MBA1168 Must Read- Disney U by Doug Lipp

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O welcome to the $100 MBA show where building a better business is an everyday thing with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online and today is a must Read Episode on our Must Read Episodes. I share with you a book that I've read that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur and share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. Today's must read is DisneyU by Doug Lipp. Disney youy lays out the strategy behind the massive success of Disney theme parks. By caring for their staff and providing them with the highest training, Disney ensures that their employees have the customer service skills necessary to create a truly magical environment. This book teaches you how to implement Disney's philosophy into your own business. This book was incredibly interesting and useful. It also had some funny quirks, some inside secrets like where managers at Disney theme parks conduct their meetings. Disney is a powerhouse and a staple when it comes to customer service and delighting their customers. I can't wait to share with you the insights I learned in DisneyU. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The author of Dream you Today's must read. Doug Lipp created the first international version of Disney University, which trains Disney staff. He was also a mentor in Walt Disney World's corporate headquarters and worked with the founder himself of Disney University, Van France. In this book, you learn how Disney delivers an exceptional experience to their customers at their theme parks. You'll learn why Disney managers held crucial meetings in Cinderella's castle, why great customer service is a mixture of art and science, and why you can't buy alcohol at Disney Tokyo, but can at Disney Paris. At its core, this book really displays how Disney has its own company culture and values and how those values keep the company staff motivated and hardworking and happy. You see, employees are the most important part of any business. You are only as strong as your team. I've learned this recently in the last few years building our team at Webinar Ninja and and the better our team is, the better our product, the better our service, the better our business is. But you gotta keep your workforce motivated and happy. And it's not about money. It's not about giving them all the money in the world. Actually, the best employees and the best company culture don't have the highest paying salaries. If your employees don't care about your company's values, they won't be interested in the progress of the company. They'll only be concerned about their own material gain. So this book outlines and shows you how Disney avoids this at all costs. They carefully promote the company's philosophy at Disney University. The training for their actual staff. They actually don't call their employees staff or employees. They call them cast members because they believe language, manners. If you identify yourself as a cast member, you start to understand that, hey, I'm a part of entertaining my customers. I'm a part of delighting my customers. My job is to put a smile on their face. Now, the founder of Disney University is Von France. He developed a new orientation program that was more suited to the needs of the company and its trainees. It was about transparency. It was about making everybody aware of the organizational's inner workings and how to seek out ways to be more efficient and have more of an enjoyable time working at the company. The book also talks about how running a business is a mixture of science and art. Usually we all focus on the science side of things. The dollars and cents, the data, the timesheets, all that kind of stuff. And trust me, Disney knows that side of things. They have to. They're the largest on site employer in the United States. But great infrastructure and well engineered roller coasters. Aren't enough. That's where Disney's artistic side comes from. A business's artistic side is what gives it its special touch that sets it apart. This is where people say, oh, this is different. I feel different working for this company and I feel different of being a customer with this company. What they mean by art is having soft skills, understanding that we at the end of the day are human beings and we have to treat each other with some sort of emotion. And if you do that with your staff, you are sensitive to that actual reality. Your staff, your employees, your cast members are going to do the same with the customers. They mirror the way they are treated. Disney understands if they treat their staff members in a nasty way, they're going to go out and treat the customers at the parks just the same. They need to put them in a good mood. They need to put them in a state that makes them feel calm and happy. And therefore that translates when they hit the floor, when they hit those parks and serve customers. No one wants to work hard all year long to take their whole family to Disneyland or Disney World to meet Cinderella. And Cinderella is just in a nasty mood. Disney understands that it's an experience that customers want to have. They have to create a pleasant experience at work. In fact, all the meetings, all the planning, all the staff meeting happen, happen behind closed doors. You don't see that anywhere in the park. In fact, a lot of it happens underground in Disney World because when they're on stage, when they're in the park, cast members know they are performing. They need to put a smile on their face. They need to make sure that everybody's having a great time. There's another chapter in this book that I found particularly interesting and it's all about strong companies. Look to the future and the past at the same time. You could probably name a few companies off the top of your head that were dominant in a market but eventually fell into bankruptcy. Or at the very least, just not that good anymore. Kodak, Blockbuster, even Nokia is almost a no name brand anymore. After dominating the market, each suffered this fate. Why companies often collapse when they fail to keep up with changes. They cling to business practices and what has worked for so long, for too long. They don't realize that the world evolves and they need to evolve with it. This is so important, especially for you and me as small businesses. I'm constantly worried that if I don't evolve, if I don't get better, if I don't change with the times, I'm gonna get left in the dust. These stories like Kodak and Blockbuster, they're cautionary tales. Don't just push them aside and say, oh, those are like big behemoth companies that didn't know what they're doing. No, it's so easy to coast on some success that we have. Even if we have a small business in an online business, we're selling courses, we're selling content, and we don't realize, hey, the market will change over time. I need to change with it. Disney has been fantastic with this. They've been around for so long, Disneyland and Disney World, and they've evolved and grown and been profitable because they know how to adapt. Heck, they have competitors right at their doorstep. Universal Studios opened up their own theme park in Orlando, just a few miles away from Disney World. And yet Disney World still thrives because they always grow and adapt. Disney also touches on the idea of speaking the language of success and adapt yourself to different cultures. Language is what sets humans apart from other living creatures. We all speak different languages as human beings. But it's great to have your own language for your own culture in your own company. That means using a unique language that sets your company apart from from others. Small changes make a big difference. Disney uses its own special names for various parts of the company I mentioned. Employees are cast members and customers are guests. Disney parks don't have crowds, they have audiences. These terms might sound odd, but they really do change the way employees and customers feel. Disney's unique language immerses them in the magic of the Disney environment. Words create ideas and ideas produce a reality. They also adapted this when they opened up parks in different parts of the world, like Tokyo and Paris, for example. When Disney opened Tokyo Disneyland, they maintained the drinking rules that they enforce in the US no alcohol anywhere in the park. Japanese people responded well to this, and many wrote letters to Disney thanking them for it. One housewife wrote to Disney and said that her husband wouldn't have spent time with her and their children if the park sold sake or alcohol. Right? But the alcohol rule didn't go over well in France. However, the French press criticized Disney for their insensitivity to French culture. So wine now is allowed at the park in Disneyland Paris. So know what you're dealing with, know the cultures, know what will work and what will not. And always remember that when you make a decision, there'll be some minority of people that are going to disagree with that decision. But when a majority of people disagree, you know you need to make a change. Another great takeaway from this book is A good business never gives up and always strives to keep their employees happy. Even a company as strong and well structured as Disney, they face problems. In 1971, for example, Roy Disney, the company's inspirational leader, died at a mere two months after Walt Disney World was open. His death was very hard on the cast members. Understandably, the cast members were generally demoralized and struggled to focus on their work or perform with smiling faces. Right to be performing in front of people. When you reach a tough period like this, the best thing to do is to have everyone come together and work it out as a group. Don't give up. Gather your team, bring them together and have everyone share their ideas on how to make the situation better. Try to get something positive out of it. When Roy Disney died, the managers held an emergency meeting in the tower of Cinderella's castle. They discussed the issue, they collected feedback from everyone on the team and eventually came up with some ideas for reinvigorating the company and its employees, like improving staff training and the HR department. In the end, the company only became strong. Now they didn't just bury their head in the sand and said, oh, let's just plow through. Forget about it. They'll get over it. No, they said, this is a problem. We need to address it. We need to come up with some positive suggestions to solve the problem, to improve things.

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To wrap up today's must read episode Disney U by Doug Lipp. What I learned is a company's character and strength depends on its staff, depends on its employees, on its team. Disney understands this very well. They give their employees more than just a good salary. They include them in decisions. They make sure that they share values. They make them understand you're part of a legacy here. Disney holds onto traditions and looks to new ideas for the future, and even though they'll have tough times ahead, they work through it as a team. Even if your organization isn't as big as Disney's, you can still incorporate the things that I shared with you today and what's in this book. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Disney youy. It's a great, great read and it's a lot of fun. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, leave us an iTunes rating and review. I would love to hear what you think of the show. Share with us your favorite episode what you get out of this show the most. I read every single review so I would love to hear from you before I go. I want to leave you with this. As the leader of your company, it's your job to create this environment and create the values for your company. That's what leadership is all about. This is why it's so important for you not to do every task in your company. You need to delegate and hire out so you can do the bigger picture things like this because this stuff affects everything, but most of all it affects the experience your customers have with you and your company. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode, New Year's Day. I'll see you then. Take care.

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