Taking Responsibility for Your Life, Why Creators Need to Smash Limits, and Dealmaking Strategies

1. 0:00 – 1:23

   Intro

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      [upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is Todd McFarlane. Todd is an Emmy and Grammy-winning director, producer, and creator of one of the world's best-selling comic books, Spawn. He is best known to many comic book fans for his work as the artist on The Amazing Spider-Man, for which he co-created Marvel's top villain, Venom. Todd is the CEO of Todd McFarlane Productions, McFarlane 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 #301, earning the Guinness World Record for the longest-running creator-owned superhero comic book series. You can find him online, Instagram @ToddMcFarlane, Twitter Todd_McFarlane, and Facebook like Todd McFarlane. Todd, it is nice to see you again.

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:20

      Yeah, thanks for having me back, Tim. Appreciate it.

2. 1:23 – 26:59

   The wit, wisdom, and work ethic of Stan Lee.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:23

      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-

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:49

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:49

      ... superiority on your adversaries-

   4. TMTodd McFarlane1:52

      Yeah

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:52

      ... and many other things. And I thought we would put a pin in the Marvel chapter by talking about Stan Lee, and perhaps you could just explain who Stan Lee is and how you first developed a relationship with him.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane2:07

      Probably most people been paying attention to movies, uh, 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, right? So if we go back when Marvel first began in, in the early '60s, he helped create... He was a writer, and he helped create characters like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, 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, you know, a few years back, to me, and I think a lot of people sort of said the same thing, you put him in the same category as somebody like Walt Disney in terms of the global impact that his characters had. Not necessarily him as a person, but that his characters had. And so Stan was a comic book guy for a lot of years and then eventually moved out to California in the, in the '70s and, odd as it is, really s- sort of became a big-time celebrity when the movies came around and he started making cameos in the Marvel movies, right? So, and he started that when he was 85. So most people don't begin a new career when they're 85. Stan did, and he did it.

   7. TFTim Ferriss3:43

      [laughs]

   8. TMTodd McFarlane3:43

      So my quick sort of meeting with him, first time I meet him, I'm about 16, 17 years old, Canadian kid in Florida going to a baseball camp, and I happened to stay overnight before we're gonna catch a plane, go back home in a, in a Ho- Holiday Inn, 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-'70s, and Stan Lee was there, and to me, he was like the Pope because anybody who's ever read any Marvel comic books, at the top of every Marvel comic books at that time said, "Stan Lee presents." He was in every book, "Stan Lee presents," every comic book I got. So I'm like, "Wow, there's Stan Lee, the guy who presents every Marvel comic book." And I walked up to him, I wanted to break into comics, and I asked him, "Hey, Mr. Lee, is it okay if I ask you a couple 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 him-

   9. TFTim Ferriss4:56

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane4:57

       ... with questions. Now, again, he didn't have a big giant lineup 'cause like I said, he wa- he hadn't hit his celebrity status that would come decades later. But just that he just said, "Here, you know, sit next to me. You got questions?" And so when I went home to Canada, that was one of the moments where I went, "Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna really drive and do this." My next encounter with him... Now fast-forward, I actually do break into comics. I, I climb the rank and file that you and I talked about in our first interview. Uh, I even get to do Spider-Man, which is sort of the corporate icon of Marvel Comics. That puts me on the map and I set sales records with, with those books. And then a bunch of us quit and we start Image Comics, and I end up doing like a series of videos with Stan in 1992, '93, and sort of rekindling a professional relationship. Fast-forward again, and- There's a, I, I think it was Iron Man movie was coming out, and they were giving Stan his own-

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:05

       Todd, I'm sorry to interrupt. What were those videos that you did with Stan? What was the content or the intention of those videos that you did with Stan around '92, '93?

   12. TMTodd McFarlane6:15

       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?

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:31

       Cool.

   14. TMTodd McFarlane6:31

       Why does that guy look like that, right? And it was just sort of a, almost a how, how do you do it sort of videos that were there.

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:39

       Did he v- not view that as competitive since you guys had split off to be Image at that point?

   16. TMTodd McFarlane6:47

       No. Stan was very entrepreneurial himself.

   17. TFTim Ferriss6:50

       Mm.

   18. TMTodd McFarlane6:50

       So at this point he was doing, you know, he was almost an ambassador for Marvel at this point.

   19. TFTim Ferriss6:57

       Right.

   20. TMTodd McFarlane6:58

       And doing his own stuff. So the, the interviews and the, and the videotapes were sort of under an umbrella that was part of his own camp away from Mar-

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:10

       Ah, I see.

   22. TMTodd McFarlane7:10

       He wasn't a full-time-

   23. TFTim Ferriss7:11

       Got it

   24. TMTodd McFarlane7:11

       ... I think they were giving him a salary to be, like, a, a good steward going around, but he wasn't writing any books at that point, so.

   25. TFTim Ferriss7:19

       Got it. Yeah, he was like the professor emeritus of Marvel. So sorry to interrupt. So-

   26. TMTodd McFarlane7:23

       No, no. That's exactly what he was. And 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.

   27. TFTim Ferriss7:34

       Good for him.

   28. TMTodd McFarlane7:35

       Because again, he was a creative guy, right? And having been around Stan as much as I have been, his, his superpower to me, besides he created all these characters that none of us will ever come close to. I mean, I got Spawn. He's got, like, 100 Spawns. He, and I saw it over and over and over in all the times I was with him, within 20 seconds, 'cause you have, when you have a big lineup and people are coming for autographs, you literally have 20 seconds with each individual, and he would make people feel important, special, and unique in that 20 seconds, and then he would reset for the next person, and he would do it all over again for thousands of people, right? They felt like that was the best 20 seconds of Stan's day, even though he was giving it to every single person, right? So it was-

   29. TFTim Ferriss8:30

       Wow

   30. TMTodd McFarlane8:30

       ... it was really a... And I, I saw this when I was 16, when I was sitting with him for the first time, but I just kept becoming more and more aware of this is how you treat the public. '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... And so, 'cause I, I, I, I go to shows and people go, "Todd, why do you say thank you to me? We should be thanking you." It's like, [laughs] you give me money.
3. 26:59 – 37:58

   Todd’s four corners: video games, TV, movies, and toys.

   1. TFTim Ferriss26:59

      Yeah. So Todd, it seems to me, or at least it seemed to me when I was younger, and even now in some respects, like once a comic guy, always a comic guy. However, you have managed to branch out and infiltrate all of these different areas, and I don't even know how to put them in order. So you've got McFarlane Toys, right?

   2. TMTodd McFarlane27:20

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss27:20

      So let's just generically lay it out. You got toys, music, directing, TV, film. What is the order of how you entered those various things? So you're forging new paths-

   4. TMTodd McFarlane27:36

      Yeah

   5. TFTim Ferriss27:36

      ... setting records, that image.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane27:38

      Yes.

   7. TFTim Ferriss27:39

      When do these things start to pop up and in what order?

   8. TMTodd McFarlane27:43

      In all honesty, Tim, they're s- they're a bit scattered, so let, let me- let's get... see if we can go through them real fast, right? Let's just talk first about how the toys come to be real quickly, okay? We start Image Comics. We talked about that in the last show. Image Comics, the third largest comic book company, you know, in North America. Marvel, DC, and then Image Comics. If you ask who's three, that's us for 30 years in a row. And because of that, when, when we came out in 1992, that was when we first came out, and Spawn came out in 1992. We're celebrating the 30th anniversary of both of those this year. Spawn went to the top of the charts, right? 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 DC 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.

   9. TFTim Ferriss28:39

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TMTodd McFarlane28:39

       And so people were coming and knocking on my door going, "Oh my God, Spawn is at the top of the charts. You wanna do pajamas and pillowcases and toothbrushes-"

   11. TFTim Ferriss28:48

       [laughs]

   12. TMTodd McFarlane28:48

       "... and all these anc- what they call ancillary merchandising."

   13. TFTim Ferriss28:52

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TMTodd McFarlane28:52

       And so a- all those phone calls were coming. Now, I gently said, "No, no, no, no, no, I want... I, I understand you wanna do pillowcases, but do you know-

   15. TFTim Ferriss29:02

       [laughs]

   16. TMTodd McFarlane29:02

       ... have you read a Spawn comic book?" Was like, "Well, no, but we see it's number one." "So do you know that he-"

   17. TFTim Ferriss29:07

       [laughs] Wrong answer for Todd.

   18. TMTodd McFarlane29:08

       Yeah.

   19. TFTim Ferriss29:08

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane29:09

       "Do you know he's from the, the pit of hell," right? Like, and you can just see there's a hesitation.

   21. TFTim Ferriss29:13

       [laughs]

   22. TMTodd McFarlane29:14

       They're going... So I go, "Why don't you take a couple of the issues from this character who's from the pit of hell, go read a couple, and then decide whether you wanna do pillowcases for kids that are five years old?"

   23. TFTim Ferriss29:23

       [laughs]

   24. TMTodd McFarlane29:24

       Now, a bunch of them didn't follow up with their phone calls after I sort of put their nose in the product. Alls 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.

   25. TFTim Ferriss29:40

       [laughs]

   26. TMTodd McFarlane29:41

       So here's what I had in the back of my mind when we left Marvel comic books and we, we helped start Image Comics. I wanted to build a foundation, 'cause I feel that, you know, metaphorically, if you can build a strong foundation, just like in the, the real world, you can put a skyscraper on a strong foundation. How do we know?

   27. TFTim Ferriss30:01

       Mm.

   28. TMTodd McFarlane30:01

       'Cause they exist, right? So the foundation to me was could I do movies, TV, video games, and toys? Those were the four.

   29. TFTim Ferriss30:12

       Mm.

   30. TMTodd McFarlane30:13

       Those were the four cornerstones.
4. 37:58 – 45:41

   Learning the art of toycrafting and beating the industry at its own game.

   1. TMTodd McFarlane37:58

      and more.

   2. TFTim Ferriss37:59

      How did you learn about making toys and figure out the process for making a quality product? Like, how did you educate yourself on the bits and pieces and steps and right way to approach it?

   3. TMTodd McFarlane38:16

      Slowly. I did it slowly. No, no, no. So when I finally hung up my last meeting with somebody wanting to take the rights of Spawn to make him toys, and I said no, I, 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 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 then you send that... You know, make a mold of it, and you send it over to your factory, and most toys are manufactured in China. We found factories in China. And they cut a steel mold, and they go, "How many do you want?" And you're off to the races.

   4. TFTim Ferriss39:07

      Mm.

   5. TMTodd McFarlane39:07

      Right? So again, I mean, it, it's more complicated than that, but at its core, it's not, it's not really.

   6. TFTim Ferriss39:16

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TMTodd McFarlane39:16

      If you've got art, you can make art in any shape you want. And so-

   8. TFTim Ferriss39:21

      Mm

   9. TMTodd McFarlane39:21

      ... for me, what, what helped me, Tim, more than anything else, and I've said this, uh, I've never, I've never invented anything original. I've never done anything new. What I've done is taken everything that I've seen with my eyes and just made it sexier and cooler, period. That's it. That's the recipe. Everybody who's out there is listening and wants to be an entrepreneur, stop putting the pressure on yourself to think you have to come up with something new and original. You do not. You just have to add 3% sexy to it, and you will now be the genius. Let's give you an example. I'll give you an example. 10, 12 years ago, there was a guy named Steve Jobs. You may have heard of him, and he went up on stage one day and he said, "Ladies and gentlemen"... I remember the day. He... There was a bunch of people in the... And he goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are Apple, and we are"... 'Cause they were doing iPods. And he go, "We are gonna come out with a phone." And the people on, in the audience went, "Uh, Steve, a little late to the game. Phones have been out for a while. Cell phones have been out for a while. [laughs] Little late." "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But get this. Ours can dial people." "Already been done, Steve." "And we text." "Done." "And photos." "Done." "Download stuff." "Done." "Email." "Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. There's nothing you're doing, Steve, that hasn't been done." And then the moment. And then the moment. He said, "Yes, but when you text, 'Hi, Mom' on their phone, you are touching a QWERTY with plastic buttons. And when you say, 'Hi, Mom' on mine, you're not touching plastic. You're touching glass." Boom. Boom. It did the exact same thing as every other phone on the marketplace except you touched glass. That was the genius. He gave them the sexy. Glass instead of plastic? Still have to put H-I-M-O-M. Hi, Mom. It's still the exact same thing. He just figured out the 3%. If you can figure out the 3% on any idea, that'll make you a genius. So what's the genius they've given me, Tim? "Oh my gosh, Todd." We've done sports figures for decades. "Oh my gosh." I've won awards. "Oh my gosh, Todd, your toys are so detailed and so realistic. How do you do it?" 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-

   10. TFTim Ferriss42:02

       [laughs]

   11. TMTodd McFarlane42:02

       ... 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 [laughs] 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 100 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 wanna be smart, act and hang around dumb people because why is using photo reference get me awards? It shouldn't.

   12. TFTim Ferriss42:47

       [laughs]

   13. TMTodd McFarlane42:47

       It shouldn't, but God bless dumb people.

   14. TFTim Ferriss42:49

       So those are for the athletes. Is that what you're talking about, the, the photographs?

   15. TMTodd McFarlane42:53

       Yeah.

   16. TFTim Ferriss42:53

       Yeah.

   17. TMTodd McFarlane42:53

       That was it.

   18. TFTim Ferriss42:54

       Yeah, yeah.

   19. TMTodd McFarlane42:54

       Making toys back then is just manipulating clay. Clay will go into any position and pose and shape you want it to. The question isn't... I wasn't doing anything original. I was just putting the clay in a different shape. They had clay, too, and they'd been making toys for 50 years. Why they chose not to put it in those shapes, I don't know. Go ask them. 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.

   20. TFTim Ferriss43:27

       Yeah.

   21. TMTodd McFarlane43:27

       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, 10, 12 extra cents. We can't do that." Why? 'Cause we're making tens of millions of toys times 12 cents, it just becomes a number. They're in the business to maximize shareholder profits every 90 days. They're not... Their job isn't to be great artists. It's to maximize margins and profits. So they go, "We need to make 10 million. How do we make the toy? We gotta manufacture it for 98 cents." I do the opposite, Tim. I go, make the product as good as you can, price it afterwards. And if it's of 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. And th-

   22. TFTim Ferriss44:25

       Yeah

   23. TMTodd McFarlane44:25

       ... they say that at Toys "R" 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.

   24. TFTim Ferriss44:35

       Yeah.

   25. TMTodd McFarlane44:35

       Because they're walking in another aisle giving you $200 for a PlayStation. If people-

   26. TFTim Ferriss44:41

       Yeah

   27. TMTodd McFarlane44:41

       ... think that there's value-

   28. TFTim Ferriss44:43

       Sure

   29. TMTodd McFarlane44:43

       ... they will give the money to you. Just make value, price it afterwards. But they don't, and so they were cheap.

   30. TFTim Ferriss44:50

       Yeah.
5. 45:41 – 1:00:21

   Dumb luck at Toy Fair.

   1. TFTim Ferriss45:41

      How did you think about distribution? You didn't wanna be right next to the Teletubbies, so what did you do?

   2. TMTodd McFarlane45:44

      [laughs] 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, one of the people you have to hang around with is that guy named Dumb Luck, right? That has to come-

   3. TFTim Ferriss45:59

      [laughs]

   4. TMTodd McFarlane45:59

      He has to come be a visitor every now and then, right? So I'm gonna give you my Dumb Luck moment. I- in comic books, I hate to say it, my Dumb Luck moment was that an artist on a book died, literally died.

   5. TFTim Ferriss46:14

      Yeah.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane46:14

      And there was an opening.

   7. TFTim Ferriss46:15

      I remember that.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane46:15

      Okay, so he's dead. Todd, break for you. Not good for him, good for you. My big break in toys was [laughs] ... 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 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 1994, Hasbro, let's just take a big toy company, or Mattel, they had their own building, 10 stories high, filled with everything, and the buyers would go into that building, circle to floor one, go up to floor two, and go all the way up and down 10 floors. I, on my first Toy Fair, was in a building that only had five floors. I was on one floor, but on that floor there was 20 rooms. I was in one room, and that room was cut into 40 pieces.

   9. TFTim Ferriss47:07

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane47:07

       My space was five feet by five feet. Okay. Now I'm at Toy Fair. I'm in this 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.

   11. TFTim Ferriss47:22

       [laughs] What? Wait, so what'd you bring?

   12. TMTodd McFarlane47:25

       I... Shoot.

   13. TFTim Ferriss47:25

       Sorry. Keep going. I don't wanna interrupt, but I'm just like, "What the hell are you doing, man?" [laughs]

   14. TMTodd McFarlane47:28

       I'll tell you what I brought. A drawing of Spawn on foam core, and I cut it out.

   15. TFTim Ferriss47:34

       Hmm.

   16. TMTodd McFarlane47:34

       So I go, "It's gonna look sort of like that drawing," right? That was it. That was my sell. That was my whole speech. And oh, by the way, I had made some Hot Wheel toys based on a funny car that I had bought, and, and I'd hand them the, the Hot Wheel. Okay, and now the moment. Now the moment. At this point, Toys "R" Us is number one toy buyer, not Walmart, and pretty soon Walmart's gonna crush them probably within six months. But at that point, Toys "R" Us is the toy-buying gods. And then we're in this room with 40 of us with our little... Like a bad swap meet when I was a kid.

   17. TFTim Ferriss48:08

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane48:09

       And the door opens up, and everybody stands up and snaps like they're in a Army barracks and the sergeant has come in. And I'm like, "Huh. What's that about?" Now again, the room was so small that you had to come down a h- like a little bit of a walkway and then bend. There was, there was a jog. And I was around the jog, so I didn't know. I just saw people stand up-

   19. TFTim Ferriss48:28

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane48:29

       ... and present themselves in front of their beds. And it's like, okay. And so I go around the corner to see, and I go, "Who is that?" And they're going, "Oh my God, that's the buyer from Toys "R" Us." And it was like the Pope had come into the room, and it was like, "Oh my God." So I was watching him come, and as he's walking closer and closer down towards where I was standing, if he walked by you, he wasn't buying anything. So it was really kinda cool visually. I still have this moment where it was like as you walk by people you could just see them ... collapse physically 'cause it's like, "Oh, shit, he's not buying that."

   21. TFTim Ferriss49:03

       [laughs]

   22. TMTodd McFarlane49:03

       And he'd keep walking by and it'd just be like, "Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap." And then I went, "Oh, I guess I better go stand by my barrack too, uh, and my bed." And so I stood in front of my little thing, and they come around the corner, and guess what? The Toys "R" Us buyer stopped at my, 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 21 or 22, and then the magic words, "Hey, boss, this is the guy I was talking to you about." Now, remember, at this point, Spawn the comic book is number one in the nation.

   23. TFTim Ferriss49:48

       Mm-hmm.

   24. TMTodd McFarlane49:49

       So he's basically [laughs] this kid, I don't even remember his name. I owe my career to this dude. And when he said, "This is the guy I'm talking to you about," and alls that Toys "R" Us buyer said, he just looked at it and just went, "Let me ask you a question. Can you get it to me at this price?" "Yes, sir." Did I know if I could, Tim? Of course I didn't. Always say yes-

   25. TFTim Ferriss50:13

       [laughs]

   26. TMTodd McFarlane50:13

       ... to any opportunity. Always say yes to any opportunity. Figure out whether you can actually do it later. "Can you give me it that price?" "Of course I can." "Can you deliver it on this date?" "Uh, of course I can." "Fine. If you do that..." I didn't know if I could either. I didn't even have factories at that point. And, and so-

   27. TFTim Ferriss50:31

       [laughs]

   28. TMTodd McFarlane50:32

       ... he goes, "If you can do that, I'll put you in all my stores. I'll go store wide."

   29. TFTim Ferriss50:36

       Holy shit.

   30. TMTodd McFarlane50:37

       And, and just so you guys know-
6. 1:00:21 – 1:08:04

   Toy marketing and distribution circa 1994.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:00:22

      So let's talk about 1994. The reason I asked about that timing ties into where you were going a handful of minutes ago with respect to how do you sell these toys, right? How do you get the sell-through once you get toys placed storewide in, say, Toys "R" Us? And 1994 is relevant because I was thinking, how would you have any direct fan outreach-

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:00:48

      [laughs] Right

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:00:48

      ... to drive sales? Because-

   4. TMTodd McFarlane1:00:50

      The internet doesn't exist

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:00:52

      ... now you have social, you have email. Even email was really nascent in terms of mainstream adoption in 1994. 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 placement. So they have-- they pay extra. They pay the retailer for end caps. They own the first, say, 20 feet of a store. I'm making up this example, but, like, Coca-Cola, boom, they own the first, you know, 20 feet deep at A, B, and C retailers. And you f- you literally 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, uh, 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?

   6. TMTodd McFarlane1:02:18

      There are iterations of what you're talking about, but not quite what you're saying. I think this is closer to what the reality is, is the stores have, let's say they have a run of 100 feet. Let's say that 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 100 feet long. They, I think the buyers, for the most part go, "I'm gonna dedicate 80% of that, 85% of that to the big brands." And we all know what they are 'cause we see, you know, foot upon foot upon foot of these brands. And they rotate them out b- depending on what the movies are and what's hot out in the zeitgeist. They go, "Okay, 85% of that's gonna be given to the thing that is gonna be in every company's..." I don't care whether you're Kmart, Walmart, Amazon, everybody's gonna have it. Then there's the 15% left, and the 15% is, ah, this is where, you know, just in case we're missing something, just to give us a little bit of diversity, just so that we can have, you know, 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 into the sales that were worthy of that 15%. And so to your first question, how did I get people to know and buy the Spawn toys at the beginning? I didn't. In all honesty, the internet, and I know this seems foreign to people, was literally just in its infancy.

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:03:56

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane1:03:56

      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, 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." Right? What you see is, is what you get. And I think that my toys just quickly passed the eye test to a lot of people. And, 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 toys." So they jumped on very quickly. And, and as you know, in any business, you're only as good as sort of your last set of sales, right?

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:04:56

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TMTodd McFarlane1:04:56

       It doesn't matter what you have today. Is-- 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, it just... I don't know. It just... And, 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 [chuckles] 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 you just... 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, it's not true. You just, you try your darndest, and sometimes that 30-foot shot banks into the bucket, and you, and you score the 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.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:06:02

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:02

       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, right? I need to basically keep the momentum going and finding places.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:06:13

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:14

       Here's where I kept the momentum. We started selling places like Virgin Records and Tower Records-

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:06:20

       Uh-huh

   16. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:20

       ... and KB 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 toys, and then alls they cared about was the one magic sentence. "Walmart's not buying this." "Boom, we'll take it."

   17. TFTim Ferriss1:06:43

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane1:06:44

       Because now 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 wanna compete with the big boys. Unfortunately- The world changes and Babbage's and Virgin Records and KB, these companies don't even exist anymore, right? 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.

   19. TFTim Ferriss1:07:25

       So momentum. Uh, you strike me as someone who's v- a very good sort of creative and business DJ, to push the metaphor, uh, which I like. You mentioned the four pillars, games, TV, movies, toys. It seems like toys came in one of the earlier chapters in terms of setting that pillar of the foundation. Where did, whether it's music, TV, directing, any of those other elements come into the picture?

   20. TMTodd McFarlane1:07:59

       I'm gonna get to that. Let me just go back to toys and tell one more quick story on the toy end.

   21. TFTim Ferriss1:08:03

       Sure. Yes,

7. 1:08:04 – 1:15:35

   The play Todd made with a $3 million baseball.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:08:04

      please.

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:08:05

      So there's another story that people to this day scratch their head on, and it was in 1998, Mark McGwire, if you're a baseball fan, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were going for the home run title.

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:08:16

      Yeah.

   4. TMTodd McFarlane1:08:17

      And at the end of the season, Mark McGwire had hit 70 home runs. The prior record was 61 home runs by Roger Maris. Sammy Sosa hit 66 that year. Okay, why is that relevant? Because for a couple years I had been... I had started my toy company in 1994, 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 taken 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 back doors and alternatives. So here was the play, and again, I, from one perspective, it seems like the dumbest thing that a human being can do. I'll give you what I was doing during that play. Anyways, the 70 M- McGwire ball, the last ball he hit that was a record, goes up for an auction in Madison Square Garden. I'm the anonymous bidder. Anyways, nobody's ever spent more than $300,000, $400,000 on any baseball paraphernalia. At the end of the auction, I end up winning the 70 ball, and it cost me $3 million.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:09:25

      [laughs]

   6. TMTodd McFarlane1:09:26

      10 times what the previous record was. $3 million. Now, you can say, and I understand this perspective, "What? [laughs] Why would any, any human being with a brain spend $3 million for a $3 baseball? Why would they do that?" Especially given a couple years later, Barry Bonds broke the record. Oh, by the way, I had to go buy that ball, too. But I bought the 70 ball. Here's what the 70 ball did, and it seems like the stupidest thing, right? $3 million for a baseball. It's stupid. You're never gonna get your money back out of it. It depends on how you're looking at it. Here's how I was looking at it. I knew that spending and getting that ball would get me headlines, right?

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:10:09

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TMTodd McFarlane1:10:10

      So, so instantly it was a national story, and I was on lots of talk radio shows and TV shows and everything. I mean, I, 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 3 million, but let's put that to the side. Here's what it did. Those headlines then got seen by all the sports leagues and the unions. And when I phoned the next time and said, "Hey, I'm Todd McFarlane. I don't know, maybe you heard of me. I bought the McGwire ball. But I'd just like to 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.

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:10:49

      [laughs] That's genius.

   10. TMTodd McFarlane1:10:50

       In short order, I ended up having the license for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. I did it for 13 years. I can tell you, j- ladies and gentlemen, I made more than $3 million in profits on those toys multiple times over those 13 years. So at some point you have to put up an ante on the table to play the big game with the big boys in poker, and my ante, unfortunately, was a $3 million baseball so that they took that as saying, which just so everybody knows, it was every red cent I had and then some. I had to beg, borrow, and steal to pay for it. Then what ended up happening, the people see those headlines and they go, "Oh, if he's got $3 million to wipe his ass on a baseball, he must be successful."

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:11:38

       [laughs]

   12. TMTodd McFarlane1:11:39

       "He must have a lot of money. He... Bring the successful guy into the room." And I got the four licenses, and it was there. One last comment on it. Why do you care that I spent 3 million on a baseball? Because for me, I made it over multiple times, and any time I do any interview, 'cause I'm now the expert, just so everybody knows. Guess how many interviews I did when Aaron Judge this year was gonna do a ball? People were asking me how much the ball was worth. I'm now an expert 'cause I spent an ungodly amount on one ball. I become an expert.

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:12:10

       [laughs]

   14. TMTodd McFarlane1:12:11

       This is how silly all of this is. I get to amortize that $3 million once again that's sitting there. But if I don't spend that money and I don't get there, I don't get to the table, then my company never does any of it. So here's why... This is one of the reasons, Tim, I can't be, I can't be public, because you can't play that game.

   15. TFTim Ferriss1:12:34

       Yeah.

   16. TMTodd McFarlane1:12:34

       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 90 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 [laughs] point that I'd become a bit of a talking- moment because I've run into them years later. They would come, and here's what I found with Wall Street. "Todd, we're 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 money, 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?" "Uh-huh." "I already got money. I don't need any of your money."

   17. TFTim Ferriss1:13:38

       [laughs]

   18. TMTodd McFarlane1:13:38

       So they're like, "Okay." And then here's where Wall Street is literally a one-trick pony. [laughs] "Okay, Todd, we won't give you X amount of money. We see that you're a little stubborn. We'll give you 2X." [laughs] "No, no, no. Okay, so but if you give me twice the money, do I have control?" "No." "Well, that's a problem." "Todd, last time, we'll give you 3X of money." "Guys, let me, let me now define what money is to me, right? 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, right? And here's what useless is. It's when you have something and you don't use it, right? 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 a bank doing nothing, right?" Do you know the reaction to people from Wall Street when you call their one product useless? Do you know how horrifying-

   19. TFTim Ferriss1:14:44

       [laughs]

   20. TMTodd McFarlane1:14:44

       ... it is that they're just going, "What did you just call m- 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 McFarlane, why do I know that name?" And it was somebody I'd never met before. And they went, "Oh, you're the guy that doesn't like money," right? [laughs]

   21. TFTim Ferriss1:15:01

       [laughs]

   22. TMTodd McFarlane1:15:02

       It was, it was ... And, and look it, let me tell you, and I've told everybody, "Look it, guys, I'm not a saint. I'm not a saint. I can be bought. We all have our price." The price, though, that I needed that day was that they would give me enough money that I would then give up control of the company, but have so much money I could then buy it back at a discount, fire all of them, and I'd still have a profit and I'd have my company back. But nobody's ever given me that deal. So I, so-

   23. TFTim Ferriss1:15:27

       [laughs]

   24. TMTodd McFarlane1:15:28

       ... I've just never sold the company, and they've stopped saying, "Todd," I'm just a madman. So anyways, over to

8. 1:15:35 – 1:21:52

   Todd gets in a hockey fight.

   1. TMTodd McFarlane1:15:35

      Hollywood now.

   2. TFTim Ferriss1:15:36

      Well, before we get to Hollywood, I wanna do a deep dive on the madman part. So you, you mentioned that this $3 million was basically all the money you had and then some.

   3. TMTodd McFarlane1:15:45

      Yep.

   4. TFTim Ferriss1:15:45

      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, right? Some people could say, "Well, if you say yes to Toys 'R' Us and you haven't even figured out manufacturing, that's reckless," but it's not reckless, 'cause what's the downside? You can't figure it out and you're like, "Sorry pal, I can't make it work."

   5. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:02

      Yeah.

   6. TFTim Ferriss1:16:02

      The downside's actually really, really limited for you.

   7. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:04

      Yep.

   8. TFTim Ferriss1:16:05

      3 million bucks, different story. So given that the NHL and NBA and so on hadn't returned your phone calls up to that point-

   9. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:13

      Yeah

   10. TFTim Ferriss1:16:13

       ... what gave you the confidence, or how did you do the calculus? Did you have enough safety net that you were like, "Ah, this could suck for a year or two if they don't actually open up to me"? How did you think about this? What was the reasoning going into it?

   11. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:30

       So there was two things that I thought were going, again, keeping the momentum going in my favor. One, I had the data of all the toys that I was doing with Spawn, right? And Spawn at that point, it hit a point where consecutive series that were coming out, I think we got all the way up to 36, was the second longest running streak of series of toys other than, I think, Transformers. Even, it was even longer than-

   12. TFTim Ferriss1:16:55

       Hmm

   13. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:55

       ... Star Wars. Star Wars had gone quiet and gone dark for a while.

   14. TFTim Ferriss1:16:59

       Hmm.

   15. TMTodd McFarlane1:16:59

       So again, there was a little bit of that. I planted one small seed before I made the crazy play, and the, and the small seed was I was able to get to the players union of the NHL, right? Because of the four major sports, most people will say, especially in terms of revenue, that the NHL is, like, the fourth one, 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 two license. You have to license the union so you can get the players and their likeness.

   16. TFTim Ferriss1:17:38

       Hmm.

   17. TMTodd McFarlane1:17:38

       And then you have to get a contract from the league so that you can get basically their uniforms and their logos.

   18. TFTim Ferriss1:17:44

       Hmm.

   19. TMTodd McFarlane1:17:44

       And then you have to glue the two together and you have a double royalty that you have to pay. It's not the best model, but it, if you wanna 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 them 'cause I don't have an NHL. I'm gonna have to do generic uniforms," right? And they went, "Yeah, sure. We'll take money."

   20. TFTim Ferriss1:18:18

       [laughs]

   21. TMTodd McFarlane1:18:19

       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 pulled out my toys and I go, "Guys, look at these toys. Aren't they cool? They look just like Pavel Bure and Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky. Look at them. These are super awesome, right? Here's the thing. Notice that I don't get to use your uniform." And at that point, I had sort of had a conversation with them and they were threatening to sue me because they said that my generic uniforms-

   22. TFTim Ferriss1:19:03

       [laughs]

   23. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:03

       ... were looking like theirs, right? I, I think I even done some McGuire, generic McGuires too. And I'd even at that point then went to the NFL A 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, and I remember this r- 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-

   24. TFTim Ferriss1:19:37

       [laughs]

   25. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:37

       ... they're threatening to sue me because I'm doing like a sort of a generic, a generic uniform on one of the players that I had there. And they're going, "We're gonna sue you. You cannot do these toys." And I'm like, "Oh, yeah? You sue my ass."

   26. TFTim Ferriss1:19:55

       [laughs]

   27. TMTodd McFarlane1:19:55

       "You sue my ass, because here's how it works. Here's how it works, and you guys aren't even smart enough to know how this works. Number one, you're sitting here right now across this table telling me you own everything. Good. Sue me. And if you win, you don't get a fucking ounce of upgrade. You say you got 100%, at the end the best you can hope for is 100%. Go ahead and do it. But if you pay attention and you do a little bit of research on me, you're pulling the wrong tiger's tail, right? Because I'll do this."

   28. TFTim Ferriss1:20:21

       [laughs]

   29. TMTodd McFarlane1:20:21

       "Because here's the thing. If we go to court and you find out that you don't have 100%, and I'm betting you don't, that not only do I get a piece of that 100%, it is gonna basically be a story for every human being on this planet. They can now go against you. So you got two choices. You can either go to court and say that somehow you own reddish colors and bluish colors. If you want to make that argument, be my guest. Or what I'm saying, I've got a check for a half a million dollars here I'd like to shove down your throat to give me your fucking logos. I don't know. Sue me and potentially lose 100%, or take a half a million dollars. This seems like my six-year-old could figure out what this thing is." Eventually they took the half a million bucks, right? So what are you talking about?

   30. TFTim Ferriss1:21:13

       [laughs]
9. 1:21:52 – 1:25:43

   Bringing Spawn to TV.

   1. TFTim Ferriss1:21:53

      So doing your thing, let's hop across some lily pads and, uh, touch on whichever you want to touch on next. The music, TV, movies, how do any of these other elements, I know you've mentioned games, but which of these elements enter the picture?

   2. TMTodd McFarlane1:22:13

      Let's talk about TV first, right? 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 years, it was the number one selling book. So it was at the top of the chart. So like I said, phone calls were constantly coming. I get the phone call and on the other line is HBO, right? Legit at that point. I mean, what are you talking 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, my partners at Image Comics had sold and, and were gonna get Saturday morning cartoons, which they did. Spawn, again, the guy from the pit of hell, it just wasn't what I wanted. And so I remember, and I don't say this as a joke, I say this as ... And I'll tell you why I ask 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?"

   3. TFTim Ferriss1:23:20

      [laughs]

   4. TMTodd McFarlane1:23:21

      And, and again, it wasn't meant to be a joke. It was just ... And they paused and then they said, "Yeah. Probably. Like, why not, right?" And that was all I needed to hear. Not that I wanted to use that word, Tim. Not that I wanted to do and show naked women or anything. I just thought that if they were willing to basically say yes to that, then I could basically ... Th- I had a wide lane of creativity.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:23:48

      Yeah.

   6. TMTodd McFarlane1:23:49

      And the reason I needed a wide lane, because my character lives in a dark, serious world, 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?

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:24:06

      [laughs]

   8. TMTodd McFarlane1:24:06

      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, right? And so I just needed to, if the moment came, I needed to be able to do that and have the creative freedom to do it. So when they said, "Yeah, sure," then I was like, "Cool. Then let's do it. Oh, one more thing. I know nothing about animation, never spent a second on it, but I gotta be in charge. So you guys go and have that talk and do what you gotta do."

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:24:44

      [laughs]

   10. TMTodd McFarlane1:24:44

       And they came back and said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can, you can be in charge, but we're gonna put some good people on your flanks," which they did. And we went in there. And so I was working on HBO animation. At this time, Tim, HBO had started an animation division. I think there was five, maybe six shows going on, of which Spawn was one.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:25:11

       Yeah.

   12. TMTodd McFarlane1:25:11

       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 for, to make an animated show, who collectively probably had 600 years of experience. 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

10. 1:25:43 – 1:29:15

    Being the dumbest guy in the room can win you Emmy awards.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:25:43

       bite. And so artists would go, "Yeah." All these, all these creative people, all these people who'd 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. They just went back to status quo. And so being the dumbest guy in the room, I used to ask these questions. There's, there's really... 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." "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, 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. Da-da." 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, 50 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 of effort maybe, but about the same." And then you get, you get the, to me, the golden moment. Pregnant pause.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:27:01

       [laughs]

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:27:03

       Silence. So there was nobody in the room with 600 years of experience saying, "No, we can't do that, Todd. No, we can't do that, Todd." 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, will it take more time or money? You're saying no. Why are we figuring out how to self-edit ourself, self-censor ourself when nobody else is? This is a crime. Why are we putting guardrails on ourselves? We should be smashing up against the walls until the executives upstairs go, 'Whoa, guys. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Pull it back.'" Right? That's what we should be doing.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:27:49

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:27:49

       But when you've had a dog that has been in a small backyard for so long it gets comfortable, that the moment you throw the doors open to the, to the wild farmlands and you go, "Run, Rover, go," it was amazing-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:28:05

       [laughs]

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:28:05

       ... how many creative people sat down instead of running, because that's all they knew.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:28:11

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:28:11

       They knew one way to do animation, and they knew one way to draw it, and they knew one way to story tell, and they knew one way and one way and one way and one way. And here's the frustration. By the end of the three years, we were butting heads 'cause they all thought I was the crazy guy, whatever else. We won Emmys on that show, and I remember being up on the stage holding and getting my Emmy, and behind me was 15 of these people, most of them I was constantly having to basically drag them into some of these decisions, 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 it's be- and you were resistant to almost everything that, as to reason why we're up on this stage today," right? It was... I, I... It bugged me that I was putting that award in their hands 'cause they were not willing participants for the ride.

11. 1:29:15 – 1:30:37

    Cancellation.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:29:15

       But the reason we ended up getting canceled wasn't because people weren't watching it. It was because... And this is, again, just the way of the world, right? Name's Todd, only rhymes with God. I don't get to control any of this. And it was-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:29:30

       [laughs]

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:29:30

       ... that they had five shows. Remember I said they started an animation show?

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:29:34

       Right.

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:29:35

       And every time a show got canceled, one of the animation got canceled, they just put all the costs on the existing shows.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:29:44

       Yeah.

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:29:44

       And eventually all of them failed except for me, and I remember them calling me in saying, "Todd, we gotta, we've gotta stop the animation." I go, "Why?" And he goes, "It's getting too expensive." And I went, "Expensive? You haven't given me one red cent more than you did the first year. I'm, I'm working on the exact same budget." He's like, "Yeah, well, yeah," and then I found out I was covering all the other overhead that had basically failed.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:30:10

       Accrued, yeah.

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:30:11

       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, 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 Emmys, doing exactly what we were doing, but now all of a sudden they had to let us go because somehow the math didn't

12. 1:30:37 – 1:37:07

    Todd is bilingual — in art and business.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:30:37

       work for them, so.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:30:38

       So question for you about that. It's, it seems like, and I know this is simplifying, but you've had this incredible bull run with Spider-Man, Image, toys, and then you have this television experience, which is r- super challenging, doesn't end the way probably you would've liked it to end.

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:00

       But we won Emmys, so I'll take that upgrade.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:31:02

       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?

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:15

       Yeah, sure.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:31:15

       Proud of it?

    7. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:16

       Yeah.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:31:16

       Yeah, okay.

    9. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:17

       [laughs] This is easy. There's only one human being I have dominion over. Me, period

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:31:24

        Yeah

    11. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:24

        I don't-- My wife, I love her. I've been with her for over 40 years. Like, I, like, I don't even control her, right? And she's the closest person that I have in the world. So okay, I don't, I don't worry. It's, I mean, it can be exhausting at times trying to drag people to the water, but you can't make the horse drink-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:31:40

        [laughs]

    13. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:40

        ... 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.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:31:56

        Mm-hmm.

    15. TMTodd McFarlane1:31:57

        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 to the point-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:32:21

        Hmm

    17. TMTodd McFarlane1:32:21

        ... 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." Because if I'm going to... 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-

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:33:13

        [laughs]

    19. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:14

        ... 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 my- me creating, and when I'm not creating, I, I don't think I'm bringing the most value to my company. I need, 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 nos and, and... '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," and see. At the beginning, it was all BS. Let me just tell you. It was, it was BS.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:33:59

        [laughs]

    21. TMTodd McFarlane1:33:59

        But as the, as the years have gone by, there's hardcore data now, right? Tim, let me just, again, go back a little bit. Last year, I don't even pay attention to it, but last year, there's the equivalent of the Nielsen ratings in toys, and they literally count when something gets scanned at the big superstores, all the b- 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 m- I don't, 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 in action figure line than Hasbro, Mattel, Playmates, Spin Master, all these public companies, right? And the question is either I'm and my people are geniuses, or they're not getting full value for whatever infrastructure they did. I think the answer lies somewhere in between, right? How is it that I can take on Fortune 500 companies? Last year, I had the number-one selling comic book. The number-one selling comic book. Marvel's owned by Disney. DC Comics is owned by Warner Brothers, AT&T, Warner Brothers Discovery, whatever it is this week, that's there. Those are billion-dollar empires, and my comic book division is four people. How do four people take on billion-dollar empires and beat them at times at their own game? I don't know. I don't know. It's, 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, right? Those should be encouraging of that, yes, you too can go against these guys and succeed. And here's the thing. As long as your company is the right size with the right overhead, you can make a profit. You can make $10,000 a month and make a profit as long as your overhead is less than 10,000, or you can make 100 million a year and lose money because your overhead is over 100 million. You just have to rightsize your company and you can make money. Don't worry about being rich. Just go, "I make 30,000. As long as we spend 25, we're making five grand a month." It's a living. It's a living. Cool, and you're having fun

13. 1:37:07 – 1:42:15

    How Todd finds time to create while managing his businesses.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane1:37:07

       doing it.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:37:08

       Two questions related to all of this. The, the first is, and 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 90-plus, maybe 100% of my time this week managing stuff." How have you been able to block out or protect the time to create? How have you thought about that as, as someone who has all these different business ventures now?

    3. TMTodd McFarlane1:37:54

       It's the eternal question we all struggle with. How do we balance our life? We all ask that, both on a personal and a work. We're always going, "How, how does this work?" I, through failures, Tim, found that I was a five-ball juggler, right? 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 Cirque du Soleil and you can juggle 25 balls. Even that person, if you go one ball more than they're capable of, guess what happens? All the balls fall. Every ball you're juggling hits 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 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 Jordan have six championship rings, so did Phil. And you know how many buckets Phil made during that time? Zero. He was just smart enough to know to put Michael and the crew out there in the right iterations. And so there are times where you have to just go, "Todd, you can't build this all yourself." There are some things that make sense for me being the lead and/or even isolating myself artistically. There are plenty of other things we do, making toys, making comic book, making movies, making video game, all of it. That's a collective team, and I actually sort of enjoy being with the collective team because if I can find my Michael Jordans and my Scottie Pippens, 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," right? And I just sit there and go, "Hmm." And if I really wanna make it look like that I'm sort of more important than I am, I, 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.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:42:04

       [laughs]

    5. TMTodd McFarlane1:42:05

       I just hope they don't quit and start their own company and compete against me," because they're super awesome. And so that's it. You 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.

14. 1:42:15 – 1:48:25

    Brand matters.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:42:16

       Uh, hearkening back to what you said about last year and toy sales. So the example you gave was DC. So we're not talking about Freddy Krueger, we're talking about DC, so it's not the R-rated advantage. Presumably, these are at large retailers.

    2. TMTodd McFarlane1:42:30

       Oh, yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:42:31

       So you no longer have the Hot Topic advantage. How are you competing so effectively? And I would imagine also the people have emulated and tried to copy the style by adding more detail and trying to compete. I assume that. Maybe that's an incorrect assumption. But how are you guys still competing so effectively and selling certainly as a multiple of your head count so much more than these other guys?

    4. TMTodd McFarlane1:42:58

       Brand matters.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:43:00

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TMTodd McFarlane1:43:01

       So I'd been making toys for 25 years, and I said every day of my life, "I can sell Star Wars, just give me the contract. What are you talking about? It's Star Wars," right? "What are you talking about? Star Wars."

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:43:12

       [laughs]

    8. TMTodd McFarlane1:43:12

       "Sp- You know how 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 DC Comics and-- except for me. I don't know why I was the only guy.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:43:27

       [laughs]

    10. TMTodd McFarlane1:43:28

        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- I guess it didn't, it-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:43:40

        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?

    12. TMTodd McFarlane1:43:48

        Those definitions are in, 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-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:44:03

        Ah

    14. TMTodd McFarlane1:44:03

        ... the Hot Wheels with the logos on it. You ba- basically, you can be-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:44:06

        Right

    16. TMTodd McFarlane1:44:06

        ... you can do puzzles. You're in the entire store if you want to be.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:44:10

        Mm-hmm.

    18. TMTodd McFarlane1:44:10

        You've got all the aisles.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:44:12

        Yep.

    20. TMTodd McFarlane1:44:12

        I'm in aisle five, boys action figure, right? I always said, "No, I don't wanna diversify. I wanna just be the king of aisle five, if I could. That's it. Like, just focus.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:44:21

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TMTodd McFarlane1:44:21

        Don't get, 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 trades. So eventually we ended up, couple years back, getting [laughs] after decades of trying, finally we got the license for the DC Multiverse. Let me tell you really what the big piece of that was. I had the word Batman and Superman on my toys, right? [laughs] Like, what are you talking about? Those are global brands, right? So I've always told people, "Look it," and 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, you can survive." How do I know? I've done it for 25, 27 years prior. But I always had a but to it. But if you ever give me a triple A brand on top of that, on top of that mythology, shit, get out of the way, right? What are you talking about? 'Cause now I'm gonna give them price and quality and a name that everybody knows. I've been saying that for years and guess what? They finally give me one of the big brands and guess what? We outsold all of them. Boom. Right? Now, here's one of the things also that mattered. Big companies, and this is their job, I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying this is their job, is to maximize value for the shareholders every 90 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, right? And so one of the ways you cut corners in our trade of toys is that you reuse the same pieces, right? Lego does the same thing.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:45:59

        Mm.

    24. TMTodd McFarlane1:45:59

        I mean, I don't care how ambitious it, the, 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 build, 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.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:46:23

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TMTodd McFarlane1:46:24

        Toys are sort of the same, that they go, "Ah, 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 molds. We don't have to cut any more steel." Why? 'Cause that's money, and we don't have to do all those things. So early on when I was given the people at Warner Brothers our lineups, and we were talking to them. I go, "I want to make this character," and they would talk about this, and then they go, "Well, we can't really make that character." And I go, "Why?" And they go, "Well, y- you know, it doesn't really share the same look as any other character." And I went, "No, no, I know that. I, like, we're good. I'll just, you know, we'll cut some new molds." And when they found out that I was willing to make new molds for, specifically for one character, they were blown away by that, 'cause they'd been dealing with the big boys. And they were going, "So hold on. So you're gonna do five new characters and make five new sets of molds?" "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 have been making Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman toys for decades. Of course they had. But some of the other iterations of the, those characters and/or B characters or C characters that look super cool, I don't care if you even know their name. In plastic they look super cool on a shelf. I was able to make them. And then I think there was a big enough audience in geekdom 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, like, literally the rookie cards using s- sort of trading card... They were 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.

15. 1:48:25 – 1:55:33

    Making a music video, winning another Emmy, and almost killing Eddie Vedder.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:48:26

       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-

    2. TMTodd McFarlane1:48:36

       Yeah

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:48:36

       ... in a sense, right? The comic books are going. The toys are going.

    4. TMTodd McFarlane1:48:40

       They each create an opportunity.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:48:41

       Yeah.

    6. TMTodd McFarlane1:48:42

       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 is that possible, right? Some dumbass kid-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:48:52

       [laughs]

    8. TMTodd McFarlane1:48:52

       ... who doesn't know anything about music's got a Grammy. It bothers my wife. She's a very good pianist, right? And it bugs her-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:48:58

       [laughs]

    10. TMTodd McFarlane1:48:59

        ... that 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 HBO animation, right? It's doing pretty well and it-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:49:18

        Mm-hmm

    12. TMTodd McFarlane1:49:18

        ... again, it was winning a couple Emmys. And then out of the blue, I don't know why, go, go ask him, out of the blue I get a phone call from Eddie Vedder. Eddie Vedder's the lead singer of Pearl Jam. And Eddie then says-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:49:29

        Mm-hmm

    14. TMTodd McFarlane1:49:29

        ... "Hey, Todd. Eddie." "Hey, Eddie. How you doing, bud?" "Here's what we wanna 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 [laughs] that it's like, "Pardon? You don't want to be in your own music video?" "No." And we'd been putting them off and putting them off, but they keep bugging us, so now we're at the point where I've s- I've figured it out, Todd. I just... 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, "Well, okay, cool."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:50:05

        [laughs]

    16. TMTodd McFarlane1:50:05

        And so he goes, "You, you wanna help us with it?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure. Cool. What's, what, what, 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 gotta 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 days just to sort of give you the vibe." And so a couple 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, them to go with his music of the song that we were talking about, Do the Evolution.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:50:46

        That must have been surreal. [laughs]

    18. TMTodd McFarlane1:50:47

        I wish I had that tape. I don't know what I did with this tape.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:50:50

        [laughs]

    20. TMTodd McFarlane1:50:50

        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, I go, I said, "Hey, Eddie, this is just... I got it. I, I understand what you wanna do. Okay, whatever. We'll come up with it. Who edited this thing? This is super cool." [laughs] And he says, "Oh, that was me." And I went, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a sec. What did, what did you... 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-"

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:51:22

        [laughs]

    22. TMTodd McFarlane1:51:23

        "... 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?

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:51:31

        [laughs]

    24. TMTodd McFarlane1:51:32

        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 getting 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've done this earlier." We lost to 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, heck." So he sat with us in the three days that we were there editing, and he, 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, 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.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:52:34

        [laughs]

    26. TMTodd McFarlane1:52:36

        He put the briefcase down next to us, and then we worked all day and we did the editing, and then he left. And then the next day he came, dressed just like, you know, grunge Eddie, cool, and he had his briefcase again, and he put it right down next to us. Never touched it the whole day again, and he left. And then on the third day, he came, same thing, but at some point I just went, "Hey, Eddie, I don't mean to pry, but why do you keep bringing that briefcase with you every day? 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 a- asked what would have happened, would he have just gone home that day. But he goes, "Oh my gosh, Todd, I'm glad you finally asked." And then he... It, it was a, it was a sup- 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.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:53:31

        [laughs]

    28. TMTodd McFarlane1:53:32

        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, Eddie." And he goes, "You wanna play catch during the lunch break?" And I went, "Sure, I can play catch with Eddie Vedder. That's cool." 'Cause Eddie's a big baseball nut, right? And so he had done his homework-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:53:54

        Yeah

    30. TMTodd McFarlane1:53:54

        ... and he knew it, and he knew I was left-handed, and he ha- I, like I said, if I'd never asked him about it, would he have ever opened it? But then it goes even further. We finally go outside, and unfortunately, it's seasonably hot. It's, like, about 105, 106 that day-
16. 1:55:33 – 1:58:17

    The momentum of success.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:55:33

       And so that video goes on to I don't know how many views it has now on YouTube, like 50-plus some 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

    2. TMTodd McFarlane1:55:52

       But that comes from the HBO, right? So again, this is-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:55:54

       Right, it comes from the HBO

    4. TMTodd McFarlane1:55:55

       You do Marvel that begat Image Comics. Image begat, right, I'm gonna use biblical terms, [laughs] begat Spawn. Spawn begat HBO. HBO, because Eddie was watching it, begat, "Hey, you wanna do a music video?" Music video comes out successful, gets nominated for a Grammy. That begats people phoning, "Hey, you wanna do more music video?" Right? I mean-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:56:19

       Yeah. Uh-huh

    6. TMTodd McFarlane1:56:19

       ... 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 for f- before, right? So none of it's planned.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:56:32

       Yeah.

    8. TMTodd McFarlane1:56:33

       It's just happy accidents along the way.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:56:36

       And doing a good job on each piece of it so that those doors open or present themselves.

    10. TMTodd McFarlane1:56:42

        So let's talk about that piece. Let's talk about that, 'cause it, 'cause what you just said is important. So sometimes I get people go, "Oh, Todd, you know, you're, you're just sort of getting rich and famous, and 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 I like success. 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.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:57:10

        [laughs]

    12. TMTodd McFarlane1:57:10

        So here's why success matters. 'Cause you can't keep doing art, which is what I am, an artist. If I walk into the room and say, "Oh, get this. The last thing I did failed," you don't get the job. You have to have a certain level of success to get the next job. That's why I need to keep 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.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:57:43

        Mm.

    14. TMTodd McFarlane1:57:43

        And the next day, and the next day. And hopefully if I do it right, I'll die and I'll have been doing art till the time I take my last breath. That's the success. So the art and the success has to be a component. You're not dealing with HBO and the NFL and Microsoft and all these companies we've dealt with if you're not able to show that you can do the job at a level that makes sense for them. So I'm not gonna apologize-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:58:13

        Mm

    16. TMTodd McFarlane1:58:13

        ... for us doing our jobs right.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:58:16

        Yeah. [laughs]

17. 1:58:17 – 2:00:19

    The surface area of (dumb) luck.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:58:17

       Doesn't seem to be your style. [laughs] All right, so we're talking about these, 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 give 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-

    2. TMTodd McFarlane1:58:44

       I agree

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:58:44

       ... you've done a very good job with that. So where do games or movies enter into this entire constellation of activities?

    4. TMTodd McFarlane1:58:54

       Let's go back to the dumb luck just for a minute to just paint a metaphor. Again, I'm at half court and I got my back to the basket and I throw it backwards, and then I make the bucket, and they're like, "Oh, Todd-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:59:07

       Mm

    6. TMTodd McFarlane1:59:07

       ... you're a genius." Some people will look at that and they'll go, "You're a genius." I'm going, "Eh, it's a little bit of dumb luck." But to your point, the reason that I was able to get that genius shot that some people think of, because I was there for four days in a row and I took 10,000 shots and I missed every other one, right? But I didn't leave until I made the shot. So if you take 10,000 shots, sometimes one of them goes in. So there's the personality of going, when they say no, which is basically a missed shot, "Don't do it, Todd." "Oh, yeah? I'm 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 TikTok.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:59:56

       [laughs]

    8. TMTodd McFarlane1:59:56

       You only show the one you made. You don't know how lo- many years or hours or months they spent [laughs] 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 [laughs] 'cause you didn't see-

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:00:12

       [laughs]

    10. TMTodd McFarlane2:00:13

        ... the three days they didn't make it, right? So-

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:00:15

        [laughs]

    12. TMTodd McFarlane2:00:16

        ... there's a little bit of that going, going on there. So back to your question,

18. 2:00:19 – 2:07:40

    Building worlds that will endure.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane2:00:19

       sorry.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:00:19

       Actually, let's, before we get to games 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 for decades. And in doing research for this, I found an interview of yours where you talked about going into Hollywood and pitching various ideas. And you were [laughs] ... I might be misquoting, so I can't, can't believe everything you read on the internet. But the, the 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? [laughs] What's the end of Batman? What's the end of Spider-Man? Why are you asking me for the end? [laughs] Why, why aren't you asking can this last for 30 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?

    3. TMTodd McFarlane2:01:22

       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's, how does the idea end?" 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 'cause again, what is the end of Batman? I don't know. Who cares? W- we hope it goes 1,000 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, we can maybe have this conversation, but not in the first one. So I think one of the ways to create a brand that does have some value is using another word, and it's called attrition. And attrition is-

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:02:20

       Mm

    5. TMTodd McFarlane2:02:20

       ... that over time you're gonna have both high points and low points, 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 times so that maybe people don't know who you are or don't know what you do, but then they go, "Well, you know what? I... Yeah, no, I've heard of the character Spawn." They don't have to have bought anything, right? 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? 'Cause I can't get away from them.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:03:09

       [laughs]

    7. TMTodd McFarlane2:03:10

       And somehow, as I'm looking for an article, I read the headline, and so I've got info. That's just attrition. And so were people going, did the Spawn comic book have a lull at times? Of course it did. Were the sales were not very good? Of course it did. But I thought that the value of wasn't that was I making money in the way that I needed to at that point. It was just to keep the machinery going. Because the value at some point isn't now any single issue or any single year. It's now the sum total of all of it, so that all the people over 30 years who have passed through any of the characters I've created, let's use Spawn, he's my biggest guy. So maybe they came in for five years and then quit, but they're still there. They're still there, right? So if we ever do a movie, they're gonna remember, "Oh yeah, yeah, 20 years ago, I collected..." But maybe it was somebody who passed through it 15 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago, or just jumped on since we set the world's record that came in going, "Huh, you know what? I've been a DC and Marvel acolyte, now I'm gonna sort of try this out." I don't care. All you wanna 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, now it's just, it's just attrition of just going again, again, again. And so it will just get into your brain. I'll give you a bad, bad, bad example early on. I mentioned it before when I was at my first toy fair. I gave them a Hot Wheel. I bought a funny car. I don't know if people know what a funny car is, but a funny car is like a cut down dragster, and they put this really cool fiberglass body, and they go down. Just Google what's a funny car look like. 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, I bought a funny car when Spawn came out, and really because I wanted, I wanted a funny car, but I had to convince my wife and other people otherwise. So it was like, "No, it's not that I need a funny car. It's just that if I take a funny car and I paint the word Spawn on it and I take it to shows." You know who has a funny car at comic book conventions? No one. You know who's ever had a funny car at comic book conventions? No one. If you bring something to a show that nobody's ever brought before, you'll be surprised. Like if you bring a elephant to a sh- comic book convention and paint it purple, 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 w- literally was the funny car. Now here's what I did. One side, I did a two t- 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 1,000 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. What side do you like better so I can finish this project?" And here's what people did. They went and they went, and I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. They took their kid or it was some one person, and they went on the white side and they 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 what, 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. And you know what I did with the sheet at the end of each show? I threw it in the garbage. I threw it in the garbage. I didn't give a shit.

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:06:59

       [laughs]

    9. TMTodd McFarlane2:06:59

       I didn't give... 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 forced 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.

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:07:28

        [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane2:07:28

        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

19. 2:07:40 – 2:14:55

    Building characters who will outlive their creator.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane2:07:40

       on your brand.

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:07:41

       So from a creative, let's just say writing standpoint, you've now published more than 300 ... editions of Spawn, right? How many books out, when you started Spawn, how many books out had you planned from a plot or character perspective, 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? Like how, how far in advance did you or do you plan with that kind of thing?

    3. TMTodd McFarlane2:08:16

       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.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:08:25

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TMTodd McFarlane2:08:26

       I was winging it till they pried it out of my hand on Tuesday. What are you talking about? Like, it horrifies writers. The way that I do it is horrifying. Do I have it in my head? Of course not. I just figure it out on the fly, and luckily I get it right more times than I get it wrong. So here's what the goal was when I started Spawn. There was two goals. One, we started the company Image 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 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 books somehow, maybe in a small, tiny way, will exist. Obviously we're flourishing, so I don't have to worry about there only being one book, 'cause we do about 60 or 70 books a month. Number two, could I create a character that would outlive me, period? The guy who created Superman is dead. The guy who created Mickey Mouse, dead. The guy who created the Fantastic Four, we talked about him earlier today, Stan Lee, 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, right? 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, I read about these people who created these characters that I know about, but their creators have long since passed away, including my good friend Stan. Could I create one or two characters? I don't need 100. I'm not Disney. I'm not Walt Disney. I'm not Stan Lee. I'm not that good. But could I create one or two characters that when I die people say, "I still wanna see the characters"? That was, that was the goal in, 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 end? Of cour- Well, you know, 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, "Eh, I guess we better write the last story and put it to bed or whatever else." No. To the point, Tim, a- and I, I, I 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, uh, all alive. Was his costume alive in issue number one? No. No. How did it become alive? You just hit these m- moments real quickly. People will write in, 'cause I'm s- I'm very lazy. I never did a lot of referencing. Uh, you know, there was no internet, but I, I still didn't go to the library and get reference. I had deadlines. Don't have time for it. I just fake everything. So I was drawing my pages of issue number one, and I guess, [laughs] this is how bad I am, I don't pay attention to my own drawings. And so people were writing in going, "Todd, Todd, do you know you had the pouch on his left leg and now it's on his right leg? Do you know that you had six spikes on his arm and now it's, like, got eight spikes?" And so there's... These are easy moments, Tim, that you have two choices. You either admit you're a dumb shit or you go-

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:12:15

       [laughs]

    7. TMTodd McFarlane2:12:16

       ... "That's because it's alive. The costume morphs, and it can do anything at any time. It's a living being."

    8. TFTim Ferriss2:12:28

       [laughs]

    9. TMTodd McFarlane2:12:28

       "And that's now part of the mythology, and it was just because I screwed up. What are you talking about?" You just-

    10. TFTim Ferriss2:12:33

        [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane2:12:34

        ... you make lemonade out of your lemons, and you just keep moving on and hope they 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... Uh, I, I'll give you an example. I was at, doing a movie pitch for something, and i- I think it was for Doom or something. And I was giving this pitch a- and they discover something underneath the Mojave Desert or whatever. I was on a rant. And 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 a- as I'm standing up, and on it it says, "Todd, it takes place on the moon," or something like that.

    12. TFTim Ferriss2:13:18

        [laughs]

    13. TMTodd McFarlane2:13:19

        I'm, I'm going, "And they discover it in the Mojave Desert." I'm actually off a lot of miles, and I'm like... So I just blow the whole premise of this book. And I go, "Well, I'm this deep. I gotta fi- [laughs] I g- I can't. I gotta keep going." And I sit down, and I remember the executive at Warner Brothers, like, looks at me for a couple seconds, dead silence, and then he goes, slaps his hand, and goes, "That's what I'm talking about He's not afr-

    14. TFTim Ferriss2:13:52

        [laughs]

    15. TMTodd McFarlane2:13:52

        He's not afraid to take chances. He's not afraid... And the answer was, I just didn't do enough research, sadly.

    16. TFTim Ferriss2:13:58

        [laughs]

    17. TMTodd McFarlane2:13:59

        Otherwise, I would've 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-

    18. TFTim Ferriss2:14:08

        [laughs]

    19. TMTodd McFarlane2:14:09

        ... he's not afraid to basically follow everything in the book. This is what I've been talking about. We've gotta bend some of the rules, blah, blah, blah. So anyway-

    20. TFTim Ferriss2:14:17

        [laughs]

    21. TMTodd McFarlane2:14:18

        ... Spawn, we're up to issue 336, went to the printers a couple days ago. Do I know what 337 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 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.

    22. TFTim Ferriss2:14:43

        [laughs]

    23. TMTodd McFarlane2:14:44

        And 10 years from now, you and I may be talking about our, my speedster runner who's the most popular guy. [laughs] I had no idea the day before what I was doing with him, so.

    24. TFTim Ferriss2:14:54

        [laughs]

20. 2:14:55 – 2:24:50

    Today will not be perfect, so lower the bar and dance if you want to.

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:14:56

       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, you're an excellent five-ball juggler. So which ball, if any, would you like to talk about next?

    2. TMTodd McFarlane2:15:12

       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 are thinking about doing ideas and/or some entrepreneurialship is to some extent recognizing your own personalities of whether you're actually built for war or not.

    3. TFTim Ferriss2:15:35

       Mm.

    4. TMTodd McFarlane2:15:36

       And to me, all of this is a war. I know my wife has said I... It's sort of sad that you see your life as a war every day. And so I'm, I'm ready, and if I've got one regret, and I've got a few of them, but one of them is I wish I was born 3,000 years ago. Because back then, like in a movie like Braveheart, if you believed in something so strongly, you would go to the battlefield, you would face your enemy who basically was trying to deny you whatever it was that would give you personal happiness or what you thought would be good for your family, and o- 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. 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-

    5. TFTim Ferriss2:16:32

       [laughs]

    6. TMTodd McFarlane2:16:33

       ... 'cause man, there's a lot of heads I'd like to see on the ground, but I... And I'm sure they'd like to see mine.

    7. TFTim Ferriss2:16:39

       [laughs]

    8. TMTodd McFarlane2:16:39

       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.

    9. TFTim Ferriss2:16:55

       [laughs]

    10. TMTodd McFarlane2:16:56

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

    11. TFTim Ferriss2:17:57

        [laughs]

    12. TMTodd McFarlane2:17:58

        Every single day of my life I have na- I'm on, like, even a longer streak than Cal Ripken Jr. with that. What tortures people, and some of you are listening, are the people who have the bar higher than that. "Did you see this email this guy sent me, that son of a bitch?" Oh, you thought today was gonna be perfect. "Did you see that guy?"

    13. TFTim Ferriss2:18:20

        [laughs]

    14. TMTodd McFarlane2:18:20

        "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, for the Black Panther movie, and now I can't get in," or whatever. Oh. Oh. "Somebody said something about my haircut. Somebody said something about that" ... Like, what a... 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, 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. Dumbshits. But I knew it." And pretty soon you don't get hired for 10, 20 jobs in a row, and you're on a hot streak now. You're actually feeling pretty good that you called it 20 times in a row, you're not getting the job. And then guess what happens. You go to the 21st interview and you give it your best and you walk away and they go, "Todd, where are you going?" I'm out of here '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 a awesome day, because, well, it's sort of a, kind of quasi frustrate. First off, they break my streak of 20 nos in a row. So I'm a little frustrated that my streak went away 'cause I'm like, "Goddammit, 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? 'Cause they put the bar high. The bar was that we were gonna 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 you didn't, that your team won the championship, you just didn't have a lot of aggravation. You didn't get sued today. Cool. It's a good day. I don't know. It, I, I psych myself out. I psych myself out for little success so when any of it comes, it's cool. We talked about it with selling the toys at 60,000. There's either a way to get to 60,000 sales and it be a negative, or it can be a positive. It depends on how you psych yourself out. I am a horrible golfer. Horrible golfer. I don't do it much. Also, I've had people say, "Todd, you're the worst golfer who doesn't care." Here's why I don't care, 'cause I don't golf.

    15. TFTim Ferriss2:21:54

        [laughs]

    16. TMTodd McFarlane2:21:55

        And so 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 par five, I get a six. I am dancing naked when I get a six on a, on a par five. And, but, but it's interesting. I'm with another guy who must've had a different expectation. His bar was different than mine. He hits it, he hits it, he gets a six, and he is so mad, he actually breaks his club that cost more than my entire rental. And he breaks his club, and I'm sitting there going, "Wow, he got a six. I got a six. It's the same number. I'm dancing naked, and he's cursing up a storm. He must've had a different expectation than me." So that's it. I just keep my expectations low. It gets you through there.

    17. TFTim Ferriss2:22:54

        [laughs]

    18. TMTodd McFarlane2:22:55

        So 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?

    19. TFTim Ferriss2:23:33

        [laughs]

    20. TMTodd McFarlane2:23:33

        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. 9:00 comes around. The band starts playing. Nobody wants to be the first one on the 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, 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 them. Why, 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

21. 2:24:50 – 2:31:13

    Is Todd’s wife married to a monster?

    1. TMTodd McFarlane2:24:50

       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... Like, 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 every day try and tell you you can't and try and embarrass you somehow, and you have to just push it and categorize it to a side and say, "I don't care. This was my goal and I'm gonna do it anyways."

    2. TFTim Ferriss2:25:39

       Now, why would you not want your kids to have that trait? What's the downside? How do you think about that?

    3. TMTodd McFarlane2:25:44

       Because I'm, I can be a cold fish at times when needed.

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:25:48

       Cold fish.

    5. TMTodd McFarlane2:25:49

       Right.

    6. TFTim Ferriss2:25:49

       Meaning too Spock-like, like you come off as unemotional?

    7. TMTodd McFarlane2:25:52

       No, no. I, I told you. Let's say you put me out tomorrow and I could cut the heads of my enemies off. Let's go back to Braveheart, and I could cut the heads of my enemies, 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 or 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 in a fight with on Friday about 4:30. This is actually a very good time, and here's why it's a good time. 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-

    8. SPSpeaker2:27:26

       [laughs]

    9. TMTodd McFarlane2:27:26

       ... 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 and we're gonna settle this bullshit," and you go click. Now, here's what I've told my wife, 'cause she's heard me do this before.

    10. SPSpeaker2:27:37

        [laughs]

    11. TMTodd McFarlane2:27:37

        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 u-u-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, click, he's like, like... Dude, it's the weekend's coming. I'll worry about him on Monday. I'll worry about him on Monday." So but, but because I can do that, here's, 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 here'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 at 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 of my emotions. Why? Because on Monday, click, I turn it back on, and guess between the two of us who's emotionally more 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 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, but I, I proved it to my wife one day. She took out a, an, 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, 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.

    12. SPSpeaker2:29:38

        [laughs]

    13. TMTodd McFarlane2:29:38

        And the doctors came and they go, "Todd, you, they 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.

    14. SPSpeaker2:29:46

        [laughs]

    15. TMTodd McFarlane2:29:47

        And then they do my wife, whatever they had to do, and then they come upstairs, da, da, da, da, da, and, and, and she knows she can still hear me yelling. And she comes up with the doctors, there's a couple of them, and then they go, "Okay, Todd, it's you." 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 they... And this is, my wife was waiting for it, and they do the blood pressure, and they do all the testing, and they go, "Oh, yours is the same as your wife's."

    16. SPSpeaker2:30:16

        [laughs]

    17. TMTodd McFarlane2:30:18

        I literally... 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 'cause 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 a war, if you're at war, you have to find out ways of surviving that work for you. This is how I've learned to survive, to not let any... I've been sued. I've been screamed at. I've had people threaten... The other day, what are you talking about? One of the big retailers threatened to take all my toys off their shelf. You just, you just accept that this is just part of the world that you

22. 2:31:13 – 2:36:23

    Be the second person.

    1. TMTodd McFarlane2:31:13

       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 wanna be here. Why am I arguing with lawyers today? Oh, that was you, Todd. You started that company. You kept it going.

    2. SPSpeaker2:31:36

       [laughs]

    3. TMTodd McFarlane2:31:36

       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 him for the rest of my natural life. So you know what? I'm stuck, I'm stuck with it, and so I just figure out ways that work for me. I don't want you or any listener to replicate it. I would, I would say no. What I do do when I go to business classes Which is 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." 85% of them throw their pencil down in disgust 'cause they thought I was gonna give them the 10 lessons on how to make money. I go, "Here's what we're gonna talk about for an hour. How to keep your humanity, how to, 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 Little League for free than to be this... the, the VP 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, right? I just, I just think that there's a way to just not care, even if you do have money and prestige and all of it. To me, it's all silly. It's all, it's all complicated, our lives. My mo- my wife will tell you the same. It was easier when life was simpler. But it's, it's... You guys are built... The guys that are doing their MBAs in these classes are just little baby sharks, and when I'm giving that conversation-

    4. TFTim Ferriss2:33:20

       [laughs]

    5. TMTodd McFarlane2:33:21

       ... I know that they all wanna emulate the big sharks, 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, 'cause I know about making money. You gotta make money. And the reason I don't wanna tell you how to make money, 'cause if I tell you how to make a million bucks, you in your brain and your intellect and your personal experiences might have ma- figured out how to make $100 million. Why would I try to tell you how to make a million? You might have made $100 million. You may be a thousand times smarter than me. I don't wanna limit you, right? So, 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 doctor's, and doctor's takes you in the back room and he does a bunch of blood tests and says, 'Hey, I'm gonna run the blood tests,' and you go sit out in the lobby. 'I'll get back to you.' So you go out in the lobby and you look on your cell phone for a while, and then 25 minutes later the doctor comes back. He doesn't look very good. He's 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 and they go, 'We ran all the tests and we've 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.' 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. That person, I assume if you care for them that, that much, they care about you that much, and in three weeks that person is gonna be left without you. It will be trauma to their life. So here's the question. If you could only pick one human being to help that person you care about to transition after you're gone, to soft land them as much as possible, to be by their side to do anything that will be helpful in their grieving period, who is that individual? I want you to pick just one individual. I'll give you 15 seconds to think of it." And then I stand there, Tim, in silence. And then I go, "My last question before I leave. Did you pick the richest person you know or did you pick the best person? Why don't you wanna be the second one? Why don't you want to be the best person instead of the richest? 'Cause when it mattered, and we just proved it, you didn't pick the rich person. Be the second person, and you can still make money and be that second person. Don't worry about it, but don't make the money the driver. Don't do it. But I'm only talking to three of you in this class. The rest, you've already sold your soul."

23. 2:36:23 – 2:38:33

    Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss2:36:23

       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 [laughs] round three at some point, but I do think that is an excellent place to stop and begin to at least land the plane. Is there anything else that you would like to add, call people's attention to, or anything else, any closing comments before we end this conversation, at least for now?

    2. TMTodd McFarlane2:37:00

       The only thing I'd like to do is encourage people who have 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, through just a little bit of perseverance, to sort of get there. I, I, I believe that if I can do it, and I was dumb, I, I got nothing but Ds at, you know, in school and stuff like that. If I can do it, I just, I just think there are so many people out 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, as 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, right? Just, just try it, and if it doesn't work, it's like cutting your hair. It'll grow back. You can always go back to the system wherever you're at. You can always go back. There's no, there's no harm, there's no dishonesty in trying and failing. That's okay, right? The person who never tries, I think, sort of has more regret. So I talk to them, I stand on one side of the stage and I go, "You know, come on, man. I, I, just try. Try. Try it once." I, I think everybody in all honesty, Tim, should, should 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 as Todd the CEO. I hope you don't do it."

Episode duration: 2:43:13