How does this sound to you ...?

• He was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper because his work “lacked creativity”


• He lost his first business and all of his employees because he neglected to read the fine print in his contract


• Only two of his employees stayed with him through the tough times --- two employees and his brother, that is --- the rest were hired away by a competitor because he failed to legally arrest their movement


• After enjoying some small degree of success, he rewarded his parents with a new home. Unfortunately, the home he purchased had a defective heating and ventilation system, causing him to lose his dear mother to carbon monoxide poisoning. He went to his own grave feeling personally responsible for this tragedy.

For those of you (like me) who study the great entrepreneurs, you may have already figured out that the individual I’m describing here is Walter Elias Disney, quite possibly the greatest non-scientist entrepreneur in the history of this great country.

Why Disney? Simple. Because I’m writing this column while with my family at Disney World, his “touch” is everywhere. You can hardly not think of him.

Moreover, Walt would have been proud of the fact that my family is with me while I’m working on this article because it was his belief that “family is everything”. In his own words, “The most important thing is the family. After all, family is the backbone of our whole business.”

I knew very little about WE Disney when I and my family recently traveled from Pittsburgh for a four-day mini-vacation to the Magic Kingdom. Oh, I knew that he was the driving force behind the magnificent Walt Disney Corporation (magnificent then, not necessarily now, unfortunately) but I never really studied the man himself. And, neither did I study the events in his life that propelled him to the great successes he achieved.

Entrepreneurs are a tough-minded bunch. And here, I’m talking about the real ones --- not the, “Look at me, I’m an entrepreneur, too” --- as they accept and then burn millions of dollars in start-up capital --- kind.

My definition of an entrepreneur is someone who lights out armed with nothing more than his or her wits and courage. I’m talking about the individuals who, and when they meet adversity, instead “find a way” to succeed. Lose all your employees? This too shall pass. Get cheated out of your trademarked character? Re-invent another, better one.

All these things and more happened to Walt Disney.

I personally believe that there are certain circumstances and characteristics inherent in every entrepreneur's ultimate success. Since this column affords me little space and time to list all of them, let me now present just a few of the ones that, and strictly in my opinion, shaped Mr. Walter Elias Disney.

• Entrepreneurs take their lickings but somehow find ways to keep on ticking - How many entrepreneurs do you know who have actually lived the lyrics of the Steve Miller tune, “Jet Airliner”? Let me refresh your mind --- “You know you got to go through hell before you get to Heaven.”

  Like so many great entrepreneurs, Walt Disney succeeded modestly in his very first business. Just 22 years old, he signed on to produce a series of “shorts” for a New York City company run by a guy named Charles Mintz. Disney thought that he had done so well for Mintz that he was actually going to receive a significant increase in his contract revenue as a reward.

  Instead, Mintz ruined Disney’s business by first informing Disney that he, Mintz, now owned Walt’s key intellectual property along with the full and exclusive rights to Walt’s cash cow … the animated character known generally as “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”. Mintz then drove the blade in even further by hiring away almost every single one of Walt’s prized animators. (Only two stayed … and these two were forever considered by Disney to be among his most loyal employees. He rewarded them accordingly.)

  To most, this would have been a death-blow. Most people would have reacted to this distressing event by saying, “What was I thinking? That little old me could possibly out think and out do this very successful and polished businessman? And on his own turf? I must be insane! I must immediately find a real job and dispense with my entrepreneurial fantasies!"

  But Walter Elias Disney was never your garden variety businessman. Instead, he was a never-say-die entrepreneur who gave little thought to the downside of risk taking, so long as the conditions were both in his control and favor.

  So, Disney started over with the two men who had the courage and character to stay right by him throughout the nasty Mintz situation. They had each spurned Mintz’s plans to succeed by destroying Walt Disney and Company. And, these same two men: U.B. Iwerks and Les Clark, stayed with Walt and Walt’s brother --- Mr. Roy O. Disney --- for decades to come. These three men also became important players in the Disney Corporation, staying until Walt’s last days on Earth.

  So the way I see it, Disney not only got away from someone (Mintz): a.) who would never have been loyal to him anyway, and, b.) who would likely turn and run whenever the heat ratcheted up --- and instead gained three tough-minded and resilient men of character, resolve, and loyalty. Not a bad trade-off.

  Entrepreneurs recognize and then stay with Great Ideas ... far beyond the time that almost anyone else would. Most businessmen would most likely “cut and run” when an idea is perceived to be: a.) so outsized that most reasonable men could not even contemplate a rational plan of action; or, b.) too revolutionary, in terms of technology or complexity.

Disney, and just like so many successful entrepreneurs, had no shortage of ideas. In fact, he probably had too many ideas --- which also is typically the case with super-entrepreneurs.

Like the author of this article, Disney was a huge believer in the concept (Socrates - 600 B.C.) of Know Thyself. And, in knowing himself and therefore the fact that he was prone to “idea overload”, WED taught himself to instead think in planes. That is, to come at all issues from three different mental perspectives. He called these: The Dreamer, The Realist, and The Spoiler.  And here is how he defined them:

The Dreamer: Unrestrained creativity, exemplified by the question, “If we had zero constraints, what would we love to do next?”

The Realist: Pragmatic and practical. The Realist might say, “How, in actual practice, might we make this work?”, and,

The Spoiler: The Spoiler checks himself by wondering aloud: “There is something wrong with this (approach or idea) --- What IS wrong with this? --- What are we just not seeing?”

WED became so practiced at these three different mind-sets (and remember, the guy was pretty much an idea-machine) that his own Imagineers were known to say, “You never knew which Walt was coming to your meeting.”

Oh, had I only been able to dance nimbly amongst these three mindsets while still in my thirties ….

• Entrepreneurs believe in what they’re doing --- What really characterized WED was his plain old Staying Power. For whenever Walt saw a technology or organization he liked and personally believed in, he stayed with it. Not easy --- especially when the money stocks are low and everyone is telling you to cut and run.

  Here’s Walt on persistence: “Get a good idea and stay with it --- dog it --- and then work at it until it’s done and done RIGHT!”

  I hate to self-promote, but this is exactly what we did with Pittsburgh Business Radio, our wonderful start-up of a radio program for business owners and entrepreneurs. It would have been so easy to give it up when we lost over $900,000 in our first year.

  But we knew that we had a great product and we knew if only from reading our mail that we had a winner in the kitchen --- it was only a matter of time.

  And this past August, we got our reward. Thanks to the efforts of a great staff and a couple of unselfish volunteers, we reached our first $100,000.00 sponsor sales month.

  And that says it all.

• Entrepreneurs look at the small things --- the details --- for their guidance. They observe everything

• Walt Disney observed everything. And here are just a couple of things that he learned through his observations:

  First, Walt noticed that about 75% of the world is right-handed, and thus right-hand oriented.

  So, when Walt built his second park (The Magic Kingdom), he “built that in”. For example, knowing that people typically turn to the right, the bridge from Main Street to Tomorrowland (on your right as you reach Cinderella’s Palace) is exactly twice as big as the bridge to the left.

  Walt also observed ways to figure out where he should put his trash cans. One day, just after building his newest park, he gave the first few hundred patrons a single piece of hard candy, wrapped in a cellophane paper.

  Why? Because he wanted to see how far they would carry that wrapper before tossing it into the street.

  The answer was twenty-eight feet. And today, twenty-eight feet is the exact distance between each trash can in every one of his parks!

Here are just a few more “factoids” that I learned about Mr. Disney these past few days in Orlando:

• Think Big - If you know you have a great product, and if you have thought through the process of taking that idea all the way to the marketplace, then think big as you go ahead and take your idea to the stars. And by the way --- don’t listen to your critics; listen instead to your customers --- for it is they who will always tell you what to do next.

  And always THINK BIG!

  How many times might Walt Disney have been stopped cold had he instead listened to those who would say, “This is just too big”, or, “Can’t you just scale it back a bit?”

  Make it Better, ALWAYS - WED had a term that he used whenever he endeavored to inspire one of his Imagineers. He called this phrase, “Plus it”.

  Interesting term, no? But this was Walt challenging his people to not only go TO the limits that they were “comfortable” with, but to then surpass them.

Think about Walt Disney World in Orlando. Twenty-seven thousand acres of land --- in Walt’s words, “Big enough to hold all of our dreams” --- and also big enough to insure that the huge mistake he made in Anaheim would never be repeated. (Note: At Disneyland, WED never foresaw the growth, and right up to his very doorstep, or Los Angeles.) Maybe someday, Orlando will “grow right up to the door” of Disney World, but fortunately, that day is a long, long way off.

It takes courage to dig in and gamble on one’s dreams - especially in a world so driven by technology.

But if your core premise is right --- and here I mean DEAD ON in terms of “fit” for your market segment, well … then go for it.

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