Kind: captions
Language: en
everybody welcome to another episode of
impact books today we are doing part 2
of Walt Disney by Neil Gabler this book
has totally blown me away but I'm not
gonna lie it was like a part-time job to
read the saying it is insanely long I
think even at 3x it was over 11 hours
with the reading which means that the
book itself naturally is north of 30
hours but I'm telling you that this book
is worth every second that you spend on
it I was totally blown away now this is
definitely an entrepreneurs book or if
you're really diehard into just
biographies of historical figures I
guess you could really get into it but
man the lessons that are present in this
for anybody either who wants to build a
business to really by the way get a gut
check as to whether or not you want to
run a business or for anybody in the
middle of it who wants to be able to
predict your future as you scale it the
first part of my book review and the
first part of the book is really about
Walt's ascension the Disney ascension as
they translated this unending passion to
do something extraordinary something
that had never been done before in
animation and really the first half of
the book absolutely captured my
imagination as an entrepreneur as
somebody who has a vision that he's
trying to bring into the world to hear a
story of going from nowhere Middle
America to becoming one of the while he
was alive certainly one of the most
recognized iconic figures around the
world they said that he was actually
even more famous outside of America than
he was in America and really building
his business in one of the most
tumultuous times in recent American
history so starts the company in the
Great Depression and then goes on world
war two and that had a massive impact on
the company as well and then the the
sort of Red Scare where everyone was
paranoid McCarthyism and you know were
communist actually trying to bring down
Disney and the biographer in this says
that maybe they actually were and there
were moments where it really did seem
like
the red uprising was targeting him and
trying to bring him down but ultimately
this is an incredibly incredibly
powerful tale of what it takes to go
from nothing to creating one of the most
enduring companies of all time
especially in the entertainment industry
something that has been disrupted over
and over and over again going from sound
to color animation becoming such an
important form and then all the
competitors coming in I mean it really
really is I think an incredible insight
into the lifecycle of a company and
that's really what the second half of
the book just made abundantly clear to
me if you're an entrepreneur if you're
already in the middle of this if it's
something that you've been thinking
about to be able to read this book and
say this is what I would go through and
is this something that I'm interested in
because the amount of passion that you
have to have something in the amount of
passion that Walt had for Disney it it
was so extreme and that's the only
reason that has survived and as I was
reading the pages and hearing all the
things that happened to him from the
strike which Disney ends up being sort
of half unionized and then there's this
massive strike and how difficult of a
period that was for Walt emotionally to
feel like he was being betrayed by the
employees that he had at the studio and
the way that that really changed him and
had such a massive impact on the way
that he ran his studio and how he began
to really cloister himself afterwards
and didn't trust people and what that
did to the dynamic of the studio and how
that really set the studio up for things
to come in terms of you know people joke
at least pre Bob Iger people used to
joke and call it mash wits and and
full-disclosure have no idea what it's
like now but it it used to have very
much a reputation of being a very very
hard place to work and reading the book
and seeing all of the changes that the
studio went through was just really
really incredible so I want to walk you
through some of the key moments and to
understand the glimpse of humanity that
you'll get and going through this book
in the second half again that I've
already done part one so
in the second half the war and this is
something that really surprised me World
War two essentially saved Disney Studios
and when I really think about what is
the part that luck and timing play in a
company becoming enduring and I think
that you know as an entrepreneur I will
just tell you there's a very distressing
amount of luck there's a very
distressing amount of timing that goes
into making a company that is able to
survive all of the tumult so what
happened to Disney they were right
before the war broke out as it was
breaking out across Europe the
international box office receipts fell
and at one point I believe that Disney
made up more than 50% of its receipts
were coming from overseas so as that
began to crater they had been investing
millions of dollars which at the time
was just an ungodly amount of money into
so Snow White was a huge hit smash hit
made the company flush with cash and
then they were working on Fantasia and
Pinocchio if I'm not mistaken were the
next two big ones and they had a few
more that were farther down in
production I think they at that point
that they began to play with the very
very early days of Cinderella and some
other things which by the way Cinderella
wouldn't come out for like another 15
years of some crazy but so when the
international box office receipts began
to dry up and they had taken out all of
these loans against the success of Snow
White and they were really an investment
mode and had brought on all these
additional employees to be able to bring
out films a lot faster and they had
committed to doing one a year then you
know unbeknownst to them obviously wore
suits across Europe the international
box office receipts dry up and now
Disney is literally teetering on the
brink of insolvency and Walt's whole
thing was he always wanted control and
that's one of the major themes in the
second half of the book is control and
that one of the things that because Walt
always insisted that he didn't make
movies for kids and if he's not making
them for kids like what is his real deep
expression and the biographer basically
takes the stance that the thing that
Walt was really obsessed with was
control and that one display of his
control was being able to essentially
create life and you see that both in
animation you see that in his obsession
with animatronics you see that in his
obsession with building this secondary
world Disneyland
he could control every aspect of it and
just this real obsession with control
and now you have the war where they are
not only just desperate for cash which
puts you at the mercy of your bankers
but they became part of the war effort
machine and their biggest client
essentially all through the war became
the US government and doing things for
the war effort and it really creates
this weird dynamic for Walt where he's
really losing a lot of his passion and
enthusiasm
Fantasia fails Pinocchio fails which was
weird for me to read because those have
become such classics now but at the time
they were considered failures that Walt
was very unhappy with how they turned
out
and and certainly just financially there
was no arguing it did not do the company
any service and then the war effort
saves them and so they're basically
turning out very low quality items and
Walt is sort of disillusioned with his
ability to really create great art he's
no longer pushing things from that
perspective everybody can feel him
backing off at the studio and if it
wasn't for the war effort the biographer
anyway surmises that they probably would
have gone out of business now reading
this book knowing that not only do they
not go out of business that they become
one of the biggest most enduring
companies ever was really fascinating to
see like sort of how close on the
precipice they got but what I found
really really interesting and and I talk
about this all the time for
entrepreneurs that you really have to
believe in that thing that you're trying
to do and as I was reading the book and
I just I kept thinking when does
Disneyland become a thing because he's
in such dire straits things are going so
poorly during the war after the war the
Red Scare and the strike and everything
that was happening and he begins to you
know really lose interest in pushing the
artform forward and like when does
Disney really begin to take off and they
start having some early success in
movies that were live-action which was
very interesting they start having Dumbo
began to turn the tide for them and
became successful when Walt literally
abandoned the quality standards and said
just make something fast and one of
those fast things they made was Dumbo
which ends up being a smash hit gets
things going in the right direction they
start having some wins with the
live-action stuff
and then you see this return to form for
Walt when when he realized his passion
and seeing how Disneyland becomes that
obsession again and in him getting
obsessed and maybe the biographer is
right because he could control
everything and he had the capital to
build this amazing thing but it really
was him becoming obsessed again and it
all started from a miniature train that
he had built around his house and that
it was big enough for him to sit on if
anybody's old enough to remember a
silver spoon made me think of that but
he had this miniature train built at his
house that went around the property and
even had a tunnel and you could ride
through the tunnel and that notion of
being able to create these idyllic
things that he had this total control
over reignited his obsessive passion and
that obsessive passion was the thing
that allowed him to really reinvigorate
the company create Disneyland which for
a while was by far the most successful
thing that they had going at Disney and
that Disneyland really was recouping a
lot of losses that they were
experiencing over on the filmmaking side
and is by the way the thing that gave me
the idea for how we would create impact
theory before I read the book I had
already heard and understood this that
creating the art doesn't necessarily
need to monetize on its face but
understanding how the echoes of that
ideology can be incredibly incredibly
profitable through merchandising through
things like Disneyland which were all
based on some of the live-action and
obviously the cartoons that they were
doing and just utterly utterly
fascinating to see how passion was the
thing that saw him through so when
people talk about finding your passion
the reason they're saying that the
reason that passion is so important is
because it is the thing that makes
fighting through a strike fighting
through the war fighting through the Red
Scare fighting through all of the things
the potential bankruptcies and fighting
with the banks it's the passion the
thing that makes you feel alive that
makes it worth fighting for and that
leads us into the the last thing that I
want to talk
Wow and the thing that left the most
indelible mark on me and the thing that
as an entrepreneur I struggle with the
most which is that a lot of people hated
Walt Disney but you can't deny that what
he built was amazing and how you
reconcile having a strong vision knowing
that you need to push your vision
forward and yet knowing just knowing
about human nature if you can get people
to believe in you if you can get them to
be excited about what you're doing if
you can get them to feel better about
themselves when they're around you than
they do when they're not what more could
you build and for me that was the
question that I kept asking was was
Disney successful because of Walt or was
Disney successful in spite of Walt or
was it a combination and it's the same
feeling that I have when you think about
Apple and how mercurial Steve Jobs was
known for being but not every great
leader is like that so it's this
fascinating look at the double-edged
sword that raw unadulterated vision and
passion really is and being able to see
when somebody has clarity of vision like
when he decided that he was gonna build
Disneyland and the obsessive way that he
went about it and the way that he would
make people do things over and over and
over and over and over until they were
perfect and that what he loved about
Disneyland was he considered at this
living organism that he could keep
changing and that one of the things that
drove him crazy about a film was once it
was done it was done although and this
was shocking to me he would actually go
back and reanimate parts of the film
after they had been launched which I
literally had no idea that he did that
or that anybody did that I thought Star
Wars was sort of the first film that had
ever gone back and retroactively Lee
changed a movie to any significant
degree but very very interesting so
seeing that clarity of vision how it was
able to drive him how he was able to
ignite other people and get them excited
but it left me asking the question how
can you do that and get people to feel
better on
day-to-day basis to love I mean there
were so many stories of people having
heart attacks and leaving and bitterness
and feeling betrayed both ways were Walt
felt betrayed by the employees the
employees felt belittled and demeaned by
Walt and but yet it created this
extraordinary company which has so
captured the world's imagination and so
as an entrepreneur that to me I think is
the thing that I think about the most I
want people to feel better about
themselves when they're around me then
when they then they do when they're not
but at what point does do you have to
really put your foot down and say but
this is the vision and this is what
we're gonna execute against I can't
recommend reading this book enough for
any entrepreneur out there it is it is
just an unbelievable journey
it's an unbelievable tale of what it
takes to have a vision to see it through
to really go on the emotional journey of
how difficult it must have been and in
the end to find your rhythm in the end
to really push yourself to think bigger
and and that was I think if I were gonna
put one fine point on what I took away
from this because I have no desire to be
the divisive embittered cloistered
genius like that the the lonely tortured
artist hold holds no appeal for me and I
very much got that sense but seeing how
he went from thinking small to then
believing in himself to then really
truly having the arrogance of belief
that he could figure it out and that he
could make it happen and that towards
the end of his career it really was him
always trying to put himself in like
this impossible scenario where no one
believed that he could pull it off
because he just wanted to see if he
could do it and I found that completely
inspiring so check this book out man
this is a raw look this is a
a mixed bag of some things he does are
amazing and other things will make you
cringe but it's an unflinching look at
somebody who built something
extraordinary and even reading it just
to go I would never do that I would
never do it that way and but I'm gonna
take that and I think that's genius like
you're not gonna take it all but it's
the 20/20 of hindsight it's being able
to look back on his journey knowing
where it ends up I think is worth the
price of admission all right this book
gets my highest recommendation guys this
is also a weekly show so if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe and I hope
that this one impacts you as deeply as
it impacted me all right until next time
my friends be legendary
take care