Lately I’ve been reading a lot about Stan “The Man” Lee, the face of Marvel Comics (and the guy who made the whole Marvel movie universe possible).
About 60 years ago, things weren’t going so well for Lee, and he was ready to quit Marvel to find work elsewhere.
Back then the company was playing it safe and copying its rival DC, the leader in the comic book space at the time. It wasn’t taking any risks as it churned out cheap knock-offs of its rival’s books, and its numbers stunk.
So Lee was ready to give up, but just before he quit his wife gave him this advice:
“If you’re going to quit anyways, why don’t you do a book the way you’d like to do it, and get it out of your system … the worst that will happen is that they’ll fire you – and you want to quit anyway!”.
He followed her advice and created “The Fantastic Four” – a superhero team unlike anything readers had ever seen before.
He followed that up with Spider-Man, and a string of other unique superheroes that reflected his personality and were more realistic than what DC was putting out at the time.
Sales went through the roof, and by being unique Marvel became the leader in the space.
Since then the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) has made tens of billions of dollars – with no signs of slowing down.
But none of that would have been possible if Stan Lee hadn’t thought outside the box and done things differently.
You won’t get ahead in the coaching world by playing it safe either.
If you’re looking to do something differently, check out the upcoming Coaching Jungle Mastermind.
It’s made up of a small group of peers who will push you to think outside the box, and we start soon.
You can get the details here:
