THE MCFARLANE COMPANIES 1

The McFarlane Companies

Adriana Berenice Acosta Nunn

Walden University
THE MCFARLANE COMPANIES 2

Abstract

After reading Todd McFarlane’s biography and reviewing a few videos about his

business methods, we were able to answer a few important questions: "Who is Todd

McFarlane?", "How do the videos portray him?", "What kind of personality does he

have?", "How do the programs convey his attitudes and values?", and "What do we

think makes Todd McFarlane so successful in his creative and business ventures?"

Keywords: perseverance, innovation, risk taking, quality, adaptation, awareness.

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The McFarlane Companies

Todd McFarlane is a businessman and renown comic artist for his comic "Spawn", he

dreamt of being a professional baseball player but due to an injury that put him out of

playing for while he started drawing. Todd was selected to play on baseball teams all

the way from high school to college, but by the time he was out of college no major

baseball league had offered him anything, that's when he decided to give the comic

industry a shot.

He sent many applications when he started, receiving up to 700 hundred rejections,

but he kept trying, then finally Marvel gave him an opportunity, he started working with

small things, he worked his way up to the top, he made contributions for Marvel's

Amazing Spider-Man, and Incredible Hulk.

His business and company all started when he convinced six other important artists to

leave and start a company of their own, they created and association where each of them

were owner's of their own characters and whatever creative change they wanted to apply

on them.

Todd McFarlane is portrayed like someone who is passionate, who knows what he

wants, and doesn't give up easily; from what is seen in the video we can understand and

know that Todd is ambitious, hard-working, artistic, and creative. Todd has something

that many other companies don't have, he feels the duty to make better quality things

even if they cost him a little more, he thinks that spending the least amount of money on

the production of a toy for example, and making it not realistic at all is just absurd.

What makes Todd so successful is that he is a good manager, he know how run his

business in an efficient and effective way, he is constantly changing like the general

environment, he is paying attention to his competitors and searching for windows of

opportunity for his company to grow, he has a good relationship with his team and also
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he appropriately encourages them by rewarding them if they've earned it.

Hard work, perseverance, not being afraid to take risks and innovate, never giving up,

good quality and great managerial skills are the key to Todd McFarlane's success.
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References

Mhhe.com. (2014). Movie. [online] Retrieved from:

http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/McFarlane/ [Accessed: 3 Mar

2014].

Spawn.com. (2014). Spawn.com >> info >> todd mcfarlane. [online] Retrieved from:

http://spawn.com/info/todd/bio.long.aspx [Accessed: 3 Mar 2014].