139: The Wisdom of Walt Disney: Live a Great Story and Control What You Can Control with Jeff Barnes

Robert Plank: We have Jeff Barnes who is an author, professional keynote speaker, university professor, and leadership and success coach. His book is called The Wisdom of Walt. It's an Amazon number 1 bestseller in multiple categories, including personal success in business. We're going to be talking about a lot of fun, Disney kind of stuff today. How are things, Jeff?

Jeff Barnes: Hey, Robert. Things are great. How are you?

Robert Plank: Super fantastic. I feel like I should say it's magical or wonderful or whatever the proper Disney term is, but I have to admit I know almost nothing about Disney despite living in California.

Jeff Barnes: We're doing the interview on a Monday, so let's just go with "happy, magical Monday."

Robert Plank: Perfect. Happy, magical Monday. I'm going to start using that one every Monday.

Jeff Barnes: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Is there one of those for like every day of the week or am I just stuck with the one day of the week?

Jeff Barnes: "Magical Monday" is pretty popular. "Have a terrific Tigger Tuesday" is another one that you'll hear every now and then. I like "wonderful Wednesday," which sort of goes back to the Wonderful World of Disney. Yeah, I mean, if you're really, really deep, you've got one for every single day of the week. I typically stick with "magical Monday" and then trust the rest of the days to take care of themselves.

Robert Plank: Okay. Yeah, they'll all fall line after that.

Jeff Barnes: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Cool. It seems like there is this whole crazy, like subculture that's really cool, brands called ... this Walt Disney stuff that you happen to be in the middle of, so can you tell us about that and about yourself and all that good stuff?

Jeff Barnes: Sure. 33 million people a year in the United States alone, Robert, go to Walt Disney or Disneyland and, within that pocket of 33 million, there are people who are just fanatics and obsessed and cannot get enough of it. Within Southern California, there is a love and a passion for Disneyland as a local park that beats almost anything I've ever seen to include love for a sports team, love for one's city, town, community, you name it, and part of that is the 61-year history of the park here in Southern California. I think a lot of it has to do with, in Southern California, everybody's from everywhere and there isn't any central place in Southern California, to include downtown Los Angeles, and so, over the years, Disneyland has sort of evolved into the public square for Southern California, and it really is the one place that all of us share together and, sort of like a narrative thread, it becomes the 1 place that sort of holds us all together as well.

Robert Plank: What's pretty crazy about all this Disney stuff, because it's seems like there's no dark side to it, there's no one, anyone like saying anything bad about Disney the same way that like a sports team or any kind of usual theme park like your Great America or your Magic Mountain or something like that?

Jeff Barnes: Disney is not perfect and they certainly have made their mistakes over the years, but, by and large, people are in because they love it and it is something very special and very magical and it really echoes back to I think a connection that starts in childhood. As I have gone around Southern California and really around the country in the past year promoting the wisdom of Walt, I meet people. Their family moved to Southern California in 1956 and all they could think about was, "Wow, we're going to get to go to Disneyland," or you meet someone else and their dad worked on the construction crew that helped build the park in 1954 and then you meet other individuals, their first date was at Disneyland and then, fast forward to now, you've got an entire generation that grew up with Disney in their home by way of the video cassettes, whether it was the classic films, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, you name it. They have that sort emotional connection and, now, they're bringing up and raising their own children and they just keep coming back over and over and over again.

Robert Plank: What did Disney do right that no one else seemed to do right? Was it a lot of little things? Was it good marketing? What was it?

Jeff Barnes: First of all, the whole idea for Disneyland started when Walt took his 2 young daughters, Diane and Sharon, to what was a local amusement park in Griffith Park near the studio in Burbank and, as they were riding a merry-go-round, he's sitting on this park bench and he begins to dream of a place where parents and children could have fun together. It took him some 15 years before he began to actually take action on that particular idea and that particular dream, but it sort of grew into this thing that no one had ever seen or heard of before which, ultimately, became a theme park.

As he began to talk to other amusement park operators and they heard he was going to spend all of this money on this theme park and all of this money on landscaping, he was going to have a single entrance in by way of Main Street and a single exit out, and they thought he was absolutely nuts. They literally thought he had lost his mind, but as Walt was going around to all of these amusement parks around the country and around the world, he was really learning what not to do because he genuinely sensed that the American people in 1955 were ready for something new and radically different in outdoor entertainment. He knew what we wanted before we even knew what we wanted.

You talked to a single person who was there on opening day, they'll tell you 2 things. One, they'd never seen anything like it anywhere in the world and then, secondly, they had never walked into a public place that was so impeccably clean, which I think is fascinating because, when he went home on that Saturday in the 1940s, having spent the afternoon with his daughters and he said to his wife, "Lilly, honey, we're going to build an amusement park," she thought he was nuts and said, "Oh, Walt, no, we, we don't want of those. Why, why those places are filthy." He kept it impeccably clean really as a promise to Lilly who never believed in his dream.

For me, the whole core idea is he's got this vision. He has this dream and he has enough courage to actually take action on it even when everybody around him thinks that he is nuts, thinks that it's crazy and thinks that it will never work.

Robert Plank: How did that work out, because, as you're describing that to me about this really smart guy who goes around and sees, like you said, sees what's not working everywhere else and has a better solution and goes and has all this attention to detail? I can't help but think about all these like Las Vegas casinos where they just pour in all kinds of money, have this huge vision and then it would just completely flop. I mean what's the difference there?

Jeff Barnes: Walt was very attentive to quality. When they opened the park, it was in fact a failure. July 17th, 1955, which we celebrate some 61 years later as Disneyland's birthday, was actually a day Walt never really wanted to remember again because everything that could go wrong actually did go wrong. The press, which had predicted it was never going to work to begin with, when they saw the disaster that was that black Sunday, they were labeling it "Walt's nightmare," or "Walt's folly," but he took responsibility for every single thing that didn't work and he ignored the elements like, for example, there was like a 105-degree heatwave the day that they opened the park. There wasn't anything he could about that. He couldn't change it, and so he focused on what he could control and changed it and fixed it and upgraded it, and the things that were out of his control he simply ignored them and moved on.

Over time, it just grew into the dream that he had always envisioned that it ultimately would be. Again, it took time. He didn't just step up from that bench and get to work on it immediately, and it wasn't an immediate, overnight success. He had to stay true to that dream and true to that vision and stay attentive to it and focused on it until it ultimately became what we know it to be today.

Robert Plank: With all that, how did he make it all function, because I mean it's 1 thing to say, okay, he has ... He focuses in all of these things or he controls what he can't control, but I mean I can't even imagine like a park like Disneyland how much it costs to run it every day, how many people have to be involved? I mean, what's the secret there?

Jeff Barnes: He built a phenomenal organization. He had people who were willing to literally go through walls for him because he had this insatiable, contagious vision, and that was true for Micky Mouse back in 1928, it was true for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was the world's first full-length animated feature film in 1938 and, now, it's true all over again when it comes times to build Disneyland. Even though Walt liked to control things, he wasn't a micro manager, and so he empowered his team to help make his dream come true.

I think, first of all, he was smart enough to hire people better than himself. This was true when it came to artists and animators and it became true when it came time to build Disneyland and, ultimately, when it came time to run Disneyland. He hired a gentleman out of Texas who had done training in the aerospace industry, and he said, "Look, we're going to build something very unique, very special and very different here. I need you to be responsible for the training," and, ultimately, this would come to be known of as Disney University. The training really only consisted of 2 core elements. First of all, Walt said, "I don't want to deliver the same, you know, shoddy service that I get everywhere else," and then, secondly, he empowered that trainer and, ultimately, every single cast member to create happiness.

People ask me all the time, "What's the secret? What's the magic? How do they get the pixie dust?" as if it's more difficult than it actually is. Walt's mantra was "treat people the way you want to be treated and empower the folks that you hire to actually make that happen." That is still true even till today. We'll go to Disneyland for dinner and someone, for whatever reason, stuff happens and our reservation gets lost. Rather than going through policies and procedures and managers, the cast member on the spot is empowered to say, "Hey, we're really sorry about that. We're seating you 5 minutes later than scheduled. Um, pick an appetizer. Pick a dessert anywhere off the menu. It's on us."

I think there's a real business lesson there. Hire the right people and then trust them to do exactly what you need them to do.

Robert Plank: I've heard of little tidbits like that. As I keep saying, I'm not a very knowledgeable Disney guy, but I've heard something maybe like a couple of years ago about something like there are these little touches on like, for example, Main Street where there ... I guess there's no garbage cans or like, the cast members, there's something where they have to pick up any piece of garbage or something like that just to make sure it's super clean. Is that a real thing?

Jeff Barnes: Walt paid attention to people and he figured that, on average, will walk about 30 steps before we have to get rid of the trash that's in our hands, and so they made sure that there was a trashcan themed to the environment because they don't want to break up the narrative or the story. There's a trashcan approximately every 30 feet in Disneyland. They make sure that the restrooms are cleaned spotlessly every half hour, and then, when it comes to cast member training, like Walt never wanted to be called anything but Walt. He didn't want to be called Walt Disney. He didn't want to be called Mr. Disney. He only ever wanted to be called Walt.

He really was, Robert, the very first undercover boss, if you will. He'd get up on a Saturday morning and he would walk every inch of that park, making sure that it was ready for the guests, and then he would stand in line just like everyone else and would experience the attraction just like you and I were experiencing them, always taking notes and encouraging his leads and his executives and his cast members to enjoy the experience so that it was something that we would go home as guests and rave about.

Even today, when Disney hires executives, whether it's a CEO, a president, a vice president, one of the first things that he'd do is set them loose in the theme park and they have to go around and pick trash.

Robert Plank: Nice. That's pretty cool. It sounds like, as far as Walt's attitude, he was very, very ... trying to look through things from the point of view of that customer even to the point where ... I mean, just knowing to clean the bathrooms every half an hour and not every 2 hours, not every 20 minutes, knowing that it's 30 steps to every ... before you need to get rid of the trash, not 40, not 50. It sounds like that's a pretty good eye for detail without getting too bogged down in the details I guess.

Jeff Barnes: Yeah. There's this great story. He was working with one of his Imagineers who helped build the park, a fellow by name of John Hench. They were up at the studio and finishing out what would become the very first attraction installed at Disneyland, which was the old frontierland stagecoach line, and John could not the leather strapped on that stagecoach right to Walt's liking and, finally, in frustration, John threw the leather strap up in the air and said, "Walt, it's a stupid leather strap. No one is ever going to notice. No one is ever going to care," and Walt stopped him and said, "John, you're underestimating people, but he will notice. They will care. Every time they come to Disneyland, they're going to see something that they've never seen before, and that's what's going to keep bringing them back over and over and over again." Some 61 years later, some 650 million of us have come back over and over and over again.

Robert Plank: I'll hear a little bit about something like that. Every now and then, I'll just see some list on the Internet or something that'll say like, "Did you know there were these hidden whatevers in the, you know, on the ground or these hidden things and whatever?" I think that's pretty cool that there's always some kind of Easter egg to find on any return trip.

Jeff Barnes: Yep.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about you a little bit. It sounds like you have a lot of, I mean, so much knowledge, so many stories about Disneyland and Walt Disney. What got you into all of this stuff?

Jeff Barnes: I actually grew up in Florida, and I can remember I was 10 years old and we took a family vacation to Walt Disney World in 1974. I knew, Robert, the second that I stepped on the Main Street, I was just blown away. I was like, "Wow. This place is super, super cool." As I grew up, whether it was middle school or high school, if we were going back to Walt Disney World either as a family, band trip, Boy Scouts, you name it, I was typically the kid who was most looking forward to it. I was typically the kid who was counting down the days until we were back at Disney World.

It actually wasn't until 1988 when I was a grad student up in the Bay Area of California that I made my first trip to Southern California and my first trip to Disneyland and, truth be told, I write about this in the book, I hated it. It wasn't what I remembered from Florida and I think, worst of all, we got up on a Sunday morning in August and took our time getting there, arriving on Main Street at 10:30-11:00 in the morning. Back in 1988, the big, new E ticket attraction was Star Tours. We walked down Main Street. We turned right into Tomorrowland.

The good news is we were in the right place for the ride, but, unfortunately, in the wrong place for the line, and so a cast member directed us back to the start of Main Street, and it wasn't until 3 hours later that I had finally experienced my first Disneyland attraction and, of course, by that point, it's the middle of the afternoon, it's hot, it's crowded. By the end of the day, I was done. If you had told me, "Look, you're going to fall in love with this place. You're going to end up teaching a college course on its history. You're going to write a bestselling book about Disneyland," I would have said that you're absolutely crazy.

Fast forward 3 years later, I was bringing a group of young people back down and we were going to Disneyland again. By that point, I'd lived in California long enough to know, wow, these people are really into this thing called Disneyland. I must have missed something. That's when the historian in me came out. I started doing the reading and the research, and that's when I discovered, just like you and me, Walt wasn't born successful. He certainly didn't start out as a success. In fact, he went bankrupt in Kansas City at the ripe old age of 21 and, even when it came to Disneyland, he didn't just speak the magic words and his magic kingdom would appear out of an orange grove in Anaheim. He faced all sorts of adversity and all sorts of obstacles to make his dream come true.

It was in learning that story that I came to realize, wow, that is the ultimate example for each of us in terms of how to make our own dreams come true, and so I brought those young people back and I fell in love with it and I've been in love with it ever since.

Robert Plank: Yeah, it sounds like there's all kinds of little life lessons and business lessons and all kinds of little things that I'm picking up from you when anything about Walt Disney or abuot Disney in general kind of comes up. I understand that you have, like you mentioned, this bestselling book out called The Wisdom of Walt. Is that right?

Jeff Barnes: Correct.

Robert Plank: Can you tell us about that a little bit?

Jeff Barnes: I can. To back up a little bit, I am dean of students success at California Baptist University in Riverside California, which is about 33 miles from Main Street, USA. We've lived here for about 5 years now. My wife and I, we've been to the park 350-plus times in the last 60 months. Again, we really, really, really love it. Along the way, early on, I had this idea of, wow, our college students don't know anything about Walt and they don't know anything about the history of the park. They just think it's always been here because, in terms of their lifetime, it always has been, so I started dreaming of a course that would teach students about Walt and about Disneyland, but, most importantly and most significantly, we'd use Walt and use Disneyland as a vehicle to inspire and motivate those students to see their own dreams come true.

I sat on that idea for a while because I didn't want to be the faculty member who lost his job for pitching such a Mickey Mouse idea. Finally, I got the courage to go in and talk to the chair of our history and government department and, because he had worked as a cast member 30 years earlier, which I didn't know, the idea of teaching a course on the history of Disneyland, he loved it, and so, for the next year, we did the curriculum and the syllabus, the textbooks, guest lectures, field trips, you name it, and I gave the very first lecture on what had become my dream course, the history of Disneyland and then, Robert, the very next day, I was actually diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Robert Plank: Oh, no.

Jeff Barnes: The neurosurgeon said, "It's life-threatening, It's got to come out. Today is Friday. I want you back for surgery on Tuesday even if it's not cancerous," and I'll tell you now, fortunately, it was not, but, because of the evasiveness of the surgery, even if it's not cancerous, you're going to be out of work anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. 6 to 8 weeks means I'm not going to get to teach my class. 6 to 8 weeks means my dream of doing a college course on the history of Disneyland dies, and I realized Disneyland tells great stories, but I also believe that it's challenging us to live a great story. All of us have conflict in our life. The conflict is there for a reason. It's enabling us to live a better and greater story. The bigger the dragon, the better your story.

This brain tumor happened to be the biggest dragon that I'd ever faced in my life. We put the surgery off for 2 and a half months, which, trust me, the neurosurgeon was not happy about in any way, shape or form. The idea that I would risk my life so I could teach a stupid college course about an amusement park seemed completely ridiculous to him. Again, I was in that instant that it became my passion because, again, 33 million people a year go to Disneyland or Disney World and rather than it being a place to escape, rather than it being the place where dreams come true, I genuinely believe we can make it the example, the example that it's showing us how to make our own dreams come true.

We taught the course. We had the surgery. I'm healthier now than ever. Because of the popularity of the class, we wanted to make the material accessible to as many people as possible, and so we turned it into what has, fortunately, become a bestselling book, The Wisdom of Walt: Leadership Lessons from the Happiest Place on Earth.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Yeah, I don't know about you, but like whenever I ... I don't know, when I'm looking for something new to read, I always come across like the business stuff and it's always just like, oh, here is more of the same stuff, yet another story about Steve Jobs or something. If I'm just looking for like some kind of creativity or guidance, the same kind of deal. I'm like, "Okay. Great. What's Oprah recommending?" or, "What's the, you know, the latest, latest Chicken Soup book."

I like this book. I like the idea of it in that, like you said, there's business stuff in it, there's life lessons in it, and it's all kind of disguised behind the entertainment factor. Right? There's all kinds of reasons to check this book out. You also get all these amazing, wonderful side-effects, byproducts from it.

Jeff Barnes: Robert, I didn't want to write another Disney business book because there's already great ones out there and I didn't really think the marketplace needed another one. Walt most wanted to be remembered as a storyteller. He built the park for the purpose of telling stories. I wanted to write a personal development book that told Walt's story, that tells the story of Disneyland, that explains the stories that we experienced when we're at the park, connect it to some of my stories and then, hopefully and ultimately, connect it to your own story as a source of motivation and a source of inspiration to see your own dreams come true.

I'm really proud of the fact that I managed to write the book that I truly dreamed of writing. A year later, I mean, I get 2 or 3 emails a week from readers thanking me for having written The Wisdom of Walt and they're working on this dream or they're working on that dream because the book did exactly what we set out for it to do.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so there's a bunch of layers to it, and just like how we can go back to Disneyland again and again and see something new, people can read your book over and over and get new thing from it.

Jeff Barnes: Yes. One of the favorite features for readers is every chapter has what I call a souvenir stuff. If you think about when you're on vacation or if you're at Disneyland, you always go into the stores and you want to bring something home, you want to take something back that reminds you of your trip to the park. Every chapter has a souvenir stuff, and those are your take-home lesson. These are the points that I want you to remember from whatever the lesson in that particular chapter was. It plays out sort of like a workbook. Whether we're talking about how the park teaches us to focus or how it challenges us to live a great story or how we can do a better job taking care of the teams that we're working with or we're working for, there's places to apply all of that again to your own life, your own dream, your own family and your own business.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That sounds amazing. Where can people go to find the book and to find out all about you and everything else that you're doing?

Jeff Barnes: Sure. Like all good books, it's available on Amazon these days. You can get hardcover, softcover, Kindle eBook, as well as an audio book. If you're looking for a personally signed hard copy, you can also find me at TheWisdomOfWalt.com. I also travel the country doing inspirational, motivational speeches. We also have leadership training programs as part of The Wisdom of Walt as well.

Robert Plank: Awesome, so all kinds of good stuff. I really like everything that you had to say here today, Jeff, not just the Disneyland stuff in general, but your story and your scary brain tumor thing and just everything that you've done to I guess get your knowledge out and get the word out from not just ... A lot of people have idea that they don't implement, but you have the course, the book, the speaking, all kinds of cool stuff, so TheWisdomOfWalt.com..

Thanks for being on the show, Jeff.

Jeff Barnes: Thank you, Robert.