5 SUCCESS TIPS YOU CAN LEARN FROM
THE BOYS (& GALS) AT PIXAR.
Dr Kem Thompson
I watched Pixar’s latest serving, Ratatouille, yesterday, with
my son. As usual, it was fantastic (my all time Pixar fave is still
The Incredibles though, but still, these guys are way ahead of the
pack in terms of animated movies, imho).
We both had a fun and enjoyable experience, watching it.
Right from before the movie started, I was reminded of something
that Pixar often does before showing a movie in the big screen:
show an unannounced short animation clip, which is usually funny,
entertaining and sometimes a subtle plug for a future release. It’s
always perceived as added value though, and this makes one feel
good towards the makers of the movie.
Yesterday that got me thinking some more about other strategies
I’ve found Pixar to use when it comes to their movie projects, and
I realized there were at least 5 things we could all learn from the
way they do things.
Here are the 5 I came up with. If you can think of any more, feel
free to share them and I’ll publish them in a future edition of this
ezine. Send them to feedback@successeminars.com
1. Believe in what you’re doing
2. Give value and overdeliver
3. Repurpose your content
4. Market relentlessly
5. Have Fun!
Now, if you’re not in business you may, at first glance, think that
this list doesn’t apply to you.
You’d be wrong.
Look closely at that list and you’ll discover that those 5 things
apply perfectly to anything you’re doing in life, if you wish to
succeed.
Here’s a bit more detail on each tip.
1. Believe in what you’re doing.
The guys in Pixar have a strong belief in each of their
projects (you gather this from watching the ‘extra features’
in their dvds…), and this comes through in the amount of
time and effort they put into it.
Whatever you do, (job, business, relationship with significant
other, parenting, etc), you must have a firm belief in what
you’re doing, otherwise you won’t have the inner motivation to
continue doing it. You must see the value in what you’re doing,
you must see the point of doing it. If you don’t, you won’t keep
at it for long, neither will you give it your best shot.
2. Give value and overdeliver.
Always do your very best, and constantly seek to improve on it.
Then give more in value than is expected of you. If you work a job,
do you see how this makes you more valuable for your company? And
if the company you work for doesn’t appreciate your value, yet you
continue to deliver and overdeliver, pretty soon you’ll attract a
job in a company that does appreciate you.
In business, this endears you to your clients and positions you as
a trusted resource who they happily tell their friends and contacts
about.
In every relationship, it always pays to think in terms of what you
can give, and how you can overdeliver. And I mean *every* relationship,
be it a personal, professional, business one.
If you’re this way unconditionally, you will very likely attract
relationships with people who value you and see your worth.
Note that sometimes this will mean repelling those who don’t…
3. Repurpose your content.
This is a fun one. Notice how merchandise for Pixar’s movies
comes out in all manners of shapes and sizes, around the time
the movie’s coming out?
This is called ‘milking it for all it’s worth’, and it’s something
you should be doing with all your ‘content’.
‘Content’ here could be
a) Your experiences: a stay-home-parent wishing to return to work
can repurpose their experience to reflect a wide range of skills
they’ve acquired while out of work (on their resume/CV). You
can repurpose any experience to suit your circumstances and need.
b) Your products or services: every business person must find ways
to repurpose or repackage their wares. An easy example is if you’ve
written an article that you’ve submitted to a website. That same
article can be repurposed into an e-course, a teleseminar, an audio
product, a video telecast, you name it.
c) Yourself (!): Try something new. Be bold to express another part
of you that you’ve wanted to do for ages. Life is too short to
be the same old, same old about things. Explore your interests,
hang out with a different crowd (but keep the old crowd, unless
they are the type that drags you down into mediocrity…). Do
something different. You’ll get more mileage out of life when you do.
4. Market Relentlessly
Pixar markets their products, past, present and future, non-stop.
This keeps them in your consciousness whether you like it or not 
Because they always give value and such, you don’t mind (mostly)
being bombarded by them, see.
This is for everybody, business, professional, homebuddy, whatever
category you fit into.
If you’re in business, I hope you know that your business is not
the business you’re in: your business is the business of marketing.
If you’re not marketing your business, it doesn’t matter if you’re
the best at what you do. You’ll soon be out of business. So come
up with a marketing plan and stick to it relentlessly. Do something
each day, no matter how small, to promote your business.
If you’re in a career, all your communication efforts amount to
a desire to market an idea or a concept to someone. So you too need
sound marketing skills to be effective in your job.
In every relationship, you’re marketing yourself. You know you’re
‘all that’. But nobody else will know that if you don’t ‘let your
light shine’. If you don’t believe and know that you’re ‘all that’,
that’s an indication that you’ve got to market you to yourself. You
need to create a brand new image of yourself, and sell yourself on
it, until it becomes physically manifest. If you’re not sold
on who you really are, nobody else will be.
I highly recommend that you read books on marketing, for really
they are books on human psychology, and what makes people respond
to certain triggers and not others and such. They’ll also teach you
some things about yourself that you never knew.
Start by reading anything from Dan Kennedy’s excellent No B.S. series.
Also, read anything by Jay Abraham. Very importantly, read
the classics like Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.
With a bit of imagination you can extrapolate and see how this tip
would apply to your specific circumstance.
5. Have Fun!
The boys at Pixar obviously enjoy what they do tremendously.
Watching the ‘Behind the Scenes’ clips on dvds, a friend of mine
commented on how those guys had a dream job, one they actually
enjoyed doing, and how she wished she could have a job like that.
I agree that they have a dream job.
I also believe that you can, too. No matter what you’re doing,
you can turn it into a dream job, dream life, dream whatever,
if you change the way you look at things.
Course it helps if you know what your dream life looks like.
Once you know how it looks, you can choose to see your circumstances
either as that dream in the making, or as stepping stones to that
dream.
Success comes from enjoying the journey on your way to your intended
destination. Seek the fun in everything you do and your life will
truly become a dream, for if you seek, you will most definitely find.
I work some pretty crazy shifts at the hospital but you know what,
I look forward to, and enjoy every single one. That was initially
a conscious deliberate choice on my part, but now it’s just the way
I feel about the job.
So don’t wait to ‘feel like’ something is fun. Find the fun in it and
revel in it. In doing so, you’ll attract more fun circumstances and your
life would be one great big celebration.
Having fun also enhances your performance, which increases the value
you deliver, thus setting up a positive cycle of success, happiness,
prosperity for you, just as it’s done for the boys at Pixar.
Take these 5 tips on board seriously. I know I will, more so. No
excuses. For the past couple years, I’ve let my hospital work (and
preparing to return to it) be my excuse for slipping up every now
and then.
No more.
What about you? As we enter the last couple months of this year,
you can still apply these 5 tips and make this your best year
yet. Don’t wait, don’t listen to naysayers. Just up and do it!
