Small Business Lessons from Disney
Today I’m joined by Business Operations Strategist Nicole Boucher to chat about our mutual love of Disney, and lessons that small business owners can learn from Disney World, like:
Disney’s Laundry System and Magic Kingdom Tunnels and Creating Intentional Systems
The Star Wars Galactic Cruiser Hotel and When to Kill Your Darlings
Magic Bands, Data Collection and Knowing When to Invest
Annual Passes and Pricing
Disney’s New WaterPark Offer and Using the Underutilized Offers in Your Business
Minnie Vans and Partnerships and Collaborations
Nicole is a Strategic Planner & Business Manager with an English degree, an MBA, and a background in Lean Six Sigma. She helps her clients be more productive and strategic with their time so they can play BIG with their online business (without the overwhelm).
She’s also the co-host of the podcast Pixie Dust & Profits where she gets to geek out on the regular about her favorite things: Disney magic and business systems!
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives! Check out my Playbook for Complete Marketing Game PlanThis week’s action step: Take inspiration from these small business lessons from Disney and try to implement some aspects of them into your businessThis week’s book recommendation: The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert IgerFind us on Instagram and tell us you what you thought of this episode: @mrsamandawarfield and @nboucher214The Pixie Dust and Profits Podcast and the Star Wars Hotel Episode mentionedNicole’s Shiny Object Workbook, I highly recommendNicole’s WebsiteNicole’s InstagramYou know you can do *anything*… but, you also know you don’t have time to do EVERYTHING.
Imagine having someone in your business who *really* understands what’s inside your head.
Someone who knows what you need to grow your business. A sidekick who can turn your ideas into revenue-generating offers and campaigns (without the need for you to delegate every little detail… or worse, having to do it all yourself).
That’s a strategic partner, friend.
Nicole is a Strategic Planner & Business Manager with an English degree, an MBA, and a background in Lean Six Sigma. She helps her clients be more productive and strategic with their time so they can play BIG with their online business (without the overwhelm). She’s also the co-host of the podcast Pixie Dust & Profits where she get to geek out on the regular about her favorite things: Disney magic and business systems!
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
Ep. 257 6 Small Business Lessons From Disney World with Nicole Boucher
Amanda: [00:00:00] Today I’m joined by business Operation strategist Nicole Boucher, to chat about our mutual love of Disney and lessons that small business owners can learn from Disney World, like Disney’s Laundry System and Magic Kingdom tunnels, and creating intentional systems for your business. The Star Wars Galactic Cruiser Hotel and Wind to Kill your Darlings Magic Bands data collection and knowing when to invest.
Annual passes and pricing. Disney’s new water park offer, and using the underutilized offers in your business, minivans and partnerships and collaborations, and so much more. Nicole is a strategic planner and business manager with an English degree, an MBA, and a background in Lean Six Sigma.
She helps her clients be more productive and strategic with their time so that they can play big with their online business without the overwhelm. She’s also the co-host of my favorite podcast, pixie Dust and Profits, where she gets to geek out on the regular about her favorite things, Disney [00:01:00] Magic and Business Systems.
You’re listening to episode 2 57 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by the Cha and Simple Playbook, and you can check it out for [email protected] slash playbook.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Our launch is still a thing, and most importantly.
How do I put it all together to market my business strategically? Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasey and Simple, where Practical Marketing Strategy meets Simplicity.
I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, [00:02:00] simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing. I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business.
So that they have time to grow their business, take time off and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own. When I’m working, you can find me working with one-on-one clients, such as the contract shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches.
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They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily can suck up their time when what they really wanna be doing is the thing that they started their business to do. Which is why I’m here [00:03:00] to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love.
Each week, I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever you drink of choices. And meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on business Shall.
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The playbook is an incredible resource. Everything you need to plan and create the best [00:04:00] content for your business, a systematic method to get that content out in the world. Logical growth and nurture strategies and so much more. The playbook is a guided but flexible one stop shop. It gives you all the information you need while leaving space to personalize the execution so that it works for your own business.
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Welcome to, oh, it’s got me making. Some awful faces. Hello. Welcome everyone. I’m so excited [00:06:00] because today I have Nicole Boucher and we are going to talk about small business lessons from Disney World. Nicole is a small business planner and operation strategist and I have had the joy of working with her personally and, , spending time together at Disney and also working with her.
In other people’s businesses as well. So I’ve just loved getting to know all of her genius and I couldn’t wait to share it with all of you. So welcome, Nicole.
Nicole: Thank you so much. It’s awesome to be here and it’s always awesome to talk Disney, especially when it’s. Very cold and wintery and all I can think about is planning a trip and going.
Amanda: Do you have your next trip planned?
Nicole: I do, but we’re going to Universal. We’re staying on DVC property, so we’re staying at Disney, so we’ll probably end up at Disney Springs in a bunch of other places, but we’re going in June for Epic Universe because I have an 11-year-old, well, he’ll be 11 while we’re there.
So he has to go Hogwarts for his [00:07:00] birthday.
Amanda: Yeah. Absolutely a hundred percent. And for the new park, like that’s so exciting. Yeah. Yeah.
I love it. And you’ll still get the Disney magic. That’s what I love about Disney is like. Well, one of the things I love is there’s so many opportunities for that magic. We went in December over New Year’s, and I was not, oh my gosh, gonna to go in the parks.
I was like, that’s not happening. But we stayed. We didn’t even stay on site, but we went and we, you know, we rode around and hotel hopped and we went into Disney Springs and like, we still got all the magical feelings without going into the parks, and it was great.
Nicole: They do so much that even if you’re not staying on site, you can come over like I think Disney Springs had a Christmas tree scavenger hunt type thing.
Yeah. So they have like 12 Christmas trees around so you can see them all. So that’s nice.
Amanda: And they all had like very like different decorations. Like each one was themed, which was really fun to just walk around. Even if you’re not doing the full scavenger hunt, just walk and be like, oh, like that one’s Tiana themed, or this one’s a nightmare.
Before Christmas or the Haunted Mansion there was one, the Haunted Mansion one had like a whole [00:08:00] body inside of it. It was wild.
Nicole: Oh my gosh. I, we only saw a couple of them, so I don’t think I saw that one.
Amanda: I’ll send you a picture later. It was so weird. But anyways, we clearly both love Disney and I thought that there was no one better to bring on to talk about lessons that we as small business owners can learn from Disney.
Because you know so much about it. And also you technically still have a podcast called Pixie Dust and Profits, which Yeah. Is my favorite podcast of all time. Oh, thank you. It’s, I just love it. All the lessons from Disney, I mean, they’re successful for a reason, and so I. Loved listening every time you guys put out a new episode, but even now, I still go back and listen sometimes.
Nicole: That’s so nice to hear. So yeah, pixie Dust And Profits was, I was co-host with my friend Yasmin Kche Spencer, who is another business strategist. So we met on the like retreat circuit pre covid. We met [00:09:00] together and we actually roomed together and found out we were both just kind of like Disney nerds and it wasn’t Disney nerds from the, like, I love to go and see the castle and dress up, which, you know, that’s one side of things, but.
We were geeking out about how they handle the mosquito population and like queuing theory and all sorts of stuff like that about how they manage crowds because we’re just like operations geeks. So the idea for pixie dust and profits kind of started out of our mutual love of that. And then I think I was sitting at the airport maybe a year and a half, two years later, coming back from something that I had met up with Yasin for.
I was just sitting in the airport thinking of alliteration and Pixie Dust And profits came up and it’s such a fun name. I’ve got my little, like, we make small business magic for pixie Dust And profits. We’re currently on hiatus. That’s been about a year long. Yasin just had her second child, so she’s kind of on a maternity leave and, you know, every few months I’m like, we should bring that back.
It [00:10:00] was so much fun. Yeah, we talk a lot about operations, marketing strategy because so many of our clients over the years kind of. They didn’t go to business school and we did. We both have our MBAs and so our business is the business and a lot of people just kind of stumble into having a business like they were an artist who taught a couple people and then it turned into this big like online program, or they were a lawyer who, you know, helped a couple friends get a contract together because they just started photographing weddings and now they have a business that’s selling templates to other people.
And so a lot of our clients. Had the product or the drive or like they had the business, but they didn’t know anything about running the business. And so that’s where we stepped in. And we love the idea of distilling down some things that Disney does for just small businesses that are, you know, one to five employees.
Like it doesn’t have to be a big operation. You don’t have to have a brick and mortar to learn from Disney.
Amanda: Yeah. And you [00:11:00] guys did such a great job at distilling that down and making it, so easy to understand. Whereas, you know, if you go get an MBA let’s be really, that’s a lot of jargon that may not be necessary for all of us who run online business.
Nicole: It really isn’t. It really isn’t necessary. And everything can be explained in a simpler way. And I think examples, at least I’m the type of person that examples really help. And so who doesn’t like to talk about Disney or hear about Disney?
Amanda: Yeah. Crazy people. No, I’m just kidding. Yeah, you guys did such a good job.
So we’ll link to that actually in the description guys, after this live is over because again, I have re-listened to so many episodes over and over ’cause they really are just so, they’re so informative. And if you love Disney, they’re so fun too. Before we dive into some of the lessons we can learn from Disney though, I wanna know what’s your like.
If you had to tell one Disney operations fun fact, what would it be? Like, what’s that one thing that, oh gosh. You’re [00:12:00] like, oh, did you know they did this?
Nicole: You know, there’s so many things, but I did a backstage tour and they haven’t brought those back since Covid. There’s some of them, but not the one that I did.
And so it was so much fun to see how organized they are in every facet. So one of the things we did was we toured the costuming department where they actually make all of the princess dresses and like the onstage things, and they had this entire wall of thread. Each color was very specific and could only be used for specific characters.
And so there’s like Captain America Blue, you could not use it for anything other than Captain America. And so just the thought of they have this inventory to that level of detail is amazing. But I think my top thing was I really loved seeing the laundry facilities, which [00:13:00] is so, it sounds so silly, but when you think about it, they have at this point, I don’t know, like.
15 to 20 resorts in and of themselves. Yeah. And think about like the turnover and how much laundry needs to be done. And so they have these facilities and they’re so smartly made where the trucks come in on one side of the building and dump all of the dirty sheets and towels, and then it goes through the whole system where they actually don’t have time to dry everything because it would just take too long to use a dryer.
So they actually squeeze everything down into like this tiny little hockey puck to like get all of the liquid out of it. And then they throw it into a dryer that puffs it back out into a towel or a sheet or whatever, which is really cool. And then the trucks get sprayed down to get cleaned and sanitized, and then they pick up.
You know, the outgoing clean laundry and then they bring it to the resort. And because they have different levels of resorts, they actually have like three of these facilities. So one is [00:14:00] for the deluxe level sheets that have a higher thread count, and then they have the other ones for the other resort.
So it’s just, it’s very apparent that when they bought all of that land in Florida, that they were trying to make an ecosystem that supported itself. And so. It sounds like it’s silly to be like, I love the laundry system, but it was fascinating how well thought out it was.
Amanda: So, okay. I never, this is one that I actually haven’t heard you talk about.
So they don’t have, like, each hotel doesn’t have their own laundry system. It’s all one. That’s crazy.
Nicole: So those like green carts that you see in the hallways where they’re throwing all the dirty linens in, they load those onto like these big trucks. And then those trucks go to the laundry facility, dump all of the dirty stuff out, get cleaned on the inside, and then.
Go to the other door to get all of the new stuff to go back to the resort that they were just at. So it’s just like
Amanda: That is mind blowing.
Nicole: It is. It is. And what was, I mean, there’s also fun stuff when we were there. [00:15:00] So like one of the first steps is like there are people hand sorting to make sure that there aren’t.
Usually stuffies inside the laundry socks. They have socks. Yeah, they have a really big like glossed and found section over there. And they said that the number one thing that they find in the sheets is the remote control to the tv. Because usually what happens is like, you’re like checking everything, getting ready to leave and then, and this is their quote.
It wasn’t me, but I agree. It probably is that like dad sat down and turned on whatever game was on. And then you’re like, mom’s like, okay, we’re good. Let’s go. And dad leaves the remote on the bed. So, yeah. But yeah, it’s a like, just knowing how much they even looked at laundry. You, we didn’t get to tour their, like, food facilities or anything, but they have like biofuel that right on site and all of that stuff.
I have so many stories, but I can, but it reminded me about like gonna to like the mechanical area where they refurbish [00:16:00] everything. And that was a lot of fun.
Amanda: Man. That is so cool. And I said that this was gonna be a fun fact before we dived in, but actually, uh, I’m curious what your thoughts are, like how can we build systems with intention like that in our businesses?
Nicole: Yeah, I think that like our systems can always evolve and I think as long as we’re open to, like, we may have started here, but now things are bigger or our customer base has changed, or I am using a different system, or whatever it may be, just be open to the fact that you can revisit something that you’ve already created.
Because most of the time we don’t start from scratch and we can build from the ground up to like really think through like every single facet that we need before we start. But I will say my clients who are most successful are the ones who have had a program or a product that does really well.
And instead of. And I know this is really hard to not get sucked into the shiny object syndrome, but instead of like kind of thinking about all the different things, you could go from there, you just take that one thing that’s doing [00:17:00] really well and you lean into it. And so you either make the program a little bit better, like you rerecord the videos, make ’em a little more evergreen, use a better camera, do some better editing, whatever that might be.
And then the next year you go in and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna change a little bit about how I market it. And so it’s just. Continuous improvement of the thing that’s working really well and that your audience really wants instead of dividing your attention and, you know, bringing in a new product every six months when you know, I’ve seen people have the most success with just making things work that they have and continually improving it because your existing customer base is gonna be so happy that the thing that they’ve gotten keeps getting better.
And then they have all of this like. Feedback and testimonials they can give for the new people coming in. And so it just makes a better community in a lot of ways.
Amanda: Well, and something that I’m constantly telling my clients is that every launch is just, it’s preparation for the next one because what you’re doing every time you launch [00:18:00] is bringing in new eyes that aren’t gonna buy right now because they’re just hearing about it for the first time, but the next time you launch it, they’ve heard about it at least a couple times.
And so it’s. If you launch something one time and then you evergreen it and launch something new, you are never bringing in those people that they heard about it during that one launch and then forgot it existed because you didn’t launch it again.
Nicole: Absolutely. And if you think about Disney, right, like Disney has to change to keep up with Universal right now.
But you know, they have a set schedule where they started with the Food and Wine Festival in Epcot, right? And so that was every. It was in the fall now, I think it’s like August to November, but it used to be just around
Amanda: October, November.
Nicole: And so they started with this one festival, right? The food and wine, and they market it and they continue to market.
They even have a run Disney race around it. And then they expanded out to, now we have the Flour and Garden Festival, which I think is like March to May or so. And they already had parts of that where [00:19:00] they had the topiaries that were like, look like Daisy Duck, or whatever it may be. , and so they were like, oh, this model’s really working.
Let’s, you know, do the same thing over here. And then a few years later they came out with the artists one. And so it’s the Festival of Art, and that’s like January, February. And that’s usually the one I end up going to because somehow I end up in Florida in February. A lot.
Amanda: Well, because you’re escaping the cold.
Nicole: Yeah. And you know, now my kid’s in school, so I have to go in the summer and it’s really hot. But yeah, so they have the art festival and it’s the same formula every time. Yeah. Right. Like they have pop-up tents in every country in between the countries where you can get certain foods that you can’t get the rest of the time.
And so they kind of keep following the same model and just. Tweaking the marketing or what the theme is. And you know, at the art festival, they have this collage that everyone can go paint a couple squares on. Yeah. So you every day are making this beautiful collage with all the other people who went to [00:20:00] Epcot that day.
And I don’t know a lot about food and wine. I think they’ve only ended up there once, but I know a lot of people go just for food and wine. But yeah, so if they did it once and then abandoned it. You wouldn’t have this entire culture now where there’s basically a festival any time of year except, you know, one or two months and you already know what you’re getting when you go because you know what the other one was like.
Yeah. I mean, I think with something at least two times, unless it’s drastically not clicking with people, I mean, I think. There are times where you can like, have a really overpriced product or something that people really aren’t interested in. And especially in the world of like covid and post covid where people like wanna be online.
Maybe now an in-person retreat is more what people wanna do instead of being more on Zoom. And so obviously take into account those things, but see how you can switch what you’re doing into that. And I still think that people need to try and launch something too, maybe three times before really giving up on it.[00:21:00]
Amanda: There’s just so many variables that you can test and change. Yeah. And you know, going back to the idea that Disney World has these laundry facilities that are so intentional, that wasn’t their first time doing something like that. Right? Like Disneyland existed before Disney World was created, and so they.
Probably tests run a lot of these things before going, okay, we can do this better. Let’s create this second site and here are all the things that we’re running into problems with at Disneyland. And then we could improve on and systems that we need and all of those things.
Nicole: Well, well, I mean, and Disney World Magic Kingdom, I think is famously known as being like on basically the second floor.
And there’s these util doors underneath. The main main street in the castle. And so part of the tour I went on, we did get to go into those util doors, and I’ll tell you like it’s, it doesn’t smell very lovely down there when you’re in certain tunnels because they have like the trash shoots are going through and stuff.
[00:22:00] And so. What’s cool is that you’ve got your store on the first floor and underneath you’ve got all of the like pins and inventory that you need to bring upstairs when you’re out. And so that’s great. It’s also part of the reason they made that was because Walt didn’t want someone who was dressed for, you know, the wild West to be in the future world, right?
So that’s wonderful, but they learned that it’s actually really limiting because they can’t necessarily change those areas of Magic Kingdom very well. And it makes it hard for growth when they want to grow in certain ways because now you’ve got some areas of the park you can get to from the util doors, but other areas of the park you can’t.
And so they learned from that. And so when they built. Epcot and Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, they actually just have a dirt perimeter road around the back of the parks. And if you look, you can see like trailers. So all of the SVPs and everyone who’s like has to go to work at the parks, they’re in trailers, they’re not [00:23:00] in permanent physical buildings, so that when they decide, oh, we’re gonna build Star Wars, Galaxy’s Edge.
They can just take out that dirt perimeter road, add to the park, take out those trailers and move them a little bit further back. And so they learned from Magic Kingdom like, okay, this is actually, we thought it was cool and we had good reasoning for it, but it’s actually really limiting for us. And a dirt road is actually so much better for what they needed.
Interesting. Yeah, I love that. I didn’t know. Go look at the aerial views now. Yeah, like their little dirt paths. It’s really interesting now that the gondolas are there because you get to see a lot of the backside of Epcot, which you did not get to see prior to them existing. And so it’s really interesting to come in and you can see like the Ouie ride and yeah, all of that.
But prior you didn’t get to see all of those things.
Amanda: Yeah, you were just inside. Interesting. So speaking of Star Wars land, I’m very curious to know your thoughts about everything that’s [00:24:00] happened with the Star Wars Land Hotel. Oh my gosh,
Nicole: I cannot remember her name, and if I find it I will link it to you.
But there is this YouTube that did, like, I wanna say it was like an eight hour deep dive into that hotel and the failures and. And why it failed and everything, and it was so well done and so well researched. It’s lovely to watch while you’re, you know, crocheting or doing something else. But what’s really interesting about that is they came out the gate with this offer.
If you don’t know, they have this hotel that is not operating right now. And so this hotel, the Galactic Star Cruiser, I think it was was right next to Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, and the whole idea was, it was a cruise ship model where you would show up, you would be on the Star Cruiser for two days.
It would include, you know, going to Galaxy’s Edge and Hollywood Studios and you know, getting to ride the popular rides. But it was supposed to be like an immersive experience. And I think Yasin and I had an [00:25:00] episode about this on the podcast, but we had considered going. And mind you, we are people who go to Disney very often.
We are both vacation club owners. You know, I just went in January for run Disney. I’m going back in June. Like we go often enough. And the starker experience was like out of our price range to people who are willing to spend a lot of money at Disney. And I think, if I remember correctly, it was like.
$4,000 a person starting, and it, mind you, this is two days and no one’s gonna fly. At least not me. I live in Maine. I’m not gonna fly down to Florida and back up in two days. I’m going to extend my trip. So if just two days cost that much, what else do I have to spend for everything else? So the cost itself was so exorbitant.
And then when you looked at what they were offering, it was like the Jedi training facility. Which already existed in Hollywood Studios a pass to the Droid Factory, which I [00:26:00] have already done in Hollywood Studios. And so they weren’t really offering anything exclusive. And then the whole idea of it being this, I don’t know, kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, you’re living in it while it’s going like a Comic-Con type thing.
They were just severely limiting that audience. They were like, you have to be making this amount of money to even come. You have to be a mega Star Wars fan. You have to probably be somewhat extroverted if you wanna be on this experience where you’re interacting with characters. And so I think that their biggest problem was they thought it was like a really cool new world idea and it just wasn’t executed really well, and they didn’t.
Stop and think like, do we actually have people who will pay this and it will like lasting, right? There might be people who would do it in the first year, but are they gonna come back and are they gonna tell their friends? So, you know, Yasmin and I were looking at it and trying to share one pod with both of our families to [00:27:00] try and make it affordable.
And at that point it was just, we’re all gonna be packed in like sardines on a cruise ship. So yeah, it was very interesting. I think that period in Disney expansion was an interesting one. The Bob Chap who was CEO at the time. I don’t know why they went in that direction. And they very quickly pivoted out of that direction because there were so many failures back to back.
And it was apparent that someone had a really cool idea and they didn’t do any sort of market testing before building it. And now I think it’s gonna become offices or something like, that’s crazy. I think they, uh, the last I heard was like the Imagineer offices were gonna go in there. Wow.
Amanda: That’s wild. I didn’t realize that.
Nicole: Yeah, and Universal just opened one of their hotels for their new expansion and it is kind of this spacey, futuristic theme. And part of me is like, did they kind of just [00:28:00] wanna stick it to Disney? Like we did it right where it’s a theme, but it’s, you know, you can still see there are still windows.
So if you go look at the Galactic Star Cruiser, they didn’t have external windows, so you never got sunlight for two days and just. I don’t know. There were a lot of decisions that were questionable with that.
Amanda: Well, and I have to wonder like how many mega Star Wars fans are extroverts? I would guess not many.
Like that to me just seems like a big red flag outside of the cost and everything else. But like as an introvert, it sounds like a nightmare. And I’m not a fan.
Nicole: I know. And you know, star Trek has a convention happening in Vegas later this year. Right. And like, it’s one thing when you’re going to a convention and you know that you’re kind of in like a safe place with other people who also love the thing that you love and you’re all like dressing up and you know, it’s very different than.
There’s a family next door to us and here’s us, [00:29:00] and we’re trying to pretend like we’re cosplaying, but you’re also not allowed to wear costumes if you’re over 10 years old. And you know, there’s just a lot of mixed messaging that Disney was giving with this whole property. So, cool idea. I think terrible execution.
Amanda: Okay, so things we can learn here. One, it should be encouraging that. Even big, super successful businesses like Disney, they, they have failures. Two, you mentioned market research and market testing. What are some other lessons we can learn from this?
Nicole: I think some of it is really to think about human behavior, and I think a lot of times we have.
In MBA school, we talked about kill your darlings, right? So you have your darlings, which are like the product idea or the thing you’d love to see come to life and you love it so much, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does. And so I think as a business owner, we have to be really aware and.
Find times to step back and think like, do I love this? Or will other people love this? And it can be in little ways, like my [00:30:00] branding very much like, looks like the style that I keep my house in, right. That uses a lot of the same colors and because that’s what feels good to me and it’s you know, it feels authentic to me, but.
If my people resonated more with like bright, happy, loud colors, we’d go with that, right? And so I think that there’s just a lot of times that we love something and we don’t take that step back and think, what are people, what are the trends right now? What are people doing? So, you know, after covid, people who are like eager to get out of their houses, right?
And so if you were like trying to make a program that was keeping people tethered to their computer. When everyone was trying to like exit the world, you probably weren’t gonna do so hot. But if you took that opportunity and saw what was coming ahead and how people were feeling a little bit wound up and you said, you know what, I’m gonna do an in-person experience.
I remember the first pixie Dust And profits live. We did. It was originally supposed to happen. Covid hit. We made it an accelerator that was virtual based, and then that first year that we could have [00:31:00] it in person together. I don’t even know how much business talk happened because everyone was just so excited to not be home, to be with other women of the same age group and just.
Yeah, business talk happened, but it was really just like a mental thing everyone needed to experience. So definitely like stepping outside of yourself and your wants and thinking about what other people what the trends are for how people are behaving and you know, I think there’s something to be said.
It’s not my favorite practice. But I have done this with a lot of clients and it can be successful if you plan it well, is to pre-sell. And so this is where you kind of have, this is what I’m going to make. It’s going to include X, Y, Z. It’s going to launch on this date. You can get in now. It’s not built yet.
You’re gonna get like a discounted pricing. I’m gonna take your feedback into it while we make this program. And so that can be really helpful when you have a really solid concept. You just know it can go in a couple directions and you need that immediate [00:32:00] feedback for where it should go. So preselling can definitely be an option.
And I mean, brands like Brandon Sanderson, who’s an author, he uses Kickstarter and he has no need to, he is like one of the biggest selling authors, and he uses Kickstarter. To get like leather bound editions of his books printed. And so I think there’s something to be said where like we are never too far above doing some of these kind of grassroots ways of getting things done.
Amanda: That’s such a good point. Yeah. You do tend to think of some of the grassroots ways as like, oh, this is for beginner business owners, but just because you’ve had success previously doesn’t mean it’ll keep happening if you’re not intentional about, do my people actually want this?
Nicole: I’ve seen people have success with just like sending an email out saying, just picked, you know, 10 people that they were super fans usually.
Like, Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. Like, what do you think? Do you want in? And that can be really successful. Obviously you [00:33:00] can’t do that more than once or twice depending on how long you’ve been in business, but it’s definitely a way to like get some good feedback and move forward with it.
So like. Disney, you would think that they wouldn’t have mistakes like this with their, they have a huge audience of super fans. They know every dollar that we have spent, they are right. They could obviously pull and they do. I think every other trip I go on, I have to take like a 30 minute poll either at the park or when I come home.
You know, they have ways to get that data, so it’s really interesting. To hear how big of a flop something like the galactic star cruiser was, because did they ever take those polls and say, would you be interested in an experience that would cost around this much?
Amanda: That’s so true. You know? Okay.
So. Speaking of the data, I am curious, I’d like us to talk about the magic bands and how those work, but I’m also curious, why do you think it is that they only do those at Disney World and they don’t have them at Disneyland yet? Still
Nicole: the magic bands. Yeah. [00:34:00] So I think. First to explain magic bands for anyone who doesn’t have them.
So magic bands are like, you wear ’em on your wrist now they’re optional for a while. I was there when they were test running them and it was really cool. So these magic bands basically are RFID Chip that can open your hotel room. They let you into the parks, they kind of link your tickets to your wrist.
Think of it like Apple Watch or I don’t know, the Samsung watch, but like the watch that has your wallet on it. And so I actually forgot my magic band once and I just used my watch and it worked exactly the same way. Not as fun. So these things, they keep your lightning lanes on them so you know what time you’re returning to a ride.
It gives you access to things. And so they’re basically just like data gathering.
Amanda: And it also has like celebrations on the
Nicole: Yes. The new ones have celebrations. So you can buy like magic band plus. And so when you walk by statues, they usually like. Coco was yelling at me the other day and it sterling me ’cause I forgot that I had one of those on.
And so [00:35:00] there’s that. And then they do all sorts of fun things. So like when I scan into the park, it turns purple and it says Welcome home because I’m a DVC member. And so it’s just little things that make things feel a little special on the business side. This gives them so much data. I use my magic band to check out at restaurants to buy all of my goodies and souvenirs because it just like sends it to my hotel room or my credit card, like whichever way you have it set up.
And so I don’t need to carry around as many cards or cash or anything. I just magic band, swipe it over. And so they have data about like where people are in the parks, how many transactions are happening at any given time. And it really lets them do things like deploy characters in an area that’s really busy to spread out crowds.
And I think this gets why into Disney World has it and Disneyland is flagging behind and why they haven’t like prioritized rolling it out. There is I have not been to Disneyland. I have relatives who have, and it’s basically you can do both [00:36:00] parks in a day. Yeah. Two days you’ll really get to see everything.
And so there’s probably not as much of a need. To throttle crowds and do crowd control and the whole like queuing aspect of things. And so, yes, I think from the consumer standpoint, people want it because it’s really cool to be able to swipe in and have everything like in one place. It’s so simple. But I think from Disney’s perspective, like they’re using it as data gathering and crowd control.
Whereas at Disneyland, that’s not needed quite so much. And so, the initial expense of implementing the magic bands was so much money. Is it worth it to retro’s fair? All the stuff at Disneyland, which I mean, if you think about it, even Disney World. So many lines don’t, like every line is handicap accessible in some way, but the newer rides do it better where there’s, you know, a dedicated section.
I travel a lot with, my mom is blind and deaf, and the last time I took her I was pushing her in a wheelchair, [00:37:00] and so I’m very familiar with. The older rides are a little bit difficult and we have to like, go in through the exit in some rides. Whereas newer things they, you know, have a very steady process for it.
And so like, think about that. And Disney World is hard enough to retroactive things and Disneyland is so much older. And so trying to get magic band into every aspect of that park might be more difficult.
Nicole: Maybe it’s coming, but I just don’t think that Disney has as much of an incentive.
Amanda: Yeah. There also aren’t as many hotels and most people.
Nicole: Yeah, I was gonna say, there’s like two hotels, right?
Amanda: Three. There’s three. But they’re so expensive and you can literally, like staying offsite is a fraction and you can still walk right in. And so it’s, yeah. I don’t know. Like I don’t, we stay offsite every time because it just doesn’t, yeah.
Financially, I’m like, I could spend more money on souvenirs than food instead of in the hotel.
Nicole: Yeah. And I mean, there’s the whole Disney aspect, but like, think about Disney Springs and Disney World, where there’s hundreds of other [00:38:00] brands and companies who have a storefront there and have to integrate with the magic band system, right?
Like you can go shop at gosh, where were we last time? Like. Oh my gosh, I’m drawing a blank. We were like a sunglass hut or something. And you know, there’s all these stores that are like high end stores that you can go to in your local mall or drive down to Boston or whatever, and they have to be able to interact with the magic band.
And so when you think about that, like they really invested in a lot of infrastructure. Like you can use it at the Lego store. Like, and you know what? Fun fact. If you have an annual pass, you can get a discount at the Lego store. DVC doesn’t count with the annual pass you get, I think it might be 5% or something, but like the Lego, Lego does not give discounts.
So when I was an annual passholder, that was nice to get it a little bit off.
Amanda: Are you not a Passholder anymore?
Nicole: No. We can talk all about pass holding too, as like. There becomes a point where things are just more [00:39:00] expensive and you’re turning people away. So, there was one year that the way the dates worked, we ended up.
I ended up at Disney three times in a year. ’cause we had like Pix US Live, we had a family trip and then we had another family trip, but it was like, one was in August and one was in May. So they were you know, a year apart almost. And so we bought annual passes because the math really worked out that if you were going twice, they really paid for themselves.
Especially with DVC we could get the Florida pass rate. Yep. So they changed that whole system actually during Covid. They stopped the sales of annual passes. And so I renewed mine just because I might not be able to keep it if they didn’t bring it back. And then they kind of restructured everything.
The DVC still could get a discounted pass, but it wasn’t as discounted as the Florida rate. It started being like you needed to do like two really long trips or three trips for it to make sense and. It just got to the point where it was like, I’m okay [00:40:00] going to the park for a couple days and I don’t need to be at a park every day.
So like, we did run Disney recently and there’s so much to do that we just got one park pass and that was it. And we went to Epcot to have like dinner and stuff. And so it really, it did change how much we go or what we do, but yeah, they got really pricey. I just saw an article last week and I think it was like the.
CEOs the board has recognized that the price of a Disney vacation has gone up so much in the last few, too few years that it’s now becoming a problem. So I think like that’s also like in your business, it’s smart to keep in mind like, where are my price breaks? Am I still offering things at all the different points?
And really weighing out like, yes, the annual pass cost this much, but how much more money are my annual pass holders bringing in? Does that necessitate that they get a little bit more of a discount instead of raising the rate of annual passes? Because I’ll say that, yes, I’m DVC. Yes. I had an annual pass.
I would usually bring other people with [00:41:00] me. I buy so much more merchandise because I’m not paying for my hotel room, per se, the traditional way. ’cause you get that discount, which like feels good, right? The discount is so good. It’s like, it’s 20%. So I usually, like, I have a friend who’s like, oh, can you find that spirit jersey for me?
I want another one. And then, you know, I can get them 20% off on saying that they really want it. Like, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. But yeah, so I think like think about the fact that like, okay, yeah, I need to raise rates. ’cause the price of things keeps going up, but they raise the rates and they still limited when you could go to the park because they said you have to say you had to like specifically set a date that you were going to go to, which park and annual pass holders it.
It’s not that it, you’re just a little more fluid. You’re like, I want a park hop. I want to like, I just wanna wake up and decide I’m gonna Epcot. Because you don’t go to the parks in a traditional way. You’re not waiting in line for all the rides. You’re, I mean, there was one time that it was [00:42:00] before a holiday party, and I just wanted to stop into Magic Kingdom and get some hot cocoa mugs that I wanted to buy, and they wouldn’t let me in the park because, well, you didn’t use your pass earlier in the day at Epcot, so you can’t park hot.
I was like, well, I decided not to go there. I still have an annual pass and if I had gone there, then I could hop here. Like the restrictions that they put in place combined with the price increase, it was just, what’s the point? I can’t just kind of skip over there anymore.
Amanda: Yeah. I just looked up the the pricing and.
The, I the, since I’ve had a pass, the cost has gone up 200 extra dollars and it was at the point where, I mean, ’cause I wasn’t, in Florida, I didn’t have DVC, so I did, I had to buy the top tier. Yeah. Which also is crazy. They have, let’s see, one, two, I don’t, they four. Right? Four passes and. Two of them, you have to be a Florida resident to get ’em the third one, Florida [00:43:00] resident or DVC.
And then if, so, if you’re not DVC and you’re not a Florida resident, you have to buy the most expensive one, which doesn’t make sense for everybody. It’s $1,549 right now, plus tax.
insane. And I think the way this, it was structured before there were three or four tiers for DVC. You could get, first like the, there’s Florida and then there’s DVC and Florida and then the others. So you at least still felt like, I’ve spent all this money on vacation club and I’m getting this one, but now you’re just like I’m just getting the base pass everyone else gets. And I wanna say that the first year I got an annual pass, it was like 750, maybe $800.
And now if I were to get it, it’s. You know, I think 1300 or something like that. Like it just went up so significantly. And then you multiply that, like, I fortunately have a family of three, but most people have a larger family than that. And so it just got too pricey for, I’d rather just buy the tickets for the [00:44:00] days that I’m going.
And sometimes that means that we just don’t go to the parks. Like we don’t currently have any tickets to Disney Parks for our June trip where we’re staying on site, where we’re planning to go to Universal. I will say that they did add this year for your arrival day, you get a free pass to the water park.
The water park, yeah. That started this year. We did not take advantage of that in January. It was 30 degrees when we ran the run Disney Race, and so the water parks were closed. It was just way too cold. But I’m looking forward to using that this time, and I think that was a really smart move.
So when you’re thinking about it from like a business perspective, like what things do you kind of have lying around that are underutilized and how can you, like, give that to your audience as an incentive or a bonus or just a, like, we appreciate you because I mean, the water waterparks are there. They are open every day.
They have to pay the staff to be there so. You’ve got this audience of people who, you know, maybe they land at [00:45:00] 11:00 AM and they don’t have a room yet. What are they gonna do that day? And so I think it was a really smart move to be like, we have these kind of open places. Go get that for free. And I think they’ve experimented with the water parks here, and there were so many times, like they have the water park pass that’s like ESPN and the water parks.
And like mini golf. And I don’t know that anyone ever takes that up. I will say the mini golf is really fun. So
Amanda: we’ve done the mini golf a few times.
Nicole: Yeah it usually, we ended up in a situation where our flights got canceled. They didn’t want us, we couldn’t leave for another, like three or four days, but I.
The way Disney was throttling, you had to have like date specific tickets. We couldn’t go to the parks. So we were just stuck in Disney but couldn’t go to anything. And so that’s when we did like all of the mini golf and Yeah. Went to the movie theater and like all the random things you can do,
Amanda: they do have so many things you can do.
My husband doesn’t like we are very much, we get up, we go to the park in the morning and then by [00:46:00] 11 he’s like, let’s eat lunch and get out. Like, I’m done. All the people are here. We’ve ridden all the main things. Which is fine by me, but we would do like, okay, let’s go walk over to mini golf and do mini golf this afternoon or something.
Just so it’s not like we’re still doing Disney, but it’s not so crowded. Yeah, and that’s something when you stay on site, they give you passes for mini golf, right? Like it was. Included in our stay. And so it wasn’t like,
Nicole: I think they do that extra For regular rooms. DVC, we don’t get those, but we did take a trip last summer and we stayed at Caribbean Beach.
And I remember getting them, because I remember we had a rental car and took my kid and we went in mini hall because Typhoon, the lagoon kept closing because of the weather. Like we kept getting thunder and lightening,
happens when you go in August.
Amanda: Yep. That hurricane season. Okay. I feel like we could keep talking forever about this.
We may have to do a second installment if anyone’s interested in that. Let us know the comments. But yeah, if there was one final lesson that you could share that we could all learn from Disney, what would it [00:47:00] be?
Nicole: I don’t think I have one. I would say go read Bob Iger’s book. It’s super fun. Even if you don’t read through every single chapter, he’s got a list in the bag of like all of the highlights that he’s written in there.
Like all the leadership lessons. Yeah. Mine is over there. It’s it’s one of my favorite books and he just gives so many good lessons about how you need to listen to the creatives and the experts around you. And you’re like, you’re not the smartest person in the room. So. That’s not one lesson.
There’s a lot in there, but I highly recommend gonna read that book even if you’re not interested in Disney. There’s a lot in there about just like marketing and he talks a lot about when he worked for like the sports segment. He worked for a, b, C for a long time, like he kind of got acquired by Disney when they bought.
He talks about like the mergers and acquisitions and the moves they decided to make. And I think that it’s really important to like just be inspired by that whole journey. Even if [00:48:00] you’re not into Disney stuff. I think it was really well done. So I would say go read that book. And I’m trying to think of just like one of my favorite things.
We’ve talked about so many different things. So like the minivans. I loved those when those first came out. Obviously they kind of took a hiatus during Covid, but it’s such a smart idea that they kind of incorporate stuff that’s happening in the real world and see how they can bring it into their Disney bubble.
And so minivans in and of themselves, like, I love the dad jokingness of it. I love that they look like mini mouse. And then they were like, we don’t have to build a whole app. Let’s partner with Lyft. Or like they do Lyft, but you know, partner with them. They already have an app. They already have the ecosystem, but we’re using Disney employees.
And so I just think it’s really smart of them to kind of look at what’s happening in the market and incorporate that. So the mobile ordering that they have. For parks now. So I just kind of put in all the lunch we want to eat and where we wanna eat it and what time we’re gonna pick it up. And I just hit like we’re [00:49:00] there while we’re waiting in line for something else.
And I don’t think everyone knows that exists or knows how to use it. And so we’re always eating at a good time. We’re not waiting for anyone else. We’re not losing park time. And so I think that if you think about things like what is trending around me? What things do I like to do? How do I incorporate that into my brand?
Trying to think of any other like fun lessons that we work through, but that’s a lot. Yeah. Go listen to the podcast. Maxie Dust And profits com. Yes. There’s an episode for you. Absolutely. I’m, we try to keep them like on the short and sweet side because we know your time is really important.
Amanda: Short, they’re sweet, but they’re so actionable.
Like you don’t feel like. You’re not walking away going, I got nothing from that. Like you get so much in that short and sweet, but they keep it so simple. Anyways, again, it’s my favorite podcast of all time. We’ll definitely link to that in the description. Where else can everyone find you, Nicole? I.
Nicole: So I am not as active on social media as I should [00:50:00] be.
Amanda: no, there’s no should.
Nicole: So I, but I’m very available, so if you have questions or wanna talk to me, like DM me, that’s great. So, we’ll put them in the comments, but my handles n Boucher, which you will not be able to spell by how it sounds. So, and it’ll be, we’ll put it in the description.
So I’m very available. You can DM me, you.
Related to what you are like working on in your business. We also have at Pixie Dusted Profits. Again, the podcast itself is on hiatus, but Yasin and I like this is our, we did it as a fun side project. We will talk Disney Operations Marketing Strategy all day long. It’s our favorite, so, yeah.
Amazing. That’d be great. And if you feel like you’re kind of all over the place and you’re just like shiny objects everywhere, I dunno what to work on. I know like it’s February right now, and so a lot of people are like, new Year, get your goals in order. And I always feel really overwhelmed by that. And I don’t really [00:51:00] start that process for myself until probably February when I feel like I got a grip of like all of my clients’ goals and what they’re working on.
If you feel like you’re kind of scattered all over the place and need helpless, prioritizing yourself. On my website, it’s n boucher.com/shiny. There’s a whole workbook for you. It’s all about the shiny object syndrome you can get, and it actually has just like a little flow chart of like if you are here yes no, and kind of sends you to what you should work on.
So I really recommend checking that out because that can just help you like think about things in a different way because a lot of times we. Sit down, think about working on our business. And there’s just so much of like, do I work on marketing? Do I work on like fixing that product I have? Do I like start writing emails?
What do I do? And so I think that can really help prioritize for you.
Amanda: It is really a great workbook and we will link to that in description as well, so you guys have easy access. Nicole, thank you so much for being here and sharing some lessons that we can learn from Disney. I appreciate you so very [00:52:00] much.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all the resources you need to simplify your marketing [email protected]. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you’ve never missed an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
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The post Ep. 257 6 Small Business Lessons from Disney World with Nicole Boucher appeared first on Amanda Warfield.
