O'Connor Bootstrap Podcast

I am a fan of Mike Row, and I saw a video where he spoke of not following your passion, but instead bringing it with you. This seems to be the polar opposite of the advice I gave in one of my early posts, where I wrote about finding a career that fits your passion. The episode is here and my exact quote was;

“What am I passionate about?” Or “What can I become passionate about?”

Now Mike Row is a rather intelligent guy and I have a lot of respect for him. Because of this, I do not take what he says lightly, and so I took time to ponder it, and try to figure out if what my views were in conflict and if so, which of us were correct.

With the title of this episode, you may be thinking  “Wait, what? Did a business guy just tell me to stop marketing what I sell?” And the answer to that is no you need to market what you sell but you need to think more about why people buy what you are selling.

Last episode I talked about how Marvel tells a good story. You may think, of course, they tell a good story, they produce comic books and movies which are at the heart storytelling mediums. In order to have incredible success in either you need to be a master at storytelling.  Sure you can be a mediocre storyteller and wow audiences with visuals in both mediums, however for truly great success and fan loyalty you need a solid story to go with it. Marvel has a good overall track record of telling good stories, even their worst films had an okay story that still kept them from being a total financial failure.

Other movies and other franchise with amazing visuals have often failed due to a bad confusing or mediocre story.  Even some Marvel movies outside of the MCU have suffered this fate.

You may ask, “how does any of this apply to me the small business Entrepreneur?” That is a good question and this is how.

Now there are many, many reasons for this amazing achievement, and you can find a lot of articles that go into the details of opening days, amount of theaters available, etc.  However, I am going to focus on something I have not seen one of these writers talk about. That is the value that Marvel has created as a brand.

In April of 2019, Marvel Studios released its highly anticipated movie “Avengers: Endgame.” It hit the box office like a nuclear bomb. It broke or shattered over 144 records in 6 days, and its final gross was $2.796 billion making it the highest grossing film of all time. (Not adjusted for Inflation)

Now there are many, many reasons for this amazing achievement, and you can find a lot of articles that go into the details of opening days, amount of theaters available, etc.  However, I am going to focus on something I have not seen one of these writers talk about. That is the value that Marvel has created as a brand.

One of if not the most often asked questions I have seen asked is “How much should I price for this” followed by a picture of the work or a description of the service provided. Of course its nearly impossible for an outsider to give a good price due to not knowing the costs involved the local market etc. This means that you are the one who has to decide on the price.

Pricing can be intimidating. Done right it can help you grow and be profitable, done wrong it can cause you to lose your business. Price higher then the perceived value and few will buy, if you price below the perceived value you may be perceived as cheap or unprofessional, and again few will buy.

One of the more common ways I have seen people start businesses is to take a hobby and find a way to monetize it. This is what I have done with my current balloon business. I took my hobby of making balloon figures and turned it into a business. I briefly discuss how I turned my hobby into a business and place more focus on where I got some information to help me along my way. This time I will be going into some practical tips.

If you play politics with a business that is not firmly in the political realm you risk causing some bad press, lose customers or even go bankrupt.

In this episode, I tell the story of a man who was a big inspiration for me from my youth. A man I will call Spencer, a man who suffered multiple setbacks in his life, that would cause many to quit. Instead, he pushed through to leave a major impact on world history.

On Tuesday, July 30th, I saw a notification pop up on one of my favorite YouTube channels. It was a short 1-minute video titled “Grant Thompson, in Memoriam.” The video was simply a picture of Grant Thompson, aka “The King Of Random” with no sound. Underneath in the description was the following text.

“It is with great sadness to inform everyone that Grant Thompson passed away last night. Grant had great love and appreciation for his fans. We invite you to share your thoughts for Grant and the channel in the comments. Please do a random act of love or kindness today in honor of The King of Random. Grant’s legacy will live on in the channel and the global community he created.”

This news hit me unexpectedly hard. Sure I liked his channel, and have watched it a lot with my two sons, but I did not know the guy, had no personal contact with him. So when I thought about it some more, I realized it was because of his age and his family. He was only 38 years old, had a wife and 4 young kids. I am just 2 years older than him, so I think it hit home pretty hard.

This made me start thinking about his legacy.

Have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam? A big one, like on a major highway that runs through a large city. You know the good ones where you are parked on the highway next to the speed limit sign that mocks you with the limit of 70 miles per hour. If you make progress at all its only inches or if your really lucky, feet at a time.

Then all of a sudden you get past whatever the cause was, the major off-ramp, the accident or toll booth/bridge, and the traffic all of a sudden parts like Moses and the Red Sea and your free, quickly forgetting the stress and frustration of the mess behind you. You have just experienced a bottleneck.