167 How to Hire, Manage, and Lead Thousands with Lee Cockerell

"Don't underestimate the influence of your own behavior." - Lee Cockerell If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/167. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 167 with Lee Cockerell.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Excited about today's guest. His name is Mr. Lee Cockerell. And for those who have not heard of Lee, he is the former Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resorts. And as a senior operating executive for 10 years, Lee led a team of 40,000 cast members and was responsible for the operations of 20 resort hotels, four theme parks, two water parks, a shopping entertainment village, and the ESPN Sports and Recreation Complex, in addition to many other things. Here is a true leader who has experienced so much in his lifetime.

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  And I can't even fathom what it'd be like managing 40,000 people, but we dive into this topic of leadership and productivity and time management and how to hire the right people so that you can actually scale your business and have one of the most successful businesses there is out there, as an example, Walt Disney World Resorts. So, without further ado, I want to dive into this one with the one and only Lee Cockerell.

• 1:39Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have a living legend on today. His name is Mr. Lee Cockerell. How's it going, Lee?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Hey, it's good. Good to be with you.

• 1:48Lewis Howes?

  Very excited now, as a former Executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney World, where you were managing over 50,000 people at one time, that's a pretty impressive. I've never met anyone who's managed that many people before, so I'm excited to dive into how you did this, the emotions that it took probably to manage that, and all the lessons you learned along the way. So, very excited. How did it become about that you actually got hired to work as Executive Vice President for Walt Disney World?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Well, I started out in the hotel business back in Hilton, back in 1965 at the Washington Hilton in DC. That's the one where Reagan got shot that afternoon. And I worked there for Hilton for eight years in Washington, Chicago, the Waldorf store in New York, Los Angeles, and then I went to Marriott in 1973. Worked for Marriott for 17 years and kind of became an expert in food and beverage. Then I got recruited by Disney in 1990 to go open the food and beverage operations in France. And then after that, they brought me back to Orlando and I was head of all the resort hotels for about three years and then they put me in charge of all the operations in 1997 and I did that for 10 years. So that was a quick career. Quick career.

• 3:02Lewis Howes?

  Quick career, 10 years, yeah. What was it like managing 40,000 employees?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's pretty easy actually when you think about it. I just had a great team around me. I think a lot of people think about the big number, but I had anywhere from six to 14 direct reports over those 10 years and I had experts and they took care of their piece of the business. I let them do their job and I focused on what I could do best, which was making sure we were hiring the right people, promoting the right people, training and getting the culture right. So everybody woke up in the morning excited to come to work at Disney. And when I did those three things and they did their job, everything worked out just fine.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  And everyone was happy, yeah. Would you say it was actually probably easier to manage 40,000 people with that structure in place than it would be to manage 100 people yourself?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 3:48Lewis Howes?

  Really? So you'd much rather manage 40,000 people than to say I've got 50 or 100 to manage in like a smaller company or something?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and also I think I had the advantage of when you worked for Disney, you can really hire the best people out there in the world. You can pay them, you can take care of them. They want to be there. Really high caliber, high quality leaders and managers and have a lot of technical skill too. So sometimes when you're a small business and I, you know, it's just harder to get people to move over to you or to take that chance or although there are a lot of entrepreneurs today that are out there doing it and having a lot of success with it. So, yeah.

• 4:27Lewis Howes?

  You know, Disney's known, I think, for their incredible customer service. And was that something that you went into it knowing like from the hotel and resort world going into it saying, you know, I'm going to take this to another level or was it more maintaining that service already?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  No, I knew we could take it to a new level. I think that's one thing I would tell all your listeners is raise your expectations. No matter how good you are, can you be better? And that's how I think about things every day is we can be, even if you're great, can you be greater? You know, if you're, if you're in good shape, can you be in better shape? And I think that's the key to companies like Disney and Apple. They never are happy. They want it to be better and they're always pushing. And so I would say that was the key to taking a culture that was already world famous and moving it up because the times change, you know, young people today are different than they were in the 60s and 70s.

• 5:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  And you got to really manage and lead them a different way and they want responsibility and they want to be involved and they want to be listened to and they want their opinion to count. And that wasn't the case back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. You kind of did what your boss said and kept your mouth shut. So.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Right. You didn't have an opinion then, right?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, keep your opinion to yourself.

• 5:39Lewis Howes?

  Right. So what are some of the customer service principles that you had and still have today and that you talk about for people taking it to that next level?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think if you want to have a great organization, you know, you got to decide you want to be average. Average people are easy to find. You want to be good, good people are not quite as easy. But if you want to be great, you got to start out, number one, the most important thing anybody does in business is who they hire. And you got to be careful. I say hire slow and fire fast when you make a mistake. You know, we hire too fast. We don't fire people that don't do their job. We get stuck with them. And if you got a little small company of 30 or 40 people, you can have 10 or 12 people that are just kind of barely coming in and just want a paycheck. You got a problem. So I'd say the number one thing is really get good at hiring.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And I work on that a lot about what kind of questions to ask, what to listen for, how to understand what the potential of a person is with their attitude, can do attitude, passion, and then we can teach them the skill level.

• 6:42Lewis Howes?

  So what's, would you say that having a positive attitude and their passion is more important than their, their resume and skill level and experience?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. You know, if, you know, there's only one of those three that you can train. And that's skill. You cannot change, somebody's a can't do attitude, you're not going to change them. And if they're not passionate, you're not going, I don't care how much you spend time with them and talk to them and threaten them and you're not going to do it. People are wired the way they are. So we gotta start hiring the right people instead of trying to think we can fix them. You can't fix them. I tried to fix my wife for 25 years. It didn't work out too well. So.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  Is it still working out?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. We've been married 47 years coming up and it's working just fine because I quit trying to change her and she got better immediately. So.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Change your, as we tell people, the only person you can change is you, not somebody else.

• 7:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Wow. So what are some of the questions, if, let's say there's an entrepreneur listening who's trying to hire someone, maybe they've got a five to 25 employees and they're, you're, you know, every hire matters at this point, obviously every level it matters, but what are the, you know, three to four most important questions they should be asking and also be listening for in their responses?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  I think if any of them get a chance, they ought to look in my book, The Customer Rules. It's rule number nine of how to hire. I work with a lady, Carol Quinn, and we've been working on this for three or four years of how to develop questions with obstacles in them. We found out that people who know how to overcome obstacles from little ones to really big ones are your best performers. And how many obstacles do we all have every day from traffic to getting our kids to school to, uh, something happening that we don't expect to, uh, all kinds of things, guests that are not happy. And so we develop, depending on the job, if it was a salesperson, we'd have different questions than we might have for a retail person. So we try to figure out five or six good, strong questions about that job. So maybe a retail, you might ask somebody,

• 8:35Speaker 01

  tell me about a specific time you had to deal with an irate customer in your last job. And what you want to listen for is what they did and what was the outcome? And you know, people who really go all the way, they can talk about it all day long, how much they would take. And the people who don't, you know, they can talk to you about thirty seconds and they have no more story to tell you. And really, if you can figure out overcoming obstacles, the name of the game, really, in life, you know, people who, you know, you know them, I know them, people who, no matter what you give them, they make it happen. And then there's other people, I always said, the people who come to work on time and the ones who come late, come on the same interstate. But the ones coming late say it's the traffic. It's

• 9:17Speaker 01

  not the traffic. The can do people leave earlier. I mean, they know, they know there's traffic every day and it's just a matter of how you think. And we, we just work hard at Disney and making sure we're hiring. When we screen people upfront, you have to go on the internet and answer one hundred and thirty-six questions about yourself. We want to understand, but even before we'll interview you, we want to have stamina, high energy. Are you positive? Do you have discipline? Are you going to be to work on time? These are things that are really important at Disney. And so we have a screening process. We worked with Gallup on to screen people and see if they can get through that, then they get to go over to the casting center and fill out an application. A lot of people don't get through it.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay. So would you say that customer support is one of the crucial ingredients to a successful business, then?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it's everything. You know, at the end of the day, everything's a commodity now. I don't care what business you're in, whether you're giving speeches like me, or there are a lot of people giving speeches, or there's a thousand restaurants to eat in, there's a million movie theaters, and you can buy every different kind of car you want. But at the end of the day, it's how you treat people. Do they trust you, I would say is even the bigger deal. Do they trust you? And do you show respect for your customers in a way that you'll go all the way? You're so committed to taking care of them, they know. You know, we get that feeling when we know somebody's taking care of us, you know? And it's really different than somebody who's just, oh, my God, I wish I hadn't come in today. I hate this job. I wish it was five o'clock. I want to go home now. I don't

• 10:45Speaker 01

  like my boss. I don't like nothing. You know, I was born unhappy and I'm still unhappy. That's right. And so that's the key. Customer service, name of the game.

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And do you feel like when you were at Disney and, and when you were there, is it more important to make the customer feel special or to make the employee feel special?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  You know, we, we put a formula together at Disney back in the nineties to change the culture at Disney. And we said, the customer does not come first. Leadership comes first. You got to put the right leaders in place who know how to lead people, who know how to show respect. And know how to make people feel important and treat them as individuals and and get the bigotry out of their style and that are willing to train and develop their people. And when you do that, you create an environment where the cast members want to do a good job. They don't have to do it for the paycheck. They want to do it there.

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  When you make people feel that way, and then they take care of the customer. And that's how you do it. If you've got bad leaders, it's never going to happen. If they got, if you've got managers and leaders who don't treat you well, and they don't even know your last name, and they don't, they don't know your aspirations, they don't help you get ahead, you're never going to get there.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. What would you say are a couple of things that, you know, a, a small business or an entrepreneur could do to increase their customer support? What's something that's unique that would be maybe simple to implement, but create that lasting, you know, Disney feel-good result for their customer as well?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  You know, I think one thing is perception and first impressions and to make sure that when somebody walks up to your store, calls you on the phone, that, I mean, you answer that phone with such high energy, it sounds like you're, you know, you're, it's your grandmother calling, you're so excited to hear from her. And, and make sure your parking lot's clean, and the bushes are healthy, and the windows are nice and clean, you walk in and everybody's professional, and they look professional, and they snap to, you know? I just think first impressions are, have a lot to do with everything. So, so often, we don't have that happening, and people need to be aware of that. I think the key is, they need to think, think like they're putting on a Broadway show. The curtain opens when they open in the morning, and do they have it all ready to put on an excellent, perfect, consistent show every day?

• 12:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's cool. I like that.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:58Lewis Howes?

  You've got a, you've got a new book out called Time Management Magic, and it's all about optimizing your time and your time management. What are, what are some, some of the, the key principles from that book on how to manage your time and optimize your time for the greatest result? Because there's a lot of busy entrepreneurs out there right now who are scatterbrained, they're, you know, got a million things open on their computer at once, they've got a million different ideas in their head. How does, how do the, what are some of the few key principles to managing your time?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Key principle for me is for everybody to sit down and think about where they spend their time, where they should be spending it, where they're not spending it, and why they're not spending it there. Some things that waste your time are hiring the wrong people. Other things that waste your time are not training your people. Another thing that wastes your time is not holding them accountable and enforcing the training. You let them get away with it. You let them come to work late. Next thing you know, it goes from bad to worse. And so I think every day I sit down for 10, 15 minutes of Starbucks, and I think about what I'm going to work on today, tomorrow, this weekend. I pencil them in my day planner. And just, I think, taking a little time every morning, 10, 15, 20 minutes, and think about, you know, it's like going on a trip. Where are you going today? What are you going to get done? And make that list. And when you're not in a meeting,

• 14:11Speaker 01

  you look at that list, and you get them done, you check them off. And I've been doing, I've been teaching this seminar for 35 years. And let me tell you what, I'm getting notes every day from people who've read that book. They've gone out and bought a planner. They're not trying to do it on their phone, because the phone doesn't work for task lists like it should. Right. And they're getting the instant results. And even when a guy told me this morning, he said he had a cast member who was, didn't believe in herself very much, was kind of low self-esteem. And she got herself a planner, and she started making a list. And she said, just that feeling of accomplishment of checking it off has already, we've seen a change in her, because she was insecure. You know, there's a lot coming at you today in life, in business, and personal lives, and marriage, and all kinds of things. And so, I would say,

• 14:55Speaker 01

  planning time, think about, I think about three things every day. And I think the average person doesn't know what they should be thinking about. I think about myself first, my health, taking care of myself, so I can take care of my family, number two. And number three, I think about my finances and my business, and friends, and Facebook, and golf, and all this other stuff has to fall by the wayside. If I get those three things done every day, then I can go play golf. But I really zero it down to, I would tell them, a lot of them are dealing with nonperformers. Get rid of these people. So you don't, you know, you don't have to be sitting down talking to them every day, or you have to open the store because they didn't show up, or, you know, a lot of the problems we create for ourselves.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I said in my book, you know, the average person's not overworked, they're underorganized. They have no discipline, because they've never had a course on it. They've never taken a course to high school or college. Nobody takes a course in time management. And it's probably the most important thing you need in your life. As they said, you know, knowledge without implementation is pretty useless. Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  Why is health so important to you? And do you feel like if we're not focusing on our health, that we actually can't be as focused on our customer and building our business to the level we want it to be?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Because my wife told me, she said, Lee, your number one goal is to take care of yourself so you can take care of us. And you know, when you think about it, if I don't take care of myself, I don't have high energy. You know, I'm 71 years old now. I weigh exactly what I weighed when I got out of the army 50 years ago.

• 16:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  Congratulations.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  1-8-0. I still wear the tuxedo I bought 30 years ago.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  So it saves you money in clothes too. But let me.

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  You've got to have high energy today. Life's stressful. I mean, and if you lose your health, let me tell you, it'll be the number one regret you have. Number one.

• 16:49Lewis Howes?

  What are some of the things that you do for your physical health and mental and emotional health as well?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Well, I get all my physicals right on time. I schedule them either six months apart or a year apart, depending what it is. And I walk five to six miles a day, even in my house when I'm on the phone. And I have a strength trainer that I had one this morning. I have it on Tuesdays and Fridays. And I do strength training so that I don't fall and break a hip one day. And I'm telling you, I'm stronger than 99% of the 20 year olds. I mean, I'm strong. Fit. I can pick up my 12 foot ladder and bring it in and put it up. And, and you know, it's just, it's just really so important because if you don't have your health, what do you have? I mean, really, you want to sit in a wheelchair after you fall and break your hip and have to have hip replacement when you're 72? I don't.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I'm going to fall down, but I'm going to get up. So that's.

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like having, you know, your health at the, you know, the peak level that you have at your age does for your productivity, your time management and your confidence?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Oh, there's no question about, you know, they just have a high energy. You know, you ever had those days when you get more done? Because you wake up in the morning, you just feel terrific? Have you ever had those days when you had too many beers or too many wines and you woke up and didn't get anything done?

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And you're sitting looking out the window and you can't think and, and I think also exercise, getting that blood pumping through your brain, you know, who knows, maybe it will keep Alzheimer's away or dementia or, and, and keep working. I would say be careful about retiring. Let me tell you, I still give speeches and I don't use any notes and I told somebody the day I have to use notes, that's probably the day I should quit. Cause if I can't remember what I was gonna say anymore, it's gonna be a problem. So.

• 18:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Health is just really, at the end of the day, if you don't have your health, you're just, you don't have much left.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  What's a, what's some other part of your daily habits or rituals? Uh, do you meditate in the morning or do you, do you do anything else to get your day going?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Nah, I get up every morning at six o'clock. I go to Starbucks at six thirty. I stay there one hour, usually six thirty, seven thirty. I read the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, cause I'm looking for, trying to keep current when I'm giving speeches about oil business and about prices and the euro and, because all that matters when you're out there giving a talk about leadership and management. And I'm looking for new stories, new leadership stories, new management stories. I meet with people that wanna meet with me. So anybody says, could I meet with you, Les? I say, sure. Come to Starbucks at seven. And I met with a guy this morning. He just bought ten of my time management books and he wanted them and he came and I spent half hour talking to him and we had a good chat and he went off. And so I, I kinda got that time blocked out. So every morning I don't

• 19:29Speaker 01

  have to tell people, I can't meet with you, I'm not available. Then I come home and whatever I need to work on, my work, when I'm writing a book, I write from eight o'clock to ten or ten thirty every day until I get done. So in a couple of months, I knock it out. And actually I wrote my time management book in thirty days out in California last summer.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I got up every morning, wrote for two and a half hours, you know, when you get, when you write for sixty, seventy hours, you got a book.

• 19:54Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Where in California were you?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  In Carmel. I rent a house there every summer, right on the beach and it inspires me to be in the right place to get there, to think. And I try not to write more than a couple of hours, cause you get brain dead after a while. And, so, yeah, I, I like routine. I think routine is important for people, you know? I think, uh, parents who really work hard at getting home for dinner are gonna have better behaved children. Think, you know, getting to the soccer game is going to matter so you don't someday regret that you didn't spend more time with your kids or your health or, you know, regrets are pretty tough. So part of time management is thinking about what should I be working on now that won't pay off for 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now?

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Wow.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a concept and I put all that in the book and, uh, and on this Thrive15, which you mentioned earlier too. I did 42 videos on Thrive15.com and I just did six more on time management, which will be online shortly and this website is terrific. I tell you, even if you're listeners, I think they gave me a new code for you today that if they go in and use the promotion code greatness2, the number 2, they can use it for 30 days free.

• 21:09Lewis Howes?

  I like it. And what is Thrive15? Can you explain it a little?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Thrive is, it's a learning site. We work with David Robinson. He used to play with San Antonio Spurs and a bunch of other leaders, bankers, franchising, marketing, PR, all these experts. We got together and we all did videos on 15 minute videos on what we're experts at. And every five minutes a video stops. If you want to watch one on how to hire better, you can watch it. And every 15, every five minutes it stops and gives you a test, a multiple choice test. And if you get it right, you get points and you compete with people around the world and we got about 33 countries involved right now and you get scores. You know, and young generation today, they're very comfortable doing things online. They can, you know, after dinner at my son's house, everybody goes their own direction with their own device. Nobody watches the 48 inch TV anymore but

• 21:57Speaker 01

  the dog. So, you know, and so it's pretty exciting and it's really well done. They used three cameras and they filmed it for three days and I just, I talked about things people are trying to learn, how to hire, how to fire, how to improve customer service, how to raise your expectations, just all of those things. And then there's people on there that have done one, how to franchise, how to rent space for your business. Uh, there's a lawyer on there that talks about legal advice. Uh, just David Robinson did like 21 videos on how to handle a crisis, uh, leadership, uh,

• 22:32Speaker 01

  You know, all the things peer pressure, we didn't want to peer pressure for teenagers, you know, thinking about, hey, don't fall for peer pressure. That's how you get in trouble.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  And so it's just a very interesting site that, and I think it's probably, it's going to be the way of learning because how much, really, when you think about it, how much do we learn every day by going on and Googling something or looking it up or watching a video or a podcast like yours?

• 22:54Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Almost everything.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  And your listeners, they listen to these and they learn something.

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  So it's pretty cool.

• 23:01Lewis Howes?

  We'll have that linked up on the site and the code for free is greatness two. Is that right?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. I'll have that linked up. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about leadership because I know you wrote the book, you know, Disney asked you to write a book on leadership. It's called Creating Magic and I think you said you sold 250,000 copies so far.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  Last, last few years, which is incredible. What are some of the, you know, maybe the two or three of the top common leadership strategies that you learned while at Disney or you applied there?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Well, I think the most important one is strategy number one in the book and the title of it is remember, everyone is important. And I think this is not done well in American business. The guy cleaning the bathrooms, the guy in the parking lot, the housekeeper making up rooms. And this chapter really deals with making sure you're the kind of leader who shows respect to everyone and here's how you do it. And we've got about 10 or 12 techniques in there to show, send the message to your people that you are important. And if you can get that one right, your life works out pretty well. And then I think strategy three is make your people your brand. This is all about how to hire the right people. Don't

• 24:10Speaker 01

  make a mistake. Get the right people, promote the right people. Strategy four is create magic through training. I mean, the value, when you think about it, what do parents worry about their children? Safety and training, education. And that's one of the two. Uh, strategy six is learn the truth. Telling leaders, you better get out there and learn the truth, or you won't be able to make good decisions if you don't know what's going on. And you gotta have comfortable relationships with your people. So they'll tell you the truth and they'll help you run the business. And so there's a lot. There's one on appreciation, recognition and encouragement. And it's called burn the free fuel. We all don't do that enough. We have opportunities every day to thank people and appreciate them. And we let it get by. And let me tell you, when you show appreciation, recognition, encouragement, people perform better.

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's.

• 24:56Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's, what's something you, what's something you can do to facilitate that process of appreciation and acknowledgement?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  I think when you're thinking every morning, you ought to think about it. When you get into work every day, before you go in and turn your computer on, walk around your office and say hello to everyone and ask them how their mother's doing in the hospital and how was the soccer game last night? And tell them how much you appreciate the good job they're doing. If they're just did a project for you. And I try to think, I, I got in the habit now that my goal, and I wasn't always this way. I was a terrorist in my early career, you know? I was, I didn't treat people very well. But I really came around over the years and understood that if you don't show respect to people and make them feel good about themselves and build their self-confidence and build their self-esteem, they're not going to give you a hundred and fifty percent.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  And we know that, you know, with your, with children, we always tell them how much we love them. Why? Because we want them to feel safe and appreciated and loved. And, uh, and, uh, now I tell my wife every day, I love her. That way she won't leave. But you just think about it every day, the chances you have to say something nice to somebody or to mention it to somebody or write a little text to somebody, tell them how much you appreciate them being on your team or it's just powerful. I mean, it's unbelievable. It turns people on. It's a very strong fuel that drives human performance. And it's way underused.

• 26:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. What would you say if you had to attribute, uh, one thing to your success? What would that be?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Well, I don't have a college degree. I dropped out of college after two years because I was too dumb to get through college. So I was the most likely not to succeed. But my mother was married five times. I grew up on a farm. We were very poor. She started marrying better guys. So number four and five had money. And so I got to go to college, but I will tell you what made me, uh, Successful in my life, I know what it was. It's, I have a very positive attitude. There's nothing you don't give me, I won't get done. I'll, I, I won't disappoint you. I'll get it done with a smile. You'll never see that look on my face. I will figure it out one way or another. I will finish it. Positive attitude and I'm organized. I'm disciplined. Every boss I had knew when they gave me something, it was done. They didn't have to follow up.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Now, so I think, uh, having good reliability and keeping your promises and having a good attitude can really take you a long way in your life.

• 27:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that. Now, what are you most grateful for in your life recently?

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Well, I'm grateful for my health. I'm grateful for my wife. She almost died in oh eight, oh nine. I had to take care of her for two years. I ended up with depression. Had to get treated and we all got through it. Everybody's fine now and, uh, our whole family lives in Orlando. My three grandkids, my son, his wife. Our mother, my mother-in-law lived here until she died last year. And I just think that most grateful for me is having a family. It's really stability. Stay, I don't know how I would've got through that depression without my family. I mean, it was pretty tough, uh, trying to take care of my wife for almost two years till she got better and, uh, it was one, you know, I used to think about depressed people. I used to say, what's their problem? Boy, did I find, I found out what their problem was. I needed medication and I had to go see a psychiatrist and

• 28:03Speaker 01

  I tell you, when you have your health, that's why I talk about it. I, it was the most miserable two years of my life. I, I didn't care about anything. And finally asked the psychiatrist, he turned me around and got me on a medication called Cymbalta. You know, literally in two months, I was back on my feet and everything's fine today and, uh, I just can't, I know there's a lot of people out in the world going through depression and I tell them, go see a psychiatrist, an M D, because most men don't go. Women go in for help, men don't go. And I, uh, I'm, I think, uh, I'm the happiest about, I wake up in the morning and try to figure out how I can help people versus make their life miserable. They already got enough problems. They don't need to make it worse. So,

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  I'm now become, I'm not the boss anymore. I'm a teacher and I love teaching.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  I like that. That's very cool. What was the most influential book that you read, you know, growing up that you recommended people?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think the one that struck me the most and turned me around in my own leadership was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

• 29:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  That really hit me right between the eyes. It was the first person that came out with all those kinds of thinking and how to be a better person and how to really focus on seven simple things. And I still have that book and it really impacted me. And so that was one. The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker also affected me pretty big time, where he talks about how to spend more time with your people without an agenda, just talking, and how things will come out if you spend three or four hours with them instead of 15 minutes. So that was an interesting one. And yeah, so I guess Bambi when I was little.

• 29:42Lewis Howes?

  Very cool.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  And The Lion King. I love that story, you know, adversity.

• 29:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Yeah, that's a great one. Well, I got a couple of questions left for you. One of them is, I've been asking this to a lot of my guests lately, and I'd just like to hear the responses. You know, in many, many, many years from now, decades from now, it's your last day, and you have, all your books are gone. Everything you've ever written has been removed from time. For whatever reason, it just got deleted. And you had a piece of paper and a pen, and you got to write down three truths. The three truths that you know about life that you've learned throughout your entire life. What would those three truths be?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Well, one I know for sure is that you can either leave a legacy or not. And the way you leave a legacy is you help other people. Because when you help other people, they never forget it. You may forget it, but they'll make 10 years from now. And that issue of what you teach others, they teach others. You know, I know that saying, you know, what you teach your children, they teach their children. So 100 years from now, I could still be having impact. Don't underestimate the influence of your own, own behavior. I think the average person underestimates the impact they have on other people. Role modeling is like everything. And so I think about those things of what am I doing that, you know, if I'm dead a hundred

• 31:08Speaker 01

  years from now, somebody could look up and say, wow, this guy helped my great grandfather. And my grandfather wrote about it, and I wrote about it, and I wrote about it. You know, you think about it, all the famous leaders in history, we still talk about them. They've been dead for hundreds of years, fifty years, a hundred and fifty years. And if you do good things, and if you do bad things, you'll be remembered too, by the way.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  But I think about that. I want to, you know, somebody asked me the other day, what is one word I'd use to summarize my life at this point? I said, complete. I feel really complete right now. Just because I had a great career, and then I've had a great, kind of my own business for nine years. And, and they say there's three ways to leave a legacy. You can write a book, have a baby, or plant a tree. So I've got to go plant a tree. I have a good son, and I have three good books, and I haven't planted a tree yet, so.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  That's your next task this week.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the tree will be there long after you're gone.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Okay. So that's truth number one, right?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, that's one. I think it's kind of one, two, or three in there. But I think when you think about it, the truth is, you do make a difference. You do. And if you don't believe in yourself, people are not going to believe in you. And that's what leadership's all about. I would say one truth I know is you have to do the hard things if you want life to turn out right. You have to have the hard discussions. You have to exercise. That's hard. It's easy to lay on the couch. It's hard to, you have to save your money so you can retire. It's easy to spend it. It's easy to get in debt. It's easy not to have the conversations with somebody not performing. It's easy not to discipline your children. Do the hard things in your life, and you'll have a better life. And I would tell everybody, every morning, you should wake up and say, okay, what am

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I going to do that's hard this week that I don't want to do? I wish it would go away. I don't want to have that conversation. And every day, every time I go to my trainer, I hate it. Because this guy works me like he makes me do those last two moves, which I don't believe personally I can do, but he encourages me and I finish them. So do hard things, leave a legacy, use your influence for good. We can all be nicer. You know, when I wrote my second book, I asked my granddaughter, I said, Mario, what do you think is the most important rule in customer service? And she said, Pappy, the first rule is be nice to people. You know, be nice.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And that car, I think we could all be a little bit nicer.

• 33:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And we can learn to let it go. That's from that song in Frozen, let it go, let it go, let it go. So, yeah, those are some things that, you know, they're not things that you think about when you're young. You think about making money and getting a company car and stock options and having a big house and blah, blah, blah. And let me tell you, as you get older, if you look at those things, they mean nothing. They mean nothing.

• 33:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  And so people really got to think about how they spend their time so they don't have regrets.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  I love those answers and I want to, I've got one final question for you, but before I ask that, I want to acknowledge you, Lee, for, for leaving an incredible legacy and still leave and still living the legacy by serving and teaching so many people from what you've created, you know, with Disney World and all the other places you were in leadership. It's amazing to see what your influence has created in the world from, you know, a customer support standpoint, but also teaching so many other leaders and entrepreneurs how to have a successful business and life and family. So thank you for all the work that you've done in the world to make it a better place.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Thank you for saying so. I appreciate it.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  And the final question, it's what I ask all my guests at the end is what's your definition of greatness?

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think greatness for me is that you have the right attitude about you can always be better. You know, don't, don't settle in and I'm in great shape now, but I'm going to see if I can get in better shape. I'm, you know, I have a good relationship with my wife. I need to move it up to even greater. You know, it's just don't, don't settle. And I say, when you have a roadblock in your life, pick yourself up. I'm going to write the next book. It's going to be about how to manage your career. When it goes down, you get fired, passed over. Those kinds of things. And I think that's what people have got to be thinking about. We can all, we can all be better and it's never too late to get better. Might be the right final comment.

• 35:30Lewis Howes?

  Lee Cockrell, thanks so much for coming on, my friend. I appreciate it.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, guys. Thank you again so much for coming on today and listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this, we've got all the links and info and resources back on the show notes at lewishouse.com/167. You can learn how to connect with Lee over there. Check out all of his books and resources. Again, lewishouse.com/167. Also, for those who are looking to get the resources and the playlist for School of Greatness Podcast Music. I've been getting a lot of emails lately and questions about where do you get this music? Is there a playlist? And yes, we do have a playlist. The episode is at lewishouse.com/167. We'll have a link of where you can get the playlist

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  over on that episode show notes. So again, go to lewishouse.com/167 to get the information for the playlist. I think you guys are going to like it. And yeah, I'm excited. We've got some big guests coming up. Huge people coming up, talking about some incredible things, all about helping you achieve your own greatness. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. Make sure to share it with your friends online. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.