“Think beyond your lifetime, if you want to do something truly great. Make a fifty-year master plan. A fifty-year master plan will change how you look at the opportunities in the present.”
“Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reaches of time.”
Walt Disney
Deerfield Beach, FL, January 15, 2014 – These are but two of the Walt Disney-isms that pepper the pages of the latest book on the man, How To Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life (HCI Books – $13.95 – August 2004) by Pat Williams with Jim Denney. The authors conducted over 1000 interviews to present the man behind the myth. To tie them all together, Williams and Denney share lessons they gleaned from their in-depth study of this icon of American family entertainment.
Williams, whose personal fascination with Disney began when he relocated to Orlando, Florida in 1989 to build a new NBAA basketball team, considers Walt Disney to be one of his mentors. In fact, his team, the Magic, was named in honor of one of Disney’s most famous creations, the Magic Kingdom. The name was chosen not only because the team’s proximity to Disney World, but also as a tribute to how Walt Disney’s “magical personality” touched his community.
To help readers make their own dreams come true, the authors have assembled the following lessons learned by observing Walt Disney’s extraordinary life:
• Lesson 1: Live the Adventure
• Lesson 2: Be a Salesman
• Lesson 3: Dare to do the Impossible
• Lesson 4: Unleash Your Imagination
• Lesson 5: Become an Animated Leader
• Lesson 6: Take a Risk
• Lesson 7: Deal with Loss
• Lesson 8: Plus Every Experience
• Lesson 9: Be a Person of Stick-To-It-Ivity
• Lesson 10: Be a Sponge for Ideas
• Lesson 11: Ask Yourself – “How About Tomorrow”
• Lesson 12: Live for the Next Generation
• Lesson 13: Build Complementary Partnerships
• Lesson 14: Stay Focused
• Lesson 15: Accept Your Mortality
• Lesson 16: Make Family Your Top Priority
How To Be Like Walt follows Disney from his humble childhood years on a farm outside of Kansas City until his death in December of 1966. What is clear throughout the book is a life of imagination, perseverance and optimism. And, although some controversy accompanied Disney’s legacy, his impact lives on in the hearts and minds of people all around the globe.
As friend and colleague, Art Linkletter, says: “Of all the books written about Walt Disney, this may be the most important.”
About The Authors:
Pat Williams is senior vice president of the Orlando Magic and author of more than 30 successful books, including 4 books in the How to Be Like series.
Jim Denney is a professional writer who has collaborated with Pat Williams on several books, including How to Be Like Jesus and the upcoming Three Success Secrets of Shamgar.
Available in bookstores, or to order directly from the publisher, contact:
HCI Books
(800) 441-5569 or www.hcibooks.com
How To Be Like Walt
Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life
Pat Williams with Jim Denney
ISBN: 0-7573-0231-9
$13.95 Trade paperback – August 2004
A tête-à-tête with the Authors:
1. Walt Disney is one of the most enduring icons of the 20th century and there are already a number of books about him. What in particular made you want to undertake a project this big—to write about the life and lessons of Walt Disney?
Walt has always been an inspiration to me, but after I arrived in Orlando back in 1989, I was amazed at the obvious influence this man had on an entire community—and one he’d never even lived in! What kind of personality today has that much power? Just the thought of it made me want to know more about Walt. What was he like as a man? How was he regarded by those who knew him and worked for him? What was his imprint on people’s hearts that make them love him still? Those were the questions I wanted answered.
2. What did you expect to learn as you started this project in 2001?
I expected to discover memories and stories about a man who lived 40 years ago. I knew there was much to learn from his leadership style and his drive to succeed. What surprised me was the living presence I saw in so many lives—both those who knew him and those who just loved him from a distance. To these people, Walt is still alive! And as I dug deeper into his leadership techniques, developed on his own long before we had books written by leadership gurus like John Maxwell and Ken Blanchard, I was blown away that Walt was already doing all that leadership stuff. This man was decades ahead of his time! We still have a long way to go in order to catch up to him. We need his skills today. This world needs more leaders who care like Walt, who love like Walt, who dream like Walt and inspire like Walt. My book shows you how you can be like Walt, no matter who you are or what your leadership influence is.
3. How did you conduct your research?
Thanks to my years in Orlando, I’ve come to know a few people here at Walt Disney World who actually knew and worked with Walt. So that’s where I started. One person would lead me to another and another and the list just grew. Everywhere I looked, every event I traveled to, I discovered another link. And of course there are the other books on Disney. I used virtually every book of record, along with the videos and DVDs that include interviews with people who knew Walt. I was fortunate to meet some folks who work for Disney or who had worked for Disney and who loved Walt enough to want to help me with this project.
On the same day, when I traveled to Anaheim for a book conference, I met two people who “plussed” this book immeasurably – Tim O’Day and Peggy Matthews Rose. Walt, who invented the term “plussing” for making something the best it could be and then making it just a little better, would be proud. Without the help of people like these two Walt historians, this book wouldn’t be half what it is. Thanks to all of them and my writing partner Jim Denney, we’ve put together a book we believe will touch the hearts and inspire the imaginations of everyone who reads it.
I spent three years researching this book. I consulted over a thousand sources and conducted over 200 interviews. I talked to most of the people now living who knew Walt Disney, from members of the Disney family to actors, animators, and Disney songwriters. In the process of researching and writing this book, I’ve come to feel as if I’ve known Walt all my life.
4. What about some of those legends we’re always hearing? Like the one about Walt being frozen, for instance. What did you learn about that?
I run into that old urban legend all the time. People keep asking me, “Was Walt really frozen?” As magical as he was, it’s tempting to want to believe he’s suspended in time—that he’ll come back and pick up right where he left off. The truth is very simply this: Walt died on December 15, 1966 and was cremated shortly afterwards. He won’t be back.
But that doesn’t stop you and me from learning from Walt’s life. He was a vibrant, vital man with a profoundly intense personality. We can’t bring Walt back, but I believe we can learn to be like Walt. There is so much of Walt still with us, after all. We have his movies—what parent alive today doesn’t thank God for Walt Disney’s movies? And there are his theme parks like Disneyland and Walt Disney World. We have the music he inspired and the work being done even today by people whose lives were forever touched by Walt’s Disney magic.
5. How do you think readers can learn to be “like Walt”?
As you know, this is the fifth How to Be Like… book I’ve written—and I’ve got a few more to come. If I didn’t believe people could learn from each other, I wouldn’t bother doing this. But greatness happens for a reason, and all of us want to know how we can live successful, effective lives. So we study the lives of people who have done great things and left a big mark on the world.
Walt had so many qualities that we can build into our own lives: His boundless imagination and creativity. His courage and his willingness to take a risk in order to make his dreams come true. His remarkable ability as the leader of an organization. His absolute commitment to excellence. His ability to focus and persevere. These traits in Walt’s life are all learnable skills. My own three-year journey of writing this book has helped me to grow in all of these areas. I can’t help feeling that I’m a lot more like Walt—more creative, more bold, more of a leader—because of all I have learned by studying his life.
6. Tell us about some of the adventures you had in creating this book.
Oh, that would be a book in itself. The stories range from people who told me I was crazy to write a book called How to Be Like Walt, to those who willingly gave their time to help me research it. Some couldn’t talk about him enough; a few wouldn’t talk at all. Still others were suspicious or felt their own book ideas were being threatened. I even got a tour of Walt’s studio and had lunch at his favorite restaurant with a great group of people, including Kathryn Beaumont who did the voice for Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Peter Pan. Some of them had known Walt and some had just loved him—but all were eager to talk about him.
I had the opportunity to talk with Fess Parker, the actor who played Davy Crockett, and sing the theme song with him on the phone. What a personal fantasy moment that was! And when I spoke with Richard Sherman, he told me about how Walt loved the song, “Feed the Birds,” from Mary Poppins. They would play it for Walt every Friday afternoon, and continued to do so long after Walt died. What an amazing story. When I interviewed Richard on the phone, we sang that song together and ended up in tears. It was like Walt was in the room with us.
The stories and opportunities ran the gamut from an hour on the phone with Art Linkletter, one of Walt’s closest personal friends, to seven seconds with Julie Andrews at a book show in Chicago. We took what we could get. I even went to Kansas City and visited Walt’s boyhood home and his first cartoon studio. I wanted to soak up as much of a feel for the man as I could get.
I think my favorite story, though, and one I share in the book, is the day Walt’s daughter Diane called me and gave me permission to write about her “daddy.” I love it that she still calls him Daddy. And I think readers of this book will get to meet Diane’s daddy in a special way.
7. How can someone learn to be creative if they aren’t naturally gifted?
One way to become more creative ourselves is by studying creative people, like Walt Disney. As I examined Walt’s life I discovered ten simple, powerful ways that all of us can become more creative than we ever imagined. We explore all ten in the book, but let me just share three of the ten principles:
First, Walt drew on all of his life experiences to become more creative. He never wasted a memory or an experience. He used his boyhood and his adult experiences to inspire him when he made his movies and built his theme parks.
One time, he got stopped by a traffic cop and he arrived at the studio boiling mad about getting a ticket. He reenacted the whole scene with his staff, and as he told it and re-told it, he realized that it was actually pretty funny. Soon, he embellished that incident into a funny storyline that became a Mickey Mouse cartoon called “Traffic Troubles.” Turning experiences into creativity is something we can all learn from Walt.
Second, silence your inner critic. We all have a little voice inside us that says, “Don’t take chances! Don’t color outside the lines!” That inner critic is the enemy of our creativity.
When Walt was a boy in school, he drew a picture of a flower with a smiling face. His teacher told him sternly, “Flowers do not have faces!” When Walt grew up, he made a lot of cartoons in which flowers not only had faces, but they talked and sang, too! We all need to silence that voice inside us that says, “You can’t do it that way!” Creative people like Walt say, “I can do it any way I want!”
Third, ask yourself, “What if—?” Walt was always saying, “What if we tried this?” One time an artist came to him with a drawing for the movie Fantasia. The drawing showed Mickey Mouse standing on a cliff like an orchestra conductor, conducting the ocean. Walt said, “That’s nice—but why have Mickey conduct an ocean? He has magic powers! What if we have him conduct the whole universe? What if we have him conducting while the stars and comets whoosh around him?”
We can always become more creative if we draw upon our own experiences, silence our inner critic, and ask ourselves “What if–?” Those are just three of the ten ways Walt taught me how to be a more creative person, and I use these principles in my own life every day.
8. Do you believe there will ever be another Walt Disney?
I believe God has made many extraordinarily gifted people, but I believe he has created each one of us to be exactly who we are. So no, there will never be another Walt Disney. But there are and will be more people like Walt Disney. In fact, it was Walt himself who once said, “As long as there is creativity left in the world, Disneyland will never be complete.” Well, that goes for all the Disneylands that exist in people’s imaginations. All it takes is the right spark to ignite the creative fires. It’s my hope How to Be Like Walt will be one of those sparks.
9. As a man who’s lived most of his life in the world of professional sports, what do you say to those in the limelight who believe they are not accountable to others for their public or private behavior? What do you think Walt would say to them?
That’s a great question. I believe that all of us are leaders in one way or another. Some of us are CEOs, some run theme parks and animation studios, some are professional athletes and others are parents or teachers. We all influence the lives of at least one other person, for good or for bad. Those in the spotlight have a special responsibility to live in ways that inspire those watching to live better lives. Too many don’t see that responsibility. It’s my desire that more of them will learn from and want to be like those they admire—like the Micheal Jordans, the Rich DeVos’s and the Walt Disneys—so that those who admire them will be challenged to be even better. I believe Walt was always looking for the next goal, the next thing he could do to make the world a better place. And I believe he inspired others to do the same. Walt believed he had a responsibility to the next generation, and we point that out in the book. So yes, I believe he would tell those in today’s spotlight to think about who they’re impacting and how.
10. So much of Walt Disney’s life has been shrouded in myth and mystery. After writing this book, what do you think Walt was really like? Will your book help readers to know the truth about Walt?
I’ve interviewed over 200 people for this book, including Diane Disney Miller, Roy E. Disney and many who were close to or loved Walt. Through these interviews and the extensive research we’ve done, I believe we’ve de-mystified Walt without diminishing his magic in any way. In fact, I believe those who read How to Be Like Walt will discover a Walt more magical than they ever imagined…because they’ll get to know the real Walt. They’ll read about how he made it through the tough times and kept on going. His dreams kept him moving forward, no matter how many times life knocked him down. And his personality inspired others to be more than they ever knew they could be. That’s the Walt people will get to know in this book.
11. Walt’s life has touched almost everyone living today in some way, even those who never knew him or saw him on TV. Why do you think that is so, and how can we live like Walt, in a way that makes a difference?
Walt touched people because he loved people. I believe if you begin with love and compassion for others as the basis for everything you do, you can’t help changing the world around you. You may not make as dramatic a difference as Walt, or maybe the full extent of your influence will not be known in your lifetime. But I believe that with love for others—the kind of compelling love that made him want to change lives and change the world he lived in—we can all be like Walt. Walt didn’t let the failures get him down or convince him to quit. When he was knocked down, he just got up again and kept on moving forward. That’s the kind of attitude that makes a difference, and we can all learn how to have that determination.
12. We live in a world very different from the one in which Walt dreamed his dreams and built his Magic Kingdom. What do you think we can learn today from studying Walt’s life?
Great leadership doesn’t get old. We may be able to rediscover it and put it in books, but there’s nothing like studying the life of a genuinely influential leader. No one in our recent history has influenced his close circle, his community, his country and the world like Walt Disney. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to leave a legacy like that?
13. How was Walt Disney different from most business leaders?
Too many leaders today are more interested in pleasing stock holders and making sure the bottom line looks good. They do that at the expense of their workers. Walt was different. He believed that if you inspire your workers to be the best they can be, the bottom line will take care of itself. Walt invested himself in his employees. That definitely comes out in this book. How many leaders today do you think will inspire people to talk about them, write books about them and sing songs to them every Friday afternoon—40 years after they’re gone—like Walt Disney?
14. As a leader, what can we learn from Walt about teamwork? How did he motivate his employees to create all those magical Disney worlds?
His organization worked because of synergy. He knew how to pull talents together, but he was not a great praiser. His greatest line of praise was, “It’ll work.” But people he touched are still emotional about him today because Walt brought out the best in them. They may not have seen it at the time, but they realize it now and that’s why they still love Walt.
15. Walt faced a number of obstacles in his life, challenges that might have made others give up. What made him keep going? How can we persevere like Walt in the face of opposition?
We never should have heard of Walt Disney. He came from poverty, illness and failure. He had a nervous breakdown and went bankrupt twice. His first major successes were ripped away from him by two hucksters—but he just wouldn’t quit! He had stick-to-it-ivity. Today we would call that bulldog tenacity. Walt’s life proves the adage that quitting is the only way to assure you won’t succeed. Walt refused to quit, and that’s why he succeeded.
16. Walt was often referred to as a visionary, and you discuss this quality in your book. What makes someone a visionary? Do you think that’s a gift, or can anyone learn to be visionary?
Walt was always looking to the future, ten to twenty years ahead of everyone else. At the same time he was maxing out today. Walt lived life to the fullest while always looking down the road. That’s a wonderful combination. We can all learn from Walt, no matter who we are, where we live, or what our background or age—young or old, student or businessman, entrepreneur or full-time mom.