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 (00:25):
Welcome to Pixie Dust & Profits. Today. We’re going to throw back to about three years ago when I first met Nicole and you know what the first thing was that actually brought us together and spawn this amazing friendship that we now have. If you’re going to say Disney you’re about half, right? It was actually mosquitoes. And more specifically, it was how Disney manages mosquitoes on property, because like, think about it for a second. If you’ve ever been to Florida, like no offense against Florida, it’s kind of like swampland, right? That’s what just need bought acres and acres and acres of swampland. And we know that what environments attract mosquitoes, but why is it that you like barely or rarely ever get bit like, I mean, I never have been bitten at Disney, Nicole. I know you guys are super cool.

Nicole (01:14):
Yeah, not that I can recall. And me and my son are both really sensitive to mosquito bites and I swear, I don’t know, there’s, there’s something in my blood that is just like, come eat me. Like in Maine. I can’t go outside in the summer. I just get bit so badly. But yeah, I go to Disney World anywhere from August to January, to September, December. And I can’t recall ever being bit because if I were, I probably would not find it as enjoyable as I do to go to Disney World.

Yasmine (01:43):
And the cool thing about how Disney manages their mosquito problem, so to speak is really fascinating. And that’s in fact what Nicole and I stayed up till like 2:00 AM in the morning nerding out about from like a purely like operation standpoint. So Disney manages mosquitoes in a number of ways. One is like the biggest way is they actually have these chicken coops all over property. So the thing is, is that mosquitoes can obviously like bite chickens, which like, you know, what happened to any chickens living in Florida. And it’s not like they’re actually putting them in a situation that will harm them. But the one cool thing about chickens is they’re actually not prone to like any other viruses, Zika. Like they won’t get sick if they have it. So what Disney does is every day, they check these chickens and do little tests to see if they’ve been diagnosed with the virus or their Seca or West Nile.

Yasmine (02:38):
And if they are, or if they get an abundance of bites, they know that there’s more of a ski in the area. So they will implement measures to actually manage it, which interestingly does not require pesticides or any chemicals. In fact, one of the things that Walt wanted was to not, you know, use chemicals to sort of manage the bug situation at the parks, because it would ruin the environment. And you know, when you have so many Little’s going around, obviously that’s a cause for concern for parents. So in addition to using the chickens to figure out, you know, whether they’re, they need to like, sort of implement any measures to manage the mosquito problem, they actually use a garlic spray. Yes. A garlic spray to keep the mosquitoes away because they are not fans of garlic. Some people are, I mean, I’m married to an Italian, so we’re, we’re bigger fancier, but I’ve never really felt like it smell like garlic anywhere on property, but that’s a one method that they use to keep the mosquitoes away.

Yasmine (03:36):
The other thing is just in the way that Disney is built. So they have it so that no, for like places with like water are actually completely still. So the water often flows or moves or has mechanisms to do that. So mosquitoes can’t settle and hatch their eggs. The landscaping on property allows for proper drainage and you know, flowers and herbs and stuff that mosquitoes are sort of a little bit more resistant to. So they can act as natural repellents and even the architecture on Disney, everything is a little slope. So again, water doesn’t settle in pool, so it doesn’t attract mosquitoes to lay their eggs. I know there’s a few other things, Nicole, anything else

Nicole (04:15):
You want to mention? And they have a task force basically assigned to this. And you know, one of the things that the chickens is kind of ingenious because as we know, you know, Walt Disney World is a really huge span of property. And if you think about this, they could be treating everywhere of the whole property all at once and using a lot of resources, human resources garlic spray, all of that. But by using the chickens, they can basically target the areas where there are more bites happening. So they know, for example, their chicken coop at Coronado Springs is experiencing more mosquito bites than the one over at magic kingdom. So they need to deploy the unit over to Coronado Springs and, you know, get some garlic spray out there. So it’s actually really smart. And the whole reason we started geeking out about this stuff is yes, operationally, they had so many different facets to controlling this really big problem for guests for safety reasons for guests, but also for annoyance reasons, right? And it’s all about metrics and data. And so we were geeking out about the fact that they actually manage their resources by looking at probably a dashboard every morning of what’s the mosquito situation, where are we seeing more, where is getting hit and can we deploy our units out there and, you know, fight fires, but strategically. So you’re not, you know, sending everyone everywhere every single day that would probably, you know, triple or quadruple their staff, if they had to do it that way or

Yasmine (05:52):
Make the parks smell like my kitchen when I’m cooking up some marinara, like I’m sure that I love the smell, but that might not jive with everybody on property. So yeah, so what’s really cool is like Disney is putting these markers in place to measure before they need it. And that’s what we want to talk about today, about how it’s, how important it is to measure in your business. Often we will finish something up and think, oh, well, I wonder how many people came through this funnel or how many people converted here. And the thing is, is if you don’t have the tools or the necessary means in place to capture that data, it’s going to be a lot more work trying to dig into what you needed later on. Like you’re going to do so many more like manual exercises, scrubbing data. I mean, I’ve been there. I’ve literally have had to go through like two years of a client’s financial records to parse that and figure out like what their actual situation is because they really hadn’t measured or tracked anything.

Nicole (06:52):
Yeah. They were just basing everything off. If there’s cash in the account, pay for it, if not do this, instead of thinking like, is my business even profitable is product making money.

Yasmine (07:02):
Exactly. Like that’s money is like one thing that you have to track. What, beyond that, like before you then get to money, you want to look at things like conversion rates. How many people are like, oh, your open rates and your emails, traffic to your website. If you’re pushing something out there, are you actually getting the appropriate clicks to make it worthwhile, to maybe like create a specific type of content. These are all markers you need to put in place in your business. And one thing Nicole has coming up is all about measurement. So Nicole, why don’t you talk a little bit about that?

Nicole (07:33):
Yeah, sure. So I have a metrics challenge starting actually the week this airs and you can join at any time. We’ll share the link in the show notes and it’s N boucher.com/metrics challenge. And you know, really, I’m just helping people get from a point where they’re tracking nothing to tracking something I’m thinking about metrics. So this isn’t for someone who, you know, loves being in Google Analytics and slicing numbers, every which way this is for someone who’s like, I don’t even know what you mean when you say metrics. And I, I have nothing. Like I have zero right now I have zero Facebook followers or Instagram followers. And like, where do I go from here? And so it really is a, step-by-step get you in the door for thinking about making decisions in your business, using data and feelings too. Like that’s part of it and making those decisions.

Nicole (08:25):
So for example very recently I saw someone talking about an investment they had made, they had hired a firm to handle their Facebook ads for them and this from like, they weren’t seeing the results that they thought they should be seeing, but they didn’t know how to test that. And so the firm was coming back saying, oh, we need to change your, your, your sales page again. And that’s going to be this much more money. So this person is thinking they want more money. I’ve already spent so much money. And I feel like it’s not working. So I had to sit down and say, well, feeling like it’s not working isn’t enough, right? Let’s look, let’s look at your metrics. Let’s see what we can figure out. So first of all, your ads, are they getting clicks? If they’re not getting clicks, then there’s probably something wrong with the copy or the images.

Nicole (09:16):
And you need to experiment with that. If your ads are getting clicks, then are they turning into leads? Are they actually putting their email address in or purchasing the thing that you sent them to? If they’re not in that tells you there’s something wrong with that landing page, because you’re getting clicks. People are getting there and they’re not moving to the next step. If they are going ahead and opting in, but they’re not buying the second offer. There’s a problem with something on the second page. And so you can kind of do this. Diagnostics is really what it is. I mean, metrics is the fun word, but diagnostics is what it is. So you can see where the drop-offs are happening and understand, oh, that’s where I need to focus my efforts, my time, my money, that’s where I need to hire a support.

Nicole (09:58):
So when they come to me saying, I don’t know if this ads team has been effective. I say, well, how do you like, what data do you have? Can you compare it to what things look like before you can go into Google Analytics and look at things from 180 days ago, as long as you have that pixel set up. So if nothing else, you know, write it on your to-do list this week, get your pixels installed on your website. And we’ll link to some resources to help you do that. If you don’t know how, but you know, these are the things that you need to know in order to make your business decisions. So we’re not trying to scare you by saying metrics and measurements and KPIs or any of these words. It’s really just before you act or react, have a case study around why you’re making that leadership decision for your business and data is usually what helps you do that right

Yasmine (10:48):
On it calls. So if you guys haven’t signed up for it yet, I highly recommend it. Measurement and metrics and diagnostics are all things that we really implement as like the first sort of, I want to say like line of defense, because it’s true. Cause we it’s the first line of defense in any client’s business. Because by implementing these markers and being able to track data, we are able to better understand what isn’t isn’t working so we can optimize and improve a business and make it more profitable. So you want a profitable business. Yes. Sales strategies can help you get there. Yes, doing reels on Instagram could probably help, but make sure you’re measuring first guys. It’s the non-sexy stuff that honestly can result in the biggest life leaps and bounds in your business. So sign up at and boucher.com/metrics,

Nicole (11:41):
Metrics, challenge, but metrics will get you to Mike metrics tracker. So there’s two things there for you. So once you graduate from the challenge, you can use the tracker to actually track all this data. So this episode’s been really fun cause it’s what we initially geeked out about and realized like, oh, we are like brain twins here. This is amazing. And I want to say, you know, we focused a lot on the metrics and KPIs and using data to make decisions in this episode. But there’s another piece that Yasmine talked about early on with designing for the problem. So, you know what the problem is, they designed the parks around it and not to say that it was the only thing about how they design their walkways or their buildings or that water is always flowing. So mosquitoes can’t lay eggs, but those factors all came into play and the design of the space.

Nicole (12:34):
And so we focused a lot on the metrics and KPIs, which can be about diagnostics or performance, but there’s also an element to this that I don’t want you to forget about. And we’re not going to go into detail here. We’ll bring you another episode on it. But remember to keep in mind as you’re designing new products and services and programs, think about the problems that could come later and design them out in the beginning. So we’ll talk more about that in another episode, but I wanted to make sure we highlighted it here right

Yasmine (13:03):
On. Well, thanks again for joining us for another episode of Pixie Dust & Profits, we’ll be back in two weeks with our next episode. If you don’t follow us on Instagram, give us a shout. We’re @pixiedustandprofits. And if you were not on our mailing list, you really want to get on it because that’s where we share some fun extras from time to time. So sign up at magic.pixiedustandprofits.com. Thanks so much. And we’ll see you real soon.