Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Welcome to the Jody Mayberry Show. My guest
this episode is forty three year Disney veteran
and brother of Bob Allen. It's Rick
Allen. And now I mentioned Rick, I mentioned in the
introduction brother of Bob Allen only because you two were
on the show together before. And Yep. I finally
(00:25):
separated you two. Bob was on just a couple episodes ago,
and all he did was tell stories about you.
Well, then you gotta hear my side because he's known as to
color some stories a little bit differently than the actual truth. But he's a
good storyteller, so so I love and, yeah, he had a ball on your show,
dude. He had a ball on it. So Oh, we had a We love doing
(00:48):
all this. Oh, we we had a great conversation. And I,
you know, I knew I liked Bob before. But before we
started recording, we had this great conversation about birds, and I'm like,
okay. I like him even better now. And I even said, Bob, let's
let's save some of the bird talk for when we're recording. And so we got
to talk about birds. Birds have yeah. All his birds have names. You know, he
(01:09):
talks all the time about how Clarice showed up today, and he fed
Diana. And it's, that's all for real. He's, he
loves the birds up there on on the lake he lives on. Well, I have
one story for you before we get into your stories. I had a
very proud father moment. You were talking about your brother being a
storyteller. My daughter was telling a story. She just
(01:31):
turned 18, so she would have been 17 when this happened. She was
telling a story, and my wife corrected her. And my
daughter then said to my wife, you're letting your facts get in the
way of my story. And
I thought, okay. I must have done okay as a father. You did
because that's the way it ought to be. Let the story play out, man.
(01:54):
Those facts can get in the way for sure. That's great.
Yeah. That's great. That was good. Okay. So it was
wonderful having you and Bob together on the episode, and you two
told plenty of great stories. And now we've had Bob
fill in a lot of his stories and talk about his career.
Well, now you get the chance to speak up and correct the record and
(02:16):
say, look, what Bob said yeah. Actually,
this is brought me to something I where I did wanna start
is one of the things that he did say about you is he said
he didn't really wanna follow in his in your father's
footsteps and go work for Disney. And he kind of reluctantly did. And
he said, you know, I'm not like my brother Rick. You went to business
(02:38):
school and wanted to work at Disney and all that. So I thought, well,
that's a interesting take. You have one brother who didn't
want to go really follow in your father's footsteps, and then he ended up
on the creative side. But then we have you who was interested in the
business of what your father did and what happened, and then you ended up in
the operations side of Disney. So it's interesting how
(03:01):
that worked out. Yeah. That's all that is absolutely true. I think,
Bob was, you know, he was a hippie and he loved
the music business and he loved, you know, being creative and
doing all of that stuff to get him where he was.
And I loved the part about Disney being
show business. That was so romantic to me growing up,
(03:23):
listening to dad's stories, and going out in the park and and with him
and thinking about that. To be a part of that, to be part of a
show, I started as a custodial host. But in my head, I
was part of this show, and that was just darn cool. And
so, yeah, that's why I I wanted to to stick with the business. And it
made it made it easy too because we can't you know, I started as at
(03:45):
16 years old as an hourly. And so as I got out of college, I
did get an MBA and all that stuff. But as I got out, it was
easy just to slide in and go, okay. I already know the language. Everybody talks
out there, you know, about. Anyway, they had they have their own Disney has its
own language, cast members enroll in the show and things like that. And it made
it a little bit easier to get started out there, and it filled a sort
(04:06):
of a romantic thing for me. It was really cool. Yeah. What a neat story
and how you two took different paths to get to the
same place and and then took different paths again. But I
liked your story, one, because I found out you're the middle child and I'm
a middle child. So I think we get each other that way. Right? That no
one pays attention to us. And That's right. And we're sensitive. We
(04:28):
are sensitive. Yeah. Yeah. There we go.
And so I think yours is such a classic
Disney story to start out in the hourly roles, working the
front line, and over a wonderful career to work yourself
up higher and have many different roles along the way. How many different
roles did you have during your career? Oh, gosh.
(04:51):
That's a really great question. I'm sure 30
probably, different roles, maybe more than that, actually, 30
or 35. That's a great thing about working at Walt Disney World. When we
think about young people coming up today, you know, the Gen Zers and the Gen
Xers and and the Millennials and and all of that, I'm a boomer,
and so I came up and, you know, you said we're gonna, you know, we
(05:13):
we're gonna go for the gold watch. We're gonna work forever, and we're gonna get
a pension, and we're gonna get out. And young folks today, they think we're
crazy, right, thinking about that. And so we I remember
we used to always tell our you'd start meetings at Disney a
lot by going around the room, and we'd say, alright. Let's all say how many
years you've worked here. And you'd go around. Hey. I've worked ten. Oh, I've worked
(05:35):
five. Oh, I've worked twenty. Oh, congratulations. And I'm a guy
who studied how the different
demographics learn, the millennials and the versus the boomers, said,
you guys should stop doing that because the young folks, they
don't care. If you've been there forty years, they're gonna say, why would you do
that? And they said, but instead of saying that, say, I've
(05:56):
had this many different adventures at Disney. I've had
this many different roles at Disney. You don't have to say how many
years. You know, I got to go to Paris. I got to do task force
as a place. I got to do openings. That excites them rather than
just dragging them through, you know, gee, I don't know what. You don't have any
goals. You you didn't wanna go anywhere at forty three years. That's crazy.
(06:18):
So yeah. Yeah. All of that was is way different with people today as it
should be as it should be, I think. It's interesting to to realize that
that there are some organizations or maybe that's not even
true anymore. A different time when that
I've been here thirty two years brings you credibility
and makes people wanna talk to you and learn from you. But
(06:41):
maybe that's not relevant anymore, but I've had 30
roles means a lot more to someone than I've had thirty
years of experience here. Yeah. And then we could say, you you know,
I'm an example, guys. You're you wanna have a lot of different adventures, but
you don't have to move. You can come to Walt Disney World, and you can
do all of these different things, but you can you can keep your feet on
(07:03):
the ground. You know? I'm not picking on all other organizations, but if
you wanna do that sort of thing with, you know, say, Hilton,
we gotta move. They're gonna call you and say, hey. We got an opening in
Atlanta, and that's the sort of thing you need to go. You gotta go. Hey.
Now we've got one in Philadelphia, and you've gotta go. You know, 29,
30 resorts at Disney, four parks, water parks, all
(07:23):
the different departments. You can do all of those experiences and,
stay in your hometown. Yeah. That is amazing to to think.
And I I always thought it was a good thing as a park
ranger that I could advance and
never leave the organization. But often you have to move
around to get that and you don't at Disney. And when I
(07:45):
compare Lee Cockrell's career at
Marriott to Dan Cockrell's career at Disney, they may
have had the same number of roles, even though Marriott didn't
use that term, but they would have had the same number of roles. But Lee
had to move all across the country. He bounced
Chicago, Philadelphia. Yeah. Boston,
(08:07):
Washington, DC, Los Angeles. I mean, he was everywhere.
And Dan did do a stint in Paris. Right.
Otherwise, he had 19 different roles without
leaving Orlando. Yeah. Yeah. No. I you're right. That's interesting
from father to son. And then, of course, Dan messes the whole
thing up by flying out and now living in Australia. So he's messing up our
(08:29):
our theory here. But yeah. No. That's a good comparison. Well, we were
talking about birth order before. Dan's an only child, so sometimes they do things
like that. Right. We blame it on
that. Yeah. Sure. Well, since we're talking about
the early roles, how you started in the beginning, I feel
like so often I ask leadership level questions,
(08:51):
executive level questions. But just like when I was a park
ranger on the front lines, some of the best stories happened when
you're working there. I'm sure that's true at Disney. When you had those frontline
roles, that's probably where the best stories took place. Well, I think
you're right. You know, there's some some some certainly some fun things in in my
mind when I think about that. And it's funny. Just last week, I was
(09:14):
doing a talk for an organization and they you know, I've got
my career. They know what I did, and they almost all asked about what were
those early roles like. You know, I started in as a
custodial host in Fantasyland. And it may
sound funny, but I remember after working there for I was 16 years old. I
remember working there for a week and my lead and so,
(09:35):
you know, the guy I reported to, he said, come here, Rick. Let me,
let's go sit over here. And we we went to a break here. He says,
I'm going to buy you a Coke. And we sat down and he said, you
know, you're 16 and full of energy and
youth, and you need to slow down a little. You're making
everybody look bad out here. Now, of course, I'm just scared
(09:56):
to death because I'm 16 and I'm in a brand new job, so I am
running like crazy everywhere. But I, I thought that was a, an interesting
welcome to the business. But the one I remember most learning
about was those thinking about show business. I got
this interesting slap in the head about what show business is about
because we got to the custodial guys, we cleaned up for the
(10:18):
after the parade. Right? So at the end of the parade and
I know you've seen them. They they go down. They end up down Main Street,
and, you know, a parade is a huge party. There's music,
and there's confetti, and there's dancing, and there's thousands of
people watching with food and drink. And that's
all a wonderful show. And then the parade
(10:39):
ends and right behind it, you see this army
of custodial people coming behind that and they're they
pull up the cheese and the tracks, you know, in in the there's railroad tracks
in the middle. There's little those tracks you have to put yellow we called
it cheese so that none of the parade floats would they get caught in it,
and everybody's yanking up cheese. And then I got to drive we call them
(11:01):
billy goats, but I don't know what the real name for the machine is. But
it's one of those things that just it sucks up anything. It just so you
see, like, an army of 10 billy goats behind there and just sucking up
popcorn boxes and Coke and everything in one. And literally
in seconds, that huge party is back to Main
Street USA. Right? The theming of this wonderful little turn of the
(11:23):
century place with the right music and all that. And so strangely
enough, you know, right off the bat, learning a little bit about show
business. I thought that was a great education. After
that, I got to go to Fort Wilderness. And Fort
Wilderness, it's a campground, if your listeners don't know.
And it's a it's a great place, but it's got its own
(11:45):
culture, man. If you work at the fort, they're
rebels. They are rebels out there, and they
they have this thing where they'll they'll do whatever it takes in the name of
guest service. And we talk about that, Bob and I do, sometimes in our talks.
The first general manager there was named Keith Cambach, and,
his team were called Cambach's Raiders. And they
(12:08):
would they invented the midnight requisition. And so they'd go out in
the middle of the night, and they'd go borrow stuff, steal stuff in
order to make the fort work. And it was people would just nudge. I know
it's against the rules, but, doc god, we need this stuff. And, you know, the
fort didn't have a big budget. They weren't a big, glitzy
hotel that had a monorail running through it. They're a campground that had,
(12:29):
you know, $30 rates instead of hundred and $30 rates. And so,
they didn't have any budgets or anything. So they'd go out, steal stuff, and make
things work. One of the examples was they had, you know,
the work work vehicles at Disney were white. They were
all white. Anytime a company vehicle was white,
except well, what is theirs were green. They actually called it
(12:51):
Fort Greene. And the fort had a
paint booth. And Keith's, Cambach's Raiders,
they'd go out and occasionally hotwire a
truck or two in the middle of the night, bring it back, paint it
fort green, and it became a four wheeler this truck.
Man, I tell you, that stuff is true. I got to be the
(13:13):
general manager there for a few years, and it was just
wonderful. And, of course, it was long after Keith Cambach
had been there, but I called him. And he, he had retired from the company
by then. And I said, Keith, I gotta know about the
theming here. I said, I I get it. It's it's Fort Wilderness, and it's a
Western town, and Davy Crockett, and all of those things.
(13:35):
But now I'm I'm looking up here and I see totem poles. And
I said, I just can you catch me up what the theming is like? He
he laughed. He said, Rick, I was there when we first started it.
He said, I got my guys, and we got a big truck.
And I sent them to California, to Disneyland, and
they drove back behind Disneyland backstage and
(13:57):
stole anything they thought was interesting. They brought it
back, and he said, so? Totem poles. Okay.
Now I now I get it. But, you know, that's their thing. And I hope
the fort still has that still has that ambiance with their
group. They'll do anything to to figure things out. They're a little bit crazy. But
that's the kind of funny stuff that have I'll give you one more. You want
(14:19):
me to pause for a minute and let you say something?
I do have a question about the Raiders, but maybe it should come
after your next story. Okay. Alright. Well, I'll switch after the fort.
And, again, boy, this is memory lane for me. I hope everybody
has patience in me telling these stories. But I got to go work on the
Jungle Cruise in Magic Kingdom. And, boy, you talk about
(14:41):
a place that a culture within a culture. The Jungle Cruise
is a whole lot of fun, and it's a great attraction.
And I think one of the reasons why it's so special is
because, you know, it's a live show that you're a skipper on the Jungle Cruise,
and that's you get to live interaction with the show around you, but with
your your guests, and that makes it that makes it special. And the
(15:03):
skippers, when when I was there, man, everybody is looking for good
gags. You know, there there's the stuff you're supposed to say,
which is the SOP spiel. And then we were given what were
called approved ad libs, which is kinda
weird. Right? Because that's an oxymoron in and of itself. An
ad lib is something that you think up on the spot. So how could it
(15:25):
be approved? But you'd have those. But then, you know, everybody kinda do a
few of their own little things here and there to make the crews great, And
you'd sort of bend the rules a little bit in the name of that great
guest service. And there were some great performances out there, some guys
that really did some really fun stuff. And I say
guys too, because when I was there, this was at '76, '70 '7, something
(15:46):
like that. There were just guys. And, actually, that summer that I was there,
we got the first woman that joined, and so that barrier was
broken, and that was great. And you could tell when peep when their boats you
know, everybody watched. The skippers all watched when somebody's boat came back to the
dock. You know, if they were cheering going on, if they were laughing going on,
we know, boy, that guy must really be doing a good job or even boos.
(16:08):
If the crowd was booing them, then, you know, that's probably because they were
using puns, you know, and people love to boo puns. And
so, you know, that was a success as well. Like, when I finished the I
still remember when I finished the jungle, one of my sometimes you'd say,
alright, everybody. We're back to the dock. Rise like bread. No loafing on my boat.
It's the yeast you can do. Well, you know, you'd
(16:30):
get some boos on that, and that's probably okay if if they boo boo you
there. But here was my lesson that I learned on that. You know, we'd
sort of rate the crews. We'd sit in the break room and go, boy, boy,
I had a, you know, really good one today. Or, boy, these guys were just
staring at me. Nothing going on. And and we'd sort of rate the crews
and how they did. But I began to notice that my
(16:52):
best crews were when I was early in
my shift, right, when I was more energetic, when I was fresher, when my
timing was better. You know, we did 20 trips a day around the around the
rivers of the world. And so you later in the day, you'd get
more robotic and you'd you'd get less engaged with people.
And I remember one time, I was actually on a cruise late in my
(17:15):
shift, and I was completely out of sync. I was talking
about gorillas when I'm standing in front of crocodiles. It
made no sense. But the thing that was weirder was the
guest didn't even they didn't notice. And I think because I
wasn't engaged, they weren't engaged. They were just riding around taking pictures of
things. And so what I learned was, you know, there's no bad audiences.
(17:37):
The engagement of the skip made all all of the difference. And I think there
was a leadership thing there too. You know? Same thing in leading people. You've
gotta be engaged with people, and that's how you get the best out of them.
The very best spieler was a guy named Gary.
Jungle Gary, I guess. And he wasn't funny.
All the rest of us tried gags and tried to be funny.
(17:59):
He was the real thing. He tried his best to be like an
authentic what an authentic skipper would really be acting
like going through the jungle. And, man, people he was in a class by himself,
and that was harder. You know? Doing puns is easy, but, doing the
real thing is is harder. Anyway, the Jungle Cruise
was, also a great a fun thing to do in the beginning.
(18:23):
I bet. And it that lesson that you learned on Jungle
Cruise, I'm sure that's still relevant. You said you just gave a
presentation last week. I'm sure you felt it. If you were
energetic and engaged, the audience is, and that's been true ever
since you were on the Jungle Cruise. What I like about Jungle Cruise
stories is I feel like that if
(18:45):
you're a skipper, you have such a connection to Walt because
he seemed to the way the skippers were seemed to be a big
deal to him. And I feel like the effort he put into
shaping the jungle cruise and what a skipper is like is
still true today, is still there with the skippers. And that's what I
think about when I ride the Jungle Cruise. That and then and knowing that's
(19:09):
where Jeff Knowl got his start as a skipper. Jungle Jeff. Yeah.
Jungle Jeff. So I I think about that, how the
performance you see, the show that's been put on, that's the
show Walt wanted. And he had standards of what he wanted that to be
and let people know if they weren't there. Yeah. Boy. And
and there's that famous story you're probably, referring to with when,
(19:32):
he came down and rode the jungle, right, in in Disneyland.
And and then, I think it was like I'll I'm making up the timing a
little bit. Eight or nine minutes long. And so he called Dick Nunes who, you
know, was running everything in the in the park, and he called him over. And
he said, Dick, what happened to my other four minutes? And, he's
Dick said, yes, sir. I'll make sure. And and, Dick went
(19:53):
on a absolute retraining tirade, and,
Walt came back a week later and, wrote it and said, now that's now that's
what it ought to be. But like you said, that was very important to to
him, and you you don't shortchange it at all. Yeah. And
if you know that story, and that's what I was thinking about, it just
changes the way I ride it when I see it. And
(20:14):
another cool thing about the Jungle Cruise is part of its
charm is just how cheesy it is and that it kind of feels
like it's a really old ride. That's what I love about it, that it it
just has that feel to it. Yeah. And it and it you know,
the they've, I think, encouraged the sarcastic
knucklehead, you know, skipper thing. It's okay to do
(20:37):
that. You know? Like, guests would come up to us on the dock and and
say, hey. You know? Jeez. You because we weren't allowed to go in the
rain. So we we would be down one or two. We'd go down in the
rain, and they'd come up and say, hey. You know? When's the rain gonna stop?
And so, you know, you go, well, hang on. Let me grab the schedule. And
you'd you'd open it up some stupid piece of paper and go, you know, they're
gonna raise the dome here in thirty minute. You know, you could do all that
(20:59):
stuff, and, you could get away with it. They'd people say, hey.
What what's up? What you guys work here. What's the best place to see the
firework? In the sky, ma'am. In the sky. That's the best
place. So you anywhere else, you might get looked down
upon, but as a jungle crew skipper, it was fun. Yeah. That's a good
I would recommend anybody to work there. It also gets you quite a bit over
(21:21):
fear of of speaking to people in front of people. You know, you got 20
people on your boat, and you do it 20 times a day, and you got
five days a week, and you do that fifty weeks a year. And that's 5,000
speeches a year. So, you, you get to have a little bit
of confidence in yourself. I bet. I hadn't thought of it that way.
That's interesting take. Okay. I wanna bump back to the
(21:41):
Raiders. Yeah. What I like about that story
is for what what was his last name again? What were the
Raiders? Camback. Camback. Raiders. Okay. Yeah. So
Disney as a whole does a really good job making cast
members feel special, like they're part of something.
But I love the story of came back Raiders because in a
(22:03):
company that already makes you feel like part of something, I'm sure if you were
one of the Raiders, like, you felt really special.
Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, I think the fort
still maintains that that they they've got this wink, wink, nudge,
nudge. You know, you're part of a special I remember when I got to be
the GM there, as a matter of fact. And, you know, again, it's very hard
(22:26):
to get money to invest in capital and things like that, and and all the
general managers work hard to make, you know, make their presentations. Hey. We need a
new one of these, or we need to repair one of those. And, of course,
there's not enough money to do all the things that you wanna do. And the
fort was even harder again because your return doesn't make as much
money as some of the others. But I'm so I remember going through my dog
(22:48):
and pony show with our our finance director in resorts.
And, I said I finally saw it at the end, and I said, and I
know we're probably not gonna get these. And, her name is
Stephanie, and and we saw her the other day. She said, you know what, Rick?
She said, I worked at the Fort. I was there for five
years. We Fort folks got to stick together. We're going to get these. And I
(23:10):
thought, man, that's good. You know? So to your point, it's
a cool little club that I'd I think is different than any other resort
out there. Oh, how fun. Well, the way
I was connected to Rick, I can't recall if I told this
story when Rick and Bob were on together. The way I was connected to
Rick, Lee Cockrell and I were putting on an event, the Creating
(23:33):
Magic Mastermind, and we always have a guest
speaker from Disney join us. We had someone lined up and it fell
through, and I needed someone fairly
quick. And I was like, I don't know who to reach out to. So
I asked my pal, Dwan Rivers. Dwan, who
would be a great fit? Because Dwan had been a speaker. He knew the event.
(23:56):
And I said, who would be a good fit for what we're doing?
And he only gave me one name and that name was Rick
Allen. And I think the world of the one. So I knew I would
like Rick because the one liked Rick, But it made me
realize before I even met you, Rick, that you must be a relationship
guy to have had such a good relationship with
(24:18):
DeJuan. So tell us a bit about the role
relationships played during your career.
Yeah. You know, that's a great question. And and
again, I would, you know, I'm gonna relate it to the Disney
culture. You know, they're the Disney culture
is it's a relationship based culture. And, you know, what I
(24:40):
tell people when they would come talk to me about it, sometimes it was, hey.
How do you get ahead in a career? What what should I do and everything?
And I'd always remind them of that. And it's for good or for
ill. Right? You know, the culture is the way it is. It's what
people do when nobody's watching, and and it's just the way things
are done around here. Changing the culture isn't gonna get you there. So if you
(25:01):
don't like it being relationship based, that's too bad because
it is. And so, you know, it's a key thing. And
there are a couple of stories that I remember that made it
really crystal clear for me. And one is a a story about how
relationships just beat everything else when it comes to guests,
and another is about relationships when it comes to
(25:23):
cast members, so employees with each other. And and maybe I'll throw them both out
of here if we if we have have enough time. So the first one about
guests, I I was the general manager at Caribbean Beach
Resort. So, and I was the brand new general manager there. I'd only
been there about a week. And I'd I called our executive
housekeeper. Her name was Letha. And I said,
(25:44):
Letha, who is our best housekeeping trainer? And
she said, that's easy. That's easy. It's Betty Jackson.
Betty is our best. Is our best she gets the all
the most great guest comments, and we try to have everybody train
with Betty when we can. And I said, perfect. Sign me up. I
wanna train with Betty. And so we booked it,
(26:07):
and I got my costume on the day and that we
booked it. And I went and I cleaned rooms with Betty. And the
well, the odd thing was it didn't go very
well. She missed a lot of things that were really standard
for us. You know, for example, she she didn't look under a bed one time
to see if there was trash under there, didn't look in the
(26:29):
armoire, in one of the drawers to see if the guest in a checkout might
have left something behind, which they had actually and forgot to replace
some amenities, some shampoo so much that in my mind, I'm going,
jeez, this is our best trainer. And and I felt like I had to say
something. And I said, Betty, we missed a couple things here,
didn't we? And and she said, oh my gosh, Rick. I am so
(26:50):
sorry. I don't know where my head is today. And then I
thought, okay. You know, the GM is a can be an
intimidating role. I totally get that. And so I said, yeah, I'm
probably just making her nervous. So so so we will I'll just bring the temperature
down, and we'll chat. So I said, let's sit down and talk for a minute.
I remember saying, so, Betty, how long you worked here? She said, well,
(27:11):
twenty five years, Rick. All at The Caribbean. I said, man, that's
great. Congratulations. I said, do you like it? She said,
no. I love it. I love it. It's great. She said, let me let me
show you why. And we walked to the door of the room
we were in, and we looked outside, and she cleaned 18 rooms a
day in her section. She pointed up to one of the rooms she cleaned. She
(27:33):
says that that's 15 o one, and that's Donnie and
Marcia Davis are staying there, and they are on their honeymoon. And, they
got here three days ago, and tonight, they're going to the California Grill. And I'm
gonna write them a note in there and put it in the room so that
they know tonight that I'm thinking about them. And the next room
right next to that is Room 1502, and that's Jose and Maria, and
(27:55):
that's Jimmy and Bobby. They're kids. They're six year old twins, and
they love Buzz Lightyear. And so I'm gonna make a
little towel animal for that for, like, for Buzz Lightyear, and I'm gonna write a
note that says to infinity and beyond. And I'm gonna stick it in that stick
it so they know I'm thinking about them. And the room next to that is
1503, and that's Steve Johnson. And Steve's here on business, and
(28:15):
he's been he's been in meetings for three days. He's got meetings
tomorrow too, but that's his checkout day. So I'm gonna call the front
desk tonight and make sure he gets a late checkout tomorrow.
And Jody, she went on and on every room
that was occupied without looking at any document. She knew
all of her guests. She knew their kids. She knew things she could do to
(28:37):
make their stay more special. Here was our one of
our poorer cleaners in my mind who was the
best housekeeper because of relationships.
And so, you know, that really made that clear to me in a way
that I did that had never gotten through my head before. And, boy, we
needed a whole lot more, you know, Betty's in my mind. So
(28:59):
that was that was a neat experience. So that that is a
great story. That is to understand the effort that she put
into knowing the people that are staying
there, that is wonderful. Yeah. She was natural at it.
And so and, you know, that and that goes to so many things. That
goes to so many things. You know, we'd we'd tell all of our guys. It
(29:20):
says, look, if you just if you listen to the to your guest if a
guest has a has an issue that they're then you solve. If you listen
to them and look them in the eye and write things down and don't be
defensive and and say, okay. Here's I think here I understand what your issue
is. You know, if you do all those things, they're gonna feel
heard and they're gonna they're gonna know you're taking care of it. Even if you
(29:42):
don't know what you're doing, you can say, I think I've got this. You come
back and get help. But if you listen to them and
establish that relationship, I think that really matters. Let me give you
one more about but this was about, cast members. We got time? We
okay? We're good. This is a story about my general
manager there named Ed Mayotte. Ed was, and this was at
(30:03):
the Disney Inn, which at first was the golf resort then became the
Disney Inn, and now it's Shades of Green out there, the the military, the
one that gives military stays. But it was the Disney Inn back then, and I
was the resident manager and so responsible for front office
and housekeeping and a few other things. And Ed came to me and he said,
Rick, our our safety scores are not good. We
(30:25):
have too many safety incidents. I want you to fix it. So
I said, okay. I'm on it. And so
I did you know, I put posters up, and I
had some meetings, and we did some rah rah sessions and tried to make sure
everybody knew that safety was important. And the everybody knew
that safety was important, and the numbers didn't budge.
(30:46):
And so I went back, and I got a committee together.
And we got some training to do with everybody, and we put
some more posters up, and nothing changed.
And, Ed got frustrated with me. And so he came in
one one morning, and he goes, Rick, this isn't getting any better. Well, jeez. You
know, I'm I'm trying all these things. He says, come on. Let's go. Come with
(31:09):
me. We're gonna go fix it. And we walked down to the housekeeping was
doing their breakout. The housekeeping breakout every morning or or every other
morning, housekeepers will all get together with their leaders, and they'll
make sure they know exactly what rooms they're gonna clean and any messages for the
day, and that takes about twenty minutes housekeeping breakout. So the whole team is
gathered there. And Ed busted in on housekeeping
(31:30):
breakout, and he said, okay, everybody. I need to talk to you
for a minute. He said, I need you to stop getting hurt.
Now now in my mind, I'm going, that's your big plan,
Ed. I've done the
posters. I've done the training. You're just gonna tell him to stop getting hurt?
But he was much smarter than that. He went around the room one by one,
(31:52):
and he and he and he said, you know, Jose, you can't afford to
get hurt. He said, you're taking care of your mother at home.
He said, if you're laid up and you're at home, you're not gonna be getting
your full pay. You know you can't do that. And then he went to the
next person. He said, you know, Maria, you can't
because you've got you're raising your son on your own. And and so you're
(32:13):
having to pay, you know, for school or or whatever that is. And he
did the same thing. He went around the room one at a time and said,
this is why this is personal for you, and we care about you, and doggone
it, stop getting hurt. And son of a gun, man. People
stopped getting hurt. And that was just such a lesson for me again
about this whole relationship thing. And that doesn't have to be at Disney, by the
(32:34):
way. Of course, I think that can be anywhere. If you can, you know, if
you have a good relationship with people, let them know you care about them and
and, listen to what their issues are. Man, it can really get you to the
right place. Those stories are so good at
illustrating how to build a relationship culture and and
what's involved in it. I like that Rick reminded us,
(32:55):
you don't have to be Disney to do it. I remember when Dan Cockrell
first left Disney and we were working together, one of the things
he would often hear as he would talk to organizations
was, yeah. You can do that at Disney, but that doesn't work here
because you've got all that staff, the big budgets. And he said, no. It
doesn't take money to focus on details. It doesn't take money
(33:19):
to build relationships. You just have to be deliberate about it.
And I thought I think that's a great way to look at it. If
people think there's something magical about Disney,
and there is. But as Lee Cockerell says, it's not magic that
makes it work. It's the way we work that make it magical. Mhmm. Yeah.
Sure. And it's the focus on relationships
(33:41):
with guests, with other cast members. And and I think
that is a a good way to to wrap up what's been a
great conversation, Rick, that's idea of just a
culture of relationships. And I think that's what you've described to
us. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you and Dan more on that. I
think that it you know, any any organization can do that. That's
(34:03):
about how people work. You know, that's how how how brains work, and we
all would react that way. Right? And so yeah. It's good to
to learn from that. It's just, fascinating how you can see it time and
time again right in front of you that those are the things that matter. Yeah.
That's right. Well, Rick has been
out giving talks and well, so, Rick, I know
(34:25):
we at the end of the episode when you were with your brother
Bob, we talked about the talk that you two are giving together,
but you're also out there doing stuff on your own. So tell us a little
bit about what you're up to. Yeah. Thanks. So I've got
a a talk called Culture Tales, and it's t a I
l s. Right? So that's, you know, probably a a reference to my
(34:48):
old boss, Mickey. But, you know, what that gets
to is, you know, Disney has a very successful
operating culture. And if you're interested in
that, I think I'm pretty smart about being able to tell
you stories about how that worked with the Disney company
and then give you tactics to say that and this is how you can
(35:10):
bring that to life. And so I've that's about culture
tales, and I like doing that. And then there's a there's another one that I've,
I'm putting the buttons on it now. It's not quite finished, but I'm tentatively
calling it making it work. And that's for the all the operators out there. You
know, operators in any organization, you know, you're given the
assignments, man. Somebody cooks up the strategy, but they say, now
(35:32):
you go make it work. And so making it work at Disney is,
you know, was part of what we what we operators did. And so
I've got a talk working on that. We actually did a, we had a
project one time where we needed to get our guest service scores up, and I
won't go too far in the details. But I was part of a group that
said, you know what? If you could do anything you wanted, anything
(35:54):
to make your guest scores go up, what would you do? And let's go try
it. And so we got a chance to do that for about three months, and
we learned a ton of things, made a lot of mistakes, but we learned
a ton about some things that, that ended up carrying on out there. And so
this talk will be about, you know, what are some things that an operator out
there might wanna learn from that. Alright. Wonderful. And where can we find
(36:14):
you? You can find my website is,
rickallenconsultinggroup.com. That looks like
a long sentence, but Rick Allen. So r I c k a l l e
e n. Rick Allen consulting group dot com, and and I'm on
there, or you could give me a call. (407)
832-3592. That is great that you gave your phone
(36:35):
number, Rick. I have expected someone to do that
eventually. And and here you you did it. You just threw it out there. You
know, Lee puts his phone number. He's got his phone number in the back
of the customer rules and people call him, but he
said it is way less than you would think, the people that actually
call him, even though his phone number is right there. Yeah. That's it. So we'll
(36:57):
we'll try it and see if anybody anybody calls out. You know, I may, I
may get a you may get a voice mail, but then I'll if, you know,
if you've got a question for me about all this, I'll be happy to call
you back. Alright, Rick. Thanks for coming back. I'm glad
we were able to sneak you away from Bob and have a a
private episode here. You know how first moms are. Right? They
(37:18):
always want the spotlight. That's right. Exactly
right. They need us sensitive people that, you know, can make
compromise happen. So that's what we're all about in the middle, I think. That's right.
Well, thank you so much, Rick, and thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry
Show.
(37:40):
The kids say he's hip. It's Sugar Jay.