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.

Nicole (00:26):
Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of pixie dust and profits. I’m Nicole and I’m Yasmine. And today we’re talking a little bit about the endless construction at Disney World, more specifically at caught. And I don’t think that there’s a better time of year to talk about having too many projects on your plate than the beginning of a new year, where everyone is energized to maybe try something new or create new products, or, you know, do marketing in a different way. And so today we’re going to like wheel that in a little bit and talk about the chaos that can happen when you were in construction mode. So first up, let’s talk a little bit about all of the construction to happen at Disney World. So we went in October with pixie dust live. I visited again in November for a conference, and so the 50th anniversaries and full swing, and because of the closures during COVID, a lot of these projects were slated to be completed before the 50th anniversary started, but that is not reality.

Nicole (01:28):
So there is always construction at Disney world. No matter when you’re going, you’ll see cranes, you’ll see construction trucks flying around, going to all different parts of the whole resort campus. So that could be a new hotel being created, like the Riviera that recently opened. But right now I have never seen the parks in such a state of construction, as I did with Epcot. These last few visits. So magic kingdom has some things going on. The Tron rollercoaster, the train has been closed for years because the Tron coast is being created. But for the most part, you don’t really notice it’s going on because it is on the outskirts of, of the park. It’s, you know, behind space, mountain behind the Tomorrowland Speedway. So, you know, it’s there, but it doesn’t impact your whole visit, complete opposite experience at upcot. You walk in and they have redone the front entrance and it looks beautiful. They moved a couple of the stone statues that were in the front and moved them elsewhere. And I think they’re going to relocate them again, but it looks great when you’re walking into Epcot, but once you pass spaceship earth, you are just, I feel like I’m in a mouse maze, didn’t it feel that way?

Yasmine (02:41):
Yeah. And it honestly feels like they’re is more barricades that are blocking the view than actually like things to look at at Epcot. It’s insane. Everywhere you go. There’s like these big signs stating that something’s coming

Nicole (02:55):
Soon. Yeah. And even while you’re walking through those signs, the buildings you can see, or the buildings that seem like you could maybe walk in the doors, if they were, you know, open and active, those buildings are empty because they’re being repurposed or redesigned. There’s like complete restaurants that don’t exist right now. So it’s really jarring, especially if you enter from the main entrance, FCO has two entrances. The other one is over near the world showcase. And I think it’s just before France. So now that Reta TUI is done, that area is open to be able to walk from. So if you have to go to the park, he soon that might be the entrance you would like to choose. You can typically only get there from resorts. So like Riviera or boardwalk, any of the boardwalk resorts can get there. So you could, you could actually park at Hollywood studios and take a boat over to upcot if you’re so inclined.

Nicole (03:51):
And so that could be a much more fun experience to walk in from that side of things. But some of the projects they’ve going on, they have the guard at the galaxy coaster, they just opened the space two 20 restaurant. They’re overhauling the living with the land and sea area of the park to have like Moana’s journey of water. They’re trying to make this like play pavilion with shops and kind of trying to be like a trade fair. And so these are all little projects thing going on, but they’re all happening at the same time. So the entire front half of the park is under construction. And so we wanna talk about today is when it feels like your business is entirely under construction and how you can maybe avoid some of the customer pain points or the ugliness of seeing scaffolding everywhere you look. So do you feel that way today? Cause if you do we have a resource that can help you? Yeah.

Yasmine (04:50):
Why don’t we talk a little bit about the squirrel syndrome workbook. Nicole, are you tired of throwing spaghetti at the wall or chasing every shiny new trend in the business world? Because you think it’s gonna completely overhaul your business, but ends up going

Nicole (05:09):
If you are, or if you’re trying to be more focused in 2022 as one of your goals this year, and you wanna stop squirrel syndrome from good, then go to pixiedustandprofits.com/squirrel, where we’ll teach you all about how you can get more focus in your business by focusing on six areas that are all completely different and you can focus on them one at a time, we walk you through what they are, how to check in with where you are right now, how to brainstorm the things that you should be working on. And also we hold you accountable to it with a little Hmm. Pledge. So if that sounds good to you go download our squirrel syndrome workbook pixiedustandprofits.com/squirrel.

Yasmine (05:54):
Okay. So I hope you download our squirrel syndrome workbook. It’s full of great resources and information on how to prioritize your projects because shiny object syndrome is no joke. I’ll be honest. Even I fall susceptible to it sometimes, and I really have to take a step back and be like, okay, asthma, slow your role. There’s too much going on. You gotta pick your, because that experience that we had at Disney, not really magical and Epcot, isn’t like the most magical park given that it is kind of geared a little bit more towards adults. Let’s be real. But that Disney magic is why we go back to the parks year after year, sometimes multiple times a year. And when you take that magic away, it kind kind of feels a little sad and you don’t want that for your business. You don’t want that sort of luster and shine that has your customers in love with you and have them coming back over and over again, to feel kind of messy and half finished. And that’s what happens when we, as entrepreneurs try to take on too many projects and launch them all at one, because when you don’t do things in sequence, by prioritizing, what’s gonna have the biggest impact based on what your goal is. At the time you end up trying to do a bunch of things, throw a spaghetti at the wall launch a lot of half finished, or frankly I’m gonna say at half-ass products and your customers can tell, be, cuz it’s not consistent with the experience that they

Nicole (07:21):
Know you for your most loyal customers will forgive you. Like we are forgiving that Disney and EB cup look this way. But even for us, it’s a little much, they can put as many butterflies on those, those walls as they want. So we can take selfies, but , it’s still not for the fact that I cannot see. I cannot get to living with the land from test track without walking an extra, you know, half a mile to get there. So we still notice those things. And I can’t imagine what people like this is their first and maybe only experience. And then they walk in and I three things under construction everywhere. Now mind you, I don’t think that Disney had trouble prioritizing what projects they wanted. I think they went through that process, decided these were the projects we wanted to do. They knew F cot really needed a lot of love.

Nicole (08:11):
It was looking dated for park, especially the front of the park, which is supposed to be futuristic themed. It was looking very dated, needed some updates and obviously a COVID at the park closures, not being able to work safely before vaccinations made them decide, okay, well we’ve gotta change these timelines. So, you know, in this way, the environment changed that they had to do all of these things at the same time that you know, it’s 20, 22 now. And if you are still feeling, you have a lot of construction going on, let’s prioritize, let’s simplify. What are the things you need to work on? What org does that need to happen in? Yeah.

Yasmine (08:47):
And like one of the best things you can do is figure out what phase of business are you in right now, Nicole, you talk about like the six phases quite a bit. Do you wanna recap

Nicole (08:56):
What they are? Yeah, sure. So you have typically like six different realms of projects that you could be working on in your business. So first one is I think the one that everyone thinks of it’s reach and visibility. So this is all of the marketing you do to get in front of people. And so a lot of people spend a lot of effort here and the thing is without all of the other pillars done the reach and visibility phase, you might not actually be ready to be doing that phase because you can bring people in and then what, what are you bringing them into? What is ready for them? And so that’s when we start getting into some of the other phases, we have systems and work or flow. So if you work one to one with people you need to have, how do I send a contract to them?

Nicole (09:41):
How do I get their first retainer? Or what is the onboarding experience? What questionnaires do I need to send to them? This whole process of onboarding someone. So they feel cared for and taken care of. And if you don’t have that process yet, if you’re doing region without doing that part of things, that could be a recipe for a mass, because you could be bringing in more people than you’re capable of handling. And they all have a really jarring onboarding experience. This isn’t just for one to one service providers, it can also be for product sellers, digital products, physical products. If you don’t have systems in place and you suddenly get 2040 orders and in who’s going to the post office, how are you packing them? Do you have enough materials to have them packed properly? Do you have the inventory? If you haven’t been keeping accurate inventory?

Nicole (10:25):
So this is why systems are so important before you get to that scaling phase, which is where reach and visibility is. The next one is customer experience. And this is probably the one we talk about the most on exceed Dustin profits, because you know, Disney world is all about creating a magical experience for their guests and customer experiences. The top of that, right? You want people to walk away, being satisfied, trusting you more and being willing to come back or to share with a friend. So anything you can do to improve that experience is going to be important. It’s so typically you need to have your systems and workflows or your products already made before you get to improving the customer experience. So you might be in the phase of product development or product innovation. So there’s two phases to that. You could be creating something new or you could be innovating something you already have by making it better.

Nicole (11:14):
Maybe, maybe it is improving the customer experience. And then the last two I’d say are really when you, when you have your baselines done, you know, when you have your products, you have your systems and you start your reach and visibility to your marketing. The next phase of your business is thinking about growth. So that’s growth and scaling that could be hiring team members that could be getting ready to order more inventory, you know, having a bigger warehouse, getting all of that stuff sorted. So that way you can be ready for the big influx of orders, especially around things like black Friday and then the last one’s personal development and team development. So personal development could be you investing in your own coaching programs or just investing in being a better leader for team culture. That’s also really important. If you have a team underneath you, even if it’s a team of three, that’s still a team and there are dynamics at play and you need to make sure that you’re leading them to doing the tasks that they’re best at and guiding them along the way of how they can best serve your business.

Nicole (12:15):
So those are the six phases. You can learn more about that in the squirrels, into a workbook we talked about earlier, but thinking about which of those you fit under right now, because they all naturally flow together. You can have a hand in multiple ones, but you don’t want to be in every single one at the same time.

Yasmine (12:34):
Yeah. I think one of the things that Nicole says often is that big major corporations pick one of these a quarter and they have like hundreds of thousands of people on a team executing a project. So why do you as a small business owner who may be working solo or has, you know, a small team or contractors working under, underneath you? Like, why do we put pressure on ourselves to try to do six of these things all at once? So, you know, slow your roll, give yourself a break, pick the one area that’s your core priority and look at the projects that you have on your plate right now that you’re super just about and pick the one that supports that goal and finish it, finish it properly and launch it again. I know we do say like done is better than perfect. We’re not saying that it has to be like, you know, Finese and to the point where like you don’t launch it because you’re worried about it not being perfect.

Yasmine (13:26):
No, that’s not what we’re getting at. But what we are saying is make sure, you know, you’re crossing your eyes and doting your tees before you hit launch, because that’s gonna a better customer experience. It’s going to better support your brand and your image online. And it’s going to help people come back because what you don’t want is someone to invest three or $4,000 on a family trip to Disney, go there, be, you know, a little disappointed at the experience. Cause it wasn’t as magical as they want. And this family that might, might have, you know, budgeted to come back in a couple years besides Disney’s not worth it. It never comes back. So really think about that before you do a million things and it also takes pressure off of you as a business owner. I know that with like TikTok and Instagram, we see what like businesses that seem to blow up like literally all overnight. And we think that’s what small business success looks like. The thing is, is a lot of those businesses have been planning probably for weeks months have been working on their products for ages before that happened. And that’s the combination of their efforts, not the start. I

Nicole (14:33):
Think that’s such a good point because it is so easy to see what other people are, are doing. And even just the simple messages out there I think are so harmful when they say we had this many people sign up for our webinar and we had this dollar amount launch and it said, well, what did you do before that? Where were, where was your business before that? What did you do to set yourself up for that? You don’t just wake up one morning and say, I’m going to do this business. And then that happens, yes. There’s probably like 0.5% that that does happen to, but for the rest of us, like you said, it’s a culmination of, it could be months of having this, it percolating in the back of your mind, formulating it. And we’re not saying it’s not okay to pre-sell new product ideas or anything like that, but go into it with the plan and knowing what you plan to do.

Nicole (15:22):
So for example, pixie dust live was something that we said, you know, I think that we should do this in person. It would be really impactful. And of course we’re pixie dust profits. It needs to be at Disney World. What, what can we do here? And we outlined what it would look like what day one day, two day three would look like. So we knew what the product was before we built the sales page before we built, you know, the intake questionnaire. Because you do have to apply to go to pixie, that’s live the application, things like that. And we reached out to certain people and said, you know, I think your business is in the right space for this. So yes, pre-launching without the entire product already built, but with a plan. So don’t hold yourself back because you’re waiting to have everything perfectly done because you can, when you have the audience and the other offer and the trust built, do things like that. And we were in that phase of product development and innovation right now, we are in the phase of reach and visibility because we have our products built and we don’t really need to worry about them so much. We will constantly improve them, but it’s not going to be major overhaul so we can focus on our reach and visibility.

Yasmine (16:30):
Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us for another episode of pixie dust and profits. If you are not following us on Instagram, please do we’re @pixiedustandprofits on there. Make sure to comment and let us know what you thought about this episode and what projects you’re working on. We’re super curious. Thanks again. We so appreciate you listening. We so appreciate the support and we’ll see you real soon. Bye