Peter Cuneo - Marvel’s Turnaround CEO, $4.5B Exit | The Navy Officer Who Saved Marvel

I think I was born with an adventurer gene. I had a history of Navy officers, my father, my uncle. So I went to the Navy and I got as a young person a lot of responsibility. And this is where I first really started to understand that I enjoyed leadership. He rebuilt Empire's others said we're dying. Peter Cunio doesn't just lead companies. He resurrects them from transforming Marvel into a global media powerhouse to scaling Iconics into a licensing giant. I didn't know anything about motion pictures of making them or comic books. When I did my research, I saw that the company had 4700 characters. We're valued at only $500 million. His leadership has been legendary. He's a turnaround architect, a strategist on the front lines, and a bold believer that businesses can and must reinvent themselves. We have a problem with over-parenting. Well-meaning parents think that their children should never have a negative thought about themselves. They don't realize it. We learn more about leadership than our successes. Lead a diverse life. You become wiser and you make better decisions when you've had diverse exposures to people. So the book is about leadership. Podcasts is about leadership. You've been studying these principles for 20 years. You have these 32 essential ideas around leadership. But principles are one thing. Understanding where they came from is something entirely different. So I know you said a lot about how Vietnam changed your relationship with risk. So was there ever a moment when you were serving, when you were on a destroyer where you actually had an experience that really changed or shaped your relationship with risk? Or was it just that period of your life? Well, actually, this is a very good question, Scott. I think there was an exact moment, which I could tell you a little about, that where I realized that I needed to have a life of leadership, or at least aspiring to leadership, trying to become a good leader. So this will take a little bit of time to tell, but I think it's worth it. So in the Vietnam war, I was a Navy officer on a guided missile destroyer. And then in the Navy at that point, and it's probably still true today, you really have as an officer two jobs. First job is a functional job. So the first tour I did, I was a damaged control officer. The second tour I did, I was communications officer. But the other job that you have is what is simply a ship driving job. You need to be ultimately qualified to what's called the officer of the deck, because the captain does not, you know, this is not like you see a lot of movies at the age of sale where the captain is yelling commands to the, to the, you know, engine order telegraph for speed or the helm for which direction. Now captain is way too busy, whether it's peacetime or wartime to be doing that. So you have people officers who are highly qualified and they're called officer of the deck. And you get qualified only by practicing over a period of years, which I had been doing. But I was now a qualified officer of the deck. So I am driving the ship. It's two o'clock in the afternoon to lovely day, nice sunny little breeze, and the ships mission, which we did quite a bit of on this particular day is called plane guarding. So when Navy aircraft carriers want to launch and or recover aircraft, they want to have a destroyer one nautical mile in front and one nautical mile and back. A nautical mile is 2,000 yards. And basically the destroyers, including mine, were playing lifeguard duty. The toughest time for Navy pilots was actually landing on an aircraft carrier. It's the most dangerous time. And if they had been hit over North Vietnam, they were limping back trying desperately to get to the carrier and not go down either on land or in the ocean. So you're there to provide lifeguard duty. In between recovering and launching aircraft, the three ships to destroyers and the carrier kind of just drift around going very slowly at random. But when they're ready to wreak, in this case, I'm going to tell a recover aircraft, they will call each ship over cryptid, encrypted voicemail and tell us what to do. So my ship's coal sign was fleet fox. And so I am now the most of the deck. It's very calm right now, but we get a message. Fleet fox takes station and describes, you know, wants us to go behind the carrier. And the carrier also tells you where it's turning in. It wants to go into the wind. So we'll tell you what course it's taking because you get maximum lift to the aircraft whether they are landing or taking off by going into the wind. And also they're usually at flank speed, which is top speed, which on those carriers could be 35 miles an hour, believe it or not, those giant warships. And so if you had a 20 mile an hour wind, there's 45 mile an hour wind when you throw the planes off or when they're landing. So there's a lot of lift because they landed typically 90 to 100 miles an hour. So we, I quickly do a little calculation. It's a relative motion. Oh, the captain, the carriers here, they're going to go in this direction at this speed for me to get the fastest way for me to get behind us to go at my flank speed, roughly the same speed 35 miles an hour and then what direction. And so I'm doing that. And I suddenly realized that the carrier is coming right at us. Their new course and speed is directly at us. Now we are like three miles away. So there's no danger. I don't want to mislead you of having a collision because I can get out of the way very easily. But I need to get behind the carrier and I'm in front of the carrier. So I'm yelling commands on not on the wing of the bridge in the wind with the door open to the bridge yelling commands to the engine order telegraph, which is all ahead flank, which is top speed. And what course I want the helmsman to take. And I see that I'm going to pass what we call an Navy close aboard to another ship. In this case, the carrier. They're going to be going exactly one way. I'm going in exactly the opposite direction. And we are port to port. So in the Navy, the left the left side is the port side, the starboard side is the right side. So we're passing port to port close aboard. And when I say close aboard, it's it's a hundred yards apart, which seems like a lot when you're playing football, but actually two big ships. It could be a disaster if you hit. So I'm going by the carrier. Very important to get in our assigned position as soon as possible. Could be a matter of life and death. We really don't know. We don't know what condition the pilots are like coming back to land from a mission. And so we're flying by and understand that we're at 70 miles an hour relative motion, going in opposite directions. So to pass the carrier only takes eight seconds at 70 miles an hour. So I'm already anticipating I have to get behind. So I'm starting to turn to the port, my ship, even when I haven't passed the carrier yet because they because they're going to be past us, you know, when I get around. One of the things though about Navy ships, particularly big ones, is that when you put the helm over, put the rudder over, those ships continue to skid for a while in the same direction that they were headed, because the mass of these ships is so large. This isn't like driving an automobile, you turn the wheel and you turn right away. And you practice understanding as the officer of the deck, you know, went to give an order knowing you're going to continue to skid. So I'm actually giving the order to turn. It feels like into the carrier, but it's not because I know they're going to be past beforehand. And I'm judging the skid. If you've ever, Scott, if you've ever driven a car, sure you have in snow and you come to a corner, come to a corner and you're not even going fast. You know, you're very careful and you start to make a turn to the left and the car, the wheels go over, but the car continues to skid in the same direction we're going. That's the way the Navy ships behave, the big ones. So I'm starting to turn and I also realize that my turning radius with full rudder from my ship is going to be, is too large for me to get right behind the carrier. I'm coming left now. Okay, I'm going to be on the other side of the carrier, which is not where I want to be, but I have a trick up my sleeve that good authors of the decks all have this trick. I have a twin screwed guided missile destroyer. We have two propellers so that if I actually back down my port propeller, my port, because it would say screw, it's actually going backwards, full backwards, when I started right side propellers going ahead, my speed full, it will twist the ship even tighter than the normal turn. And so I'm trying to manage that as well. The ship shakes when you have those two forces on the propellers. The ship actually shakes a little. And I'm trying to get in position. Most stories short, call me good or just call me lucky or a little of both. I hit the spot perfect. And I'm I I steady up right behind the carrier 2000 yards. And just as I steady up, the first plane comes right over the ship. And remember they're very low at this point. You think a mile away is pretty high. It's not for for a great and this happened to be the F4 Phantom E class, which is one of the great Navy and Air Force planes ever built both fighters and bombers. And so just comes in over over the top of the ship. I hear the wine obviously the jet going by. And I'm feeling wound up needless to say. And but I'm feeling I'm feeling good because we we made our mark just in time. Luckily that day there were no planes going in the water. So that was not a part of this. So the captain is very busy, but he's watching the carrier and what have you. And I see the carrier is flashing us a message. You may have seen old movies where Navy ships communicate by Morse code you with a flashing light. And I don't think they do that anymore unless they're really in trouble, but back then that was common way that you communicated from a ship to ship kind of situation. And so I said to the captain because I'm still watching to make sure I'm in perfect position, adjusting a little bit tiny adjustments in the speed course of my ship. And I said to the captain, captain, what was the message? And the captain says to me, Cuniel, it was for you from their captain. And I'm like, what? The captain of the carrier is sending me a junior officer 25 years old, a personal message. And he said, yes, for you, what was it? He said, Cuniel, it was Bravo Zulu, BZ in the Navy. BZ means well done. Now I am on a natural high. I don't know if I really wish on all of your audience that they at some point in their lives maybe multiple times experience a natural high. It comes from feeling so good, you can barely breathe. And so I am, well, what is going on here? I'm this young guy. I'm at sea. I've got 300 sailors, 20 officers on my ship that they're depending on me right now. And it's tremendous responsibility for a young person. In wartime, all of the armed forces have a lot of junior officers and they do give them an amazing amount of responsibility for being so young. And so my feet are full of the ground. I'm floating in my, I'm so wound up feeling so great. And it's at that moment, it occurs to me, Scott, that I need a life like this, a leadership, doing things that support other people, bringing together, doing my part of something really big. And that's the exact moment it hit me. Now I have to say there's a little finish to the story because it didn't occur to me till five or ten years later. That of course, the captain of the other carrier was not saying to me personally, good, good job. He was probably sent it to our captain. Captain to captain would be normal. But my captain, who was by the way a great leader, someone I admired, revered so much, shows to make me feel good by telling me the message wasn't to him, it was to me personally. Now I'll never know for sure. But either way, you know, I am, I was just, you know, I just floating, I swear, if I look down, I think my feet were a foot off the ground. So that's the moment, long story I know. But no, no, I love the extra detail so that you can, I think appreciate a lot better. First of all, I actually think what the captain did is the sign of what a good leader should do. Totally agree, totally agree. So when I figured out he probably, that's what he did when I was a so full of myself, you know, I thought about it for 10 seconds until my God, what a great leader to do that. Because it really, you know, it really lifted me up. I wanted to stay in the Navy to make it a career. I was not anapolis. I went to also candidate school in four months, your officer. And when I had done well in the Navy and the Navy offered me a regular commission, like people from anapolis, one was my time to get out, which was after about three and a half years. And I didn't stay in because my wife, who I just been married only nine months, had figured out talking to the lives of other officers on the ship when we were in port, that I was going to be, if I made it a career, I was going to be at sea six months a year, and she's going to raise our kids. We didn't have any kids at that point. Raise our kids alone, and she wasn't up for that. And I, well, I love the Navy, but I loved her more. And I will say it's 55 years later, and we are two days short of my 55th anniversary. And so one day, so I want to say about 10 years into my career, I had, my boss came to me and said, Peter, I want you to take over the international division of our organization, which is in trouble. And so I was thrown into, I was, I was living in working in New York City, was really thrown into with no prior warning, my first turnaround. And to be honest, the first six months, I was depressed. I thought, Turner, I don't know anything about turnarounds. I don't, I don't have any skills that I know of. I don't, you know, I don't know how this is going to turn out. But after six months, we started getting results. And I started to understand that turnarounds that are successful are all about leadership. Congratulations. That's amazing. Thank you. I'm just thinking about that story. What, what makes, because you were, I didn't realize when I was reading, when I was reading a little bit about your time in the Navy, I didn't realize how young you are. But now when you actually, when you actually place the Vietnam War, that actually makes a lot of sense. So you're 25 years old, and you're dealing with all this responsibility. Do you feel like that's something that, like, like leadership and responsibility, and you probably, you probably now see it with people that you hire in your organizations and your companies. Is that something that you're born with, or is that something that you just have to learn as you go? Like, is there anything that prepared you for that moment? I know that it wasn't like the most stressful combat situation, like some people have dealt with, but still it's like a 25 years old. You mentioned the amount of people on your ship. It could have been a life or death with the pilots coming back. There's a lot of things you could have screwed up to be quite honest when you're doing those maneuvers with a very large ship. Like, what prepares somebody to act cool and do good work in those high pressure situations when they haven't ever done them before? So I'm a very firm believer that leaders are never born. They're always made. Yes, you can be born with a certain amount of intelligence and certain things that are precursors, if you will, to learning leadership. They're certainly helpful, but I always cringe when I hear someone say he or she is a born leader because there aren't, I've never met any. So you learn leadership throughout your life primarily by face-to-face interactions, personally, professionally, with the diversity of other people. And with another way to learn leadership is geographical diversity, seeing other worlds, seeing other cultures, you know, what have you, is also very important. And that's how you learn the instincts. You're not born with the instinct. You learn the instinct of how to work with other people, how to motivate them, how to get them excited about what they do. And it's a process. And it doesn't happen right away. In my speeches about leadership, I often say to the audience, you can start learning leadership at age five. Your kids, your grandchildren, whatever can start at age five. And the audience typically goes, I can see them shaking their heads no way. You know, there's 200 people in the audience. No. You know, my child doesn't even know what leadership means. I've never heard the word. So I tell a story. And when I'm done, I have to say, I think most of the audience is going, you're right. Take your five-year-old for a week's vacation in Europe. Go to a country that doesn't speak English. And here's the emotional reaction from your child when they come back. Emotional reaction is, we went to this place. I can't remember the name. You know, I didn't understand anything anyone said. The food was different, but I liked it. Mom, Dad, where are we going next year? Great leaders are very good at being thrown into alien environments. Sometimes they move to an alien environment by their own decision-making. Sometimes this is something unexpected that does that. You could work in New York and take a job in London. Well, you're moving to an alien environment. I don't mean bad. I mean different. Okay. But you chose to do that. That's cool. Okay. Sometimes, unfortunately, business problems, problems with any leadership who can be in business or not, you can be leading any type of organization. There'll be things that come out of the blue that you didn't know about our big surprises, probably negative. And you've got a cope and great leaders actually run at problems, run at those situations. So by a five-year-old starting to travel, if you won't, and I say to people, if you cannot afford to go to Europe, I understand, go to Quebec. If you can't afford Quebec, go to West Virginia. Okay. It's a different environment. Okay. And so that's the key. Get kids started on being comfortable in these indifferent worlds from the world they live in most days. And actually looking forward to it, being excited about it. So, but learning leadership, it's all about face to face. Yes, you can learn some things from me listening to me talk. Yes, I think that's I do it because I think that can happen. But your most of your learning is going to be dealing with other people, good events, problems, bad events, your failures, your successes, all of these count, taking risks. You have to take risks to be a good leader. It's impossible. Leadership is synonymous with change. And whether you do what I do, which is turn arounds, with very extreme situations, companies and really in big trouble. Or just some you're in a great organization. You just have to make some small speed adjustments because things are going quite well. It's still change. And you have to be comfortable with change. Most people don't aspire to leadership because they're afraid that they don't want to upset other human beings. And they know instinctively that change will upset some people even so-called positive change. Quick question. What's your go-to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab, which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with Hule. This black edition ready to drink is a complete meal. So it has 35 grams of protein, six grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added, gluten-free, under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge. And honestly, it solved the whole back-to-back meetings, go-go-go, non-stop, no time to eat problem, super well. And this one's new for me. It's Hule's daily greens. 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One thing that, you know, when you describe leadership, I've always thought of curiosity as like a good trait for anybody wants to be successful, but I've never actually tied curiosity to leadership. But what you're what you're speaking about with throwing people into new situations even at a young age telling them to go visit new environments overseas, new language, new culture, different part of the US, different part of North America. All of it is about curiosity mixed in with like a little bit of empathy. And when you have when you understand these traits very, very well, then I think it becomes a lot easier to throw yourself into this new environment that you don't understand at all and and thrive in it, not just sort of go into a new environment and maintain the status quo, but truly go into a new environment and not dominate but just excel in it. I think you do need to be curious and empathetic to do that. And you're sort of what you're talking about with kids is you're sort of training these traits early on. I agree. So my parents were such that I was, they never said the words you need to be curious. They just encouraged me to be curious. Anything I asked about, I'll go get a book, read more, or why don't you try out for this club in high school or wide range of different things, but I was always encouraged to follow my interests. We have a problem today with young people not learning leadership. There are two big reasons. One is just what I talked about. You need face-to-face experiences with other people. And today, because of technology and because of this, they don't get it. Okay, it's harder and harder. I do have a list of 15 things on petercunio.com that I recommend for young people with the learn leadership. And most of them have to do with face-to-face different types of experiences face-to-face. But I also say, you know, encourage young people to become expert at something. This is the other thing because human beings, even at a young age, when they have greater knowledge about a certain subject than most other people, it makes them one feel like they have a little power and two feel good about it. And so that's that's again being inquisitive. So your five-year-old, let's go back to the five-year-old, may know more about dinosaurs than you do. And that's great. If they like dinosaurs, encourage them to learn a little bit more about dinosaurs or whatever. It's okay, it could be something very simplistic. You know, and reward them for that with praise. You know, the other problem we have with young people not learning leadership is we have over parenting. And this is a problem where parents are not teaching their kids to be inquisitive, the opposite. They're teaching them not to take risks. Okay, and they are, it's called gentle parenting. There are lots of names for this. But basically, well-meaning parents want their, unfortunately, want their kids never to have a negative thought about themselves till they go out in the real world after college, let's say. So whatever goes on, it's not their fault, they're wonderful. They had graded in school, teachers' fault, didn't make the elite, football team, it's the coach's fault, whatever. And when these kids could not be leaders, they'd never learned the instincts of leaders. And when they first go out in the world, I hear from a lot of sea-sweet executives really horrifying stories about the lack of performance by young people now, including highly educated, well-educated children, kids, they're not the young adults. And lack of social skills, lack of no work ethic. I think I'll quit today, but don't even tell anyone. Or you don't want, you don't take a vacation day today, not going to show up, don't tell anyone. And they are not, because of the way they are over-parented, they're not thin-skinned, they have no skin, no skin. So when something goes wrong, the slightest thing that Scott, you and I would probably laugh at, they're devastated. It runs their whole day, it runs their whole, it's amazing, it's very sad, it's not their fault, I'm not blaming the young kids at all, not at all, it's how their parents did, how they grow up. That's where you look. But this comes from, this is not just an issue with young kids, I think that in general, I see people not wanting to be curious and not wanting to think outside of their worldview more often than never before. And I think that's just a toxic cultural phenomenon that's, unfortunately, the kids are a recipient of. I think it's toxic across the board. Now, of course, it's going to affect a kid at a younger age, much more seriously, when they don't have curiosity, they don't have critical thinking, they don't understand a world outside of their own. That's going to impact their career, that's going to impact their life. But it just seems like, I don't know, it just seems like across the board regression in terms of how we act and how we communicate. I think it actually started with COVID when everybody was like isolated in their bubbles and there was no more human to human face to face interaction. I think that definitely didn't help. But I don't think we've, I don't think we've bounced back to the society that we were pre-COVID, where people were empathetic and curious and wanting to be leaders and wanting to learn things that they didn't know and didn't understand. I don't think that we're there yet. Oh, I agree with you 100%. But again, it's going to be up to parents, grandparents, friends, mentors to fill the gap. Some will make it. And by the way, ones that come out, young people as, as quality leaders, are going to crush it, they're going to have very little competition and, and so on. Yeah, I, I think it's, it's a real challenge. We, we don't, you know, one of the things I, I noticed a lot is a big topic for organization I'm involved with, which is the National Archives Foundation. So the National Archives keeps all the records of the US government from day one, 22 billion documents. And I've been on the board now. I think this is my 16th year. I really love history. One of the things I recommend again on PeterCunio.com on my list of 15 things is study history. Because I do think that the past is prologue. And I do think you can learn a lot about human behavior by studying history and study our heroes. You're going to find out that heroes are not perfect. No human being is perfect. And while they did great things and they are very appropriately our heroes, they didn't do everything right. And, and they made their share of mistakes. So studying history, I really recommend to people. One of the things that concerns us on the board is that schools don't teach civics anymore. We have civics being how our federal government, state governments, and even local governments are organized. How they work. And so we have people in voting age voting with no sense. I didn't realize they stopped though. I took civics when I was in high school. Well, you're probably in the last year. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm telling you that we don't teach civics anymore. It's really troubling. And we're putting together programs to help rectify that. But that's another one that may never get fully rectified. And I think, yeah, so, so we have young people voting and they couldn't tell you who or why they're voting for necessarily because they don't know what the parties stand for really. They know what social media says. But most of that is inaccurate as we all know. They don't know enough not to to take social media. They don't know enough to take social media as with grain of salt. So then, so I don't know if you have an opinion on this. And I I'm just curious because you have strong beliefs around it. And your beliefs are very similar to mine. I don't know what the solution is. That's that's the quite like I don't know what the solution is because I think I think the actual solution is people have to be self-taught individuals. People have to be curious. People have to want to learn. But they also have to have the ability to understand if the information that they're learning is accurate or not. So it's a lot. Like the burden of education, it rested in institutions. Now I don't know if people even believe in traditional education the way they used to. I mean, I think there's I think people are now very focused on self-education and learning from their favorite, you know, thought leader on on social media. What's the solution to all of this? Like how do we how do we help kids get the right education to make smart decisions to be good leaders to be good human beings when they don't trust traditional institution or there's so much influence from social media. Like how do you set your kid up for success in 2025? I think it's doable. I certainly meet kids that are the exception and they're very impressive. And when I really get into them and you know, I have a podcast I've done two seasons, just finished season two. I interview people who names you may know, you may not know, but who are proven terrific leaders. And they talk about, you know, about their adventures, their failures, their successes. One of the things I ask all of them about though is their childhood. And when you hear some of their stories, how diverse their childhood was. One person I interviewed grew up in a camper, you know, with five of the children, brothers and sisters as an example. And another one had a paper route. And instead of just throwing the papers on the stoop when he went around, he actually rang the bell of every house and handed the paper to the people just he didn't know why he did it. But he was he was learning about human nature already based on the reaction from all these people in the neighborhood, you know, when he was handing them their paper. And he you know, credited a lot of his success started with that experience. So you really you really hear a lot when you talk to people about how they were grown up. And when I interviewed people, I always want to hear about how they grew up. What they, you know, they have adventures, have that diversity. You know, what was their life really like? Was it all planned out completely by their parents? Those, those people typically don't get passed the interview with me. I need people who have gained confidence in themselves. Okay, by getting out there and trying to, I would leave you with this thought for young people, however it gets done, young people have to learn their strengths and their weaknesses. They are not learning those today. Okay. And their strengths are their strengths, their weaknesses. They can avoid or work to get better. You know, it's it's it just depends on the situation. But you know, listen, I know this will shock you, but I certainly have a list of weaknesses I get taught to you. Learned in some cases to work to get better. In some cases, I can't get better. I just have to avoid. And so, and that goes on through life. I don't think it's just young people. You know, you're learning, well, I'm still learning. Let me really. And, and I enjoy it. One of the challenges I have right now is actually understanding the latest generations and how they think and what they value. And we've just been talking about this. And I, I can be critical, but that doesn't help anything. We have to find a way. And I interviewed recently, Patrice Gordon, who's in London. And she is a big proponent of what's called reverse mentoring. And I was really taken aback by this. I didn't ever heard of reverse mentoring. It's basically the, you know, the, the employees are educating the bosses. And how to do it. And, you know, she's, she's been very successful at it. And, and how you would set that up. And so on. And this, you know, and if it works, the whole organization is much, much more happy and much more efficient. So there are things that the, that the bosses can learn from young people. I think that's, I think that what you're saying is very wise. So what you're telling, what you're telling people who are a little bit younger, who are trying to figure out how to navigate the world. Like some of the people that you've had on your podcast, they have built real companies. They've had real success. They're not just the flashiest person on social media. They're people that have the track record. Those are the people that you actually pay attention to and learn their stories and understand how they leaned into adversity. How they started to learn about leadership. How they sort of structured the wrong career. Those are the people that find, you know, there's a lot of noise online, but those are the people you actually learn from. Yeah, and I think with all of this to talk about the media, the media has a lot to be blamed for. And I'm talking about, I know that. I'm talking about all media, because the way media makes money is to give you little tidbits on a particular subject with a, you know, in some cases, a totally misleading headline. No one is ever encouraged to go deep on a subject. In fact, half the time the headline tells you what the whole thing is, except it uses crazy words that don't fit the situation at all. And we all know the words, stunning, jaw dropping, you know, on and on and on and on, chaotic, all these words which actually don't apply, but you see them in the headline. And the media does this simply because that's how they make money. It's how they attract advertising. But unfortunately, our culture is a, is a 30 second, you know, info blast on any subject. And that's it. And you and the viewer or the listener has no idea if what they're hearing is accurate or not. And a lot of it is inaccurate. Of course. And they don't realize that they're just, they're basically just part of the monetization strategy. That's it. So one last one last thought on this. And then we'll switch gears. But if somebody who's listening to this who's 25 years old, they want to be a leader, they want to stand out. They grew up comfortable. They never faced real hardship. What should they do this week, this month right now, to better position themselves for the type of person that you think they need to be and they should be. Honestly, it's going to sound very self-serving. Go to petercunio.com and look at my list of 15 things I recommend for young people. And I'm defining young as 30 and under in this case. And they're all, most of them have to do face-to-face interaction with teams. So, for example, no one would be surprised. I highly recommend team sports. Now, you could be the worst person on the team. That's okay. Doesn't matter whether you're on the starting team or whatever. Being with you at one goal, which is to win, you'll have a diversity of people usually on the team. You have to bond with that team to have a winning team. Everyone counts, everyone will contribute some more than others. That's a great experience for kids. They don't have to be the best player. It doesn't matter. I also recommend performing arts. The reason I recommend performing arts is because it's a team sport also. Everybody diverse getting together. It doesn't matter if you're on stage or in front of the camera or whether you're backstage doing something. When I was young growing up, I was pulling curtains for a show at a local college. And I loved it. I wasn't performing. But, you know, there were 15 acts and each one had a different combination of curtains. I just had to keep that straight. And there were like 10 different possible curtains. And I loved it. I felt I did my job and I felt part of the whole group. So, performing arts, also I think a good way to learn diversity, learn other people's behaviors and teamwork and leadership. And then there's many more on the list, but I think you get the idea. The HubSpot podcast network is a success story partner. Now, a quick podcast recommendation. I've been listening to truth, lies, and work. They're in the HubSpot podcast network, just like success story. It's this husband and wife team, Al and Leanne Elliott. They break down why people actually do what they do at work. So, if you have a business, if you manage people, if you have to hire people at any point, you have to listen to the show. I just listened to an episode on my good employee suddenly quit. That's an issue that we all have. And it totally clicked for me. One of the reasons I explained is why it's not usually about the money. It's about all these little promises that we as founders, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, we break without realizing it. Like, when you tell someone you just hired that they're going to learn all these new skills, but you just keep giving them the same tasks over and over and over again. It made me realize that I probably lost a lot of good people for dumb reasons that I never noticed. And hiring is one of the most important things you can figure out. So, if you manage people or if you just want to understand what makes your co-workers tick, it's worth checking out. Listen to truth lies and work wherever you get your podcast. Chipstation is a success story partner. You know what separates successful online businesses from literally everyone else? It's not just having great products. It's delivering an amazing shipping experience that keeps customers coming back. All of my friends that run the biggest e-commerce companies, they use Chipstation and it has completely transformed how they handle orders. They save thousands on shipping costs thanks to their rate chopper tool that finds the best discounts. And when makeshipstation brilliant, you never need to upgrade because it grows with your business no matter how big you get. And they offer discounts up to 88% off UPS, DHL express and UPS rates and up to 90% off FedEx. 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You're going to dive into breakout sessions where you can immediately implement what you learn. And plus San Francisco's legendary startup ecosystem provides the perfect backdrop for networking with all these great entrepreneurs, decision makers, industry leaders, peers who are actively shaping the future of business. From September 3rd to 5th at the Moscone Center, you're going to be surrounded by forward-thinking professionals who turn insights and ideas into breakthroughs. Don't just watch the future unfold. Be part of creating it. Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. So I want to just speak about Marvel because obviously that was a huge part of your career. And we touched on it a little bit but just to go a level deeper. So Marvel was basically bankrupt and I know I'm putting words into your mouth so you can tell me how good or bad it was but it was basically bankrupt. You came in. You didn't know the industry. When you come in, how do you know to a situation and this is sort of a leadership question laid on to a Marvel question. When you come into a situation that has history, how do you know sort of which industry wisdom you should learn and understand and keep versus which industry wisdom is not helpful at all and you have to sort of reinvent the wheel. You have to ignore some of the conventional wisdom that got the situation to where it is when you stepped in which was bad. In Marvel's case, Marvel had actually just come out of bankruptcy but it's important to talk about bankruptcy for a second because bankruptcy is a very very difficult process. Marvel had been in a tough bankruptcy for about two years before it came out of bankruptcy and a lot of people that don't know bankruptcy think oh you must be cured when you come out of bankruptcy and the reality is you're not cured. Your creditors have agreed on certain financial structures that they can live with. Those financial structures often are not the best structures for the individual business but it's what the creditors will agree to. So you're still very weak financially and you've lost a bankruptcy a lot of good people and that happened at Marvel. Long bankruptcy and people wondering if Marvel would ever actually come out of bankruptcy two years is a long time and good people left because they could. They were offered good jobs elsewhere and so there was a talent drain on Marvel that I had to deal with as well when I came in but so all of the turnarounds I've done well not all but most were businesses I had no background in. So and I'm always comfortable doing that in fact for a turnaround I could argue it's a good thing because you can really see what's wrong much easier if you have no background in industry and I had no background in motion pictures making them I love motion pictures but that's about it and I had no background in comic books publishing comic books the last time I read a comic book I was probably 12 years old so really didn't know much about either of those but the other thing that I do before I take on an assignment is homework and that homework is consists of two things one is and particularly the public company which Marvel was and it still is a part of dizzy now but Marvel went through bankruptcy still as a New York Stock Exchange company so when it came out of bankruptcy it's still a public company so there's a lot of public filings you can read that are open to people if you want to find them the things that you must you know submit to the SEC on a regular basis so I could see some of that but I also could find people to talk to through other people that would tell me something about Marvel what they thought was going on what were the problems did they know when it inside I would do that kind of searching on every opportunity I got and I turned down more opportunities when you go into a company you go into an opportunity I don't know if it's the first 72 hours of reviewing maybe it's the first week maybe it's the first month first first quarter what are the signs that you can see immediately that a company's culture would be bankrupt I'm going to be honest with you I couldn't see any signs in three days or whatever it takes time working with people seeing their attitudes you know seeing what what went on in the past I I always knew going in that there'd be cultural problems no question it was you know but exactly what they would be you could guess from the outside before you go in but they're often not not often always surprises and so it's always worse than you think it is when you actually get inside and I don't care how much work you do looking in from the outside how many people you talk to doing your research all of these things it's always worse but in Marvel's case the one interesting thing I still remember is going through Marvel's books if you will after it had just come out of bankruptcy I'd still hadn't taken the job was that the the the lineup if you will of the characters Marvel had 4700 characters and the that entire group was valued at 500 million dollars on the books coming out of bankruptcy and I knew that one character alone spider man and I didn't I just knew as a consumer could be worth 500 million dollars if if managed correctly and and so I was very I thought this is definitely worth you know a shot and you can do a lot of homework but they're always surprises when you finally walk through the door every time you can't possibly it's always worse by the way than you think it's going to be I did seven turnarounds they were all the same it was always worse but um and so you know the I a lot of people want to give me a lot of the media and the interview me want to give me credit for the getting in the movie business the comic books etc actually movie business had already started uh it's come back before I got there I actually arrived the first film was X-Men 1 in which came out in 2000 but in 1999 when I came to the company the first month I went to Toronto where we were filming you know on a set and a mansion some of the X-Men movie so it had started before me and we had some good people got him obvious rod really was the guy who pushed the motion pictures for Marvel it wasn't me I um I had to you know I tell people I read the scripts I never made a single change I wasn't I didn't feel I was qualified it would have been the height of arrogance for me to start telling people writing scripts filming movies how to do their job it would have been crazy so I didn't and I think that being an outsider it allows you to look at things differently and I think that's the huge advantage that you bring I think yes I think you're right I think that we talked about culture briefly also is the culture of the company right and invariably in any turn around the culture is not right now I'm defining the culture two ways as two pieces one is how we treat each other very simply and how we view people outside the company that are important to us they could be suppliers they could be customers they could be advisors they could be whatever it's it's it's you know how do we value human beings you know in terms of success the second thing is what do we need to be really good at to be successful we'd love to try to be good at everything but what are the key things is it new products is it customer service is it manufacturing you know so on it's it's very often the organ of the culture doesn't realize even what they need to be good at or doesn't take it seriously I've gone into cultures that actually didn't respect customers if you can believe that it's hard to imagine similarly with comic books the main thing was getting back a lot of the talent that we've lost we had some we hired some very good people our editor and chief came in who came in with Joe Cassada who was very instrumental in bringing back a lot of talent the talent could talk to me but I was the suit so to speak I was not the the fellow comic book guy if you know what I mean and so they needed someone like Joe to give them confidence that we were going to make it and so while I read the comic books I read them after they were published and I made very few decisions in comics or in film for that matter credit really I will take a lot of credit for staying out of their way which is very hard for week for week leaders week leaders will come in and want the world to think that their instant experts on some industry they think it's a sign of weakness you know what I did was a sign of weakness not suddenly showing up on the sets you know or or reading the the soft copy on on a comic book and making change no no I wasn't going to do that so my my big job was one making sure the culture the values system of the business was correct what we thought was important was what we were working on how we treated our our fellow employees and the people we counted on outside the company our customers our suppliers and on and on and on okay and that was my first big job and the I will say because I had a great board that agreed completely right away with the with the new culture that was basically a culture of changing the rules of the game we were not going to make movies the way big studios did and initially we had to because we had no money and we had to be partnered with that but eventually when we started model studios we did things very different same thing in comic books we did a lot of new things that worked out very well that other people weren't doing so that was all part of it and and actually most people don't realize I was there for the first year when I came to the company this stock was $7 after a year it was like a dollar and a half the world still thought we were going to go bankrupt again but the big event there were several big events but the biggest event was a year after I came X-Men 1 came out it was a gigantic hit people were lined up around the block on Friday night to go see the movie when it first aired or across the United States and most of those people had no idea that the X-Men was the number one comic book in the world they didn't just thought they just heard it was a cool movie and they had to see it so it demonstrated the power of comic book characters when they were done right and of course ultimately after 10 years that I was there first as CEO and then as vice chairman of the board we sold the Disney for four and a half billion dollars from bankruptcy 10 years earlier what was the biggest bet that you took because you said you didn't mess with what worked you preserve the culture you stayed out of the lanes of the writers and the producers because that's not what you knew but was there a bet that you took like something that you brought in it was I mean like I know a little bit about Robert Downey Jr being involved in Disney at this point that was I'm assuming one bet was that a big bet that came some in the number of years later I wasn't to CEO anymore I was on the board as vice chairman and essentially we had abandoned our joint uh ventures with big studios and we're starting it's really restarting way back in the early 90s Marlowe had had its own studio it had not done well so this was a rejuvenation of Marvel studios and the first film was going to be Iron Man and Tony Stark being the name of the character we needed to cast someone great we really had a lot writing on on this we had raised 500 and 25 million dollars in debt to fund Marvel Studios a deal that will never be done again we have really no equity if you can believe that but at that point we had we had been the most successful film producers in history as measured by average worldwide box office for our films and so it was it was hard but we still were able to get very very good terms on the debt and so we had to but we had to have a winner out of the box and the board initially did not you know was very anti-tasting Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark because Robert had had some brushes with the law as you probably know not not soon before his mug shot was on all the media everywhere and the board naturally was um was definitely concerned about casting him as the primary role we knew he was a great actor however Robert screen tested and the board saw the screen test and it was so good that when the lights came on the board including me or we're saying you know together do it and the rest is history so so we did take a risk no one else at that point I think would touch Robert and he delivered and he's and that was 20 years ago so so you know and he said great movies and he's still playing on Iron Man and uh he's a great actor just one award for best supporting actor if you remember and uh god bless him he's been very was there any bets that you took a little bit earlier on when you were still in CEO role when it was you know it was just coming out of bankruptcy that were more stressful bigger bets things that you weren't sure if they were going to work out but you went with anyways um you know I'd be lying if I said there was any one's huge huge bet that I made or I got the board to make with me any huge bet would would require of course board approval um but I I don't think that there was any one big huge amazing bet I'll mention something to you wasn't so much of a bet but this may qualify for your question so after six months I've been on the job six months of CEO my CFO quit and went to another job and rather than hire a new CFO you might call us a bet I took the job myself so I was now the CEO and the CFO at the same time for a public company and by the way Scott today you couldn't get away with this this something called Sarbanes Oxley came along after this okay with a law change there was no way this would be acceptable but I wanted to do the CFO job the two because I wanted I was going to understand the business just so much faster if I understood all of the numbers where they were coming from why they were good why they weren't good what could we do to change our different businesses so that you know so that our financial situation improved and I actually was CFO for two years I was a CEO for almost four years but the CEO before I hired someone else but it gave me great insight you know the numbers are like blood in the person's body you know the numbers flow around from different parts of the body different parts of the organization and you want to understand you know the chemistry whether the numbers are good or bad whatever very very important and for someone who doesn't going to a business they didn't know it's really important so I didn't want to see a photo leave but since that was his decision and got something better you know so so I grabbed it and so big bet I don't know about a big bet but it was certainly very radical and very different and of course the investors in a public company you know what are they thinking what the CEO is crazy he wants to be the CFO also so it certainly wasn't popular initially after a while though when we started doing well everyone forgot about it just one last thought on just sort of your decision making framework because obviously Marvel was a successful story you've had multiple is it seven turn around so you've made some pretty good decisions across your career but you make big decisions you deal with companies that are at their worst point ever what is your advice for making decisions and understanding if they're going to be brilliant or if they're going to bankrupt your company like you take risk but it works out so there's some framework that you follow what is it it's purely instinct and I would love to tell you that every decision I make and every turn around was correct that wouldn't be the case I have my flaws like other people I had a good batting average yes okay I had a good batting average and I think I knew generally what was important and what have you but there's no formula it's it's it's a much of it is instinct and that instinct that you've developed over the years in dealing with people and when when you get you know you're going to need some new people you may not know day one who will wear but it's inevitable and you know also that there's going to be some people who won't make the trip they just won't support you they'll think what your new strategy your new culture whatever is wrong and if anything there'll be a negative there'll be a cancer on the organization they'll be talking you down there'll be whatever and they have to go and you can try for a little while to turn them around but I never tried for very long because I didn't have time on my side and so they those people had to exit the company and you should not take too long to make that decision and make it happen mo many unsuccessful leaders simply can't make they can't bring themselves to make that decision that because it's hard it is hard it's not about it and unfortunately it's too late area orphan for them where can people connect with you I know you mentioned your website where else should they go if they want to consume more of your content listens your podcast read your book all of it so my my let's take each one my podcast is on petercunio.com it's also on amazon Spotify iHeart the normal places you'd go we did film season two we did not film season one so we are on youtube with season two as well and so you could see two people sitting there talking to each other for 40 minutes not sure why people would want to do this but it's apparently it's a trend popular now i think people put it on in the background now i think i think right so that's the podcast podcast is all about me interviewing great leaders all different types talk about diversity all different industries the military uh you know other places as well where they've been great leaders um the uh the i have a book coming out called superhero leadership by the way the podcast is petercunio.com but the excuse me the website is petercunio.com the podcast is superhero leadership with petercunio i have a book coming out in february that ties into all of this including a lot of the stuff we've just been talking about uh it's my take on you mentioned 32 essentials for superhero leadership it's actually now 28 um just because we consolidated four into the other 28 um when we wrote the book so it's 28 but it's really the same 32 and um and that's the form of the book that these essentials for superhero leadership are one liners things i think that i've learned in my life of of leadership and they are instincts they are philosophies they are behaviors they are ways of just set your mind all of these different things and i think for perspective leaders really go to petercunio.com you can see the 28 there you can copy them and with the last thing i would say i still grate myself on the 28 every once in a while and i think other people can grade themselves as well if the honest with yourself they can grade other people they want that way too i wish i could give myself an a on every world 28 skyd i gotta be honest i'm not i'm not straight a i'm trying very hard even at this age if you could look back and out of all the wisdom that you've learned over your life and throughout your career and you could tell your 20 year old self sort of one last piece of wisdom or even like one piece of wisdom that you'd want to pass on to your kids what would that less than be and why lead a diverse life diversity as i said in terms of who you who you meet who your friends are um business challenges or or non profit challenges if that's the way you go whatever whatever you decide to make a career of make sure that you you know you become wiser and you make better decisions when you've had diverse exposures to people