There's always a messy middle.

The Toy Story 5 trailer came out this week and it had me thinking about how incredible it is that Pixar continues to make these massive box-office hits that continually break new ground. Sure, not every film lands, but generally if it has the Pixar name on it, it’s going to work.

And like most success stories, we show up with the benefit of hindsight and assume success was always guaranteed. But Pixar’s early days were far from glamourous.

Pixar was actually founded as a computer hardware division inside Lucasfilm, led by a man named Ed Catmull, whose ambition was to create the first fully computer-animated film. At the time, hand-drawn animation ruled and there was no roadmap for what Catmull wanted to build.

When George Lucas faced financial pressure all the way back in the early 1980s, the division spun out into an independent business and, in 1986, a young entrepreneur (who’d just been fired from his own company) bought it for $10 million.

That entrepreneur was Steve Jobs.

For the next eight years, Pixar lost money. Every single year. Their hardware failed, the software failed, and even their early commercials couldn’t bring stability. They eventually created a short film called Tin Toy, which won an Academy Award for Best Short Animation. This was their moment of hope, but every pivot still felt like survival.

For years, the team operated under a cloud of whether the business would exist 12 months later. They persevered by keeping the small team, improving their tools, and maintaining a belief that something was going to work.

And then, Disney called. The team at Disney had seen the quality of Pixar’s early shorts and needed help producing a computer-animated feature. That became a three-picture deal with the first film being Toy Story.

With the benefit of hindsight, we all might think this was a guaranteed success, but Toy Story almost collapsed halfway through. Disney executives hated the early drafts. The tone was wrong, the humour fell flat and the characters were unappealing. Even Tom Hanks (Woody) admitted that his character sounded like a “real jerk”. Each side blamed the other and production was halted in November 1993 of what became known internally as the “Black Friday” shutdown.

It was a critical juncture for the Pixar team. If they couldn’t make Toy Story work, then the company wouldn’t likely survive.

Pixar had to rebuild everything from the ground up. New writers were brought in (with personal financial contributions from Steve Jobs), storylines reworked, and the tone completely reset. And from that chaos emerged a film that changed animation forever.

After Toy Story, Pixar delivered hit after hit, including the brilliant Finding Nemo. However, behind the scenes, the relationship with Disney was fraying. Disney claimed ownership of any sequels and Pixar wanted creative control. The conflict escalated so sharply that Steve Jobs, keen to sell Pixar to Disney, pulled out of negotiations entirely.

This was a small studio walking away from the most powerful distributor in animation. And it was based on a refusal to compromise on the kind of work they wanted to make.

Eventually, in 2006, Disney acquired Pixar for a massive $7.4 billion and placed Pixar leadership in charge of Disney Animation. The student became the master.

Pixar’s story is riddled with failure, stalled progress, and uncertainty. It’s a reminder that resilience often looks like commitment to something important, even when the future is blurry. It’s incremental, cumulative, built on hundreds of small decisions to keep moving forward.

Here are my 4 lessons from Pixar for modern work and life

1. Vision needs patience. Pixar held onto the mission of a fully animated film for decades before it was possible. Most people quit at year two, but they had the patience, and the runway, to make it that far. We must plan until the end, even if we don’t necessarily know where that end might be.

2. Reinvention is resilience. Pixar changed business models several times before they found the right one. It’s one of the most common themes when it comes to entrepreneurship: the original idea we start out with usually requires edits and adjustments at least once. And reinvention is also a constant theme of resilience. We must be willing to adapt, pivot, try another pathway at any time. At work, this means we don’t need the perfect plan, but we do need the willingness to adapt without losing sight of the greater mission.

3. Culture matters. Pixar’s creative culture included candor and psychological safety, and it’s probably the key reason they endured. Resilience is built by strong environments and leadership that empowers the team to hold true to that culture. The team at Pixar believed that the unpredictable is the only path to the groundbreaking, and this mindset gave them strength in uncertain times.

4. Success brings its own storms. After Toy Story, Pixar struggled with partnership breakdowns, internal pressure, rising expectations, and the fear of becoming predictable. Once we’ve tasted success, we understand that the level of expectation shifts much higher. Suddenly the question shifts from “how do we make it?” to “how do we maintain it?”. And that is when resilience really matters, because it’s key to not just overcoming failure, but also handling success.

Uncertainty in life (and the future) can be scary. Most of us prefer the predictability of what happened yesterday, but that path usually results in more of the same. If we truly want to make positive change, it begins with doing something outside of our comfort zone while sticking with our values. It means trying a new recipe, risking an awkward conversation, or facing some embarrassment.

But mostly, it requires us to do the work. To show up with resilience and readiness. Because that’s where the groundbreaking change occurs, and that’s also how we’ll be prepared when the shit really hits the fan.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré @ Resilient Minds

PS - we are just 39 days out from 2026. Perfect timing to start thinking about goals and ambitions for an exciting year ahead. Set your team up with the tools to navigate change, uncertainty and perhaps a bit of chaos with a resilience workshop. I’ve just returned from a workshop series in Australia and all 4 organizations were delighted with the results. Check this one out and reply to this email to set up a time to chat.