Lost in the Woods (and Finding the Way Out)

I was lost and nervous, and the situation wasn’t getting any better. It was sometime in late October about 15 years ago. The sun had just set. I was in Harriman State Park in Rockland County, New York: ‘a wooded expanse of hills and valleys spanning two counties and covering more than 44,000 acres’. It was getting chilly and had started to rain. You could smell the dampness in the air. On top of it all, I was embarrassed, as I had invited a college buddy to go on a hike, and the situation we were in was entirely my fault. My phone rang. It was my wife:

“Where are you?”

“Lost in the woods.”

“Stop kidding around.”

“No, I’m serious. I just called 911. The rangers have gone home for the day. They are contacting them, and we’ll have to sit tight until they get here.”

“How will they find you?”

“I have a rough idea where we are, and we’re on a logging road.”

So there we were. Cold. Wet. And it was dark. I mean – pitch black. In fact, it was downright spooky, like something from horror movie. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The only thing we could see were the stars twinkling above the treetops.

As I recently reflected about that situation from long ago, I realized that the story works as an analogy about successful companies that stumble into difficulties without an obvious way out. One great example comes from the world of comic books. The company we know today as Marvel Entertainment.

Marvel’s origins date back to 1939 when Martin Goodman founded Atlas comics to compete with DC comics. The name Marvel was used as one of their many brand names. Throughout the 40s and 50s they established a foothold, but were less popular than DC due to their mediocre artwork and confusing story lines.

Their first wave of true popularity occurred in the early 1960s when Stan Lee and other Marvel writers and artists created modern super heroes. Their new super hero characters were unlike those at DC comics. The Marvel characters were complex human beings with petty jealousies and flaws. They held grudges and had personal problems they were working through. In addition, they lived in real places such as New York City. These changes along with their complex story lines made Marvel comics popular with young adults on college campuses. By this time, the company had officially adopted Marvel as their main brand name.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the company did well with successes like the Incredible Hulk TV series, but had their share of failures such as the Howard the Duck movie in 1986 and the short-lived Spider-Man TV show (and that doesn’t even count the campy Thor character from the Incredible Hulk Returns TV movie). Looking at these shows today, it’s clear that special effects of the time had not evolved enough to make the characters look and feel believable.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. By this time, Marvel had licensed characters for children’s toys and were selling exclusive editions of various comic books with their trademark complex story lines. They issued stock that traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, they began to acquire other businesses including baseball trading card and toy manufacturers, plus a regional distributor to comic book shops.

Unfortunately, they overextended and were buffeted by unforeseen events such as the 1994 baseball strike and a sudden collapse in the collectibles market, which crushed the business. Sales dropped by 70% and the share price plummeted. In early 1996, layoffs were followed by a bankruptcy filing by the end of the year.

And there they were - lost in the woods.

A once successful company was in serious trouble. How did they end up in such dire straits? Questionable decisions, market factors, and poor management accelerated the downward trend. In this case, expanding too quickly by purchasing multiple businesses, combined with poor financial management resulted in significant debt.

Luckily, new leadership found a way out. After emerging from bankruptcy in the early 2000s, they came up with a strategy to simplify the path to make movies based on Marvel characters. They found it was easier to court movie studios by packaging scripts, directors, and talent for proposed projects. This approach successfully secured licensing deals with 20th Century Fox, Sony, and New Line Cinemas which respectively released successful X-Men, Spider-Man, and Blade franchises.

And that was just the beginning.

After a few years, Marvel realized the licensing deals were making a fortune for the studios while they were receiving much smaller payouts. Here’s where they made a strategic gamble that eventually paid off handsomely. They came up with the idea to form their own movie company - Marvel studios, and went to Wall Street to secure funding. Using their assortment of characters as collateral, they secured a $500 million dollar loan from Merrill Lynch to launch the enterprise.

The rest, as they say, is history. The first movie in the new Marvel cinematic universe was Iron Man. Taking another calculated risk, they hired a talented, but troubled actor and an unknown director. But Robert Downey Jr.’s snark, the steady hand of Jon Favreau, and a great script that mixed humor with realistic characters, was a resounding success. Building upon the momentum, they made better merchandising decisions, launched successful TV shows with modern special effects, and licensed characters to theme park rides.

As a result, in 2009 Marvel was purchased by Disney for $4 billion dollars. And by 2019, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had generated over $22 billion in box office sales. To put that in perspective, that is more money than other massive film franchises such as Harry Potter, James Bond or Star Wars. And that’s how Marvel escaped disaster and became the successful behemoth it is today.

Now that we have solved that mystery, let’s go back to Harriman and answer the burning questions: How did I get lost in the woods, and better yet, how did I get out?

It’s no different than the example above. A sequence of poor decisions put me and my buddy in a bad spot. For some reason I was in a mood that day, and was itching to go outside and commune with nature to clear my head. When my friend arrived, I grabbed my stuff and we jumped in the car to get on our way.

First mistake, I forgot my map of the extensive array of trails in Harriman State Park. No problem. I had hiked that trail many times before. And it was a loop. Next, while we were chatting, I missed the exit to get to the park. It took 20 minutes to get to the next exit and back where we were supposed to be. That's ok. I felt we still had enough time to accomplish the mission.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. For a while, things went well and we made it through 75% of the loop without any issues. However, by then it was late afternoon, and the sun was going down. Suddenly the pressure was on. There was a tricky left turn we needed to find to complete the loop. If I remember correctly, it had yellow markings. We found it and followed that trail, but came across a white marking. The new marking threw me off. I felt the best thing to do was double back and figure out where we went wrong. After a period of time, the sun fell lower in the sky, the rain came, and we were clearly lost. The last mistake was forgetting to bring a flashlight, “just in case”.

As the light was fading, we came across two dirt grooves in the trail. I realized it was a logging road and that we should follow it until it intersected with a main road. That turned out to be a promising idea. Unfortunately, before we found our way out it became too dark to continue. That’s when I called 911 and asked for assistance. There was nothing else to do but wait. The ranger found us about 30 minutes later based on our general description of the paths we had taken. I’ll never forget how happy we were to see the headlights of that pickup truck cutting through the darkness. The ranger gave us a lift back to my car and we made it back home safe and sound.

The good news is - these types of events are great learning experiences. Since that time, I plan my hikes carefully. I make a point to choose a trail in advance and let others know where I’ll be. All hikes now occur early in the morning. Before leaving, I go over the checklist which includes a trail map, snacks, water, and a first aid kit for emergencies.

One last thing. I couldn’t put this out of my mind until I solved the mystery of what happened to the yellow trail. A few weeks later I went back and retraced our steps to figure out where we went wrong. Turns out, there was a mismarked tree on the trail. We had been on the right path all along! About 20 yards ahead, the next tree had the proper yellow marking.

What does it all boil down to?

Trust your instincts.

Learn from your mistakes.

No matter how dark it gets, there’s usually a way out.

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Wikipedia Article