#347 How Walt Disney Built His Greatest Creation: Disneyland

Founders

David Senra

History, Entrepreneurship, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What I learned from reading Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you. A few questions I've asked SAGE recently: What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas) How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- Vesto helps you see all of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business accounts from one dashboard. Tell Ben (the founder of Vesto) that David sent you and you will get $500 off. ---- Join this email list if you want early access to any Founders live events and conferences Join my personal email list if you want me to email you my top ten highlights from every book I read ---- Buy a super comfortable Founders sweatshirt (or hat) here ! ---- (8:00) When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney. We were quite wrong. He had, instead, created his masterpiece. (13:00) This may be the greatest product launch of all time: He had run eight months of his television program. He hadn't named his new show Walt Disney Presents or The Wonderful World of Walt Disney. It was called simply Disneyland, and every weekly episode was an advertisement for the still unborn park. (15:00) Disneyland is the extension of the powerful personality of one man. (15:00) The creation of Disneyland was Walt Disney’s personal taste in physical form. (24:00) How strange that the boss would just drop it. Walt doesn’t give up. So he must have something else in mind. (26:00) Their mediocrity is my opportunity. It is an opportunity because there is so much room for improvement. (36:00) Roy Disney never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant, perfectionist imagination of his younger brother. (41:00) Walt Disney’s decision to not relinquish his TV rights to United Artists was made in 1936. This decision paid dividends 20 years later. Hold on. Technology -- developed by other people -- constantly benefited Disney's business. Many such cases in the history of entrepreneurship. (43:00) Walt Disney did not look around. He looked in. He looked in to his personal taste and built a business that was authentic to himself. (54:00) "You asked the question, What was your process like?' I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the 'Walt Period' of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all these people who had never designed a theme park, a Disneyland. So we're in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions." ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's two things that Charlie Munger said one time that I think almost all of history's greatest entrepreneurs understood intuitively and that's learning from history as a form of leverage and the second thing he said was that there's ideas worth billions in a $30 history book.
0:13.5	If you've been listening to these episodes I've been making about the filmmakers recently,
0:16.3	like Stephen Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino,
0:18.6	this idea comes up over and over again.
0:20.2	Both Tarantino and Spielberg actually studied Walt Disney and learned from him as well.
0:24.6	But they would watch and rewatch old movies that they loved and then decades later entire scenes
0:30.0	from those movies would actually appear in Stephen Spielberg's movies.
0:33.5	They'd appear in Quentin Tarantino's movies.
0:35.8	It's the exact same idea behind young Steve Jobs studying Edwin Land and you see Edwin
0:41.5	Land's ideas show up in Steve Jobs Companies and Products.
0:44.6	Jeff Bezosos was famous for passing out Sam Walton's autobiography to the early employees
0:49.7	and the top executives at Amazon.
0:51.2	You see that Sam Walton's ideas would show up in Jeff
0:53.7	Bezos's companies and products. And that is a main theme that reappears over and
0:58.1	over again for anybody that gets to the top of the profession, whether it's in
1:00.8	business and art and sports and music, you see it over and over again.
1:03.7	Anybody who becomes great at what they do, they are seeped in the history of their industry.
1:09.6	They talk about it over and over again. They don't just read a book one time. They don't just watch a book one time. They don't just have one conversation. They do it over and over and over again.
1:18.0	That is why if you have not done so already, I'm going to highly recommend that you subscribe to Founders Notes.
1:24.0	For six years I've been cataloging all of my notes and all of my highlights for every single
1:28.0	book that I've done for the podcast.
1:30.0	And now by signing up for a subscription to Founders Notes, you get access to all my notes and all my highlights.
	...

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