Dream-Mapping Your Business The Walt Disney Way

What do you do when those closest to you, friends, family, business colleagues, bosses tell you that your dreams, plans or ideas won't work when they shoot you down just as you're getting started? If your answer is ignore them and do it anyway, well, you could be missing out on one of the greatest secrets to successfully planning a business project or creative work. In fact, Walt Disney himself used this exact strategy to to build his empire. And now you're going to see how you can use it to build yours.

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in Bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Hey there. I'm Brad Costanzo, host of Bacon Wrap Business. And today's episode will teach you one of the most effective tools for planning anything in your business and your life. Whether you're a Fortune 500 executive, small business owner, or future entrepreneur, you you'll be able to harness the power in this simple technique to improve your odds of success and avoid the unseen forces that cause you to fail. I used it when I created every single one of my businesses and most recently when I created the show you're listening to now. Speaking of that, I've gotten a lot of questions about why this show is called Bacon Wrapped Business. What's that mean anyway? Well, if you're like me, you might already be thinking everything's better with bacon. And. And you're right. Bacon brings out the flavor of great foods and makes the foods you don't like delicious. So in the spirit of Bacon, where my co hosts and I will bring you proven business advice, unique marketing methods and sizzling hot ideas to fix your business problems and make what's working now work even better. We're dedicated to making you fat profits. And most importantly, I'm dedicated to making this show fun for you and for me. And it's hard to be boring when you're wrapped in bacon. Now let's get back to the topic. So few things are more frustrating than when you have a great idea. Whether it's a new business idea, a creative work, a book, a movie script that you want to write. Maybe it's a life change and you get really excited and you run to a colleague, a boss, maybe your employees, husband, wife, or even your best friend and you hear that dreadful critic, that negative Nancy party pooper that just tells you all the reasons that your idea won't work and why it's destined to fail. In fact, I'll bet because of human nature, the last time somebody brought you an idea, the first thing you thought of is all the reasons it won't work. We're kind of wired that way when somebody brings that to us. You see, every single one of us has three voices going on in our heads whenever we're planning a new project or endeavor. And that is the dreamer. We need somebody to dream it up and get excited about it and think about all the possibilities. And then there's the practical side of you who has to figure out how to do all the stuff that your dreamer voice just came up with. And finally there is that negative voice. We've got it in our heads and we have it in our lives. And it's that critic. And that critic is sometimes telling you it's impossible or improbable or, or that you can't or shouldn't do it for any number of excuses. A lot of folks will call that resistance and they'll just say that you just have to push through that and ignore it. And if you believe in yourself, push forward and do it anyway. Well, I'm here to tell you that that might not be the best way. In fact, one of the most creative geniuses and successful businessmen of all time, Walt Disney himself, you used this exact strategy that I'm about to tell you and turn this idea of ignoring the critic on its head. Now, I wish that I had come up with this. However, I took a class about five or six years ago from two of my mentors in a field called Neuro linguistic programming. They held a class about the strategies that Walt Disney used in this planning. These mentors were Susan Stageman and Mary Lucivi, who took me on a two day excursion down deep into this entire method that I'm going to cover in the next few minutes. So if you take careful notes and you listen to what I say, you'll be able to use this in your business and your life as well. So we're going to go back to those three voices. Those three voices are the dreamer, the doer and the. Now, if you let all three of these voices talk at the exact same time, vying for competition over each other, all you're going to hear is noise and you're not going to get anywhere. Actually, sometimes it's so noisy that you never even start your dream or your project or your plan and you just throw up your arms in frustration. But sometimes the dreamer wins. And this happens to a lot of us entrepreneurial, optimistic souls out there who just says, screw it, I'm gonna do it anyway. And we run off on half baked plans that are sometimes destined to fail because we refuse to listen to that critic. Well, one person who never refused to listen to the critic was Walt Disney himself. The interesting part about Disney is that he realized that the critic is a equal importance in the trio of the dreamer and the doer. Because the critic's job is not to squash your dreams. It's to make sure that your dreams become a reality and you don't miss anything that could derail you. So, as I've been told, I could be wrong, but I do believe that Disney had three offices. In his headquarters, in his primary office, back when he was building his empire. And whether this was planning out a theme park or planning out one of his new movies, I believe he went through the exact same process. And I'm gonna share that process with you right now, and you can use it in your own life. So legend has it that Disney had three offices. One dedicated to the dreamer. And it was wild and vibrant and colorful, and it encouraged imaginative thinking. And there was another office that was dedicated to storyboarding the plans and the ideas and actually planning out what had to happen to make the dream a reality. And he had a third office that was, as I understand it, cold and critical and designed to bring out the critic in everybody. And when he was using, whether he was sitting down with his imagineers, planning the theme parks, or his animators and the directors and the people producing the animations, he would bring them each into the dreamer room first, and there they could feel free to dream without criticism, without plans, and just think of all the things that would be amazing to have, if anything were possible. It was very important that there was no critiquing. In this room, you could come up with the most amazing plan in the world. And if you didn't know how to do it, you're not allowed to say anything. The next stage was everybody would leave and go into the planning room and they would storyboard the concept and the idea. Now was not the time to make new or bigger dreams. It was simply to find out what needs to happen to make those dreams a reality. Now, when everybody's in a great mood, they all walked into the critics office. Now, that office was designed to do one thing, and that was critique the dream and the plans and make sure that everything had been covered and accounted for to make sure that this wasn't derailed. Maybe they would bring up objections like, well, we don't have enough money for this, or we don't have the technical capabilities, or we don't have the skills, or any number of reasons we can't pull resources from X and put it on Y. The goal in the critics office was not to solve the problems, by the way. The goal was to only bring the problems to light and make sure that the critic in every one of us has equal time on stage. Well, now, at the time when people may be a little bit depressed going, wow, I didn't think about that. Instead of just deciding to scrap the project altogether, they would go back into one of the other offices and approach the critics issues from the other points of view. So let's just say, for instance, you don't have enough money and you need to raise money. Well, there's a million ways to raise money, whether it means sell more things or kicks these days, do a crowdfunding campaign or put things on credit card.

Borrow from friends or family, you name it. That's the job of the dreamer. To dream up all the possibilities to solve the critic's first problem. Now, when one or two of the possible solutions are brought up, you go right back into the drawing board room, the doer, and you figure out what has to happen. What's the most likely of succeeding in order to still achieve that dream. And then we take it right back into the critics room and we present the problem to Mr. Crankypants and say, hey, take a look at this. Did we solve your problem? Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Sometimes new problems arise. But that's the critics job. What's key is when you're able to silence the critic with solutions as opposed to saying, screw it, I'm going to do it anyway. The critic says, well, that's great. You've covered everything. Green light, and go for it. Well, there's few things more exciting and powerful than when the critic, whether it's yourself, team members, or others, say, I can't see any reason you shouldn't be able to pull this off. Now that you've put enough thought and effort into it, go for it. So by simply harnessing the power, separating them out, giving them equal stage, Disney figured out that he would be much more powerful, much more probability of succeeding, and less probability of failing than had he just ran with it. Now, how do you use this in your own life? Well, there's a couple of tricks to make this really really work. You may not have three different offices dedicated to this, and you may just be working out of your house. You may work in a small office or a team environment. But what's important is for you to realize that you can do this with yourself or with a team. And it's very important that the place that you do the dreaming and the place and the way you do it and the place you do the doing and the place you do the critiquing are a little bit separate and engage those thoughts. So to give you an example, one of the things that I will do if I'm just in my house or my small office, please. Planning out a new endeavor such as this one is I will use my body posture to take the pose of a dreamer. There is a very strong link between your mind and your body, and that link controls the way you're able to think. So for instance, it's hard to dream if you're in a position like a critic would be. Like a critic. As I'm sitting here right now, my legs crossed, my arms crossed, my hand up at my chin, kind of furrowing my brow, looking down as if I'm critiquing something I don't like, it's really hard to have a big dream like that. Go ahead and try it. Try to take a critic's pose and dream really big on the other side. Try to take a dreamer's pose. Maybe you're standing up, bouncing around, looking up at the air as if you're seeing the movie play out before you. Of all your dreams, a reality, and try to critique it. It's really hard to do. In fact, it may be impossible to do. So it's very important to put yourself in the dreamer phase or pose or the critics pose when you're doing these things. This is part of Neuro Linguistic Programming and the nlp, which is a field of study that I learned this from from two of my mentors, Mary Lou Seavey and Susan Stageman, who taught this years ago based on the findings of author Robert Diltz, who analyzed Disney. So I'm not taking credit for, for developing this, only sharing it with you. However, you can do this with yourself, using different spaces in your house, different attitudes and poses. But you can also do this with your team. And I'm going to give you a very effective way to plan a project with your team. If you're the boss, that's great. And if you've just got colleagues, bring them all together and before you ever tell them exactly what the idea is and exactly what the dream is, and waiting for them to just poo poo you right away. Set it up, say, hey, guys, I've got something I want to run by you. I've got an idea. I think it'll work. I'm not exactly sure how yet. I've got some ideas, and there may be some reasons that it won't work. And before we tear it apart and before we realize all the reasons it may not work, let's jump into this first and just think about what if it did. So I'm asking you to put aside your criticism for a few moments while I explain what could be possible. Will you do that with me? And by giving somebody the permission to put the critique aside or at least delay it, you're giving them permission to dream with you. So you can bring your entire team in and just storyboard or not storyboard, but I like to say whiteboard all the things that are possible that could be done and just dream together and then say, great, now, what would have to happen in order for us to pull this off? And sometimes a critical jump in, but just if it does, tell that person or tell yourself there'll be time for that. Let's just say what would have to happen if this was possible? And then finally say, now, go for it. Let's tear this apart. What are we missing? Maybe you're missing the fact that you don't have the skills, the resources, the money. Well, go back through the process I just told you and take it into the other offices. See if you can solve the problem for a different perspective or a different point of view. And there's no such thing as. You might be surprised. You will be surprised at how quickly and easily you're able to come up with a solution to this problem. Whether you're creating a story, a fictional novel, a book, a movie script, a new business, or you're just sitting there with your family and thinking about quitting your job and starting a new business. You can use this exact strategy in your business or your life. So do you see what we did there? We took the tedious and arduous and sometimes boring process of planning anything and we wrapped it in bacon. We made it fun, we made it way more effective, and we used a proven method that anybody can use. We're going to do a lot of that on this show. And if you like this episode, please subscribe on itunes and leave a review. It only takes 10 seconds to let me and my co hosts, although there was no co host in this show, but also the rest of the world know that you approve and recommend us. It helps the show ranking and together we can help more people achieve their business goals too. I'm also going to invite you to email me directly@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com tell me your biggest business challenge idea or your own bacon wrap strategy. I read every single email. Perhaps I'll feature it on the show. Maybe I'll even invite you to be a guest and we'll cover your strategy in detail. Also, if you want a second opinion on your business or marketing strategy, come on over to baconwrapbusiness.com.

Second opinion spelled out S E C O N D opinion and I will be sure to give you information on how you can get a hold of me. Maybe we can discuss your own business problems or strategies. I do occasional consulting one on one and work with businesses that I feel are a good fit for both of us, but most importantly is I'll give you a second opinion and it doesn't cost you anything. There's no risk to it at all. So come over to baconratbusiness.com second opinion. Leave us a review and make sure you watch it for the next episode. I've got something really cool planned for you, so until next time you got a problem, wrap it in bacon.