Join us as we unveil the magic of internal promotion – not in ranks, but in marketing! And we’re not just talking about content repurposing. We’re diving into the rabbit hole to find how strategic promotion can help you sell your products from within your existing offerings. Drawing inspiration from how Disney cleverly markets new attractions within their parks, this episode is all about leveraging what you already have to enchant and engage your customers further.

Download Episode 86 transcript right here

Nicole (00:00):
Hi everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. I’m Nicole.

Yasmine (00:04):
And I’m Yasmine.

Nicole (00:05):
And today we’re going to be talking about promotion from within. And we don’t mean job title promotion, we mean marketing. And this is all about how you can use the inside of your business to promote other pieces of your business. And I think that this often gets branded as content repurposing, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about rewriting something you’ve already done or distributing a blog post as an email and a social media post. We’re talking about actually hard promoting your other products, tools and resources within other products, tools and resources. So let’s give you the inspiration behind this episode and then we’ll talk about all these business lessons we have for you.

Yasmine (00:51):
So it all stemmed from seeing that Jamie Lee Curtis, Owen Wilson and Keith Stanfield were at the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland to promote the upcoming film, which I mean it’s, it’s out now. Haunted Mansion, I’m just gonna say is like one of my favorite, like classic Disney rides. And part of the reason is because there’s so much like fun lore behind it. Like aside from like going into the doom buggies and everything, there’s like so much interesting history, which a lot of which stemmed from the original ride at Disneyland and like we’ve been on Nicole.

Nicole (01:26):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think one of the interesting things for me, haunted Manchin was one of those things that terrified me as a kid because of the elevator room. And so I never really went on it. And then I started watching some of those behind the scenes with the imagineers that’s on Disney Plus and they had a whole episode about the Haunted Mansion and it was really fascinating to hear how the imagineers basically had two competing thought processes behind Haunted Mansion, where like, where some people were like, it needs to be scary, it’s a haunted ride. And some people were like, it has to be funny. It’s, you know, we’re Disney and so goofy. It kind of became this like clash. But they made both work somehow. So if you go on the ride, you can tell that there’s a distinct point where things turned from like spooky to just comical really. So yeah, it’s, it’s a good ride. It’s a staple. I have not had the opportunity to go on the re themed version that is the Nightmare before Christmas, but that sounds really fun. My brother was supposed to go and experience that, but they couldn’t get Oggie Boogie Bash tickets, so they decided to try again next year.

Yasmine (02:34):
Yeah, that I’ve done the Nightmare before Christmas version multiple times at Disneyland specifically. And it is it’s an adventure all on its own is what I’ll say. I just, wait,

Nicole (02:47):
Wait, wait. Like let’s go back though. Like talk about using your own stuff and repurposing it, right, right, right. Like they, they’re, they’re bringing in just for the month and it draws people in just for that. So, you know, our last episode was about limited time seasonal offers. This is about like using your own things for other things like Disney to Yeah. Using your

Yasmine (03:05):
Own IP and re theming rides, which Disney does quite a bit. Across various rides. They’ll have like special edition versions of the rides like with the like Ghost Space Mountain, which again isn’t necessarily a specific ip, but they once had like a Star Wars overlay on Space

Nicole (03:22):
Mountain. Yeah, it was in Paris.

Yasmine (03:24):
Yeah to Space

Nicole (03:25):
Mountain.

Yasmine (03:26):
Yeah. Super cool. So what inspired this episode was the fact that they had the stars from the movie at the ride to promote the ride. And like this isn’t something new for Disney. Disney frequently brings in their actors from live action versions of things to promote an upcoming film because so many Disney movies are attached to Disney attractions. One of our favorite examples of this was back when like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were all the rage, Johnny Depp would occasionally just like pop over to Disneyland. And the last part where you’re like now with the updated ride leaving, I’m trying to say like the, what is it? Like the

Nicole (04:06):
Leaving the,

Yasmine (04:07):
Just the end of the ride. Yeah, you’re, and right, so the last part of the ride when you’re just about to like leave the ride you see a Johnny Depp replica sort of like, you know, sitting on top of the Arch and like looking at you and Johnny Depp would actually go in and like, you know, be in places where like fake Johnny Depp is on the ride. And it was like super cool and it caused like a lot of publicity for the film but also the riot itself ’cause people then wanted to go to Disneyland to see if they can actually spot Johnny Depp.

Nicole (04:41):
I think what made the one about Haunted Mansion really fun is that it was multiple actors. Yeah. It wasn’t just, I mean the Johnny Depp one kind of felt like he wanted to do that for fun ’cause he loved that character so much and so he would just show up and get in full garb and and do this promotion. But the Haunted Mansion was obviously very intentional and there’s something about seeing Jamie Lee Curtis in the cast member uniform. Yeah. For Haunted Mansion. ’cause I think they were, I’m sure they weren’t operating the ride, but I think they were kind of like helping out as if they were cast members for the ride. Which I just think is a fun way to do it because it probably isn’t the type of ride they could have gotten them into an exhibit on that you could actually

Yasmine (05:20):
See

Nicole (05:20):
Them. Because

Yasmine (05:21):
Haunted

Nicole (05:21):
Mansion definitely has a lot of, like when you pass this point, the light is gonna be on a different focal point. So it’s not like they could jump into the set but a lot of fun here. And you know, you’re already in Disneyland, you’re already walking around, you probably had no idea this was happening. It’s not like they pre-announce these. Maybe if the premiere was like that coming weekend or something you might expect there, there might be mentions of it. So this is what we’re talking about where you’re in one product and you find out about another product and because you had that special experience with the first one, you’re like, oh I saw Jamie Lee Curtis, I’m gonna go see that movie. You might not have seen it otherwise. So it’s kind of that promotion within a promotion and some of the ways that this comes out in your business, and I’ll give an example because I have someone who’s working on this right now.

Nicole (06:09):
She’s putting together her first course and she’s working on teaching people different things and I said make sure at the end when you’ve done filming all of the tutorial and all the learning and all the training stuff, you go back and film your introduction. You can do the introduction first if you want, but I think it helps to go through all of the material and record all of that and then record your introduction. Because in that video you can say, Hey welcome to the program while you’re in this program you’re going to learn X, Y, Z. And you know what that is because you’ve already recorded it. And if you’re looking for the more advanced topics here, you know, I’ve got another product over here, it’s this course, you know, that’s not for right now, but I just want you to know it exists so that when you’re ready for it after this course, ’cause after this course you’re gonna learn all of these things. You’ll be ready for it, that’s over there. And obviously it not that quick. You can talk about it in different ways, but just kind of previewing what the next step is after the step they’re currently in. And so that’s a promotion for another product inside the product that they’re using. And so I want you to think about things like that and how you can incorporate more of that in your business.

Yasmine (07:18):
So similar to the point Nicole was making a lot of the time, you know, if someone joins a program, if you have an ascension model in your business, which we talk about at length on this podcast ’cause it’s something we believe all businesses should have, you need to have a pathway for them to go to next. And talking about what that next step is is so crucial and so important. You know, once they finish like, you know, an course that’s more or programs more targeted at someone who’s in the beginning stages of whatever you are teaching, you want to them to know what they have to do next to get to the most advanced stages. Maybe it’s going to a more advanced course, maybe it’s joining a mastermind, maybe it’s joining a membership where they can get, they can get ongoing support. It’s really important to really lay out what that next step is and what that pathway is so they can continue working with you. Because what you don’t want is to give them that you know, baseline of information and have them implemented and when they want to take it to the next level, start seeking out what that next level is and not immediately thinking of you. You may think like, oh they’re in my universe, they know this exists. It goes back to the old marketing adage of like, you have to say something seven times before it actually like sinks into someone’s head.

Nicole (08:33):
Well and then sometimes the other part of the what emails you have coming out in your newsletter might not match up or where that person is in your course or Exactly. Or whatever product they’re experiencing. So you might we’re all bad at promoting ourselves, so you might not even be talking about the thing that is there next level for a long time because you’re not planning another promotion for that for four or five months.

Yasmine (08:55):
Exactly.

Nicole (08:55):
So if you embed it in all the other things, it’s right there in front of their face for when they’re ready for it.

Yasmine (09:00):
Mm-Hmm. . Exactly. Maybe it’s like mentioning that this course is available and if it’s something that you only open up like once a year, the call to action is like, get on the wait list. ’cause At least they’re taking that initial step and they’re gonna receive your promotions when you know things open up again. So always make that next step clear because you wanna remain top of mind when people need you. And I can think of like countless times where this has happened, even with products like physical products, you know, you might buy something for one trip and then next like, you loved it so much, next trip, you wanna think of that brand again. So letting ’em know like the other things that you have available. I’m talking about Disney shops in particular in this example, it is helpful for me, like I travel a fair amount, a little bit less so now that I have a kiddo, but still a fair amount.

Yasmine (09:52):
And like one thing that I loved was I had bought like a duffel that also turns into a garment bag from a brand. And in my order there’s like a little like sort of brochure thingy of like the other items that they have in their line, like suitcases and stuff. And when it came time for me to like upgrade my luggage, I was like, I love this bag so much, the quality is so good. And I remember that like, oh right, they also have this. So I went immediately to them even though it was like almost a year later when this need came about, just because I like had literally glanced through the marketing material at the time and thought about, oh, that’s cool that they have that. Maybe I’ll keep ’em in mind when I need new luggage, when I need new luggage. I didn’t bother searching because I was so pleased with the quality of this one big, I felt like I would get a good deal and a good product if I purchased from that company again and I did. So promote your products from within is so, so, so important.

Nicole (10:50):
Yeah. Especially if someone doesn’t opt to purchase that right away. Mm-Hmm. , you still need to come

Yasmine (10:55):
Back to it. You wanna plant a seed, you wanna plant the seed. It’s better to do that than not be top of mind at all when they’re thinking of making that purchase.

Nicole (11:04):
I think the other thing that goes along with this is sometimes this is the work that you don’t think about if you’re doing content consistently, which most of us probably are not, but some of us are, you know, sending a monthly email, writing a blog a month, that type of thing. If you’re doing content consistently, are you going back to that content? Are you linking back to mm-Hmm products that have been created since that resource was made? Are you linking to other blog posts that you’ve made since then that are related, like planting the seed, getting the related content in there? And I mean, I would say that the contract shop did a lot of this where we’d go back to old blog posts that were still getting traction from Pinterest clicks and we would update them to make sure they linked to new contracts that exist that didn’t exist previously that were related to that topic.

Nicole (11:57):
Just going back to your old content and, and kind of weaving a web where someone who is there and who is interested is going down the rabbit hole. You need to build the rabbit hole. It doesn’t just happen. They sometimes people can be reading a blog and they’ll click the menu bar and go somewhere else, but very rarely they’re gonna click the link that’s right there. So builds the rabbit hole. If you’re just putting things out there and never linking back to another resource. I’m gonna challenge you to think about what else do I have that I can point to from this.

Yasmine (12:32):
So thank you again for joining us for another episode. I hope you learned that there are many ways that you can drive your existing customers to other products. So whether they’re ready right then or ready in the future, they will think of you when they need to make that next purchase.

Nicole (12:47):
If you wanna hear more from us, make sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast episodes. And go ahead and send us a DMM or follow us on Instagram. We’re at @pixiedustandprofits and we would love to hear from you. We love chatting Disney, we love chatting business. So just send us a message. We’re happy to chat and we’ll see you real soon.

Yasmine (13:08):
Bye.

As we gear up for our next Pixie Dust LIVE event, we reflect on how Disney theme parks consistently surprise and delight their regular visitors. From limited-time treats at the parks to the clever marketing strategies Disney employs, we discuss how small businesses can take a page out of Disney’s playbook and share some advice on how businesses can create their own “limited-time offers” to entice and retain customers. Plus, get ready for a bit of an unexpected debate about Disney merchandise.

Download Episode 85 transcript right here

Yasmine (00:00): Hello and welcome back to the eighth season of Pixie Dust and Profits. I’m Yasmine.

Nicole (00:07): I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s been eight seasons. I’m Nicole.

Yasmine (00:11): Yeah. Like can you believe it? Like, it’s been eight seasons of doing this and I just remember like a couple years ago we were at a retreat sitting a few people apart, you know, looking at each other, being like, gonna start our podcast this year. Yeah, we’re gonna start our podcast this year.

Nicole (00:27): And that was after we had started the idea for the part podcast. Like, I don’t know, a year earlier. Yeah.

Yasmine (00:33): Where we first met. Yeah.

Nicole (00:35): It

Yasmine (00:35): Took us a year to decide. We wanted to do a podcast where we could talk about Disney and business are two favorite subjects in the world.

Nicole (00:41): It’s, it’s been really fun. Gosh, we’ve gone through so much like it started out as just being really excited about Disney and business case studies and then we went through like the pandemic and now we have retreats in Orlando with female business owners who wanna get stuff done and have some magic in the background while they do it. And our next one’s in February if you didn’t know. So go ahead and check that out at pixiedustandprofits.com slash live.

Yasmine (01:10): And we are actually splurging on the ultimate Disney experience in this one. We are renting a three bedroom villa for the retreat. So if you attend with us, you can stay in one of like Disney’s biggest rooms that they offer on property, which we’re super excited about. And it’s, it’s probably gonna be like a, maybe a once in a lifetime experience for us too, because those things are crazy expensive. But we managed to make the numbers work for this retreat.

Nicole (01:39): Yeah, and you know what, talking about going to Disney as often as we have, which I feel like it’s slowed down, it’s probably once a year or so now, but it, you get to try something different every time. Right. And I tell this to people all the time, you know, sometimes it can be a little bit embarrassing when my kid’s like, we’re going to Disney and so i’s like, oh, have a great time. Is it your first trip? And then he looks at them and says this is like my ninth or 10th trip. And so as a mom you’re like, but you know, that’s where we spend our vacation money and the thing that we love about it is that we don’t stress about mm-hmm. hitting certain rides or having to do everything. And every time we find something a little bit more fun and magical, we’ve definitely talked on this podcast about like the scavenger hunt around Epcot.

Nicole (02:25): And I think the last time we were there something came up and it was one of those days where there was like a rainstorm and somehow we just started collecting all of the 50th anniversary trophies on the play Disney app. And so we actually ended up getting all of them because we made like a last minute 7:00 PM run to Magic Kingdom to just collect them all, you know. So yeah, this episode’s all about the things that Disney does to surprise and delight the regular visitor, but also those repeating visitors with limited time offers.

Yasmine (03:05): Yes. And this is one of my favorite things about going back to Disney. Like obviously by the time I tend to go back every year, there’s usually like a new ride. You know, they, on average they put out like one new ride a year at minimum. It

Nicole (03:20): Feels like that, especially

Yasmine (03:21):

With Nicole (03:22): Tron and yeah.

Yasmine (03:23): Galaxy’s

Nicole (03:23): Edge and I don’t even know what’s coming out next

Yasmine (03:26): Party’s the Galaxy Ride that we went on. Oh my God, that’s like my new favorite ride at Epcot. But in addition to that, Disney is really, really good with their limited time offers, like Nicole said, primarily in the areas of merch and snacks. And I think we’re gonna kick it off by talking about snacks ’cause

Nicole (03:47): That we can, but then you said merch and I started thinking about like the hundred anniversary a hundred years as their current merch line. Mm-Hmm. I don’t really love it as much as I loved like the purple colors they had for the 50th celebration. And it’s also really confusing to go from a 50th celebration to a hundred years. But, you know, Disney does their own way of making all of these things feel very limited time and very special, but for food. Okay. So food is like the easiest thing for Disney to make special and different. So you’ve got stuff like May the fourth for Star Wars and they start having like special popcorn buckets that only come out. Then I, this is making me think about the P bucket for Figment and Epcot where there were lines all the way to the front of the park waiting to get this figment popcorn bucket. I think when we started looking at some of the more recent ones, 6 26, so June 26th, 6 26 was stitches experiment number in Lilo and Stitch. So they had a special like blueberry lemonade, mose cake just for stitch and it looked like him. So I wanted to see like if there’s anything recent, and I just have to share this because I don’t even think I’ve shown Yasmin the picture yet, but Yasmine loves Dole Whips. If you don’t know I

Yasmine (05:05): Love Doll Whip, like

Nicole (05:07): It’s a special, I we were on pixie dust live and you had blisters all over your feet.

Yasmine (05:13): Yep.

Nicole (05:14): And the only thing you did, you walked to the Dole Whips, you got your Dole Whip and then you were like, I have to go back to the room.

Yasmine (05:21): Do not get your shoes wet on the first day because you’re walking in the rain and then proceed to walk around Epcot in those wet shoes because your feet will not like you pro tip.

Nicole (05:33): But the, the Dole Whip must have helped. But

Yasmine (05:35): I, I will suffer for Dole Whip every time. It’s so good.

Nicole (05:40): So if you don’t know right now it’s early October, this episode’s probably coming out early November. So, so the Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party is going on and one of the treats that they have right now, they like to experiment with Dole Whips and at Storybrook Treats, which storybook treats, which is right between like meeting the princesses and Winnie the Pooh. They have all these like limited edition ice creams and that’s usually the ice cream cone you see snapped on Instagram because it just looks so cool. I still remember the one that was like Rapunzel. But right now they have the Hades Cone and so it’s a dull whip that’s coated with like just some like blue raspberry shell. It’s super sweet. It looks like Skittles. But then they put some Totten sauce, no, like

Yasmine (06:29): Spice Spice

Nicole (06:30): On top of it and it’s the Hades cone. ’cause You know, he’s a little bit spicy, but he’s still cool. But yeah, they just do stuff like this all the time. So even if I am not an ice cream person, if I get a some ice cream, like my husband will eat it all in the house. That’s not, that’s not my vice. But it’s, they just look so fun. How can you not go and get the fun looking ice cream cone?

Yasmine (06:52): Seriously? It’s so good. The

Nicole (06:53): Cone is blue.

Yasmine (06:55): Yeah. And like I, I’ll be honest, every time I go to Magic Kingdom or any park, I totally overestimate the amount of snacks I can eat. Because I’m like, I have a list of like five things I wanna try and I get like two off of the list and I’m so full. And I think it has something to do with like the Florida heat. Yeah,

Nicole (07:14): Yeah.

Yasmine (07:14): I, it, I think it just like kills my hunger a little bit. But I’ve only been able to try a special edition Dole Whip once because I always have to get the original, like I have to, it’s, it’s a non-negotiable on my trip I need to get Dole Whip. But then after that I got like a seasonal Dole Whip and I think it was actually the Polynesian Oh

Nicole (07:34): Yeah. Who

Yasmine (07:34): Went together. I got like a, one of the special like float type thingies that they had at the time. And it’s so good. And like, that’s the thing about Disney, like you will constantly see Disney influencers or just people going to the park sharing these limited edition treats and you have to be there to try it because they’ll go away and I will like literally look up all of the fancy treats that they have before every trip because I wanna make sure I’m gonna try the one that they have villa at the time before it’s gone.

Nicole (08:04): So when we’re thinking about these like limited time offers, right? It really comes back to like our businesses. Mm-Hmm. Like what are you doing that’s for a limited time? And it could be the product that you sell, you are just having the doors open and close. It could be that you’re doing like a special, you know, I’m just doing this seven day program and it’s the only time that you can get it. ’cause I’m, I’m, this is what everyone’s feeling right now. So I’m leaning into that and we’re gonna do this all together. It could be if you’re a product seller, you know, just you see trends that are coming out and you’re like, limited edition, let’s follow in on the trend. And so Disney does this with everything. Like food is obviously an easy way for them to mix things up because it’s just food.

Nicole (08:48): You’re putting different ingredients together. But they do this even with like their credit card designs. Mm-Hmm. I just got a mailer yesterday that was like, we now have Avengers credit card designs, turn in your design and get a new one. I’m still holding on to my 50 year anniversary with the pretty gold sparkly castle, but my husband did just change his to Darth Vader. So, you know, they send these flyers out to like get a new card. So you’re excited about your credit card just to see that it looks different. And so you can think about this in terms of like drops mm-hmm.

Nicole (09:23): And just especially with merch, but you can do this with a service-based or a digital product-based business as well.

Yasmine (09:33): I mean, that’s like trial offers too. For example, having like the first month of your membership discounted to let people, you know, try it out for a limited time and then, you know, renew them on the regular price. It could be, you know, offering something up for free for a limited time and then charging for it. One of my clients, this is in October, literally just wrapped up a big summit. And Nicole, I know one of your clients is that too every year. And you know, we have the sessions available for people to watch for free for the first 24 hours, but after that, if they want to catch a sessions or watch them again, they need to upgrade to a pass, which is a very like, nominal fee that gives ’em access to a ton of value. But these limited time offers get people through the door by offering the sessions for free upfront. People get to like sample things out, see they like it and they’re willing to invest to get access to everything. So

Nicole (10:27): Especially these days where, I mean I, if you’ve been in this space long enough, you’ve probably bought a course from someone mm-hmm. That you didn’t need or you got into it and you’re like, oh, I already knew all of this. Or you get into it and you’re like, I can’t believe I was charged that much and the videos this quality or something like that. And so summits really give a great way of reviewing what you’re going to see inside and what you’re going to get. And so it’s definitely like limited time kind of puts people in a little bit of a pressure cooker to make a decision, but at the same time it also gives them a taste of something fun, something exciting something that’s different from the norm. I was actually talking about this recently with a client who, you know, has this course where she’s teaching people something about art and then from there she’s like, how do I do more of this?

Nicole (11:18): But not shortchange the people who were, who bought it already. Like, do I have to give them everything I make for the next two years for free? Like, no, like, I’m a gamer. Let me think about this in terms of gaming, you have a season pass to the content, right? So you’ve got the baselines that you needed to know and now we’re gonna do a seasonal drop. And for this season you, you’re gonna have all of these new things to learn and we’ll do all of that together. And you have access to it forever, but you’re, you’re only getting the season pass with these six new things that we’re teaching. So I think about it in, in content drops and season passes when it comes to things like I’ve been playing Diablo lately and season two’s coming up, right? So those are the things that you think about where, how can we take what they’re doing in other industries and kind of morph them in a way and use them how it works for our own businesses. But I love the idea of a seasonal drop. So it’s, it also makes your course more affordable because then you can say you’ve got these options you can add on. So once you’ve got the basics, now you can learn the more advanced stuff and you’re not trying to put people in, get access to everything for $2,000. And that’s really off-putting to someone who is a beginner or a novice and they’re just like kind of trying to dabble or it’s their current fixation for, you know, 30 to 90 days.

Yasmine (12:43): I know that give them

Nicole (12:43): The opportunity.

Yasmine (12:45): Yeah. And like the other thing that I love about that idea is we don’t put our customers in a position of information overwhelm, which has been the trend with courses I would say in the past couple years where it’s like, oh my gosh, that’s

Nicole (13:01): Everything. Yeah.

Yasmine (13:01): All this information for this like, price. And then it ends up being like so much people don’t know where to start. Right?

Nicole (13:09): We did the advice for so long was like, get that, that image stack graphic that has absolutely everything. And then you started seeing these ads on Facebook or Instagram that were like, it’s an iPad screen and a phone and then a computer monitor and on that laptop and then a digital like printed thing. And like it’s just the whole screen is taken up by these like mockups of what you’re going to get. And it was just, I think especially after the pandemic, people are like, I need to simplify. I need less in my space. I need to focus. Even if I don’t feel like I can focus, I just, I can’t handle giving me the kitchen sink ice cream from Beach Club.

Yasmine (13:54): Wholeheartedly agree. It ends up being just too much to parse. And I, and the idea originally was to show the value, like you’re getting all this stuff for this incredible price, but like, it, it’s sort of like buying something on sale that you don’t necessarily need. Just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to buy it, you know? And in this case, like you’re getting all these things that you might not need and you could be paying more than if you just got like that one thing you need. But how do you know? ’cause There’s so much to go through. So

Nicole (14:25): It reminds me of those promotions that are like, get to $50 for free shipping. Mm-Hmm.

Yasmine (14:30): <Affirmative>.

Nicole (14:30): And sometimes they’re good ’cause it’s like, oh, okay, I can get to $50. But when they’re like, get to $70 for free shipping and all of the things that you wanna buy, add up to $69 mm-hmm like, it feels slimy and it makes me abandon my cart entirely because I’m like, oh, now I’m not getting a discount because you’re forcing me to spend a hundred hundred mm-hmm., like, I’m willing to spend 75 mm-hmm.

Nicole (14:54): And so you just kind of feel like gross about it. And so I think there’s a balance to everything we do. And just like anything else in life, sometimes it goes a little too far in one direction and I think we’re swinging back in the opposite direction where it’s all about simplicity and then we’ll go back into the middle in another year or two. Like it’s just gonna, it’s a pendulum, it’s gonna keep swinging, but simplicity I think is key right now. So yeah, think about your business, how you can bring in this like limited time exclusive merge, just short term fun. Like how can you bring that into your brand? Maybe it’s in how you do your social media. It doesn’t even have to be related to your product. I think Nicole Yang does a really wonderful job with this. If you go look at her Instagram profile, she kind of has like a magazine where two, like six, it’s like a six block.

Nicole (15:46): So the first two rows of her Instagram show, like, here’s what’s going on. It looks like a magazine. It’s a different color from the month before. It’s fun. It’s like, it feels like, it feels like a content drop. It feels like you’re getting something new. So it doesn’t have to necessarily be about your products or sales or anything like that. It could just be in how you’re talking to your audience or where you’re showing up. Do a two week content drop by trying out TikTok and then go back to your original audience and say, here’s, I spent two weeks on TikTok. Here’s what I learned. It, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy, but it has to be fun.

Yasmine (16:20): So true. So thank you for joining us for our first episode back for season eight. We’ve got so many things to talk about this season, lots of ideas. So definitely stay tuned if you want to join. Nicole and I live at Disney World for Pixie Dust & Profits live in February. We still, I think we have one seat left, Nicole.

Nicole (16:41): Yeah, just one.

Yasmine (16:42): Yeah. And we don’t expect that to last for long. So head over to pixiedustandprofits.com/live. If you don’t follow us on Instagram. We are @pixiedustandprofits on there. And thanks again and we’ll see you real soon. Bye bye.

In this episode, we discuss the changes to the Genie+ system at Disney, sharing our experiences – both successful ones and not-so-successful ones. Though the fluctuating prices of Genie+ can be frustrating, a dash of strategy here and a sprinkle of Pixie Dust there, and you’ll conquer these parks without breaking the Genie+ bank to make the most of your next Disney visit.

Download Episode 84 transcript right here

Nicole (00:00):
Hi everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. Today we’re talking all about the Genie+ Changes. Now, if you dunno who we are, I’m Nicole.

Yasmine (00:10):
And I’m Yasmine.

Nicole (00:11):
And this is our summer snack series of Pixie Dust & Profits. We’re bringing you short and sweet episodes for the summer while you’re probably taking some time off your business or we hope that you’re taking some time off of your business. So today we have some brand new CHA changes coming for the Genie+ system. If you haven’t been to Disney since the Pandemic Genie+ is essentially what replaced the Fast Pass system of years past. We now have this kind of two-tier system for Lightning lanes where you can buy individual lightning lanes to the big ticket rides. Like what do we have? Seven Doors, mind Train, rise, is that still? Yeah, rise on it. The

Yasmine (00:51):
I think so. Tron as well. The Neutron Ride.

Nicole (00:54):
Yep. Guardians of the Galaxy. All of

Yasmine (00:56):
Of those rights of the resistance.

Nicole (00:58):
And so you can buy the individual passes to those rides that would otherwise have a very long wait or have a high demand. And then you can also buy Genie+, which is access to a system that allows you to re reserve a Lightning lane pass for one ride at a time. And you can only ride the red once. So if you’re familiar with Universal, you can buy an express pass that lasts all day long and you can go on the ride as many times as you want. And so today we’re talking a little bit about these changes. So at a baseline, all you really need to understand is when you buy Genie+ you have access to being able to get lightning cleans at all of the parks right now. And so there’s strategies around it. I will send you to Wish upon a planner if you would like to learn all the strategies, but we’ve had some good times and some times where it was kind of a waste of money. It can vary. It used to be a flat rate of, what was it, like $11? The first time we did it,

Yasmine (02:00):
It was 15. So when we had gone to Disney with Pixie Dust & Profits live, this was like two years ago, right Nicole? Yeah, it was like our second day. That was literally, it was literally, yeah, the second day it came out, the first day it came out, Nicole and I were there. We got it to try around at Epcot just to see what it was like to familiarize ourselves with it. And then the second day, that was when everyone else joined us and you know, we started using it for our park trips and yeah, it was 15 bucks per person. Yeah, think it’s not 15 bucks per person anymore. I’m not talking box for a person anymore.

Nicole (02:30):
I was there as a personal trip in April, which was kind of during the spring break time, so that’s probably one of the most expensive times of the year. And I think there was a day that it was like $25 each. So it can get pretty pricey if you have a large group. Fortunately only have a family of three, so it’s not too bad for us. But, you know, we’ve had the great experience where on one trip I was grabbing lightning lanes all morning long for the park. We were going to go to that night night, which was Hollywood Studios. And somehow we got to Hollywood Studios at seven at night. It was just me and my husband that our kiddo was with his grandma and we had lightning lanes for everything. We had like Rise, slinky Dog, millennium Falcon tower Terror was closed at that point I think.

Nicole (03:17):
So we didn’t get a chance to go on that, but we, we basically had everything all for after 7:00 PM so that was an amazing experience and probably like best case scenario, but I’ve also been on the flip side of that coin where we, we purchased it for a day also at Hollywood Studios hoping to save some time and you know, my kid very bravely went on rides of the Resistance for the first time and really enjoyed it. But he was done with rides after that. He did not want to go on any other rides. And so we had bought this Genie Plus and really did not use it that day at all. We didn’t get any of our money’s worth at all. So definitely go check out Wish Upon and Planner if you need some good strategies for using it. But I, we say all of this because to give context to the changes, there were definitely parks that you would just say no, I don’t need Genie Plus if I’m going to Animal Kingdom today the Safari is really never more than like a 15 minute wait for at certain times of the year.

Nicole (04:14):
Expedition Everest, you can walk on the single rider line most of the time and even when you wait with friends, it doesn’t take that long. It’s just not a park where lions are the problem. And so

Yasmine (04:26):
And the rides that do have long lines, well there’s the individual Lightning Lane pass for that. Yes. Like flight of Passage, the avatar ride, so

Nicole (04:34):
Right. So it’s a separate pass. So why would you buy Gen Plus if you’re just gonna buy that individual more premium ride? So you know, it’s not really worth it for, for that park. And then Epcot to a lesser extent, depending on what you wanna do at Epcot because you know, I think it’s cosmic rewind, the Guardians of the Galaxy Rollercoaster is on its own individual pass, but Remy I believe is now on the regular pass for the day. Mm-Hmm. So you’re really getting it for test track Remy and frozen. And you know, if you don’t have kids that are interested in any of those, then you might not need it. Testra being the one that goes down the most often. And I’d say if you really, really, really need to go and test track, you might wanna consider it. But essentially Disney saw this, right? They saw the data they had, they saw, you know, what people going into Animal Kingdom and people going to Epcot or not buying Genie Plus and we want them to buy it because that’s more money in our pockets.

Yasmine (05:30):
Well, especially as the prices increased. So originally it was sort of like a flat rate of like $15 per park, but then it started to increase based on how busy the parks were. Right? So it was like it was demand, right. Higher demand for it higher price and you know, there would be days where the price would go up to 30, $32. I think even 34 I remember hearing for

Nicole (05:53):
Gene Yeah. In March person

Yasmine (05:54):
During

Nicole (05:54):
Spring break. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the thing about the Genie plus to get the most use out of it in some ways you kind of had to buy park hop tickets because mm-hmm, you would, you know, in the morning you would kind of get your lightning lanes for the afternoon for whichever park you were switching to. And they, they put somebody restrictions around park hopping that you can’t do it till after 2:00 PM and you have to go to your new park because of the pandemic that I think they just started seeing that this was all getting so complex. I mean some of you probably understand everything we are saying and the rest of you were like, I can’t follow any of this. And so they knew that this is getting complex for their audience. They could tell with the questions coming in, the complaints at the customer service booths, what, what do they call them? Like the customer experience, like those happy booths they have? Yeah,

Yasmine (06:45):
The guest services. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole (06:47):
So they were, you know, they have all this data and so one of the things that they decided to do was, well, we still wanna get our money for Genie Plus and we still wanna have this dynamic pricing so we can charge more money when things are busier because we’re Disney and we want revenue and profit. So now they’ve split it. So you can buy a multi park Genie Plus or you can buy a single park Genie Plus. And in some ways it simplifies things based on like if you have a park hopping ticket or not. I think they’re also doing away with needing to have park reservations starting in January, which is should also help this kind of problem where you’re like stuck into a park.

Yasmine (07:29):
The caveat right now though is like, that’s for dated tickets is what they’re guaranteeing like after January. Yeah. So if you buy like a gated ticket, I, I said gated, I meant dated. So it’s for like, you know, January 4th through 17th or whatever. That’s a really long window, but you know what I mean, like yeah, you don’t have to worry about reservations. Not a hundred percent sure if it’s completely being done away with for annual passes, but we’ll see.

Nicole (07:52):
Yeah. So like with all this backstory, I think the thing we really wanna touch on is, first of all, Disney makes their decisions based on data, but that doesn’t always mean the, they are ignoring like the feelings part or the like how users actually use it. So yeah, they’re getting a lot of questions and confusion and you know, they’re like, okay, we’ll make a, a single park pass and a multi-part pass and it’s cheaper for these. And we have some that are on their individual passes. It’s still really complex to understand and they’re trying so hard to be innovative because they’re Disney that when you turn around and look at what other parks are doing, like universal, universal is very expensive. It’s, you know, the trips I’ve been in the area that’s at least $200 a person. But you go and you get this unlimited express pass, it’s $200 and you can use it the whole day at the park you’re at. You just keep going on the ride, you wanna go on, they have a lane for you to like walk right on and you can go on that ride however many times. I think we did Flight of the Hippogriff five times cuz my kid really enjoyed that. You know, family rollercoaster. So Disney’s trying so hard to be innovative and different that is this really helpful? Yeah. So they just charge $300 for a pass .

Yasmine (09:14):
I mean if they charge $300 for a pass, I think we would see a lot of, a lot of angry posts in Facebook groups and and stuff. Absolutely. But, but yeah, like they’re, they’re trying to, you know, like created this amazing app. I mean maybe amazing is debatable, but they created this like complex app which does a lot like, it gives you recommendations on how to plan your day. It takes into consideration like where you are in the park and what you have planned to help guide you. Which if you were newer to Disney, that can be a valuable tool in your pocket. But of course with it comes all of these you know, priced experiences that historically were free and included in your park ticket. Like in the past the benefit was booking on Disney property because you got advanced access to picking out your fast passes, you get three per day and then after that it’s like once you use all those up you can get an additional one but you’d have to like use up your initial three.

Yasmine (10:09):
And it was it was, you know, great for everyone cuz it sort of leveled the playing field, but with obviously increasing costs and seeing what other parks are doing, Disney knew that there was revenue to be made. So they created the Genie Plus system and it sort of worked into all of the restrictions and changes that came after the pandemic. Everything sort of changed. So it was an easy way for them to be like, well we’re not doing Fast passes anymore, we’re doing this. But one thing that I have to give Disney props for, does anyone say that anymore? Nicole? Giving props my dating myself. I think I just did.

Nicole (10:44):
Yeah. You know, they, they take the w

Yasmine (10:46):
Yeah, they took the W Yeah, yeah. What what Disney takes a W four. Please don’t make fun of me on the internet. Any Gen Z we’re totally

Nicole (10:59):
Get a DM that’s like you use that entirely wrong. Yeah, yeah.

Yasmine (11:03):
Well, but they are not afraid to kill their darlings and in this case they’re not killing Genie Plus, but Disney is like, they have, they’ve scrapped entire projects that they’ve invested quite a bit of money into. If they saw that it wasn’t gonna, you know, bring a good return the Star Wars hotel, right? Like that’s the most recent one. They literally scrapped a product they spent millions upon millions on because it just wasn’t profitable. And they’re gonna shift directions and who knows what they’re gonna do. We’re gonna find out hopefully in the coming months and years. But they are okay with taking the data into consideration, taking the customer feedback and shifting gears because they do not want to sink money into something that is not maximizing revenue for them and profits. And

Nicole (11:55):
I think this is really important to keep in mind as a small business owner, like oh hundred percent, I have seen so many clients who are just like changing things nonstop . And it’s like, you know what, sometimes I get frustrated as the operations manager with that because it’s hard to like keep projects on track. But at the same time, like Disney isn’t afraid to just up and say, you know what, we’re completely changing the system. We don’t care that you already have a trip planned cuz people plan their trips but like a year out and they’re just, okay, you know, there’s gonna be millions of people that this will affect and we’re just gonna, we’re gonna roll it out and we’ll deal with the customer service that comes with it. So, you know, take some of those chances of like, don’t be afraid to, to change things if they’re, you know, not working. But it’s so interesting because I feel like this system is still so complex mm-hmm and they’re still trying to do it with data. But you know

Yasmine (12:51):
What, the price will increase and decrease depending on demand to a degree. But like you’re no longer paying 34 bucks for Animal Kingdom. It’ll be like 16 or $17 in. Yeah.

Nicole (13:00):
I feel like a lot of these parks are like, let’s do the premium experience where it’s just like easy one and done. You know, we upsell you how many people are gonna convert when something’s $300 versus you know, the mobile game method that Disney’s playing here where it’s like, oh, it’s just an extra 10, it’s just an extra 15. And then, you know, you look at your credit card statement at the end of the month and you’re like, oh, that was a lot of extra 10. Yeah.

Yasmine (13:27):
One of my my in-laws friends explained it as like, 30 dollaring you to death. It’s like, oh, it’s $30 for this, it’s $30 for that. They, they were talking about like yard equipment cuz we had recently renovated our backyard and need to get like a new hose attachments, like, oh, it’s just $30, but you’re like spending 30 here, 30 there. Before you know it, it’s like several hundred dollars that you have spent without really thinking of it because you just see, oh, it’s like 10 bucks per guest or 16 bucks per guest. Yeah, that’s not that much, but spread it over your whole trip. It adds up a bit.

Nicole (13:59):
Absolutely. And you know, when we come back to like your, your business, what, what products do you have? What price points do you have? Are you trying to be the, let’s have a lot of things at $27 and go for like volume where, you know, Disney probably nets out ahead of Universal in this, you know mm-hmm. Realm. And some of that’s just due to the sheer numbers Disney brings in. But when you look at it, it’s probably because of what Yasmine Yasmines was just talking about what Yasmine, princess deal, what Yasmines was just talking about, right. Where you are $30 to death and you’re just $30 doesn’t sound like much when you’re looking at a water bottle that’s $8. I won’t say that their water bottles are probably closer to $4. It’s the, it’s the alcoholic beverages that Yeah. Get into the numbers when you’re like, oh, well you, you know what? I can get Genie+ instead of getting a margarita, it’s the same prey. Mm-Hmm. But yeah, so just, just keep in mind it’s okay to change, it’s okay to be innovative, but at the same time make sure you’re getting data from your customers on like, is this working? And some of that data might be indirect, it might be nobody’s buying

Yasmine (15:10):
Mm-Hmm. and I recently went through an experience with this, with a client of mine, and I know like Nicole, you’ve been seeing this in the industry as well, where, you know, we have a premium product and it comes with a premium price and we notice that sales are down because literally like we’re in a recession, you know, people are holding onto their dollars a little bit more, but they still want that support. We still get, you know, an outreach of messages people for people looking for support. So we looked at, you know, we have our product, it’s a good product. We don’t necessarily want to change the product, but we need to change our strategy for bringing revenue into the business. And rather than, you know, steeply discount our products and take away from the premium value that this client offers, we looked into creating a newer lower cost product that wouldn’t necessarily, you know, take away from her current offerings.

Yasmine (16:03):
And that’s a product that we’re working on right now to bring in revenue and you have to be able to like adapt and you have to be able to change. And one of the consequences of introducing this product is we ended up killing one of our launches that we typically have every fall because right now it wasn’t the right time for it. You know, we knew that the projections weren’t going to help us hit the goals that we needed to as a business, so we pivoted to a degree. And that indirect feedback was what drove it ultimately. So like, don’t be afraid of change, but at the same time I wanna caveat like don’t change things all the time too quickly. Like it’s easy to have like, you know, a fear of something not working and wanting to pivot right away, but like, wait for some data that like, that’s important because what you don’t want to do is be all over the place.

Nicole (16:56):
Well thanks so much for joining us today and make sure you tune in for next week. We’ll have another summer Snack bite series episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. By the way, if you’re interested in joining us at Pixie Dust Live, which we talked about earlier in this episode, you can go to pixiedustandprofits.com/live to find out about our new events or sign up about the wait list when our events eventually fill up, which they always do. So thanks for joining us today and we’ll see you real soon.

Yasmine (17:23):
Bye.

In this episode, we discuss a seemingly peculiar design choice of Disney Parks: the bathroom mirrors. More specifically, how they’re intentionally placed away from the hand-washing stations for a very conscious reason—and it’ll make so much sense once you hear it! (No one preens like Gaston, after all.)

Download Episode 83 transcript right here

Yasmine (00:01):
Nicole, you know what really grinds my gears? It’s when

Nicole (00:04):
I’m sure the list is long, so like, can we narrow it down?

Yasmine (00:08):
Okay. Okay. So what grinds my gears at Disney is when I am in the bathroom, you know, I’ve done my business washing my hands and I wanna adjust my ears because, you know, they get like wonky during the day and there’s no mirror. Like, have you ever noticed that if you go to a Disney washroom and you’re washing your hands at the stations, there are no mirrors?

Nicole (00:29):
Yeah, pretty, pretty often. I, I, I know that I’m always like, I have so much hair, so it’s so hot down there and I hate putting my hair up. But in Florida it’s kind of a necessity. Necessity sometimes. So, and after the rollercoasters when your hair is like all over the place, you’re like, I just wanna make sure that I don’t look like a crazy person, .

Yasmine (00:46):
Right, right. Well, before we get into this episode, I do wanna introduce us and say, welcome to Pixie Dust & Profits. We are doing our summer snack size series where we are doing shorter episodes every week to keep you motivated in your business all summer long. And, and today we’re gonna be talking about keeping things moving. So Nicole, why don’t you tell us why Disney has no mirrors?

Nicole (01:09):
Yeah, so if you go to Disney, you’ll notice this, especially in the newer areas. So if you go to Magic Kingdom, this may not be as true. Mm-Hmm, because all of the restroom areas are older, you know, 50 years, there was just an anniversary. But if you go to probably like the Rati area, often you’ll find that the bathrooms in Disney are intentionally designed. They’re always available in some quick to get to location, so they’re always thinking about that. But the bathroom itself, Disney is a place where queuing theory and engineering need to be top-notch because so many people go there every single day. So in the bathrooms you’ll walk in and, you know, there’s the stalls and then there’s where you wash your hands. And usually there is not a mirror where you’re washing your hand, it’s actually in like the outside area where people may be waiting in line to for their turn. And there’s a reason for that. And the reason is, first of all, it reduces vandalism. You can’t have cameras in a bathroom, but if there’s beers there, people know that, like other people can see them. So there’s that. But mostly it’s to keep people moving because if you’re standing there waiting to wash your hands and someone’s putting their lipstick on or

Yasmine (02:27):
Or adjusting their ears,

Nicole (02:28):
Adjusting their ears or their hair or whatever it, you know, that’s just going to take extra time. And so you’d end up waiting and then no one can move between the stalls because you’re taking all the room up in the middle. Like it’s really intentional that they, in the newer restrooms have the mirrors in a separate location. They’re also full like mirrors. So I actually really appreciate it cuz then you can see your whole fit.

Yasmine (02:49):
But yeah, they don’t want to have any bottlenecks in the bathrooms and they wanna keep things flowing. And you know, Disney does that in a lot of interesting ways in other parts of the park too. And I could go into more detail on that, but this is a snack size series. We’re keeping it short and sweet. So what we wanna do is look at bottlenecks in your business. And I know that we’ve talked about, you know, bottlenecks in the sense of like, sometimes you are the bottleneck in your business, you’re slowing progress down, but in this case we wanna look at things more systemically. What are the processes in your business that keep everything from flowing smoothly? I can speak to one in my product based business. Should I start there, Nicole?

Nicole (03:32):
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So let everyone know what your product based business is.

Yasmine (03:36):
So in addition to this podcast and running my consulting company, I do run sort of a crystal and, you know, ritual tool shop called Lunar Drift apothecary. And back when I first started the shop, we had like a really, really high volume of orders. And it was, it was a little bit crazy. I I would basically work, you know, from nine to five in my consulting business and in the wee hours of the morning when I was not with my daughter, when she basically before she woke up, after I dropped her off at school and at night after she went to bed, I was like packing orders, like nonstop. And one thing that I did at first, cuz it was really important to me was like, write a handwritten thank you note with every single package. And I still maintain that. That’s a nice touch. And I personally love it when I get a handwritten note from a small business, but it was taking me so long to write them because A, my penmanship is atrocious, you know, I like, so I constantly had to like scrap notes and like rewrite them from scratch. B again, I was handwriting like, you know, a couple sentences for every single order that I got and I was shipping out hundreds of orders a week. And three

Nicole (04:44):
For context, she launched those business and had a few like semi viral, like minor viral videos Yeah. On TikTok. And so this was around Christmas time in the holidays mm-hmm. So she had an influx of many, many, many, many orders. Yeah. So handwriting it was intense. A hundred of these was definitely difficult.

Yasmine (05:04):
Yeah. And like the third issue that I had was, wait, Holland, I forgot my third thing handwriting. Oh, right. And the third thing was, I’m so used to typing all day, and this goes back to the fact that my penmanship is atrocious. My like actual handwriting muscle muscles are not strong. Like, I rarely write things these days, honestly, like I’m typing everything that I do and I’m gonna be honest, like I do not have the skills I did back when I was in school because we’re constantly typing, so it just delayed the process. So I need to make a pivot because this was slowing down how quickly I can get orders out. Like it wasn’t just packing crystals, which takes longer than, you know, just putting a few like shirts and a poly mailer. Not to say that that packing process isn’t like intentional, it takes a while.

Yasmine (05:52):
I had to individually wrap every single crystal to make sure they don’t break in transit because they can be fragile. So I needed to do something to expedite the flow and the pivot that I made was, instead of, you know, having these four by six little promo cards that were intentionally made for writing like notes to every client, I ended up ma redesigning them into a smaller format. I put some of the information that I would’ve written in my note, like thanking them for their order, giving them a coupon code, you know, where to find me on social. But I also included a little area where if I didn’t wanna write something extra, I had that space to do it. And then what I did instead was on their invoices. I would always like, you know, write a little, I thank you so much, or like a little comment about what they ordered. I still put a personal touch there, but again, I wasn’t sitting, going through every single order and writing, you know, five to eight sentences for each person. And I actually like almost doubled the amount of orders I was able to ship out per week because that’s how long it freaking took me to write notes.

Nicole (06:57):
Isn’t that long. Yeah. And I imagine with a little toddler in the house if she saw you writing notes, she would also want to write notes or write on her notes.

Yasmine (07:07):
Oh, oh yes. My customers often get little pictures and drawings on their like invoices and stuff from my daughter when she’s around when I’m doing shipping. So but yeah, it would’ve been way worse at that volume.

Nicole (07:22):
Yeah. So we’re, we’re talking about like, you don’t need to remove the mirrors and entirely from the bathroom, you just need to move them a little bit and flow will improve. So where Yasmine, you know, kind of made a pre-printed card that had a lot of information but still had space to just say like, thanks name. Even that goes a long way and that’s a quick thing to write. You know, that’s kind of a process about bottleneck. We often talk about like the analysis paralysis, waiting for perfection, the like internal bottlenecks to yourself. But I also wanna talk about team bottlenecks and whether you have a large team or you have a small team that’s just, you know, one virtual assistant who maybe writes the show notes for your podcast and gets them published for you. And so when you’re talking about teams, sometimes the bottlenecks are like your leadership or your communication if you don’t have a way to let them make decisions.

Nicole (08:14):
So for a while we stalled on Instagram because it was just relying on us to write the content and get it moving. And it was, you know, the podcast is kind of a passion project for us. We have a lot of fun with it, but our day jobs are our consulting businesses. And so at earlier this year we just kind of gave the green light to the team of, look, we have 70 something episodes of this podcast. We have tons of content you can pull from and we have a lot of wonderful photos of Disney courtesy of Allie at Wish Upon a planner and also Laura Foot Photography. So go check those two guys out. But go ahead, take the pictures, write whatever you wanna write and you have a blanket. Go ahead. These are people we worked with for long enough that we know that they’re not gonna be writing anything scandalizing or vandalism for our social channels, but we were holding up that process so much and we didn’t clearly communicate that we were okay with them just publishing.

Nicole (09:17):
Mm-Hmm. So they had some things were in here and there, so it wasn’t just that they were waiting for us to tell them to do the work. They were waiting for that autonomy of this is a decision I trust you to be able to make, and I’m okay with what the result is going to be. You guys have shown that you’ve been able to do this work. And so just think about the communication. You might be in your head saying, I wish people would do X, Y, z I wish they would take this off my plate. But if you’re not communicating that in a way that your team understands, whether that’s like tasks or having a meeting, we don’t have a lot of team meetings with our VAs. We, you know, often send boxer messages, which is audio back and forth, or we talk in Asana, which is our task-based system. But you know, we actually said, you know what, this is important enough that we need to get in a room together. We need to have like a 20 minute meeting. Just say like, hi everyone, just want you to know we love what you’re doing. Just hit publish, we’re okay with it. And so now we have our Instagram engagement moving again. So just think about those bottlenecks in your business. Where can you move the mirror so that way it’s not holding everybody else up.

Yasmine (10:21):
Well, I hope you took something away from one of my biggest annoyances at Disney. It’s, it, it’s really interesting when you look at how Disney structures things and when you realize the intentionality behind it. Thank you for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it.

Nicole (10:39):
And if you wanna join us to see the mirrors and the bathrooms in perso, come to Pixie Dust Live. It’s happening this October 15th, and you can find all the information about that at pixiedustinprofits.com/live-2023. We do go to the parks and have some fun, but the focus is on moving our businesses into 2024 with intention and a plan, a content strategy, a offer stack the ascension ladder, your product offerings. We talk about all of these things at Pixie Dust Live together. It’s a very intimate retreat. There are only five slots as of this recording, three of them are taken. So if you want one of those last two spots, go check out pixiedustandprofits.com/live-2023 and you can see the mirrors in the bathroom for yourself.

Yasmine (11:23):
My personal favorite is Rapunzel’s Bathrooms and Magic Kingdom.

Nicole (11:26):
Those are, those are really nice. I also,

Yasmine (11:29):
They’re probably the newest that’s,

Nicole (11:30):
I also like searching for the Pascals outside of that bathroom.

Yasmine (11:33):
It’s just a fun vibe all around in that area.

Nicole (11:36):
Awesome. All right, well we’ll see you next week.

Yasmine (11:38):
Bye.

In this episode, we discuss the concept of content multiplication using Disney’s “One Day at Disney” as an example. We can’t get enough of how Disney strategically planned and executed multiple forms of content from a single project, including a coffee table book, a documentary, and short episodes.

Download Episode 82 transcript right here

Nicole (00:00):
Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s snack sized summer series episode of Pixie Dust & Profits. I’m Nicole.

Yasmine (00:07):
And I’m Yasmine,

Nicole (00:08):
And we are bringing you business bits all summer long. I hope that they’re something that gets you thinking about your business in new ways, whether you’re vacationing or taking a slow summer, or you’re right in the middle of it all and you’re prepping for Christmas in July. Because I know for a lot of our creators and makers, this is the time of year where they’re getting ready for their largest season, which is the end of the year. So thank you so much for joining us today. Our episode is really, really fun to us today. We, I mean, this was inspired by a visit probably a couple years ago to the D V C resorts, but it has nothing to do with D V C. I know we talk about D V C a lot, but it was just something that happened while we were there. We walked into our room and there was this, what, 200 plus page beautiful hard cover like glossy paged book,

Yasmine (00:59):
Coffee table book.

Nicole (01:01):
Yeah, it’s like a coffee table book, just a conversation piece, right? And it’s called One Day At Disney. And then we start flipping through this book and we start seeing all of the different jobs that keep Disney running all these short little features. And we were like, not only is this beautiful and we’re, we’re loving the content inside and we’re engaging with it, but of course, both of us, our brains are running all around of like, this was genius that they did this.

Yasmine (01:26):
And what’s really cool about one day at Disney is they didn’t just publish it in a book format, right? Nicole, if you are a Disney plus subscriber, you may have seen the documentary where they, again, dive into all the cool jobs that keep Disney running, but that’s not all, is it Nicole

Nicole (01:47):
N? No. So, I don’t know, maybe everyone has a different stream on their Disney Plus, but I tend to get all of the documentary type things because those are the things that I watch. I loved the Imagineering series and I hope they do another season of that. But this is kind of of the same vein. So they have one day at Disney, and if you go into Disney Plus and you search for that, you’re gonna see two options. They’re going to have about an hour long documentary that kind of goes through most of these roles that are featured in the book. But then they have one day at Disney shorts. And so just like we’re bringing you a snack size series for summer, they’ve kind of broken up this documentary in a different format for viewing. And there are 51 episodes in the one day at Disney shorts, and they’re each like seven to 10 minutes long.

Nicole (02:31):
So it looks like they tried to keep ’em around eight minutes so that way you could just kind of understand that particular role and move on to the next one and binge watch it or, you know, exit and do something else. But I, I think it’s a really ingenious thing, and that’s what Yaz and I really loved about this. Okay. The, the book is interesting in and of itself. We could probably do a different episode about every job that they’ve mentioned in there. You know, you have things like the animal keepers animal Kingdom to the casting directors for the show. Obviously Imagineering is a popular one. They even go beyond the parks and they start talking about like some of their news anchors on the different, a ABC shows people, the Broadway, some of the Broadway actors. I, I saw one that was like the research and development of making the, like the Spider-Man animatronic.

Nicole (03:25):
Good Morning America co-anchors. I mean, this goes all over the place. So what was really interesting about this is they had the book in the room. There’s so many levels of everything that’s interesting, but they had the book in the room, obviously to entice D v c members to purchase that book. I can’t remember off the top of my head. I feel like there was a card with it that kind of said like, take this home with you, you know, an advertisement to purchase your own copy. And so in and of itself, great marketing, put your own stuff in the room so people buy it and take it home. But when we go and look on Disney Plus and we see they have so many different forms of this same piece of content, they have the book, they have the long videography, and then they have the short form.

Nicole (04:07):
But I want ya to talk a little bit more about this cuz her and her husband do you kind of like editing for some clients over the years. And there’s, there’s an intentionality here from Disney that I think everyone needs to know when they wanna execute things like this. A lot of people talk about content repurposing. We’ve talked about content repurposing, and we think this kind of falls more into the content multiplication realm, which is something completely different. And if those terms mean nothing to you, let me just start with saying content repurposing is taking something that already exists and trying to reuse it in a different way. So that could be like, oh, I have this hour long video, let me try and cut it up into individual episodes. But Yasmine’s gonna tell you why that doesn’t always work.

Yasmine (04:48):
Yeah. So my husband, Dylan, who also edits the podcast, Hey Dylan he is a video editor and a lot of our clients come to us for YouTube editing or podcast editing or other just editing projects. And after an episode is cut up, we always get the question, oh, hey, can we just like cut this into a bunch of different talks or like reels? And the short answer is, sure we can, but sometimes the content always doesn’t flow that way with content multiplication. What goes into your content planning is just that a plan. So when you are creating the script for like one day at Disney, for example, or for a podcast episode or a YouTube video that you’re doing, you’re intentionally planning little breaks into it and basically writing the script so it can be segmented. So even though you are maybe recording it in one go, it’s being set up to be cut into smaller pieces so you can repurpose it.

Yasmine (05:47):
So when we look at what Disney did it with one day at Disney, they did obviously the photography, the principle of photography, the actual photography, the interviewing, and the script writing. They did this project in one go. They didn’t sit down to like interview that same animal keeper three different times, once for the book, once for, you know, the documentary and another time for the shorts. No, they did this all in one go. And then different team members took that content and worked on their respective project. So you had the book team taking the photos and the probably the video scripts, which were then transcribed into actual content for the book. Then you had the documentary team that, you know, had to cut out a lot of footage to fit all of those jobs into a one hour documentary. But then the shorts are probably extended.

Yasmine (06:35):
I’m not probably there. The shorts are extended little highlights of each individual role. So they’re pulling that out. And what that might look like for you is if you’re doing a YouTube episode, teaching your audience about a specific topic, the actual footage that you might produce could be, you know, 30 to 40 minutes of content, let’s say. But then the video that goes up on YouTube might be a 15 minute cut of that, where it’s more you know, you’re teaching to specific topics. It’s a bit shorter. It’s made to be edited in a way that’s appealing for YouTube. That’s another topic that I can go into is editing for your platform. And I think I’ll touch upon it a bit after, but it’s edit for YouTube and then they might make longer cuts from that original recording to be put up on TikTok or reels or YouTube shorts or whatever short format video that you want to put out that goes into maybe a specific topic in a bit more depth but isn’t long enough to necessarily warrant its own YouTube video. And then you can take that content and probably transcribe it into a blog post and you can transcribe it into Instagram caption. So it’s taking that one piece of content, and I know this sounds like content repurposing, but what’s different is you’re going into it thinking of all the outputs and structuring the content in a way that will make it easier to produce those outputs versus trying to, you know, find the perfect spot to cut a video to create a TikTok and have it sort of start and end oddly.

Nicole (08:07):
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I was gonna say. This is more about the the process of how you’re going about your content than it is about how to repurpose the content. Because it’s not about repurposing, it is about, I love how you put that yasin where you start at the beginning with, okay, I want to make something about all of the jobs at Disney. What is the end goal? Like, what is the end output? Okay, we are going to have eight minute short videos that really go in depth for each job we’re interviewing. We’re gonna have an hour long documentary that kind of gives an overall view of many jobs, but maybe not all of them. Maybe they wanna highlight their, you know, most featured things or whatever might be, I’m sure there are more Marvel ones in the interview longer series because they wanna sell Marvel, or have you watched Marvel?

Nicole (08:54):
You know, there’s probably an intention behind which ones made those cuts. And then the book, right? They, they knew what the outputs were going to be when they started planning the process, and they probably had multiple video cameras and two different teams working on each side, like Yasmin said, because there is such a different way to go about this. They did this with Bob ER’s book too. Mm-Hmm. He’s actually one of the featured shorts where he’s, it says, you know, c e o. So it’s really cute that they did like the seven minute video, just like he was any other employee and put him in here. He isn’t even the first episode. It’s, you know, a couple episodes in. And that was also the masterclass that they recorded for masterclass, which was basically the story from the books mm-hmm.

Nicole (09:39):
And so they planned how many pieces and ways that this content was going to be used in advance. And that is the difference when you’re taking something and you’ve planned for it to be filmed in multiple ways. It might be something like those podcasts where we’re recording an episode and then you don’t see us when the episode ends. We’re like, let’s rerecord this part as a little advertisement to insert somewhere else, or let’s record a video to use in a different platform. It’s, we just talked about the topic so it’s fresh and top of mind, but when we’re thinking, okay, we’re gonna do a cut now for YouTube, we’re gonna talk a little bit differently than we do when it’s a, an audio podcast episode. And so there is a difference between doing that where you have an hour set aside for filming and you’re thinking about, you know, here’s the topic we’re talking about, but we need to do it in these different formats versus I’ve recorded it once and then it’s an afterthought.

Nicole (10:30):
That’s what usually happens with content repurposing. And that doesn’t mean it’s bad, especially if it’s good content, but content repurposing makes it, you can just tell, you can tell when you’re on TikTok or you’re u on YouTube or you’re scrolling through Instagram reels. You can just tell this what’s not meant to be a reel. This is like, someone recorded this on TikTok and put it over here. It doesn’t work. Even though TikTok and reels might feel similar on the surface, you can tell when you’re watching it. It doesn’t feel organic, it doesn’t feel natural, and therefore the engagement is low and the algorithm isn’t gonna put it in front of people. So I hope you enjoyed this snack size summer series episode. It’s really about multiplying your content, thinking ahead about how you’re gonna use it before you film it. And maybe even after you film it, if after you film something and you’re like, oh, that was great, or after you wrote something that was great, stay in that mindset and, and go the extra five minutes to go do it for another platform.

Yasmine (11:27):
You know, I’m gonna add in one little tip there. We did this with one of our clients where originally we were planning on doing YouTube episodes for her podcast as well. And the idea was that we weren’t just gonna put up the podcast recording on YouTube, we were going to take that script and then we had sectioned out specific p parts to then use that footage for the YouTube video. So it was a little bit more succinct and set up for YouTube. But we found that process didn’t work for the client in the end in terms of how she wanted to, you know, create content. It didn’t feel that organic for her, which was fine. You sometimes have to tweak things. But then what we ended up doing was when we found that there were specific talking points that she had where she got really excited rather than use that, you know, video recording of her recording the podcast where, you know, she would be looking at her notes and might not be making eye contact with the camera.

Yasmine (12:20):
We had her take those points and literally after she was done recording for five minutes, she would just talk straight to camera and sort of repeat that. But she’s re basically using that same content but just shooting the footage in a slightly different way. So it’s succinct and it’s basically made for a short YouTube clip, a YouTube short, or for us to put on TikTok and we were able to take that content and multiply it in many ways. And it wasn’t that much effort. It was literally, like Nicole said, an extra five minutes for her.

Nicole (12:47):
Yeah. When, when it’s top of mind and you just talked about it like it’s it’s still in your head. Exactly. It’s not like you have to reset up your room or get your production ready to go again. It definitely makes things so much easier. And sometimes it’s helpful to just like look at how they record movies, right? Mm-Hmm, you know, they, every single second of a movie is recorded over and over and over again for the expression and for the, and then we’re not saying you need to curate your content that hard, but just think about how, like, okay, if I’m, if I’m talking to someone on YouTube, what are the videos I like to watch on YouTube and how do they act while they’re on that? No one would really love the videos from these audio recordings because we’re just in sweats and just chatting. Maybe sometimes we,

Yasmine (13:36):
We get excited, looks on our faces, which I don’t know, might not be the most video friendly. Sometimes, I get crazy eyes when I get excited. Just warning everyone,

Nicole (13:44):
We will, we will, we have plans. We’re planning, we’re we notice we’re on episode 82, you know, episode a hundred is coming. We, we we’re thinking of things for that. So if there’s something you wanna see, some topic you’d love to hear about, let us know. We have a few more snack series coming out this summer. And we’re, we’re treking along to that hundredth episode really soon. But we’ll see you for our next episode next week.

Yasmine (14:07):
See real soon. Bye

Nicole (14:09):
Bye.