Maureen Zehring
mini-MBA
Complete confidence in managing an IP, its team, and its business, for leaders who've seen it all.
We don't teach storytelling or courting creative talent. Instead you get the depth of five disciplines: philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, psychology, and communication. But the theory has been ruthlessly forged into 32 practical tools.
About the Program
The program gives you 32 practical tools for turning a single piece of content (a story, book, game, film, or series) into IP with cross-media and international potential.
We don't teach storytelling, directing, game design, or producing. This program isn't about creativity at all. We assume you have people for the creative work, and your job is to make investment and management decisions. We teach the layer without which content is a one-off expense with no scale and no long-tail monetization:
a methodology for building your project's internal logic and commercial framework, the thing that makes an audience believe, love, and come back.
World-First Method doesn't depend on inspiration, a formal education, or an AAA budget. It's a way of designing systems of meaning that works at any scale and makes equal sense to an indie developer, a studio head, a producer, a showrunner, and an investor.
Star Wars, Marvel, Fallout, Dune, Warcraft, and The Witcher are all built on these principles. It used to take lone geniuses working on intuition. Now the method has been broken down into tools you can start using on Monday.
With it, you can say who will love your project and why, why people will want to literally live in your universe, how and why it will scale into other media, and how much it will earn.
- Who It's ForShowrunners, IP directors, creative producers, game designers, art directors, studio founders, independent creators, investors, and analysts who want to break the cycle of script debates, matters of taste, and one-off releases, and build a franchise with international and cross-media potential.
- What You Get32 tools mastered and 32 finished artifacts. Confidence working with intangibles like meaning and experience. At the end, a full business case for your current or future project: your universe's IP Architecture, an evidence-based audience and positioning, an Origin Product concept, and a team management and KPI system.
How You'll Learn
- A new tool every weekOne week, one module. Each week you don't just get "new knowledge" but a document, a framework, or a template you can use in your work.
- Professional growth every monthEvery four weeks add up to a standalone set of skills, not a piece of something out of reach.
- Paced intensityUnits 1–2: analysis and diagnostics, an easy start. Units 3–5: the core of the method, the most intensive work. Unit 6: packaging it into a product, moving from synthesis to structuring. Unit 7: team and KPIs, the operational layer. Unit 8: project defense.
- Confidence long before the finishYou gain practical, standalone skills early and midway through the program, long before the full project comes together.
Mini MBA Curriculum
- Diagnosing Your Project and Team
4 modulesGoal: See your project and team through the lens of meaning management and learn the core concepts of World-First Method. Outcome: A complete diagnostic of your project and team. - Market Analysis and Target Audience
4 modulesGoal: Learn to define market niches and target audiences by interests, not demographics. Outcome: A complete market study and a chosen target audience. - Mythic Structure: The Physics of an Imaginary World
4 modulesGoal: Learn to design the physics (the "backend") of an imaginary world. Outcome: A complete mythic structure for your imaginary world. - Setting I: Mapping Other People's Imagination and Building the Setting Core
4 modulesGoal: Learn to design the setting (the "frontend") of an imaginary world based on audience expectations, not invention or creative ego. Outcome: A defined setting core with its rationale, ready to hand off to your creative team. - Setting II: Assembling the Imaginary World
4 modulesGoal: Complete the setting design and test its coherence. Outcome: The finished Canon of your imaginary world, a full document combining mythic structure and setting. - Origin Product: Launching the Imaginary World
4 modulesGoal: Learn to compress an imaginary world into a product that can be produced, launched, and defended in front of the business. Outcome: An Origin Product design document and a concrete brief for your creative or product team. - Management, Culture, and KPIs for the Business of Imaginary Worlds
4 modulesGoal: Learn to build a management system and culture that attract and retain the best people, and run the business of your imaginary world at the operational level. Outcome: Four documents that run the business day to day: team topology, career levels, a task-setting and KPI system, and a scaling plan. - Capstone: Project Defense
4 modulesGoal: Prepare your document package and defend your project. Outcome: A complete business case for your project or IP, validated by industry experts.
- Full program, paid upfront
$1,600 ($200/month)
Full program, installments
$2,000 ($250/month)8 equal monthly payments of $250, each due before the start of the next unit.