MBA1493 Must Read: Walt Disney by Neal Gabler

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Hey all. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. The business podcast that always got your back every day 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 Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. Before I get into today's episode, I want to address the fact that a lot has changed in the world recently. This is the first time I'm back on the mic recording after everything has gone down with the coronavirus. This tells you how much we batch in advance for the show. Many of us are in self quarantine. Many of us are staying home. We have to stay home. You know things are closing down. Work is closing down. I got to work from home. This is a very challenging time for us, but I want to wish you all the best. I want you all to focus on what you can control. Stay, stay positive. If you follow me on Twitter or on Instagram or on Facebook, reach out to me if you have any questions about working from home or staying productive at home. Let's stay safe. We could ride this out together. I'm gonna be continuing to publish podcast episodes so you always got me to listen to every single day to help you plan for your business because we will get through this so let's make sure we're successful on the other end. Today's episode is a must read episode. On our must read episodes, I share with you a book that has greatly influenced me as an entrepreneur, has impacted me in some way, and I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination by Neil Gabler. This is the best biography on Walt Disney. This is a big book to get to. I picked it up and put it down a few times, but it's incredibly memorable because of the lessons in there. For the longest time, Walt Disney has been an enigma. People don't really get this guy, but he's accomplished so much. This book looks into how did this man operate, what made him tick, what was his framework for making decisions? A man that has innovated over and over again and created what we know as the world of animation. I'll get into some of his strategies, his quirks, some of the negative things about his personality, and some of the most incredible ideas he came up with. And in what situation did he come up with these ideas? Can't wait to cover every everything that's in today's must read. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. This book, Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination by Neil Gabler, was published in 2006. And if I were to say this book was well researched, it would be the biggest understatement of the decade. The book is meticulously researched. He interviews so many people that were involved in his life, involved in his work. One of the hardest things that the author had to do in putting this book together is getting a narrative together. Every time he interviewed somebody and asked him the same question about Walt Disney, they would get a different answer, almost like they were describing somebody totally different. In the book, you start to realize that's who he was. When you speak to people that are really close to him, they said, you didn't get the same Walt Disney ever. Every day you'd get a new Walt Disney, somebody different, somebody who reinvents himself every single day to the point where people are like, is this guy going mad? And yes, in the book, you start to realize he wasn't exactly normal. Okay? He wasn't run of the mill. His imagination was incredible, which made his life so frustrating because people just did not see what he saw. Now, one of the things I thought was fascinating about this book is it walks you through how he is the father of animation. I didn't know this, actually, I kind of understood. He was a big part of the animation world and cartoon world, you know, given, you know, Disney's history. But he actually invented animation. And he invented it because motion pictures were quite popular when he was growing up. Actual films with actors and they were short films because, you know, the capabilities of the technology back then wouldn't allow for, you know, a two hour film. But he thought to himself, well, if we could do this with people, why not with drawings? He even thought that it would be more cost effective to do with drawings and you could still tell stories. In fact, the animated movies that he created weren't intended for children at the Star. They were actually intended for adults, even though he was using animal like characters. Let's pause for a second and see what can we learn from this. He identified, wow, this is really popular movies, motion pictures, people love this form of entertainment. He didn't invent movies, but he created something new out of something else. So he said, hey, let's create motion pictures, but with drawings. He basically created a remix. But you can't do that if you're not paying attention to what's going on. What is working in the world? What are people gravitating to? What are the trends? Many of us, we are tunnel vision in our business and we don't really see the future and where it's going now more than ever. What's going on in the world, we need to kind of see the future right now with what's going on with coronavirus and people working from home, things will never be the same. Yes, we're going to get through this and people are going to go back home, or I should say go back to work, go to the office and things will go back to normal. But we'll pick up habits, we'll pick up things that we did during this time. Our perspective on things is going to change. The economic effect of what happened is not going to just go away miraculously. It's going to sustain for a few more years. So what effect will this situation have in our business in the future? How can we pivot? How can we change things around so that we're prepared for the future? The other thing I learned from this book is that Walt Disney really believed in sending a positive message to the world in his stories, in his animated films. Even though he was quite religious as a Christian, he made an important point that not to make the lessons in his films or in his stories Christian based, he thought it would be best to make it universal and just. Just morally good with good lessons. He thought that it would attract more people and that it would resonate with more people, people that weren't of his faith. I thought that was incredible because it takes a lot of maturity, it takes a lot of perspective for you to realize that, hey, just because I believe something doesn't mean the whole world believes in it or it will work for everybody else. How can I really take the core of what I'm trying to do here and be able to serve it in a way that everybody can accept? You realize, if I want to make a global impact on the world where two thirds of the rest of the world is not Christian, I'm going to need to package this differently. Now, this is not a political or religious statement. I just thought this was brilliant on his part to realize, hey, I can still do what I want in terms of conveying good information, good stories, good moral stories about family and caring and good and bad without putting my own biases on it. Let's stop and think about our own business. Are we putting our own beliefs into our brand and business when they're not necessary? If they're necessary, I get it if that's part of what you do. If you are, you know, a Buddhist and your whole brand is how to do it in the Buddhist way, that makes sense. But if it's not, then you're really alienating people that can really benefit from what you are giving them by branding it in that way. It doesn't even have to be religious. You know, you can have belief systems that are political or even just ideas that you feel firmly about. What are some ways that you can repackage them, where you can get your message out, where you can give the good you want to give without any biases. Another little funny story in this book is when Walt Disney started to kind of build out the Disney brand and wanted to have a mascot for the brand and, you know, be the star of his animated films. You know, he came up with Mickey, right? But Mickey originally was a rat, actually. But he quickly advised his wife, and his wife said, that's a terrible idea. Nobody likes rats. Make him a mouse. Mice are cute. And she actually told him that mice actually live longer than rats. So he quickly changed the sketches of Mickey to make him Mickey Mouse. So consulting people is something that he did regularly. Even though he had very firm beliefs, he was willing to listen to his team. He often changed his mind, which is not very common in leadership. Sometimes. Sometimes we feel like we got to stay firm and we got to stay to our beliefs and not change our mind because it makes it look weak. No. He was like, hey, if there's a better idea around the corner that makes more sense, let's go for it. One of the most brilliant things about Walt Disney is his understanding of branding. He fully understood that if people could love a brand, love a symbol, they would be willing to consume films, movies, shows, go to theme parks, buy merchandise, eat at themed restaurants, you name it. He spent a lot of his time working on cultivating the characters of Disney. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Minnie Goofy, all these characters. He spent a lot of time introducing them into the films, into the cartoons, really investing in their personalities. And today, what do you see when it's open? When you go to Disney World or Walt Disney World or Disneyland or Euro Disney or Tokyo Disney or Hong Kong Disney, and what do all the people have on? They have Mickey ear hats on. They have plush animals in their hands. They have T shirts. They're going to the Mickey Cafe. They go back home, they watch Disney plus, Right. Or they watch the Disney Channel. Incredible. All because he understood the power of building great brands, great personality, storytelling, cultivating characters. How are you doing that in your business? You can definitely do this even if you're not in the animation space. Why do you think Apple, when they do a keynote presentation, when they're revealing the new iPhone, they have four, five, six different people from the company present. These are their characters. These are their heroes. They have Tim Cook step up. They have Phil Schiller go and explain something from the Apple Watch or something like that. Who are your rock stars who can present on your behalf at conferences, on webinars, in videos, in social media? These are some of the things I've been thinking about. How can I make my team members memorable characters that resonate with my audience? Why? Because we buy from people. We don't buy from businesses. We buy from personalities. The biggest example of this in today's modern world is Elon Musk. There are so many people out there that just love Elon and they do anything and buy anything that Elon presents. As soon as a new car comes out, they put money down to reserve it. They watch every single interview. They build a YouTube channel based on their love affair with electric cars. Branding matters and personality matters.

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Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination by Neil Gabler. Walt Disney was a larger than life character. He was very complex and he was actually very unlikable by the people that were around him because he was so fickle. He was somebody different every day. He wasn't particularly mean or nasty. It was just very difficult to work with him. But he was able to produce an incredible business and brand. He saw the future, or he attempted to see the future. He tried at least to look into the future and see what holds. Later in the book they talk about, you know, they built Disneyland over in California and Anaheim. It was very successful. He purposely had it done in California, built in California because of the great weather all year round. So he was looking for a second location for a theme park. A second theme park. He needed a place that had good weather all year round. And he thought, let me go to the east coast so I can attract people on that side of the country. And he thought, Florida. The funny thing is that he didn't go to Miami or let alone Daytona beach or something like that. He went to Orlando before Disney World. Orlando was a dump, okay? It's swampland. No one would go to Orlando for anything. He thought this was an opportunity of a lifetime. While everybody thought, you're crazy, you don't build on swampland, why would you buy here? He said, it's doable. You can work with this. In his mind, he thought this was an incredible opportunity and everybody's going to jump on it if he doesn't keep it a secret. This became a big secret in the Disney organization. Organization. Even though it didn't need to be because no one wanted to buy land in Orlando. He negotiated an incredible deal in Orlando of over 30,000 acres. Much of that land is still not used up today, but he bought 30,000 acres for $5 million. Some people spent that much money in their house. He bought 30,000 acres in Orlando, Florida for $5 million. People thought he was crazy back in 1965. But today it's also seen one of the best investments Disney ever made, because Disney World is actually the number one vacation destination for Americans. To give you an idea of how much land this is, they were required to have their own zip codes, their own fire department, their own police department. It's its own county, really. Unfortunately, though, Walt Disney didn't live to see the opening of of Walt Disney World. But his legacy lives on. I highly recommend you pick up this book. It's a great biography. It's well written, well researched. I picked it up on Audible. I listened to it on and off. It's brilliantly put together. Highly recommend. Today's must read, Walt Disney the Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler. That wraps up today's episode. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe. So you get our next episode automatically and you get free access to over 1400 business lessons in our archives. It's the only way you can get access by hitting subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitch Radio, Overcast, Himalaya, we're on them all. Before I go, I want to leave you with this right now. The present is challenging. We're all sitting at home, all trying to be safe. We don't know, you know, what's going to happen tomorrow, but we know things. Things should get better. We will get through this. So take a page out of Walt Disney's book. Look into the future. Where do you think your business is heading? What are some changes you need to do today to make sure that you're strong tomorrow, in the future? Where are some opportunities? People are sleeping on that. You can jump on that. You can really be one of the first people to see that opportunity and to do something about it. This is a great time to plan for the future. I also want to leave you with the fact that it could feel a little bit overwhelming. You might feel helpless in this moment. It's okay. We're all in it together. I'm with you here every day on the podcast. Let's focus on what we control. We can control how we spend our day. We can control what we do every day, our to do list, how we help other people, how we look after our families. This too shall pass. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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