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.

Yasmine (00:30):
And I’m Yasmin.

Nicole (00:31):
And today we’re talking about onboarding experiences, which is something I know we’ve talked about before, but the inspiration behind this episode is very specific. I recently signed up for a Disney Rewards Visa card. You get a couple of perks with that and it just kind of worked out that I really needed to have that at the time that I took that out. But what really impressed me was that I got that welcome pack in. If you have ever opened a new bank account or a credit card or anything like that, you know what I’m talking about. You get the letter in the mail that has your card in it and it just tells you go to this website to activate it. And you get pages and pages of disclosures that are on those little pamphlet papers with, you know, size eight font that you probably don’t even look at.

Nicole (01:18):
Um, and so that’s the typical experience when you open a new account. And this is not the experience I had because of course Disney has to mag Gify everything. So I got this package in the mail, it had my disclosure information, but it also had, you know, this laminated sheet colorful, magical with, with all of my Disney parks. It talked about how as a Visa card holder you could go to special meet and greet events with the characters. You had, you know, 0% interest on vacation packages for six months and a couple of other little things just, you know, making some of these parks that I already knew about. It was the reason I signed up for the card reminding me of them making it seem more magical like I made a good choice. But that is not all. They also gave four little postcards that were all different designs.

Nicole (02:13):
Um, they were beautiful, they were cute. There was one with the castle with like magical stars around it. I think there was one with Dumbo. Um, just really adorable postcards and it was so unexpected. Um, of course I could send a letter to someone on those postcards, but I opted to keep them and hang them around my office cuz they were so adorable. They were nice art prints almost, even though they were, you know, designed to be used as a postcard. So it was just something that really stuck with me when this happened that I took all the notes on it and I was like, this is gonna be a pixie dust episode.

Yasmine (02:46):
You know, I love Disney and how they take a very like boring, mundane and frankly kind of like stressful experience. Cause like when you get that pamphlet with all of that like legalese, it’s just, it’s a little overwhelming. And I’m one of the people who goes through like all the benefits and you know, elements of, uh, features that come with my credit card because I like to know what I can benefit from but also like what I need to be aware of. And I love that Disney really does magic that unfortunately as a Canadian, I’m not eligible to sign up for that credit card. Otherwise that would be like my daily personal um, card cuz who doesnt love Disney Rewards? Right?

Nicole (03:28):
It’s, it’s wonderful because we were just at Disney for Pixie Dust Live. Mm-hmm . And when I was going around the world in Epcot for food and wine, I used my rewards points. I had $200 in rewards that had been saved up over probably the last two years because during Covid we didn’t go to Disney. So it had built up and I just, you know, went around the world eating and got a couple of souvenirs for my family while I was out all on those rewards.

Yasmine (03:56):
$200 gets you a lot of Mickey pretzels.

Nicole (03:59):
It does. I did have a Mickey Pretzel

Yasmine (04:02):
And beer cheese if you get it in Germany, . So we obviously want to talk about what you can do in your business and what we can learn from that. And one of the things that Nicole and I were just talking about as we were playing this episode is how gifting as part of the onboarding experience just has such a positive impact on the brand and also the experience. One way that we actually applied this at Pixie Dust and Profits live was when we had people register. We actually sent them little, um, luggage tags.

Nicole (04:37):
I love our luggage tags.

Yasmine (04:38):
They’re so cute. They’re so cute. I have them on my suitcases and like, you know, if you have sort of like a common colored black standard issue suitcase, if you’re checking your luggage, a bright pretty luggage tag definitely makes it easier to pull it off of the carousel when it comes out. But we sent it out because we wanted to have a touchpoint in between people signing up for the retreat and the actual retreat to get excited and to hear from us in advance of us all getting together. And I would say like more than half the ladies showed up with the little luggage tag on their luggage.

Nicole (05:16):
It’s so fun. It says, I bring the magic. I love it. It’s my favorite.

Yasmine (05:20):
Other ways you can apply gifting into your business is sending something out with your orders if you have a physical product based business. So I see this all the time. If I order something from a shop, often a small shop on Etsy or online, they’ll send stickers, um, along with their order. And again, you know, I may not have ordered those stickers, but they’re just like a f fun, cute thing that I will hold onto. And like, I maybe unfortunately am in the camp where I just like hoard my stickers cause I’m afraid of like sticking them on

Nicole (05:51):
Things. I am the same. I am the same. I do not put my stickers on things because I I just don’t wanna not use that thing anymore. And then I don’t have my sticker

Yasmine (05:59):
exactly. Or like, I’m worried that I place it on the wrong thing. So like, I have this like one Disney sticker that I put on my iPad. Cause I’m like, okay, this, this is the one thing I’m gonna stick on. And you know, it was beautiful, but like I used my iPad every single day and after about a year it started to fade and I had to peel it off and I was just like sad at the loss of that like totally free but cute sticker that I got. Uh, so instead what I do is I just hoard them in an envelope in a drawer and I just look at them, uh, from time to time. I, I was, while

Nicole (06:27):
We’re talking about stickers, this episode comes out just before Black Friday. So if you have ever seen our t-shirts on our website, they say pixie dust and profits. I bring, I make small business magic. They are the most comfortable t-shirts I’ve ever worn. Those will be on sale. And hint, hint, you might get some stickers if you order them. So take a look at the website over Black Friday. We have some deals for you.

Yasmine (06:53):
Yeah, we had some cute ideas as we were planning it out so you don’t wanna miss out.

Nicole (06:59):
All right, so we talked a little bit about product based businesses, um, and sending something along with your order, but I also wanna talk about service based businesses or even coaching businesses like agencies where there might be multiple people working with a client. So of course the onboarding experience we’ve talked about this before, is so important. And that could include sending a gift. Thank you for working together. Um, I personally like to send gifts maybe toward the end of a project saying like, Look how hard you worked. So I don’t always send a gift right on onboarding. I, it’s kind of personalized to what the situation is or what the project we’re working on together. So that’s how I like to gift my clients. Um, but there’s also the gift of being responsive available and interested and engaged in their business. These are things that are soft skills, but so important.

Nicole (07:50):
Especially when someone has just invested in you. This might have been a scary investment for them. Mm-hmm. , it might have felt risky. Especially right now with the way the economy is having your own business and keeping it running can feel a little bit scary or isolating. And so being available and even if you’re not available to be available, you can say, Hey, I will be out of the office for pixie dust live during these dates. If you have an emergency, this is how you get in touch with me. Those proactive, and I hate that word, but those proactive steps can really mean a lot to the relationship. And that’s what we’re talking about with onboarding experience. Knowing going into Black Friday, who is taking time off, who isn’t, who’s available? If there’s something that’s gonna go down on the site, I know who I can turn to.

Nicole (08:38):
I know who’s moving during that weekend and who not to bother. Those things are so important. And so I want you to keep in mind that gifting and experience doesn’t have to be a physical item. It doesn’t have to be a huge package. It could literally just be remembering a conversation you had during your consulting call and moving on from there to say, Okay, we talked about this, let’s make sure that we address that and we don’t lose sight of it. So taking something traditionally boring, jazzing it up, like your credit card disclosure statements, um, there’s some other things too. So, um, I talked a little bit about how I like to gift my clients. So whether you’re work project based or you have like a certain engagement that you do with people or someone says, you know, I’m moving in this other direction and it’s like an offboarding process.

Nicole (09:29):
You can also gift then, so I, you can call them parting gifts. Um, and so what I like to do is just at the end of a project, I helped someone do a summit last year for example. And as we got close to the date, I know how stressful that is when you’re trying to field emails from 30 different speakers and in your head you’re thinking about, how am I gonna do this? It’s, it’s like a live event. What’s going on? Getting that gift in the mail of, Hey, you’ve got this, look how far you’ve come, this student exists four months ago and look all of you’ve done. So, um, it’s election day here. I’m really involved with my local community and so I am looking for that gift tomorrow, . So, you know, it’s, it goes a long way to recognize that someone’s worked really hard, even if the results may not have been what they expected, good or bad. It’s, it’s an acknowledgement that you were here, you were present, you worked hard. We see you.

Yasmine (10:22):
I love the acknowledgement of the progress and the work that you’ve done together. Cuz again, you typically see gifts in the onboarding process for, um, contractors that I worked with for a really long time. I, you know, I’ll get a little holiday gift. I send out holiday gifts to my clients. Um, but just to acknowledge the end of a big project I think is such a nice touch.

Nicole (10:45):
I think we can also go beyond just the clients that you’re working with or the customer who purchases from you. And I am really big on this. We’ll have some upcoming episodes about leadership and team building mm-hmm. . And so if you have questions on that realm, please dms s on Instagram, send us an email, whatever it may be. But this also extends far beyond just the customer and client. It also extends to your team. Recognizing when they’ve gone above and beyond. The onboarding experience for a new team member can mean so much to their success on your team. Letting them know exactly what you expect from them, what their daily tasks are, what their weekly tasks are. Having regular check-ins and expectations. It goes such a long way versus the contractors who come on and they’re like, Okay, so what is it that you wanted me to do? And they really don’t have an idea for how they fit on the team or what you’re expecting or, um, get surprised by the amount of feedback they get because, you know, they thought they were doing something the way you might have wanted, but they don’t know what you want yet. So this goes far beyond just your customers and bring it to your team.

Yasmine (11:57):
Well, I hope that gave you a few ideas on how you can incorporate gifting in your business beyond just even onboarding. We wanna thank you again for joining us and wanna remind you to check us out on Black Friday. We’ll have more information up on our Instagram and on pixiedustandprofits.com. If you have any questions about leadership, please send them our way. That’s one of the topics Nicole and I really, really love talking about, and we can’t wait to dig into it in a future episode. So email us hello@pixiedustandprofits.com with any questions you have about being a leader in your business.

Nicole (12:32):
Thank you so much for listening today. Follow us on Instagram @pixiedustandprofits if you’re not already. And stay tuned for our next episode.

Yasmine (12:39):
We’ll see you real soon. See you real soon. Bye.