Having recently returned from a trip to Disney, I found my brain spinning with insights that we could all learn something from as small business owners. 

Here I’ve rounded up my “5 Lessons small businesses can learn from Disney”. 

Lesson #1: Celebrations 

This year marks 100 years of Wonder, and everywhere you look in Disneyland you see 100 year celebration memorabilia—Mickey ears, shirts, signs, flags. 

Now it’s not a celebration of 100 years of Disneyland being open but instead 100 years of storytelling through the Disney brand, and people are eating it up!! And rightly so, it’s a big celebration. But it makes me think, sometimes we only celebrate the yearly anniversary of our business when there are so many other things we could celebrate as well.

Here are just some I’ve been thinking about:

* Staff anniversaries 

* New products or product anniversaries 

* Bricks and mortar store opening celebrations or anniversary events

Throwing a celebration builds credibility, brand loyalty and builds excitement. I encourage you to find a way to celebrate all that you do sometime soon.

Lesson #2: Be known for something. 

Disneyland is the “Happiest place on Earth” and every cast member (yes, every employee whether they take out the trash or put on a Snow White costume are called “cast members”!) understands the goal for the customer experience. 

When they are at work, they understand that it is their duty to ensure that everyone who is in the park that day is enjoying their happiest day ever. 

How do they do that? Well here are a couple of examples:

• When you enter the park, you are greeted every time with a smile and a ‘Have a magical day!’

• If you buy food and accidentally drop it on the floor (eg. Kid drops an ice cream, adult trips and tray falls out of their hands) the closest cast member MUST replace the food, no questions asked, no cost involved. 

• They have cast members sweeping, emptying bins, picking up trash constantly. At no time can you look around and see mess.

• There is always something happening. If it’s not a show, it’s a street performance, it’s a character appearance and it’s all engineered to give you an unforgettable and ‘different’ experience every time you visit. 

Now your business mantra might not be “Happiest place on earth” but what are you known for? Or what can you be known for? 

If you’re not sure, the first place to go to is your loyal customers and ask: What makes me different? Why do you keep coming back? 

And once you’ve married together the thoughts you have on what YOU want your business to be known for and what THEY say kept them coming back, you need to come up with a set of agreements that will help everyone understand how to execute on those agreements, like the examples above. 

It’s not a coincidence that everyone greets you the same way when you enter the park. That’s a system, that’s a process, that’s training, and you can do it too in your business. 

So what do you want to be known for?

Lesson #3: Everything is a show 

Now, no secret that this is my favourite thing about Disneyland… everything is a show. No wonder I love this place! 

Seeing it in real life is like a masterclass in the customer experience. What better way to encourage me to have a good time than to entertain & delight me from dawn til dusk. 

But how can you implement this into your business? After all, if you are an accountant, you’re not exactly going to do a tap dance to present my BAS outcome (though you could and honestly I would pay more for that!) So here’s how I think you can use this Disney-ism in your own business. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have ceremony over the important deliverables in your business? Is there a way you could surprise and delight your customers when it comes to the biggest moments in their customer journey? 

• Does your team have a united way of presenting themselves? Eg. Uniform (costume!), the way they answer the phone, the way you are greeted when you walk into the shop, the way a product is or isn’t boxed up?

• Can you turn an average moment in their customer journey into something to rave about? Something they will just HAVE to tell their friends about?

There’s a lot you can unpack there, but if you take the time to make change in your business, you won’t have to work so hard to bring in new customers or to make more sales, people will be raving about their experience and others will want to have that too, others will want to see the show! 

Lesson #4: Freshen up! 

Disneyland has some of the same rides running now that they had when they first opened. Think Matterhorn, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Railroad. But do they look old? Nope. Have they been left untouched or have they been constantly improved over the years little by little? The latter. They stand the test of time, they look great and are just as thrilling (and terrifying!) as they have been for all these years.

This does two things for the customer experience:

• It keeps people coming back for the legacy element (“We can’t come to Disneyland and not ride Splash Mountain!”).

• It keeps people wanting to get the latest update (“Have you ridden Splash Mountain since they replaced the bear with a monkey?”).

They aren’t only having to innovate new rides all the time (though they do do that, think Avengers Campus and Star Wars Land) they keep people interested by keeping the legacy rides fresh. And they tell you all about it! So you want to keep coming back for more. 

Not only do they tell you about it, they share the update on their socials, the behind the scenes, the how they did it so that you stay engaged. 

What products or services do you have that need a bit of a freshen up? What could you do to tweak an offering that you’ve had for years to entice people to buy again or to come back and try the newer but kind of the same version? 

Lesson #5: Be Unique 

This one is simple. There is no other Disneyland. Others can try… bigger theme parks, bigger rides, more characters (we spent a day at Universal Studios, they are trying hard!) but people keep coming back to Disneyland. 

And that’s because it is so different in what it offers and it reminds you of that every step of the way. 

Sometimes I think we know what makes us different in our business but we fail to remind our customers. So take a leaf out of Walt’s book and remind them today.

Why are you the best at what you do?

What makes you different from your competitors?

Why should people buy from you and not someone else?

You know the answers to these questions…. So tell your audience. 

Just one thing at a time. One social post, one newsletter, one blog post, one Instagram live. 

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