Millions of people will fail at business this year. It’s not meant to discourage you, it’s the reality that many are facing head on right now. If you are starting out or you’ve been working towards building an empire, but things seem to be falling apart and you’re not sure if you’re going to make it, it’s time to step back and look at how to build a universe. That’s right, you need a universe, not just a small business. The more collateral you create, the better off you’re going to be, and while one entity isn’t going well, another project can come in to sustain your market share while others are dormant. Not sure how this works? Consider Marvel and their latest work within the Hollywood movie scene.
Marvel’s Universe
Look at the history of Marvel Comics and you’ll see a huge drop off in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, Stan Lee has gone on record several times to say that the company was going to fold if they didn’t do something drastic. Then out of the blue Marvel Studios started to take form and more and more movies started to proliferate pop culture to the point where the brand and the universe was saved. Right now there are 20 plus comic book movies in production and each one of them, upon release, are making over 100 million dollars at the box office.
How did they do this? Well, they didn’t just stick to the well-known characters; they hit the ground running and were thinking outside of the box. They went into the boardroom and shook things up from the comic franchising, to the movies, to the product tie-ins, and everything else. They took their branding and threw it across several entities and tried their best to have the biggest reach to ensure the success of their movies before they even hit the silver screen. Now everyone is following suit and companies like Fox, Sony, and Warner Bros. are all trying to create universes instead of just relying on one entity. It’s the reason why DC Comics has 3 major shows running, and several movies in production right now, and not all of them are based on “Batman” alone.
The Small Business
When you’re dealing with business, you need to diversify your reach. Consider the musician that wants to stay true to the art. There are a lot of these people wishing they didn’t have to “sell out” or succumb to the “business” of things. However, starving and working a job you hate versus playing music for a living could come with being smarter about business. You don’t need to “sell out” in order to get this done. The musician that wants to get paid for their art can do so through digital downloads, physical albums, t-shirts, stickers, and a lot of other merchandise. Not only that, they can turn to songwriting for others, tutorials, lessons online and in person, as well as a number of other outlets. Anyone with a talent has more than 1 option to make moves within business.
Creating a universe is not so much about creating more of the same, as much as it is going into other avenues with your business and building foundations to create leverage in other areas. For writers, that may mean becoming ghost writers, article marketers, search engine optimization experts, and even programmers. For just about any business, there are other options that you can traverse within the scope of your everyday marketability. Think in terms of branching out and controlling an umbrella of sorts, and you’ll find that there are more opportunities that abound within diversity. Look at Marvel and their universe, and you’ll find a glimpse of what you can do to gain a strong business model for today and the future.
