Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust and Profits is a podcast for small business owners who love Disney and want to sprinkle some of that magic onto their own businesses. Join your host, Nicole Boucher and Yasmine Spencer. As they explore the mouse’s $12.6 billion operation and break down exactly how you can apply these big scale concepts to your own business.

Yasmine (00:25):
Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of Pixie Dust and Profits. Today’s episode is going to deviate a little bit from our usual format because Nicole and I are going to be talking about our great big Disney adventure. In January. We found ourselves needing to meet with one of our clients in person, and we had another client trip that was also on the other end of Florida in the panhandle. So one idea that we came up with was doing a Pixie Dust and Profits business intensive, and we actually spent four days in Orlando, close to Disney property, where we sat down with our client and went through her entire business. Did a deep dive into what happened in the past six months and came up with our plan for the next six months and worked in a little bit of Disney magic. Now on today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking a little bit about what we sort of did in Disney.

Yasmine (01:23):
Some of the interesting things that we discovered that we think you guys would be super interested in learning about and why we ended up spending two days at Disney, just for fun, because if you’re in Orlando, like you have to go to property, like it’s basically a waste of a trip. In my opinion, if you don’t stay at Disney, when you’re in Orlando for business-related reasons, and if you’ve ever traveled to conferences, a lot of them do actually happen in Orlando. So I hope that you take on a little bit of Disney magic at the end of your next Orlando trip.

Nicole (01:51):
It definitely made the work day a bit better to know that like Disney was coming at the end of it. So yeah, like what Yasmin said, we decided if we’re going to make this big travel arrangement, I am from Northern the United States, the new England area and Yasmine lives in Canada. And so it’s a big expense for us to be able to travel that far. So we decided, Hey, why not? Let’s end cap. The same week first started the week is with one client. The end of the week is with another client. And let’s go to Disney for two days in between and start working on this podcast that we had been talking about for at least six months, we had the name of it. We had 12 episodes outlined for it. And we had yet to record a single episode

Yasmine (02:35):
Because when you work with as many clients as we do, sometimes they’re so takes precedence. And if you don’t know, Nicole and I are both operations strategists working on the back end of, I want to say some of the biggest names in the industry, which we feel incredibly fortunate to do. You know, we’re the ones coming up with strategies, plans, analyzing numbers and trying to really move things forward so they can grow and scale their businesses. So because of that, as much as we wanted to start this podcast many, many months ago, it took us a little bit of time to get things off the ground, but we did it. We got it done and done is better than early. So I’m going to consider that a success. So let’s start off with the beginning of the trip and what we ended up doing. We met with our one client for that deep dive intensive. And of course it wouldn’t be a pixie dust and profits business intensive. If it didn’t actually involve a trip to Disney. So we did our very first after hours event. Now, Nicole and I we’ve been to Disney quite a bit. You know, we’ve been on all the rides. So why would we spend what was basically an extra hundred dollars to go to an after hours event? And of course, take our client along with us,

Nicole (03:38):
Right? It was one of those things that I’ve always struggled with. Should I pay this extra a hundred dollars to go here? I was an annual pass holder. You guys, I had like one week left of my annual pass. So I was trying to get the most out of it. But this event is separately ticketed. So I still had to pay to go to a part that I already had access to that I’ve already met on. I think every ride multiple times it would just fit in with our schedule for working hard during the day, doing this deep strategy work, figuring out the teams that we’re going to be working with and how to implement a big project we had coming up. And then the end of the day at seven o’clock, we would go to this after hours event. And we were allowed in a little bit early.

Nicole (04:17):
It was dark out. So it wasn’t like super crazy hot, the crowds. Now this was the best part about paying that $100. There were so few people in magic kingdom. It was February. So it was kind of cold actually. And I remember we were all wearing like sweaters and pants, which is unheard of in Orlando. And we just had such an enjoyable experience walking around without any heat, without any crowds. And you also get free popcorn and ice cream and drinks, and probably a bunch of other things that I can’t remember at this point while you’re walking around the park. So if you fancy getting a Mickey bar, it is included.

Yasmine (04:57):
Many Mickey bars were had also a lot of popcorn. We found that, yeah, we found that we would you know, grab some popcorn eat and then we had to go on a ride and, you know, sometimes you would try to like stuff it in our little backpacks. I mean, I always go with like a little park bag. That’s a small backpack that like keeps all of my central. So he would stuff things in there cause I was the designated carrier for the evening. And other times like, you know, we would just get more popcorn later. And I think with the exception of some core nugs that we had at Casey’s corner, we basically filled up on ice cream and Mickey bars and popcorn. It was just like incredible. And even if it was like, kind of on the chilly side of things, I mean, Nicole and I were the North, our client, she lives in a pretty cold part of the us too.

Yasmine (05:46):
You know, we were able to handle that ice cream and what was like 65 degree temperatures like champs. So it was super fun. And on that trip, we actually did what I like to consider the highlight of my business career, which was delivering a financial report on the people mover. You know, we found ourselves trying to take like a little bit of a break to enjoy our Mickey bars and our sodas. And you know, we thought why not now to talk about financial results? And you know, I had everything prepared. So I walked Nicole on our client through how we did for the past six months, what our goals were for the next six. And frankly, I wish I could do all my business meetings on the people mover because that would just be,

Nicole (06:26):
So the thing that I really want to stress here with this after hours event is that from a business perspective, Vega, people who have annual passes to pay more money, to come to something they already have access to. And that just got us thinking about your business and how you can give little like order bumps and one time offers and things for your customers to spend just a little bit more money with you, even if it’s for the same thing that they already have,

Yasmine (06:54):
But with an elevated experience, right? What we were paying for was not just to go to magic kingdom, we can go to magic kingdom any time we were paying for less crowds walking on seven doors, mind train, and like pier plans flight. Like when do you do that? Never, never, right? Like you wait 15 minutes in line with the FastPass or you’re waiting an hour to get in. And just to have like, all the treats are heart desired. It was an amazing evening. It was just low stress. And we actually were able to hit every single ride we wanted to with the exception of splash mountain because it was cold and we were not going to get wet all for, you know, a hundred dollars. And when you compare that to the price of like a regular park ticket, I think it’s around $150 for a single day, you know, you get less time in the park, but we were actually able to maximize that and have an enhanced customer experience.

Yasmine (07:48):
And there are ways that you can take your existing offers and add, you know, an additional level of experience, a higher touch point and charge more for it. And your customers would be fine with paying for it. One example that we can think of right off the bat that a lot of our clients do is if you have a group program, obviously when someone’s coming into a group program, they’re sharing your time and your expertise with a bunch of other people. Now, if they want your one-on-one advice outside of, you know, the weekly or monthly calls that you have, you can charge them a little bit of a premium for that and get them to, you know, pay extra for one-on-one access. So if you offer a bonus clarity call or a bonus strategy call, you can discount that from your usual price. Because again, they are a customer, but get them to spend an additional hundred, hundred $50 for that hour of your time, which is going to be insanely valuable for them because just like Disney, they’re not competing with everyone else for your time.

Nicole (08:42):
Gotcha. Yeah. And this can also be something like a Slack channel. If you just want to have access to someone for a month to be able to talk to them or Voxer, if you prefer a voice communication, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a 30 minute call. It could also be a bundle of things that you’ve sold in the past, or you have sitting on your hard drive that you use in your own business already. Just tweak it up a little bit and make it more of a template. Don’t give them over your customer information, but you can sell these little things. In addition to the regular product that you’re selling, you already have them sold. This is the best opportunity to give them just a little bit more that they actually need and want, and they’re already have their credit card out. So it’s a perfect win-win for them and for you.

Yasmine (09:25):
And you’ve experienced this a lot of times, even through like funnels that you may have gone through. Now we can talk for ages about funnels and how that relates to Disney. But I’m going to say that for another episode, you probably haven’t heard it call it Nike cat until you’ve heard us gigging at about funnels.

Nicole (09:39):
Just this morning, we were talking about the process of getting your magic band and how genius it is for Disney to offer the opportunity to pay $10 more, just $10 to get a custom band. So of course I chose BB eight for my son and it was no brainer. It was only $10. And when I go to the parks, I know those magic bands are $25. So this is another opportunity where you’ve already sold me. I’m already coming. You just send me that one little extra bump and it’s only $10, but think about it across, like, even if you have, you know, 20 clients and you’re charging $25 for something that adds up very quickly, and it’s usually for something that you already have done, and it’s not difficult for you to provide

Yasmine (10:22):
Exactly it’s not additional time or effort on your part. You just set up the system and it delivers that bonus and that’s extra money you’re raking in every month. So we encourage you to look at your business, look at the products and offerings you have. What are ways that you can add a little bit of an extra touch point or a little bit more value to your customer in a really meaningful and intentional way that you can charge more for. I mean, that’s a theme of this podcast, pixie dust and profits. If we weren’t talking about basically wages, Disney gets you to pay more money. When you’re at the parks, we wouldn’t have any lessons to teach you, but let us know on Instagram, what are you doing in your business to add these little or bumps or these little extra touch points, you know, where you can find us @pixiedustandprofits.

Yasmine (11:08):
We’d love to hear from you. And we’d love to see how you’re implementing these lessons in your business. And this week, if you are on our mailing list, you would have actually seen our little tutorial. That’s going to walk you behind the scenes of how you can implement little order bumps to your existing funnels without actually taking on a ton of work time and effort. So if, for example, you have an opt-in right now that you’re using to get leads on your mailing list. We’re going to show you how to make a teeny bit more money off of that. So it actually pays for itself and you are not necessarily spending money to acquire leads, but are making money in some cases. So make sure you’re on our mailing list. If you haven’t joined, you can find us at magic.pixiedustandprofits.com in addition to our biweekly behind the scenes tips. So you’ll be getting with each episode, you’re also going to get access to our list of three business lessons that we’ve learned from Disney.

Nicole (12:02):
So thank you so much for joining us today. And we hope that you can find that special little something to give the, to your audience, to sprinkle some pixie dust on them, and also make a little more profit on the way. Thanks

Yasmine (12:13):
So much for joining us and we’ll see you real soon.