Kate Padilla

Fair warning: This blog post contains spoilers on Disney’s Cruella.

Do you ever have moments when you just get inspired? This post came out of one of those moments. I had just finished up a week at EXPCON, a conference for eXp agents that was held (this year) in Las Vegas. 5,000 agents who traveled, some internationally, to one location for a week of networking, growth, and business development. It was a lot to take in, but so great for the soul.

And on the airplane home I thought I’d clear my mind a bit by watching something purely for entertainment purposes.

But, for a creative, once your inspiration gets warmed up it’s hard to turn it off. And as I watched the movie I started to see lessons for an entrepreneur.

This is meant to be a fun piece, not a hard and fast rule book on starting a business. But, it can go to show you that inspiration and learning is all around us, even in places we might not initially expect.

Lesson 1: There is something about you that is different.

Initially, this seems like an obvious takeaway from the movie. Cruella’s hair is certainly a standout quality — split down the middle between black and white.

And, certainly, her hair is the defining tell on whether the audience is watching Estella or Cruella. Estella is “normal,” with her medium-length, auburn locks. Cruella, by contrast, is bold and mischevious.

But there is another scene that highlights Estella’s differences from her peers. In the first scene where we see her going to school, as soon as she bids her mother goodbye and walks into the building, she turns her uniform blazer inside out to feature her hand-drawn doodles, characteristic of her design style.

It may be easy to shy away from certain industries or certain products because of what is already on the market. But, your product and your business can still be unique because you are unique.

The magic comes when you’re able to tap into what makes you different and find the audience that is looking for exactly what you have to offer them.

Lesson 2: Even if you try to be “someone else,” your authentic self will make himself/herself known.

As she grew up, Estella tried to suppress Cruella and live “normally.”

And, for a while, she is successful. As a child and then a young adult grifting on the streets alongside Horace and Jasper, there isn’t anything about her that would stand out (this was the goal, as her line of work requires a girl to blend in).

But, even after years of keeping Cruella at bay, Estella can never really eliminate her. She’s always in there, and over time it becomes harder and harder to prevent her entirely. And once Estella take Cruella “out of the box,” as she says in the movie, it’s almost impossible to put her back inside.

In contemporary entrepreneurship, this is often called your “authentic self.” Social media allows us to be anything we want to be, “real” or not. It’s like dating — everyone’s on their best behavior for a little while, but the more you get to know each other the more quirks (the ones you’re a bit embarrassed to put out into the world) show up, often completely unintentionally.

But can I let you in on a little secret? Just like in dating, those little quirks often allow for deeper relationships, because they make you different from everyone else in your industry.

And in today’s market, relationships are the driving force behind a successful company.

Lesson 3: You must often be many different sides of the same person, especially at the beginning.

This may seem a bit counterintuitive given the above section, but here me out.

Yes, Estella tried to suppress Cruella and couldn’t.

Yes, Cruella could be seen as Estella’s “authentic self.”

But let’s not forget Estella existed. She is still part of the dichotomy. They are both very real.

We see this in one of the later scenes of the movie, when Estella has all but completely morphed into Cruella. She has learned the truth about her mother, and she goes back to the water fountain at Regency Park to pay her respects one last time.

She’s angry, as is expected, but right as she is living she turns one last time and mutters, “I still love you.”

Just as Cruella is unable to be suppressed completely through Estella’s childhood, Estella will always be present in Cruella as an adult.

It’s okay to be introverted and extroverted.

It’s okay to be creative and analytical.

It’s okay to be both the preppy kid and the nerdy kid at the high school cafeteria table.

It’s okay to do multiple things, at the same time.

And it’s okay to show this all to your audience. In fact, I encourage it.

Branding, these days, isn’t about fixing yourself into a neat little box with a neat little bow. It’s about showing yourself as a real person, with real interests, and — let’s be honest — real faults. Not everything is going to be perfect, because no one is perfect. Full stop.

There are ways to do this, but you must find a way to balance in how you show up to your audience.

Lesson 4: When you’re on the right path, it will not be easy.

As a birthday gift, Jasper and Horace get Estella a job at the department store she dreams of working at. It’s an entry-level position, but it’s a starting point for working towards her lifelong goal of becoming a fashion designer.

But an entry-level position at this store requires little more than scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. Hardly the career in fashion Estella had dreamed of when she flipped her jacket inside out to make a statement at school.

The easy thing to do would be to quit and go back to grifting. After all, it was more exciting, it was easier, and I’m sure it paid better.

But it wasn’t in line with the vision Estella had for her life, and so she continued to show up every day.

When many people outside of entrepreneurship imagine the life of an entrepreneur, they see glamorous lunches, high-level discussions and foosball tables in the break room.

What they don’t imagine is the reality of #entrepreneurlife: spreadsheets, cheap coffee, and weekends working on the idea you just can’t seem to get out of your mind.

Lesson 5: Have a tarket.

In every goal Estella (and Cruella) had, there was a defined target.

In their grifting days, Estella got distracted by the billboard for the department store (and The Baroness).

Later, once she had embraced Cruella and set her sights on the attention and, even later than that, her mother’s necklace, every move she made progressed her toward her goal.

If you know where you’re going, you can make the decisions necessary to get there, and you’re likely to get there sooner.

How much growth do you want to see over the next year? What does that mean for how you schedule your day today? Luck can definitely play a role, but very few “overnight successes” are actually overnight.

Most spend 10 years to get to the point where they can take advantage of an opportunity that comes their way.

Lesson 6: Whatever you do, do it well.

Once Cruella makes her appearance she does not hold back. Everything from her basic designs to her grand gestures are well executed. There is not a detail out of place. And because the execution is so on-point, she is seen as a legitimate threat and not as a pest to be shooed away.

A quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln is, “Whatever you are, be a good one.” And, even if it seems a bit trite to you, it’s not a bad reminder.

There is a caveat to mention here: done is better than perfect when it comes to starting a business. You can’t whittle without a block of wood.

And so, even if your first product isn’t exactly as you’d like it to be, if it is the best you can offer at the time, still offer it. You can refine it down with the feedback of your customers.

But anything worth doing is worth doing well. Even if your first product isn’t top-of-the-line, your customer service can be top notch. It doesn’t cost any extra money to be pleasant and responsive.

Where you are able to provide the best, do so.

Lesson 7: Find the need, then fulfill it.

At one point in the movie, Cruella says to her friend, Artie, “Some people need a villain to believe in, so I’m happy to fit the bill.”

The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who can identify a true need, and then find a way to fill it.

Steve Jobs, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in modern business, once said, “We need to learn. We need to understand what life is like in the community to understand what they want, or what they’re gonna want in the future.”

Other entrepreneurs call it “market research,” but really it’s learning about your customer and finding a problem you could solve or a need you could fill.

Often, our first (and best) target customer is ourselves — or a person we were in the past. Because, let’s be honest, who knows us better?

Ask yourself these questions:

• What is something that would have made my life easier?
• What is an experience or a product I would have created differently?

Just those few questions may be the starting place you need to find your great idea.

Lesson 8: You must take risks.

After getting shut down over and over when she expressed interest beyond her job of cleaning the toilets, Estella finally took the initiative and took over the design of a store window in the middle of the night.

This gesture served as a turning point for the movie because it was the first point at which Estella took a significant step toward her goal of becoming a designer.

Similarly, taking the first risk often the turning point in our business. While it’s not necessarily “easy” to go about the day-to-day of being an entrepreneur, until you take a risk you’re not likely to grow in any meaningful way.

Lesson 9: You must have a powerful why.

This is the crux of entrepreneurship, and it’s also the heart and binding theme of the movie. Near the end, after everything has been revealed and all her plans have played out, Estela visits the fountain at Regency Park in London, to connect with her mom.

She feels guilty in thinking she killed her mother and she wants to live up to the idea her mom wanted for her. Even in her devious schemes, going from Estella to Cruella and back again, her why always revolved around her mother.

Entrepreneurs refer to this as the “why.” Simon Sinek even wrote a book on it: Start With Why. Your why is the driving force behind your business (and it must be strong enough to see you through the spreadsheets and solitary weekends mentioned above.)

Without a strong why, your business likely will not succeed, because it has no real reason to.

Lesson 10: Sometimes, despite your best intentions, you will fail.

The heist did not go as planned on any level.

The safe was empty, the rats cut through the wires, and (the final blow) the dalmatians took the necklace away from Buddy and spoiled the whole operation. But this scene serves as a powerful lesson: we can have the most powerful and clear why, we can have a plan and we can set ourselves up for achieving our target, and things will still go wrong.

Because as much as we want to prepare for every contingency, sometimes things just happen. It’s life. And when (not if) these situations come around, the best response is often to take a step back, regroup, and find a different way forward.

Lesson 11: Find the right team.

Without Horace and Jasper, Estella might never have even gotten through the door at the department store, much less the job and later the opportunity to work for The Baroness herself. Who knows? She may not have even survived living on the streets.

In their grifting days, Horace, Jasper, and Estella each had their strengths which, when combined, allowed them to be so successful as pickpockets and general thieves.

The same is true in business. Every one of us has our strengths, and our weaknesses. And while in the beginning we may have to wear al the hats and play all the roles, there will come a day when we must start to build a team if we want to see the growth we imagined for our business.

But once you do get to the point that you need to build a team, who you surround yourself with is so important in how our business moves forward. Surround yourself with people (in your business and in your life) who share your vision and see your why.

You likely will not find someone who loves your business as much as you do, and that is okay. But you should find something who has a passion for your product or service, and for your audience in the same way that you do.

Lesson 12: Put yourself in the room with people at the level you want to be, and dress the part.

The Black and White Ball was an event held by the Baroness every year, and it had one rule: guests must only wear black and/or white.

No exceptions.

And as a buck to this tradition, and to the explicit rules, Cruella shows up not only in a vibrant red dress, but one of the Baroness’ own vintage originals. In fact, the only black and white element of her ensemble was her hair, which Estella had painstakingly sought to cover up since childhood.

But Estella, the meek assistant who shows promise on occasion, was not there. Cruella was, and she would not be ignored.

If you are the smartest, most successful person in the room, you are in the wrong room.

Entrepreneurs seem to have an insatiable love of learning, and the way to be constantly learning is to be constantly listening to people one (or ten) levels above you, reading the books they read and listening to the podcasts they listen to.

But it’s important to also keep this in mind: If you want a seat at the table, you must bring something to the table. As Lesson 1 said, there is something about you that is unique. And there is a way you can provide value, even to the people you are seeking value from.

Lesson 13: Use the language (and body language) of your audience.

Cruella matches the Baroness at every turn, because she wants to capture her attention.

Had Cruella not done this, chances are the Baroness would not have given her the time of day.

And the same is true for your audience.

Pat Quinn, a speaking coach, talks about using the “language of the consumer.” At the bare minimum, using their language ensures they understand your message. Most people not in your industry don’t know your lingo, and will just blow past your content and your call-to-action, without stopping to take a look at the value you could bring to them.

I’ve seen this firsthand in real estate. Fun fact: the average person does not know what the letters “C.M.A.” mean. They don’t even know what a “Comparative Market Analysis” is. But they do know what you mean when you say, “an analysis of where your home might fit on the market.”

When you use the language your customer uses, you are relating to them but also (more importantly) you are allowing them to relate to you.

And when they feel they can relate to you, they feel they can trust you.

And when they trust you, they are more likely to look more closely at what you have to ofer them.

Lesson 14: Not every role model will be positive, but you can still learn something.

This is a huge lesson that I don’t think we talk about enough.

The Baroness was certainly not a positive role model for Estella, but she was a role model nonetheless.

When it comes to mentors and role models, we often look for someone who can show us what success looks like. Someone who has gone before us and done well.

And I don’t want to discredit that idea, because it’s really important to find someone to look up to in this way. But it is also vitally important to learn from the mistakes of others, to avoid making those mistakes ourselves.

As an example (when I worked in an office), I found myself making mental notes about the people one or two levels above me — what they did well that I wanted to adopt, and what they didn’t do well that I wanted to avoid as I built my career and leadership skills.

Both are key, because they teach important — albeit different — lessons.

Lesson 15: If you love the people around you only because they don’t say “no,” then before too long they won’t want to be around you anymore.

Near the end of the movie, Cruella and Jasper are on the balcony sharing a quiet moment. In their conversation, Jasper says to Cruella, “I find it very difficult to say no to you sometimes.”

Cruella responds, “It’s one of the things I love about you.”

It may feel good for our ego to have a posse of “yes” people around us that go along with our every wish, but it likely isn’t good for our business. The strongest businesses often have a variety of thought leaders at the table, bouncing ideas off each other around the common goal of creating a better company.

Businesses thrive when ideas are critiqued and refined, and people do, too. Social media makes it really easy to see and hear only what makes us feel good, we can forget that analog life doesn’t always operate this way. It’s not supposed to.

In fact, when someone is able to disagree with you, and vocalize that disagreement, it can often be a sign of respect that they are putting themselves out there to go against the decision or offer a different solution.

The true test of your strength as a leader, then, is in how you respond to disagreement. You set the tone for the office, and if you want your office culture to be different than it currently is, the simplest way to change it is in how you respond to people who have different opinions than yours.

Is this an exhaustive list? I’m sure not. But it is a good start, and perhaps there’s something here that struck you a bit differently or reached you in a different way.

Get involved in the conversation!

What’s a movie that has inspired you in your journey as an entrepreneur? Or, what is one lesson you learned from a movie that helped shape how you run your business?

Leave me a comment with anything you’d like to see me write about or any feedback you have on what I’ve already written.