Intro (00:01):
Pixie Dust & 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):
Hey guys, and welcome back to pixie dust and profits. We are here with our last episode of the season. I know, I know I’m crying too. But don’t worry, Nicole and I are planning a ton of great content to come back to you within the fall. Right? Nicole? Yes,

Nicole (00:42):
I can’t wait. And we have some Disney trips planned, so we’ll get more inspiration for new content as well.

Yasmine (00:49):
Yeah. Yes. We’re so excited to go back to the magic. So this week we want to talk about something that Nicole and I get really excited about. So we’ve mentioned before that, like we love Disney because it’s magical. It’s fun. Nicola is taking her kiddo there. I’m excited to take my kiddo there and experience that magic through her eyes. But our love of Disney is also intellectual. Like we love the machine and everything behind the scenes. So when Disney plus, you know came online and released the Imagineering story a few months, weeks and years ago,

Nicole (01:23):
I might’ve been like right when Disney parks came out. I remember watching the first episode. I think I had just landed in Boston and I was taking a bus from Boston to Maine. And I remember watching that first episode and just really geeking out about it. And I have since rewatched it multiple times.

Yasmine (01:40):
Oh yeah. It’s like just fascinating and exciting to see them sort of pull the curtain and see how the wizard makes the magic happen. Right? So we love that show. And while there’ve been other like little documentaries and stuff on Disney, there’s been a hole in my heart for behind the scenes Disney content. And when they announced behind the attraction, which is going to launch on July 15th is coming out, which is basically, you know, behind the scenes story of the beloved attractions at Disney Atlanta Disney world. We were jazz. Like not just jazz, like super excited because the rides are fascinating. They’re fun. But like the story of how they came to be and evolved over time is super duper interesting. And you know, that got us thinking like it hasn’t aired yet. We haven’t seen the first episode, which is going to be on the jungle cruise, which we’ll talk about a bit, but it made us think like men just see as really smart, you know, they’ll create something and then use that intellectual property in a number of ways. So we thought, why not talk about how you can take ideas and concepts in your business and recycle them, repackage them. We’re all talking about just bundling products, but actual ideas and concepts and like

Nicole (02:56):
Themes kind of like if you sell t-shirts right, like holding t-shirt up to a black light and doing like the inverse of it. Yeah, exactly. You know, selling that to it. It’s just, so I think we kind of have a preview of what the behind the scenes is going to be, because a lot of the things they’ve mentioned there is going to be jungle cruise. There’s going to be this says the star wars rides and Galaxy’s edge area. And the castles, the building of the cow

Yasmine (03:22):
[Inaudible] tower terror. My favorite.

Nicole (03:26):
So some of these things came up in the imaginary story. So I imagine they were shooting footage at the same time and tried to look at all the different ways they could use this footage. So we can use it for a behind the scenes about the ride, but we can also use it in the Imagineering story when we’re talking about this, because I mean, they went into detail about the new rise of the resistance, right. And the types of challenges they had and, you know, basically they were like, oh, we want to feel like we’re free floating. So what kind of mechanical thing do we need to build to make that feeling happen? And, you know, same thing with tower of terror. Like they, they use technology from tower of terror to make rise of the resistance. So, you know, so it, I mean, they were already doing this in the engineering world.

Nicole (04:08):
So now they’re doing it with the content world. And, you know, Bob Iger talked a lot about this in his book where he talked about, that’s why they bought star wars. That’s why they bought Marvel because as long as they had characters, they could do any type of storytelling they wanted. And that is still a variable. And that comes back to like that intellectual property thing. And I dunno, we’re really excited for both behind the scenes, but I think it’s also really fun to talk about just how innovative it is to rethink of something that already exists. I mean, we can get into the whole live action discussion today, how they keep remaking things like Cinderella and the lion king, like who thought that you could remake the lion king as a live action

Yasmine (04:50):
And not use actual animals.

Nicole (04:53):
Right?

Yasmine (04:55):
Like they’re all CG,

Nicole (04:57):
It’s just mind boggling to think about. And I am actually, I think there’s like two schools. You either love the live actions or you don’t like them. And I am team loved them because I feel like they bring a new spin to these old classics and they modernize them quite a bit. Like I love all of the messaging and the new 11. Mm.

Yasmine (05:17):
Yeah. Especially like Jasmine’s role in how she’s really you know, not just the damsel in distress. Yeah. Like she’s not just like, sort of like waiting for the men to sort it out. Like she’s standing up for herself and wants to be Salton, which I mean, back in those days probably would never have happened, but I’d love the message that Disney’s putting out for little girls and everything though. Sort of an as an aside, I wonder how that translates to the cast members who play those characters at the park. Right. Like when it’s a cartoon, it’s like, you know, th that can really be anyone, but like, if you see you know, the actress that plays Jasmine and then the actress in the park does a look like her as for kiddo. Is that weird? I don’t know. Probably not. They’ve likely thought about this, but yeah,

Nicole (06:03):
They do a pretty good job of keeping the cast looking pretty close. And I think kids know it’s not the exact, but it’s so authentic, especially when you talk to the characters at Disney. And I think that’s a difference between Disney and other places where you’re no, I don’t even know if Chuck E cheese exists anymore, but when you go meet a mouse at Chuck E cheese, like the difference is that, you know, they do have a script they stick to, and they do go through a very rigid training to be the actors and actresses behind those characters at the park. So that if a kid asks them about, you know, gosh, I remember meeting Ariel and she was like, your hair is so pretty. I have a Dingle hopper for that or whatever. And, you know, they’re so in character, whether they’re talking to an adult or a child, and I think that’s, you know, the Disney magic difference. But yeah, getting to them re-purposing stuff. Okay. Let’s make a list of like, the ways Disney has very recently been re-inventing things with stuff they already had. Right. So we talked with the live action movies.

Yasmine (07:07):
Yeah. I mean, they’ve also taken rides and made series out of them, parts of the Caribbean that wasn’t like a movie or story that they turned into a ride that was a ride. They turned into a franchise, which is like insane.

Nicole (07:21):
Yeah. And I mean, and it gets kind of meta because it’s like, they took the ride, make this blockbuster movie series, and then they went back and changed. The,

Yasmine (07:31):
I tried to match the series with, because at the end of the ride now. Yeah, yeah.

Nicole (07:38):
So interesting. I think they did try it with haunted mansion and it wasn’t as successful.

Yasmine (07:42):
That’s true. They’re doing the jungle cruise. It’s going to be a movie. And that wasn’t originally like based

Nicole (07:48):
That is on my weekend list this week. I need to watch that movie. I love the rock. I need to see this.

Yasmine (07:53):
I’m, I’m excited for it too. It’s actually one of my favorite rides. I know. I said, Tara, Tara is my favorite ride, but it’s one it’s up there. And just like a fun fact for you guys, they might mention this in the show. They might not, I hesitate to call it a fact cause I could be wrong, but I’ve heard that back in the day at Disneyland, the skippers were actually comedians who would test out their material on the ride. So they would just like make jokes as they’d go along. And it wasn’t necessarily the jokes that we all know and love. And like, I can, I think I’ve heard them all like half a dozen times because I been on the ride so much, but after things got maybe a little, not so Disney friendly, they were all sort of told that they had to skip to the S stick to the script. So you’re not going to see many of them veering off of the approved jokes, but that’s okay. Cause they’re still super funny.

Nicole (08:40):
I don’t know if I’ve been on the jungle cruise when it’s the regular jungle cruise. I feel like I’ve always ended up on it when it was the jingle crew.

Yasmine (08:49):
I’ve done that too. And yeah. It’s I’ve done. Yeah. Both of them. They’re girl funny. I mean,

Nicole (08:56):
I mean, just right there, they’re, re-purposing jungle cruise to incentivize people to go to the slow moving, you know, water ride during the holidays and the holiday parties and stuff just by changing it up from, you know, dad jokes to holiday Dutch. Yes.

Yasmine (09:13):
And they do that with the haunted mansion too. They have the like nightmare before Christmas version of the haunted mansion. So again, that’s something where they’re using like movie IP and then skinning a ride to walk you through a different experience and like the actual haunted mansion.

Nicole (09:29):
And then when you think of things that they’re doing recently, like chlorella just came out last month and you know, we all know 101 Dalmatians, but they were looking at everything they have. And like, you know what, we haven’t told the story of Corolla, what’s her backstory. Why did she even want to kidnap these puppies? And then they did it in live action of course. And you know, made this beautiful, stunning movie that I have yet to see, but have heard amazing reviews on. And it’s like looking at that in your business, right. Where do you have some existing, I mean, they could be with your content. It doesn’t necessarily have to be with the product, but what stories are you telling and where can you make us spin off? You know, like if you have this origin story about why you started your business, maybe there’s like another path you can take with that to share with people that you haven’t shared before or divvying it up. So it’s like, oh, this was a YouTube video. Let me just cut it a different way and put it on Instagram TV and just thinking about things like, how can I reuse this in new ways? I can tell the backstory of chlorella who would have thought 25 years ago when you first watched 101 donations that twenty-five years later, not only would this movie still be like relevant and you know, we’re making completely new movies about it

Yasmine (10:47):
And, and Disney has placed like the seeds for that. So they deal with Melissa sin, but now they have like the Disney villains of after hours party. So they’re even like sort of seeding the idea of diving into these character backstories and more detailed. So I can, like, I bet my left kidney that they will come out with more movies about Disney villains and telling me more like the backstory. So you almost like empathize with them a little bit. Right. Because it makes them not seem like the villain that they are and it makes them seem like more of a well rounded person.

Nicole (11:18):
Yeah. So they’re making these movies with the villains and then they bring it to the park to resell you on another experience that has to do with the villains. I mean, it’s so it’s so complex and brilliant, and I’m sure behind the scenes, this isn’t easy to pull off. You know, when they’re, when they’re have a production team filming, both the Imagineering story and the behind the scenes of the attractions tour, they need different cuts for different reasons. I, I know operationally how the back office is probably much different, but there’s building future opportunities. And then I also wonder, like, I’m not a lawyer. I also wonder like what this to the intellectual property we’ve talked to recently in an episode, I think two episodes back about risk management and your business and risk tolerance. And does it extend the 101 donations IP, if they bring Corella out?

Nicole (12:09):
You know, I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t play one on TV or on podcast, but some of these things that they’re doing could continue to keep their company valuable because it’s keeping their content protected underneath their umbrella and brand for even longer. So those are all interesting things I think about. And I mean, the other thing that I know that they do do, I think it’s brilliant because you know, teenagers probably have like checked out of the magical Disney princess, get dressed up. When I go to the park stuff, I think it’s better than it was when we were kids, because there is so much more for people to do. That’s outside of, you know, the baby rights, but they have a whole line of young adult fiction books that I’ve seen in the stores. I have not read. The one that caught my eye was called like conceal don’t feel.

Nicole (13:02):
And I was like, what if Ana and Elsa didn’t know each other? And so I picked that up because I was like, what is this? It’s kind of like fanfiction or, you know, 50 shades of gray. Is this a spinoff book, but no, it’s actually Disney, licensed young adult books that are kind of like the dark side of like, let’s tell this story in a completely different light that’s maybe darker or you know, just beyond the simple superficial that we get when we watch the film. So just brilliance and how they can use characters in so many different ways. I know my husband reads almost every single star wars book that comes out because I see the pre-orders come through my inbox and you know, he’s always talking about, oh, they keep changing cannon. Cause they like got rid of all of these things and I need to reread this one. And so he’s talking about that, these worlds that they’re making. So I know that he wrote a book and then Galaxy’s edge is connected to it. And he wrote another book and it was a 20 minute scene in the last star wars movie. And so they just have this really nice flow of, we have this audience over here that can get more backstory through our books and we have this audience who watches our movies. How can we, you know, keep making money, right. And goal.

Yasmine (14:21):
And again, leveraging that same IP. They’re not coming up with necessarily all brand new characters or anything. They are taking a concept they have and just repackaging it and in different mediums too. Like it’s not just that they’re making a new movie. I mean, w like we talked a lot in and how they changed Jasmine’s character. Well, they also added like Dalia her handmaid and that wasn’t even in the existing movie. Right. So they’re constantly changing things up and keeping it, and as consumers, we love Disney. We love this story. So we keep buying and consuming it. So very interesting,

Nicole (15:00):
Certain safety and like watching something you’ve watched before. And it’s just a little twist. So you’re not like fully putting your hands around, committing to a whole new thing. It’s like, okay. I I’m not committing to a whole new world. Like that’s what popped into my head. So, you know, you’re, you’re feeling comfort in the things you already know, but you’re expanding those horizons a little bit.

Yasmine (15:25):
So Nicole let’s summarize like he action items for listeners, how they can leverage our IP in new ways. So we talked about with creative, like you get a shirt where maybe you sell like the inverse of that image. So you have the creative, you’re just making some tweaks to it. And you have like a different sort of spin on it or a different color way. That’s definitely one way that you can do it, especially with the bestseller for our service based business owners. I mean, you have frameworks that you apply to the work that you do if you’re growing in your businesses growing, and your audience has growing with you, how can you take that framework and put a little bit of a different spin on it? So it serves your client at the next stage. I mean, Nicole and I say this all the time to each other, our clients that make like millions of dollars a year at the end of the day often have a lot of the same problems that our clients that might make, like, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a year at the core of the problems are the same.

Yasmine (16:21):
The solutions might be a little bit different, but the frameworks still apply. Like the steps that we go through are similar a lot of the times, so we can take a framework and really make it work depending on the scale and size of the business. And that’s how we leverage our IP in new ways. Heck we took a podcast and turn it into a business. I mean, we talked about Disney because we love Disney and we love the business side of it. And as our audience grew as a podcast grew, we realized that there is a need to maybe take this knowledge and insight in terms of taking big business ideas and applying it to your small business and an actual strategic way and support small business owners, which we do with the party. So there’s many ways that you can take what you have already created and just package it up in different ways.

Nicole (17:17):
Yeah. And if you need help thinking about your things in a different way, you know, you can speak to your spouse, your friends, they can give you some insight keep in mind that they don’t know your industry or audience as all as you do. So they might have pieces of feedback that you can say yes or no, to take it to a mastermind. And I don’t mean that you have to go pay for a mastermind to get feedback from quote, an expert or whoever else. But if you have any connections who also have businesses, you don’t start a group chat and just be like, Hey guys, this, this is hard alone. Some times let’s try and figure some stuff out together, but can I get your feedback on this? And, you know, I used to do this in person with other people who had businesses and as I’ve had my business for six years now, I have my online community.

Nicole (18:07):
Mostly people I’ve met at conferences or people I’ve worked with, with other clients who are also back office people. And, you know, if he asked me and I didn’t go to a conference, we’ve said this before this podcast wouldn’t exist. And we wouldn’t have her businesses where they are because people feel each other and push each other along, even when we feel that imposter syndrome, even when we’re creating new products, even when we’re trying to write a sales page for ourselves. And so get feedback from other people, get feedback from your audience. Just maybe take a break or maybe you go watch a movie, you go watch Cruella. And then you come back to your business right after watching Cruella. And like, let me, let me look at this as if I’m Cruella, what would she say about this product? And it’s, it’s kind of a silly exercise, but it can help you re just feel differently or look differently at what you’re doing.

Nicole (18:59):
So a new lens to your business. Yeah, exactly. I do this sometimes with this exercise. My negotiation professor taught me like seven years ago where I look at like the lamp in the room, I’m like lamp fire, light high. And then I look back at whatever piece of content I was trying to write. And I’m like, okay, hot fire. Let me write, rewrite this with that lens. And it can be just enough of a spark to help get me going on, whatever it was working on. So it’s the same thing with your products. You know, it’s not like someone walked in a room and was like, Hey, let’s make a movie on Corella. There was probably a set regimented process of, okay, we, you know, have this budget, what movies were really popular, what things can we update? You know, they probably had 20 sticky notes on the board and they came down with, okay, let’s make the order.

Nicole (19:51):
Same thing with the Marvel characters. I mean, they bought Marvel and who knew when they bought Marvel that they’d start making movies about like ant man. And, you know, it’s just one of those things that whoever, I don’t know, whoever goes back and looks at the Marvel deals and be like, wow, you’re way undersold. Because you didn’t think that these lesser characters, these background characters could have full-blown movies and, you know, merchandise and all of that. So you look at those little things in your business that you keep putting to the back or the side, or you hide, like, is there a potential in any of that? All right. So if you took any tips out of this episode, let us know, send us a message. On Instagram at @pixiedustandprofits, or better yet text message us at 2 0 7 2 0 3 6 7 6 9. We will answer, we love your feedback. If you have ideas for episodes for the next season, text them to us. We would love to experience Disney through your eyes and get that little filter that we were just talking about and apply it to next season. So we hope that you have a wonderful summer, that you were able to enjoy the outdoors and maybe even sneak in your own trip to Disney. We’ll be back this fall. And in the meantime, join us on Instagram @pixiedustandprofits.