The films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have made nearly $30 billion in box office sales. The studio spent around $7 billion of that to make the films. That’s an incredibly successful film franchise—the highest grossing one of all time. Naturally, film studios are trying to copy it. And yet, Marvel’s chief creative officer Kevin Feige’s advice to them is this:

“Don’t worry about the universe. Worry about the movie. We never set out to build a universe. We set out to make a great Iron Man movie, a Hulk movie, a Thor movie, and then be able to do what, at the time, nobody else was doing: put them together…”

It’s great, simple, advice to keep in mind. The strategy needs to keep evolving in order to keep the movies and characters fitting into each other, but the work—each film, each performance and VFX, each script—is the most important thing.

It’s similar to how W. Timothy Gallwey approaches playing tennis. He writes in The Inner Game of Tennis, “Today I play every point to win. It’s simple and it’s good. I don’t worry about winning or losing the match, but whether or not I am making the maximum effort during every point because I realize that that is where the true value lies.”

Don’t focus on winning the match. Focus on winning each point, and the match will take care of itself.