Transcript generated by Podium.page
Help us spread the word by tweeting about us at @podiumdotpage and including us in your shownotes! https://podium.page
NOTE: There were 2 speakers identified in this transcript. Podium recommends using "Find and Replace" to change the speaker label to the appropriate name. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously.
0:00:00 - Speaker 1
So how would you like to get some insider scoop on how to use the Disney best practices around performance excellence to enhance your consulting or coaching? If you're interested, please listen to this episode of the enough already podcast. And welcome to the enough already podcast.
I'm your host, Betsy Jordyn.
I'm a business mentor, I'm a brand messaging strategist, and everything I do with the show and what I do with my clients one-on-one, is to help consultants and coaches forge their own pasts of success in their careers and in their lives, and One of the things that you might know about me already is I have a background as a Disney organization consultant, and this is what was the foundation of my career and Something that is really important to me, because there's a lot of amazing Disney best practices that other companies can use to scale their results and make a bigger impact, and it's really hard to figure out.
Well, how do you? How do you understand these principles? How do you apply them? And so this is no longer what I do, and I have a colleague who knows all about this. He's built an entire business around taking the Disney of principles and applying them to other companies, and so I'm really excited to have Jeff Cobra on the show to share his insights into how to apply those Disney principles. And if you've never worked at Disney and you want to learn about how to up level your consulting, you're definitely gonna want to listen in.
0:01:31 - Speaker 2
So You're very kind, thank you.
0:01:34 - Speaker 1
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
0:01:35 - Speaker 2
Thank you so much, betsy. It's just pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to just talk about things we love. So thank you.
0:01:44 - Speaker 1
Well, this one for me too, because it's giving me a chance to go back into like my roots and how much I love working at Disney. But before I get into like what your business is all about now, I'd love to get back into your background, you know. Like let's go back in time Like what was your role at Disney and what made you decide to leave Disney and start your own consulting business so.
0:02:08 - Speaker 2
So, just to even roll it back just a little bit further, because I certainly didn't grow up saying someday I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, or someday I want to be a consultant, or someday I want to. You know, I didn't even, I couldn't even have defined those words as a as a kid. When I was a kid growing up, I wanted to. I wanted to fix movies at Disney because they were just terrible and awful, and so I saw myself as a potential film director Coming in to save the day at the Disney Studios, and so I even wrote. I even wrote Ron Miller who is Diane Miller's husband, or Diane Disney Miller's husband, who ran the studio back in the 1970s, said I said I made the case, I said I wanted, I want to create movies for Disney, and he allowed me to come Actually visit the Walt Disney Studios when I was like 16, 17 years old and and I saw this vision I had for for making great movies.
Vision and reality became two different things as I grew older, because I, as I went into filmmaking in college, I thought I don't really like this. This is not me and it's not who I am, but I couldn't tell you who I was. I did know that there was a part of me that loved To speak, I loved to teach, but I didn't. I mean, my wife's a wonderful school teacher, but I didn't want to be anywhere close to kids. You know, I have kids, but I didn't want to do that kind of thing. I just didn't know what to do. And in the process I became familiar with organizational development, with instructional development, with organizational training and Training, design and development, and those became actually created, my own Masters program in college, because they didn't have anything quite like that at the time. But I was thinking these are the kind of things I wanted to do. And then then you get around to doing your thesis in your masters and all I remember is the these words from my, my, my Closest professor do something you love, because you will absolutely hate this by the time you're done.
And so one day I've gone through a lot of different topics and I said I don't know I I don't know what I want to do. I said, well, what do you love? What do you love? I said, well, I love Disney. And so then I thought, well, could I do something around Disney and training and development? And so I wrote Dave Smith, who was the archivist in charge of the archives at Disney and said this is kind of what I want to do. Can I write a thesis? And he said yes, and so now I'm here back at the Disney Studios writing this thesis and I think this is really what I want to do, but I didn't know how to translate that into a job.
I had Much less a job at Disney. I didn't want to just go and be the jungle cruise skipper at Disney. I need to take care of my family, I need to take care of my wife and kids and and, and I just couldn't quite see that. So that process took a long, took about 10 years to figure out and, honestly, it was because I happened to know the well. I actually ended up getting into the business of of developing online learning, and Disney had never done anything like that and they were wanting to do that, particularly what became the Disney Institute. Now some people know the Disney Institute is let's go learn about gardening or cooking or canoeing or something that concept didn't work.
0:06:00 - Speaker 1
You have to be a total Disney file to remember.
0:06:02 - Speaker 2
Yeah, but there was this thing back in the 80s, where they were in search of excellence, was written, and and the authors of that said if you really want to see what great organizations look like, go benchmark Disney. And out of that, people started calling up Disney and saying, hey, I want to learn more about your best practices, how you could? The customer service Can we see that tunnel underneath the magic kingdom, all those kinds of things that developed into the side thing that was happening at the Disney University, which was responsible for training the cast members or the employees. But they needed something else for these other Corporations coming in and that became its own business that eventually took on the Disney Institute name. I won't go any further on that, but that's where I came in. They were wanting to take that to a next level and and so I was brought in and it was great because I it was the same time as Judson Green, who took over the direction of all of Disney parks back then worldwide, and he was basically saying look, if I don't know if you ever saw this video, but he talked about the idea if you put your ear to the, to the, to the train tracks, it's not hard to see that there is real competition out there. And he wasn't even Referencing SeaWorld or Universal nearby, he was referencing Vegas coming in. He was referencing cruise lines long before Disney got into the cruise line, because he was referencing a bigger thing, he said. He said we got to take this whole thing to a whole new level and we can't be shooting from the hip. We've got to really develop Some smart processes. And the only way to sustain a great customer guest experience because we call them guests at Disney the only way to sustain that is by having an engaged workforce, people who are absolutely passionate and take ownership in in making the magic work. And so that became what I refer to today is the chain reaction of excellence. That leadership is the driver of an engaged workforce which drives a Highly satisfied guest experience or customer experience, which ultimately leads to loyalty and financial return and long-term profitability and all those kinds of things at the end. And so it was just a really great opportunity to To see Disney succeed in those places. Now most people are kind of assigned to a particular hotel or a park or attraction.
My experience was to be responsible for this customer service programming, whether our client was MetLife or General Electric or Siemens or a healthcare institution Whatever it may have been government organization. I needed to figure out what was the best of the best at Disney when it came to providing a great guest experience, and so I was all over the place. I was at Fort Wilderness, at the campground, I was at the Magic Kingdom, at Splash Mountain, I was at Tower of Terror on the top of the hotel, trying to figure out, okay, how do we make this into an experience? And all these different places, living, seas and so forth, and out of it, it just gave a great, better understanding of how do we deliver a great guest experience and you don't. It's not about telling people. You know what you need to do. You need to smile a lot more Smiling, that's your problem. Smile, well, smiling is important, but it's the guest experience is much more than just a couple of niceties. You know, say please or thank you on smile. It's bigger than that, and getting to understand those systems and processes and how the setting and the place you know brings it all together. That was just so insightful, and so we have an opportunity to deliver that to organizations at Disney, and it was tremendous opportunity, people.
I'll just talk about one client, if I may. And it was a South African grocery chain and all of their employees well, not all, but 98% of their employees never went on to college. They had very limited educational opportunities. So he, on one of his visits this, he just stopped in the middle of this program and he said I've got to make a phone call. They were building a new grocery store in Johannesburg. He stopped construction on that and said don't do any more construction on that till I get back. When he got back, he had them redesign it so that there would be that the grocery store chain was pick and pay, an entire Disney University type facility. Only it was better than the Disney University. It was. It was an amazing facility. And then they invite us come down and see how they put together their orientation and their training. And they did it so it connected to their store so they can learn a principle, go literally through the door and apply it on the grocery store floor and then come back and talk about it.
And it was just this amazing thing. And so they would, as an incentive, they would say that top, top, top employees of the year, the top 100, will come to Walt Disney World. Now these are people who had never been on an airplane. They didn't even know how to use an elevator. So if you, if you said your room is 232, they'd be going. Okay, do I punch two, then three, then two you know they didn't understand any of that to bring them onto the Magic Kingdom Main Street for the three o'clock parade and see this thing just come before them and then they would just glue them away.
But these were the. These were the experiences of bringing these ideas and insights to other organizations. And it was just, it was just so cool to see how inspired they could be, not because Piccaday needed to be like Disney, but Piccaday needed to figure out what. So they called it Vusalela, which was kind of the spirit of pride, of service delivery, and so they called their whole initiative Vusalela and they went and delivered Vusalela style service, and it was just very cool to see how they would take these ideas and adapt them to other organizations. And so that was, that was my experience at Disney. It's just seeing how these ideas could carry to other organizations.
0:13:05 - Speaker 1
So interesting. So you started off with the vision of, like I'm going to make Disney movies better, which I love, Disney movies.
0:13:12 - Speaker 2
So I'm not sure where you were thinking at that point in time, but Island on top of the world, Herbie goes bananas. There was a period where it tanked.
0:13:23 - Speaker 1
Okay, all right. All right, now I'm with you. So you had that idea. You knew you liked teaching. You didn't want to teach to. You didn't want to teach to younger kids, you like teaching to adults. And then your professor was saying, if you're going to like, keep working on this like master's thesis, you got to be somewhere where you actually love what you're doing, you're passionate. That's how you got hooked up with Disney again, reminding yourself of that love. And then, through some of the roles that you had, you found yourself at the Disney Institute. I wasn't quite sure you were. Were you a facilitator, instructional designer? A little bit of both.
0:13:58 - Speaker 2
Begin more as a designer. And then and we created some very amazing tools, multimedia tools and so forth, where we would actually use laser discs and be able to actually go through an interactive experience as to how a family going to Walt Disney World would experience it and, based on everybody's response, it would either go this way or this way or a third way, either positive or neutral or really bad.
0:14:29 - Speaker 1
And and not just an instructional designer, but a creative instructional designer.
0:14:34 - Speaker 2
It was a very different thing, but unfortunately it overwhelmed some of the facilitators who was used because, wait, when I came in, they said, okay, everything we're doing is with slides, and so I was like, okay, well, it's time to move on. I think we need to move on to PowerPoint.
0:14:54 - Speaker 1
Yeah, more interact or a laptop.
0:14:56 - Speaker 2
They were actually hesitant about that. They thought, oh, people lose their laptops Like. Well, this is the business and this is what we have to do and you know it takes a little while sometimes for people to catch on to the vision, but but we any rate, the longest short is. I started facilitating some of these programs to demonstrate how they were delivered, and that evolved me in the role of being a facilitator, and I had done that previously years before, but now it kind of came back to me of doing that again and I loved it and enjoyed it and and so it was nice to be able to to work particularly my focus was was they had open enrollment programs, but I really focused in on particular clients who were coming in and doing business with us.
0:15:42 - Speaker 1
So so you started as an instructional design movement into the facilitation role. So now you have this like super amazing, cool experience where you're seeing the impact. You see it in South Africa with this, with this grocery store. But so tell me a little bit, like what was it that made you leave, like this incredible dream role to go start your own business?
0:16:04 - Speaker 2
Yeah, there is no one reason anybody should leave Disney. I, because, honestly, leaving my name tag on the table was probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my career. But one of my clients was with the Department of Ed federal student aid and they had started bringing in mass groups of people and they had a consultant group working with them. And I got to know this group of people and let's just say that this opportunity to join this consulting group came about and it was a little bit. I was a little anxious, to be honest, it was. It was a big and hard decision. It was the smartest and best thing I ever did, because these people knew the business of consulting and they were the best of the best and it was a tutoring of how to best work with clients and really help them come from many times a very dysfunctional place To an evolution of growing and succeeding, and that was a powerful notion to me. So I bit the bullet. I was able to still stay in Orlando, which was important to me and my family, to my children in school and so forth, and so I spent a lot of time flying up to DC in the first couple of years and I started feeling like, huh, I really miss the Disney part of this, and I mean I could go to the parks on the weekend with the kids and my wife, but I really miss the Disney parks.
There was a feeling when I was at Disney that a book needed to be written about best practices and customer service, and so my manager and I supervisor and I we pitched the idea. The idea had to be approved by Michael Eisner at that time and he approved it, but he said it had to be a ghost ride and I was like I'm sorry, I'm the one who's created all this programming. I know what this should look like, you know, but it was determined would be a ghost writer. So I had to sit down with a ghost writer and hand off all my materials to this individual, and that person sat on it for a year and did nothing, and so it finally then finally left the project.
So we went back and said really, we want to write this and he again said, yeah, we'll write it, but it's going to be a ghost. So I had to do that a second time and so eventually, after I left Disney, that book came out and when I opened it I thought, man, this is missing the point. I know what this should look like. I know what this is all about. I started to write about Disney best in business practices and and feeling like this is okay, I still got my consulting and eventually, by the way, I'd left that consulting group, didn't leave them, actually, I just became my own consultant and then worked with them as a consultant to them and built my own business around that love that and so that that business celebrated its 20th year this year.
0:19:43 - Speaker 1
Wow.
0:19:46 - Speaker 2
And, and, by the way, never had thought that I was going to have my own business or anything. I didn't grow up to someday I'm going to have my own business. You know, didn't ever think about that, but somehow need kind of pushed me that way and I did the homework and I started and fortunately I had a lot of people to kind of support me and say, yeah, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll bring your business and we'll make it work. And that made all the difference in the world. And and so I still got to work with all these great consultants and and working in the public, private, nonprofit sectors. It was, it was really fantastic, but I did miss that little Disney aspect of it.
And so I started to write about Disney best practices, started to write articles for an online blog, and then I thought, well, I can take these articles, put them into a book, and that started my first book, the Wonderful World of Customer Service at Disney, which was my effort of retorting back to that book that Disney wrote and saying this is how that book should have been written, in my opinion, you know.
And and so wrote that book and it's now in its second edition. And then I subsequently wrote some other Disney books, also wrote a book with another business partner of mine who was with Disney. He had had a 28 year history with Disney but he was ready to move on and we saw some opportunities to partner together. So we started a second company. So I had kind of a consulting firm on my own and a consulting firm with him and that led to all sorts of business opportunities and doing things and we wrote a book together called Lead with your Customer and that's allowed me to to explore things that I I didn't have the license to do back at Disney. So that's what made that kind of fun.
0:21:44 - Speaker 1
So I love what you've been able to do with your business is it seems like you found a way to combine all of your passions. You know your passion for the learning and development side and teaching people, the consulting and helping solve dysfunctional situations which I'm sure nobody here on this call who's worked in organizations would know anything about those dysfunction they just are all feeling good, yeah, let's talk, yeah just kidding about that one.
You know, and you're bringing it together with your Disney. So you know the people who are listening into this particular episode, our consultants and coaches, and so is, if you are going to like, if we can take the remainder of our time of like talking about like. What is it that you would recommend to these consultants and coaches who are working in organizations that are dysfunctional, maybe loose siding at the cost, loose side of the customer, loose side of the employee, you know, all in service of business results? What are some tips that you would give from your Disney experience and your consulting experience to them about how they can take those Disney best practices and apply them with their organizations and their leaders and their executives?
0:23:08 - Speaker 2
Attaining results. That's number one. Attaining results to effectively working with other people. I think that really kind of goes back to that Johnson Green model, performance excellence and some people call that kind of our squared results and relationships. Let me tell you that's a starting point for so much of what I observe in leaders, whether they are in a managerial position or acting in a spontaneous manner or exhibiting personal leadership.
Just ask yourself how good are you at getting the job done? Are you competent? Are you knowledgeable? Do you set goals? Do you discipline yourself to follow through? That's the result side. On the relationship side is how are you building those relationships and understanding Others and bringing others to the table? And without the two together I just don't see that anyone is ultimately going to be very successful. I have to look at those two things and say how am I doing and how can I do better in terms of those two areas? There's lots of little points in those things, but that's where that begins. And then I would say, before you do the next one can I ask you to follow up on that one?
0:24:34 - Speaker 1
Because there's sometimes, when you deal with a leader who they're saying well, I'm just going to tell people what to do, that's my relationships. I'm going to just I'll get results done by telling other people what to do. What's the difference between what you're saying in terms of getting results through people? That's different than I'm going to get any results by telling people what to do.
0:24:57 - Speaker 2
So I think if I were to, I think if I could answer that it would be your job as a leader. When we say, attain results, you're and by effectively working with others, your job is not to just execute and to accomplish a result. Your job is to help others be successful as leaders. And so in the leadership model, I always talk about the fact that leaders are not just the managers. Do you know someone who you have worked with that didn't have the title of manager, but you'd say that person's a leader? Conversely, you know someone who was a manager but you'd say, yeah, but they were never a leader. Then let's look at how do we develop everyone to their full leadership ability, regardless of their status or title within the organization. You, as a leader, need to help create and and and foster that. Developing leaders is kind of I hope that's kind of answering the question there.
0:26:05 - Speaker 1
So it sounds like when you're helping your clients with their leadership, is that you're helping them define it or maybe sidestep that tendency, especially when you're dealing with senior leaders who have a lot of ego, who believe in command and control. What you're suggesting is let's talk about your results. And so when you're talking about the results of a leader, it's some of it is like okay, here's what the results are organizationally, but here's the results as it relates to how other people are developed around you, their leadership skills. That's one of the results. But when you're talking about the R side of the relationship, you know, are you, do you have competencies or do you have explicit, explicit coaching that you use for your clients to help them be more articulate or not more articulate, more clear about what, what relation, what positive relationships look like?
0:27:00 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I think. So what? Going back to the chain reaction of excellence that leaders drive highly engaged employees driving a highly successful customer experience and are ultimately the success of an organization During the time to really look at the data out there that says how engaged are your people? It's not whether you're engaged, it's not whether you have a good idea, but how engaged are your people. And being passionate and do they have the tools and this goes back to a lot of Gallup you 12 kinds of things Do you have? Do you? Do they know what's expected of them? Do they have the tools and the resources they need? Do they gain recognition? Is somebody you know working to develop them?
If you're not doing those kinds of things, you're not going to sustainably deliver a great experience. Your good idea as a leader may get you, you know, to the to some good results at the next quarter meeting, quarterly meeting, but your ability to deliver quarter after quarter after quarter, year after year, depends on your ability to sustain that employee engagement and get them to a place where they feel passionate and they feel ownership and they feel like you are truly supporting them. So that's what I try to focus in hone in If you can get them engaged. They'll figure out the customer problem because you've given them the tools and resources to do it. You don't need to figure out the customer problem. You need to figure out how to engage your and resource and support your employees, and they'll figure out the other problem.
0:28:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I love that. So it sounds like what you're saying is like step one is really getting clarity on the leader's purpose. You know, and the leader's purpose is all about creating that that engaged employee. Your leader's purpose isn't necessarily about the results as much as it is about engaging the employees in the results. And I'm also hearing something else in the way you help your clients is also helping the leaders create a vision for the organization that's outside of the 90 day numbers, and I think that's part of the Disney background, is Disney's you know Jim Collins talks about that built to last in, and I think, a lot of organizations, especially the ones who are owned by private equity equity firms with the expectation of flipping.
You know, people are thinking about the 90 day numbers. The street is very different now than it was even when I was at Disney. It's like the pressure for those 90 day numbers, especially since, like the 2008,. You know, recession is kind of time period, but you're still sounds like you're still motivating your leaders to think this organization should be lasting for a long time and your purpose as a leader is to engage these employees. And if you can engage these employees, the rest will take care of itself.
0:29:53 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and that manifests itself in different ways, for instance, in the military. Leaders change out every three years and so they see they see their world as three years in length. Their life is three years and so they're looking at what they could do within three years to make a difference. And that's not helpful, that's not a sustainable model, and so trying to get those kinds of archaic systems to rethink themselves, thinking it's not about just how are you going to look good in the next six months or three years or whatever it is, but how are you going to truly take the organization in a sustainable way over the long term. That's a real challenge.
0:30:41 - Speaker 1
I think this is like one of the transferable principles. I would like, just as another way of saying what you're saying, one that I might talk to my clients about, even when I work with clients one-on-one on their business, is the Disney principles one foot in today and one foot in tomorrow. They have to be looking at both of them and that is something that we talked about. All the time is like you have to have one foot in today, one foot into tomorrow and you need to be spending that time thinking it through. I mean now the thing that you're talking about the military. It's like, well, the military has been around forever as an organization, it's not going to go away Really at all.
But as a leader, be thinking about what is it that I'm going to create that's going to outlast me, and that is as a parent. You could say what outlasts me is obviously my children, but when you think about it as a leader, it's like these employees, how well they're developed, what they're able to do, and that's the part that outlasts beyond where you are today. So that feels like a really solid, seems like there's several transferable principles Anybody who's a consultant or coach to can take, as it relates to the best practices is one get the leader to understand their purpose, which is about the long term legacy. It's about developing other people, expand their view of results to also include those types of things, and when you're talking about getting things done with and through people like, that's really the outcome. So that seems to be the first part of the. It's not the value chain. In your language, what do you call it? Chain of?
0:32:11 - Speaker 2
Chain reaction of excellence.
0:32:13 - Speaker 1
Chain, reaction of excellence. A lot of us who leave Disney, we all call it the value chain and a lot of us have liked it and we call it a lot of different things.
0:32:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, it goes back to the book on loyalty. So one of the things I also tell organizations is hey look, disney's not a nonprofit. Disney is not about you know. Disney has a responsibility to its bottom line and to its shareholders. It is a business. What we're trying to do is create a business that's long term and sustainable. That's what we're trying to do, and so we have to think about those variables. That's going to create the longest trajectory for that. That's what's. That's what it's at the end of the day. Yeah, we still have to provide a quarterly report, an annual report, a return to shareholders, but to do that sustainably is the trick at Disney and I think I think that's well.
There was a. There was a time, there was a day when no-transcript Michael Eisner and Frank Wells who was second with Disney they came into one of the Disney Institute classes and they observed for 20, 40 minutes I can't remember the length and then Michael came out of the room and turned to Frank and he said see, I told you, they're just giving away all our secrets. They're just telling him how we do our business and I don't know why we're doing this kind of programming when they're just stealing our business. And Frank calmly and very wisely turned to Michael and said look, there is one thing that we do at Disney that nobody asked us. He says we work very, very, very hard. We are looking at all the details in ways no other organization is looking at. That's our secret, that's our formula for success. And if I were to suggest, particularly to consultants or to others, you cannot just think about your gig, you can't think about that presentation, you have to think about the whole experience, from the moment they're looking to reach you or contact you, to that opportunity for repeat business. And my success. I'm not, I do not consider myself to be, you know, the richest man on earth because of consulting, by no means. But I think the thing that I see as a success point is that people keep coming back to me and doing and asking for more from me, and that repeat business makes me feel like, okay, I'm providing the right kind of experience. So, whether you are an organization providing that customer experience or you're a consultant providing that experience, you got everything speaks.
We talked about that at Disney everything speaks. You build a multi-billion dollar playground and what does the guest notice? The guest notices that stray piece of paper sitting on the ground yeah, piece of trash. That's why we told every cast member everyone picks up trash. That's our second rule you create. First rule. Create happiness. Second rule pick everybody picks up to trash. Doesn't matter what your role is, what your title is, by the way, that levels the playing ground. But the important thing is that you have to look at the entire experience, even that little piece that seems, that little tiny piece. Whether you're a consultant, whether you're a major organization, you have to consider that everything speaks.
0:35:54 - Speaker 1
So I think I got an aha Like. Now I feel like I can get distilled on the essence of everything that you're talking about. That fueled your success for 20 years as a business owner and what you teach, that's the repeatable principles from Disney. The bottom line goes back to on to leadership excellence leads to employee engagement, which leads to effective, efficient processes. Which leads to the outcome, which is customer satisfaction, which leads to business results, and that is the basic fundamentals of what you teach that any consultant or coach could go in and say to what degree are these explicit and aligned with one another and how well are you living this? Are leaders doing what they need to do and creating the engaged environment to lead to the outcomes of customer satisfaction and business results?
And then, similar for you as a consultant, what is it that you're doing If you have people on your team or whether you don't have people on your team. Are you looking at creating that positive experience that creates the business results? And it sounds like what creates sustainable results is you thrill your customers and they intend to repeat and recommend, and that's how you continue to get repeat business and this you live, what you teach with your clients, and that's the fundamentals, that is, the transferable best practices that anybody could take in any organization, and you could scale them up. It doesn't matter if you have the magical Disney brand or not, it doesn't matter if you've been in business for one year or 50 years. It goes to leadership. Excellence leads to employee engagement, which leads to process effectiveness, which leads to the outcomes of customer satisfaction, business results. Did I get?
0:37:40 - Speaker 2
that right? Yeah, well, yeah, I think that's, at the heart, pretty much what it is. And then you have to ask yourself so what is it going to take for you as a leader to do that? And I go back to the day I had to think about writing the thesis Do something you absolutely are passionate about, because you're gonna hate it at some point, and the only thing that's gonna drive you through to do all those kinds of things is that passion. So find your passion within reason. I didn't end up being I would love to have been the CEO of Disney. I would have loved to have made those films. That wasn't me. I found my strengths and, finding my strengths, I could then bring that passion to the table of delivering what I need to for my clients and helping them find their passion and delivering it to their customers and inspiring, like taking your experience, the best of your experience, forward and paying it forward to other companies.
0:38:41 - Speaker 1
And you can still get to talk about Disney, use Disney as an example, but you get to pay it forward.
Even as I look for those of you who are just listening and you don't see the video in which you can find the video on my blog or on my YouTube channel there's the map of Disney right behind you.
You see all your Disney stuff there and it makes sense Like you can lead with that. But I love the whole idea too. It's like the that you apply those Disney principles to yourself and that your success formula. So as like we wrap up, I would love for you to give just a couple tips about like how, as a consultant or coach given the way how difficult it is sometimes to even land work right now and this kind of crazy economy where you're dealing with a lot of different things that you can't guarantee results of what you do because they can change a leader out how can you just encourage your, take your best practices for consultants and coaches and say this is what you can do to create raving fans who are going to continue to work with you and recommend you to others, based on the quality of your consulting coaching experience.
0:39:54 - Speaker 2
Yeah, well, I probably would to do it, to do it the best way possible. I'd probably go to find somebody like you bet see if you're gonna help. You're gonna help somebody sit there and think, okay, what you know, what is, what is it that you do best? You've got to be really clear where you stand in the marketplace. And right now, at the the funnies say that because the thing I've been sitting around all the I've really tried to get into social media and to Interactive tools and to get out there in all the different forms.
I have a YouTube channel. I have online tools through rise, articulate. I have. I have Pod podcasts and I have Web pages and so forth and a book and a book and books you know, something really old-fashioned like Pieces of paper passing together.
But I look at all of that and I say, okay, what of this is the most sustainable moving forward? That's because I see a lot of stuff out there and Out there on the web and and elsewhere. What is the thing that's that's gonna make you, that's gonna differentiate you and and sustain you long term? And I don't pretend to have all of the answers to that, but that's why I do all these things, because I'm learning along the way what it is it's going to create Again, what's gonna make me different in the marketplace and what it's gonna sustain that Moving forward. And so that's what I'm really all about right now it's trying to continually refine and build on that and and it's kind of fun To what would put it, kind of fun to do the impossible, and maybe this is impossible, but it's kind of fun along the way.
0:41:43 - Speaker 1
And where can people find out more about you?
0:41:45 - Speaker 2
Oh, Feel free to reach out to me in my organization performance journeys or to go out, if you like, all things Disney Disney insights, calm, or to my podcast, disney insights, or my YouTube channel, disney insights. But just absolutely Feel free to reach out to performance journeys contact page there or to just Jeff cobra gmailcom and Happy to you. Know, one of the smart things I ever did is on the back of my book I just put in a page saying hey, you read this, you want to do it in your own organization. Call me at that number and literally somebody, a Los Angeles Finish that my customer service book and she said well, I wonder what happens when you pick up the phone and call. And I Answered and that produced a huge amount of business over a year With that individual and we're still very close and looking forward to do other things. But I think that's yeah, feel free to just reach out to me anytime.
0:42:48 - Speaker 1
That's awesome. That's really great. So we talked about a lot of different things as it relates to your Disney background, what it means to implement the the value chain into organizations, about your sustainable success as a, as a consulting business owner. Is there anything else that you want to tell me about all of this? And I'm just not asking you the right question.
0:43:10 - Speaker 2
You know, I have an expression at the end of my podcast and it is follow the compass of your heart. And I think anytime you just really take some time to sit to listen and to think what, where do I want to go and how do I get my, how can I use, how can I use my passion to go there? So follow the compass of your heart.
0:43:35 - Speaker 1
I love that because your compass did lead you to Disney and then back to Disney and then talking About Disney, so that it feels really meaningful and I'm so grateful to have you on the show. I felt like you took me right back to the Magic Kingdom tunnel, like I could still smell the smells there. I I could still hear the music and the smell, the cookie that's, that's on Main Street and this is really fun. It was a great trip down memory lane.
0:43:59 - Speaker 2
Thank you.
0:44:00 - Speaker 1
I'm so grateful to have you on the show and I'm gonna include a picture of the value chain. If you are listening in on the podcast, I'm gonna put it on my blog so you could see it there and you can see what this these transferable, easy to understand best practices look like. So definitely check out this particular episode on my blog and, in the meantime, thank you all for listening and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you for tuning in. If today's episode lit a fire in you, please rate and review enough already on Apple podcasts or subscribe wherever you listen. And if you're looking for your next step, visit me on my website at Betsy Jordan calm and it's Betsy Jordan with a Y and you'll learn all about our end-to-end services that are custom designed to accelerate your success. Don't wait start today.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
