Turning Corporate Experience Into a Speaking Business

“Don’t discount what feels obvious to you—what’s obvious to you is magic to someone else.”

Notable Moments

01:45 Dennis shares his Disney origin story and the leap into speaking

04:30 Why so many professionals undervalue their own expertise

09:10 The biggest challenges Dennis faced going out on his own

14:20 Building a speaking brand that isn’t all about hype

20:05 How Dennis books clients and continues to grow

24:30 Advice for<

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to the Jody Mayberry Show. I'm so
excited this episode to introduce to you a
new friend of mine, feels like an old friend by now just by hanging out
with him a little bit, and that is Dennis Snow. I'll tell you about
Dennis, but first, I just wanna welcome him to the show. Dennis, I'm so
glad you're here. Yeah. Thanks, Jody. I'm honored to be on the show with

(00:25):
you. Well, Dennis, I had heard about you for
years until we finally met. So what a treat for
me it was when I host a workshop at
UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, and
in the audience is Dennis Snow. And so I
wanna get in I I will talk more about that, Dennis, but I wanna tell

(00:48):
you that people were telling me when you were there,
people would say, you know and hopefully, you take this as a compliment.
They would say, next to Lee Cockrell, Dennis Snow is
like the Disney speaker. I do take that as a as
a compliment. Yeah. Yeah. Lee is fantastic, of course.
But but, yeah, I learned a lot in that workshop. I mean, I took three

(01:10):
pages of notes. That was a that was a fabulous workshop that you all put
on. Well, thank you. And we talked about you afterwards
because I was so impressed. We had never met. I knew you who
you were. We had never met. And in the at the end of this workshop,
we had the talk back session, the question and answer.
Right. And Dennis asked us a question

(01:33):
about using stories. And afterwards, I was like, guys, can you
believe it? Dennis Snow asked us a question about using
stories in his presentations when he's known as one of the best
Disney speakers. And Bob Allen said, oh, you just gotta
know that's Dennis. That's how he is. He's just always
trying to get better. Yeah. Well, you guys did a great job. And like I

(01:55):
said, I I learned a lot and made me question some of the things that
I'm doing. I'm making tweaks on things. So that's when you know you have a
great workshop when people actually do what you talked about. You
know? Yeah. I love it that someone like you can go,
and it's not just entertaining, and hopefully it was, but it's good enough to
write down three pages of notes. Yeah. It was it was

(02:17):
great. So and I knew everybody that was
teaching the workshop too, so that was fun. I knew you from a distance, but,
you know, I knew everybody else pretty well from my my Disney
days. Yeah. That's right. And I don't think I've talked about it on this show.
So I'll just mention that workshop was called Stories That Work,
and Lee Cockrell gave an opening talk. And then Dwan

(02:39):
Rivers and myself, we gave a talk
together followed by Rick and Bob Allen, gave a talk together. It was so much
fun, and the room was full of the audience was just
great. The questions we had, the feedback, a lot of smiling faces.
And I know you understand that, Dennis. It it makes it so much easier when
you look out and people are smiling at you. Yeah. Well, you had a full

(03:01):
room too, and that that was great. The room was full. And it really did
look like you guys were having fun up there. So, I appreciated
that because that makes a difference too. Yes. Well, it made a difference for
us. It felt like it made a difference for the audience. And I
wanna talk about speaking because that's what you're
known for. That's the first time we met in person. I was

(03:24):
one of the speakers, and you built such a great
reputation as a speaker, but I think it goes back for
years. When I was going through your history with
Disney, and I saw what you did with
Disney University, Disney Institute. I'm like, oh my goodness. This
was no wonder Dennis ended up such a great speaker.

(03:46):
It's almost like your Disney career set you up for
that. And that wasn't by design. It really it really wasn't.
I just I feel very fortunate. I feel very, very
fortunate. I was, I I grew up in Vermont, and I
was on a break from college. And I was looking for
something to do for a summer job. And my dad reminded me

(04:08):
that when I was young, we went on a vacation to Florida, went
to Disney World. He said, you love Disney World. Why don't you try and get
a summer job down there? Alright. Why not?
So I came down. I was 19, and, I
got a summer job working. The the ride isn't there anymore, but it was
called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a, you know, simulated

(04:31):
submarine ride based on the based on the movie. And I just fell
in love with the place. You know, I just thought this is the greatest thing
ever. So I ended up transferring to school down here in Orlando,
And, what was gonna be a three month job turned into a twenty year
career, did the the attractions as an attraction
operator, then got into management as a supervisor, and,

(04:53):
then, as you said, went to the Disney University. And that's where I really
fell in love with the whole public speaking thing. It was just I
felt like I'd found my purpose in life, you know, doing
that. And we spun off a division called the Disney
Institute, which I know you're familiar with, where companies would
come down to benchmark with us. And my last several years with

(05:16):
Disney, that's what I did, teaching programs. And so at
twenty years, I thought, well, that's a good round number. I I've always wanted
to have my own company, so I decided to go out on my own.
And when I left, I made sure I didn't burn any bridges because if I
needed to come back, I wanted to be able to come back easily
and, just fell in love with doing my own thing.

(05:37):
But it really all goes back to that Disney foundation.
I learned so much in that twenty year career, and and, like I said, I
feel very fortunate. I know when we just we
say it so casually, twenty years at Disney, and it
lumps so much into one small statement like
that. But twenty years is such a long time. And

(06:00):
I It is. Yeah. And I'm sure we focused
on the Disney Institute, Disney University. What are
some other roles you had at Disney or times at Disney that come to
mind? Yeah. Well, certainly that 20,000 leagues under
the sea. It was just cool. You know? It was just a fun thing to
work on the rides. Now after that, they did send me to work at It's

(06:22):
a Small World, you know, and I heard that song eight hours a
day. And I can't you know, I have grandkids now. I can't even
walk by the place, you know, and and without hearing
that song and getting a little twitch. So I did that, and
I think the benefit of that frontline
position is you really learned how to deal with

(06:44):
people. You know, you really learn the ins and outs of dealing with people with
very high expectations. Doesn't take a lot to screw up a
vacation. Right? I can't tell you how many times I was held accountable for the
rain, all kinds of things. But that's the deal. That's the
job. So learning that as a at a young age,
those lessons stayed with me. And and as you know, Disney has some pretty

(07:06):
strict rules and regulations about how you are
going to treat the guests and keep the park clean and all of those
things. So learning that at you know, as a teenager and in
my young twenties was great. And then when I got into management
supervisor, my first management position was the greatest title
I ever had. I was the supervisor of Fantasyland. You know? That that

(07:28):
title doesn't get better than that. So then it was about, okay,
taking what I learned as that frontline cast member. Now as a leader, you
know, keeping that going in terms of, you know, how do you make sure those
things are happening every day and keeping your people engaged?
And then taking that learning, you know, from went over
to EPCOT and worked over there in a leadership in a

(07:50):
supervisory position. So it just kept going. And it like I
said, it wasn't by design. When I went to the Disney University, now it was
teaching those things. So it was a logical next
step. And then with the Disney Institute, it was another logical next step
of how do you get other organizations to buy into it. So
I would like to say it was all by design and look how smart

(08:13):
I am, but it really wasn't. You know? It was it was I was very,
very fortunate. And I was lucky to have some terrific leaders along the
way that were real role models for me, of
which Lee was one of them, of course. We worked together for a short
time when, when I was with the Disney Institute. He was a leader
or that that included the Disney Institute. And,

(08:35):
so I learned a lot from him, but I had some great leaders that
I would you know, they did not necessarily take me under my under their
wing. But just by observation, you can see
the elements of what it took to be a strong leader. So
yeah. Yeah. I'm a I'm a fortunate I'm I'm, you know, I'm getting older and
older, and I look back and I say, I'm a really fortunate guy.

(08:58):
Well, we already mentioned how the roles that you had set you
up perfectly for your post Disney
career. So you said 20 was a good round number. I've
always wanted to have my own business. I'm gonna go for it. Did
you take so so much of what Dennis talks
about is Disney related because twenty years is a

(09:20):
long time. Dennis learned a lot. Dennis learned how to teach that.
So now, Dennis, you teach to organizations.
You're a great speaker. When you knew you were gonna start your own
business, I'm kinda curious of that. You have twenty years
of wonderful experience, all this knowledge. Tell us a little
bit about taking the twenty years and transforming

(09:43):
it into these are going to be my presentations. This is what I
can teach to organizations because it's it is not easy
to take twenty years of experience and Yeah. Make it teachable.
You're absolutely right. And I I you know, it started out really as a
consulting business. I was going to do long term consulting
with organizations. But what happened was the first

(10:05):
few clients that I was working with, they asked me if I could
speak at various conferences and do some training and so forth. And that's what I
really fell in love with, was that part of the job. But one of the
first things I did was what were the core learnings
from that twenty years? What are the things that really had the
biggest impact on me? And how can I

(10:27):
translate those those for other companies? And, of course, the Disney Institute
experience helped with that. But what really got it going for
me was when I wrote a book called Lessons from the Mouse.
And I wrote 10 lessons, 10 things that I
really had to think out. Because when you write a book, I mean, you're thinking
about every single word. I think everybody should write a book, by the way,

(10:49):
because it really does make you solidify your thought
process around whatever your passion is, and that's what it
did. So it made me really think through these 10
very specific lessons. Like, never let backstage
come on stage. And as you know from your experience with Disney, that's a
big deal. You know? The onstage is onstage and backstage is

(11:11):
backstage. So I thought about, okay. What does
that mean? Then how does that translate to other
organizations, you know, like a hospital or a law firm
or, you know, just about any other organization? And what I found
is it really does translate. You know, there there's nuances based
on the industry, but I found that people really could

(11:34):
latch on to those Disney principles. You know? That most of them
you know, most people have been there before, or at least they know about
it, and they really latch on to those Disney principles. And if you can
help them make that bridge between
Disney and what they do, you know, they feel like, okay. We
can do this. You know, we we can do this. So I

(11:56):
guess it was a a transition from thinking about
it from a consulting standpoint to more of a
principle and delivery standpoint. And then as, you know, as
you know as a speaker yourself, you refine your message.
Right? Every time you do it, you refine your message.
So trust me, I made many mistakes along the way. And, you know,

(12:18):
there was these times I came off stage, and I think, well, that part didn't
go real well. But that's the career. Right? That's how you get better
at what you do. And that's why you go to programs like you all
did on the storytelling session because you could always get better.
Again, I know I've said it, but I I was just so impressed that you
were there for one, and then to find out you're taking notes. And I've seen

(12:41):
that with Lee Cockrell as well. As long as he's
been doing it, the positions he's had and his age, he
still thinks I've got so much to learn. And he still goes to
workshops. He goes to presentations. He just was this
week telling me about one that he was at, and the guy had said some
things he hadn't thought about. Maybe we should do some changes based

(13:03):
on what he'd just learned, and I thought and this yes. It it creates a
little more work for me. Also, it is wonderful
that Lee's done what he's done, and he's still out
there learning and making changes. And I see that in you, and it it's so
encouraging. Yeah. It's a fun career. Yeah. I see Lee in the
coffee shop pretty regularly, and it's always good to catch up with

(13:25):
him. Here's what here what he's up to. So yeah.
Yeah. Well, that that is great. Now one of the things you
you were talking about, you have these Disney principles, and
now you help bridge when you understand what the other organization
does. What that made me think about, I was lucky enough to
partner with Dan Cockrell in the five and a half

(13:47):
years between his career at Disney and Tilly took this
newer role in Australia. And when one of the
questions or comments or pushbacks he got quite
often was, yeah, that works at Disney. You've got all
that staff. You've got all that money. You've got all that pixie dust,
but I don't know if that would work here. Have you Right.

(14:09):
Heard that over the years? Yeah. I hear that all the time.
And, you know, the the answer that I wouldn't say to
somebody because it's kind of a smart mouth answer is Disney doesn't
do those things because they're Disney. You know?
They're Disney because they did those things. So they did those things
during the hard times. You know, when Disneyland first opened, you know, it was

(14:31):
a struggle. And because of the experience that they were
creating, that's why it became Disneyland, you know,
Disneyland that everybody knows, and the same thing with Disney World.
So, you know, you have to have the discipline to
recognize this is the right thing to do if you're gonna differentiate yourselves.
And one of the things that I try and stress with

(14:54):
organizations is the principles are universal. So my
belief is we all want three things. As customers, we would want
three things. We want you to do the job right. We want you
to be efficient while you're doing it, and we want you to be nice to
us. Those are the three things. If you do what you said you were going
to do and you do it very well, you make it easy to do business

(15:14):
with you and you're nice to me, I'm gonna be loyal to your company. I
don't care if you're a law firm, a hospital, or a grocery store.
Those apply to everybody. Now the way Disney does it is
through shows and events, you know, and putting entertainment
in the lines and with the different technology so you don't have to wait
in line to make it as long to make it efficient, being nice, you know,

(15:37):
the Disney courtesy, the park being clean for the
accuracy, you know, doing the job right. You know, that's how Disney does
it. Now how you might do it as a hospital,
the small details might be different, but the principles don't change. And so
when you start talking that way, people say, you know what? You're right.
You're right. This you know, if if I'm in a hospital, we need to do

(15:59):
the job right. You know? We need to be easy to deal with.
And people are in their most vulnerable state when they're in a
hospital, so it is important for us to be nice to people and treat
them well. So now let's talk about what is the what do those things mean
in a hospital? So when someone hears
what you do or well, let me come up with a a

(16:22):
hypothetical. So there's a small business owner. Let's say they
own a corner drugstore because I live in a small town. I love
going to Don's Pharmacy. It's just a drugstore that's
been downtown forever. So they find out what you do
and maybe they did a customer survey or overheard
people talking and realize, gosh, our customer experience

(16:44):
is underwhelming. Yeah. And they happen to sit next to
you on the bus. And they say, Dennis, I've read your two
books. I've heard you talk. My customer experience is underwhelming.
What can I do right now to improve that?
So I'm a big believer in bringing our team together. You
know? I think our frontline people, they deal with our

(17:06):
customers every day. They know what the issues are. They know what the challenges
are, and they have fabulous ideas. So what I would say is
bring your team together and ask this question. What are three
things we would want our customers to say about their experience with
us? Because that makes you zero in on what you want
your differentiator to be. So what are three things you would

(17:28):
want them to say about us? So if I were to ask this at Disney,
they might say something like, it was a magical experience. You know, we want
guests to say that. They paid attention to every detail.
They made us feel special. Okay? So what are the three things in a
drugstore? It may be the place was immaculate, the employees
were very helpful, and they cared about me. But

(17:51):
let's just say that. So those are the three things that we want our customers
to say. So what you've really just done is define what you want your brand
to be. Right? Because your brand is what people say and think about you. So
you've defined what you want your brand to be. Now once you've defined
those three things, so what has to happen in our
drugstore in order for people to say those things? So if we

(18:12):
want people to say, wow. They were really helpful, then we need to greet them
when they come in the door. We need to try and remember things about them
with repeat customers. We need to help them find things in
the drugstore rather than pointing to where the item
is. So all those behaviors now start falling into
place once you've defined what do we want the experience to be.

(18:35):
So that's something that you can do tomorrow in your
organization just to have that. All you need is really a flip chart, you
know, or or a piece of paper to brainstorm all this stuff
on. And what you've done is you've defined your culture,
but you've also engaged your people in defining that culture.
So we're all in this together now, and, you know, that's a

(18:57):
great great launching pad for just raising
the bar of the experience. I like how you put that
because your team can get behind that. Rather than just say,
look. We can do better. To be able to say this, I
like that almost creates the purpose of why we're doing what
we do. Because if you know these are the three things we

(19:20):
want our customers to say, well, now you know what you can do
to get there. And I think that
maybe that's a missing piece sometimes is just saying, hey. We can do better. There's
like, you can't define that. We can do better than this.
Right. Yeah. We need to do better, but what does that mean? You know,
behaviorally, what does that mean? And, again, I

(19:42):
think our people know the answers. If you say, you know,
what if we want our customers to say the place was
immaculate, you know, the store was immaculate, what do we need to do
that lead them to say that? Your people will know. They'll come up with the
answers on, what needs to happen. So you've got the buy
in. You know? You've got the energy behind it. You know, we talk about employee

(20:04):
engagement all the time. And I think sometimes we turn it into a
program instead of a a real tool. And the way
to turn it into a real tool is engage your people in how do we
get better. That's employee engagement. You know, that's real employee engagement
and and engaging them in how we get better at what we do. Well, to
tie what you're talking in now into

(20:25):
speaking, you talked about coming to the workshop, taking three pages
of notes, and reevaluating.
So I know that happens. People come see your presentations.
They take notes. They say we need to do these things.
What do you do if you're just giving a one time
talk instead of ongoing consultation? What's

(20:48):
the key if someone comes to one of your talks, takes three
pages of notes, find some areas they need to work on,
how do you take that excitement, that motivation from being at a
Dennis Snow talk and then actually implementing it in the
workplace? Right. Well, you know, some of it is just follow-up too.
You know, some folks, they wanna do a follow-up call with the leadership

(21:09):
team. But one of the things I always try and do to help
with what you're talking about is to provide tools that they can
take away from the presentation and apply as soon as
they get back. So I try and give them,
you know, tangible things. So when I talk about the
concept of looking at everything through the lens of the customer,

(21:32):
you know, and how do you do that, I provide them a service
mapping tool that I walk them through during the session that they
can take back and implement it with their teams.
For each of the key principles, I provide those tools.
Now, ultimately, it is up to them, right, to actually do
it. But I try to make it as easy as possible

(21:54):
to make that happen. As I said, I don't do that much consulting
anymore because I'm getting old. You know? So I don't do that that that much
consulting anymore. So that would be the ideal, you know, if then
you go in with a company and you do ongoing
consulting. But I do try to set them up for success with
what they need. And the other thing I try and do and not everybody takes

(22:16):
advantage of it, but I say, you know, if you ever wanna call me, feel
free to reach out to me. I'm I'm happy to talk about this
stuff all day long with somebody. So I I do try to set
them up for success. Yeah. That's wonderful. Okay.
So you started your speaking career. You wrote lessons from the mouse.
That really helped. That was, like, the tipping point for you.

(22:38):
And then just a few years ago, you wrote unleashing
excellence. So tell us about how did you realize,
okay. One book wasn't enough. I've got more in me. Talk
about that process. Yeah. So it actually goes back to your question
about what do you do afterwards. So it goes back to that. I actually
cowrote, Unleashing Excellence with a colleague,

(23:00):
named Terry Janovich. I don't know if you know Terry, but, I I
cowrote it with her. But it helped to answer that
question of what what do we do now. So it's
more of a how to book, a how to
manual of okay. If this is what we want the experience to be,
how do we hire people that are wired to deliver that? How do we

(23:23):
communicate how do we onboard people and train them? How do
we communicate relentlessly? What are some accountability
processes that we can put into place? How do we
identify obstacles and do something about them?
So what we tried to do with the book was
give a blueprint. If you follow this

(23:44):
model consistently and don't leave any of the pieces out because they're all
important, you're going to have a culture of service excellence.
So it was it was really, again, going back to your question of of
how do we set them up for success. That was one of the ways was
through through that book, Unleashing Excellence. So I don't
like to call it a textbook because that sounds really boring, you

(24:07):
know, but I I think it's an engaging book. But it really is
a here's the manual of if you do these things, you're going to
have that service culture. And what a great compliment to
the other work you're doing that you can be on stage,
talk about the bigger picture, and then that they can have this
book to take back and actually work through it.

(24:29):
Right. It does highlight the hard work, though. You know? So
when people start reading it, sometimes they're thinking, oh my god. This is
there's a lot to do. But that's where the discipline comes into play.
Right? You know, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
And that's why just a handful of companies really stand out
to most people that they're really, really loyal to.

(24:52):
It's because those are the companies that have put in the hard work. They've got
the discipline. They've engaged their employees, and,
the payoff doesn't necessarily come immediately. You have to be in it
for the long term. You know? So and I'm I know you've seen this too.
So many organizations, they'll have flavor of the month programs. K.
This year, we're focused on service. You know? Well, you've gotta be

(25:14):
focused on it always. You know? It's not a one year program.
It's it's the type of thing that has to be ongoing.
Yeah. Well, Dennis, this has been great. I'm so glad we were able
to meet in person at the workshop, which led to us talking
today. And I know when people hear you talk, they're
very interested in learning more. So where can we go to find out more about

(25:36):
you and what you're up to? Yeah. The best thing that we we try and
use our website as the hub for everything. So it's
www.snowassociates.com.
Snow associates, all 1 word, Com. And that links
to yeah. I mean, they could see videos of of me in action, but
we also have articles up there. We have a a YouTube channel

(25:58):
that you can link to from there with you know, we try to put out
regular videos about different topics that are
pertinent, usually five minutes long. You know, five minute videos,
blog posts, and so forth. I have an online training program, a virtual
training program that they can link to, But we try to use the the
website as the hub. But my phone number, if, people ever

(26:19):
wanna call, because, again, I'm always happy to talk about these things, is
(407)
294-1855. And that's, here
in Orlando, Florida. That's so wonderful that you do that. You
and Lee Cockrell are the only two people I know that are bold enough
to put your phone number in a book, say your phone number on a podcast,
and encourage people to call. But maybe you have found

(26:42):
this. Lee has told me very few people actually do
it. He's absolutely right. I don't know why, but
he's absolutely right. I know Lee is a very generous
person, and I like to think I am too. So I
love it when people call, and they say, hey. I just wanna pick your brain.
Okay. Now sometimes that might turn into business.

(27:04):
Many times, it does not. But those are the types of of
moments of giving back that again, going back to what I said earlier about
how fortunate I feel that the way things have played out for
me, that's just a way of giving back. And I'm not saying
my point of view and and what I share is always correct,
and I always say, no. I'm talking about this from my perspective. But that's the

(27:26):
way I try and give back from where I came from. Yeah.
Well, it's wonderful. It's been a great talk with you. And go check
out Dennis's website. Check out the books. I I know
you won't be disappointed. His short five minute videos are
wonderful. I'm I'm glad you put those out there, Dennis. It's been great
talking with you. Great talking with you. Thank you so much again. It's been an

(27:49):
honor, to be on the show. Alright. Thank you, Dennis, and thank you for
listening to the Jody Mayberry Show.
He's always up for a chinwag when you've got somewhere to be. It's Sugar
Jay.