High Performance Secrets from Walt Disney

Summary

How could a kid that was fired from his first job for not being innovative and creative enough end up building the most iconic brand in the entertainment industry? By leveraging a few core secrets of high performance that transformed his career at record speed and helped him achieve in a lifetime more than others would in several lifetimes. Meet the man, the myth, the legend: Walt Elias Disney.

Transcript

How did a kid that was fired from his first job at a newspaper for not being creative and innovative enough, and building the most iconic, creative and innovative brand in entertainment industry? Let's find out.

Hey, everyone, Leon Castillo here, Ceo & Founder of Selfmastered, we help entrepreneurs scale their businesses by transforming the personal performance.

Now before we dive deep into the story of Walt Disney, remember to subscribe because we release a few videos every week to help people like you achieve your goals at a much faster speed.

Today, I want to talk about probably one of the most interesting folks that I've have studied. And this guy was named Walt Elias Disney, the founder of The Walt Disney Company, who is unarguably one of the most iconic brands within the entertainment industry. Walt Disney is the guy that invented the animated film, that created a concept of an amusement park; and he shaped and created some of the most iconic characters that you've known since you were a kid, probably.

And how did he pull all of this off? In just one lifetime? Because everything he achieved, he did in just 50 years, right? And most people will need eight lifetimes to get as much out how did he perform at such an elite level for so many decades, in order to create all of this Disney Empire by leveraging three secrets that really hold the key of alive? Well, the first secret is the importance of having a vision. Vision is one of the most misunderstood terms that I see in the performance world. See, vision is nothing else that the big goal that you are chasing, that helps you understand how long and what do you need to do, to gather a vision is nothing else that a big hairy goal that pulls you towards it, and helps you marshal all of your resources. In order to get it.

Humans are thelia logical beings, we need those goals in order to function. If we do not know what are we chasing, then we don't chase anything, just like you cannot build a system. If you don't know what that system is for what the function of a system, you cannot create a high performance life without a vision to chase vision comes before performance. And he understood this intimately well, because everything he did, while Disney was creating visions that could help other people understand what was at stake. And it was very complicated at that time. Because nobody had ever done most of the things that Walt Disney did for the first time. Nobody has ever participated in an animated cartoon movie, it was supposedly impossible to pull off.

Nobody has ever created an amusement park that was a radically new concept. And all of those achievements required the ability to dream that thing to have it clear in your mind to have that vision so that others can finally understand what are they fighting for. And this is super number one, you need a vision, you need to know exactly what it is that you are chasing.

Because when you have it, everything else becomes second best. So having a vision is the number one prioritization mechanism. And that's exactly what you should be thinking when designing it. What's so powerful that pulls you towards that goal. What is that thing that if you could achieve it in let's say, 10 years time would give your life meaning think about this question because it's supremely important.

Secret number two is unbelievable. self efficacy. self efficacy is a technical term to describe your trust in your agent if capabilities in other words, you trust that everything is figured out double you are able to do whatever you set your mind to do is not self esteem is not self belief is belief in your capability to pull anything you try off. And this is very important because the more entrepreneurial somebody is, the more self efficacy in has to develop in order to create a business so there's a positive correlation between self efficacy and intrapreneurship. But if on top of being an entrepreneur like Walt Disney was, he was constantly creating new concepts and iterating visions on his head.

He needed to have a supreme degree of self efficacy in order to pull all those things off. In fact, there's a very important character in the life of Walt Disney, who's his brother right Roy with Disney was someone that had probably a totally opposite view of everything well, Disney wanted to do. And every time he had a new project and an idea, new vision, Roy Disney will always tell his brother, all of those things that let him think that that new plan wouldn't work out.

The he was always providing angles and perspective that try to tear his brother plans down. But what isn't a will will endlessly convinced his brother of the possibly of doing it and doing it together. And a few example is he decided to create a theme park when there were not theme parks around. And he was told that that idea will fail miserably, and he was totally adamant about the fact that he could create that experience. And indeed, he created. He was told that animated films were too boring to watch by adults. And he proved the naysayers that he had the ability and belief in his agentive capabilities to make a film that was interesting to both adults and kids.

He was told that there was no way of mixing real footage and animation effects. And we now know, and this video proves it, that this is not true. So at each step of the way, every crazy idea that he was able to create every time he refined that big vision that he was chasing, he would have naysayers, naysayers, even among his own family. But he had such an incredible amount of self efficacy, that he just got to work. And he got the results he wanted. And the third secret, and this is probably one of the most important for entrepreneur is emotional control and resiliency.

This is so important, because without the ability to sustain damage, there's no way you can create a functioning business, because he who can sustain the most damage will eventually win. And I say this because well Disney was turned down 302 times when trying to find financing for his amusement park for Disneyland, it took him 16 years to negotiate the rights in the script of Mary Poppins. And it took him countless tries to really get the final design in most of his characters at each step of the way.

He had doubts, but he overcame those doubts by keeping control of his emotions. And that ability is called resiliency is their ability to recover every time you suffer a loss is your ability to understand that victory nor failure are final. They're just transitory moments. And if you keep pushing, you'll eventually get the breakthrough you deserve. And that's so important because as I was saying, intrapreneurship is really a battle against oneself, who can master himself will master business the other way around doesn't work.

So these are the three secrets that I believe will Disney leverage to become who he became. First, create a big vision, something that really pulls you towards it, that serves as a natural prioritization mechanism to believe in your agentive capabilities, believe that you can do it. And of course, Hone and train your skills so that you have a chance of doing it. But really, you need to believe that everything is figured out playable, because in the end, it really is. And then three, cultivate emotional control and resiliency, understand that no, victory nor failure are fatal. They're just transitory moments that have to be overcome.

So if things go south, you pick yourself up and continue the battle. That's how you become Walt Disney. And that's how you create the most iconic, innovative and creative brand in the entertainment industry, at least historically, I hope this was useful. Please let me know in the comments if you knew this secret from Walt Disney and anything else that you want to share that you believe that we should have covered.

And of course, if you want a proven framework on how to install eight specific skills that you can leverage and sustain for high performance, please apply for the semester accelerator and we will make sure that you achieve that big vision that you set for yourself. See in the next video.