Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables

by Phil Vischer

Life is tricky. God gave us all the freedom to choose, and with that gift comes the freedom to choose poorly. My dad’s choices were costly to us, and even more so to him. But as I think you’ll see in my story, God has an uncanny ability to redeem our mistakes. To use them for good. I’m not saying God wanted my parents to split—my pain and isolation wasn’t his initial plan for me—but I am overwhelmed by his ability to take our hurts and our lousy choices and turn them to gold. To bless us—and others—through our broken lives.

Fred Rogers describes the shock of his initial exposure to commercial television as his parents fired up their first TV set in the early 1950s like this: “They were throwing pies at each other.” The sight of grown adults using this amazing new medium to showcase something as juvenile and pedestrian as a pie fight unsettled young Fred so deeply that he decided to spend the rest of his life showing the world how television could be good for you. And that is exactly what he did. By the time I was in high school, though, a pie fight would have been a welcomed respite from the drivel Hollywood was cramming through America’s set-top boxes on an increasing basis.

We were “tornado hunters.” We even composed a theme song for the occasion, which we sang over and over while hunting. (After all, anything worth doing really should be done to the accompaniment of a theme song.)

Some were even dabbling with character animation, as in Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing music video, produced with a Bosch FGS-4000, the first commercially available computer animation system.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had known what they were up against right from the beginning, we probably wouldn’t have Apple Computer. The same could be said for Hewlett Packard, Yahoo, Google, and countless other companies founded by bright-eyed kids who didn’t know how much they didn’t know. Without the irrational exuberance of youth, we wouldn’t have any of those companies. And, most likely, we wouldn’t have VeggieTales either.

A marriage that grows and lasts in a culture that sneers and spits on the very idea of lifelong commitment. That is a big deal. But that’s material for a different book. One, perhaps, for when our kids are a little older.

The “creativity experts” will tell you always to throw away your first idea, since it is often the most obvious or clichéd. Set aside your first idea and dig deeper—that’s where genius is found. I never had much regard for creativity experts. After abandoning candy bars, my very first idea was a cucumber. I ran with it. And now, looking for a short, round veggie to compliment my tall, skinny guy, the first thought that popped into my head was a tomato. And I ran with it.

Every truly worthwhile pursuit, it seems, begins with a “Herculean” effort—a period of almost superhuman work from a small band of committed zealots.

What makes something “go big”? From Mickey Mouse to the Beatles, Precious Moments to Pokemon, modern history is filled with stories of unexpected cultural phenomena and surprise smash hits. In his book The Tipping Point—itself a bit of a “smash hit”—Malcolm Gladwell theorizes that most cultural phenomena spread not unlike epidemic diseases—from person to person, through social contact. He compares Baltimore’s syphilis epidemic in the 1980s to the surprise resurgence of Hush Puppy shoes among New York’s fashionistas a decade later. He believes that in both cases the rapid expansion of these “epidemics” was not merely due to the fact that a certain number of people had become “infected” and therefore could spread the word (or the virus), but rather that certain types of people had become infected—people who traveled in broad circles and exerted significant social influence. According to Gladwell’s theories, it isn’t just that people start talking about a product, it’s that the right people start talking about a product.

So, contrary to what might seem logical, mothers of young children were not the earliest adopters or promoters of VeggieTales. College kids took that role.

tried to imagine that lesson without God in it—“Forgive others, because . . . it will ‘grease the wheels of society’?” If God wasn’t in it, our characters were just flapping their jaws. It was all nonsense. God was the “why” behind everything I wanted to communicate. Take him out, and I might as well go home, sit on the couch, and watch MTV. God was why I had started in the first place.

Failure is no fun. I don’t think anyone will argue with me on that point. But success brings its own set of challenges and pitfalls. Sure, it sounds fun, but the reality can be something else entirely.

Walt, on the other hand, didn’t just stop at being a guy who loved great storytelling, innovation, and “feel-good, middle-American values.” Within the studio that bore his name, he built an entire culture around great storytelling, innovation, and “feel-good, middle-American values.” Make a cynical remark about a sweet, sentimental scene in one of Disney’s films, and Walt would show you the door. Swear in front of a guest at Disneyland, and Walt would show you the door. As a result, the employees who lasted at the Disney Studios were those who shared Walt’s values. Those with differing values and goals were either weeded out in the interviewing process or left the company of their own accord after noticing they didn’t seem to fit. Visionary companies, the research showed, were companies whose founders built their values into the culture of the organization. Into the ways they hired and managed their employees. Into the ways they celebrated successes and rewarded behavior. In fact, IBM even had their own songbook at one point, filled with songs praising the big computer maker. Not into singing songs about IBM? You should probably look for work elsewhere.

All in all, the researchers observed, the cultures of truly visionary, lasting companies could be described as “cultlike.” But rather than being cults of personality, rallying around a specific leader, they were cults of ideology, rallying around a core set of beliefs and values. If you were fanatical about customer service, you’d feel right at home at Nordstrom. Fanatical about coffee? Try Starbucks.

It was time to build Big Idea. But how? The book said great organizations were marked by clearly articulated beliefs, values, and goals.

After a few hours of laborious wordsmithing, I thought I had it: Big Idea’s Purpose To markedly enhance the moral and spiritual fabric of our culture through creative media.

went back to the exercise. I had my core beliefs, values, and purpose. Only one thing was left—a “big, hairy, audacious goal,” or “BHAG,” in Built to Last parlance. A “BHAG” is a seemingly impossible long-term goal that serves as a rallying point for a developing organization. Like Walt attempting to produce the world’s first animated feature film. Like NASA aiming for the moon. “Big, hairy, audacious goals,” according to Collins and Porras, were vital tools for visionary companies to inspire their troops to do the impossible.

I looked back at the book. A visionary company needed a BHAG to inspire its troops. What to do? I’ll make one up. Just temporarily, of course, as an exercise. I’ll make one up and put it down as a placeholder, and then, when God gives me my real BHAG (you know, like “build an ark and start loading animals”), I’ll just swap it out. In hindsight, I wonder why I thought this was a good idea. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Being the most trusted of the “biggies” would mean we were consistently beneficial regardless of our size. It is relatively easy to be trusted if you attempt very little. Make only one product, sell it to only one person, meet that person’s expectations, and then shut down the company, and you will be 100 percent trusted. But the more products you make and the more people you serve, the harder it is to consistently live up to all their expectations. The bigger you get, the harder it is to remain pure. That’s what I wanted Big Idea to be—big and pure. It was only a “placeholder” BHAG, of course, but I liked it.

As fun as it sounds, though, the press exposure played a critical role in the success of VeggieTales.

The buzz about VeggieTales’ unprecedented success in Christian bookstores earned us a spot in the coveted “new release” section on the power aisle, but it was the free publicity from all the newspaper and TV stories that made shoppers stop when they saw our package. “Oh—VeggieTales. I just read about that.”

The problem with these giant, publicly traded media goliaths isn’t that they are immoral, but rather that they are profoundly amoral. They are valueless. They are simply too big to focus on any specific value system or moral code, and instead must be all things to all people. So Warner Brothers sells Bugs Bunny with one hand and Snoop Doggy Dog with the other. Viacom sells Blue’s Clues with one hand and MTV with the other. Disney sells Mickey Mouse with one hand and Desperate Housewives with the other. We aren’t talking about companies making blenders or farm implements here; we’re talking about companies in the business of selling images and ideas—the business of influencing beliefs. And each is valueless!

Big Idea would grow as big as possible while still being 100 percent beneficial, and then it would stop growing. Beyond a certain size, in the world of entertainment, you simply cannot afford to let morality govern your work. Your shareholders will not allow it. Regrettably, the Walt Disney Company had clearly now passed that size.

good enough to send Mr. Silent away smiling, silent at last. Don the accountant, however, was not so silent. He knew VeggieTales was selling well, but he saw more clearly than most the rate at which our expenses were ballooning. So with each new hire, his quiet voice would pipe up: “I think we’re spending too much money.” “Silly fellow,” I’d think to myself, “Doesn’t he see how well we’re doing?” Sure, we were hiring a lot of people, but we needed them to keep building the business—to become the “Christian Disney” that more and more seemed to be our divinely preordained destiny. God was behind our success. He wouldn’t let Big Idea fall apart. Besides, my CFO from Price Waterhouse and my $3 billion ex-CEO partner who worked for Jack Welch both said we were doing fine. For the next several years, Don’s still, small voice kept echoing, “I think we’re spending too much money.” But the more he repeated his concern, the easier it became to tune it out like background noise.

The year after I had pericarditis, I contracted strep throat. The year after that, shingles. All stress related, the results of an increasingly maniacal schedule that had me bouncing between press interviews, speaking engagements, and endless meetings with animators, marketers, licensors, architects, and designers. My days were now scheduled down to fifteen-minute increments. Even the tasks I should have enjoyed—the creative writing projects or strategy sessions—were no longer fun. Big Idea was now creating toys, books, greeting cards—you name it. Exactly what I had wanted. But my time was so stretched now that the only projects I could handle personally were the videos themselves, and even those I did only by locking myself away in a nearby hotel for intense two-day writing marathons characterized more by stress than joy.

Burnout and spiritual anemia

“I’m 95 percent with you,” our licensing VP told me several times after hearing my point of view in a strategy meeting. “Hmm,” I remember thinking at the time, “95 percent is pretty good.” What she really meant with that statement, I now realize, was, “I’m not quite with you.” And having your key leaders “not quite with you” in the heat of battle is pretty much the same as having them not with you at all.

My president, CFO, marketing VP, and licensing VP began meeting weekly without me. When our new VP of human resources joined the company in the fall of 1999, he was invited to join the weekly “no Phil” meetings. He declined. Our executive vice president, a good friend of mine with a background in Christian ministry, was never invited. I had no idea the meetings were even taking place. Lines were being drawn. Sides were being chosen. People, I was learning, were nothing like computers.

Mutiny!

It’s interesting to note that only one out of three companies that makes the Inc. list repeats its appearance the following year. What happens to the rest? Many see their growth stall, never to fully recover. Others simply cease to exist. Vanish. You see, when a small company experiences extremely rapid growth, it soon ceases to be a “small company.” Yet just because it no longer qualifies as “small” doesn’t necessarily mean it is now “big.” In other words, just because you’re no longer “Tim’s Software Hut” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “Microsoft.” And somewhere in the middle, many, many companies fail. Inc. magazine noticed this dynamic and had several business researchers look into it. What emerged was a picture of a treacherous period in any business’s growth when a company finds itself “too big to be small yet too small to be big.” The researchers dubbed it “No Man’s Land.” “No Man’s Land” threat number one, according to Inc.’s experts: Small companies, experiencing rapid initial growth, attempt to make the leap to being “big” without having a clear plan for sustaining that growth. What got you to $10 million in sales won’t necessarily take you to $100 million. We sold more than six million VeggieTales videos in 1998. Unable to imagine selling more than that, I entered 1999 assuming Big Idea’s continued growth would depend on expanding into other areas like television and feature films. Unfortunately, the executive team I put together

Lying in bed at night, I wondered if my executive team really had Big Idea on the right track. When I asked my marketing VP in the hall one day why he thought we could still achieve significant growth in home video sales, he simply smiled and responded, “Because I’m here!”

As small companies grow, the experts at Inc. magazine observed, their need for top-notch management often arrives years before their ability to attract or even afford top-notch management. Many small companies fail to survive “No Man’s Land” because they either never find the management talent they need to make the leap from “small” to “big,” or even worse, they bring in the wrong management.

In the end, some non-Christian artists left Big Idea because it was “too much like a church.” Some Christian artists left because it was “not enough like a church.” My mission statement, intentionally vague to keep cynical journalists from writing us off as radical right wackos, proved equally adept at allowing employees to draw various, often contradictory conclusions about what it actually meant. “Is Big Idea a Christian ministry?” Ask twelve different employees and get twelve different answers. Yes. No. Sort of. What do you mean by “ministry”? Even I wasn’t entirely sure. I knew my life was a ministry, but my company? A ministry? No, my company was a mess.

The process quite often resembled The Lord of the Flies more than The Art of Management.

Ha!

A full decade of my life had gone into this often exasperating pursuit of the stories I felt God wanted me tell. For the first time, I really felt the weight and fatigue of building and attempting to run the company alone for so long—a task I had seldom enjoyed. Sitting alone in a hotel room somewhere in Los Angeles, I found myself breaking down in tears. I was exhausted.

“Well,” I thought, “maybe if the home video does really, really well . . .” I was beginning to sound like a Cubs fan.

While some of his points were certainly well taken, what struck me more about the letter was the emotion behind it. He was angry. Really angry. He closed with the interesting statement that if I didn’t respond to his criticism, he would send his letter to major Christian magazines and “expose” our creative short-comings to the entire Christian world. A dream is a powerful thing. Letters like his made me realize just how much emotion people had invested in my dream. Not just the artists, designers, and businesspeople who had moved their families across the country to actively join the effort, but also the fans. This fellow, like many others, was so excited about my dream of a “Christian Disney” that my failure to deliver on that dream struck him much more deeply than I would have expected. Big Idea had become his dream, too, and now that his dream was failing, he was angry.

And remember, as of April 2000, the company needed $20 million to survive through the Jonah production even though Jonah was at that point only a $7 million film. The rest of the money was needed to cover our gross overhiring in areas like marketing, human resources, and design. And what led to the overhiring? The wild enthusiasm of 1998 and 1999, inspired partly by exponential sales growth up to that point, partly by the general “irrational exuberance” of that era in business history (think “dot-com”), and partly by the misreading of the VeggieTales business as a packaged goods business rather than an entertainment business.

VeggieTales success itself had become a huge challenge. Whenever you have an unprecedented hit, future planning becomes extraordinarily difficult simply because there are no precedents. There were no comparables for VeggieTales. Our sales had skyrocketed 3,300 percent in four years! Against that backdrop, what could we project for the future? More skyrocketing? Was our growth almost done or just getting started? Look at another example: Between Christmas 2003 and Christmas 2004, sales of Apple’s iPod increased by a staggering 500 percent—a huge success but also a huge challenge. How many iPods do you make for Christmas 2005—500 percent more than 2004? 100 percent more? 10 percent less? Unprecedented success is extremely difficult to manage simply because it is unprecedented. Every year is a big ol’ guess. Guess wrong one way and you’ll choke your success by running out of product or not having enough manpower to support the demand. Guess wrong the other way, and you could crash and burn right in the midst of your success. As wrong as the forecasts my team made in 1999 ended up being, I honestly believe they did the best they could with the information and the experience they had.

And I could blame the first bunch of executives for making the company so huge, but then I have to remember that one of the things that attracted them to Big Idea in the first place was a line I put into our mission statement way back in 1997—something about building “a top four family media brand within twenty years.” A statement that sounded an awful lot like we were supposed to get really big. A statement that, even at the time, I was pretty sure had emanated suspiciously from my own noggin in response to a business book exercise, as opposed to from God after much prayer and reflection.

Of course, I could have waited for God to supply his twenty-year goal for Big Idea. I could have overruled my executives at any point. I could have stopped the hiring, decreased the forecasts, redirected the strategies. As controlling shareholder, CEO, and sole board member (building a board of directors was something we often discussed but never got around to actually doing), I had the final word on everything. So who is ultimately to blame for the collapse of Big Idea? That should be pretty clear by now. I have seen the enemy, and he is me. My strengths built Big Idea, and my weaknesses brought it down.

As VeggieTales took off, I became terrified that my business inexperience and lack of people skills would result in Big Idea’s failure. So, in a panic, I brought in others to help, often spending far too little time getting to know them before or after the hire. I then backed down from my own convictions, assuming that an executive with an impressive resume surely knew better than a Bible college dropout. And I launched projects like Jonah before we were really ready to handle them, assuming we’d figure things out on the fly as I had done in my basement and with the very first VeggieTales episode. The results were some amazingly rabid fans and absolute organizational chaos. The result was the rise—and fall—of Big Idea. For the record, I’m sorry.

And I’m really, really sorry. Just as Big Idea really wasn’t ready to tackle the production challenge of Jonah, I really wasn’t ready to tackle the management challenge of Big Idea. There. Now I’ve said it. The real question to ask in any failure, of course, isn’t “Who should we blame?” but rather “What did we learn?”

Thing I Learned #1: Never lose sight of the numbers. This is a tricky concept, especially when the business I was starting was supposed to be a ministry. I mean, wasn’t I supposed to stay focused on the ministry of my enterprise? The message? The audience I was serving? Well, yes, I was. But the numbers showed the financial health of my ministry. And ignoring my ministry’s financial health, even for a brief period, was like ignoring my own health. Financial resources are like teeth—ignore them and they’ll go away. Ignore your health and you’ll go away. Just as dead men make lousy ministers, dead organizations make lousy ministries. The trick here is that creative people called to ministry—“creative ministers” like myself—are seldom gifted at financial management. And gifted financial managers are seldom effective creative ministers.

Why? Because most gifted finance folks are so heavily influenced by their financial training and focus that they often have a hard time seeing the world in nonfinancial terms. Everything becomes a numbers decision. And nothing kills creativity and ministry faster than viewing everything as a numbers decision.

So who should be in charge? Who should call the shots? Both of them, that’s who. The balance between creative inspiration and good stewardship of resources is vital to any successful enterprise. Neither can be subordinated to the other without serious and highly detrimental consequences.

The key to the Walt Disney Company was the partnership of Walt and Roy. The key to the partnership of Walt and Roy was mutual submission, based in genuine love for each other. Walt knew he couldn’t do what Roy could do, and Roy knew he couldn’t do what Walt could do. So they submitted to each other’s area of expertise and worked together, ultimately for the benefit of the ideas and the benefit of their audience.

If God has given you ideas for ministry, look for your Roy. It may not be one person—your Roy may be several people or even a whole board of directors. But the relationship will work only if the people you bring in to perform that role are there because they want to see your ideas succeed—want to see you succeed. There can be no other agendas. If, on the other hand, God has made you a Roy, look for your Walt. Look for someone with creative gifting and calling. That person needs you desperately. This is tricky, of course, because Walts typically hang out with other Walts and Roys typically hang out with other Roys.

Ignore the ideas of the suits at your own peril, creatives. There is great value—and great creativity—in a clever spreadsheet or financing scheme. Love. Mutual submission. It all sounds very Christian, and, amazingly, seems to be the key to successful, long-term organizations. Amazing ideas come to life when people with complementary gifting devote themselves selflessly to each other, not for their own success, but for the success of the idea.

Thing I Learned #2: Ignore the voice that says, “You deserve it.” “Whenever I travel, I now rent compact cars and stay at the Hampton Inn. Always. I don’t care how careful I think I am or how successful my new business might become, I have learned that once I start upgrading my travel accommodations, I’ll start upgrading everything else too. Everything will become more expensive. Once I, as the leader, start spending more money than necessary, everyone else will too. They’re watching.

It all starts, I think, when a voice shows up inside your head one day and whispers, “You deserve it.” I remember the first time I heard that voice. Big Idea was booming, and I was beginning to hire real “executives.” Coming from companies like Kraft and GE, they were used to being paid like executives and living like executives. They drove executive cars, lived in executive houses, and ate executive meals. Up until this point, I had always lived modestly, though more out of necessity than deep philosophical conviction. But now I was hanging out with executives, and their lives looked like fun. And then that little voice showed up in my head and said, “You’re an executive, too, you know. After all, they all work for you.” Good heavens. The voice was right. I was more than just an “executive”—I was the CEO of a successful company! I was the executive of the executives! “Look at all the hard work you’ve done,” the voice continued. “Look what you’ve built. Don’t you deserve it?”

And suddenly everything at Big Idea started costing more. Meals, travel, equipment, everything—because we were successful, and we deserved it. That little whisper—“You deserve it”—comes, I believe, from the worst part of our sinful natures, the part that always wants another cookie, a bigger house, a nicer TV. I’m pretty sure it’s the same voice that told Hitler he “deserved” Poland. Advertisers know the power of that voice, and they use it relentlessly. The new car, the ridiculously high-fat dessert, the fantastically overpriced watch—do you need it? Of course not. But you deserve it. I have come to hate that voice. I will avoid any product that tries to influence my purchase decision by telling me I deserve it. Why? First of all, the appeal is insanely selfish. If I deserve it, it must follow that someone else does not. I have achieved more. I am special.