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.

Yasmine (00:26):
Hello and welcome back to pixie dust and profits. Today, we’re going to be focusing on the importance of experience and the Disney vehicle, no pun intended that we are using and to talk about, this is one of the newest rides that you can find the star Wars land, the rise of the resistance. Now, if you have not written this ride, there will be spoilers ahead. I have not written this ride, so I’m actually going to mute Nicole when she starts talking. So I don’t get spoiled. But Nicole is going to be going into the really cool things that Disney has done to build a really unique experience and to bring a ride to life in like more than the usual Disney way. So I’m going to throw it over to Nicole. And if you can’t listen to this episode, now we really encourage you to come back. When you have written the ride, or you can skip to the point where we talk about the business takeaways and we’ll make sure to include that in the show notes. So you don’t miss out on any fun tips. All right, Nicole,

Nicole (01:28):
All right, everybody. This is probably the best ride. I don’t even know that I would call it a . It is just an experience that I have ever been on in my life. I don’t even know that I could envision that this would have ever existed. It’s beyond 3d when 3d was a big deal, you know, in 2000 it’s more than 40 it’s. You are a part of the experience. So let’s talk a little bit about Disney and Galaxy’s edge. And the last few years, Disney has done a lot of work to acquire companies like Marvel and star Wars, and the whole reason for them doing that is because they know that good characters build strong brands and build things that people want to connect with and be a part of. And so star Wars was one of those things. And I can just imagine that it was always in their plans to try and create star Wars in real life.

Nicole (02:19):
But how do you do that? How do you actually make star Wars come to life? They did it, they absolutely did it. If you have written this ride, you know what I’m talking about. If you have not written it and you’re still listening, then I highly encourage you to go watch a YouTube video of rise of the resistance, because you might not be there, but you can just get a feel for how amazing it is. So without further ado, I am going to go into some ride details now. So this is your last chance to exit. And come back later, I feel like I’m one of those cast members that are telling people it’s like your last chance to get on the roller coaster. You could turn it around. So this all starts out. You’re in this very long queue line because it takes forever to get through the line.

Nicole (03:03):
But you walk through with this giant group and you get into the first room. You’re not on a ride, you are in a room. So it’s almost like you’re still waiting from start to end. I think the entire experience is about 15 minutes long. So the very first room you’re in there, BBA is actually there it’s BBA, right? And he is on a pedestal and he is talking to a hologram of right? Like there’s a hologram in front of you, a star Wars hologram. You can actually see it. It looks like you can touch it. I have no idea how they did it, but it is amazing. So there’s this mission that you’re about to go on and the doors to the side open and you are outside. You go from being inside in this base, getting your mission to being outside where you’re going to go and try and get onto this giant ship from the resistance.

Nicole (03:54):
But while you’re flying, which actually feels like flying by the way, you’re kind of like seeing this battle take place, the empire starts attacking. And then all of a sudden the doors that you came in from open up and the empire boards, your ship. Now, the reason I say that the doors where you came in from open up is so important is because that means you actually moved. We all have been in these types of experiences where you enter a room and then the door on the left opens. It’s not the door you came into. You’re just walking into another room. And you know that, no, you were actually flying in some way, shape or form because the same door opened and you are not outside. You are now literally inside an empire Starship and you were in that ship and the cast members that are there, but first you walk in and there was just a row of stormtroopers.

Nicole (04:49):
Like I don’t even know, 50 stormtroopers are standing there, pointing their guns at you, and you’re on the ship. And you’re being taken into your next location by cast members who are head to toe and empire outfits. It’s very much influenced by like Germany and the German troops. And you’re kind of intimidated and scared standing there. And if you try to joke around while you were there, they will call you out on it. They will say things to you while you’re waiting like the standard, go stand on the green line and wait for your turn. No, it’s, if you can even know what the color green is, you should walk over there. And so they just kind of intimidate your while you’re waiting for your next assignment. And so they’re telling you that they’re going to interrogate you while you’re there. And you are part of the rebels and which one of you is the rebel spy.

Nicole (05:40):
So you’re actually like, you’re a character in the story. And then the door opens and you go into the intimidation room, which is like this triangle shaped room. And you kind of go in and you look up and you see the commanders of the ship, trying to talk about how they’re going to interrogate you next. And you’re looking around and trying to figure out like, what happens next, going what’s going on? When all of a sudden on the side of us, there is just like this laser cutout as if someone is using a blow torch to cut through and the, it opens, you did not know there was a door there. There was no way of telling that there was a door there, but it pops out and you board this ship, this little vessel to get around the empire Starship. And it’s amazing. I’m just going to, I’m not even going to details about the ride.

Nicole (06:32):
You see at vehicles you see Kylo Ren, you see his Jaguar light, saber cutting holes and things like right above your head at the end, you start escaping. And I’ve actually watched some of the behind the scenes on how they made this. And they essentially took something like Soren and tower of terror and tried to put them together. So there’s like a free-fall, but you’re also kind of, you know, moving as if you’re in a star ship, you then board the ship to get out of harm’s way you fly off. It feels like you’re flying. You do the free-fall piece. That’s kind of like tower of terror and then the ride ends, but doesn’t just end there. You open the door, you leave. And you were literally in another planet, they, the cast members, there are part of the rebel Alliance and they are there helping you to get back to where you were supposed to be.

Nicole (07:23):
And the whole thing, like I said, 15 minutes long, it was amazing. We were there at a morning that it was about 30 degrees. We had to get there at 6:00 AM in order to get our passes, to get on. We couldn’t stop talking about it and it was worth the entire day we had to spend to wait to get on that ride. I don’t know how they can ever surpass that. And it’s, it’s just amazing. So enough gushing about the ride. I gave you a few details in there about why it was so crazy and amazing, and it was really inviting us people who had no idea what we were getting into to be a part of the experience. You know, they talked directly to us in character. And even if we were being a little bit silly with it, they were still in character.

Nicole (08:11):
And, you know, it became this game, like who’s going to make the cast member crack and, you know, it just was so much more fun. It elevated the ride to another level to actually feel like we were part of it. And, you know, things like this have happened throughout some of Disney’s history. So if you remember pleasure Island, there was the adventurers club where you kind of got a little bit of taste of this. So it really felt like this like improv element to everything happening. So I’m going to let Yasmine talk about the business stuff. I’m going to tell her, like, give her a little secret handshakes and signal to take her headphones and put them back on. And let her talk about some of the business takeaways about the experience, but I’m just going to encourage you that if you can get the opportunity to go and once Disney reopens, it is so worth your time, even if you are not a star Wars fan, it’s just such an immersive experience that it really makes you think differently about how you can get people involved and interactive with something that they may not have ever thought they could.

Yasmine (09:11):
Okay. So I think I can listen now, Nicole, my good to go.

Nicole (09:16):
Yes, yes, yes. You can. You can go. I will zip my lips back. Yeah.

Yasmine (09:19):
All right. So I didn’t hear any of that, but I was watching Nicole as she was talking and she seemed really excited. So I’m now like ultra jazzed to go on the ride. W we were supposed to go in March and then again in August, but again, with the state of the world, we decided to cancel our trips because we didn’t know when Disney would open. And, you know, Disney actually recently mentioned that they’re going to be opened by August, but we had made the decision to move pixie dust in profits, which is our live in-person experience that was going to take place in late August at, in Orlando and act Disney to an online experience for obvious reasons. We want to make sure everyone who was attending felt safe. A few of the members didn’t feel comfortable traveling and pixie us and profits like Nicole and I had been planning this for literally like almost two years now, am I, I’m not exaggerating that. Am I Nicola two years,

Nicole (10:14):
Maybe talk about this idea of the in person experience, like about the same time we were like, it can be tied to the podcast.

Yasmine (10:21):
Yeah, like, so for two years we have been planning everything from obviously the course curriculum, which we are leveraging from what we do with our one-on-one clients, but bringing it to a small intimate group, but how we were going to surprise and delight everyone. And when you put that much detail into an in person event and bring it online, it’s easy to think that you’re going to lose a lot of those little touches. So we had to put our thinking caps on and really plan how we were going to turn this online experience into one that still had the same intimate feeling and the same, like fun touches that our attendees would have felt if they were joining us in Orlando in August. So the first thing that we did was when we were reading this online, we moved away from the traditional Facebook group mastermind model that so many people do.

Yasmine (11:10):
And they do really well because we wanted a tool that would allow us to deliver the course content, but also facilitate a lot of discussion. I mean, that’s why we get together in person. We want to talk, we want to interact. We want to really be able to come together. And while Facebook allows for that to a degree, we wanted more. So we’re actually going to be hosting pixie dust. Non-Profits live your online experience on mighty network. So it’s actually new to me. Like I’ve never used it, but Nicole has. And when she walked me through it, I was like sold Nicole, will you tell us a little bit about how it works?

Nicole (11:44):
Yeah. So I used it when it used to be called mighty bell. And so I know they’ve added so many more features since then, but what I really loved about the mighty networks and community is that there’s so many different elements to it and it still feels personable. I also loved that it take took people off Facebook and all those notifications and distractions that happen there, like advertisements or other people posting, or a family posting a new photo that it gives you an alert for. So many networks takes people away from that, but it has such a great usability in UI that you can tag certain topics. So if you’re at the point where like, okay, I’m working on lesson one, for example, I can click on all of the things for less than one and get all of the discussion stuff in one place.

Nicole (12:27):
It’s also really good for starting threads where it’s kind of that old that old board style where you could start with forward and everyone yeah. The forums yeah. Where you could start a thread and everyone could kind of reply to it, but you can come back to it later and see all of the discussion there. So there’s a lot of great pieces about it, where things won’t get lost in, you know, the algorithms that hide comments and all sorts of stuff like that. It also has features like live chat rooms. So we can right there in there have like an open office hour where we can chat together and, you know, get the transcript it’s already there for us and we can scroll back through and see what’s happening. If you happen to see someone else’s online at the same time, as you, you can say hi, and just say, what are you working on?

Nicole (13:13):
So it can be a little bit more personable in that way. It’s also like your events can be held right there. And now they have like the course programming allowed in there. So we can use it as a course host platform instead of trying to get people a log to, okay, we’ve got our group over here on Facebook and we have our course materials over here and teachable. And by the way, we also wanted to send you something else. So here it is in an email or something like that, like, or in the file section on Facebook. So everything can kind of be contained. So it can kind of feel like the small little close-knit community. It was very important to us because one of the selling points for pixie Destin profits live was that it was very small and intimate experience. We kept it at eight people. And so we wanted to keep that feeling, but still get those deep conversations that happen in person that are much harder to come around online.

Yasmine (14:04):
Thanks so much for that, Nicole. And like the other thing that we really considered when we were bringing this online and putting it out, my networks was the length of the events. So Pyxis and profits live was going to happen over a couple of days, but with, you know, kids at home and so many of our attendees and like us too, like just juggling a bunch of different priorities, being able to quote unquote, pull yourself away from daily life while you’re at home for four days, just like wasn’t going to fly. So we’re extending the program through the entire month of August and that’s going to allow us to really dive a lot deeper into the work and give people a space to work on things and get stuff done while, you know, dealing with, you know, kids coming in while you’re trying to have a and all that.

Yasmine (14:51):
So that was really important to us to give our attendees, the space, to get the work done while they were at home. And then the third thing that we were thinking of is we had so many surprises planned. Like I, the first thing that I was really excited about and this shouldn’t be surprising based on my comments today, but like the swipe, like we had been researching things to like surprise and delight our attendees with, for ages and like, don’t want to give too much away, but like, we may have ordered like custom ears. And am I allowed to say that Nicole?

Nicole (15:26):
I think so. I think I hinted at it to some people.

Yasmine (15:29):
Okay. Yeah. So, and so many other, you know, little things that we had custom designed exclusively for pixie dust and profits and for our attendees. So I mean, the girls who were attending, they thought on the heads up, but they are going to be getting some fun things in the mail. And that’s how we’re going to bring a lot of those in-person experiences and surprise and delight moments to them while they’re at home. And I don’t want to tell you like all the things that we’re doing, but maybe after pixie has some profits happens, we’ll sort of do like a rundown of everything that we plan, because I really want to be surprised for the ladies. But if you’re taking your event online, think of how you can create those tangible moments by sending things in the mail. I mean, who doesn’t love getting a package it’s like Christmas. Right. So think of that when you know, you’re creating an online experience and think of the touch points you can have beyond an online platform with your attendees, with your customers, with your audience.

Nicole (16:27):
Yeah. I mean, and just rolling with this experience side of things. If you’re a product based business, you can stop and think about all the different touch points that you have with someone when they’re in the purchase journey with you. Right. So they have just ordered something like what is on your, thank you page what’s on that order confirmation page, do you have something really fun and uplifting there or just some sort of congratulatory? Yes. You finally invested in yourself or some sort of fun thing there. So there’s that, there’s your order confirmation email, what do they get in that email? Is there any sort of fun element you can add to that? And then if you’re a product based business, once you send something in the mail, like what is in there besides their product and their order description, it doesn’t have to necessarily be this huge thing or a special gift or anything.

Nicole (17:17):
It can be a short and sweet card. That’s just like thankful and appreciative and maybe a picture of you using the product saying like, I’d love to see yours. You know, I got some sweat pants from once con apparel for Christmas. And when I opened them up there, they came with Mickey confetti. And my husband is actually the person who ordered these for me and put it under the tree, but he loved the Mickey confetti that it came with. And he thought it was so cool that when he wrapped the present for under the tree, he included the Mickey confetti. So, you know, it’s such a little thing, but like he noticed that, and he’s not, he’s a Disney fan, but he’s not my level Disney fan. So like he kept that making confetti and it made it that much more special when I opened it. Like, not only did you go and find a Disney small shop to gift me something from, but you know, you kept part of that experience of getting something fun from a small shop owner. So just thinking about like those different touch points that you have and what can you do to bring it to the next level where it’s not just a transactional email or something.

Yasmine (18:22):
I have an experience to add to that. That’s not a Disney related, but I have taken up knitting recently that has been like my quarantine creative activity. And I’ve been knitting up so many socks and working on sweaters, it’s super fun. And one of the popular sort of like trends in the knitting world right now is knitting things with gradients. It’s called a fade. It was made popular by the designer, Andrea Marie. And I found an incredible indie Dyer who dies her own yarns named Celeste. She’s at sweet nesting on Instagram. And I had ordered a custom fade that went from like charcoal to mint green from her. And throughout the process, she was DM-ing me like showing me samples. She shared like a little knitted swatch of what the feed actually looks like. And it was like everything I imagined and more, but honestly like her messages, like I would get excited when I get a little notification on my phone from her saying that, you know, she’s working on like the next step or she’s packaging it up or sending it up and taking that extra step to have that communication with me that went beyond just, you know, the typical email.

Yasmine (19:28):
It was just, it was so nice to the point that like, even before my order arrived, I put in another order for, with her because I just like, love that experience so much. So I got a load of urine kind of my way. And it got lost. What are some niche just in time for summer, of course. But like think of things, the things that’s listed, like just those like personal touchpoints and, you know, if you’re not necessarily doing like custom projects, so that level and you’re creating things on a larger scale, if you’re your product based business, I know I’ve said this before, but like share the behind the scenes. Pictures, like when I see you know, a pair of ears, like the ones that I had ordered being made, I get excited, even though my order’s not due for another four or five weeks because of like the custom timeline, just seeing the production element of things really jazzes up your customer and gives them something to say excited for while they’re waiting for their custom made item to arrive. So don’t underestimate the power of sharing things behind the scenes, because again, I, between Nicole and I like, I’m the shopaholic, if we’re being honest, real here. And I acknowledge that I, I I have a fun fund and I like to spend it on fun things, mainly Disney things as a grown adults, totally normal. And I will see things that other creators are sharing behind the scenes photos of on Instagram. And that literally makes me go like, I want that. So if it works on me working on other people, I also want

Nicole (20:48):
To encourage that. You know, if you’re doing a service based business where you might not necessarily have a behind the scenes to show, there are still things that you can do. You can set up alerts or reminders. I mean, a lot of people have that, like touching noise that happens when a sale happens. Can you take the extra step when you get that to chain? Or when you see an email come through that you’ve had a sale to just send them an email, you know, click on their name. It doesn’t have to be like, you might have an automated email sent to them, but you might just be able to click their name and reply and say, Hey, this is really cool that you got that. Thanks for, thanks for being here. There are definitely ways where if it’s a high end service that you’re selling, you can, you know, send a, like a welcome video to them almost just like you picking up your phone, if even if you were standing in your kitchen, making lunch, when the sale came through, like picking up your phone, like, Hey, I just saw your sale come through.

Nicole (21:39):
I’m so excited that you’re going to join me in this program and sending that off it’s it takes you five seconds really makes it feel special. It makes them feel like, you know, I made the right choice and working with you or buying from you. And so that’s definitely like a small step that you can take. And pixie dust and profits. We actually have an automation set up in our email system where, you know, when someone signs up for our email list and you can do that at magic.pixiedustandprofits.com, when someone does that, they can get our welcome secrets that kind of tells them a little bit more about our podcast and what they can expect. It gives them a couple of resources of some of our most played episodes. But it also on the backside will let us know if someone doesn’t open those two emails.

Nicole (22:24):
It gives them some time to do it, of course, but then it will alert us to say, Hey, this person joined your list and didn’t get your emails. And so I actually take that extra step of clicking when that notice comes through and personally emailing them from our inbox and saying, Hey, so glad that you’re a listener. What drew you to us? Or which episode have you listened to, or what type of business do you have or whatever it might be at that moment. But I take that extra step because they cared enough to join our email list. I want to make sure that they’re actually getting those emails that they wanted to get. And I also want to make sure that we’re serving them or giving them the things that they want to see. And so that’s just one small step that it takes for me and for Yasmine to go in and say like, Hey, we were just two business owners who love doing this podcast and we love that you’re here. So join the conversation with us. So just a little, anything you can do to add another touch point, that’s unexpected that unexpected delight and surprise that, you know, pixie dust that you’re giving to them. That’s the extra layer of what’s the pixie dust on your business and passing it on to your customer.

Yasmine (23:34):
So we hope you got a couple of fun takeaways on how to jazz up the experience that you create for your customers, or if you listened to the first, you’re just like super excited to ride rides the resistance either for the first time or again, either is a win in my opinion. So thanks again for listening. If you don’t follow us on Instagram, please do we’re @PixieDustandProfits. We’re always sharing a lot of great tips, but also some fun things that we come across. Any posts you see about yours are usually for me. And in case you miss Nicole’s earlier, plug join our mailing list, magic.pixiedustandprofits.com. We also send funny emails and we’ll see you real soon.