His two brokerages required a lot of work because, having never documented the processes involved in running them, he ended up just doing most of the work himself. Then, in 2005, he had a catastrophic snowboarding accident that left him unable to work for several months. He used his convalescence as an opportunity to sell both brokerages, but since neither of the new owners knew what was involved in running them (and Brian’s lack of documentation certainly didn’t help), they both went under soon after.

Of great interest to me was the fact that almost every traditional media company, while trying to figure out its place in this changing world, was operating out of fear rather than courage, stubbornly trying to build a bulwark to protect old models that couldn’t possibly survive the sea change that was under way.

You can’t wear your disdain for people on your sleeve, though. You end up either cowing them into submission or frustrating them into complacency. Either way, you sap them of the pride they take in their work. Over time, nearly everyone abdicated responsibility to Peter and Strat Planning, and Michael was comforted by the analytical rigor they represented.

Kevin Mayer couldn’t stop fantasizing about what Disney could do if we added Marvel. Kevin is as intense and laser-focused as anyone I’ve ever worked with, and when he sets his sights on something of value, it’s very hard for him to accept my advice to “be patient,” and so he harangued me on a near-daily basis to find some way to get to Ike, and I told him we needed to wait and see what David could do.

The content was there, and the talent was there. (In fact, the Marvel Studios talent, led by Kevin Feige, described their long-term vision for what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU. There was a lot of work ahead of them, but the plan Kevin laid out, including a plan for intertwining characters across multiple films well into the next decade, seemed brilliant to me.)