PodCrash with Matt Ebert
PodCrash with Matt Ebert
The CEO Who Saved Marvel From Bankruptcy | PodCrash
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I'm Matt Evert. I turned one collision repair shop into a multi-billion dollar business called Crash Champions. Now I'm sitting down with people who have also built great things so you can build something of your own.
SPEAKER_00All right. Today's guest that is crashing the pod is Peter Cunio. Oh, great. Yeah, so Peter's been known for being a turnaround CEO. Uh he's most famous for being the CEO of Marvel. Uh he was named CEO in 1999 shortly after they filed bankruptcy. Then in 2009, they sold to Disney for $4.5 billion. Billion with a B. With a B. In 2009 money. Is that a lot of money in 2009?
SPEAKER_02It's a lot of money today, Danny. A billion dollars is a lot of money. But even in 2009. Definitely 2009, but it's a lot of money. Like here, to illustrate it, let me let's compare it to a million. Okay. And I'll illustrate it this way. How long do you think a million seconds is? Besides a million seconds, how long do you think it is? Uh I have no idea. Okay. It's a little over 11 days. Okay. Eleven days. Eleven days. Million seconds. Million seconds. How long would you guess a billion seconds is? Thirty days. Over 31 years. Wait. That's how big a mil a billion is compared to a million. Eleven days compared to 30, almost 32 years. Yeah. Right. We can get a sense of that. So it's a billion dollars a lot of money.
SPEAKER_00That's a lot of money.
SPEAKER_02So he got him, he sold for four and a half of this billion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's great. It's good work. And so being known as a turnaround CEO, you've had some experience with turning around a company, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we've had our our experience with that. It's tough. Like, you know, from buying a bankrupt company and turning, you know, integrating it and turning it around. It's a big battle.
SPEAKER_00What did you what was the biggest takeaway from it? Well, what did you learn out of it?
SPEAKER_02It's always surprises, bad surprises is more broken than you think. Yeah. It's never is what it seems.
SPEAKER_00I guess. Okay. All right. Well, hey, I'm looking forward to your conversation with Peter. Me too. This is Podcrash.
SPEAKER_02You know, before we maybe get into some of your background, you've got a new book out. Um, we're looking at it right here in the middle of the table. Superhero Leadership 28 ways to lead with courage, uh, strength, and compassion. Um tell us about it. Why why 28?
SPEAKER_01Well, actually, I've been uh in leadership positions in my life for over many, many decades. And um uh this really started when I was CEO of Marvel Entertainment. Okay. Over 20 years ago. And I was asked to give a speech on leadership by a large group. And in thinking about what am I going to talk about, because I had not done this before, I actually got on a plane. It's an 11-hour flight nonstop to China from New York City. Okay. And I started thinking about my whole life what principles had did I think I'd learned. And actually, in nine hours, I came up with 28 essentials. Um, and I've made some changes over the last 20 years, of course, but not many. And so today, the reason for the book is I'm very concerned about this the status of leadership in the world. I'm I'm I profess that we have less good leadership in the world than maybe ever in human history. I'm also equally concerned about the fact that I believe young people are not learning leadership. The question is, why not? And what can we do about it? So this book is part of my quest, if you will, to to talk about leadership and what I think I've learned uh and the book is aimed at people who are interested in the subject of leadership, which is most human beings, people who want to become better leaders or or aspire to leadership, and so on. So it's I don't want to say it's a Bible, it's not the wrong right word, but it's a it's certainly something that I think will resignate, you know, with other other people.
SPEAKER_02I was uh it's super excited to talk to you today because it resonates with me. I agree, like there's like a vacuum almost of leadership today, and love to see um you communicating the lessons that you learned uh to help uh to help others. Um if I glance at it at these, um, which I got to do when we talked, um they all are great. Do you have a favorite?
SPEAKER_01I do not have a favorite. Um I'm often asked what's the most important of the 28, and the answer is there is no most important. Okay. They're all important. They're all you no one uh exists on earth that's gonna get a grade of A on everyone. We're all human beings. And I I tell people, some of those, even after 20 years, I give myself a C because and I'm happy to get a C.
SPEAKER_02Even though they're your leadership principles, you know it's not your strength.
SPEAKER_01That's that's right. I know I have certain failings, flaws, like any human being, which I'm always fighting, and so on and so forth. But I will tell you what is the hardest one to do, because that I often get that question.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And that is, I think it's number 18. But um Notice, I gotta put on the glass. Yeah, that's okay. But basically, it talks about having the emotional but maturity to understand that to be an effective leader, you're going to upset and be unpopular with other people because you have to make change. Really, my definition of leadership is the courage to make change. And you're gonna make change up can upset a lot of people, even good change upsets people sometimes. And you have to be comfortable with the idea that there'll be people who will never, never really like you very much. You know, I still get calls every once in a while from friends who say, you know, Peter, do you know John Smith, you know, or Jane Doe? Um, I just met him or her, and they, you know, they don't like you very much. And I said, Yeah, I figured that because I had to fire them years ago, you know, what have you. But but um you just you're just gonna have to live with that. Not I'm not suggesting to be cruel or abusive in any way as a leader, but just accept that it, you know, you're gonna have to be comfortable with because if you don't make the change, you're going to fail. Yeah, and no change is gonna bring everybody's everyone loses. Yeah. Everyone hates you.
SPEAKER_02Even if you even if it's the greatest thing in the world and it's better, better for them, it's gonna make it so much faster, so much easier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I and you know, I I have the experience often uh offering people really nice promotions and uh being turned down because they didn't want the responsibility of leadership because they knew in their hearts they were gonna have to make other people unhappy. And they just most human beings would rather just be liked by everybody and you know go do their thing every day. So most human beings actually do not aspire to leadership, they're interested in leadership for sure. Okay, but um it's it's for that reason. It's something that I in my turnarounds, I've done seven tur turnarounds of distressed businesses. You know, I had to cope with that every day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's one in here that um because of you know love of people, so to speak, like this be ruthless when called for, that's when I pointed out. Like I've still work on that one. Because it's difficult sometimes if you like the people, the calls you gotta make sometimes are hard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I actually wrote that to talk about the really bad people. Okay. Uh, because there are people who just don't want to make the hard decisions on people and will put up with anything. And you I noticed uh, you know, if you if you look at what I wrote afterwards on that, I'm talking about sexual harassment. I'm talking about uh theft. I'm talking about Then it actually gets easy to be ruthless. Oh, yeah. It actually gets really easy. You know, there are certain people you're just gonna have to pull the plug on. And um there's no there's no if or or but with regard to those people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They are a cancer and they need to go.
SPEAKER_02Agree. So maybe a little background. Um, if we could, you um you gave us a little hints already. Manage seven turnarounds, Marvel's the one you're most famous for. Um, you said you had an adventurer gene. I've heard you say that. Tell me about that. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm um a risk taker. Okay. I I don't think uh anyone is born really with an adventurer gene. I think it's how you're raised when you're young has had a certain effect on you. And in my case, um my parents and my grandparents were all adventurers. My grandparents were all uh immigrants. They came from Italy, they came from Sweden, and they came from Scotland. Okay. I'm actually half McLeod from Scotland, um, but my last name is Cuneo, which is Italian, is a city and a province in northern Italy, Cuneo. And so some of them didn't speak English, and they made that adventure, coming to a new country with no not knowing anyone else, and they survived. They survived and and did fine. A little known fact um is that uh many of the immigrants, we talk about uh US being an image country of immigrants, which we are, but many went back. Okay. Because they couldn't cope. You'd be surprised if you saw the numbers. They just couldn't cope. Gave it a try and said, I'm gonna go back. I believe that. I'm gonna go back. I saw uh once that 40% of Italians that immigrated went back to Italy. I don't know if that's accurate, but I was very surprised that it was that much.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't have guessed that either, but yeah I think about it, there's obviously some that would have gone back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's look, it's hard. It's really hard. So my grandparents all got did fine. They got through the depression, they were middle class, they worked hard, they didn't do desk jobs, they were all out there in different different uh uh occupations. My mother and father, similar situation. My father was um, well, as a young man growing up in Manhattan in New York City. He was Boy Scout of the Year at age 13. Okay. Um he uh went to Stuyvesant High School, which was the best academic high school, public high school in New York, might still be. He was an all-city basketball player for three years. He went to the University of North Carolina, and in 1940, they won the unofficial national championship. There was no March Madness back then. He was the sixth man on the team. My father was a lieutenant in New York City fire department. And his firehouse was a Chinatown in Manhattan, a lot of bad fires, those types of buildings, and uh and so on. He was a Navy officer in World War II in the South Pacific and in the Korean War. So I grew up Oh, and my mother was an EMT for 30 years. Okay. The last 10 years physically, she couldn't do it anymore, so she you know, she was a dispatcher. But um this is what the model that I grew up with was people that get out there, people that take risks, people that give back to others. You know, um and no, did that when I was young, was I thinking that this is what I'm learning? No, of course not. I didn't. But I started in a way learning leadership when I was eight years old, and I'll explain. One of the attributes, and if you go to petercuneo.com, I'm doing a lot of things on leadership on there. Okay, but I do talk about some of the attributes also of great leaders. And one is that they're not afraid of being thrown into alien situations, alien environments. And I have to always say that by alien in this case I don't mean bad, I mean different. Yep. And uh and they run at problems, they don't hope the problems go away, they don't contemplate a problem for a month, they go right at the problems when they know about them. Um so uh alien environments, you we all as humans face these occasionally. It might be things we did ourselves. Oh, I have a job in Chicago. Well, I just took a job in uh in London, and uh different environment, but I chose to do that, okay? Um sometimes, unfortunately, it's not so good. It's a business thing that suddenly crops up. Oh, my competitor has a new technology, they might blow me out of the water. My products, what am I gonna do? Yep, you know, or unfortunately, it could be a health situation that occurs. But good leaders are very comfortable, and I'm very comfortable. This is something I realized a long time ago, coping with unforeseen, you know, new new events.
SPEAKER_02You alluded to something when you were eight.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um when I was eight years old, my father was called up to go into the um back into the Navy as Navy officer in the Korean War. Okay. So in a two-year period, we went from New York City, where I was growing up, first to Pensacola, Florida, then to Bremerton, Washington, which was where the there was a Mothbowl fleet. My father was taking a carrier from World War II out of Mothballs. Uh Birmingham is across the sound from Seattle. Okay. Then we went to San Diego, which was big Navy town. Then the war was over, but he was asked to stay in for another year. And we went to Philadelphia. He was in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and then for a year, and then so I I did the fourth grade in in San Diego, the fifth grade outside of Philadelphia. But it's funny if you think about it, I went to all four corners of the United States. Florida, state of Washington, Southern California, Philadelphia, and then back to home in New York City again. And I became very comfortable, actually liked the change. I had to make friends in every location, four locations in two years. I don't remember it being difficult. Um, and I coped. And I liked it. So I was always interested in what's over the next hill. Yeah, that's not a normal childhood experience. No, not at all. Right. But I thought again, I was thrown into call it alien environments. Yep. Okay. But my family co my parents coped, I coped, uh and uh and so on. So that's in a sense how I got started on leadership at age eight. That's great. I didn't even know there was a word called leadership or what it really meant. But looking back in terms of my personality and and how I was shaped as a young young kid, that was a big deal.
SPEAKER_02So any any big mistakes when you were a young person then, or did that make you um did that make everything adventurous and trouble free?
SPEAKER_01Or you know, pretty much. I had uh no big mistakes. Um uh I was just growing up, you know. I'm sure I made some mistakes. I really don't remember them. Uh I it was more about uh just learning new environments and learning to enjoy that challenge. Even at at a you know, I was 10 years old when I came back to New York City.
SPEAKER_02Learning those skills as as a young person. Where where do you feel, though, in life you really started to emerge as a leader? Was that in the Navy for you?
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. So um I I had started to do things in a few things in high school and in college in terms of student leadership, but really the big leap for me was uh going to Vietnam. So I had graduated with a degree in in ceramic engineering from a school called Alfred University, upstate New York. Alfred is number one school in the world for ceramic technology science and art, by the way. Okay. Um and I my degree was in glass science. Most people don't think of glass as a ceramic, but it's the largest ceramic industry in the world. And so then I worked in a fiberglass factory for a year. Okay. After I graduated. Uh, but again, you know, that can't sit around at a desk thing was getting me. And uh I volunteered, even though I had a job deferment. I didn't have to go to the war. I volunteered. Part of it was the sense of adventure. Pretty naive, actually, looking back in that regard. It was going to be more than an adventure. Yeah, a little bit more than adventure. But I think I saw too many John Wayne movies when I was growing up, you know. Okay. World War II movies. But uh but also because my father had been a Navy officer in two wars. Okay. And so um, yeah, so I I went to officer candidate school, and in four months I was an officer because during the wars, the military, not just the Navy, all over the military, needs more officers, junior officers. And than they than you would need in peacetime. And so I wasn't taking it as seriously as people who went to Annapolis for four years. Okay. So that which is fine. I expected that. And that was appropriate. That was appropriate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01No, exactly. That was appropriate. Yeah. And so, no, no problem. Um, but um, yeah, of course, I was on a guide a missile destroyer. I did two tours in the Vietnam War. My ship, I was first uh damage control officer, and then first tour, second tour, I was communications officer. But more importantly, in the Navy, those are your functional jobs. Officers have other jobs. And my biggest job was not those. It was learning to drive the ship. Okay. Because uh the you know, this is not the age of sale. Captains don't give the orders anymore to the engine order telegraph or to the helmsman on what course to take. You have someone on the on the bridge call the officer the deck, and they actually drive the ship. The captain is far too busy. Okay. Far too busy. Learn something new today. Oh, yeah. And so, but of course, to learn to drive, in my ship's case, a ship that is 20,000 metric tons, 417 feet long, 60 feet wide, 300 sailors and 20 officers takes time and practice. You don't just suddenly go on the room.
SPEAKER_02You're not turning out on the dime, are you?
SPEAKER_01Oh, not at all. So I was not qualified as an officer of the deck on my first tour, but I was as on the second tour. And so I had the responsibility literally for the entire ship when I was driving the ship. And yeah, the captain was off was on the bridge usually with me, and so on, doing other things, but no question. Um, but um, and then you're in a now you're in a war in a combat zone. And so um a lot of responsibility. And when you're given a lot of responsibility, you naturally learn about leadership. Uh, but I also learned a great deal of leadership in the Navy from senior officers. I was actually blessed to serve under some great senior officers uh on the ship and uh also learned a lot from senior enlisted men. Okay. The Navy chiefs, listen, I didn't know anything when I showed up on the ship at first, okay? I I literally go to the chief who reported to me, who had been in the Navy 20 years. Chief, what do I do now? Even though he reported to me I was technically his boss because I was an officer and he wasn't, I wasn't gonna kid my anybody. I was not gonna pretend I suddenly could be superhuman and know what to do. So for the first six months, I did a lot of asking the chiefs, what do I do now? But that's okay. That's that's part of the process. It's normal. Way better than acting like you know something you don't. Well, and that gets into leadership in organizations. You know, one you know, we how many p uh weak leaders have we run into who want everybody to think they're on omnipotent and perfect and they can know everything and know you know, even walking into a whole new situation, they think it's show of weakness if they don't act like they're super cool and above it all. That's my first that's my first tip off, by the way, when I meet people like that. I know they're not going to be successful. So it's okay to ask questions, it's okay to admit your mistakes. One of my 28 essentials comes from an incident that happened in the Navy, um, which if we have time, I'll mention some of the details to you. Sure. Um but it it's it's talks about be honest, be human, yeah, and admit your mistakes. And so I learned to admit my mistakes, and it wasn't terrible when the following happened. So on my first tour, it's the midnight, mid mid watch, midnight watch on a ship is is midnight to four in the morning. I'm still a junior officer, I'm not doing anything but watching what goes on. That's right. Assignment. Just watch and learn. Our assignment at that time was called plane guarding for carriers. When carriers launch or recover aircraft, they want to have a destroyer one nautical mile in front, nautical mile is 2,000 yards, and one nautical mile in in arrears in trail in case the planes go in the water. Okay. You're lifeguard duty. You're on lifeguard duty, basically. And so and and Navy sh Navy carriers conduct operations in the middle of the night as well as during daytime. Maybe a little less, but they're doing it. And in Vietnam, because these planes had been bombing or fighting the MiGs over North Vietnam, they won't some of them come back injured, hit, damaged. But they want to get back to the ship. They do not want to land, go down on land and end up in the Hanoi Hilton. They don't want to go if they'd rather get to the ocean. It's called feet wet, but even crashing in the ocean is very dangerous. So they want to get back to the ship if they can. And they're but they're wounded. So when flight operations are not going on, the the ships kind of float around at very low speed. Two destroyers and a carrier, and and so on. And then when the carrier starts operations, they'll tell the destroyers to take one to go in front, one to go in back, and the carrier will turn into the wind at top at flank speed. Flank speed is top speed. And if you're going into a 15 mile an hour wind, that's 50 mile an hour wind that the planes are taking off. Does that create a lot of lift for them? Is that why they do that? Yes, exactly right. And landing, same thing. You land tail down, as you know. Okay, so you want that lift. Yeah, nose down wouldn't be good. No, no. I don't know how to fly, but that makes sense. So the captain is uh on the bridge, but he's exhausted, he's asleep. Okay. Which is common. He's on the bridge in combat zone the whole time, basically, but he's exhausted. So he's sleeping. And the order comes, and the officer of the deck, who's a very qualified highly qualified guy, does a little calculation and he gives speed and the direction we need to go to get in on in position. In this case, it's behind the carrier. And it's a relative motion calculation because the carrier's not sitting there, it's moving. So you're you know trying to look ahead.
SPEAKER_02Where do you got to be when he gets to here? That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01You want to be behind him as fast as you can. Okay, he's going in this direction at super his top speed. You're gonna go your top speed, but what direction do you want to set? And so Captain Wake, uh Captain wakes up, he does his calculation, and he thinks he does it, he me he screws it up, and he changes the orders to the helmsman and and and so on. And a minute later we're about to cut the other destroyer in half. That'll be a problem. Believe it or not. The only time in my Navy career I heard hard right rudder. Hard rudder is very you hear full rudder, you don't hear hard rudder. And so we end up just missing, passing close aboard, 50 yards apart, these two two destroyers close to each other. But we managed to avoid it. We get in. Yeah. So the next there's no secrets on this ship. The ship is a little community. So the next day the crew is saying, Can we trust this captain? Is he gonna get us killed? You know, that that's what can happen here. And the captain did something amazing. He called all the officers who were not on watch to the officers' mess, which is the which is the dining room for the officers, to start a meeting, and he got up and he said, Last night I made a mistake. I want to spend the next hour d analyzing every detail of what went on so it can never happen again. And I, as just an observer, could see the body language of these other officers, officers go from essentially, is he gonna get us killed to we're gonna die for this guy because he cares more about us than his career, because he's gonna get written up in the log for this. Okay. I don't know if it ever got written up or not, but I learned that that house in that hour. I learned, you know what? It's okay. And by the way, that captain, many years later, was promoted to rear admiral. So I know that his leadership qualities were recognized by the Navy. So I have no problem telling you I screwed up, let's fix it. What really matters is once we know it's a problem, we're gonna fix it right now. I I blew it. And in turnarounds, you're gonna make a lot of decisions almost every day. Some are gonna be wrong. It just is. Sometimes you don't have enough information, sometimes your judgment's just not great. But the real the real thing is, okay, we made a mistake, we're not gonna debate it, let's get on it right now. How do we fix it?
SPEAKER_02So that is something probably pretty unique. I don't know how many men and or women in the world can say they they manage seven turnarounds. So you must have you must have loved it a little bit or gravitated toward it, or people knew you were good at it, so they pursued you to come turn theirs around.
SPEAKER_01But you know what? Actually, I was I didn't have any sense I was thrown into the first one. Okay. I by my boss. Uh it was a the of the smallest of all of them, but it was an international business. Um and um I I was I was per pursuing this classic big corporate financial career, and all of a sudden I have responsibility now for this international division of a business, and they're in trouble. And I'm like really honestly, I was probably depressed for the first six months. Not clinically depressed, but I was down. You know, what do I know about turnarounds? What do I know? I don't know anything about this, you know. Uh and after six months, we started to get some really good results. We you could see we were improving. And I realized, thinking about it, it was about leadership that the past leadership had been pretty poor for a lot of ways, and what I my approach was very different. And one of the things I learned on that first turnaround, and I've found it turned out to be true on all my turnarounds, one of the nice things about it is you're gonna discover people in the organization that were never allowed to flourish by by the senior leadership in the past. And once you get let them have you know some leeway, they're like, oh my goodness, these people are really good. But they were never asked for their opinion, they were never asked to have vision, they were never asked, just keep your nose down to the table and do that job we define for you day after day. And suddenly you discover. And yes, you're gonna bring in some other people as well, but but so what happened with me was that ended up very well, and then the company I was working for, Bristol Myers, gave me, said that you this is great. Here's a bigger turnaround, another division. Okay. And then by then I was addicted to turnarounds. Because of seeing the bad go to good, and loving working with people, seeing the just the success. Look, we all love to have success and seeing, you know, I mentioned before, I love to work with a diverse diversity of people. I think that's the strongest group you can put together because you have many different outlooks and opinions that you can measure and weigh. You know, human beings really fundamentally we all want to be we want to be seen, we want to be noticed, we want to be heard. Okay. You know, we want to people to be interested in what we think. Even if our opinion is 180 degrees out from the final decision, my experience is most human beings are okay as long as they felt you took them seriously and you wanted, you valued them. We all want to be valued. Yeah. Okay. And that's something I learned also. Particularly, I think I knew it a little before, but I really learned it on those first couple of turnarounds.
SPEAKER_02So what you saw, what I'm hearing is it was leadership every time. Because you weren't the expert in all these businesses. You couldn't have been.
SPEAKER_01Um correct. I I would tell you that these were all cre I've been mostly in creative businesses. Okay. Okay. Uh not everyone was creative. Some were manufacturing some consumer products, but still there's advertising. There's what Marvel, of course, was completely creative. Movies, comic books, what have you. And so leadership, I don't want to say it counts for more in a creative environment rather than a technical environment. But you know, leadership is really has a great effect on the organization and can go bad quickly, but also can go well quickly. If your problem in doing a turnaround is somebody has a new technology that's going to obsolete your technology, that's a different challenge. I never had one of those challenges. Okay. I have to be honest. It was always getting people to be creative, ever for them to understand that no idea was a crazy idea. We wanted to consider virtually anything. You know, thinking out of the box at Marvel, our culture became changing the rules of the game. Everything we did was going to be different from everyone else. We made movies differently, we've made comic books, published differently, we wrote them differently. It was all changed the rules of the game. And that's why we were so successful.
SPEAKER_02Because you started to do it different than they have been doing it in the past. Well, obviously, what they were doing in the past wasn't working.
SPEAKER_01Well, not just the people that were there before, but I'm talking about the industry. Okay. People other competitors.
SPEAKER_02We we wouldn't do it like them either. Aaron Powell So I've talked to some before, and that's probably um an advantage that comes from an outsider because you don't have any bias to how the industry does it, and and you you don't have any like married to the old ways because you you don't even know the it's kind of an advantage.
SPEAKER_01And you know, I again I was comfortable not being the guy who was wanted everybody to think I can just parachute in and be an expert on all these things and make judgments. I read scripts for the movies, I never made a single change. I didn't feel I was qualified. And we had I actually found a lot of good people already there. Okay. Okay, we added some people, of course, but there were people who seemed to me to really know what they were doing. Um, I read almost all the comic books, but I only read them after they were published. Come on, Marvel had 4,700 characters when I arrived. I didn't know anything about any of them really. That's a lot of characters. Vaguely, something about Spider-Man and the Hulk, you know, but that's it. I didn't have know the essence of these characters. I wasn't qualified to make a change in a story or something about them. Did you have to go find different people that did? Or we had honestly, we had what we had a lot of good people there already, but because Marvel had been in bankruptcy, we had lost a lot of talent because good people could go somewhere else. And they did. So we spent a lot of time, particularly in comic books, convincing great people, great writers, great illustrators to come back to Marvel. Because and a lot of them felt they had been abused by Marvel in the past. So it took, I was the new guy, but I really uh I hired some new people to run the comic book business, and really they get the credit for getting the talent to come back.
SPEAKER_02So I I can relate to this because we we bought a business bigger than us a few years back that out of bankruptcy. And exactly those things, like the a lot of the good people were were ran off. It was it was more broken than I thought, so therefore a lot harder than I expected. Um when you go in, is there a pattern to how you would go about things that you applied over and over?
SPEAKER_01You know, that's a good question. I get it a lot. Okay. The answer is no. There's no you'll you'll see another one of my essentials is never think you've seen it all before. And that means that's the cause for I think leadership failure. Every situation actually is different. Yeah. And I had learned, we we talked about it earlier, to sit back and watch. And that was okay. And probably I was sit for for some things I didn't need to sit back. I had a financial background. I could attack our financial situation, which was very poor when I came to the company. Um, I had some knowledge of leadership, so licensing. I could get involved in the licensing of what we're doing deeply. Um, so it wasn't that I was sitting around doing nothing, but when when I came to making a a movie or or comic books, I was learning for the first six months. And so curiosity. Curiosity first. Yeah, yeah. Well, I it would just be ridiculously audacious on my part to make some change in some movie, knowing nothing about how to make a movie or the I really didn't understand the true essence of the characters. I did eventually. Okay. But it was just ridiculous, arrogant. I it never occurred to me.
SPEAKER_02Was Marvel the hardest one? Like that's the one you're most known for. It was it the hardest one you did.
SPEAKER_01It's gonna sound funny, but I think they were all hard. Because I I chose, I've thrown in and then chose to go to the biggest challenges where where radical surgery was needed. Okay. There are other turnarounds that you can do less. You know, I talk about change in an organization. I sometimes talk about the pebble, the rock, and the boulder. So in my head, when I look at making change in organization, I always had to think about pebbles, rocks, and boulders. Pebbles, you throw in the pond, they make a little ripple. It's gone very quickly. Rock makes a bigger splash, but the ripple doesn't get to the shoreline. Boulder falls in, there's a big wave, hits the shoreline hard. And think about changes that you find you have to make in an organization, and they can fall into those categories. So at Marvel, a pebble would have been, oh, we changed it to offices. We moved 10 blocks from one office to another. It was a little disruptive moving, but no one had to change where they lived to continue to come to the office and what have you. And after a month in the new office, everyone forgot we even moved. Okay. That's a pebble. A rock could be oh, we got uh uh a new product that we want to get out. Okay, and there's gonna be multiple functions involved in that getting that new product, and hopefully it'll be uh it'll be successful. That's a rock. A boulder is AI. A boulder is merging with another company. A boulder is buying another company bigger than you are out of bankruptcy. I know what you went through, okay? And and so on. And here's the thing you have to really think about. You can't throw pebbles, rocks, and boulders in the pond at the same time. If you have tried, but yeah, okay. What happens is those ripples interact with each other and you have chaos in the pond. Yep. Total chaos. So you have to think through, and this is something a lot of leaders miss. You have to you have to make the changes, but you have to figure out when they all fit timing-wise. Because many changes, even though it's a change, you're changing your financial organization, but that will impact the whole company in some ways.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And if someone else is making customer service is making a change, well, they may interact with each other not well to do the changes at the same time. That's my point. To really think about that. Um, and so on. So um they but I had that challenge, if you will, with all seven turnarounds.
SPEAKER_02Did you find you know, one thing I've tried to do with change is change once. Like if you're gonna change something, change it once and get it right. But I didn't succeed that often. Usually there was a change and then an uh you know, from bad to good and then to to the great. But we we yeah, but I was that my experience, or oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01As I I as I was talking about, you're gonna make a lot of changes. Yeah, some are not gonna be right. You're gonna make decisions, most of them are about change, basically, and some will be wrong. But the the the the the test for a really good leader is okay, I blew it, I made the mistake, let's go fix it right now. That's the test. You shouldn't beat yourself up for not batting a thousand on change. No one does. No one.
SPEAKER_02The great thing in the turnaround situation, there's well, I guess there's you could go all the way down, but there's no it's kind of in a place where there's nowhere to go but up. So that what I I view life a lot of time and business, it's it's a roller coaster at times. And I almost am most comfortable coming off the bottom because on the way down, you don't know where the bottom is coming off, and at the top I'm always nervous. Okay, what's gonna what's gonna go wrong? Where's it gonna fall out? So it's that coming out of the bottom where I always feel the most comfortable to be in the past. Yeah, I know the most optimistic there, yeah, more feel like you're in control of where you're going.
SPEAKER_01Sure. I think I I think that you you there look these turnarounds, you know, or or or going into an organization, and it doesn't have to be business. I mean, it could be the military, it could be education, it could be some religious organization. I'm not talking about just business here. If you're a leader, you're going to have to make some change. Hopefully it's all pebbles.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But unfortunately, life isn't that sweet. Okay. So, you know, it so so I th I just think it's uh there's a lot of stress. And I warn people. I been um Harvard Business School wrote a case about Marvel. The first paragraph says Peter Cunio is sitting at his desk wondering what the strategy for Marvel should be, you know, in the coming years. I'm paraphrasing here. And so a lot of MBA programs invited me to go to class and talk about Marvel and what actually happened and and change. And um I found a lot of the students initially thought doing turnarounds was very sexy. It was really cool, you know, to make a lot of money if you're successful, which is true. Um, but uh and so on. But I I would tell them, but you you know, let's let's role play here a little bit. You just took over manufacturing, and now I'm telling you as a CEO, you gotta go turn down, close a factory in Nebraska in a little town, and 50% of the jobs in the town are all in this factory. And they're unionized and they know you're coming and they're afraid you're gonna shut them down. You gotta do that. That's not fun. That's stressful as heck.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay? There's gonna be a lot of stress when you're working in a turnaround. Be prepared. That's what I'm my my point.
SPEAKER_02So you had you found getting the courage to do that stuff. You were able to do it.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, you know why I I think again because it was for the greater good. You know, I mean, if I didn't do it, the whole everybody was done. Yeah, that's what makes the decisions easy, right? And w one of the things I had to do in a couple of places was move manufacturing from the United States to Asia. Okay. Okay, which may be very unpopular, but the reality was this the cost to make the product was twenty percent of what it cost in the United States. My competition was already over there. Doing it over there. And retailers were saying, Peter, I I you're you know, I I can't keep your your your product, I can't keep buying it. It's too expensive. So what am I supposed to do? Tank a whole company? No. So we did move and we lost some people lost their jobs in manufacturing. But we had to rest save. We saved the company by doing that. And so on and so forth. So that's there's some bad things that you know you just have to do no matter what.
SPEAKER_02Maybe you could if take a few minutes. I want to ask when you do go and tell the Marvel story, because you've been asked to do that hundreds, thousands of times, probably. What are w how would you run through the highlights of what happened there and and how you got it right?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I would uh encourage your your audience to tune into the Marvel Mindset. It's my podcast that answers that question, except it takes it's 10 episodes, 15 minutes each. So so you're gonna you're gonna spend if you listen to one two and a half hours for the answer to that question. And you put it out there for us. It's out there now. Oh that's out there now. Marvel Mindset and and so on. But um I will mention one thing that I think was very important on all my turnarounds and that is the first thing you really have to look at is the value system, the culture of the company that you're or the organization that you're going into. Because I always found the culture was wrong. Yep. Misaligned. Now by culture I'm referring to kind of two things. The first is how you treat your employees how you view very important people but it's also how you treat outs people are important to you outside the company how you treat your suppliers how you treat your auditors how you treat your customers your retailers if you're in the retail business how you treat we can go on and on how you viewed them very important. The second part is understanding okay what do you really have to do to do well? What are the things that you have to do well and invariably the things that really these organizations needed to do well they didn't think they needed to do well. They were working on other stuff. Example new products so if new products I've mentioned new products before need to be 25% of your sales area you should have your best people in new products. And yet you have your worst people in new products. How could that happen I it take a while to explain how that happened but the point is that's the culture's dead wrong you wouldn't believe how many of these turnarounds where uh I went in and and the culture included well we can sell our customers anything so then you're not given a very good product I let me tell you a quick story here. And I you'll be able to figure out who I'm talking about but I won't mention the name but a very large retailer mass retailer is my biggest customer I've just I'm in the job a month that head of sales comes to me and says we have a problem with so and so what's the problem? Well um they don't like our prices we're getting price competition with for some of our products that are like you know there's nothing special about them. So okay we'll we'll I'm not worried about coping with that. We'll figure it out. He doesn't leave my office I said is there something else yes um our quality isn't so good they're getting returns on some of our products at very high levels of the customer saying the products don't work I'm going uh so you know I'm at this point I'm starting to sweat a little um but okay I'll go you know I'm planning already in my head I'm gonna go see the head buyers there and you know we'll work it out. It still doesn't leave. There's more to tell he says so they're running a big national ad for a particular product it's our product. We told them we had enough inventory to support it we found out there's a flaw in the inventory system. We only have half the inventory we told them they're not going to be happy when we tell them they're running an ad all that expense in 2000 stores.
SPEAKER_02Did you tell them don't worry half the product's coming back anyway you can sell it again was that the solution I'm like oh oh my lord oh my lord and this but this went back to now we it's a long story I don't think we have time but it was a happy ending but it was down the road it wasn't right away but uh you ask yourself how can an organization do that I mean it's it's right I mean it's so obvious and and if they had that problem with the big guy they had to have similar problems with other customers. Yeah I've narrowed down our business to like five things we have to concentrate on and customers being happy is one of them. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Like it's yes customer service you have to make sure that happens. Right no I I yeah you know how many businesses don't understand how important customer service is even today.
SPEAKER_02So I the It's interesting that how they survive that way.
SPEAKER_01I most of the people I deal with just as a consumer in my private life they always have numbers that I can talk to a human being. Mm-hmm and and you know and get my problem solved or get my question answered. And I just avoid the ones where I'm talking to a bot. Yeah people need to know you care. Really really I don't mind talking to someone who's in the Philippines if they can answer my question I don't care. That's fine. But you'd rather the person than the bot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah no matter where the geography so you mentioned something to me that um you feel pretty strongly about and that is young people today and the leadership qualities that they're learning or not learning maybe it's more more the problem. Maybe we can spend a few minutes on that. Sure. Do you think it's a real problem?
SPEAKER_01I do think it's a real problem and I I it's we need young people because we're lacking in good leadership in the world in general quite badly in my opinion uh we need them to take eventually you know grow up and take over and but they have to be equipped to be good leaders and I'm the feedback I'm getting constantly from people that are higher up in different organizations about the performance or the attitudes of the young people today is pretty distressing. And so part of this book is aimed at young people you know to uh the book's 190 pages it's not that long and a lot of st I'm telling a lot of stories including some I just mentioned here uh but um you know learn from what I think I've learned um but but in the end is uh you you you really learn most of leadership from intro from dealing directly face to face with other human beings okay you need to you need to have interactions um personal life private life life the more diverse the better diversity in in geography moving around is is very helpful experiencing different cultures and this is because you learn to cope and you learn to interact and communicate exactly you learn to understand um how to deal with other people um one of the lost arts I talk about also and I do have a note on this on com is is communications. Communications particularly in leadership is a lost lost art. Good communications are a combination of an art and a science but the art part is disappearing. I can read people's body language almost immediately face to face. Yes even the subtle parts but I've been at it a long time and I'm not thinking I'm reading your body language just looking at you it's just my brain is processing it right but you know but it's only because I've had experiences with a God knows how many people over the years very different people and and learn how to convince them to my way of thinking or you know to a change of culture the value system of an organization whatever I think it's it's super important.
SPEAKER_02But the y young people are not getting face-to-face experiences they're they're on a cell phone they're on a tablet um their parents are making all the decisions for them okay they are not learning their strengths and their weaknesses we all have weaknesses we're human by definition you're better knowing what your weaknesses are than not knowing because you can work on them yeah they they and you can run with your strengths that's right yeah yes lead with your strengths sure but sometimes people can turn weaknesses into strengths there's no doubt about it so but that ability to communicate like I say two qualities we need in leaders are ability to communicate and sense of urgency and you're saying that for young people today they're not because of social media you know because of the phone because of not interacting they're not learning the communication skills they need to effectively lead later in life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that's that's right they're not out there in the real world again overparenting is a problem COVID was a problem particularly for young people because they had talk about not being out in the world that they went four or five years at home no school in many cases or or or school at home or whatever. So how does that show up?
SPEAKER_02It's pretty easy to see I can interview somebody who's 21 years old and and read it right away and and when I interview I'm always getting at how they were raised you know just tell me about okay where you're from you know what I ask about you know my mom and dad left me alone I almost died three times and rather than my mom and dad did everything you know and honestly lately what's happening the people from some state university come across better than the ones from the Ivy League. Okay. They weren't pampered as much they were out there. They they it was they they grew up in a different environment they have a really a much better a clutch if you will on the real world and so I think you have on your website some suggestions for young people too right did you tell me about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah so I have 15 uh uh suggestions starting at age five okay and I I defined young people as age five to age thirty and I uh you can go to petercuneo.com and see the list okay um and most of them are face-to-face experiences so prof team sports are great okay uh performing arts is a team sport I recommend that study abroad won't surprise anybody what if I'm terrible at sports and what if I can't act or dance um some of the other things that I recommend are becoming an expert in something as a young person.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Now if you're age five you can be an expert on dinosaurs. Yeah okay or Legos right or be sure yeah but but be an expert I have no more no it gives people a sense of power the sense of being an expert getting in depth you know kids today never go below the surface on any subject if they have to they have the internet to just plug in they never read a book unfortunately on on a subject it's all it's all cosmetic. Interesting it's that but that they're trained is not their fault they're good they're good kids the parents are well meaning but it's all cosmetic it's all it's all yeah I I just have to say it's it's shallow they're shallow and uh because they're trained not to be shallow to be shallow in effect. They're not interesting. They've never gone deep on anything and I recommend going at any age go deep. Probably leads to I think what you describe as not very thick skinned too right well because of overparenting well meaning parents think that their kids should grow up never having a negative thought about themselves. Well if so you're not going to learn your weaknesses. Yep period okay you won't get the feedback very well either right no you'll be shocked at the feedback actually and so okay what you know what what do I want to uh uh get into I mean it's they're just again not prepared for the real world they're not in the real world they get bullied on the internet and God they believe this stuff stuff people would never say to your face and they believe because it's and the first negative thing they hear is usually on the internet from from other kids and they're they're they're they're really bothered by it really in some cases terribly to commit suicide. That's how bad it is oh wow you know and so they they've never learned this is BS and you shouldn't take it seriously they have no sense they believe everything they see on the internet on streaming on whatever form of media that they're absorbing they think it's all real when most of it is actually not real. Yeah or indefinitely one-sided or worse yeah that's that's correct no judgment to make a judgment about this is silly stuff and with AI it's getting worse because the stuff that's being put now and the AI's just AI is is pretty good. You can some people are actually fooled by the AI thinking to this reporter a well known national reporter is on AI it's not them. The only thing moving is their face their mouth it's so easy to spot if you look for it but they're saying stuff breaking news and there's no it's actually no breaking news no story.
SPEAKER_02It's made up well those suggestions are all going to be really helpful if followed um we talked a little bit like you you're you're well past where you could retire is it is it you wanting to help others and and see some improved leadership is that what keeps you going?
SPEAKER_01Yeah you're still working pretty hard at yeah I'm still working 247 at my very advanced age and uh I I love what I do I feel wanted and needed um I'm not perfect and you know that's fine. I still make mistakes occasionally but um I'm uh I just I'm stimulated on a lot of different levels.
SPEAKER_02Well you got a great message and I I can't wait to read the book um and I did glance at some of it and it looks really good. Well thank you very much. We're all about champing people here and so I have a closing question for you. Given the opportunity someone in your life past or present that you would want to champion and and why yeah um well there's a lot I'm on the board of the National Archives Foundation in Washington.
SPEAKER_01I've been on the board for for 18 years. Well that's got to be a lot of documents so one of the things one of the well they 22 billion documents. Wow so the the but the uh one of the things on my list of 15 things for for young people to learn leadership is to study history because I believe the the past is prologue. Believe it or not leaders a thousand years ago were having the same emotions positive and negative that we do today. Yeah you just they were people and the way they behaved is actually not crazy or whatever. When you understand the world they lived in you could see why they behave what they did and you can see what great leaders did right and what poor leaders did wrong. Picking one so is hard for me because I love history. I'm a big student of history but I will say Winston Churchill okay and Winston Churchill wa is a great example most great leaders are not great at everything. They need to find their situation where their strengths really come to bear you know in World War II you had George Patton okay Patton had a lot of faults but boy if you needed someone to fight and lead he was the man he delivered many many times. Navy had its own nimitz and bullholzy and also in World War II. Okay. Um politically Churchill was uh I think the perfect guy and I'll I'm gonna describe one situation that I recommend to everyone there's a movie called the Desperate Hours came out in 2017 it's a story of Churchill when the Nazis are have now basically conquered Europe and his cabinet wants him to sue for peace sign a peace treaty and he really deep down inside doesn't want to okay and uh it the star is Gary Oldman who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for for that movie. And there's this near the end the last 40 minutes and I've made a lot of movies as you know so I think I can appreciate great movie making last 40 minutes are some of the best ever made and the scene that I recommend to everyone the whole movie but I'll watch it this weekend is so he's really uh a conflicted he everyone is saying sou for peace sou for peace and he doesn't want to he's a fighter churchill is definitely a fighter and so he's in his limo going through the crowded London he's passing the underground the subway and he suddenly leaps out of the car his driver's where are you going? And he goes down in this in the underground gets on a subway car the car is completely full shoulder to shoulder with a diversity of people color age female male you could tell it's all mixed people in fancy suits workmen with with tools everybody and he starts talking and they're like is that Churchill you know and he finally says to them what would you do do you want to fight or should we sue for peace? And the whole car goes what are you talking about? Fight of course so I'm sorry to say this actually never happened but it's still great I had to go check it was so amazing I wanted to wanted to know for sure and so he so he gets off at Westminster subway stop where the Parliament is he goes upstairs he tells his cabinet we're gonna fight and they're all against him just about all of them. He goes to the floor of the Commons of Parliament now this part of it's real history. This now it's real okay and and it's real that he that they were encouraging him to stay that all part is real. And he gets wound up and he gives in twelve minutes arguably the greatest single speech in human history to me. You may have heard of Churchill's we'll fight them on the beaches speech. Yes. If you haven't I highly recommend it's only 12 minutes he goes off we'll never give in we'll never this and we'll we'll fight them on the beaches we'll fight them in the in lun you know streets we'll fight whatever it takes we will fight we will never give up and in 12 minutes he convinces the entire British Empire to follow him in 12 minutes.
SPEAKER_02I still get goosebumps when I hear the speech now yeah you got 12 minutes that's all it doesn't take much time and it may sound strange now it was 1940 that this happened uh and um but may sound a little strange but boy you gotta see through it this is an entire British Empire you know it was the largest if you will country in the world back then they and they're all convinced to fight and they do and he was a great leader the perfect guy to go through five years of war as a leader and then get voted out of office as soon as the war was over by the way I don't so but he found his niche maybe I found my niche with turnarounds you found your niche with this yeah I think so I think so it sounds like hope so or I've wasted a whole lot of time I don't think you don't strike me as someone who's gonna waste any time I'll ask the people in the room here later on what uh what they think but yep this has been great could talk to you for hours Peter thanks for doing it and hey everyone make sure to check out his book Superhero Leadership it's out now right yes couple weeks so looking for Amazon you can get it off of Amazon. Thanks so much thank you very much I hope you enjoyed this conversation if you want more podcast in your life which of course you do make sure to like follow and subscribe to us on YouTube at Podcast Spotify or wherever you get your podcast catch you next time