Category: Dear Son

2021 Disney Keynote Speaker firsts

couple gazing into each other's eyes
These two share 66 years of Disney Service and Leadership.

2021 Disney Keynote Speaker firsts…this is an “intermission” in my unpacking last night’s intensely-painful event.

Deep breath.

Exhale.

And remember that writing is as cathartic a daily exercise as any other option.

Here goes a remarkably simple, uneventful story. Yet this story illustrates a dramatic leap in my artistry as a professional speaker. And it happened just four months ago. This is significant in the 23-year arch of a prolific speaking career.

Here goes:

Grateful that risk taking yields growth…

Let’s review the Disney Keynote Speaking firsts from 2021: 

Walked from home to Disney Convention Center, to speak.

1st Disney speech – in 2,000 speeches – delivered without slides.

1st time using conference A/V staff to role-play a story.

1st Disney Keynote delivery in jean shorts.

1st time in Walt Disney World’s 50-year history a Disney conference speaker walked from their house to speak at Disney.

Bonus 1st: 1st time in 23 years with a 16-month (Covid) public-speaking gap.

All firsts happened in one day. Would have been ridiculously easy to take no risks. Just do what you always do – what works – since 1999. Without multiple risks of failure on this day there’d be no growth. And because none of the risks failed, it was an epic growth day.

None of these firsts required a checklist. All of these firsts required an unexplored frontier.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

We desperately need both

Disney Institute Keynote Speakers
Jungle Jeff, Chelsea, “The Boss”, Kevin. “Graduation Mickey” photos just come with the Disney Institute territory.

Leaders see something. Managers do something. We (desperately) need both.

dad

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Artful verbs

mountaintop fire lookout
Imagine if living and working on a mountaintop was your dream and you actually did it every Summer.

Artful verbs.

What?

Your career. What you do. Verbs create art.

Wishing and hoping, waiting and doing nothing, these are the things that destroy (your) art.

Action builds the artist.

The artist builds the art.

Live like you mean it. Life is not a dress rehearsal.

dad

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Public thinking

The coolest thing about Public Records is that they are public, not private. Everyone has 24/7 access.

Writing prolifically on a personal level affords the writer a gracious, and powerful, gift of publicly “thinking out loud”.

To say things publicly requires a conviction and a certainty that private, invisible thinking cannot, ever, compete with.

Once you reach a certain distance on a journey you shouldn’t even be on, you start to find deeply creative ways to get off this nonsensical path and back to a peaceful, everyday normality.

(Sure, you’ll still have to deal with your hell that no one knows about. Everyone does. It’s the great equalizer.)

But what you discover about your personal leadership is this: adversity doesn’t develop character, it reveals it.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Quantity versus quality

E a legend books with Small Disney toys
May your Force be with you, whatever you decide.

Classic business dilemma: price or value?

Quantity or quality.

Commodity or scarcity?

Churn and burn or loyalty?

Satisfactory or remarkable?

Plain vanilla or rainbow?

As CEO of You, Inc, these are just some of your important decisions.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.