Disney Secrets for Business

Welcome back to another episode. If you've ever been to Disney, you've experienced the magic, the kind of customer service that makes everything feel seamless, special, and unforgettable. But what if I told you that your business, no matter the size or industry, can create that same kind of customer experience? Today, I'm sitting down with Vance Morris, a former Disney leader turned customer experience expert, to unpack the real secrets behind Disney's legendary service. We're diving into how small businesses can create world class experiences, charge premium prices, and turn customers into raving fans.

From turning mundane tasks into magical moments to the power of systems and processes, this episode is packed full of high impact strategies you can implement today. If you're ready to Disney ify your business and unlock next level success, this is an episode that you cannot afford to miss. Welcome to the show, Vance.

And I my answer wholeheartedly was, I think that if you can change the game, if you can offer the top customer experience, that there's room for anyone, that there is no business out there that there's too many of because I think that anyone can do it better than someone who's already doing it. And so, you know and I think that that's Disney right there.

I mean, a dentist is a dentist is a dentist. I mean, there's only so many ways to clean teeth. You know? They either get the little brushy thing or the squirty thing, and that's kinda it. So, I mean, what's the only difference that can be made is that in office experience, or do they create some kind of theme out of the dentist office?

I had a, client, who's actually a dental client, and she decided that she was going to only be a pediatric dentist, which was smart. She was really niche down. But she took it even further, and we found out her favorite movie was Peter Pan. And she was going to be the pirate dentist. And so when you niche and when you create experiences, you also get what's called price elasticity.

You get to charge premium prices for these incredible experiences. So back to our dentist. She dressed up as captain Hook every day. The, cleaning, what do they call them? The cleaning technicians, or dental hygienists, whatever, all dressed as mister Smee.

And they walk around the office all saying, argh. And the kids love going there. I mean, when was the last time your kid wanted to go to the dentist? I mean, usually, I don't even wanna go to the dentist. And, you know, usually, they're dragging, screaming, and crying. They don't wanna go, but people just line up to go to her place.

I'd never been to Disney World. I had no idea that there was so much research and planning required to do Disney World effectively. And so I feel like I've, like, been immersed. Now my social media feed, all it shows me is all the all the Disney things. And over and over again, you see people talking about the amazing cast members and the customer experience and the fact that, you know, maybe someone had a medical emergency when they were there and and, you know, oh my gosh.

My kid fell and split their head open. But can you believe that it actually turned out to be a totally fine experience because and it's all of these pieces where it's over and over again. It is this examples of well done customer experience. We have a party shop nearby in town, and they're going out of business. And so my daughter and I went in there recently.

We were getting some some birthday decor. My daughter's 12. She says things often that, you know, without a filter. And we walk out of the store and she says, you know, mom, perhaps if there was better customer service, they wouldn't be going out of business. And I thought out of the mouths of babes because %.

I was like, yep. That's that really summarizes it. She's like, they've got cool stuff, but, man, like, I mean, here she is at 12 and has identified that, like, hey. Great product, terrible service.

Beautiful place. But there were some things that were out of place in the rooms. I don't have it close to me, but in the, in the bathroom, they had plastic water cups. And on the plastic water cups, it was emblazoned luxury division of whatever hotel. And I'm like, Holiday Inn gives us real glass, and do you have to tell us it's luxury on a plastic cup?

So you have to have that congruency all through your business. If you're gonna have lobster Thermador and it's a, you know, and it's a $200 meal, well, you know, the guy who's serving it probably shouldn't be in, you know, jean cutoffs and a tank top shirt. I mean, it's just it has to be congruent. And I think that's what Disney does so well is that everything is themed, so you're not going to so if you are in a high end restaurant, the servers and the cast members are all going to be dressed appropriately to serve a high end meal. And if you go to Casey's Corner in the Magic Kingdom where they serve hot dogs, well, they look like they should be serving hot dogs.

So everything is congruent, and I think that's really important. And I wanna go back to what you said at the beginning, you know, with things with accidents and things that happen like that. A lot of times with businesses, we can actually make a situation better or make an experience better than if a problem never happened. Mhmm. Make it even more memorable.

My daughter, when she was younger, we were at Disney. And, of course, we told her to, you know, we're going. We're gonna be walking all day. She has this new pair of sneakers. We said wear socks. Oh, no. No. No. No. Mom and dad don't know squat.

Socks are not cool. I'm not wearing socks. I kid you not. We weren't in those shoes thirty minutes, and she's got blisters. So we go over to the little first aid station, to get some band you can't buy Band Aids, but you can go to the first aid station and get them.

So we're in there, and we're sitting there with a guy, and he says, you know, well, how'd you get these? He goes, well, you know, they're new shoes. Mom said to wear band socks, but, I didn't. And now I'm you know? While we were getting Band Aids put on, somebody else from the medical center went over to one of the merchandise stores, got a three pack of socks, came over and asked my daughter, well, which one of these would you like?

And I'm gonna use my daughter, oh, yeah. Okay. The frozen socks are kinda nice. So I just put the frozen socks on. And I'm like, alright. You know, what do I owe you? And he goes, oh, don't worry about it. And he gave us the other two pairs of socks to

Again, it has congruency with Disney's level of service, but now I have a story to tell others. It wasn't just a, okay, we went we went on the rides, we had some nice meals, we took some great pictures. Now I got a story to tell that, oh my god. They went above and beyond. We got Band Aids, and and they, you know, gave us free socks. It's Totally. You get a story. Your business becomes tellable.

And it was like, okay. I appreciate the honesty because those that say a mistake will never happen, it it feels insincere.

So if you got a burnt steak at the restaurant and the server can run back there and immediately get another steak and bring it out, and then there was only a few minutes' time and maybe he brought a salad or something to serve you in between. That's probably all it's gonna cost the restaurant. But, boy, if you got a burnt steak and then, you know, the server argued, well, you wanted it well done and you know? But, no, I didn't. I said medium rare, and you get into an argument and then stretch it out.

And then, well, I gotta get my manager to come over and the manager gets in. Now it's strict. I mean, now it's a period of time has elapsed. And instead of just having to maybe comp the guy's dinner or and maybe he didn't even have to do that. Maybe he just got him a new steak. Now you're comping his whole dinner. Maybe you have to comp the entire table's dinner. Maybe you're inviting him back for another time. The compensation piles up. So it's just like a wound.

I mean, if you cut your finger and you put a little ointment on it and a band aid, well, it's gonna get better in a day or two. But if you cut your finger and, you know, you rub a little dirt in it and then you don't do anything, well, you know, it's gonna get infected and then it's gonna get gangrene, and then sooner or later, they're gonna amputate. It's the same thing with a problem. I mean, it's just you can't let time go by because the problem is only gonna get worse.

So everyone who's ever been hired is with the hope and intention that it will be a great job. But Disney does that at I mean, we're I mean, I don't know how many people work there, but hundreds, thousands, I don't know, lots. And and overall, the consensus is that those people are doing a great job when someone's paying attention, when someone's not paying attention. How at that large a scale scale is that done?

Because myself included, we are the firm belief we can teach you to do any job. We can teach you to carry a tray in a restaurant. We can teach you to drive a bus. We can't teach you to be nice. Right?

We can't teach you to truly sincerely want to help somebody. I mean, we can coach you a little on that, but that's something that you have to bring with you. So certainly through through those assessments, we're looking for that. Then, obviously, in the interview, we're asking more questions about personality, about how they would handle situations than we are, you know, can you tell the difference between a a glass of Chablis and a glass of Chardonnay? So we wanna address that first.

And then really looking at the I almost lost my train of thought there. Sorry. Yeah. I did lose my train of thought completely. Let's that happens. It does. They're not necessarily. Alzheimer's sometimes kicks in. But hiring for the attitude is paramount because, again, we can just train people to do anything. And I think that and Disney knows that though that they're they have a right fit for the right person.

So they might be a great person, but not very personable. So maybe, like, third shift custodial might be a good place for them. The park is completely empty. They don't have to talk to anybody. They just have to clean. So there's a place for everybody. And just through those tests, through those assessments, and the interview, they can certainly place people where they think they would be best.

There's also more opportunities. So interesting to kind of kind of o ying and yang of every situation.

He chipped in. He carried this, and he helped there. And, you know, he told me about his family and everything. But every once in a while, they'll, you know, you'll say, well, okay. Well, you know, how how can I make a little extra money on the side while I'm doing this job?

And, you know, so some red flags start going up. But, you know, the more you can do before and that's an investment on my part because I pay for that, for him to ride along for that day. But so it's an investment for me. But I would rather invest six hours of pay, but know then that they're gonna be a lousy employee rather than hire them, begin the training, and be a week or two weeks or two months later and have to terminate them. And now I've blown two months worth of salary, and I gotta go rehire somebody and start the process over again.

So whatever you can do before the hire and before the job offer to really get to know that person, it's a worthwhile investment.

We have this new person. And that new person shows up on day one. They jump in the van for training and within, you know, half an hour that person is like, oh, man. Is this this who's supposed to be helping us? This is the help? Oh, no. This is never gonna work. And it almost, instead of being like, oh, thank goodness the help has arrived. Instead it's like, oh, this is terrible. And they know that now they're gonna battle this for a while.

It's not gonna work out. They're gonna have to start the process all over again. It it negatively affects the culture more so than had you just never hired in the first place and that person just kept doing extra work.

But then when it comes actually time to deliver on those kinds of things the bad apples stay a little longer than they should or, you know, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. And it I I get it. I totally get the wanting to do those things. But at that, you know, I I didn't an episode actually maybe in season two and that really was one of our lot of feedback on that episode. And it was really talking about the success of all was more important than the success of one.

And so, although you wanted to believe in the good of that person and their ability to get better, were you willing for it to to cost the company and your ability to employ your and feed the rest of, you know, the rest of the team? And when you kind of take that mindset, it, you know, it becomes kind of

And one of the, customers, they run a school, and one of the customers was, you know, was showing up late or not showing up for, for classes. And they they have it in black and white. Says, look. If you don't show up or if you're late, it counts, you know, as one of your classes, and you don't get to make it up. And the owner was like, oh, just, you know, she's she's a good person.

We'll we'll let her slide. And the manager was like, well, why do we have a policy then? I look like an idiot because I told her no, you know? So if you're gonna have a policy, follow it. I mean, yes, you're the owner.

You do what you want, but you're not helping anybody by doing that. You're actually incentivizing bad behavior, which isn't helping anybody. But, yeah, when it comes to employees, you certainly I mean, if you've got the policy, if you've got the standard, you've got to you've got to manage to that standard. And when you do and when people know that that is what you're doing, it becomes a really easy place to work.

You really cut the legs out from under them. And so, you know, I was helping a client navigate a situation recently and I said and they wanted to walk something backwards. They were like, oh, maybe we were too hard on that policy and it was, you know, they hadn't foreseen some of these other circumstances. And I said, but you need to go back to that manager and coach them from the shadow in terms of how to walk they are gonna walk that back. Because if you come in over top and walk that back for them, they are forever the bad guy and you are the good guy, and it will render them ineffective forever.

And, you know, they it was then the roles were you know, the managers were trying to protect the employees from me. Now, I mean, I wasn't a a a jerk, but, you know, that was that that was just the way it was, and and it worked.

They're all 17 and 18 year old kids, and they gotta push the button. And if they don't know how to push the button, things fall apart. So I've carried that with me. And systems give you freedom. It gives the owner freedom.

So, like, I have systems in place right now in my home service businesses, allowed me to put a general manager in place, and I don't have to do anything with those businesses except CashJax and GizBabies. I spend about ninety minutes a week in those businesses, and I meet with the general manager for thirty minutes a week. That's it. Other than that, I just make sure the bank account is balanced and we're good to go. For employees, systems and processes also give them freedom, and this is where Disney shines.

Because if you can not just memorize, but do your job simply by muscle reflex because you've always done it that way through roots. I mean, it just works that way. Now you have the freedom to do all of those nice things that Disney is known for. You know, do you know, make a napkin into a butterfly or taking pictures for a family or whatever it is. Because you know your job so well in and out, you're not worried about, okay, did I do this, did I do that, while you're taking a picture for a family.

So that's what allows that those extra wow moments, those extra moments of, you know, oh my god. This is fantastic. Look at what these people did for me. Well, they did it because there's a process for their job. They know it really well, and it gives them freedom to be able to do what it is they're doing.

So the easiest way to do it is to map out your customer journey. So wherever you and the customer get together, map out the whole thing. So if the first point of contact is an ad or a postcard or a telephone call, okay, that's great. That's point number one. And then what's point number two? Okay. They come into the office. Great. What's point number three? Oh, they, you know, we we visit their home for this.

Right? And and you just go through. And then you take one of those points, and then you prioritize it. And you say, okay. Well, which one of these is gonna get us the most bang for our buck? What's gonna be either have the greatest impact on service? What's gonna give us the greatest increase in revenue? Or maybe what's going to give us the most savings in either money or time. And then you attack those. And as you're doing this, you're documenting.

And you just if you just do one a week, at the end of the year, you got 52 systems documented. And remember when I said Disney does it simply, and I do it I follow the same thing. Disney runs on three words. What to do, how to do it, and why we do it that way. So, I mean, what to do? Answer the phone. How do you do it? Okay. Thank you for calling the Grand Floridian and now we wish you a magical day or whatever it is. Great.

Why do we do it that way? Well, to make sure that the guests know that they, they've reached the right place and that we separate ourselves from all the other resorts on the property. I'm just pulling that one out from nowhere. But that that's it, and it's that simple. And you just do one of those each week.

You know, you can record yourself. I mean, if you're a solopreneur or if you're, you know, a small business and the owner's still working in the business, get your phone app that does recordings. And while you're driving around, start recording stuff. Upload it to one of those AI things and have it transcribed and you're done. Because when it comes to it with the with your policies and your standards, it helps you to also measure your employees because you don't wanna compare employee a to employee b.

You wanna compare the employee to your standard. Right. Because that's completely unfair to the employees, and it's not doing you any good either because both employees might not be anywhere near your standard. So we wanna make sure that you are are ranking and evaluating your your employees to the standards that you've set.

You know, you're saying maybe one week. So maybe they're kind of part of the way through the process. So some things are documented and some things are not. And you have always some employees who are gonna follow things to the letter and some employees who are not. And so oftentimes, what what kind of people business owners run into is where they have someone who is who seems like they're a great employee.

They do that. They follow the policy to the letter, but when it comes to customer experience, that actually works to their default. So maybe that person is a frontline frontline communications. Maybe they're getting incoming phone calls, and they know that maybe customer Bob Smith there is very unhappy. But they are maybe it's a billing issue, but Bob keeps calling them and saying, hey.

I still had I haven't heard from anybody. And that person in that role keeps forwarding it over to the person who based on a policy should be dealing with that problem. But, obviously, Bob keeps calling. Bob has not been resolved. And that person in the end says, but I did the I I followed exactly what you said.

But Bob is unhappy. So what would you say in a situation like that? How can you you kind of blend the fact that customer you know, you've got policy and procedure, and it is being followed, but then you've got a cut and happy customer. So there's a somewhere something's not right not right.

I I you know, I will make sure that we get so and so to call you back, resolve it, whatever. And then she needs to get up off of her derriere and go find whoever that person is that resolves this and say, hey, you. Let's get this fixed because now it's on me, and I need to report back to the customer that we're doing something. And then you have a log or, you know, some kind of tracking, which you can either do in a CRM or, I mean, even have a notebook if you don't have anything else. And she makes a note to follow-up in a day or two.

Did it get resolved? Yes or no? Called the customer back, said, hey. I just wanna make sure that, this was resolved satisfactorily for you. So, I mean, that's I get it with policies. Sometimes there are, yes, those people that will literally work to the letter of the contract. But if you put something in there that is if you encounter an issue, if you encounter a problem, you kind of own the problem until it's fixed.

But in their mind, that task was now that person's, even though it was their client, their portfolio, their piece. And so things were getting missed because it was like, oh, well, but I assigned that to so and so. It's like, no. No. This is yours. And even if you don't know how to do something, that's okay. You can 100% ask the question. That person can walk you through it. But making sure that that all happens before the twentieth at 5PM when that's due, that you. That is you own that deadline.

Doesn't mean you have to know how to do it, but you have to make sure that you've tracked down the right people to make sure that it happens on that timeline.

You know? So so often it's this big, huge, elaborate thing which may work for the engineer or the this or the that, but then you know, the actual person who has to come in is is like, I'm so lost. I'm very confused, and then it never happens. So what else what are the other pieces that that can really make a big difference?

So we have to rise above it by providing, the experiences. And the term that I call Disneyfying is creating experiences out of the mundane. So what are all the boring mundane things we do in our business day in and day out to keep the business running? How do we plus that? How do we raise the level of service for that thing?

Disney has figured that out. So I'll give you an example for my carpet cleaning business. So one of the boring mundane things we have to do is get into somebody's home. Right? So we have this completely scripted out, and we follow-up with it. It's, you know, it's in our OJT book. So it starts in in the street. We park our van in the street. We don't park in the driveway because, god forbid, I got an oil leak. Now I got something else I gotta clean up.

And the technician gets out of the van. He's in a clean uniform because he carries extra uniforms with him in case he gets dirty on the job beforehand. He smells good because he's not allowed to smoke on the job, and he's not allowed to wear, cologne because there's nothing worse than a technician walking around smelling like day old Marlboros, and he just took a shower in Axe. Some people like it. I mean, if you wanna go to seven eleven and buy a bottle of it, knock your socks off, but that's not for my guys.

So he gets a special mat and a little gift, and he goes up to the front door. He lays down his special mat. He knocks on the door. He doesn't ring the bell because friends knock, salespeople ring the bell, takes a couple of steps back, waits for the customer to come to the door. Customer opens the door, and he says, hi. My name is Josh. I'm here to create your healthy home. May I come in? We don't just barge in. And, customer will, invite us in.

We do an exaggeration, so like we're like we're performing a show, we exaggerate, wiping our feet on the mat, put little booties on our shoes. And as we're going into the home, we present missus McGillicuddy with a gift. And I don't know about you, but when was the last time you had a home service professional come to your house, a plumber, electrician, carpet cleaner, and give you a gift before any service was provided? Gonna probably hazard a guess never. So we give them a gift.

It's not not a very expensive gift. It's a nice little custom blue box, and then it is a bottle of our spot remover, a bag of cookies, and a little note from me saying thanks so much for allowing us into your home. That is our scripted entry to get into the home. That is our experience. Now notice that that experience doesn't cost a lot of money.

I mean, that gift is under $5. Everything else is just cost of doing business, and I would have to do it anyway. But that gift, the cost of the gift is more than compensated because giving that gift starts a process called reciprocity. So if I give something to you, you feel compelled to give something back to me. So when we started giving this gift, we saw a 26 increase in our mid tier package, which equated to about $65,000 in additional sales every year.

So a little $5 box generating additional sales like that. I'm like, oh my goodness. This is great. So you just have to think, okay. Well, what what are some of the, you know, what are some of the stereotypes of your business?

How do you break them? How do you completely go opposite of what everybody else is doing and do that? So that's one of the ways. But, you know, just look for those boring mundane things. Answering the telephone is I'll tell you how to separate yourself from everybody else in the world.

Answer your phone live. Seriously. Answer your phone live. You will be heads and tails above everybody else in the world because everybody has abdicated phone answering to some kind of app or service or something, and you can't get a live person. It's crazy.

But the fact that the person who actually already is ready credit card in hand to book you is on the phone, and it's, like, you know, the afterthought ultimately is just such a key piece. And and oftentimes, if we go back to that kind of, you know, business owner, whoever's in the business, maybe they're, you know, they are the person who's still on-site cleaning the carpets themselves. Now they're with the customer, phones in the pocket ringing, and they don't want you know, but maybe they're dealing with missus Smith already. You know, I feel like that is the the missed piece so often where, you know, you can you can get someone to answer the phone. It's not expensive, you know?

And so you can have someone answer the phone and and maybe they just answer the they've got their script. They answer the phone. They give that good experience, and they say someone will call you you know, come someone will call you back within the hour. That person who is ready to purchase is still handled. It's they're still getting a positive experience.

And and going to your point, a couple of minutes ago is you can't afford to not answer the phone. If you were to do so, like, you know, like I said, I'm part of a call center. And, I mean, eve our even our largest package for, like, a busy home service business is only $1,500 a month. And if so that's what if I mean, if you do if your job average is, I don't know, 400 doll. I mean, all you gotta do is get four jobs that you easily would have missed because the phone's in your pocket, and the service is paid for.

And easily, people are missing four calls a month, especially if they're, you know, solo. So, yeah, that that telephone is just I mean, as much as it's still as you do texting and videos and all the other stuff on your phone, it's still the lifeline to your business.

And so, I mean, I shamelessly use my children in my marketing. You know, I constantly make fun of myself deprecating humor all the time, any chance I get. And people enjoy it because it's entertaining. But, my buddy was, trying to make himself look like this big company, and he he got one of those phone tree things. And right when he opened, it was press 1 for commercial, press 2 for residential, press 3 for janitorial, press 4 for something else, and press 5.

All of those options went right to his cell phone. He was the only employee, and all those options went right to his cell phone. I'm like, you're a freaking idiot. What are you doing? Just answer the phone. Nobody wants all that.

Maybe they say, hey. I I wanna start a cleaning company, but I, you know, I my my family thinks I'm taking on too much anyway, and I don't wanna do that. And so, you know, one of the questions years ago, a client asked me they want you this this big store, this online store, and and she was kinda shy. And I said, I really think the only way you'll make this successful is if you're willing to be the face publicly. And if you're gonna be on your social media and you're gonna be sharing because people buy from people.

And so you can buy that specific item just about anywhere. And I I said, but you, people really like you. So if you're willing to get over being shy and show up and, you know, if you wanna if you wanna sell all over the place, then you need to get on, like, short form clips and be sharing who you are and why this is cool. And she was like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, a year in, she was still and she's like, the marketing's not working. And I said, because you're missing you're missing you. You really are.

And you look at his website right now, and his face is, like, really hard to find. And I'm like, dude, you need to get your face out there. People, you are a celebrity in your own world. Play with that. You need to get that out there. So I I 100 agree with you.

And, well, Vance doesn't clean anymore. You know? And, so, yeah, it took some time to really separate myself from that. But now people I mean, you know, Steven's got kids. They love I mean, they ain't got little kids, so he's they're eating up his little baby stories and all that kind of stuff.

But, you know, my coaching business, this is I am the face. I'm it. Oh, if I if I stop, the business goes away because I'm it. And and I'm okay with that because I there's really nobody I could sell this to. The home service business, certainly. I mean, I could sell that to anybody. Yeah. I I I think that I mean, bricks and mortar stuff, stuff that doesn't require the personality behind it to to make the business go. Yeah. Those, certainly, you can transition to somebody else.

It take a little time, but you can certainly do that. You know, stuff like I do with this, now as soon as I'm done, I'll just turn the lights off and walk out the door.

And get the results from it. Something you read in a newspaper, if you still read the newspaper. I do. But just pick one thing you learn and just commit to implementing that one thing. See the results and pat yourself on the back that said you did it, and then go do something else.

So it's all free and really low cost ways to wow. So you got one wow for every week of the year. And then, if you wanna follow me, I'm really only on LinkedIn. Flakebook is not my place, but, so I'm on link I think I'm the only Vance Morris on LinkedIn as well. So either the website or LinkedIn.