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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. And on today’s show, we’re going to be learning how to grow and nurture a team, regardless of whether you’re even anywhere near starting to employ somebody or whether you have a big team already, this show is still for you. It’ll help you either start right or it will help you adopt some good habits for your business. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Before we To kick off the show, here is a word from our sponsor.
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ContentSnare:
Hello and welcome to the show. I am absolutely honoured and privileged to have Mr. Lee Cockerell on the phone. How are you, sir?
Lee Cockerell:
Well, I’m great. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.
ContentSnare:
Well, thanks for being on. I just said the phone, it’s not actually a phone, is it? But it’s a microphone and internet, but I’m still old school, so we’ll pretend it’s a phone line. Folks, if you don’t know who Lee is, he is the former executive vice president of operations for the Walt Disney World Resort How am I saying that three times fast? I presume you had a shorter title just for ease.
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, I told him I was really just a teacher.
ContentSnare:
Well, Lee is also the author of several books, including Creating Magic and also Time Management Magic, both of which I actually recently bought at the parks just last year. That was on the recommendation of Frank Candy, a friend of mine. Also, Lee is a public speaker and podcaster, and of course, like everybody, a Disney fan. Lee, thanks for being on the show. Would you mind just giving us a little bit of an expanded introduction about yourself? I probably missed some stuff out because you’re involved in an awful lot of things.
Lee Cockerell:
Well, yeah. I was in the hotel entertainment business for a long, long time, restaurant business. I started with Hilton Hotel when I got out of the army, way back, and worked for Hilton for eight years in Washington, Chicago, New York, at the Waldorf Astoria, Los Angeles, and some other places. Then I joined Marriott, spent 17 years with them. I eventually became the vice president the food and beverage operations for Marriott worldwide. Then I got recruited by Disney to open Disneyland Paris in France in 1990. I went to France, worked there and lived there for three years. Then I came back to Orlando in ’93, and I was in charge of all the operations here for about 10 years.
ContentSnare:
Wow. Well, I’d really love, if you’re okay with this, to just jump back into the time machine and go pre-Disney and just learn a little bit about your career and what it was you were doing in the different hotel chains before the Disneyland project?
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, well, I dropped out of college after two years because I forgot to go to class. So that’s why I went in the army. And in the army, when I finally got out of the army, I met a guy in there. Actually, he was British. His name was Terrence Bigs.
ContentSnare:
Great name.
Lee Cockerell:
His uncle was part of that big robbery, Bigs guys. No way. Let’s see, they got 1964, I think they robbed the train or something. So he said he was to the Washington Hilton, a new hotel that was opening in Washington, DC. Would I like to go? And I said, Sure. So I got my car, we went, and I got a job at the Washington Hilton as a banquet waiter, serving banquets and conferences. And eventually, I got into a management training programme. I was the food and beverage controller for a while, and I got transferred to Chicago in the same job, and then the Waldorf story. And then I became the director of Food and beverage operations for Los Angeles Hilton. And then I went to Marriott and did the same work in food and beverage for a long time, and I was vice president of Food and Beverage there.
ContentSnare:
Then I-I feel like it’s a dumb question, but what is the Food and Beverage operations side of thing? What is that specifically?
Lee Cockerell:
That was all catering, restaurants, bars, that stuff. Then I was a general manager for one of the Marriott hotels, so I got that experience. Then when I got recruited by Disney, I went off. Actually, I first got recruited to go do the food and beverage operations at Disneyland Paris because they needed somebody. Then after that, I got out of food and beverage and got into all operations. So it was a quick 42-year career.
ContentSnare:
Just in a few sentences. So when you lived in Paris, was that pre-enduring the actual build, or did you just spend the first few years after it was open?
Lee Cockerell:
No, I got there two years before it opened. 1990, it opened in ’92, and then I stayed another year after the opening. So I was there before and after. I even got a French daughter-in-law out of it. My son fell in love there.
ContentSnare:
So So is he still over there?
Lee Cockerell:
No, he came back. He worked for Disney 27 years. He was running the Magic Kingdom here. He was VP there, and he ran Epcot and Studio and some hotels. And he just left after 27 years to start doing what I’m doing. He and I were in Zurich just two weeks ago to give a presentation to a company there, and he’s doing work in Croatia, Brazil, and all over the place. So he’s got a new life. We’re doing some together, and of course, we each have our own business on the side, too. So that’s what he’s How are you doing?
ContentSnare:
Could you share with us a day in the life or a week or a month in the life of Lee nowadays? Obviously, you were Vice President of Operations. What are you doing and what are you doing with your son as well?
Lee Cockerell:
Well, I’m keeping very busy. I have a lot of bookings. I travel a lot. My wife goes with me if she likes where I’m going. Actually, I have a public seminar in London on November eighth, Central London. Then I just came back from Zurich, as I said. I’ve got a programme in Germany in May, all over the place. A typical day, as I get up, I go to Starbucks around 6:30 in the morning, and I have coffee, I read the paper. If people want to meet with me, I meet with them there at 7:30. Then I come home, and I catch up on my email and do contracts or whatever I got to do. This morning, on Tuesdays and Fridays, I have a trainer that I work out with doing strength training and agility and balance training so that I don’t fall and break a hip and die. I do that a lot. I work out pretty much every day to try to stay fit. Then whatever else is on the calendar. I’ve got another call this afternoon from 1:00 to 3:00 with some training we’re doing. I do some calls. I take a nap, I have.
Lee Cockerell:
But then I travel quite a bit. So either I’m giving presentations maybe in Florida or South Florida or somewhere else. I’m going to Wyoming next month to Jackson Hole to do a programme. I got one in Colorado Springs, here and there, and different companies, hospitals, colleges, any business organisations trying to get better.
ContentSnare:
Yeah. Now, one thing I know from looking at the content that you put out there is that you do have a morning routine as well. You like to make sure that you plan things, et cetera. I think I heard something where you have a leather chair, you like to go and sit in in Starbucks to get yourself started and all that stuff. That’s true. That stuff. I’ve done some research on Sorry, mate. That’s true. I’m interested. How do you manage to do that whilst travelling? Because you’ve got time zones as well, haven’t you? How do you manage to keep those routines going, maybe even including the nap. Do you manage to fit those in as you’re travelling around?
Lee Cockerell:
Well, it’s harder when you go to Europe sometimes because you want to take a nap in the morning. But I go to Starbucks, and it’s true. There’s four leather chairs there, and I get there early, so I get one of them. I do my planning and think about things I need to work on and what I’m doing, what I should have done yesterday, didn’t get finished, I need to work on it today. I’ll book some airline tickets, hotels, whatever’s coming up in the next 30 days sometimes. But I really run my life with my planner. I schedule my priorities, and I make sure I get them done. When somebody asks me to do something, I write it down in my little planner so I don’t forget. I think reliability and credibility and keeping your promises is a big deal with people. If you don’t do that, they begin not to trust you. So really, the day planner for me is a big deal about keeping me on target, both in my personal life and my business life, that I do what I say I’m going to do. And I think most people out there in the world could get better at that, frankly.
Lee Cockerell:
That’s why I wrote the book on time management. I have an online course on time management because it’s probably the biggest problem people have because so much is coming at you today. Everybody wants everything right now, and they don’t want to wait for it. If you’re not careful, you may not be scheduling the important things in your life. That’s why I schedule my workouts because what’s more important than your health? Absolutely. Then spending time with my family and my business. Then I try to think about where I am spending time that’s a waste of time and try to quit doing that. Or people I’m spending time with that are not the people I want to be spending time with because they’re so negative or whatever their problem is. I think a lot about time and how I’m using it. You spend two things in life. You spend your time, you spend your money. I want to get value out of my time as well as I do my currency when I spend it. I think about it as something that’s valuable. When I give you my time, I’ve given you something that’s of value. That’s how I think about it.
Lee Cockerell:
Absolutely. Life goes by quick If you don’t plan the life you want, you end up spending a lot of time living a life you don’t want. That’s something to think about every day. Are you spending your time the way that’s going to… You’re not going to have regrets when you get older, that you wish you had worked out, you wish you had spent more time with your daughter, you wish you had gone back to school, you wish, wish, wish. You got to really think about it every day. It’ll be Christmas again. What happened? How did that happen? It goes quick.
ContentSnare:
It’s a common conversation we’re having in our entrepreneur community as well with regards to what is important? How are we planning our time? Instead of us all focusing on becoming millionaires now and then realising our children have grown up, how’s about we earn enough and balance our lives accordingly? You can still be successful, but equally, part of that success is having that really valuable time, isn’t it, with the family? Like you said, not just suddenly realising your children have grown up and having all of these regrets. Another thing I found as well about my own time management is often I’ll think, Oh, well, that’s not due for another few weeks yet. And then, lo and behold, it’s due tomorrow. And I’ve done absolutely nothing about it.
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, that’s true. You got to really think ahead and plan ahead and look out there a little further. And with your children, it can happen very carefully. And your kids really don’t know. They don’t care if you’re rich. They care if you’re paying attention to them and you love them and care for them. Being a parent is probably the most important leadership job in the world, literally, when you think about it.
ContentSnare:
Absolutely. Something I keep trying to model as well with my daughter is that we spend time as a family together. I spend time with her, specifically one-on-one, so we have the daddy-daughter dates. Equally, she knows that there are times where I’m specifically spending time as well with my wife or her mum. We say we’re trying to prioritise family time, and I do try and finish work at 4:00 PM. That’s when I finish work and work is done. It’s all chill out time for us. Well, it’s only something we’ve been doing the last couple of years. I got to be honest, I was often doing really late nights until 2:00 AM in the morning and just feeling so down and depressed. It was awful. But it was that realisation.
Lee Cockerell:
It’s not good for your health, that’s for sure.
ContentSnare:
No, totally. Absolutely. Good.
Lee Cockerell:
You’re on the right track.
ContentSnare:
Good. Quick plug on your behalf because I also have this. It’s the Time Management Magic Planner. So you’ve got the morning magic planner, sorry, that accompanies the book that you have as well. I’ll pop a link in the show notes, folk. You can go ahead and check this out as well because there is a planner which gives you some really good ideas for planning your schedules, your weekly, your daily schedules, and also helps you think through the things that Lee was talking about a second ago with regards to what are your priorities, getting things done, hanging out with people, etc. Et cetera. And that was another thing that resonated with me, Lee, when you mentioned people that are potentially a drainer or that they’re negative. That’s something that we’ve certainly been trying to teach Ella, particularly around, especially when she’s in a school environment, who is draining you in that and trying to hang out with the people that are a positive influence and that you can be a positive influence in their lives as well.
Lee Cockerell:
Absolutely. And that’s a great thing you’re teaching her.
ContentSnare:
Good man. So with regards to Disney World, I mean, I’ve definitely got a few questions there as well. There are 40 I think, employees at any one time or probably growing, I think, in Disney World. And you were Head of Operations. Do you mind just telling us what your role involved over those 10 years?
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, I was in charge of all the guests All the guest operations, which included the four theme parks, about 23 hotels, downtown Disney, which is now called Disney Springs. It’s shopping and entertainment. And then we had the ESPN Sports Complex. Plus, I had the other departments like transportation, security, purchasing, things like that. And it was just my responsibility to make sure it all stayed together and that I had the right leaders in place, that I had the right experts in each one of those jobs that knew what they were doing. I certainly was not an expert in security or transportation, but I had to make sure that I had the right people there. That’s what I spent my time on, is making sure we’re hiring the right people, making sure we’re training everybody properly, and making sure that we are creating a culture where people are excited to get to work in the morning and come in because the way they’re treated. That was my big responsibility. As I always tell them, hire them right, train them right, and treat them right. Everything else seems to work out if you got experts in those places where you need it, like IT, finance, legal.
Lee Cockerell:
That’s how I think about it. I don’t ever think I can… You can’t know everything, so you better just make sure you got the right people that do know what they’re doing.
ContentSnare:
Well, I think that’s one thing that’s always blown our mind. We go to Disney World a ridiculous amount of times. We’ve even spent two months out there going to Disney pretty much every day. We spent all that time in Florida, and other than meeting up with Frank a few times, et cetera, we pretty much spent most of our time in the parks other than me doing my… The way it worked was I did a morning of work on the business, and then we had the afternoon out all together as a family in the parks, which was phenomenal. But I was constantly in all of the absolute attention to detail to everything. Absolutely every touch point had been planned out, right from getting into the park and onboarding you there, right through to making sure things like trash cans are clean, that old paint is quickly paint it over, so everything always looks new. The place is like 50 years old and everything just looks pristine and new. It boggles my mind, and I’m still trying to work it out to this day, and perhaps you can give us a little bit of insight, but how do you think Disney is able to manage all of those different things.
ContentSnare:
There are hundreds of thousands of different tiny, tiny, minute things that Disney seems to be able to keep on top of. And with a workforce of 40,000 people, I struggle to even manage a team of 10 people at times and make sure that everyone has their roles and responsibilities. So how does Disney do it?
Lee Cockerell:
Well, and today it’s 73,000 people working over there.
ContentSnare:
It’s growing up a lot. That’s insane.
Lee Cockerell:
The way you do it is you got to first admit that you can’t know everything, so you got to hire people around you. You got to be clear with them, be a lot of clarity about what their responsibilities are, what they are not, what they can say, what they can’t do, how much authority do they have to make financial decisions. You just set that up where each area of your business has somebody that’s an expert in it, and you’ve been clear with them, and you expect them to run it properly, and come to you if they have any questions or need anything. So the technical knowledge needed to run Disney World is huge. We got engineers, security, purchasing people, deliveries, highway construction. We’ve got it all. And that’s just how you do it, is you make sure that you have the right people reporting to you, and they have the right people reporting to them, and all the way down. Then I think we also are very good at when we bring people on board, we’re very clear about our expectations for performance. Being hospitable, taking care of our guests, safety, we really A lot of companies are not clear enough about what they expect and what they want.
Lee Cockerell:
That’s what we do well. We are very clear, so nobody has any misunderstandings. That way, we don’t have those. We have a few here and there, but not very many, because we hire the right people, then we train them, we hold them accountable. That’s how it shakes out at the end of the day. We have a lot of procedures. There’s a way to do things, a Disney way, and we train people how to do that so that the guest gets the same experience no matter where they are on property. Just some of those basic principles are how you get a business organised. Whether it’s small or big, you need to have your own policies, procedures, operating guidelines, rules. You got to train your people, you got to pick the right people, you got to train them, and you got to treat them right, so that they don’t quit. They want to stay with you, and they want to get better. A lot of it is the soft stuff, the way you treat people, and how you train them, and develop them, and encourage them, and appreciate them. Those kinds of things really go a long way.
ContentSnare:
Yeah, that’s awesome. It sounds like there’s lots and lots of mini teams with leaders within those teams and leaders under them as well. Everybody understands roles, responsibilities, what’s expected of them. But equally, everyone has, because of those roles, responsibilities, because they know what authority they have, et cetera. Then people are free to use their expertise and obviously grow. Presumably, there is a very clear growth tracks as well within the company. You can start somewhere, but there is a goal in sight that you can go in particular directions.
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, the problem, you got some companies where the boss wants to make all the decisions. That’s a big mistake because first, he can’t know everything. Second, he’s not going to be there. It’s going to slow everything down. You got to hire good people, give them responsibility and authority to make decisions so you can move forward. The guest doesn’t want to wait around until you find the boss.
ContentSnare:
No, exactly right. Actually, that’s so true, isn’t it? Because there’s been many experiences that we’ve had. We sometimes do have the odd negative experience at a park. Something will go wrong, maybe a cast member will actually be rude. They’ve had a bad day, etc. And yet very quickly, that’s always been resolved. And whoever’s resolved it has had the authority to ensure that cast member maybe is taken in the back and had a conversation with. But equally, they’ll make sure that they do something to make it better, i.e. Give us a… I think once we’ve had a $20 gift card or another time we were given several free fast passes to go on a whole lot of rides, as well as the ride that we’d had the bad experience on. And that literally, that just transforms that bad experience. And obviously we remember the bad experience, but equally, we remember how good Disney were and how the person who dealt with it had the authority to actually do something. Because it’s nothing more frustrating as it than when you’re on a phone call with someone and you’re like, all right, can I speak to a manager?
ContentSnare:
And they’re like, Sorry, there’s no manager available. I’m not able to do this. And you’re just on the phone feeling like you’re going round and round in circles.
Lee Cockerell:
And half the time the manager doesn’t have any authority either.
ContentSnare:
Exactly right. Now, Disney does heavily invest in training. And another thing that really blows my mind about the company is that they create so many of their own strategies and materials, and a lot of that is through their team members such as yourself. Now, you created the Disney great leader strategies. I think there was a lot in there as well on safety that you’d mentioned about being leaders and ensuring people are safe. That’s both the team as well as your cast members, sorry, cast members as well as guests, et cetera. What problems inspired the creation of this overall strategy, and how has it helped with the Walt Disney World team?
Lee Cockerell:
Well, when I came there in ’93, we didn’t We didn’t really have clarity about doing everything across the property the same. The parks and resorts were run separately. I was frustrated because a guest would have different experience at different parts of our operations. I worked on it for about a year and just tried to normalise how we’re going to do things and put it into writing so that we could teach it to all the management and then teach it to the frontline cast members. Because then I call it the recipe book. At the end of the day, you need a recipe if you want the food to come out right. And if you’re baking, if you leave the yeast out, you got a disaster. We don’t want to leave the yeast out. So I worked on it and it came out well. It became the basis for my book, Creating Magic. And it’s a very solid document. People can understand it. It’s clear, here’s what we do. First part, safety is the first thing we talk about. And then we talk about training. We talk about getting rid of the hassles for the guests and for employees.
Lee Cockerell:
We talk about integrity, honesty. We talk about training so that people understand that all these things have to come together to have a great operation. You can’t just do one or two well. You got to do them all. That’s why I wrote it and documented it so it would still be there and people could use it.
ContentSnare:
I seem to remember reading a document. Was there something like 12 different elements to it?
Lee Cockerell:
At the time, there were 12. Then when my book came out, the publisher said, Well, we’d like to have only 10. Oh, right. I had to consolidate it into 10 for the marketing.
ContentSnare:
Oh, fair enough. Well, I think 10 probably sounds more consumable. I don’t know.
Lee Cockerell:
Apparently, the Ten Commandments. There probably were 12 Commandments.
ContentSnare:
Well, yeah, that would be better, actually, because 12 is actually, in theory, more appropriately a scriptural number, isn’t it? You got the 12 disciples, et cetera. Well, the other one is, I guess, seven with the seven habits, but then you’d have to French everything into seven.
Lee Cockerell:
The seven doors.
ContentSnare:
I like how you said the recipe, though. There is something very freeing when you know how you do it as opposed to trying to make it up as you go along. I’ve very often ruined a dish because I’ve been winging it and guessing because I think that’s how I need to put something together. Whereas if I follow a recipe, it removes all the stress. I follow everything to the letter. I know what I’m doing and what to expect, and I see the end result and everyone gets to enjoy the end result. Whereas if everyone’s just doing their own thing, no one’s singing from the same hinge, it can be an absolute nightmare. And that’s within a company of three, let alone a company of 70,000 as well. I think it’s really, really important. How long did it take you to develop that? And what were your inspirations for those? We’ll go back old school for the original 12 principles.
Lee Cockerell:
It took me about a year. And I worked with a lady. Every Sunday, she came to my house and we talked about… I just talked about the things I wished our people would do, the mistakes I had made in my own career, how I handled people or handled the situation. I just talked about them, and she recorded them, and started working on it to get it all boiled down to each strategy, and we expanded on it. We just worked on it, talked about what the ideal manager would look like, and what appreciation looks like, what recognition looks like, what encouragement looks like, and just took our time and worked through it because we were looking for consistency. Just like you said in the recipe, if you want the food to taste the same every week, you got to use the recipe. If you don’t care if it tastes the same, then you can do anything you want. But it was very productive and it was very well received because people like to have things organised. They like to know how they’re supposed to do it. And the guests were the winners. The guests started to get more consistent serving service.
Lee Cockerell:
That’s what we were looking for.
ContentSnare:
That’s powerful, isn’t it? A consistent service. Because we go to a local restaurant here in the UK and we love it. Sometimes things aren’t always right, but the customer service is always consistent. Again, the team members have the authority to give discounts, to look after you, to make sure that everything’s okay, etc. So we go all the time. Sometimes there is not tonnes of stuff on the menu either, but we always know what to expect. We always get the same service. And we’ve had a lot of experiences with other local restaurants where you have, sometimes you’ve got a grumpy waiter, sometimes the food takes ages, sometimes things come out cold, and sometimes there’s no one there to actually find you a seat initially, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas this one restaurant just does it over and over again, and it’s a pleasure. And we’ve come to expect that same treatment every single time. That consistency keeps us going back all the time. It’s exactly the same with Disney World. You hit the nail there as well. There is that consistency of experience that we do get at Disney World every single time that we’ve come to expect.
ContentSnare:
And we’re never let down. Well, rarely let down. It’s usually always the same, a friendly face, excited employees. I guess that’s a question as well I have for you. Disney seems to be able to inspire such loyalty in their team and excitement about what they do, but that’s in current and as well as with past employees. What do you think that is? What’s the magic ingredient?
Lee Cockerell:
I think it’s that we’ve hired the right people and we haven’t hired the wrong people. We don’t try to hire people and make them nice. We hire nice people. We have good systems for sorting that out. If you’re not nice, you’re not going to be there very long. I think, again, clarity. As I always used to say, you don’t have to be happy to work at Disney every day, you got to act happy. I hear you. You know what I mean? It’s being a professional. When you’re a professional, you go out and do your job, and you don’t bring your problems out in front of the guests. If you got a problem, when you’re on your break, you can deal with it, or you can do it before you come to work. But we’re all professionals. We go on, we put on a show, and that does not include being rude or not taking care of the guests or doing whatever has to be done. That’s how we think about it every day. It’s a show, putting on a show, just like on Broadway.
ContentSnare:
I do like the way that thought process of putting on a show because it also helps you. I think as a human, sometimes we need these little logical frameworks to allow us to just put something temporarily in a pot. If I think today I am on stage for the next… From 9:00 till 5:00, I’m now on a stage and I’m putting on a show and I’m creating guest experiences, even if I have something going on in my personal life, if I was to do a performance on a stage, I’m certainly not going to start halfway through that performance on a stage and start telling people my problems or being rude to the audience who’ve come to watch the performance. I’ve always loved that concept of, All right, between 9:00 and 5:00, this is now our performance. Everything else we leave at the door. Right now, we are immersed in creating experiences for people. That’s something that I got to experience very early on, years and years ago, and it’s something that we often try and do. This is a show for us, as it were, within our own business that we do have time to talk outside of office hours and share our problems and help each other and support each other out because we become more of a family.
ContentSnare:
But yeah, during the office hours or when we’re live, doing our Facebook lives, et cetera, it’s all part of that experience that we want to create for people, and we don’t want people to be brought down by the issues that we may be dealing with, of which we are all human, and we often deal with them.
Lee Cockerell:
Absolutely. It’s just a matter of, like you just said, be professional, and then you’ll have a great show. It’s probably why you come back to Disney World is because you find a place where people care about you and they take care of you. You’re spending a lot of money, and we understand that. We want you to have a great time where you can’t wait to come back.
ContentSnare:
And that’s pretty much all we do. We watch YouTube videos about Disney, we listen to the music, We love sterling. Well, what? You mean the pound? Yeah. It’s funny, actually, because I think from what I can understand, I think most people still go across to Walt Disney World as opposed to Disneyland Paris from the UK. I think there’s a very strong audience from the UK just heading over to the USA. I think they do. Just heading over to the USA.
Lee Cockerell:
They come and stay longer.
ContentSnare:
They usually stay two or three weeks.
Lee Cockerell:
And they like the sun.
ContentSnare:
Well, there’s the sun as well, but also comparatively I’m hitting my microphone. Also the actual price, there isn’t too much difference between the two as well. It’s quite cheap to be able to fly to Florida. They spend a couple of weeks there in all of those parks. Epcot is my favourite park. Actually on that, what’s your favourite park?
Lee Cockerell:
I would say probably Epcot, depending on how old my grandchildren were at the time. But my wife and I like to go over to Epcot in the afternoon and have dinner somewhere in one of the restaurants and then see the fireworks and stuff like that. We like Epcot a lot. But when my grandkids were little, I spent a lot of time in the Magic Kingdom with them. We had a princess in the family, so we had to go check out the princesses.
ContentSnare:
Thankfully, my princess is now into Epcot, so I’m happy.
Lee Cockerell:
Yeah, there you go.
ContentSnare:
I like to. I’ve never drunk around the world because I don’t think I have the constitution to be able to actually contain that much alcohol. But I’ve certainly enjoyed wondering around and sampling the different foods, especially the Food and Wine Festival. That’s one of my favourite experiences. Okay, before we wrap up then, this is all non-business. I’m just intrigued. I love people’s opinions. What’s your favourite ride in Epcot?
Lee Cockerell:
I think I asked that occasionally, and I think over the years it changed. But I think in the end, I liked Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster because it was such an incredible takeoff. When that hydraulic system, it pushes it away. So I like that. When my grandkids were little, I rode Buzz Lightyear about 50 times because they liked it because they had a little game in there. You could shoot things and get score and get points, and they wanted to win.
ContentSnare:
Did you ever get Galactic Hero? Yeah, exactly.
Lee Cockerell:
I don’t think I did. They probably did.
ContentSnare:
Well, top tip, folks, just fire at the volcano like crazy and you’ll end up getting Galactic Hero. Is that what it is? It’s a Yeah, there’s the volcano, and also there’s another one where there’s one just under Zerg as well. If you keep hitting that one when you pass him.
Lee Cockerell:
I needed to know that. You should have told me that years ago. I didn’t know that.
ContentSnare:
Shucks. Well, now you know. Just in case you’re ever there, it’s the volcano and just underneath the Zerg, and you’re all set. You’ll be a Galactic Hero, and you can get your badge. We’ve got a whole collection of badges once we worked it out. It was such fun. I think personally, for me, my rides have always been the carousel of Progress, the really old-school Disney-inspired, as well as living with the land. I love those slow educational ones, which probably makes me a bit boring for the kids, but I just love sitting in those and go on them a hundred times and everything off by heart.
Lee Cockerell:
Our grandkids liked it, too. And it was a nice place to go take a rest.
ContentSnare:
Yes. My wife will often nap in the Carousel of Progress.
Lee Cockerell:
Right, exactly.
ContentSnare:
Awesome. Well, Lee, thank you so much for your time. What’s the best place for people to find out more about you?
Lee Cockerell:
They can go to my website, leecockerell.com. Everything’s there. And if anybody’s interested in the seminar we’re doing in London on November eighth, they can shoot me an email, leeCockerell.com. You’ll get information to them. That’s It’s on my website. Everything I do is on my website.
ContentSnare:
Fantastic. If you don’t mind sending me some information as well, I am literally an hour from London, so that would be ridiculous if I didn’t go. Thank you, Lee.
Lee Cockerell:
Thanks a lot. Awesome. Great to talk to you.
ContentSnare:
All righty. Cheerio.
Lee:
That wraps up today’s show. In keeping with the learning from Disney track that we seem to be on, we are interviewing Jody Mayberry. He has multiple podcasts, including one with Lee Cockerell, where they learn lessons from Disney. But Jody himself has a fascinating story going from financial analyst to Park ranger, where he developed a way of telling stories that he’s continued to help businesses with. He also breaks down three key ingredients for any good story that you should be telling and how you can apply that to your business, your marketing, and your internal conversation. A fascinating episode. That’s coming up next week. Don’t forget, if you are not part of the community, please head on over to agencytrailblazer.com/group. Otherwise, we will see you in the next episode.
