YouSaid · the spoken record

Todd McFarlane

lines on the record: 189
first: 2022-12-16
most recent: 2022-12-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Get there. I don't get to the table, then my company never does any of it. So this is one of the reasons, Tim, I can't be public because you can't play that game. I can't go to the shareholders and to the board and the chairman of the board and say, hey, I've got this gut feeling that if I do this one thing, I think it will pay off. If you can't categorize it on a spreadsheet in rows and columns and tell them what it's going to.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why do you care that I spent $3 million on a baseball? Because for me, I've made it over multiple times. And anytime I do any interview, because I'm now the expert, just so everybody knows, guess how many interviews I did when Aaron judged this year was going to do a ball. People were asking me how much the ball is worth. I'm now an expert because I spend an ungodly amount on one ball. I become an expert. This is how silly all this is. But it just, I get to amortize that $3 million once again that's sitting there. But if I don't spend that money and I don't”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 scent I had and then some. I had to beg born steel to pay for it. It ended up happening that people see those headlines and they go, oh, if he's got $3 million to wipe his ass on a baseball, he must be successful. He must have a lot of money. He bring the successful guy into the room and I got the four licenses and it was there. One last comment on it.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what it did. Those headlines then got seen by all the sports leagues and the unions. And when I phoned the next time and said, hey, I'm Tom McFarr and I don't know. Maybe you heard of me. I bought the McGuire ball, but I'd just like to talk to you. I'm also in the toy business. They let me in the door and I got to have a conversation with them. In short order, I ended up having the license for baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. I did it for 13 years. I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I've made more than $3 million in profits on those toys multiple times.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can say, and I understand this perspective, why would any human being with a brain spend $3 million for a $3 baseball? Why would they do that? Especially given a couple years later, Barry Bonds broke the record. Oh, by the way, I had to go buy that ball too. But I bought the 70 ball. Here's what the 70 ball did. And it seems like the stupidest thing. $3 million for baseball. It's stupid. You're never going to get your money back out of it. It depends on how you're looking at it. Here's how I was looking at it. I knew that spending and getting that ball would get me headlines. So instantly, it was a national story. And I was on lots of talk radio shows and TV shows and everything. I mean, I canvassed the planet. And do you know how much 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.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyways, the 70 McGuire ball, the last ball hit that was a record goes up for an auction in Madison Square Garden. I'm the anonymous bidder. Anyways, nobody's ever spent more than $300,000, $400,000 on any baseball paraphernalia. At the end of the auction, I end up winning the 70 ball, and it cost me $3 million, 10 times what the previous record was. $3 million, right? Now,”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good. So I'm going to get to that. Let me just go back to toys and tell one more quick story on the toy on the toy end. So there's another story that people to this day scratch their head on. And it was in 1998 Mark Maguire, if you're a baseball fan, Mark McGuire and Sam Muse, who were going for the home run title. And at the end of the season, Mark Maguire had hit 70 home runs. The prior record was 61 home runs by Roger. Sammy Sosa hit 66 that year. Okay, why is that relevant? Because for a couple years, I had been, I'd start my toy company in 1994, and I'm an athlete. And that's like, again, stick to what you know. I know sport. And I was trying to make sports toys and I couldn't make sports toys. Why? I couldn't even get a meeting because I'm a nobody who's taken the NHL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, NHL. Why would anybody let me in their front door? They wouldn't. And so you have to figure out backdoors and alternatives. So here is the play. And again, from one perspective, it seems like the dumbest thing that a human being can do, I'll give you what I was doing during that play.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Babbages and virgin records and KB. All these companies don't even exist anymore. So there was a consolidation and some of the fun that we were having at the beginning is no longer sort of available to us.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started selling places like Virgin Records and Tower Records and KB Toys and Hot Topics. And we were going to what I said earlier, non-traditional places. And they were buying lots and lots of toys. You know why? Because I was making like crazy R-rated at times gory toys. And then all they cared about was the one magic sentence. Walmart's not buying this. Boom, we'll take it. Because now they don't have to compete because they don't have to compete because if you go into competition with the big boys, everybody has the same product. You're just going to get into a pricing war. And they want a product that the big boys didn't have. And back then, I could make anything up in my head, put it in the plastic, and I had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of sales waiting for these guys who didn't want to compete with the big boys. Unfortunately, the world changes.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On our own website that was phenomenal. I was getting pulled into Hollywood people going, Todd, how are you getting that much traffic? I mean, big studios asking me how I was getting the traffic that they weren't getting as a studio. So at some point, the geeks just find you, Tim. And I would like to say that I knew what I was doing all this time and that somehow I'm a savant. It's not true. You try your darnedest and sometimes that 30 foot banks into the bucket and you score to 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 disjockey. The good disjockey keep people on the floor dancing. The bad ones figure out how to put on a song that everybody walks off. I need to basically keep the momentum going and finding places. Here's where I kept the momentum.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You actually get to see what you're buying. There's no fake photo and then you take it home and you go, man, that didn't look that good. What you see is what you get. And I think that my toys just quickly passed the eye test to a lot of people. And again, remember, I was coming off, you know, setting records with Spider-Man, and then we quickly went to do the comic books with Spawn. So there was a big fan base that was there. And they went, oh my gosh, Todd's going to do some toy. They jumped on very quickly. And as you know, in any business, you're only as good as sort of your last set of sales. It doesn't matter what you have today. They just look at the data of your last ones. And so once the first series came out and did really well, and then the second one continued because I got to put some characters in it. And then the internet started to become a little bit relevant. And we were getting traffic even.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“is this is where just in case we're missing something just to give us a little bit of diversity just so that we can have sort of hedge our bet at the roulette table a little bit and that was the space that I needed to get into I needed to figure out could I rise and get in to the sales that were worthy of that 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 I know this seems foreign to people was literally just in its infancy and so that wasn't the gameplay the only play was value quality and put it together and hopefully people would notice it because the upside of making toys and action figures is the packaging is see-through”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are iterations of what you're talking about, but not quite what you're saying. I think this is closer to what the reality is, is the stores have, let's say they have a run of 100 feet. Let's say that, again, I'm in the boys toy action figure aisle. Let's just keep that. Let's call it aisle five. Aisle V is 100 feet long, right? They, I think the buyers, for the most part go, I'm going to dedicate 80% of that, 85% of that to the big brands. And we all know what they are because we see foot upon foot upon foot of these brands. And they rotate them out depending on what the movies are and what's hot in the zeitgeist. But they go, okay, 85% of that's going to be given to the thing that is going to be in every companies. I don't care whether you're Kmart, Walmart, Amazon. Everybody's going to have it. Then there's the 15% left. And the 15%.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slow with your movement That by the time you slap your arm, I'm on the other side. I'm on the other side. They can't move quick enough, Tim. And that's their weakness. And once I exploit their weakness and the weakness in toys was they will never do anything outside their comfort zone. What does that mean? They'll never make Freddie Kruger. They'll never make the Terminator toy. They'll never make the Matrix. They'll never make essentially R-rated toys. And I felt that there was a need that you could sell toys to adults. You just have to put it in the right content. I can sell a toy to my mom. I just have to make it look like Tom Jones. And she'll buy it because she loves Tom Jones. So if you put it in the right brand, then there's an audience that's out there. And now we call it Geekdom. And I was the only guy doing it. So everything I was doing was like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, there are now dozens of people and companies that do what I.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Size, they don't move fast. And if you can just be quick and nimble with your business, I never once said I'm going to slay the giant. That's never the question. Todd, you know, how do you take down Hasbro? No, no, no, no. You're asking the question in reverse. Not how do I take down Hasbro Mattel? They're billion dollar empires. The question is, how do billion dollar empires not squish me? I am a gnat. How can they not kill me? And the answer is, because why would Hasbro Mattel or any other public company want me to have one foot of space in Walmart? That's their territory. That's their money. And so the question is, why can't they kill me? And the answer is because when you're big and you're a giant and you're a sloth and I'm a mosquito and I'm biting you on your right arm, by the time you contemplate slapping that mosquito, you're so...”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started the toy company in 94 and so. Literally from the first time we hit the ground running. Here's a thing that's interesting, Tim, is that if you look at the first wave of toys, first two, three, four waves of toys I put out, they were winning awards and people were going, oh my God, Todd, look at you. You've upgraded the whole industry. And if you look at those toys, they're laughable. Compared to my standards today, they are laughable. And even yet back then, just that upgrade put me on the map. And here's the other thing too. Nobody else was doing what I was doing in terms of quality, in terms of the pricing that went with it. And then in terms of brand selection. So here's the thing about big, big corporations. They're blessing and their curse is their size, right? They have more people, more money, more everything. They can squish you at every moment. But because of that giant, enormous...”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to sucker the mental, eventually they got to the point that, like, hey, if McFarland shows you something, that's actually what it's going to look like. And they started buying into that maybe there was a quality component to these products that were coming in. I didn't have any big brands, right? So I had to beat them with pricing and quality because how else am I going to survive next to Star Wars and Transformers and G.I. Joe?”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't even put even a drop of paint on it. So what I ended up having to do, because I was paying for the sins of these public companies, is that I then took my prototypes and I showed the step from step one to step 10. And when the buyer got to step 10, guess what it was? It was the product in package manufactured. I go, that's the manufactured toy. That's what it's going to look like in your store. And they couldn't believe it that it was like, whoa, that looks just like your prototype. Yes, that's what I've been saying.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what's the product going to look like? It's never going to look like this. And I went, what? What are you talking about? It's going to look exactly like this. And I'm like, silly boy, that's not how it works. I found out because I spied on Hasbro and Mattel and all the big guys. I was able to get into their showrooms that they were doing this thing where they would bring these prototypes out that were awesome. Think of them as like the concept cars at an auto show, but you never will see those cool cars, right? They're just there. They're eye candy. And I remember seeing this one toy that was super awesome. And I went, wow, that's good. And then I saw it like months later, literally at the store and it was blue plastic.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They go with that. That was it. The company came from one simple question. Why can't toys be cooler? Again, I was looking at it from an artistic point of view. I wasn't asking it from a business point of view. Again, you find out what that means when you ask that question. And so I go, why can't they make cooler toys? I found out, Tim, that the reason they weren't making cooler toys is because, again, like I said, every time they put or did an extra joint or an extra movement or an extra paint job or something, it was pennies and it just added up. And so I ran into this thing where I was, I had my prototypes at Toy Fair because I started actually making prototypes. And each year I would bring them and we would sculpt at twice the size of the final product. Why? Because the bigger you sculpt it, the more detail you can put in it. And when you shrink it down, it holds the detail. So I would bring these sculpts and I'd bring them to the showrooms and the buyers would go, yeah, Todd, they look really, really, really nice. I get it.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But one, they're disappointed and one they're not. So you have to sort of, like, you're still playing some weird mind games a little bit so that they feel good about whatever number was there. And so to me, again, and I'm not a public company and I don't have to maximize profits. My goal is to, I've told all my employees, get me to zero every year. And we get to do it again for another year. So as long as we're money in, money out, sort of's about the same, let's keep doing it. I don't need to impress anybody, you know, my kids, I've already paid for their college. You're off. The house is paid for. We're good. My wife and I are good.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which I go, I know you want you at 40. I'll build some inventory. It'll be on my nickel. And if you need more than we'll just supply you as you need, I think if you buy 75, because here's the math just so everybody knows, if you buy 75 and you sell 60, they're going to go, ah, I got 15,000 in inventory. It's not a success. If you give them 40 and then they have to buy another 20 and they sell 60, they go, wow. Huge success. We ordered 50 more than our original order. Yeah. So you're still at 60.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You go, okay, what you want to do in the toy side is to make sure that they're not overbuying. Both parties need to be realistic, right? And it's one of the reasons I think, Tim, that I've survived as long as I have, because I've talked them down from orders. Which is actually the opposite of what they're used to. Yeah.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Toys Rus going storewide? Yeah. Okay, we'll take some. And then... The dominoes. I go to Kmart and Target and all these other places, and then you just keep adding. Well, Toys R Us and Walmart are on board. And they're like, what? What are we missing? And it just becomes this thing. And next thing you know, I'm in all these big stores and I go, wow, without even having so much as a prototype. It doesn't usually work that way. Now, once you get into the stores,”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“God oh my god and then this is why those moments matter i couldn't even get a meeting with walmart and kmart and target and those people back then and now all of a sudden i'm in walmart's room and i get to now say well just to let you know i've got this spawn product and it will be going store wide in toys rs now does walmart know anything about me or spawn of course they don't of course they don't but what they don't want to do is get beat by their competition so they go”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went, yes, sir. So he left all of a sudden, all the other people in the room came around me because it was like, oh. Like, I just won the lotto, right?”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you a question. Can you get it to me at this price? Yes, sir. Did I know if I could, Tim? Of course I didn't. Always say yes to any opportunity. Always say yes to any opportunity. Figure out whether you can actually do it later. Can you give me that price? Of course I can. Can you deliver it on this day? Of course I can. Fine. If you do that, I didn't know if I could either. I didn't even have factories at that point. And so he goes, if you can do that, I'll put you in all my stores. I'll go store wine. And just so you guys know, usually if they take a sample, they don't usually put you store wide. But he said, I don't know who his assistant was. He must have been bending his ear. He goes, I'll put you store wide.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And guess what? That toys R Us buyer stopped at my place. Now, Tim, did this buyer care about spawn? No. Did he even know who Spawn was? No. Did he knew 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 master. So he basically, as a kid, I don't even remember his name. I owe my career to this dude. And when he said, this is a guy I'm talking to you about. And all's that Toys R Us buyer said he's looked at it and just went,”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the buyer from Toys R Us. And it was like, oh my God. So I was watching him come. And as he's walking closer and closer down towards where I was standing, if he walk by you, he wasn't buying gang anything. So it was really kind of cool visual. I still have this moment where it's like as you walk by people, you could just see them collapse physically because it's like, oh, shit, he's not buying mine. And he keep walking by and they 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 in my bed. And so I stood in front of my little thing and they come around the corner”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm like, huh, what's that about? Now, again, the room was so small that you had to come down like a little bit of a walkway and then band. There was a jog. And I was around the jog, so I didn't know. I just saw people stand up and present themselves in front of their beds. And it's like, okay. And so I go around the corner to see it and I go, who is that? And they're going, oh my God.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I go, it's going to look sort of like that drawing. That was it. That was my cell. That was my whole speech. And oh, by the way, I had made some hot wheel toys based on a funny car that I had bought. And I'd hand them the hot wheel. Okay. And now the moment. Now the moment. At this point, Toys R Us is number one toy buyer, not Walmart. And pretty soon Walmart's going to crush them probably within six months. But at that point, Toys R Us is the toy buying gods. And then we're in this room with 40 of us with our little, like a bad swap meet when I was a kid. And the door opens up and everybody stands up and snaps like they're in an army barracks and the sergeant has come in.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I'm a toy fair and I'm in a 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.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good for you. My big break in toys and do not do what I'm just about to say because I don't think this lightning is going to 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 in Mattel. They had their own building 10 stories high filled with everything and the buyers would go into that building, circle the floor one, go up the floor two, and go all the way up and down 10 floors. I on my first toy fair was in a building that only had five floors. I was on one floor, but on that floor there was 20 rooms. I was in one room and that room was cut into 40 pieces. My space was five feet by five feet. Okay.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, okay, here's where beggars and choosers come. Look, I've said to people before if you're going to have any amount of success in your life, one of the people you have to hang around with is that guy named Dumb Luck. He has to come be a visitor every now and then. So I'm going to give you my dumb luck moment. In comic books, I hate to say it, my dumb luck moment was that an artist on a book died Literally died, and there was an opening. Okay, so he's dead. Todd, break for you. Not good for him.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or nine bucks, people won't give you eight or nine bucks for a toy, whatever. Of course back then, of course they will because they're walking in another aisle, giving you $200 for a PlayStation. If people think that there is value, they will give the money to you. Just make value price it afterwards, but they don't. And so they were cheap. They were making cheap, ugly toys. God bless them. I was able to come in and make mediocre toys and I look like a genius.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, now we got to paint that. Oh, a penny. Oh, a penny. Oh, a penny. And eventually they go, that's seven, eight, ten, twelve extra cents. We can't do that. Why? Because we're making tens of millions of toys times 12 cents. It just becomes a number. They're in the business to maximize shareholder profits every 90 days. Their job isn't to be great artist. It's to maximize margins and profit. So they go, we need to make 10 million. How do we make the toy? We got to manufacture it for 98 cents. I do the opposite, Tim. I go make the product as good as you can, price it afterwards. And if it's a value, people will pay you the money. It's why people will pay $10,000 for one car and other people will give you $70,000 for another car. They believe there's a value in that price. They say that it toys are us. They're going, you can't have a toy at eight.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. That was it. Making toys back then is just manipulating clay. Clay will go into any position and pose and shape you want it to. The question is, and I wouldn't do anything original. I was just putting the clay in a different shape. They had clay too, and they've 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. Ah, and here's the magic. That every time you put paint on a toy, that's a penny.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you push the button, it gives you a photo. And if you take the photo and you take your clay and you do not stop manipulating the clay until it looks like the photo, then it looks exactly like it. The question isn't, how did I make my toys look realistic? The question is, how did they not? Because the camera has been around for a hundred years, if not more. How did they not use the tool? And so I use photoreference and I'm a genius. Let me tell you, Tim, another rule of life. If you want to be smart, act and hang around dumb people. Because why is using photoreference get me awards? It shouldn't. It shouldn't.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Instead of plastic, still have to put H-I-M-O-M. Hi mom, it's still the exact same thing. He just figured out the 3%. If you can figure out the 3% on any idea, they'll make you a genius. So what's the genius they've given me, Tim? Oh my gosh, Todd, we've done sports figures for decades. Oh my gosh, I've won awards. Oh my gosh, Todd. Your toys are so detailed and so realistic. How do you do it? 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.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Little light to the game, phones had been out for a while, cell phones had been out for a while, a little late. 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 QRI 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.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helped me, Tim, more than anything else. And I've said this, 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 you 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 three percent sexy to it and you will now be the genius. Let's give you an example. I'll give you an example. 10, 12 years ago, there was a guy named Steve Jobs. You may have heard of him. And he went up on stage one day and he said, ladies and gentlemen, I remember the day there was a bunch of people and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, we are Apple and we are, because they were doing iPods. And he goes, we are going to come out with a phone. The people in the audience want, Steve.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slowly. I did it slowly. When I finally hung up my last meeting with somebody wanting to take the rights of spawn to make them toys. And I said, no. I got on the phone. I knew a couple people. And I phoned somebody who was a 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 that was it. And it was you sculpt a toy out of clay back then. You can do it digitally now. But back then it was out of clay. And you send it over to your factory, most toys are manufactured in China. We found factories in China. And they cut a steel mold and they go, how many do you want? And you're off to the races. It's more complicated than that, but at its core, it's not really. If you've got art, you can make art in any shape you want. And so for me, what how”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That all day long because people understand value and they can do it because I didn't have any big brands. I didn't have Superman and Batman or Star Wars. I had spawn. And there was only one way I was going to be able to compete with those big names, just give them better quality and give them more plastic. Never underestimate plastic. It's like saying, do you want the 50-ounce bar of chocolate for a dollar or the 10-ounce bar of chocolate? I'll take the 15. What are you talking about? Always take the bigger bar, right? For a box, take more chocolate, right? Come on, man. So I was a guy that was just giving them more and more and more.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We start at the toy company and we came out with the first toys. Action figures at that point were $5.99 and I priced mine at $6.99. And here's the thing. Here is the thing if you're listening to my voice. All the big companies came to me and patted me on the back and went, little boy, you can't sell a $699 toy. They're $5.99. Here's the answer. Of course you can. Of course you can. Here's how you sell a $6.99 toy. Give them $6.99 of value, period. Oh, I'll even give you an upgrade. Give them $7.99 of value and price it at $6.99. What they were thinking, because they're the big corporate guys, how do you sell a $599 toy for $6.99? I get that. You can't sell that because people will understand your overpricing it. I'm saying build a Cadillac and sell it at Ford Motor Prices. And you sell.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. I wouldn't spend it. I wasn't buying fancy cars. I wasn't doing anything. I'm kind of a tie-dass when you get right down to it. I was just putting it in a corner for rainy days or when I was going to get angry. Because I knew my personality.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me just tell you I wasn't getting paid a lot per page. That's not what made me, just so everybody knows, at the height of my career at Marvel, I was making 125th the amount of books that we were doing at Marvel, we would make the same money. And guess what, boys and girls? We sold the same. We sold the same. In some cases, more than we were selling at Marvel. So we were then all of a sudden instantly making 25 times more than we were overnight. And that's a whole other conversation.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shut all that stuff down and go, I don't care, I don't care if I sell five, I'm good enough. It was my money, the whole thing, spend other people's money, I disagree 100%. Spend your own damn money. You know why? Because nobody gets to tell you what to do. So if you want to go buy a car with polka dots on it and it's your money, do it and drive it with a smile on your face. And if somebody doesn't like it, tell them to buy their own damn car, right? But the moment you take somebody's money and they get to tell you whether they like the polka dots on the car or not. And so I just go, no, so I spent my own cash when I started the companies and I was fortunate because the comic books were paying royalties. I wasn't getting paid a lot.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Toys are plastic in jell-old, essentially a little bit more details I'm leaving out, but essentially that's sort of it. So when I ask the question, how do you make toys? How do you make comics? How do you make almost any, it's not, let me tell you, the people in that industry, the people that are the leaders in that industry, always want you to think that it's way more complicated, always want you to think that it's basically undoable and will never ever sidestep no matter how good your idea is to let you pass them. If anything, they will intentionally try and trip you as you're passing them and tell you can't be done, can't do it. We'll hire people away from it. They'll tell you everything. Stop rocking the boat. Why don't you just get along everything that you can possibly imagine why they don't want competition? They don't want competition. So at some point you have to.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anybody who's kind of old that remembers this when we were kids remember used to get these little trays and they're in the shape of dinosaurs and then you poured the jell- into it and you put it in the fridge and then you flip it out and all of a sudden your jello look like dinosaurs. You know why? Because that was what the mold looks like.”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How hard is it to make my own toys? That's it, right? So sometimes it's out of anger. I've started companies just because I got pissed off. It's because people think that what they're doing is way, way, way, way, way, way, way more complicated than it is. Let me tell you something right now, Tim. We've got the image comics and we do our own comic books and we're doing, you know what, making comic books is at its core ink on paper, period, period, period. Ink on paper. Toys are not that much different. It is plastic in a shape. And if you have the right mold, you can make a shape. How do I know?”
2022-12-16 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #643: Todd McFarlane, Iconic Comic Book Artist — Lessons from Stan Lee, How to Make Art that Outlives You, How to Compete with Corporate Giants and Win (While Having Fun), Dealmaking Strategies, War Stories from Wall Street and Lawyer Land, Taking Responsibility for Your Life, and Why Creators Need to Smash Limits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT