RPF0232-Lee_Cockerell_Interview
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00:00:16.480 | Personal Finance, I get accused of turning my finance show into an entrepreneurship show.
00:00:22.400 | I don't intend to do that, although I make no apologies for why I believe that
00:00:29.200 | entrepreneurship is in many ways a simpler, more direct path to financial independence and
00:00:34.480 | financial freedom. But I don't intend to do that because there are some tremendous advantages that
00:00:39.680 | can be achieved from working at a job. I've been wanting to bring you some interviews with people
00:00:47.040 | who have built incredible careers at jobs. Today, I do just that. My guest today is a man named Lee
00:00:53.920 | Cockrell who worked for many, many years with Walt Disney Corporation and served as the executive
00:01:01.120 | vice president of operations for the Walt Disney World Resort, had tens of thousands of people
00:01:06.880 | underneath him, and built a really amazing career starting from a very disadvantaged place.
00:01:13.280 | Today, you're going to get some insight into what he did well and what made the difference in his
00:01:18.480 | career success and also how that impacted his personal financial life a bit.
00:01:23.920 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:43.440 | Thank you so much for being with me today. This is the show where we work to help you clarify
00:01:47.920 | your path to financial independence. Today, I hope to do that and give you some ideas and
00:01:53.360 | inspiration that will help you, especially if you find yourself working in a large corporation.
00:01:59.600 | Hey, large corporations were designed to make money. You might as well get some for yourself.
00:02:04.960 | The cool thing about working in a large corporation is that, yes, not only can you get a little bit
00:02:17.280 | of money, but you can really have some impact because, like it or not, most people are not
00:02:21.200 | entrepreneurs. In fact, most of the population is not. I don't think it really has the skills or the
00:02:26.640 | desire or the inclination or the personal, I guess, just the personal character, the personal qualities
00:02:32.960 | that are going to be necessary for entrepreneurship. Working in a job and working in a corporation can
00:02:38.480 | be an excellent way for you to achieve and accomplish all of your goals and plans and
00:02:42.800 | dreams. Most of us start there. Very few of us start as entrepreneurs and finish that way.
00:02:47.680 | And so today, I'm thrilled to bring you a discussion with Lee Cockrell. I met Lee
00:02:52.640 | at Podcast Movement. This was one of the interviews that I did there. And when I was
00:02:59.200 | preparing for the conference, I was looking through the attendees and the speakers, and I saw that Lee
00:03:03.600 | was speaking, and I instantly knew that I wanted to connect with him. So I reached out to him
00:03:07.520 | before the conference and made sure to arrange this time. And we had a really, really great chat.
00:03:12.080 | I think you're really going to enjoy this insight from a man who's been there, done it,
00:03:15.600 | and I won't finish the cliche. You can finish it if you want.
00:03:20.400 | But as you listen to this interview, I do want you to pay attention and notice some of the themes
00:03:27.600 | that unprompted, I didn't promptly, I didn't tell him, "Here's what I want you to talk about,"
00:03:35.200 | but just notice how in his own life, some of the themes that he pursued are themes that
00:03:41.040 | countless people have come on this show and shared already. And think about if you're
00:03:46.240 | integrating those themes of success, those success habits, fully into your own life. Here we go.
00:03:52.080 | Lee, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:03:56.080 | Hey, great to be here. Thank you.
00:03:57.840 | So I've invited you on today to share a little bit of insight and history from your career.
00:04:04.720 | You've come from the corporate background. And what I'd love for you to do as a beginning place
00:04:10.080 | is share with us the immodest version of your resume. I know generally you would like to be
00:04:16.320 | very modest. Generally, you would like to say, "Yes, I've had a little bit of success." But
00:04:20.160 | so that the audience can understand why I've invited you on, give us the immodest version
00:04:24.880 | of your experience and your resume. Well, I was probably the most unlikely to succeed.
00:04:29.680 | I grew up on a little farm in Oklahoma and we were poor as we could be. And I finally got to go to
00:04:35.280 | college. My mother was married five times. I got adopted twice. I got in cock when I was 16 and
00:04:41.040 | went off to college and I was such a bad student, I quit after two years, went in the army. That was
00:04:46.080 | good for me. I learned a lot about discipline, being on time, doing what you're supposed to do.
00:04:49.760 | And when I got out of the army, I joined Hilton Hotels as a banquet waiter up at the Washington
00:04:54.000 | Hilton. That hotel opened 50 years ago. That's the hotel where Reagan got shot that afternoon.
00:04:59.200 | Wow. So I got a job there. And about a year and a half, I got into a management training
00:05:04.800 | program. And I can tell you, the only reasons I've been successful is I'm really organized
00:05:09.840 | and I look for people who are disciplined, can get things done, keep their promises,
00:05:13.920 | really are reliable and credible. That's one of the successes I had. And I think it's really
00:05:19.760 | important for people to get ahead. And the other thing, I have a really positive attitude.
00:05:25.600 | So when my boss says, be here at six and come back at midnight, I say, no problem.
00:05:30.480 | You have an opportunity clock. You don't have an alarm clock.
00:05:32.960 | I don't get that look on my face. My mother taught me, get that look off your face, boy.
00:05:37.200 | And so I think those two things are really vital in being successful. I was very insecure when I
00:05:43.360 | started my management career. You can imagine being a mother, being married five times and
00:05:47.600 | all this stuff. And I had to work my way out of it. And what happened was I just did whatever
00:05:52.640 | they told me to do. And next thing I got into management. And then I had a great, successful
00:05:56.400 | career with Hilton where I even worked at Chicago and then the Waldorf Astoria in New York where,
00:06:02.000 | God, that was so unbelievable. I was working at the Waldorf Astoria.
00:06:05.360 | And then I stayed with Hilton for eight years. And then I went to Marriott. And I had a boss.
00:06:11.680 | I didn't like it, Hilton. So I quit. Went to another hotel, doubled my salary. My wife told
00:06:17.040 | me not to go. I said, hey, I know what I'm doing. I got fired after 90 days. Had no job, a two-year-old,
00:06:22.880 | no money. Took me two months to get a job at Marriott, back at the same level I was at when I
00:06:28.480 | left, quit Hilton. And I had a 17-year career there. And I became an expert. That's another
00:06:34.800 | thing. I was an expert in food and beverage. I really studied the food business, how to make
00:06:39.040 | money in it, how to serve, how to give customer service. And so now I got three things. I'm an
00:06:43.840 | expert in food and beverage. I have a good attitude. And I'm organized. And I'm reliable.
00:06:48.960 | Right.
00:06:49.440 | Your boss likes that a lot.
00:06:50.720 | Absolutely.
00:06:51.520 | They can count on you. And I call it a can-do attitude versus a can't-do attitude.
00:06:56.400 | And so I did that for 17 years. And then I got passed over for a big promotion at Marriott. And
00:07:03.200 | I got mad. So I got recruited by Disney. And I quit, went to Disney, went to France, opened
00:07:08.560 | Disneyland Paris. That's another experience. If you can work internationally, it makes you a whole
00:07:14.080 | different person.
00:07:14.720 | Oh, yeah.
00:07:15.200 | A lot of people don't get ahead because they're afraid to leave their hometown. You got to move.
00:07:19.440 | You got to go get the action and be it. I think take risk and maybe some insecurity along the way.
00:07:25.120 | So I did that. And then they invited me to come back to Orlando. And I ended up in 1997 running
00:07:29.760 | all the operations at Walt Disney World because they wanted an expert in the business. They wanted
00:07:34.640 | somebody really reliable, could get things done, follow up, set strategy, set direction. And at
00:07:42.240 | Disney, if you don't have a good attitude, you don't last too long.
00:07:44.720 | Right.
00:07:45.040 | You know, be nice.
00:07:46.240 | You're in the fun business. It's the happiest place in the world, right?
00:07:48.800 | So, yeah, those are the things that are really critical. And there's a lot of people, I wrote a
00:07:52.160 | book about time management and how to get more done every day because most people are struggling
00:07:56.640 | with doing that. When you're not reliable, you're not going to get promoted.
00:07:59.600 | Right.
00:08:00.000 | And your boss is not going to give you the good work. We all know who we can pick and who we
00:08:03.680 | can't pick. We know who we can count on, who we can't count on. And so that was a big one for me.
00:08:09.120 | And I never was the best person. I was always had great people around me. I'm really good at hiring
00:08:15.440 | great people and leaving them alone, hire experts, let them do their job. And I focused on two or
00:08:20.080 | three things at Disney, making sure we were hiring the right people, promoting the right people,
00:08:23.680 | training, testing and enforcement of the training. And that I set a good example for leadership,
00:08:30.400 | being a good role model. And that's what I tried to do every day and ended up, started on the farm
00:08:36.560 | and ended up running the Walt Disney World. So that's pretty big miracle in my life. My high
00:08:41.600 | school teachers would not believe it.
00:08:43.280 | That's amazing. It sounds so simple, though. You know, we talk about success and it sounds simple.
00:08:48.240 | It's not easy, but it just it's, you know, do do things well, be consistent, have a good attitude.
00:08:53.440 | It sounds simple. It's almost. But in general, we're looking for a secret. Is there any magic
00:08:59.280 | secret that any pixie dust that you scattered over your career?
00:09:01.760 | One of the secrets was like podcasting. Now, people really don't have an excuse for not learning.
00:09:06.400 | Back when I was started out working in 1965, there were no podcasts. Right. But I listened
00:09:10.720 | to tapes. Right. And I read books and I made all my managers listen to tapes. We listened to other
00:09:16.640 | people. And I love that because I didn't know very much. And I was able to learn from those
00:09:21.600 | and then get stories and storytelling how you want it done. So I think that's a key. But I would say
00:09:26.880 | everybody ought to go back and reflect on their own attitude. Right. They ought to go take a good
00:09:31.840 | time management course. So they're 100 percent reliable, credible and keep their promises and
00:09:35.520 | do what they say they're going to do. So their boss just loves them. That's how you get promoted.
00:09:39.600 | And you do those kind of simple things. It's not so much what you know. You can learn what
00:09:44.880 | you don't know. Skill is learned. You can learn it. And just because you got a degree from Harvard
00:09:49.520 | doesn't mean you're going to be successful. And I look for people with attitude now. And a lot
00:09:54.320 | of companies are now telling us they don't care if you have a degree. They care about what you
00:09:57.680 | could do. Right. And a lot of young people today are if they can do something, IT, podcast,
00:10:04.560 | communications, whatever, you can go back and learn on your own. And that's what I did. And
00:10:10.400 | today, I there are a lot of kids that shouldn't go to college. I was one of them. I just spent my
00:10:15.200 | mother's money for two years. But I had a good time those two years and drank a few beers. But I
00:10:21.840 | yeah. So I would say don't underestimate what you can do. Number one, no matter how insecure you are,
00:10:27.920 | pick yourself up, get into a situation, do something you love, get better at it and become
00:10:32.720 | better than everybody else. Make sure if 10 people are doing what you do, you're the best
00:10:37.280 | and you find a new ways. Kind of plus it up. Do more than is expected from your boss and from
00:10:42.720 | your customers and have that good can do attitude. And you'll be shocked at how your career can turn
00:10:48.320 | out because most people are not trying too hard. Right. And it's never too late to get better.
00:10:52.800 | That's one thing I know. I got in the podcasting business seven months ago. A year ago, I didn't
00:10:56.640 | even know what a podcast was. Right. And when the guy said, you want to have your own? I said,
00:11:00.240 | sure. I didn't even know what I was getting into. But I said, well, we'll figure it out as we go
00:11:03.360 | along. And that's what you have to do. Step into the stuff and you'll come out. OK, but you got to
00:11:09.120 | have experience, hardship, tough, hard jobs. That's what you get developed in the fire. Right.
00:11:16.400 | Right. You come out stronger. And that's what I tell people. One of the things that I hear from
00:11:21.280 | people, the way that you describe success in the corporate world, it sounds simple. I've talked
00:11:27.760 | with a lot of people, though, that believe, well, if I do those things, it won't work here. My boss
00:11:32.880 | doesn't recognize that if I just work harder, my boss isn't the kind of person who's going to
00:11:37.920 | send me more money. What thoughts would you have for somebody who feels like they're in that
00:11:41.920 | situation? That happens all the time. It happened to me three times in my career. And if I wasn't
00:11:46.320 | being appreciated and I didn't feel like my boss had my best interest at heart, I quit.
00:11:50.400 | So I went and found another job. I'm not going to hang around somebody that doesn't appreciate me
00:11:55.200 | and is not treating me right, not looking out for my future. And I tell kids all the time when you
00:11:59.760 | got that situation, keep doing a good job, but every day spend time looking for another opportunity.
00:12:05.840 | Get out of that environment because if you stay in it, next thing you know, you'll be 40 years old
00:12:10.000 | and you'll wonder what happened. Don't hang around for security. When you're young, really take those
00:12:14.560 | chances because you're going to run into bosses that could care less about you. They don't care
00:12:19.360 | if you're successful. It's all about them. And so don't be afraid to move on, especially when you're
00:12:25.600 | young. Are you pleased with the financial results of your career? You made a little bit of money in
00:12:31.200 | your day. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. What were some of the most important, and I'm not going to ask
00:12:38.240 | you to, you don't need to share any details, but from your side of a career, what were some of the
00:12:44.240 | things that happened on a positive financial perspective that you look back on and say,
00:12:48.560 | wow, that made a huge difference for me? Well, the things that did make a big,
00:12:52.480 | my wife and I were married, living in New York City, very expensive. We had not enough money.
00:12:57.200 | I worked at the Waldorf, but we could barely get through the day with our salary. It was so
00:13:01.520 | expensive. I left my wife $6 every morning. That was the budget for nine jars of baby food. Get my
00:13:06.720 | shirts done, which were 32 cents because I had to look good. And then I told her, you know,
00:13:11.680 | do whatever you want with what's left. And we never had a credit card. We spent the cash only.
00:13:18.080 | The biggest purchase we ever made was the $35 fan at Alexander's in New York, because it was so hot.
00:13:22.800 | And we sweated over that purchase. And then as we went along, I always saved money. I eventually
00:13:29.920 | got it into a mutual fund. And then I got a good broker one day that used to take care of my mother.
00:13:35.520 | And I happened to work for some good companies, which I kept growing. And we've never been in
00:13:42.000 | credit card debt. That's one thing I'd tell people, don't spend only what you can afford,
00:13:45.760 | what you got. And we drive our cars. I bought my wife a Lexus back in 1990. She drove it for 15
00:13:52.240 | years. The current one, she's been driving for seven years. I've been driving my Toyota for 10
00:13:58.000 | years. And that money goes into the stock market or into investments. And people underestimate the
00:14:05.440 | value of time and interest. It's amazing how you can get rich by just putting it away a little bit
00:14:13.040 | at a time. And that's what we do. And when after I retired, the stock market went down to 6,000.
00:14:19.440 | I about had a heart attack. And I got it back to where I needed it. And then people said,
00:14:23.360 | how'd you do that? I said, I started a business and I earned it back. I went and started a speaking
00:14:28.960 | business, seminar business, podcasting, selling. I've written three books for Disney. I have my
00:14:34.320 | own podcast, "Creating Disney Magic." It spreads my word around the world. So I just went and
00:14:39.920 | started my own business. So while people were getting their house foreclosed on, I was making
00:14:43.840 | more money after I left Disney and I made at Disney. Are you planning to retire again?
00:14:48.240 | I don't know what that is exactly. I have a lot of time off, but I have a lot to do. I come here.
00:14:53.680 | This is not a work for me. I love it. It's my golf game. When I play golf, people don't
00:14:58.640 | clap. When I give a speech, they do. So I'll just do things where they clap.
00:15:03.840 | When I play golf, they say, move along, get off the course, get out of the woods. And so
00:15:09.680 | this is really fun. And I hear people do this. A lot of people do it just because it turns them on.
00:15:14.320 | This turns me on because it helps people. I give advice to people and they call me back and say,
00:15:18.560 | wow, that helped me a lot. That podcast you did on leadership or management or customer service.
00:15:24.640 | So yeah, I don't know what retirement really is. I get a lot of time off and I get a lot of time to
00:15:30.560 | work and my wife travels with me and we have a lot of fun. How old are you now?
00:15:34.400 | I'm 71. That's fantastic. I have a 19 year old grandson at junior in college.
00:15:39.200 | So my son's 46. Where'd he come from?
00:15:41.200 | Work another 30 years and then maybe you can slow down for the last 20 or 30 after that.
00:15:47.360 | Right. If my wife doesn't kill me, I'll probably get to 100. I'm in great physical shape.
00:15:51.920 | You can do it. My grandmother is almost 101.
00:15:55.200 | Ah, God bless her.
00:15:56.320 | She's fantastic. When you look back at your career, did you ever think about leaving the
00:16:03.840 | corporate world for an entrepreneurial business before this other business that you started?
00:16:09.440 | I didn't. I think the reason I didn't, I was too insecure. I just didn't believe in myself.
00:16:14.960 | And that took me a long time to get over that insecurity and build self-confidence.
00:16:19.040 | Corporate world was almost like therapy because I kept getting promoted. I got promoted 22 times
00:16:25.440 | in 42 years. So eventually my self-confidence got to the level that I could go out and start a
00:16:31.840 | business and retire. Some people ask me, "Lee, why'd you retire? You talk about finances." I
00:16:36.480 | said, "Well, the main reason is I could." Wanting to and being able to, that was two different
00:16:42.240 | things. And so once I did that, then what are you going to do? Somebody said, "You can't lay
00:16:46.400 | on the couch every day when you're retired." I was 62 when I retired. So I worked for 42 years.
00:16:51.920 | So now I've been working nine years. I've written three books. I just finished the fourth one. I've
00:16:56.720 | got a podcast. I got an app. It's just like, "Hey, what else are we going to do?" There's
00:17:02.640 | probably things I'm going to do that I don't know about yet. I do a lot of work for the military.
00:17:06.480 | I went to Iraq in 2011 and did 13 seminars for the army during the war in Baghdad. It was
00:17:13.040 | incredible. And you talk about the opportunities because I met a general and he invited me. And
00:17:18.560 | I've been doing work for the military for 14 years. And now I'm doing a lot of work with this
00:17:22.240 | whole thing with depression and trying to get them back in the workforce. So there's a lot of work
00:17:28.400 | you can do with your experience. And a lot of these guys need it. What do you teach somebody
00:17:33.920 | who is a former military person? They're coming back. They're facing depression, PTSD. Where do
00:17:39.280 | you start? Well, the good thing is I went through depression in '08, '09. My wife got sick and
00:17:44.000 | almost died and I had to take care of her for two years. She got better and I got worse. So I got
00:17:48.400 | treated by a psychiatrist and we talked and he put me on some drugs. And 80% of people can be
00:17:54.880 | cured with drugs. But the problem is most men won't go and especially soldiers. Women go in for help.
00:18:00.400 | Men don't. And I try to make them understand that. I tell them my story. I was depressed, guys. You
00:18:04.000 | think I'm a hot shot and I was a big Disney guy and all that? I ended up with depression and
00:18:07.360 | anxiety. I was hooked on Ativan and sleeping pills and drinking. And I had to work my way out of
00:18:13.280 | that. Don't underestimate. You can do it. Take a deep breath. Go in and see a psychiatrist. Get
00:18:19.120 | treated. Get on the medication. Don't underestimate what you can do in your life. You're coming out
00:18:23.680 | of the military. You've got all kinds of talent that you may not believe you do. You do. I'll
00:18:29.040 | help you. Other people will help you. Every company in America now is trying to help the veterans. So
00:18:32.960 | there's a lot of people out there who want to help you. But you can't suffer from depression.
00:18:36.480 | You've got to pick yourself up and go get some help. And so we're trying to encourage them. And
00:18:41.440 | a lot of them say, when they hear that I say that, I went through it. And I was like, Mr. Perfect,
00:18:46.080 | you never know. It can be anybody. And so that's the lesson I go out there and give to veterans
00:18:52.080 | and any, by the way, just plain citizens. 15, 20% of Americans are antidepressants now,
00:18:57.600 | including college students that are really suffering. It's a stressful world we're living
00:19:01.920 | in and people are really stretched out. And so don't underestimate that a lot of people around
00:19:06.160 | you are suffering that you might not even know about. Everybody's got a problem you don't know
00:19:10.640 | about. I assure you. When you look back in your corporate career, you spent a lot of time managing
00:19:16.880 | and leading leaders. When you look back at the people that were placed underneath you,
00:19:22.960 | what was probably the biggest negative mark that somebody could have when you saw this person doing
00:19:30.160 | this? You said, that's it. I'm not working with this person. Oh, it's definitely lack of humility
00:19:35.280 | and not showing respect for everybody. As I say, and you've heard many times, I can tell what a
00:19:42.080 | person's like by the way he treats the waiter in the restaurant or the guy cleaning the bathroom.
00:19:46.160 | That's for me, that's everything. Trust. I don't trust anybody that suffers from
00:19:52.640 | feeling better about themselves by humiliating other people or not showing respect to others
00:19:57.920 | or ignoring other people, making everybody feel special. And that's what I look for. I look for
00:20:03.840 | people who are honest, have high integrity, and I can trust them because if I can't trust them,
00:20:07.760 | I'm already insecure enough. I don't need people that I can't trust around me. And that's what I
00:20:11.760 | look for. Did you have a way that you preferred to test people? I've heard of some people that
00:20:17.280 | always take someone golfing or always meet somebody for lunch or always look at somebody's
00:20:20.960 | car. Did you have some tools that you developed that would help you to see past just the formal
00:20:26.320 | interview and sitting in your office? Yeah, we developed a set of questions that have obstacles
00:20:31.280 | in them. So I'd ask you six or seven questions and each one of them would have an obstacle in it.
00:20:35.680 | Like, tell me about a specific time you had to deal with an irate customer in your last job.
00:20:39.840 | Well, what you want to hear is how people overcome obstacles. And the people who are great,
00:20:44.800 | they always overcome them. They'll work on it for three weeks. The people who have a,
00:20:49.680 | this can't do attitude, they don't know how to overcome obstacles. They give up too early.
00:20:53.600 | They can't talk to you about it. And I'm looking, because we found out that people who are very
00:20:57.680 | comfortable overcoming obstacles, I don't care if it's traffic, your finances, your marriage,
00:21:03.040 | these are the most successful people. They're your best performers. So I would encourage people to,
00:21:07.520 | I actually, I work with a lady, Carol Quinn. She's written a book on don't hire anybody without me.
00:21:13.040 | And it's about how to write the right questions and what to listen for when you're interviewing
00:21:16.960 | somebody, because people lead you down the path in an interview. Let me tell you,
00:21:20.560 | they tell you everything, about half of it's a lie. So you got to ask questions that are really
00:21:27.200 | deep and where they got to give you a thoughtful answer. And if you haven't never done it, you don't
00:21:31.040 | know how to give the answer. Like if you tell me, tell me, Lee, what would happen if you were on a,
00:21:36.320 | had an airline flight and you had to be in South Africa next, tomorrow, two days from now,
00:21:41.760 | and you're in a snowstorm in Toronto. And I can tell you what I did. I've been there. I overcome
00:21:45.520 | obstacles. I got a car and I drove to Atlanta. It took me 20 hours. I got there three hours before
00:21:50.560 | my flight and got on the plane. Other people would call to the client, I'm sorry, it snowed.
00:21:54.960 | I can't miss my flight. Let me tell you, if there's a car, I'll walk there. I know how to
00:22:00.000 | overcome obstacles because I've done it my whole life. And that's why I tell people, have your kids
00:22:05.280 | work, make them go to work, be to work at six in the morning, pull weeds, clean the pool, feed the
00:22:10.080 | dog, make them do things, because they've got to learn to overcome obstacles. Life's tough and your
00:22:14.400 | mother's not going to be there when you get your first job. So yeah, that's some of the things I
00:22:19.200 | think about. I want people to live the tough life and they've been there and they know how to do it.
00:22:22.960 | Nothing's going to bother them when we have a lot of stuff happens in corporate life. People
00:22:28.080 | misbehave, misperform, guests are tough, 9/11, hurricanes. I need people that are going to get
00:22:34.640 | up and take care of business. And that's what I look for. Positive, can do people that know how
00:22:39.280 | to overcome obstacles. Did your parents do that you know of? Did they have any parenting practices
00:22:47.040 | that were intentional that helped them to instill those character traits in you?
00:22:51.680 | I don't think they were intentional so much as it was just the culture. I grew up in the 40s and 50s
00:22:55.760 | on a farm and you work, everybody works. And I had a grandmother who was really the one that had
00:23:01.360 | empathy. She's the one that helped me be, know that I could do anything. But my mother was a
00:23:05.840 | disciplinarian. You do what you're told to do, you do what you're, you make your bed. Right.
00:23:10.560 | My mother was a terrorist. I mean, if you didn't make your bed. She put the terror right in you.
00:23:16.000 | It wasn't about making the bed, it's about discipline. You do what you say you're going
00:23:19.760 | to do. You milk the cows at six and you milk them at five, not at 830 and when you show up.
00:23:24.560 | And so I had a lot of discipline growing up. And then I had my grandmother next door who
00:23:29.120 | always told me how great I was. So a little combination of that. But I think it was because
00:23:33.200 | my mother grew up in a discipline, you know, you kind of what you teach your children,
00:23:36.960 | they teach their children. And I'm lucky I got that from her. There's some things I didn't get
00:23:41.040 | from her because of all her marriages and her own problems in life about growing up in her own
00:23:46.880 | dysfunctional family. So you got to make sure that, yeah, we're all, you know, like my mother
00:23:53.360 | was married five times. I've been married once for 47 years. So I'm getting the family average down.
00:23:58.400 | Good. I decided to break that. And my son's been married for 23 years. So we've broken that thing
00:24:03.760 | that was going on in our family. And whether it's alcohol or drugs or divorce or abuse, or
00:24:09.440 | if you're a good leader, you'll step up and say, OK, that's it. We're going to change this. And
00:24:13.200 | my wife and I, well, marriage is not always easy. There's been some close calls. She recently told
00:24:17.840 | me she's going to stay. So I know I'm doing good. I threatened my wife. I said, girl,
00:24:22.560 | if you ever leave me, I guarantee I'm going with you. So you see that sign that says about shopping.
00:24:30.400 | My husband tells me he's going to quit shopping or if I don't quit shopping, he's going to get
00:24:35.200 | rid of me. And I said, I'm going to miss that man. I'm going to miss him. So I've given up on that.
00:24:41.120 | I used to track our visa charges, but that didn't work out too well either.
00:24:44.320 | Do you have some advice for a younger husband like me of some of the things that
00:24:50.080 | have really helped you to be able to maintain your marriage over almost half a half a century?
00:24:54.880 | Yeah, I think the things bad things are going to happen upset. You're going to upset each other.
00:24:59.280 | You're going to be unreasonable. You're going to be stressed out. Your wife is. And I would say the
00:25:03.600 | best advice I can give you now is from Frozen, that new Disney movie. Let it go. Let it go. Let
00:25:09.040 | it go. That's what I've learned to do. Let it go. And instead of engage or get into an argument for
00:25:15.360 | no reason, I just bite my lip and let it go. Even I want to say something nasty to her. I don't.
00:25:20.640 | Another day, my wife said, Lee, I want to tell you something. You're a good husband. I said, what?
00:25:24.400 | Why are you saying that? She says, because you put up with me. And I thought at that moment,
00:25:28.160 | I can either say you're right about that. Right. Or thank you, darling. And I said, thank you.
00:25:33.760 | I do put up with you and you put up with me. And I think you just got to. The bad days are going to
00:25:38.960 | be there. You get over them. And when you have family and let me tell you, when you get older,
00:25:44.240 | you'll see families, everything. If you don't have your family, I don't care how rich you are.
00:25:48.560 | And look at all these rich people, divorced. Their kids are screwed up. Drug overdoses,
00:25:52.800 | kids dying. And our family is everything. And we we we cherish it. And the little things become
00:26:00.400 | the big things. And that's what in your life you'll see. The upper level executive positions
00:26:05.920 | of any company are, at least as my observation, extremely demanding on your time. Did you
00:26:12.000 | struggle with how to balance your career and your family? And did you develop some techniques that
00:26:16.880 | were useful to you? Oh, yeah. Early in my career, I worked six days a week and it was tough. I'm
00:26:21.360 | lucky I married a saint. She put up with it. And then I got to marry it. You got two days off
00:26:25.840 | and they expected only 10 hours a day. So that worked well. And I'm very organized. So I really
00:26:30.080 | plan what I'm going to do. I never missed my son's football games. I was at every event. I always
00:26:34.880 | before I interview or a job, I always tell the boss I've got to leave at certain times, some days
00:26:39.600 | because I'm going to be with my family. And by the way, I had a boss at Disney. I said I come in at
00:26:44.080 | 615 in the morning. I leave at five because I go to the gym for 90 minutes before I go home because
00:26:49.360 | my health I got to take care of my health. And he and I got agreement before I accepted the job
00:26:54.000 | because I'm not going to get into a situation where I'm working six days a week and 20 hours
00:26:59.520 | a day and not getting any exercise, not being home for dinner. And so you got to work those
00:27:03.920 | things out. And you don't have to be home every night, but at least a couple of nights a week.
00:27:07.360 | And so you got to figure out what's important. You know, they've done research that families that
00:27:11.360 | have dinner together just one or two or three nights a week, those kids get less trouble.
00:27:15.040 | They do better in school. They're more self-secure. They believe in themselves. They have more security,
00:27:20.880 | like more self-confidence. And some of these things you got to think about because when you're
00:27:24.560 | young, you might not think about that, but it's important. And your kids want to see you and they
00:27:28.880 | want you around. And your wife does, too. And you got to get in. That's why I wrote that book
00:27:33.520 | about time management, how to get it all done, because it's all coming at you. And you can be
00:27:39.120 | successful in your business. If you're not successful in your personal life, you'll end up
00:27:43.680 | in big trouble. And I tell you, I know a lot of executives, a lot of big shots that are not happy.
00:27:48.960 | And they're miserable and they drink too much and they get divorces and they're on their fifth
00:27:54.240 | marriage and health problems. Biggest regret you'll have in your life is if you don't take
00:28:00.080 | care of your health. Let me tell you, my wife said, "Lee, take care of your health so you can
00:28:02.960 | take care of us." And that's what I do. I exercise every day. I have a strength trainer. I get my
00:28:07.760 | annual physicals. I'm getting my colonoscopy on September 2nd, one of my least favorite things
00:28:12.880 | to do in the world. But hey, you got to do it. Somebody said, "Colonoscopy is bad." I said,
00:28:18.480 | "I know, but colon cancer is really bad." So this is the things I think about. Make sure you're
00:28:24.960 | doing all the things you're supposed to be doing on purpose, not by accident. You don't go to
00:28:31.520 | exercise by accident. You do it because you're scheduled. And if you want to be home for dinner,
00:28:36.400 | you schedule it. If you want to beat your son's first play, you make sure you're there
00:28:41.120 | because you only get that one chance. If you miss it, you'll be sorry. It may seem like a little
00:28:46.400 | thing to you. It's a big thing to your son to look out there and see you sitting in that audience.
00:28:49.920 | And you're developing him. You're making the difference.
00:28:52.400 | I'd like to talk with you a little bit about Walt Disney, the corporation. One of the most
00:29:01.360 | impressive US-American business success stories over the decades of its existence. And today,
00:29:08.320 | a powerhouse, a financial powerhouse, a global branding powerhouse. And just, I don't see it,
00:29:17.200 | unless you know something I don't. It just seems like it's getting bigger and taking over more of
00:29:20.880 | the world. Having spent many years within the Disney culture, have you been able to elucidate
00:29:28.160 | some of the ideas and things that were different that contributed to the success of the Walt
00:29:33.360 | Disney Corporation? There's no question. I do seminars on this all the time. People say,
00:29:37.520 | "Can you tell me the magic of Disney? How do they do it?" I said, "Yeah, it's not magic.
00:29:42.880 | It's how we work." Number one, Disney hires better. We're more careful. We hire better people.
00:29:48.400 | We hire people better. Second thing we do is we train people better. We enforce the training and
00:29:55.200 | we test people after we train them. And third thing is we have a culture where people wake up
00:30:00.240 | in the morning excited to come to work because the way we treat them. And they have opportunity.
00:30:04.000 | And our managers treat people well. They don't treat you like the bottom of your shoe, like,
00:30:08.400 | I don't know if you've ever had one of those bosses. I did. And so it's really three things,
00:30:13.120 | the people, the training, and the culture. And when you do that, people get excited.
00:30:17.760 | And we try to create a culture where everybody matters and they know they matter. And the best
00:30:21.840 | way you let people know they matter is tell them. Like you go home tonight, you tell your wife you
00:30:25.600 | love her, you're going to have a better evening. You tell your kids, "I love you." And these are
00:30:30.960 | the things we teach people who they don't, a lot of them don't know that when they come to us.
00:30:34.720 | These basic things that turn people on and inspire people and make people better than they ever
00:30:39.040 | believe they can be. Great people, great training, great culture. And that's pretty simple. But what?
00:30:44.880 | It's hard. It takes time. - Is that part of the executive training program at Disney where you
00:30:50.160 | say, "This is what we do and this is how you do it"? - Yeah, I wrote a Disney... It's called
00:30:55.280 | Disney Great Leader Strategies when I worked at Disney and distributed. It became the basis for
00:30:59.040 | my first book. It's called Creating Magic, 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies for My Life
00:31:03.520 | at Disney. And it's 10 strategies in that book that I guarantee you anybody can implement.
00:31:08.160 | And the first one is remember everyone's important. Second one's on how to hire better.
00:31:12.640 | The second, how to train, what professionalism looks like, how to remove the hassles from the
00:31:17.520 | business when your customers come in so you have good procedures, policies, guidelines.
00:31:21.360 | Right through that. Disney has a very... There's only one way to do things, Disney way. Like
00:31:27.920 | Southwest Airlines. I love them. You know why? Years ago, they said there's a best way to land
00:31:32.560 | a plane. Let's just do it that way. - I like it. - Once you learn the best way, do it there until
00:31:38.800 | you get a better way and then implement it. But always do it the best way. And that's what Disney
00:31:43.360 | does. Everybody, 72,000 cast members in Orlando now. We all do it the same way. - Did you in your
00:31:50.080 | career notice any cast members who began at the most entry-level position in one of the parks
00:31:55.600 | that gradually worked their way up into executive leadership? - Well, one guy who's the president
00:32:00.320 | now, he was started as a busboy in the restaurant, the Contemporary in 1971. And he's now the
00:32:05.120 | president of Walt Disney World. - I didn't know that. - Absolutely. - What's his name? - George
00:32:08.000 | Caligridis. - Wow. - Linda Warren, who started driving one of the boats when she was 17 on the
00:32:13.200 | water, became the head of marketing for all the Disney resorts around the world. Meg Crofton,
00:32:18.080 | who started there as an hourly employee from a telephone company, became president of Disney
00:32:22.080 | worldwide. I mean, this is very common. You know, my son started in the parking garage,
00:32:28.640 | parking cars. And he's now the vice president of the Magic Kingdom. - Wow. - So this is pretty
00:32:33.840 | common because at Disney, if you do good, we're more interested in what you can do and not
00:32:39.040 | particularly what were your degrees from. We had a lot of Harvard guys that failed.
00:32:42.880 | They didn't have that tenacity. They didn't push hard. They didn't...
00:32:45.440 | Ego, attitude problem. And so we're looking for performance. That's the one thing we focus on
00:32:52.560 | at Disney. Performance, not where you're from, what color you are, what background,
00:32:56.480 | what sexual orientation. We don't care anything about any of that. Perform. I don't care if you
00:33:01.440 | speak English. I will teach you. We'll work with you. Performance. And if more companies
00:33:05.520 | will start working on performance only, not worrying about what religion somebody is and
00:33:09.520 | what sexual orientation, where they went to school, that's when you start to treat everybody right.
00:33:15.200 | Focus on their performance. And that's a good lesson for people. - Do you set goals personally?
00:33:22.400 | - Well, I do, unfortunately, because I'm compulsive and I have this huge fear of failure.
00:33:27.200 | You know, so those are the two things that drive me out of bed in the morning, fear of failure
00:33:31.520 | and compulsiveness. So I have lots of goals. I was going to write one book, then I just said,
00:33:37.520 | "Well, I'll write another, and then I'll write another one." So I've written four. I'm going,
00:33:40.640 | like, I almost flunked out of English in high school. So I don't even know where the commas go,
00:33:44.960 | but I hired a professional writer to put them in for me. So I always get experts around me. And I,
00:33:50.240 | yeah, I have financial goals. I wanted to make so much money, and I figured out how to do that.
00:33:55.760 | And I have an amount I'd like to leave my son, so I'm not spending too much of his money
00:34:01.360 | right now. And yeah, we set goals. And yeah, I think if you write it down and set a goal,
00:34:09.840 | your odds improve dramatically of achieving it. My goal is to have strength training twice a week,
00:34:16.400 | so I stay strong and don't break a hip one day. I try to exercise at least four miles a day on a
00:34:23.840 | machine, on a treadmill. And so I do that. So I don't have a goal doing it every day, but my goal
00:34:31.040 | is five days a week. And the next thing you know, I get upset with myself when I'm not reaching my
00:34:37.200 | goals. So I think setting goals, at least it's a measurement. It tells you where you are.
00:34:40.880 | Do you now, or did you have in the past, a plan for your own personal development,
00:34:48.880 | some kind of program that you created? You mentioned listening to tapes in the car.
00:34:52.000 | Was that a coordinated plan? Yeah, not so much coordinated. It
00:34:56.480 | probably should have been, but I really was already wired to listen to tapes, read books.
00:35:01.680 | And the other thing is experience. Get a lot of good experiences. I moved 11 times with Hilton,
00:35:06.160 | Marion and Disney. My wife and I moved all over the world and living in France. You talk about
00:35:11.120 | ways you learn, travel, went to India, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, you know, and you learn. Those
00:35:18.400 | are big ways to learn. I always tell parents, if you can travel, let your kids travel. My grandkids
00:35:23.040 | are in Japan right now. They climbed Mount Fuji two days ago to see the sunset.
00:35:29.120 | That's awesome. They'll come back totally. We took them to South Africa and we spent two nights in
00:35:34.240 | Soweto. They never will be the same. It changed their life. So travel, experience. And by the way,
00:35:43.200 | with Google, we have no excuse. You can know anything you want to know. And then podcasts,
00:35:47.040 | pick a subject and listen to them every day. If you listen to a 15 minute podcast or 30 minutes
00:35:52.400 | or an hour, you'll be like a genius in like a year. And people don't have it. It's just
00:35:57.440 | lack of self-discipline or people underestimate what they can do. And that's what worries me.
00:36:01.120 | Just pick yourself up and go do it. And it's never too late to get better. That's what I know for
00:36:05.680 | sure. I'm curious. And this question might require a little bit of thinking, which is fine. If you
00:36:13.200 | were going to go back and guess, and let's begin, just kind of ballpark over the decades of your
00:36:18.400 | careers. Let's say you started at 20 and think about how much money you earned at 20 and then
00:36:24.960 | at 30 and then at 40 and at 50 and at 60 when you retired at 62. If you were going to guess,
00:36:30.560 | do you have any sense of maybe how much your income was increasing each decade?
00:36:34.880 | Yeah, my increases weren't bad. My wife and I got married, we had $500 to our name.
00:36:40.160 | And I was thinking just the other day, by 1989, I had $35,000. That's all. And today,
00:36:50.320 | I won't tell you how much, but it's pretty shocking. Because it just keeps building.
00:36:56.480 | And I left it in the market. I've never taken a dime out of the market. When it fell 500 points
00:37:00.400 | back in '87, I left it in. When it went down to 6,000, I left it in. And I just kept,
00:37:06.560 | and we're frugal, we save our money and put it in investments. And so, yeah, I was shocked at
00:37:14.480 | '89 only having $35,000 because we'd moved around a lot, bought houses. We lost money on almost
00:37:20.800 | every house. The market was down when we sold, but we stuck in there and bought stocks and bonds and
00:37:27.360 | invested. And then I started my business. And I will tell you today, in this podcasting
00:37:31.920 | and writing books and speaking seminars, I make twice as much money as I made at Disney.
00:37:37.440 | And that's crazy. I thought I would make less.
00:37:42.640 | That's fantastic. I love it. The reason I ask is because I have this theory and I learned it from
00:37:47.840 | Brian Tracy and I've shared it on the show. I'll repeat it so that you know, and you can see if you
00:37:52.720 | see it as being feasible or not. But the reason I like to ask people who know, do you have any idea,
00:37:58.720 | and I'll tell you this theory from the Disney annual report. Do you have any idea what the
00:38:03.120 | president of Disney, his annual compensation was last year? Do you remember it all?
00:38:06.400 | I think it was $42 million, wasn't it?
00:38:08.000 | Right. That would be my guess, somewhere in the half a hundred million.
00:38:11.600 | That seems to be the normal compensation.
00:38:13.920 | $25 to $40 million.
00:38:15.040 | Right. So the theory comes from Brian Tracy, actually. And he taught that if you just get
00:38:21.920 | one half of 1% better every single day, that compounds over time, becomes 2% better a month.
00:38:28.480 | It becomes about 25% better per year. And then over the course of 10 years,
00:38:32.400 | it becomes about a thousand percent better. And so what he teaches is that if you apply yourself
00:38:38.800 | to a systematic discipline, personal development process, that you can build your skill set
00:38:44.000 | to such a degree that your compensation will follow that skill set because you learn to be
00:38:48.880 | more effective, more productive, more disciplined.
00:38:51.440 | You're worth more.
00:38:52.320 | You're worth more. And so at a thousand percent per decade, you start averaging that out. And
00:38:57.200 | you're like, "Wow, that's a huge difference." But if I were to go back and let's say,
00:39:01.440 | the president of Disney today, and if I were to say, "What did he earn as an initial cast member
00:39:05.680 | at a park? And then what did he make as a VP of this? And then what did he make as that? And what
00:39:10.560 | does he make today as a president?" It's actually similar to that. And what's interesting is most
00:39:15.440 | people don't have that as a formal plan. It doesn't sound like you said, "I'm going to read
00:39:20.880 | one book every single week. I'm going to listen to training sessions in the car every time."
00:39:25.040 | But you did it even if you didn't say specifically have a plan and your income over time has
00:39:29.760 | increased substantially because of that personal development. And to me, this is the magic of the
00:39:34.640 | world that we live in is the magic of personal development that you can set out a plan and you
00:39:39.440 | can identify, "What do I need to learn? Okay, I'm a cast member. So I need to focus on customer
00:39:45.120 | service. So let me go ahead and read the books that all the Disney executives have written.
00:39:49.280 | And now be a really remarkable person. I need to focus on discipline to be at work on time.
00:39:54.400 | I need to focus on a cheerful attitude. So let me read some books on positive mental attitude."
00:39:58.080 | And then I need to seek out the podcast with Lee Cockerell, the former executive at Disney and all
00:40:04.240 | the people that have written about it and study, study. And so you can either do it accidentally,
00:40:09.840 | you can do it somewhat purposely, or you can do it very purposely. And any of those will increase
00:40:15.040 | your results, especially as regards your income. Yeah. One thing I teach in my seminars now is
00:40:19.840 | there's kind of four or five areas you need to make sure you're getting better on every day.
00:40:23.760 | One, technical knowledge, whatever you do for a living. Are you going to be a better podcaster
00:40:27.600 | a year from now than you are this year? And you're going to learn how to use the new microphone and
00:40:30.640 | have a better clarity? And are you going to use... Whatever it is. And you're going to listen to all
00:40:35.360 | the best podcasts, see what they're doing. What's their music like? How do they close them? How do
00:40:40.240 | they open them? Second, management. Are you going to get more organized by this time next year?
00:40:44.720 | Are you going to be more disciplined? Take a time management course. Third, technology. Are you going
00:40:48.480 | to learn more about technology? And fourth, leadership. Are you going to be a better leader
00:40:51.920 | next year? And when you start focusing, I got to do all four of these things and I got to get better
00:40:56.160 | in all of them every year. That's when you start to have a plan, I think, a general plan of I got
00:41:01.040 | to go to this class. I'm here at this podcast. Why am I here? I don't even know. I want it because,
00:41:06.960 | you know, when I leave, I can go around talking like an expert. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love to
00:41:13.680 | go to... Curiosity is one of the most important things in life. If you're curious, you can,
00:41:18.800 | you know. I had a breakfast this morning with a guy who has a horse podcast. Horses! He invited
00:41:26.480 | me on it. He's got over 100,000 listeners. I'm going to be on it and I'm going to talk about my
00:41:30.960 | podcast. That's awesome. Because I met him. Right. Because I'm here. Right. If I was in Orlando laying
00:41:35.760 | on the couch, well, you got to get up and go do it on purpose. Get out there and meet people and
00:41:42.480 | I'll meet anybody who'll meet with me. Yeah. And that's what you got to do. Quit laying around
00:41:47.840 | hoping things get better. They're not going to get better if you hope, wish, or pray. You got
00:41:51.680 | to get up and do it. And this is what people are not doing. Too many people underestimate themselves.
00:41:56.400 | They don't know what they can do. They don't know what's inside them because they've had
00:41:59.600 | some disappointment. Things didn't work out. Their mother didn't treat them right. Yeah.
00:42:03.280 | Count on yourself. Get yourself up. Be better than everybody else that does what you do.
00:42:10.560 | And you'll get... My wife, when I started my business, she said, "Lee, don't underprice yourself.
00:42:15.680 | You know a lot." And I put a price out there for my speeches and I about fainted the first person
00:42:21.040 | that paid it. My wife yells at me for that. I struggle with that. It's very challenging for me.
00:42:28.160 | It's hard. Pricing is tough. And she's constantly saying, you know, it's tough because it goes to
00:42:32.400 | that core root of believing in yourself. And it's so easy to give in to the sense of insecurity and
00:42:39.280 | inadequacy. I wrote my own podcast, right? I wrote the content and I wrote it in third person so I
00:42:44.000 | could tell everybody how great I was. Lee, this has been awesome. I thank you for making the time.
00:42:49.600 | Tell everyone about your website, your podcast, your books, your speaking availability. Go ahead
00:42:53.600 | and share where they can go to consume more of your ideas. I've learned now everything's on my
00:42:57.440 | website. Right. And leecockerell.com. C-O-C-K-E-R-E-L-L.com. Lee Cockerell. It's all there.
00:43:04.320 | You can buy my books. You can have all my podcasts are on there. My blog is on there. My app is on
00:43:10.560 | there. My speeches, if you want to hire me, you can call me. My phone number, if you want to call
00:43:16.320 | me or email me, they're all on there. I've written three books, Creating Magic, which is around
00:43:20.720 | leadership. The Customer Rules, which is around customer service. And Time Management Magic,
00:43:26.160 | which is all about how to get more organized. I just finished my fourth. It's not published yet.
00:43:30.400 | It's called Creating Career Magic. How to deal with all those hardships when you get a bad boss,
00:43:35.040 | get fired, get passed over, things are not working out. And I'm involved with a group
00:43:40.480 | called Thrive15.com. And we have a thousand videos on how leadership, management, customer service.
00:43:46.720 | Wow. And we give a veteran. If people sign up for it, we give a veteran. They can, if you use the
00:43:51.040 | mat, it's Thrive15, T-H-R-I-V-E, the number 15.com. If you use the promotion code magic, you can use
00:43:57.680 | it free for a month and see if you like it. And it's on the bottom of that bookmark I gave you
00:44:01.920 | there. And a thousand. We work with David Robinson that used to play with San Antonio. He does the
00:44:08.000 | ones on leadership. I've done 40 on time management, Disney interviewing. And so I just keep
00:44:14.080 | getting involved in all this stuff and it's great resources. Ton of it's free. And yeah, it's,
00:44:20.800 | I love being a teacher instead of a boss. Yeah. That's my great, I love being a teacher
00:44:26.720 | because everybody hates their boss and they love their teacher. So yeah, thanks a lot for doing
00:44:31.600 | this for me. Lee, thank you very much. When you start looking for success, you find the lessons
00:44:38.880 | and the clues and just about everywhere. And I loved having the chance to sit down with,
00:44:44.640 | with Lee and pick his brains. I want to encourage you, if you haven't done what I did in that
00:44:51.200 | interview, if you haven't done it lately, at least, why don't you do it yourself? Now? Yeah. If you
00:44:58.720 | want to do it in a podcast form, cool, go for it. I encourage that. But even if you don't do it in a
00:45:03.040 | podcast form, do it personally. Take a retired executive out to lunch and pick his brains for
00:45:10.240 | an hour and see what lessons you can learn. I know for me, I found that extremely beneficial
00:45:15.520 | and I'd encourage you to do it yourself. In fact, if you don't have a podcast, I think you'll,
00:45:21.520 | you'll find it easier than I find it because I actually have many people who I ask to be on the
00:45:26.000 | show and a lot of times they just don't want to do it. The people who generally accept podcast
00:45:29.760 | invitations to be interviewed are generally people with something to promote, something to sell.
00:45:33.520 | They're the ones who know that they're looking for publicity. But some of the most interesting
00:45:37.440 | conversations are the ones that happen completely off the record because many times the leading
00:45:41.600 | business people in your town have no desire to be known publicly, but they're willing to share
00:45:46.640 | their wisdom and experience with you privately. So consider doing what I did in that interview
00:45:52.960 | and go out and pick the brains of some people that you admire.
00:45:56.800 | Make sure to check out all of Lee's information. You can find his website at LeeCockrell.com.
00:46:03.920 | You can find links to his blog. You can find links to his podcast that he has and some of
00:46:09.280 | the information and the content he's creating. You'll find information on all of his books,
00:46:12.880 | link in the show notes. So make sure to check out his blog, find some of his other resources.
00:46:17.520 | Disney is a special place. They've done a really amazing job of building just so many,
00:46:22.400 | doing things so well. And it's certainly something that all of us can learn from.
00:46:27.360 | So LeeCockrell.com, you can find all that information there.
00:46:31.680 | Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to those of you who are patrons of the show.
00:46:35.440 | Your patronage is what allowed me to go out to Texas and get that interview for you. So if this
00:46:40.560 | has been useful, if this show content has been useful, I'd appreciate it if you consider supporting
00:46:43.760 | the show as a patron. The way that works is you sign up and you choose an amount. You go to
00:46:49.840 | radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. You choose an amount on a monthly basis that you think
00:46:54.240 | Radical Personal Finance is worth to you. It can be as little as a buck a month or it can be more
00:46:58.560 | than a couple hundred dollars a month. And I've got bribes for you at every point in the way.
00:47:01.840 | At the moment, the $200 a month mastermind is full. So there aren't any slots open for that.
00:47:07.360 | But there are slots open for the $25 a month irregulars level. And that's where we spend a
00:47:12.640 | lot of time talking on in the Facebook private Facebook group. Check that out or there's options
00:47:18.160 | for three bucks, five bucks, 10 bucks, or you can choose any amount that you think. So radical
00:47:22.080 | personal finance.com/patron. Thank you to the 219 of you as of today who are currently supporting
00:47:28.400 | the show. 219. I would love to get that number to 250. So if you're not yet supporting the show,
00:47:33.040 | please consider doing so. Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Peace out, Joe.
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