John Formica, The "Ex Disney Guy"

Transcript

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Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina Coming up.

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When you think of great customer service, surely at the top of your list is Disney.

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Well, today we have the ex-Disney guy and America's best customer experience coach and a leading authority on tourism and hospitality sharing how he can help you and your team transform your existing service level into something magical for your customers.

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Stay tuned we have Mr John Formica in the studio today on Topsail Insider.

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Hello everyone and welcome to Topsel Insider.

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My name is Krista and I am your host.

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Today we are talking to John Formica, the ex-Disney guy.

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He is America's best customer experience coach and the top 10 global thought leader and influencer on customer loyalty, with over 4,000 keynotes and seminars around the world.

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And we have him here today sharing the Disney philosophy success model with us.

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His seminars are high energy and he has a captivating personality.

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You will be inspired by his enthusiasm.

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I know because I've attended.

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I did repeats actually.

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I attended this seminar, loved it so much was completely blown away.

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I came home like raving to my husband like you won't believe what I just learned.

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And then I went back and took it again a couple of years later because I knew that I needed it in the new space that I am in right now business-wise, and then also one-on-one, because I did have a coaching session with him.

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So one-on-one.

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He is highly focused on listening to your needs and helping you accomplish your goals.

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Welcome, john, and thank you so much for joining me today.

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It is an honor to be here today.

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I've heard so many great things about this podcast and to be on it.

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I am just fired up and excited.

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Well, thank you, you were in Surf City today, right?

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That's correct and you were doing it wasn't the same class, it wasn't customer experience, but you were doing another small business class through the Small Business Center of Cape Fear Community College.

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right, that's correct.

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We did a program today called how to Find, interview and Hire Magical People Eight Steps to Never have a Bad Hire Again.

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I love it.

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I would like to talk about what you do and why you do it.

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So you are called the ex-Disney guy for a reason.

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You have over 25 years working in the hospitality industry and 10 of those years was Disney World right.

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That's correct.

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I'm kind of old there, Many, many years.

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I started when I was three years old, I think something like that.

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But no, my background is I grew up in New York and as a child I always wanted to be a park ranger.

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That's what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I want to hang out with Smokey.

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But I was a city slicker boy from New York and got a scholarship to play soccer at West Virginia University.

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Oh, that's cool.

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And Chris, I didn't even know West Virginia was a state.

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It was so far out of my comfort zone and they convinced my dad and I to take a recruiting trip.

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We drive 15 hours to Morgantown, west Virginia, and soon as I pulled in I totally fell in love with the campus, the state, the people, and I tell everybody that's when I became a country boy, because I was no longer a city slicker.

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And they had a great recreation and parks program In fact top five in the country so I figured I'd get a great education as well, but unfortunately it never happened.

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When I graduated, I got a letter from the National Park Service telling me that 350 people would have to die before I ever became a park ranger.

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So that's a long time to wait, and I was an ambitious young person so I floated around with some campgrounds that I was helping manage and then I finally got the opportunity to work for Hyatt Hotels.

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How did you get to Hyatt?

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I was a general manager of a pretty large campground, thinking, okay, you're pretty high up there, but when I wanted to join the hotel industry, I started from the bottom and I was the assistant manager on duty on third shift.

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Think about, you know, they need anybody to fill that shift and they felt sorry for me, I guess.

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But it was a great learning experience and Hyatt was a great company and I just worked my way and I kept doing different things and managing different department levels, different size hotels.

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They kept moving me around in the Washington DC area, but I had this strong ambition that I've just been always anything I've done as a child.

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Even today, I just want to be the best at what I can do, which means I got to learn.

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I got to be a sponge and I wanted to be Hyatt Hotel's youngest general manager.

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That's what my goal was and I was just pedal to the metal.

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That's what my goal was and I was just pedal to the metal.

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That's what I'm going to do, until my boss told me that wasn't going to happen.

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It was pretty disappointing, but it wasn't that it wasn't going to happen because I wasn't good enough.

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It was.

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There's some things you have to do before you become a general manager.

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And I said what do I have to do?

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Tell me what I have to do, because I want to be a general manager someday.

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And he said, john, the best thing to do is we love you here.

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You're doing a great job, but there's a there's sort of a progression that you need to follow.

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He said if you could open up new hotels for Hyatt, when they open up new hotels and you can get on that task force, it's pretty good because not only is it a lot of work, but corporate gets to know you and if you don't screw up, they get to know you.

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And then you open up another hotel and your name gets out there.

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So luckily, there was a new hotel opening up right outside Washington DC.

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It was called the Bethesda Hyatt in Bethesda, maryland, which is a suburb of DC.

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So I opened that hotel.

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They gave me this task.

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I was in charge of the outdoor public areas and garage, so my job was to make sure they were ready to go look clean.

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From that standpoint I said okay, take me down.

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So you know the construction that goes on in a hotel.

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The garage is like the last that anybody even cares about, because that's where the construction goes in.

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They store things that don't belong.

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It's hidden.

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But yet, man, every night I would be washing down, I would sweeping, I would throw trash away this garage.

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Sweeping, I would throw trash away this garage.

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You could eat off the floors.

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It was awesome the grounds outside in front of the hotel, which was not a lot of grounds anyway.

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And I run across the vice president of Hyatt Hotels, senior vice president, and he says he sees me at 1130 at night and I'm in a broom sweeping the garage.

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And he said what are you doing?

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And I said I'm in charge of making sure this garage stays clean and it's these construction people are just tearing it up and I want to make sure it's clean.

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He said this is the cleanest garage I've ever seen.

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So we I met him, we talked a little bit and it turned out to be great.

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Did you know who you were speaking with?

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No at the time.

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I didn't know who I was speaking to.

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But, lo and behold, I found out, which was a great experience.

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But he then put me on the task force to open up the Park Hyatt Hotel, which is their first five-star hotel, and I was in charge of housekeeping of the entire property.

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Where was that one?

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In Washington DC as well?

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And so I opened up that.

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And then they had me open up the Grand Hyatt, which is a huge, large convention hotel attached to the convention center in a different aspect of it, and they got to know who I was.

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They shipped me off to Chicago.

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That's where the home office was.

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They had some projects for me.

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They wanted to be close by.

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Everything was great and then, out of nowhere, that's when the Disney company came calling.

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So it was a great experience.

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Opening a hotel is exhausting because you get very little sleep, because you're under a deadline, got to get it open and just things are going to go wrong, they're going to go wrong, and so it was a great learning experience.

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And it was true, I got exposed.

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So I'll take you back.

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Like you said, you were in Chicago and then that's when Disney came along.

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Tell me about that meeting, Krista.

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I can remember this day as if it was yesterday.

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Really.

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I was a manager managing the front office of the Hyatt O'Hare at the airport in Chicago.

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It's a huge, it's a factory 1,100 rooms, 400 check-in, 400 check-out every night.

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It's just massive.

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Just coming and going, I'm doing that and check out every night.

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It's just massive.

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Just coming and going.

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I'm doing that and I get a call.

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It was February, it was 17 degrees below zero and I got a call from someone from Orlando Florida.

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What's your first thing when someone from Orlando Florida calls you?

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The first question they asked was how's the weather in Chicago?

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I don't know who this was, krista.

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I said who is this?

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I'm freezing my butt off.

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Why do you want to know?

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Yeah.

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Next thing out of their mouth oh, this is the Disney company, the Disney company.

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And they called specifically for you, for me and it was just an initial call from the HR just to find out if I have interest, if there's something I'd be thinking about doing, and they said we're about to explode in the resort division.

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We're looking to expand and hire from outside.

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We've heard great things about you that you've opened up hotels before.

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From whom?

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It's not your it can't be your bosses, I later found out that Disney hired another manager who was on the task force of one of the hotels.

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And so they asked him hey, do you know anybody we're going to need to fill these positions and being in the right place at the right time.

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And so they said would you be interested in joining us?

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If it's right and I was what?

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17 degrees below zero in Chicago.

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How long did it say?

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Let me think about that.

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Yes, can I pay you to hire me?

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So after grueling interviews, literally I had an HR person in the initial phase.

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Then I had an HR person who asked me more of those HR type questions.

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Yeah.

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And then they invited me to Orlando for two and a half days of interviews.

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Yeah.

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So I go to Orlando for these interviews and, lo and behold, I find out I have eight interviews on one day, every hour, on the hour, and eight interviews on the second day.

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Oh, my gosh One hour on the hour, ranging from hourly employees, a panel of hourly employees, to the senior executive, vice president of Disney, and I'm thinking I guess I'm not working here because I can't fool 16 people.

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I can fool maybe five, I can't fool 16.

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And it was exhausting, but it was a great experience.

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But it really taught me that Disney, they're going to make sure it's right.

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They're not going to just hire anybody, and I use that in my coaching and my training programs.

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Think about you as a business.

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If you're known out there to just hire anybody, guess who's going to show up Anybody.

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And you want to hire a quality candidate, make them know that we don't just hire anybody.

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You got to want to really work here and prove to us that you can, and so it was grueling.

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I actually left.

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Didn't think I got the job.

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Can I ask you something about this interview process?

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So I've seen you give your presentations and you seem like a man with zero fear.

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You get up there, you're very confident and you exude that confidence when you're speaking and you're doing over 4,000 speaking engagements.

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I have to think have you always been like this, or is this just over the years, gaining that confidence?

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Like, how did you feel in that moment speaking with the top executives of Disney?

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Great question I've always felt comfortable.

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I guess I have the gift, the gab.

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I think I just got it from my mom, used to be a professional singer, was on radio in New York many years ago in the 40s, and maybe I got it from her.

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But I've always been easy to talk to in front of people, so maybe maybe that was pretty good.

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I've always, from the training perspective and being doing keynotes and everything else, I always felt comfortable doing it.

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I did training for my own staff, even as a general manager I would do training orientation parts because I wanted them to learn from the right way of doing things.

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Did I ever think I'd be doing this professionally?

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No, that wasn't ultimately what I fell into.

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But so I felt comfortable.

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But I got to tell you it was intimidating when you looked at the list and I just said this is all gravy.

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It's not like I wanted, really wanted the job.

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I applied and I couldn't go.

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If I can get this job, it's great.

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If not, I have a great career with Hyatt and so.

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I'm going to fulfill my dreams of being a general manager someday.

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I looked at it that way.

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But everybody asked some questions.

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I thought the panel with all the hourly employees were probably the most unusual, because I'd never been in front of something like that.

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But they were.

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They knew what they were doing.

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They weren't just ask weird, stupid questions, they were focused because they're looking at it as if you're going to be our boss.

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If you're going to be our, we want to make sure.

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I was wondering why they were doing that.

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That's really interesting.

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A lot of questions on team and culture, and how do you deal with this situation and those sort of things?

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It wasn't that.

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Oh, they're just hourly employees.

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I can really snowball them, don't they know who I am?

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It was boy, I had to really give them the respect because they did their homework and they knew what they were doing.

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And it was funny that the last person was the senior vice president and you think you'd be a little nervous and I was, gosh, this is pretty cool, but it was the last one and this is what he said to me.

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He said so you survived?

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And I said yeah, pretty thorough, I'm impressed.

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And he said I guess if you got this far, you must have done a few things right.

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The bellman will be down in the lobby.

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He's going to take you to the airport.

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Thank you very much, and he shakes my hand.

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That's all you got.

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That's all I got, and I'm thinking, did they already make up their?

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decision that I'm not going to get the job.

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So he's not wasting his time.

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So he didn't spend time asking you questions.

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He didn't.

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Wow, which was really surprising, because everybody else was real thorough and asked some things and I was on the plane flying back to Chicago thinking I didn't get this job Because he would have said I don't I was interpreting what he said and how he said it.

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And three days later the HR called me and said we'd like to give you an offer.

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Three days.

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I was wondering how long that took.

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Yeah, three days later.

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Again, it was a great opportunity.

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I was impressed, excited.

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Again.

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It came to a point where I was gosh.

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I always wanted to be in recreation and parks and now I'm in the biggest recreation and park in the world right.

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The world.

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yes, and the other thing was that I was dating at the time my wife.

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We weren't married, but my challenge with our relationship was we met in Washington DC and then they moved me to Chicago.

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She's in DC.

00:16:10.792 --> 00:16:12.702
She says I'm done waiting for you.

00:16:12.702 --> 00:16:15.331
She moves back to Philadelphia would be with her family.

00:16:15.530 --> 00:16:15.871
Oh, okay.

00:16:15.980 --> 00:16:24.005
And I kept telling her I'm going to try to get back to DC and even the regional people at DC said John, we'd love to bring you back, I don't have anything for you, just be patient.

00:16:24.005 --> 00:16:31.745
But one of the things about Hyatt hotels and many hotels like that Marriott no different is they're going to move you from city to city.

00:16:31.745 --> 00:16:35.984
So think about raising a family where every two years you're moving.

00:16:36.446 --> 00:16:38.695
If you're climbing the ladder, absolutely.

00:16:39.056 --> 00:16:41.462
And if you want to climb the ladder, what are you going to do?

00:16:41.462 --> 00:16:46.149
You're going to say because they're going to move you from a, let's say, they give you a general manager job.

00:16:46.149 --> 00:16:52.615
It's going to be a small hotel, small Hyatt brand, and then a medium, and then a large, and then a resort.

00:16:52.615 --> 00:16:58.683
They're going to move you around based on now, you can probably say no if you wanted to, but that's all you're going to do.

00:16:58.683 --> 00:17:03.106
We're here at Disney, they're going to build all these hotels, but yet I don't have to leave.

00:17:03.106 --> 00:17:05.628
I can just stay in Orlando because I'm not going anywhere.

00:17:05.628 --> 00:17:10.373
And so it was a great way of looking at that opportunity, and Disney is one of the best.

00:17:10.373 --> 00:17:13.795
I wanted to learn from the best, and how'd you get your girlfriend back?

00:17:13.914 --> 00:17:13.994
I?

00:17:14.055 --> 00:17:25.851
told her I'm moving back to the East Coast and she was excited and I said but it's a little farther South and I didn't even tell her I was going through the interview process because I didn't want to make her think anything crazy or whatever or dump me right there on the spot what are you doing?

00:17:25.851 --> 00:17:27.294
And it worked out.

00:17:27.294 --> 00:17:34.945
And then we dated a little bit and then she came to Disney actually on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and New Year's Eve is like one of the busiest.

00:17:34.945 --> 00:17:37.376
If you're in a hotel, it's one of the busiest days.

00:17:37.557 --> 00:17:48.355
I would imagine Because of all the parties and New Year's and we had a little gypsy table with all the spouses and girlfriends and boyfriends and husbands and whatever that were not part of the hotel.

00:17:48.355 --> 00:17:51.196
They would stay and have dinner and we were all working our butts off.

00:17:51.459 --> 00:17:51.598
Okay.

00:17:51.819 --> 00:18:03.905
And then the next day on actually New Year's Day is we drove to Tampa, florida, which is just about an hour away, and I proposed to her when the sun was setting oh my gosh, that's romantic.

00:18:03.905 --> 00:18:06.625
And luckily she said yes.

00:18:08.069 --> 00:18:08.571
That's great.

00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:13.446
She moved and lived in Orlando for many years and it was a great experience.

00:18:20.161 --> 00:18:25.960
So I want to hear about Disney and how you progressed through those resorts.

00:18:25.960 --> 00:18:44.430
But I will say that while you were at Disney, you achieved the highest guest satisfaction rating among all Disney World resort hotels, which is amazing, and you were also selected to co-chair and you assisted in the company-wide rollout of the Disney Guest Satisfaction Program.

00:18:44.430 --> 00:18:46.771
You were all about that.

00:18:46.771 --> 00:18:57.349
Guest satisfaction, customer experience Was it from the beginning or something that you picked up in the Disney career, when you first started with them and then you got better at it throughout the years?

00:18:58.320 --> 00:19:05.203
Having the hotel background with Hyatt, which is a top-notch hotel and I was at their full service hotel and I was at their full-service hotel.

00:19:05.223 --> 00:19:12.569
So hospitality and customer service and yes, sir, yes, ma'am, all that making sure your hotels are pristine.

00:19:12.569 --> 00:19:15.528
So I already had that aspect of it.

00:19:15.528 --> 00:19:20.290
Disney puts it on steroids because they're going to make sure.

00:19:20.290 --> 00:19:27.669
Now at Hyatt I dealt with the business traveler, the convention guest, and if something went wrong obviously you fix it.

00:19:27.669 --> 00:19:38.452
You try to apologize as best you can and maybe give them some drink coupons, but they're never coming back again because they were just there for business or they're just there for a convention.

00:19:38.452 --> 00:19:44.085
At Disney you can't have anybody go away unhappy because that's a memory of our lifetime.

00:19:44.085 --> 00:19:46.105
You can't have anybody go way unhappy because that's a memory of our lifetime.

00:19:46.105 --> 00:19:58.297
So Disney takes the customer experience and puts it on steroids because the whole show is the experience and it's all got to be top notch, it's got to be the best, it's got to be memorable.

00:19:59.400 --> 00:19:59.842
It's got to be magical.

00:19:59.842 --> 00:20:03.119
When you leave the park, the magic doesn't stop just because you're back at the hotel.

00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:06.672
The magic continues in the whole hotel experience too.

00:20:06.751 --> 00:20:10.463
That's right, and so when the interesting thing was when I opened up Disney hotels.

00:20:10.463 --> 00:20:13.511
When I first got to Disney, we had four hotels on a campground.

00:20:13.511 --> 00:20:16.647
That was it, but we had 16 brand new hotels on the drawing board.

00:20:16.647 --> 00:20:19.782
Oh my gosh, and my job was to open up each of the new hotels.

00:20:20.144 --> 00:20:20.945
All, 16?

00:20:20.945 --> 00:20:21.788
All 16.

00:20:22.048 --> 00:20:25.135
Hire the staff, train the staff and then build a team.

00:20:25.135 --> 00:20:26.759
That would create great experiences.

00:20:26.759 --> 00:20:38.915
So I learned from the ground up what an experience is, from what it needs to look like, what people have to act like, what they have to respond to good, bad and ugly.

00:20:38.915 --> 00:20:42.489
And so it was an overdose of this experience.

00:20:42.489 --> 00:20:43.692
But yet I was a sponge.

00:20:43.692 --> 00:20:45.865
I think I'm a born server.

00:20:45.865 --> 00:20:51.152
I always love serving people, maybe to a fault because people take advantage of me sometimes, but I don't care.

00:20:51.152 --> 00:20:53.847
I've been born to serve people and if I do that I feel good.

00:20:53.847 --> 00:20:54.611
I can sleep at night.

00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:56.227
Is there a Disney bootcamp?

00:20:56.839 --> 00:20:58.884
It's great training and you learn from the best.

00:20:58.884 --> 00:20:59.605
But no, there's not a.

00:20:59.605 --> 00:21:03.131
You don't go away on a bootcamp or anything like that Great idea.

00:21:03.131 --> 00:21:03.892
Maybe I should fix that.

00:21:03.892 --> 00:21:05.980
But you just learn.

00:21:05.980 --> 00:21:06.864
You learn from the past.

00:21:06.864 --> 00:21:07.424
You learn.

00:21:07.424 --> 00:21:16.621
Before the hotels opened, I would spend time with hourly cast members at the other hotels that were already open, learning exactly what they do and how they do it.

00:21:16.621 --> 00:21:18.263
I would clean rooms with housekeepers.

00:21:18.263 --> 00:21:21.530
I would slug luggage with bellmen.

00:21:21.530 --> 00:21:22.753
I'd park cars.

00:21:23.079 --> 00:21:24.442
I would serve coffee in restaurants.

00:21:24.442 --> 00:21:25.284
That was the boot camp.

00:21:25.304 --> 00:21:26.866
It's part of my training.

00:21:26.866 --> 00:21:28.009
But you learn.

00:21:28.009 --> 00:21:38.945
You want to know why everything happens and it's all choreographed to be part of the show, so you just can't be good at one and not have a bad experience somewhere else.

00:21:38.945 --> 00:21:42.359
It's all seamless and so learned a lot from that aspect.

00:21:42.359 --> 00:21:44.125
But it was how I got these awards.

00:21:44.125 --> 00:21:46.141
It wasn't me, it was.

00:21:46.141 --> 00:21:48.348
I tell people we had great success.

00:21:48.348 --> 00:21:49.605
Was it because I was a great manager?

00:21:49.605 --> 00:21:54.711
No, we had a great system and we had great people and you put those in place.

00:21:54.711 --> 00:21:57.228
You don't need great managers.

00:21:57.228 --> 00:22:05.810
You just need people to help them and knock down those barriers and support them and encourage them and troubleshoot anything that's going to possibly go wrong, to make their jobs easier.

00:22:05.810 --> 00:22:08.347
That's really your role as a Disney manager.

00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:15.205
In one way, to a fault, a general manager of a Hyatt Hotel is so different than a general manager of a Disney hotel.

00:22:15.205 --> 00:22:17.547
A Hyatt Hotel is freestanding.

00:22:17.547 --> 00:22:19.405
You need to put heads in beds.

00:22:19.405 --> 00:22:21.684
You are the marketing.

00:22:21.684 --> 00:22:22.807
You are everything.

00:22:22.807 --> 00:22:23.750
You're in the community.

00:22:23.750 --> 00:22:25.021
You got to worry about conventions.

00:22:25.021 --> 00:22:25.672
You've got to worry about conventions.

00:22:25.672 --> 00:22:27.494
You've got to worry about rate management.

00:22:27.494 --> 00:22:28.826
You've got to worry about sales.

00:22:28.826 --> 00:22:30.183
You have a sales director.

00:22:30.183 --> 00:22:31.449
It is crazy.

00:22:31.449 --> 00:22:32.824
At Disney, as a general manager.

00:22:32.824 --> 00:22:34.849
There's departments that do all that.

00:22:34.849 --> 00:22:43.501
All I have to do is manage the hotel, make sure everything is running right and the guests are satisfied, your employees are satisfied, the building's satisfied.

00:22:43.501 --> 00:22:44.003
That's it.

00:22:44.003 --> 00:22:45.185
I didn't have to worry about sales.

00:22:45.185 --> 00:22:46.127
I didn't fill the hotel.

00:22:46.328 --> 00:22:48.272
Did you find that your life was easier?

00:22:52.380 --> 00:22:55.113
Oh gosh, less pressure to do that, because I could just do what I do, naturally, and that is take care of the customer experience.

00:22:55.113 --> 00:22:55.876
Again, I was just very fortunate.

00:22:55.876 --> 00:22:59.426
I tell people as a leader and I teach this and I coach this.

00:22:59.426 --> 00:23:09.349
Your success is based on two things as a leader, the people you surround yourself with and the ability to get things done through others.

00:23:09.349 --> 00:23:17.349
And at Disney, hire great people and then, as a leader, create an environment where they want to do it, not have to do it, and they'll get things done.

00:23:17.810 --> 00:23:19.323
And how do you nurture that environment?

00:23:19.323 --> 00:23:25.520
How do you create that whistle while you work environment so that employees feel like they own it and they want to do it.

00:23:25.520 --> 00:23:31.361
It's not a J-O-B not doing it because my manager says I have to do it, they truly want to do it.

00:23:31.361 --> 00:23:36.338
You hire the best people from that perspective and then let them do the job.

00:23:36.338 --> 00:23:38.404
They know how to do it and I just knocked down those barriers.

00:23:38.404 --> 00:23:39.067
I get, in a way.

00:23:39.067 --> 00:23:46.653
When I achieved the highest guest satisfaction ratings, I was at the Yacht and Beach Hotel, which is on the Epcot side of things.

00:23:46.653 --> 00:23:49.622
Again, great team, and I already had managed.

00:23:49.622 --> 00:23:57.493
When I say managed, I managed a department front of the house, guest services, housekeeping of the Grand Floridian, which is their five-star hotel.

00:23:57.534 --> 00:23:58.575
Oh yeah, beautiful.

00:23:58.575 --> 00:24:01.314
And if you're a movie star, sports figure, you got a lot of money.

00:24:01.314 --> 00:24:02.220
That's where you're going to stay.

00:24:02.240 --> 00:24:03.082
That's where you're going to stay.

00:24:03.102 --> 00:24:15.760
That's where they're going to take great care of you, and so when we opened up the Yacht and Beach Hotel, that was like Disney's second best hotel, but the staff wanted to be the best, so they were driven that we don't.

00:24:15.760 --> 00:24:18.311
The Grand Floridian snub up their face.

00:24:18.332 --> 00:24:18.794
We don't.

00:24:18.794 --> 00:24:19.759
They think they're good.

00:24:19.778 --> 00:24:20.540
But we're better.

00:24:20.540 --> 00:24:25.236
They were just determined and we did our guest ratings sometimes beat them.

00:24:25.939 --> 00:24:39.675
That's awesome and in fact the best guest rating was typically, when you fill out a survey at Disney, one of the questions they ask would you return on a future visit and stay at this hotel?

00:24:39.675 --> 00:24:40.436
That's typical.

00:24:40.436 --> 00:24:42.006
You're measuring loyalty right.

00:24:42.006 --> 00:24:45.306
Did you do a good enough job that they would want to come back, believe it or not?

00:24:45.306 --> 00:24:49.663
Because we were building so many hotels every year two hotels a year or whatever.

00:24:49.663 --> 00:24:56.349
In some cases, people took that question differently and they said we love the hotel, but we want to go to that new hotel.

00:24:56.359 --> 00:24:57.505
We want to try the other ones too.

00:24:58.500 --> 00:25:07.474
So, on a scale one to 10, 10 being the highest, many of us in all the other hotels we would get like an 8.5, an 8.6 score.

00:25:07.474 --> 00:25:11.049
Now, every other score and everything else are 9.8, and you're doing great.

00:25:11.049 --> 00:25:12.181
But it would be.

00:25:12.181 --> 00:25:13.884
It's not anything to panic.

00:25:13.884 --> 00:25:15.586
We understand why they're doing that yeah.

00:25:16.852 --> 00:25:19.439
At the Yacht and Beach, I got 98%.

00:25:19.439 --> 00:25:22.355
Wow, and how did you do that?

00:25:22.355 --> 00:25:24.277
I said we're just giving them great experiences.

00:25:24.277 --> 00:25:29.122
And it really caught the eye of the Disney Institute, which is their professional development team.

00:25:29.122 --> 00:25:35.683
They were wanting to put a program together called Customer Loyalty, disney Style, that they could teach the professionals all over the world.

00:25:35.683 --> 00:25:37.694
And they said can we pick your brain?

00:25:37.694 --> 00:25:38.718
We want to put this together.

00:25:38.718 --> 00:25:39.560
What are you doing?

00:25:39.560 --> 00:25:42.701
Because you achieved the highest guest satisfaction ratings ever.

00:25:42.882 --> 00:25:43.684
Yeah, okay.

00:25:43.865 --> 00:25:51.113
And so I gave them some things that we were doing and then they asked me if I would be part of their pilot program and it was a great experience.

00:25:51.113 --> 00:26:01.257
But because of some of those things and again then I could be part of that chairmanship to roll out the program, because we are walking the talk, but again it wasn't.

00:26:01.257 --> 00:26:05.019
John for Micah, I didn't make the beds, I didn't check people in, I didn't serve coffee.

00:26:05.019 --> 00:26:06.362
My staff did.

00:26:06.362 --> 00:26:13.255
But as a leader, if you can get them to do the things you want them to do and they do it great, you're going to be in better shape.

00:26:13.255 --> 00:26:17.276
So that's what we did from that standpoint you also do.

00:26:17.316 --> 00:26:21.864
You give seminars that are just for the leaders and teach them how to be great leaders.

00:26:22.345 --> 00:26:25.089
Absolutely, because it's all part of the formula.

00:26:25.089 --> 00:26:34.232
The Disney success model is one piece made up of a lot of pieces, and those other pieces support the model so you can have a great.

00:26:34.232 --> 00:26:45.679
For instance this is a typical scenario I'll do a training program for, let's say, all the staff and managers on creating a great experience in their business, their organization, whatever it might be.

00:26:45.679 --> 00:26:51.913
And then a lot of times, the leaders will come up to me and say, john, this is great, I love this, I can't wait, I love your ideas.

00:26:51.913 --> 00:26:53.056
I never thought of that.

00:26:53.856 --> 00:26:56.202
But, john, how do I get my people to do that?

00:26:56.202 --> 00:27:17.490
That's a leadership perspective, and so I teach Walt Disney's leadership strategies on how, at Disney World, we got 75,000 people to be all focused on one common goal and that is to make people happy, right, and so those skill sets are different than anything else and many people move up Owners.

00:27:17.490 --> 00:27:22.432
Business owners are great at business, owning the business, but they don't know how to manage people.

00:27:22.432 --> 00:27:27.932
Or maybe a new manager doesn't have those skills, so I try to help them do that process.

00:27:28.053 --> 00:27:32.872
I imagine that might be a little hard to hear for the leadership to say oh, that's a you problem.

00:27:33.513 --> 00:27:38.671
Yeah, and I've told many leaders don't blame it on your boys all the time.

00:27:38.671 --> 00:27:40.232
What are you doing as a leader?

00:27:40.232 --> 00:27:41.715
Are you not doing as a leader?

00:27:41.715 --> 00:27:45.182
And leadership is about constantly learning.

00:27:45.182 --> 00:27:57.200
Walt Disney said once you stop learning, you stop leading, meaning that Walt Disney and the company itself gave us lots of opportunity to grow and learn and take seminars and get books for free.

00:27:57.200 --> 00:27:59.874
Oh, really, because they want leaders to learn.

00:27:59.914 --> 00:28:05.739
That's cool because you get stagnant and you think you know it all and how do you handle this situation and what do you do here?

00:28:05.739 --> 00:28:12.942
And employees are all different and, yes, we had great employees at Disney, but 75,000 of them they're not all great.

00:28:12.942 --> 00:28:19.093
There's going to be some challenges and how do you deal with those, and all of those things were part of that learning process.

00:28:19.093 --> 00:28:29.694

John Formica, The "Ex Disney Guy"

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