Imagineers, Brainstorming and Rapid Business Growth

Like any normal podcast host. Let me now tell you a story that my ex-boyfriend told me, without fact checking a single word of it 

 so that we can all gain from this example, like a parable, if you will. 

This episode is all about brainstorming and ways to brainstorm to grow your business. 

When people even accidentally stomp on brainstorming sessions, that's honestly. One of my biggest pet peeves. 



And not just for my sake, for your sake, too, for the people in the brainstorming sessions, I recently had a problem in my business. A good problem. 

We suddenly had a massive influx of clients and I had an oh, shoot moment. And oh, shoot moment where I was like, how are we going to serve all these people? So I sat down in a brainstorming session.  One with my husband where I distinctly said solutions only no bad ideas. 

How can we solve this go? And one of the first ideas he came up with.  Doubled the capacity of my entire business, doubled it. And furthermore, thanks to the idea he came up with. We serve our clients better than ever, and it all came from this moment from this, oh, shoot moment. I followed that up with a brainstorming session with my team where I said no bad ideas. We started going. 

We got a little bit off the rails. We tried to think of ideas. We tried to expand. When we got stuck, I went to ChatGPT. I asked it for more brainstorming ideas. , and we ended up coming up with like five more solutions that could continue to improve the experience of our clients. 

And none of that would have been possible if we weren't adept at brainstorming. If we weren't using the skills, it takes to brainstorm which so many people are not. So my ex told me this story. 



About the creation of star wars world at Disney world. I don't even know what it's called, but they will call it star wars land, the Grecian star wars land. 

Apparently the higher ups, they go to the Imagineers. The Imagineers are the people who ideate everything at Disney world, like architects and creatives and designers and all the people that are going to create star wars land. And they go to them and they say, go big, think humongous. What can we have? And star wars land that will blow people's minds. 

What installations can we have? What rides can we have? What restaurants can we have create it?  And so the Imagineers, this team of brilliant people, they think, and they create and they come up with and they, they go so humongous. They don't let anything hold them back. This is the dream phase. They present their ideas to the powers that be, and the powers that be say. Go. Bigger. 



Is that true? 

I don't know. I don't care because that is how you create magic. Apparently Walt Disney had this theory. 



 They call plussing. Apparently he invented it. I don't know. Um, when I looked it up, it says plussing is a term coined by Walt Disney, which refers to the process of basically taking an existing idea and finding ways to make it better, improve it. Enhance it. And so Imagineers would propose an idea and the others would build on it, build, build, build at no point are we going okay, well, how can we make this, this, how can we make this actually work? 

How much money is this going to cost us? What problems might come up because your brain can't come up with problems and solutions at the same time. So as soon as you mentally check out of the brainstorming session and start being practical and start thinking about money and start. Thinking about reasons why something's going to be hard or won't work, or we'll take some expertise that you don't yet have you are no longer building on that idea. 

You are actively making it smaller. So in a brainstorming session, when the moment is deemed brainstorming, build on ideas, go bigger. You don't know that you can't come up with the answers. 

You might be saying, oh, Jenna, would I have to like, shut down the ideas? Cause some stuff's just obviously not going to work. Why. You don't know that. You don't know that the money's not going to come. You don't know that you won't find someone where that's their expertise and it's easy for them. I just.  We're changing over the whole backend of my business right now. 

And we created a dream list. We were like, okay, if we could just have, have everything we've ever wanted in the backend of the business, what would it be? Just go big, just think of anything. And we spent like a couple of weeks where we had like a joint note pad and me and some other team members. 

We just wrote down everything that we could ever want. And then we went to an operations person and we were like, okay. We know that this software probably won't be able to do all these things, but we'll just read you our dream list and you know what she said. Yeah, good. Let's go. I can do all of this where like all of it. 

She's like all of it. I just got an email, not 10 minutes ago. She goes, Hey, I have more ideas. I'm building more for you. We can do more. We can go bigger. We had no idea how it was going to happen. We had no idea if it was even possible, but if we didn't dream, we wouldn't have given her that list. 

We would have been conservative and then we would have ended up only a few steps forward instead of running a hundred miles an hour fast forward.  

Now, obviously I'm not perfect. And having a pet peeve. Isn't great. Sometimes I can get frustrated in brainstorming sessions. , when I see people that are, you know, stomping on the idea, or, you know, if someone like shuts down an idea and then you point out that they've shut down the idea, then they shut down themselves further. 

And some people get really intimidated by brainstorming. They don't think it's possible. So I'm trying to come up with ways to also improve my team's ability to brainstorm and I'm actively doing that. I'm actively trying to find new ways to position brainstorming sessions, to help people. 

And I also added in my outlook on brainstorming to our, basically the company policy. So when we bring on a new hire in my business, I read through our company values with them and I've added one specifically about brainstorming so that we can just go head on right from the very beginning. They understand how we run things.



Here. I'll read it to you. 

You can add it to your company policy if you want as well. The headline is we never shut down ideas in a brainstorm. And I go on to say brainstorms, aren't a time to bring up reasons, something won't work, brainstorm like an Imagineer and keep ideas flowing when the setting is designated a brainstorm. 

So whether that's on slack, whether that's on zoom, if we've deemed the moment, Hey, let's come up with solutions for this. Or how can we improve this? That's not the time to shut down ideas. You will always have an opportune time to say, oh, that's too expensive. Pensive, or that's not a right now problem, or we're going to need someone else's help for this. But that is for later, not for the time when we're trying to go big, actually the way my brand values start out is if you ever think this sounds crazy, but it just might work. 

That's an idea you have to share with the team because that's how we roll. That's how we grow. That's how we expand.  

Let me give you a fun brainstorm that you can do with yourself right now. And I want you to actively, as you're doing this actively notice, when you start thinking of reasons, something won't work and see if you can pivot, see if you can change directions, see if you can stop that voice and just go with the voice of ideas and the voice of abundance. 

All right. 

What are 25 ways that you can make a thousand dollars before you go to bed tonight? Write out 25 ways and you can be bold and you can be stupid. No one else is reading it. Maybe one way you make it as you buy a lottery ticket. I don't care. Come up with ideas. I heard on a podcast a long time ago that when you try and force yourself to come up with 30 ideas, it's like the 28th idea. 

That's the little piece of gold. And I think there's a reason for that. It's   because you finally forced your brain to come up with something new and just really forged ahead. And you're reaching for the apples that are higher on the tree, right? Not just the ideas that come to you quickly that are your default ideas that are easy to you, but you're forcing yourself to come up with new ones to really see things from a different angle.  So that's your homework. Looking forward to you messaging me on Instagram to tell me at worked.

 And with that, I'll see in the next episode.