Transcript

#643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need

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Now it's seen. a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscal. Sure. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gyms. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My guest today is Todd McFarland. 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 Marvel's top villain, Venom. Todd is the CEO of Todd McFarland Productions, McFarland Toys, one of the US'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 three oh one, 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 McFarland, and Facebook 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, established 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. 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 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 sixties. He was a writer.

And he helped create characters like the Fantastic Four. Spider Man. Iron Man. The Hawk.

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'em in the same category as Somebody like Walt Disney. In terms of the global Impact.

that his character's hat. Not necessarily him as a person. But that is Characters. Had Stan.

was a comic book guy for a lot of years and then eventually moved out to California in the seventies. 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 eighty five. So most people don't begin a new career. When they're eighty five, stand it. And he did it. Quick.

meeting with him, first time I meet him I'm about sixteen. Seventeen years old. Canadian kid in Florida. going to a baseball camp and I happen to

Stay overnight before we're gonna catch a plane, go back home in a h holiday in and there was a sign that said down the hall. There was a uh 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 seventies. 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

Stanley Presents. He was in every book Stanley Presents. Every comic book I got. So I'm like, wow, there's just Dan Lee, the guy who presents every Marvel comic book. I walked up to him, I wanted to break into comics. And I asked them, 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'cause like I said, he was he hadn't hit his celebrity status that would come decades later. But just that he just said here, sit next to me, you got questions until when I went home to Canada.

That was one of the moments where I went Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna really drive And do this. My next encounter with him Now fast forward, I actually do break into comics. I climb the rank and file that you and I talked about.

In our first interview. I even get two Spidermen, which is sort of the corporate icon. of Marvel Comics. Yeah.

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.

withstand In nineteen ninety two, ninety three, 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 was stand around ninety two, ninety three. Most of them are up on YouTube. They were just You know, Stan and I sitting there and he did it with a couple of uh 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 have like how do you create characters? Why does that guy look like that? And it was just sort of a

Almost say how do you do it? sort of videos that were there. Did he v not view that as competitive since you guys had split off? To be image at that point.

No,'cause 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 video tapes were sort of under an umbrella that was part of his own camp. 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 gonna be in direct competition with Marvel. 'Cause he was a creative guy. And haven't 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 spawned. He's got like a hundred spawns. He And I saw it. Over and over and over and all the times I was with them.

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 twenty 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 twenty seconds of Stan's day.

Even though he was given it. to every single person. It was really a And I I saw this when I was sixteen when I was sitting with them for the first time, but I just kept becoming more and more aware of This is how you treat the public'cause 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 He 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 because I have a career because of your existence, which is why it's odd, Tim. And 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. Yeah. And part of it was looking at people like Stanley. I've never been put off by people wanting that 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 Trekky 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 to answer it. So even if the question may seem silly to you. 'Cause they want to know who would win, the Hulk or Thor in the fight. It's important to that individual. So I'm gonna give them

As good an answer as I can and I'm not gonna 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 gonna give Stan his own Movie premier.

And they did it in Vegas. Somebody phones me up and says, Hey Todd, can you come and be the M C Of that. thing w there's gonna 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. 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 it 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 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.'Cause he had just figured 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.

Todd, I go to conventions almost every weekend. Travel with me. 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 can't I mean I understand Batman. You would like me to be your Rob and then it's very complimentary, but I've gotta 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'cause literally, Tim, he could not hear. He could not hear. So what he needed was somebody 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 w didn't know. The comic book.

So the lingo. We just sort of had this weird kabuki dance we were doing. Yeah. 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 five thousand people. And you know

They put up the big giant screen so the people at the very back can at least look at the video. Right. And Stan was in the middle and I usually sit next to him but I go, No, Stan, this is your gig. I'm gonna 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 you know I'm talking and I'm sort of not paying attention'cause I'm looking at the audience and then I turn and Stan is literally

Six inches on my flank. And then I look up at the screen,'cause the screen wasn't mobile. The camera was fixed. The stage was empty. Because he had scooted so far over my so I look at him uh under my breath go Stan you're You're off screen.

You're not on TV. All the people in the back you go, Todd, I can't hear a damn thing. I can't hear a damn. So eventually he got let me tell you, he 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 aid, 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 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 that bring him up on stage. So I was there for a couple important moments. I'm 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 in Phoenix. He turned to me.

And said Todd, you do most of the talk and I don't want to be here. 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 we used to take these selfies. I got all these cool pictures of me and him taking selfies'cause he never understood what a selfie was. So he's always like

Right. Jam dis face jammed into the lens. So I got these cool, awesome photos. He also in the green room before we went up, he used to take a nap'cause he was in his nineties. 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 gonna put a whole book out. It's gonna be nap time with Stan. I'm gonna I'm gonna publish on it. 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 one of you have a couple of regrets. That was one that I wish we knew. That was gonna be the last time. That he was gonna be on a stage in his lifetime'cause we would have

Sent them off with a better applause than than we did 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 And fighting 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 you doing, but 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.

'Cause he only had his two things was he had the love of his life His wife. Almost married seventy. Years those two people. Seventy Yeah.

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.

Laugh and He sort of broke down at the end. It was that here's the thing. We're talking about a guy Who up to the age of ninety three was doing cartwheels up on stage, so we never allowed him to be old. Wait, do you mean literally doing cartwheels? No, you just mean energetically. Oh yeah. I'm saying ninety three. He'd got up there, you throw him a question, and he just went at ninety three. He was at the top of his game, ninety-four, he passed away at ninety five.

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 acknowledge that he was in his nineties. We just thought he was like some fifty year old guy with a lot of energy. But eventually eventually. Time came and and he

He had to leave us, so 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 twenty 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 I mean, I've got recording you used to let me record him. And he be in the taxi and pick me up at the airport and the whole drive from the airport to the hotel, he'd be like, Why's 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 you know, jabbing me the whole drive.'Cause you know, we did a lot of it up on stage. So again, it wasn't put on but

I remember And here's the last thing I'll say. 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. God. 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 you and I We're nobodies, and look at this. We're having the best time. And so what I'm saying is that the reason he was able to summon that energy. It's 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 have you know, obviously I haven't climbed the mountain of a lot of others. But if all the celebrity I've been around and all the time I spent If I was to pick one person to write the book, how to interact with your fans. By far Stanley's the guy who would do the how to do it.

Amazing. Stan. I mean I remember as a collector seeing the masthead. As a little kid, right? And then even into my early. Stanley presents Mastad. Of course. Yeah. Stanley. And then I also correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but the voice that you actually impersonated really well for people who don't know would come on some of the early Cartoon adaptations.

And his voice would come on and I would see that every morning, eating my cereal, getting ready to go to school. So Stanley for me also had this iconic Pope like importance as a little kid. Yeah. Yeah, you know, in a in a childhood experience where that doesn't really exist. Yeah. It's like who is this mythic Stan Lee? I'll tell you another little silly story. We're in the trailer, again the equivalent of Grain Room waiting to go up on stage. And I was sitting with Stan and they were talking about him doing his cameos. He'd done three or four cameos in a row and I went, Oh yeah. And I don't really go to the Marvel movie, so the next one coming up was Thor and it was 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. That's weird. And so anyways, I'm talking to Stan, we're in the trailer, and I I go, Oh, you got to do some more cameos. Oh yeah, and the Thor, what did you do on the Thor one? And he goes, Mm, let me think. I'm trying to remember. 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 this extent. You're saying I've been seeing this commercial, he's got short hair. You cut his hair? 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 them 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 found a pair of scissors. And then he literally reenacted. We've I I I videotaped it where I'm Thor. And they're holding me down and he's saying his lines. And he's like going on, he's doing all of it. So he I get we're about to go on stage, but he's still just goofing around.

Some day I'll release it. that is arguably the best piece of video I have from Stan.'Cause he was a very kind, polite gentle man in terms of of his language, if you will, when he was up on stage. And I have the one where I record it where he goes, Dodd Can I tell you something? Again, out of the blue.

Can I tell you something? Yeah, just stand 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? I won't know, Stan.

Fuck. And I'm like, what what like I had never I don't even think I ever heard him even say damn up to this point. And it sort of shocked me, right? I got one. Pardon? Yeah, and then he went on a dissertation.

Of how you can use that word has a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, and gave examples of all them. It was like a school teacher Sort of doing A classic master class and how to use a word more than once. It just happened to be that word. So maybe someday that 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. He seems like he's very good at Enjoying life pausing.

Not getting swept up. In all the superficial nonsense but stopping you and saying Isn't this great? Like let's just look at this for a second. Like, isn't this amazing? He 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 nineties 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 fifteen minutes of fame is just about over every day we wake up. We always think tomorrow is the day where they're gonna understand that we're impostors 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 gonna last one more day.

And you keep going. And you're thankful for it, right? Again, at some point once you know that your 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 my big personal hero. Uh Like gentlemen, even though they were superstars and I Think part of it is And

You know, and maybe Overstating it. from Canada, you know, 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 gonna 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 our stand sort of had a little bit of Canadian in him where he was just like, Enjoy it while you can. You don't know if it's gonna 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

manage to Branch out and infiltrate. all of these different areas. And I don't even know how to put them in order. So you've got McFarland toys, right? So let's just generically lay it out. You got toys Music. Directing T V 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 let's see if we can go through'em real fast, right? Let's just talk First about How the toy's 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 D C and then Image Comics. If you ask who's three, that's us for thirty years in a row. And because of that When we came out in nineteen ninety two, that was when we first came out. And Spawn came out in nineteen ninety two. We're celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of both of those this year. Spawn one to the top of the chart. set sales records at top of the charts. And I'm s not saying for independent comic books, I'm saying top of the charts for comic books. It was ahead of every Marvel and every D C comic book.

And so you can imagine when you have something at the top of a chart. Then people in other industries come around. And they a 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 anc what they call ancillary merchandising. And so all those phone calls were coming. Now I

Gently. Sad. No no no I want I I understand you want to do pillowcases, but Do you know have you read a Spawn Comic Book? Like, Well no, but we see it's number one. So

Do you know that you know he's from the the pit of hell Right? Like and you can just see there's hesitation, right? They're going, 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

I had in the back of my mind when we left Marvel Comic Books and we we helped start image comic. I wanted to Build a foundation. I feel that metaphorically, if you can build a strong foundation Just like in the r the real world, you can put a skyscraper.

on a strong foundation. How do we know? Because they exist. So The foundation to me was could I do Movies?

T V Video games. And toys. Those were the four. Those are the four cornerstones. Could you just repeat those four?

The four I mean, just for me. Just for me. Again, I'm I right. Video games? T V Movies

And toys. 'Cause I felt that if you could get your brand into those four corners And again,'cause 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 work 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 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 The better chance you have of then sending out your message for the next thing that you're about to do and it might work.

So those were the four pillars. One of the pillars And to go through'em real quick, I made a deal with the video games, I made the deal with HBO, um, we'll get back to that. On the T V. New line cinema, we made the deal with the movie. And then we got to the toys and all the

Fortune five hundred the public companies came to my door 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 gonna do traditional toys And put'em in traditional places and market them in traditional ways. Which basically meant they were gonna put Swan next to Teletubby's and all their Disney product. And I thought it was a recipe for failure. And oh by the way, if I gave it to'em and it failed, 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 the you have to then ask the next question. How hard is it to make my own choice? That's it, right? So and sometimes it's out of anger. I I've started companies just because I got pissed off. 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 uh you know what making comic books is at its core? Ink on paper, period, period, period. Ink on paper. Are not That much different. It is

Plastic. In a shape. And if you have the right mold. You can make a shape. How do I know? Anybody who's kinda old that remembers this, when we were kids, remember you used to get these little trays and they're 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 mold. Essentially. Little bit more detail so 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 And it's not let me tell you the people in that industry. the people that are the 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. will hire people away from it. They'll tell you everything. Stop rocking the boat. Why don't you just get along yeah? 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 one hundred percent. Spend your own damn money. You know why?'Cause nobody It's to tell you what to do. 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 the 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 I just go, No. I do so I spent my own cash when I started

The companies and I was fortunate. 'Cause the comic books We're 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 know, at the height of my career at Marvel.

I was making one hundred and twenty five dollars per page. That was the 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 four percent

Of the profits. And when we went and started our own company, guess what? We're getting a hundred percent. So do the math. If you take a hundred divide by four, if we were selling one twenty fifth. One twenty fifth.

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 twenty Five.

times more than we were overnight. And that's a whole nother conversation. And you could use that to bankroll the Toy development. Correct. I wasn't spending it. I wasn't buying fancy cars. I wasn't doing anything. I 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 gonna 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 five ninety nine and I priced mine at six ninety nine. 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 six ninety nine toy there.

Five ninety nine. Here's the answer. Of course you can. Of course you can. Here's how you sell a$699 toy. Give'em six dollars and ninety nine cents of value, period. Oh, I'll even give you an upgrade. Give'em seven ninety nine of value and price it at six ninety nine. What they were thinking is

'Cause they're the big corporate guys. How do you sell a five ninety nine toy for six ninety nine? 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 four motor prices. And you can sell that. All day long because people understand value. And they can do it'cause I didn't have any big brands. I didn't have Superman and Batman or Star Wars.

I had spawn and there was only one way I was gonna be able to compete. With those big names? Just Give'em better quality. And give'em.

More plastic. Never underestimate plastic. It's like saying do you want the Fifteen ounce bar of chocolate for a dollar or the ten 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.

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How did you learn About making toys and figure out the process for making quality product. Like how did you educate yourself?

On Uh 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'em toys and I said no.

I got on the phone I knew a couple people. And I phoned somebody who was sort of entrepreneurial and I said You know anybody that makes toys? 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 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 us. 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. It's if you've got art, you can make art in any shape you want. And so for me, what what helped me, Tim, more than anything else, and I've said this, I've never invented anything original. I've never done anything.

No. 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.

An original. You do not, you just have to add three percent sexy to it and you Will now be the genius. Let's give you an example. I'll give you an example. Ten, twelve 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 Apple and we are'cause they were doing iPods and go, we are gonna come out with a phone.

The people in in the audience want, uh Steve, a little late to the game. Phones had 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 die old 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 Courty. with plastic buttons. And when you say

Hi Mom. On mine, you're not touching plastic. You're touching Glass. Boom!

Boom. Yeah. Did the exact Same. Thing has been a

Every other phone on the marketplace except you touched Glass. 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 three percent. If you can figure out the three percent 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, Dodd. Your toys Are so detailed and so realistic. How do you do it? 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 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 photoreference get me awards? It shouldn't.

It shouldn't. Those are for the athletes? Is that what you're talking about? The uh 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've been making toys for fifty years. Why they chose not to put it in those shapes? I don't know, go ask them.

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 gotta paint that. Oh, a penny. Oh. A penny. Oh, a penny. And eventually they go. That's seven, eight, ten, twelve extra cents.

We can't do that. Why? Because we're making tens of millions of toys times twelve cents. It just becomes a number. They're in the business. to maximize shareholder profits every ninety days. Their job isn't to be great artists. It's to maximize Margins.

And profit. So they go, We need to make ten million. How do we make the toy? We gotta manufacture it for ninety eight 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 it toys are us. They're going

You can't have a toy at eight or nine bucks. People won't give you eight or nine bucks for a toy or whatever. Of course back then, of course they will, because they're walking in another aisle giving you two hundred dollars 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. So two things real quick on that. The first is for people who Don't have a lot of exposure to toys and I I'm not even sure. I mean there's there's a 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. Yeah. I mean they cost as much as a car and they're video 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. Enterprise, how did you think about distribution? You didn't want to be right next to the teletubbies, so what did you do?

Well, uh okay, here's where beggars and choosers come. Look, I've said to people before, if you're gonna 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. So I'm gonna 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. 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 gonna 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 was back in nineteen ninety four. Hasbro, let's just take a big toy company or Mattel. They had their own building ten 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 ten 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's twenty rooms. I was in one room and that room was cut into forty 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.

Where'd you bring? Sorry, keep going. I don't want to interrupt but I'm just like what the hell are you doing? A drawing of spawn. On phone core and I cut it out. So I go it's gonna look sort of like that drawing. That was it. That was myself.

That was my whole speech. And oh, by the way, I had made some Hot Wheel toys based on a funny car that I had bought. And I'd hand them the pot 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 gonna crush'em, probably within six months. But at that point Toys for 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 a 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. Down a ha like a little bit of a walk and then banned there was a jog. And I was around the jog, so I didn't know I just saw people stand up and and and s and present themselves in front of their beds. Like and it's like Okay. And so I go around the corner.

To see it 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. 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's really kinda cool visually, I still have this moment where it's like as you walk by people, you could just see them Collapse. physically'cause it's like oh shit he's not buying my and then you keep walking by and a Jid bite, Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. And then I went, Oh, I guess I better go stand by my Barry 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 are us buyers. Stop 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 was looked like he was about twenty one or twenty two, and then the magic word. 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 Basically, 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 Rush buyer said, he just looked at it. And just want 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. Yeah 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, usually if they take a a sample, they don't usually put you store wide. But he said I don't know who his assistant was. He must have been bending his ear. He goes, I'll put you store wide.

I want 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 Okay. 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 the spawn product and it will be going Store wide in Toys Ross. Now. Does Walmart know anything about me or spawn? Of course they don't. But what they don't want to do is get beat.

By their competition. So they go Toy Dress going storewide? Yeah. Okay, we'll take some. And then the dominoes. I go to Kmart and Target and all these other places and then you just keep adding Well, Toys of Rush and Walmart are on board and they're like, What? What are we missing? And it just becomes this 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. Because People go, wow, Todd, you got your product selling at Walmart or whatever. Hold on, we're 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 Rest, they're like, okay, great, we'll give you net ninety 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. No, they don't return'em. Okay. No, they don't. Okay. All right. Tell me more. Cause like if it was like a home shopping network or something, I don't think this is absolutely accurate, 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 wanna do on in the toy side is to make sure that they're not over buying Both parties need to be realistic. Right. And it's one of the reasons I think, Tim, 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. Yeah. Which I go, I I know you want seventy five thousand units of that, but you know what, I think why don't we start you at

Forty. 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 Seventy five. 'Cause here's the math, just s so everybody knows. If you buy seventy five and you sell

Sixty. They're gonna go, Ah, I got fifteen thousand in inventory. It's not a success. If you give'em forty And then they have to buy another twenty. And they sell sixty

They go, Wow We ordered fifty more than our original order. Yeah, it's so you're still at sixty. But one they're disappointed and one they're not. So you have to sort like you're still playing w 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 g I've told all my employees, get me to zero.

Every year. And we get to do it again for another year. 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. You know, 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 paired. Principles out of imagine that go with that. That was it. The company came from one simple question. 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 Kim.

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 I had my prototypes at Toy Fair'cause I started actually making prototypes. And each year I would bring them and we s we would sculpt at twice the size of the f final product. Why? 'Cause 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 gonna look like? It's never gonna look like this. And I went, What are you talking about? It's gonna 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 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 cards, right? They're just they're 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. I want to didn't even put even a drop of paint on it. 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 ten. And when the buyer got to step ten, guess what it was? It was the product. In package. Manufactured. I go

That the manufacturer toy, that's what it's gonna 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 the way 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 gonna 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. How else am I gonna survive next to Star Wars and Transformers and G.I. Joe and Marvel? I can't. And what year is this, roughly? What you say?

We started the toy company in ninety Four 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 just you've you've upgraded the whole Industry. 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, more money. More everything they can squish you in 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 gonna 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'cause why 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. 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 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'cause 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, 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 nineteen ninety four. The reason I asked about that timing. Ties into where you were going. uh 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. And say Toys R Us. And nineteen ninety-four 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 in terms of mainstream adoption in nineteen ninety-four. So

A couple of questions. And you can tackle them in any any order. One is How on earth do you actually ensure these toys sell once you get them at 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 for placements. So they have they pay extra, they pay the retailer for end caps. They own the first, say, twenty feet of a store. I'm making up this example, but like Coca-Cola, boom. They own the first you know, twenty feet deep at A B and C retailers.

You ліitery cannot. invade that territory. It's just not possible. It's been paid for. It's this is true in publishing as well with books and and so on. Like there are all these they might call them co-marketing fees, 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 like do you have to pay those placement fees? In which case, like 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 a hundred feet. Let's say that the again, I'm in the boys toy action figure aisle. Let's just

Keep that let's 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 gonna dedicate 80% of that, 85% of that. to the big brand.

And we all know what they are'cause 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 out in the zeigeist. But they go, Okay, eighty five percent of that's gonna be given to the thing that's gonna be in every Companies I don't care whether you're Kmart, Walmart

Amazon, everybody's gonna have it. Then there's the fifteen percent left. And the fifteen percent is Uh. 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 little bit. And that was the space that I needed to get into. I needed to figure out Could I rise and get in to the sales that were worthy of that?

Fifteen percent. 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.

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 is what you get. And I think

That it's My toys just quickly I 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 gonna do some toy. 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 ones. And so Once the first series came out and did really well. And then the second one continued'cause 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 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 darnest and Sometimes that

Thirty foot. shot banks into the bucket when you scored at three points and you go, Wow, I can't say I can 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. A tower records. And K B toys. and and hot topics and we were going to what I was 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 At times Gory Poise 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 have to competi'cause they don't have to compete because if you go into competition with the big boys, everybody has the same product, you're just gonna 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

Babbages. Yeah. Virgin Records and KB, all these companies don't even exist anymore. So there was a consolidation and And some of the fun that we were having at the beginning is no longer sort of available to us. So momentum. Uh you strike me as someone who's a very good

creative and business DJ to push the metaphor. Uh, which I like. You mentioned the four pillars, games, T V, movies. Toys. Came. In

one of the earlier chapters in terms of setting that pillar of the foundation. Where did Whether it's music T V Directing.

Any of those other elements. Come into the picture. Okay, so I'm gonna get to that. Let me just go back to Toys and tell one more quick story. On the toy on the toyette.

So there's another story that people To this day scratch their head on. And it was in nineteen ninety eight. Mark McGuire, if you're a baseball fan. Mark McGuire and Sam Michelsa were going for the home run title. And at the end of the season, Mark McGuire hit seventy home runs. The prior record was sixty one home runs by Roger Maris. Sammy Sosa hit sixty six that year.

Okay. Why is that relevant? Because For A couple of years I had been I started my toy company in nineteen ninety four and I'm a 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 make sports toys. Why? I couldn't even get a meeting,'cause I'm a nobody who's taking the NHL. Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL. Why why would anybody let me in their front door? They wouldn't. And so you have to figure out Backdoors and alternatives.

So here was the play. And again From one Perspective it seemed like the dumbest thing that A human being can do I'll give you what I was doing during that play. Anyways, the seventy 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

three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand dollars on any baseball paraphernalia. At the end of the auction, I end up winning the seventy ball And it cost me three million dollars. Ten times what the previous record was. Three million dollars. Right. Now You can say And I understand this perspective. Why would any

Any Human being with a brain. Spend three million dollars for a three dollar baseball. Why would they do that? Especially given a couple years later.

Barry Bonds broke the record. Oh, by the way, I have to go buy that ball too. But I bought the seventy ball. Here's what the seventy ball did and it seems like the stupidest thing. Three million dollars for baseball, it's stupid. You never can get your money back out of it. It depends on w 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 headlined. So instantly it was a national story. And I was on Wats at Talk radio shows and TV shows and everything. I mean, I I canvassed the planet. And do you know how much money it would cost? To get that attention by buying ads. In any of those areas it would cost you

Way more than three 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 McFarn, I don't know, maybe you heard me, I

about the McGuire ball, but I'd just like talk to you. I'm also in the toy business. 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 thirteen years. I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I've made more than three million dollars in profits on those toys. Multiple times. Over those thirteen years. So at some point you have to put up an anti

on the table to play the big game. With the big boys in poker, and my auntie, unfortunately. was a three million dollar baseball so that they took That has saying Which just so everybody knows, it was every red cent I had and then some. I had to beg more than steel to pay for it.

Then what uh it would end up happening that people see those headlines and they go Oh. If he's got three million dollars to wipe his ass on the 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 three million on a baseball? Because for me, I've made it over multiple times. And anytime I do any interview,'cause I'm now the expert, just so everybody knows. Guess how many interviews I did when Aaron judged this year?

was gonna do a ball, people were asking me how much a ball is worth. I'm now an expert'cause I spend an ungodly amount on one ball. I become an expert. This is how silly all this is. But it just I get to amortize that three million dollars 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 that. 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 gonna equate to in terms of capital money and profit margins in ninety days, you're gonna get shot down. 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 it was I horrified them. To the point that I become a bit of a Talking about moment'cause I've run into them years later. They would come and here's what I found with Wall Street.

Todd, we're gonna give you X amount of dollars and we're gonna 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 gotta give up control of my company? Uh-huh.

For what? Your money? Uhhuh. 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, Doc. 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, no. Okay. So but if you give me twice the money

Do I have control? No. Whoa, w that's a problem. Todd, last time we'll give you three X of money. Guys.

Let me now define what money is. To me. Here's the word I'm Canadian, so maybe you guys in America do it a little bit differently, right? So my dad taught me a word. It's called useless. And here's what useless is. It's 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 kinda useless to me. 'Cause I'm not using it'cause it's just sitting in the 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 remember I was at a party years later and I introduced myself and then they went. Todd McFry, why do I know that name? It was somebody I'd never met before, anyway. Oh, you're the guy that does it like money. It was it was and and look at let me tell you.

And I've told everybody, look at guys, I'm not a saint. I'm not saying 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 wanna do a deep dive on the madman part. You mentioned that this three 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 Choice R S and you haven't even figured out manufacturing that's reckless, but it's not reckless'cause 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. Yeah. What gave you the confidence or how did you do the calculus? Did you have

enough safety net that you were like uh 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 would 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 thirty six. was the second longest running streak of series of toys other than I think Transformers. Star Wars had gone.

Quiet and gone dark for a while. Right. So again, there was a little bit of that. But there were I I planted one small seed before I made the crazy play. And the small seed was

I was able to get to the players union. Uh 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'cause 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 to 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 and their logos. And then you have to clue the two together and you have a double royalty that you have to pay. It's not the best model, but it 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'cause they just sell jerseys and stuff with logos. Everything's logo, logo, logos on the hat. And I said I'm gonna make Toys of your players. But unfortunately I can't put their uniforms on'em'cause I don't have an NHL.

I'm gonna have to do generic uniform. 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 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 Hold out my toys and I go Guys.

Look at these toys, aren't they cool? They look just like Pavel Burret and Muriel Lemieux. And Boyne Gretzky, look at him, 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 with them and they were threatening to sue me because they said that my generic uniforms were looking like their right. I think I even done some McGuire Generic McGuire's 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 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 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.

And they're going, We're gonna shoot you. You cannot do these toys, and I'm Like Oh yeah? You sue my ass.

You sue my ass,'cause 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. Good. Sue me. And if you win, you don't get a fucking ounce of upgrade. You say you got a hundred percent at the end, the best you can hope for is a hundred percent. 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 a hundred percent, and I'm betting you don't. that not only do I get a piece of that hundred percent It is gonna basically be a story for every human being on this planet that can now go against you. So you got two choices. You can either go to court and say that somehow you own reddish

Colors. If you want to make that argument, be my guest. Yeah. What I'm saying I've got a check for a half a million dollars here. I'd like to shove down your throat to give me your fucking logos. I don't know. Sue me and potentially lose a hundred percent 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? It's like stop it. The and and and and I 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 find 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. I it is amazing how many times I've had to try and shove Money down people's throats. But anyways, that's that's corporate America. They do they do their thing, I do mine. So doing your thing. Let's hop across some lily pads and touch on whichever you want to touch on next. The

Music, T V 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 T V 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 is comes out, bam, shoots to the top of the charts and for months and months, even maybe a couple of years, it was a 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 when you talk about they're still legit, right? But they were one of the big Sort of companies out there and I 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 and we're gonna get Saturday morning cartoons, which they did. But I didn't I didn't spawn again, the guy from the Pit Hell just wasn't what I wanted.

And so I remember and I don't say this as a joke. I said as 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 let me ask you just one question. I just have one question for you. Can I say fuck? In my show. And again, it wasn't meant to be a joke. It was just

And they paused. And then they said. Yeah, yeah, probably. Like why not, right? And that was all I needed to hear. Not that I wanted to use that word. Yeah. Not that I want it 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

No. And I'm gonna have corrupt policemen and I'm gonna have mafia people, and I'm gonna have criminals, I'm gonna 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 need it to be able to do that and have the creative freedom. So when they said Yeah, sure. Then I was like

Cool. Then the then let's do it. Oh. One more thing. I know nothing about animation, never spent a second on it, but I gotta be in charge. So you guys Go and have that talk.

And do what you gotta do. And they came back and said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can you can be at charge, but we're gonna put some Good people on your flank, 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. 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 Six hundred years of experience. Which is cool. But There's also

moments where I realize I'm in front of people at times who've 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, all these people 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 gonna cost more money. Oh, can't do that. I have a budget. No, it doesn't cost any more money, but it's gonna take twice as long. Ah, we don't have the luxury of the deadline. So that's it. I 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 and then you get the moment, Tim, which is you ask a question and you've got You know, fifty people in a room and I go, If we do this, will it cost us any more time or or or money? I mean a little bit effort maybe, but about the same. And then you get

To me, the golden moment. Pregnant boss. Silent. So there was nobody in the room. With six hundred years experience.

Saying, No, we can't do that. No, we can't do that thought. 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 take more time or money. You're saying no. Why are we figuring out how to self Edit ourselves self Center ourselves when nobody else is. This is a crime.

Why are we putting cardrails 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 that gets comfortable that the moment you throw the doors open to the to the wild farmland 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 then knew one way to draw it, and then a new one way to storytell. And then you 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'cause they all thought I was the crazy guy, whatever else. We won. Mm. On that. Shell.

And I remember being up on the stage holding and getting my Emmy and behind me was Fifteen of these. Constantly having to basically

Drag them. into some of these decisions. And they were all holding an Emmy in their hands too. And 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 that as to reason why we're up on this stage today, right? It was it bugged me that I was putting that award in their hands'cause they were not willing participants. For the ride. 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? Name's Todd, only rhyme to a 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

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 gotta stop the animation. I go, Why? And I go, 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 crude. 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 accrued onto mine and it fell under their threshold and whatever matrix they used and they never go public with any of it, but it was like that was it. I was like we were doing the exact same job winning Emmy's

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

Spiderman image. Toys And then you have this television experience, which is super challenging. Doesn't end the way it probably would have Liked it to end. Well we won enemies, so I'll I'll t I'll take that up, great.

Well, that leads into my question, which is Are you glad you had that experience, or would you have removed it and replaced it with something else. How did you contend with that yourself. Did you feel good about it at the end? Sure. Proud of it.

Yeah, okay. This is easy. 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 forty years. Like I don't even control her. And she's the closest person that 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 gonna complain about how the business works Then I will then go and become my own businessman. I consider myself, Tim, 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. Where I can now go into a meeting with executives or bankers or government people whatever and sound like a CEO. Who happens to be a pretty good artist.

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. 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 gonna fail, I wanna 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 nose. 'Cause 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 BS, let me just tell ya, it was As the years have gone by, there's hardcore data now. Tim, let me just Again, go back a little bit, ластier. I don't even pay attention to that. The last year There's the equivalent of the Nielsen ratings in toys.

And they literally count When something gets scanned at the big super superstores, all the it 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 number one selling line in America and Canada. My company, literally, that is A handful of people Sold more toys.

Yeah. Action figure line. Then 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 Five Hundred Companies. Last year I had the number one selling comic book. That more sound comic book. Marvel's own by Disney. D C Comics is own by

Warner Brothers. A T Warner Brothers Discovery, whatever it is this week. 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 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 and I'm hoping That the story of a guy like me should be hopefully to some people somewhat inspirational because every time I read 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 ten thousand dollars a month.

And make a profit as long as your overhead is less. Than ten thousand. 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 thirty thousand, as long as we spend twenty five, we're making five grand a month. It's a living.

It's a living. Cool, and you're having fun doing it. Two questions related to all of this. The first is We're gonna 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 have been times where you've looked at your calendar after a hard week and you're like For fuck's sake, I've spent ninety plus, maybe a hundred percent of my time this week. Managing stuff.

How have you been able to block out or protect the time to create. Have you thought about that? As 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 How does this work? I

Through Failures. Tim. Found That I was

A five ball juggler. And here's what that means. that I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're the best juggler in Vegas. And you're with Circus Olay. And you can juggle twenty five 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 the floor.

And it's a mess. And so I unfortunately Let the balls drop. At times. that I was acutely 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 it's 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 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.

And what that also meant was Todd You can't Do all the artwork yourself. So you're gonna have to become a good scout. And you're gonna 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 and uh 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, 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 have six

Championship rings. So did Phil. And you know many Buckets film 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 Card. You can't build this all yourself.

There are some things that make sense for me being the lead and or even isolate myself artistically. There are plenty of other things we do, making toys, making comic book, making movies, making video games, 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 Jordan's and my Scottie 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. And I just sit there and go.

Hm, 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'cause 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 Harkening back to what you said about Last year. And toy sales. So the example you gave was D C. So we're not talking about Freddie Crewer, we're talking about D C. 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. Yeah. 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 in selling

Certainly as multiple of your headcounts, so much more Than these other guys. Okay. Brand matter. So I'd been making toys for twenty five 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? Star Wars. You don't come I don't sell a lot of Spider Man'cause 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. And uh

D C 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. 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. You ba basically you can be you can do puzzles and 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 wanna 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. Just be good at one aisle.

You know, I'd rather be a master of one than a jack of all traits. So Eventually we ended up a couple years back getting After decades it tried.

Finally we got the license for the D C multiverse. Let me tell you really what the big Piece of that was. I had the word Batman and Superman on my toys. Like what are you talking about? Those are global Brand.

So I've always Told people. Look at And you you and I have discussed it here. If you do a quality product At a fair price.

And do a little bit of marketing. And build a better mouse trap, you can survive. How do I know? I've done it for twenty five. twenty seven years prior. But I always had a butt to it.

But if you ever give me a triple A brand on top of that mythology Shit. Get out of the way. What do you talk about?'Cause now I'm gonna give him 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. Bom. Right now.

Here's one of the things also that matter. 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 ninety days. How do you do that? 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. Until 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, 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. 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. And then that way we can paint it with a bat symbol on it or a 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?'Cause that's money. And we don't have to do all those things. Early on.

When I was given the people Warner Brothers are lineups. And we were talking to them, I go, I wanna 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, I know that. I'll we're good. I'll just you know, we'll cut some new mold. And when they found out That I was willing to make new molds.

Sure. Specifically for one character. They were blown away by that. 'Cause they've been dealing with the big boys. And they were going so hold so you're gonna do five new characters and make five new sets of mold?

Uh-huh. And that's okay with you. Yeah, it's how I've been doing it for 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 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 the shelf.

I was able to make them and then I think there was a big enough audience and geek them. 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

So the 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, 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 dumbass kid who doesn't know anything about music's got a grammy. It bothers my wife. She's a very good pianist, right? 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 gonna block the front door. Status quo's gonna always get

Put in front of you, you find the back door. Here's the back door. Out of the blue we're doing the H VO animation. It's doing pretty well and it again winning a couple 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 Vetter. Eddie Vetter's lead singer of Pearl Jam. And Eddie then 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'em 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, Oh okay, cool. And so he goes, You w 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? And 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 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 it down.

Two Go with his music of the song that we were talking about, do the evolution. And so I get on the phone. And it was really good. I gotta tell you Tim, it was really good. And I get on the phone and go Hey, Eddie. I got it. I 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 Oh, that was me.

You edited this video. Uh-huh. You have The big editing machine was called a 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 off stage, 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 end up doing the video and doing the the animation for it. It ends up get nominated for a Grammy, which again, so it was my first foray into music. I went, What? You just

You go into music and you get nominated for a Grammy, that was easy. Should have done this earlier. We lost the Madonna that year. But Eddie, we're 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. You can do whatever you want. Sure. Come so he he sat with us in the three days. That we We're there editing and he 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 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 which I thought was like sort of formal. You 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, grungeaddy cool. And he had his briefcase again and he put it right down next to us. Never touch it the whole day again. He laughed.

And then on the third day he came. Same thing, but At some point I just want hey, Eddie, I don't mean to pry, but Why do you keep bringing that? Briefcase with you

Every day 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 I I often wonder if I hadn't asked. what would have happened would he had just gone home that day. But he goes, Oh my gosh, Dad, I'm glad you finally asked. It it was a it was a soup like a briefcase, like you know, just like like you're a spy or something. And then he clicked it open. And you're waiting for the CIA folders, 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. I heard you're a pretty good baseball player, Todd. And I went, Yeah, yeah, I I played back then and he and he goes.

You wanna play catch during lunch break? And I want Sure, I can play cat with any better, that's cool. 'Cause 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. 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 a hundred and five, hundred and six that day in California. But I'm from Phoenix. It doesn't matter. I can deal. But Eddie. He's got black boots, black pants, black shirt. Black sunglasses. And he's smoking. If 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 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 you're 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 Oh And I mean I thought I'd I go I'm gonna kill this man. We keep playing. He literally is gonna pass out with heat exhaustion. Gonna have to rush him to the hospital. And it was like but he wasn't gonna give in. This is a dumb thing about boys in our testosterone. Neither one of us was gonna give, but I'm a cockroach. I could have gone all day until I killed him.

So I just pulled it back. I didn't feel like being the guy that was the one that sent Eddie to the hospital and had to cancel his uh'cause they were on 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 anyway, 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 fifty plus a million views on YouTube. 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. And that comes from the HBO, right? So again, this is HBO. Right. So again you go you go you do Marvel that begats image comics. Image begats Right. I'm gonna use biblical terms. Right. Uh be gap spawn. Spawn begat HBO H V O because Eddie was watching it.

Be got hey, you wanna do a music video. Music video comes out, successful, gets nominated for a Grammy. That be gathered 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 gonna 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 stores Open or present themselves.

So let's talk about that piece. What you just said is important. So sometimes I get people go, Oh Tod. You just sort of getting rich and famous and you know, you just wanna you got a ego and whatever else. And it's like and probably that's true. But let me tell you why. А лай сексес.

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've 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. Job.

That's why I need to keep 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 have been doing Art. То тайма.

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 gonna apologize for us doing our jobs right.

Yeah. Doesn't seem to be your style. Alright, so we're talking about These multiple encounters with our very nice friend. 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 it for 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. They're like Oh Todd, you're a genius. Some people will look at that and go, You're a genius. I'm going, uh it's a little bit of dumb buck. But to your point, the reason that I was able to get that

Genius shot. That some people think of it. I was there for four days in a row and I took ten thousand shots and I missed every other one. But I didn't leave until I made the shot. So if you take ten thousand shots Sometimes one of'em 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 gonna shoot again. You can't do that. I'm gonna shoot again. You can't, you can't shoot, shoot, shoot. And then bam, every now and then you sink one. And then you go, How do I build off that?'Cause 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 l many years or hours or months they spent till they 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'cause 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 let's before we get to games and and movies and how that sort of coalesced or or entered the scene in some way, let's talk about creating characters

or fictional worlds that endure Four. decades and in doing research for this I found An interview Of yours.

where you talked about going into Hollywood and pitching And you were I might be misquoting, so I can't 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 thirty years? And It goes on. But could you just speak to 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 And For a company, a studio

A conglomerate who's built on trying to make money. It's like why 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 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.

The nutrition is that over time you're gonna have both high point and low point But you gotta just keep going. You can't quit. You gotta 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, I

Yeah, no, I've heard the I've heard the the character spawn. They don't have to have bought anything. I'm gonna 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. Because I'm looking for an article, there's I read the headline until I've got info. That's just attrition. And so

Did the Spawn comic book have a law at times? Of course it did, where 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. It's now The some total of All of it.

So that all the people over thirst who have passed through Any of the characters I've created, let you 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 gonna remember, oh yeah, yeah, twenty years ago, I collect that. But maybe it was somebody who passed through it fifteen years ago or ten years ago or five years ago, or just jumped on since we set the world record that came in going Huh, you know what? I've been a D C and Marvel acolyte and now I'm gonna 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 that army. off to the side. So to me it now it's just Attrition. Of just going again. Again.

Again. It will just get into your brain. I'll give you a bad, bad, bad example early on. And I 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 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. 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 I wanted a funny car.

But I have 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 combo 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.

People will actually look at it. They'll come and look at it'cause they'll be going, Why you got a purple elephant here? So my purple elephant, my pink elephant literally was the Funny card. 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,'cause 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 vote. Which 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 jump one person and they went on the white side and went, Yeah, that's kinda 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 one. And they 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 into garbage.

I threw in the garbage, I didn't give a shit. I didn't get I was never gonna 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 Force them. to look at the word spawn thinking that they were helping me on some polling survey And it was just I need to get the word spawn into their wormhole. And this 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 No Published more of than three hundred 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? And how much of it was setting conditions and making it cool and then assuming you're just gonna 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 gonna be the biggest comic book in the country. Just last week. The Batman Spawn crossover. We we touched upon it. Right. I was winging it.

Till they pried it out 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 I get it wrong. So here's what the goal was when I started Spawn. There's two goals.

One, we started the company 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?

'Cause even if there was only one book. Called spawn. I was never gonna take that logo off. So I I knew it was gonna exist'cause I'm just that militant. I'm putting it on issue number one and it will never

Come off. So image comic book 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. Because we do about sixty or seventy books a month.

Number two. Could I create a character? That would outlive me. Period. The guy who created it.

Superman. Dead. The guy who created Mickey Mouth. 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 before I do. You always want to go. You will sa 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 'Cause 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 a hundred. 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 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 gonna and 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 and put it to bed or whatever else. No, to the point, Tim

Hate sort of saying this out loud, but Spawn's costume is alive. It's like a symbiote. It it moves and the chains are like the tongue and the spikes are like the teeth and the cape is all alive. Was his costume alive an issue number one? No. No. How did it become alive?

You just hit these Moment real quickly. People will write in'cause I'm s 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 that line, don't have time for it. I just fake everything. So I was drawn my pages of issue number one and I guess That's how bad I am. I don't pay attention to my own drawings. And so people were writing in going, Todd

Todd. 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 and it was just because I screwed off. 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 at doing a movie pitch for something. And I think it was for Doom. Or something.

And I was given this pitch and and they discover something underneath the Mojave Desert or whatever. I was on a rant. And that my buddy next to me slides a piece of paper over to me. I'm right in the middle of it. I'm with the Warner Brothers people and the prior writers. 'Cause they brought me in to see if they could help spark it. And he slides a piece of paper over to me. And 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 Uh.

A lot of miles on And I'm like, I did blow the whole Premise of this book. And I'd go, Well I'm this deep. I gotta keep going. And I sit down

And I remember the executive at Warner Brothers Looks at me for a couple of seconds, dead silence, and then he goes Slaps his hand. And goes. That's what I'm talking about.

He's not afra 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. So Sometimes you just have to if you say it with enough confidence, they'll go along for the ride with it. It's like he's not afraid to basically follow everything in the book. This is what I been talking about. We've gotta bend some of the rule, blah blah blah. So anyway, the Swan we're up to issue three hundred and thirty six went to the printers. A couple of days ago.

Do I know what three thirty seven is? 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 the A guy who runs fast. That's all I know.

That I gotta pick up with a guy who runs fast. So I'll figure it out when I've gotta get the plot in two days. So And ten 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 when I was doing with them. 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 juggler.

Which ball, if any, would you like to talk about next? What if we Get away from The businesses and talk about personalities. Not mine, but other people, right? I think that that what's of value to people who

Or thinking about doing ideas and or some entrepreneurial ship is To some extent recognizing your own personalities of whether your Actually built for war. Or not, right? To me.

All of this is a war. I know my wife is 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. I've got few of them, but one of them is I wish I was born three thousand years ago because back then

Okay. 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 be good for your family. And only two things were gonna happen. You were either gonna Cut his head off.

Or he was gonna 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'll 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 gonna give you a Piece of 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. Here's why.

Way easier to get over low bars than it is high bars. Try it. Put a bar six feet high, try jump over it. Put a bar six inches off the ground, you can get over it. Twenty 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 everyday.

Today will not Be perfect. And you know how many days in a row, Tim, I've nailed that? Every Swing.

Day of my life. I have na I'm on like Even a longer streak than Cal Ripkin Junior 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 gonna 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 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 gonna be perfect and that everybody was gonna wake up and that they were gonna make your life better. You know who woke up?

In the planet today with eight billion people and said, I'm gonna 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 gonna get crushed. So here's 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, but I knew it. And pretty soon you don't get hired for ten twenty 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 twenty first Interview.

And you give it your best and you walk away and they go, Todd, where are you going? I'm out of here'cause I know you're not gonna hire me. And they go No. We actually want to offer you a job. And here's why that's up.

Awesome day. Because what's sort of uh kinda quasi frustrate first off, they break my streak. Up twenty nose in a row. So I'm a little frustrated that my streak went away. Cause I'm like, God 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 gonna get every job they go and apply for. And when we 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 gonna be perfect, and assume human beings are flawed, and you will have a pretty damn good life because guess what happens? 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. He didn't get sued today. Cool. It's a good day. I don't know. It 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 sixty thousand. There's either a way to get to sixty thousand 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 who doesn't care. Here's why I don't care, because I don't golf.

I don't assume I'm gonna get better by not golfing. every three years any more than my mandarin and my Spanish is gonna 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 a 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.

Who must have 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 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 have had a different expectation than me.

So that's it. I just keep my expectations low, uh it gets you through there. Number two, they're always gonna say no to you. always gonna 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 gonna do something that's gonna 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. 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 gonna go to the bar. And we're gonna 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. Cause 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. Why would I give any weight? Why would I give any power

To a stranger. In my life. Here's what my goal is. 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 gonna 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? No. Do I care if they think I look like a goof? Nope. Nope, not one. second of power do I give to that person. If you're the person that's gonna 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? 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 gonna make change. If you're gonna go up against competition

They're gonna ever 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. This was my goal and I'm gonna 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'm 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 and I could cut the heads of my enemies up. Let's go back to Braveheart. And I could cut the heads of my enemy, right?

So I got my my mortal enemy in front of me and I cut his head off. Do you know how much Time I'm gonna 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. 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 is gonna 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. 'Cause somebody's out to kill me. five seconds later and I either survive

Or at least attempt to survive. Yeah. I lament and get my head cut off in a second. 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 gonna fight with on Friday. About four thirty. This is actually a 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 gonna sell this bullshit. And you go click. Now here's what I've told my wife, because she's heard me do this before. She goes, Todd, she's heard me before. Todd You're gonna have a heart attack. No, I'm not. Yes, you're gonna have a heart attack. No, I'm not, and here's why. My wife's name's Wanda. No, Wanda, I'm not gonna have a heart attack. And she doesn't believe this until this one scary moment that I go No and she goes

Why? I go'cause I don't care. The moment I hang up that phone Click. I don't even care about that guy. That that lawyer I just yelled at?

Clip. 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. 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 he's what he said and he's gonna chew on it. And he's gonna chew on it. Then he's gonna go home and his wife's gonna say, How was your day? Oh fine, except for the end, this guy, and he's gonna chew on it. And then they're gonna go out and they're gonna have a barbecue with their friends, and they're gonna go, How are we going? Oh fine, but I got this one thing. And he's gonna chew on it and chew on it, and he's gonna 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.

Why? Because on Monday click, I turn it back on and guess Between the two of us who've 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 gotta do an examination on me and my wife, and 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 and they go, Todd, you gotta 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, uh Todd, it's you and I go, Yeah, oh yeah, okay. And it's like, and fuck you. Click.

I end my conversation. I go, What what what are we doing? Oh, we gotta do this examination. Oh yeah, okay, cool. And this is my wife was waiting for and they do the blood pressure. And they do all the testing? And they go, Oh, yours is the same as your wife.

And it horrified my wife. Let me just tell you it horrified her. 'Cause she goes, I am married. A, she was happy that I'm not gonna 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 And yeah, I've been sued. I've been Screamed out. I've had people threatened the other day. What are you talking about? 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 most aggravated with? Me. 'Cause 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 gotta live with them for the rest of my natural life. So you know what? I'm stuck with it until 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 Which is uh super awesome when I go talk to business classes at university. First thing I say is I'm not gonna tell you how to make money. Eighty five percent of them throw their pencil down in disgust. 'Cause they thought I was gonna give them the ten lessons in how to make money.

I go, here's what we're gonna talk about for an hour. How to keep your humanity. How to actually be A reasonable Human being.

So here's what I'm gonna tell you. I would rather you become a Garbage collector. And go Become a good community person and go coach.

Lake for free. Than the B the V P of a bank. and be divorced four times and estranged from your family and nobody wants to hang out with you. We somehow equate in North America money To success. And to me, my definition of success is different.

I just think that there's a way Not 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 are just little baby sharks. And when I'm given that conversation, I know that they Wanna emulate the big shark. So I'm only talking to four or five of them 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 gonna leave you with one thing because I know about making money, you gotta 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, you and your brain and your intellect and your personal experiences might have made figured out how to make a hundred million. Why would I try to tell you how to make a million? You might have 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 with one thought here. All of you Just woke up tomorrow and you're not feeling very good so you go to the

You go to the doctors and Doctors take you in the back room and he does a bunch of blood tests and says, Hey, I'm gonna run the blood test 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 twenty five minutes later the doctor comes back. He doesn't look very good. Got a serious look and he says, Hey I need you to come back to my office.

Yeah, sure, Doc. And you go sit down, they go, We ran all the tests. And we re ran 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. Hm. Now. I'm gonna 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. Mm. That person I assume if you care for them that much, they care about you that much.

And in three weeks that person is gonna be left. Without you. It will be Trauma.

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 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 Fifteen 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 Yeah. Best person. Instead of

The richest. Because one 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.

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 a round three at some point.

But I do think that is an excellent place to Stop and begin to at least Land the plan. Is there anything else that you would like to Add. call people's attention to or anything else, any closing comments before we

And This Conversation. Least for now. Yeah, the only

thing I like to do is encourage people Who Um A little bit of doubt. If you got a lot of bit of doubt. It might not work. A little bit of doubt. I think we can get past

That hurdle. I don't consider myself to be smart or intelligent or do better anything better than anybody else. And I was able to just A little bit of perseverance to sort of get there. I believe that if I can do it and I was dumb. I w I got nothing but D's

You know, and 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 it's frustrating to me. I'm up on stage sometimes at comic conventions. I don't even talk about comic books, but I I go, I'm gonna talk to you as your dad is your uncle.

And I'm gonna 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 and trying and failing. That's okay. The person who never tries, I think So it has more regret. So I talk to him, I stand on one side of the the stage and I go, Come on, man, I I

Just try, try, try it once. I I think everybody in all honesty Tim should be to try to be an entrepreneur once in their life. And then I walk to the other stage. And I go now I'm gonna talk to you, Todd the CEO. I hope And here's what I'm gonna tell you, Stad, this year. I hope you don't do it.

I hope you show those doubts. And you never do it. And you know why? 'Cause that means I will never have to compete with you and you may be smarter. And better.

And we'll 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 twenty five year old Todd. I'm telling you I just know but listen to me, the sixty year old man. And would have said dude I will gut you. I tr like I would never have let an old man on that stage go, Oh, but you don't do it because you're not good enough. Like 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. Yeah. Entrepreneurial ship. You have to think. A little bit delusional at times.

point where you think you're better than you are. That's okay. That's okay. Confidence is half the battle. And now we gotta figure out whether you got the skill set, which is the other half.

But some of the skill can come along the way. Because confident. And determination can take you. pretty far until you learn those skills. So Just go, go, go. That's all I've got.

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 five hundred grand and not choose to have this guy jabbing us with a spear for the next uh twenty years. So let's just do that deal. I can definitely see that. And uh I Find you to be a Extremely impressive as a creator, as an artist.

Fascinating as a CEO. And I gotta 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'll 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 Dot blog slash podcast. As usual, you can find Todd on all the social networks. We'll link to those in the show notes as well.

at Tim Double Blog slash podcast 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 in the status quo. And Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening, everybody, 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

Cock Punch, yes, you heard that right, as you think it's spelled, Cock Punch. 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 uh 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 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 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 kinda 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 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.

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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 247 support, you're never alone. And let's face it, being an entreprene, 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. They have a lot to offer. Shopify.com slash Tip.

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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, Athlet 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 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. Got 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.

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