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03 Apr 2023
Ep095: The wealthiest generation in the world
00:48:09
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we are talking about building a knowledge base in Chat GPT for a network of people that can reutilize it for the predictable future.
Ep101: From Enhancing Productivity to Breaking Dependencies
00:51:50
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, Dan and I dive into the power of mental images and harnessing our imagination to overcome trauma and achieve our objectives
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean speaks on Implementing the 50-minute focus finder system. Which for him lead to a significant reduction in screen time and increased productivity.
Setting goals, creating an optimal environment, limiting distractions, and establishing a fixed timeframe can help improve focus and efficiency in both personal and professional life.
Studies have shown that mental images and imagination can be powerful tools to overcome trauma and achieve goals.
Working with sleep psychologists and brain function experts can help reduce reliance on medications like Adderall and improve overall well-being.
Changing sleep habits is crucial for better restorative rest and overall well-being.
Entrepreneurs can create their own pathways for success by committing to their own goals and carving out opportunities.
The gap between what is taught in schools and what is valued in the marketplace may contribute to declining college enrollment.
Collaboration is essential for success in any endeavor.
Targeted writing and AI newsletters can be valuable tools for entrepreneurs.
Maintaining reserve currency status is important for the US dollar and global economy.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
Mr Jackson, you're in full voice There we go. You are in full voice today for Welcome to Cloudlandia.
Dean Jackson
That is exactly right, and it's been a great week in Cloudlandia and, more particularly, a great week in Deanlandia. Okay, that's the reason.
Dan Sullivan
That's the reason that Dean Jackson creates between the mainland and Cloudlandia. A lot of people don't know that, but there's a secret territory between these two worlds.
Dean Jackson
That's a secret territory. I love it, and there's a secret handshake to access. I know it's a funny thing. One of the.
Dan Sullivan
Secret tattoo. There's a secret tattoo. There's caps, t-shirts and mugs. That's right.
Dean Jackson
That's so funny, but not bumper stickers.
Dan Sullivan
But not bumper stickers.
Dean Jackson
No bumper stickers. In Deanlandia I've had an interesting, I'll tell you. I mentioned to you the distinction that I discovered between less screen time and more dean time And I successfully lowered my screen time by 29% this week.
Dan Sullivan
What specifically did you go after?
Dean Jackson
I spent more time. Everything that I do, i get done in what I call 50-minute focus finders, and the basics of the idea are that I've had ADD and I would always look at, even with the best intentions. I would want to do something, but I would find it difficult to focus or to do what I say I'm going to do without any supervision or accountability. So I started saying to myself listen, is it true that I can't focus, and is there any situation in my life where I can? And I immediately started thinking about golf And I thought I can play golf for four or five hours in a row with no problem. I can do that all the time. I can go to movies. I love going to movies And I don't have a problem with that. That's a couple of hours.
And I started looking at what are the characteristics of what's going on with golf that makes it so easy for me to keep my word on that or to focus on that for an extended period of time. And it developed into an acronym for golf, which is all the characteristics of why I'm able to focus on that particular activity. And I thought, ok, well, first of all, the G is there's a goal, and a goal. I'd see the goal as a decision that I've made, the decision that this is what I'm going to do. I put it in the calendar. I'm going to play golf on Friday afternoon And it's in my calendar And I work all the way around it, right, everything. It's there as an anchor. Then O is for an optimal environment And a golf course is the optimal environment to play golf.
It's set up perfectly for the task. You've got all the holes are already laid out. You start on the first tee. You kind of get on that. Ned Hollamall would probably refer to it as a bobsled run. You start at hole number one and you work your way all the way through to the 18th hole And then you're done.
There are limited distractions. Is the L meaning there's not no internet? no, especially if you leave your phone in your bag or in your locker, There's limited distractions. You're able to stay on track. You've got all the equipment, everything you need, right there in your bag, in your golf bag, and F is a fixed time. And so I started thinking okay, well, how can I apply those elements to getting the things that I want to get done?
that might be, you know, not golf the proactive things that I want to get done, and so I came up with this idea of a 50 minute focus finder And I would start blocking two hour blocks in my calendar And in those two hours I could do two 50 minute blocks with a 20 minute break in between. So it would be 50, 20, 50, and that could be two hours. And so I started thinking okay, i'm going to block off this 50 minute focus for this two hour block. I'm going to establish what's the goal for this What is it that I'm going to do?
And then what would be the optimal environment for this And so, for instance, so if I'm thinking about, if brainstorm, my new book, is the goal, then I can, i would set aside the time. The optimal environment for that is in my comfy, on my comfy white couch in my courtyard, with my light, with I'd have some water. I've got my remarkable, i've got my. You know, everything is set up for what I'm going to need to accomplish that limited distractions. I'll leave my phone in the house and not have it here as a distraction, because I want the you know distraction free environment And otherwise you know if it's dinging or flashing or there it's tempting to get distracted on that.
And the fixed timeframe I have a timer. I have a visual 50 minute timer, that kind of I can see where, where I am in that, without having to use my phone as the timer because it's too tempting for me, and so that 50 minutes goes and I'm able to get into a flow and do what it is that I'm going to do, and then at 50 minutes the alarm dings and I can get up and move around and go get some water, maybe a cup of coffee, get, look at my phone, you know, do whatever I need to do, and then, after the 20, minutes.
I come back, set the timer for 50 minutes and do it again, and that kind of thing. I find that, you know, brainstorming often leads to outlining and that, will you know, lead to whatever the next step is, but I can always set up what the goal of the of the outcome is. You know, like one of the great examples, i never have a problem focusing on Welcome to Cloud Landia. I've had ingrained golf outing for about you know I set it in my calendar.
I know where I'm going to be at the appointed time. I've got an optimal environment. I've got all the tools that I need. I have my remarkable you know, just doodling and taking notes as we're going. I'm out in the courtyard, i've got a nice bottle of water here And it's effortless effortless.
Well, I think, you're.
Dan Sullivan
What's interesting about what you've just described is that you're taking a great habit and a great activity from the mainland and you're moving it into Cloud Landia projects.
Dean Jackson
I agree.
And because that's where my access portal. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
My sense is that if you look at the development of anything new in the world going back for as long as we have history, the biggest breakthroughs is where somebody develops, takes something that's really well developed in an old territory and moves it into a new territory. Okay, yeah, and I mean right now we can use the terms mainland and Cloud Landia, because we're in a current old territory, new territory, piece of history. You know the historical period.
But it would have been the same with the development of the industrial technological breakthroughs. You know, with telegraph, you know telephone, you know internal combustion engine, assembly line, you know assembly line, you know the whole thing that the people who really make the money are the people who have the courier service between the two worlds.
Dean Jackson
That's a great outcome. I mean, when you think about that especially, it's funny. I was in the reading in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. There was. I get the print version on Saturday or for the weekend version of the Wall Street Journal And yesterday there was a hard-to-call newspaper in the world, by the way.
Dan Sullivan
Best newspaper in the world Saturday Yeah, yeah, so in yesterday I don't know whether it was Yeah, yesterday finest newspaper in the world hands down. There's no other newspaper as good as the Wall Street Saturday edition.
Dean Jackson
Well, there we go. That was your recommendation. By the way, about a year ago I started getting the physical version, but there's an article about entitled Mastering Your Mental Images. Can Make. Your Day. It's a new psychological technique aimed to use your imagination and all of your senses, overcome trauma and achieve goals. Did you read that article?
Dan Sulivan
Yes, I did.
Dean Jackson
Yes, i did. Okay, well, there you go. Very. Yeah, that's an interesting I mean, it's not so that sort of breakthrough information, but it's more supporting information that really shows what you think about. You. Bring about That's kind of.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's cheaper than Adderall, you know.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Right, right, yeah, well, i'm on a different path right now that you might be interested in. So I'm in a 12-week program with a sleep psychologist.
Dean Jackson
Okay.
Dan Sullivan
Okay, his name is Michael Bruce. Do you know, michael?
Dean Jackson
I do. Yeah, we found him on I Love Marketing He's yeah pretty good, well, i have nothing to say then?
Well, no, tell me I want to hear all about it because It's all been said.
Dan Sullivan
Oh, that's so funny Between you and Joe and Michael. What else is there to say? But anyway, I was recommended him by Paramededia, who was my My Canyon Ranch go-to doctor for 10, 12 years, and then he's gone out on his own because he's spent too much time with me And be around me. You turned him into an entrepreneur. You're going to go out on your own if you're around me too much.
Dean Jackson
You're going to get infected. You're going to get infected.
Dan Sullivan
Yep. It's contagious, it's contagious. Yeah, anyway, one of my goals. I'm working with David Hasse, who's I don't know if you've met David or not, but he's in the pre-zone Yeah.
And he's absolutely our number one overall doctor who is right at the center of all of our medical network, And his specialty is everything that improves the brain, the function of the brain. And so to start the program with him which was last August 2022, I set a goal that by 2024, August of 2024, that I would be off all prescription drugs. So that would include sleep medicines, Adderall and blood pressure medicines. So I have three big ones, And so along the way, I've been looking for ways of getting off the sleep medicine and Parmdedia, who really got me into having CPAP at night, which has been great. I've been doing it for 12 years. I've missed eight nights in 12 years. I really benefited from the technology.
First of all, the machine does all the work at night. I don't even have to bother breathing.
Dean Jackson
It controls your breathing, at least the breathing in part.
Dan Sullivan
You get that.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, but it automatically.
Dan Sullivan
And it lowers your blood pressure at night because you're not working this hard.
And so anyway, that was great And along the way I've acquired sleep medicines which I've enjoyed Lunefta and Sonata. But the tests that Dr Assy David Assy does with me indicated that there's a long-term negative impact of these drugs. They have a neurological effects over a long period of time. And he said I know what your lifetime goals are as far as how long you want to live. I understand your goals for where you want to be 10 years ahead, 20 years ahead.
And he said if we can take these pharmaceutical things out of your system at a certain point, that'd be good. And I said, good, well, that's my goal. Two years of all prescription drugs And I've made great progress. The one that was. In order to get off the prescription drugs. What I have to do is change my sleep habits. Okay, because those drugs, which are the sleep medicines at night and the Adrol during the day, totally undermine your ability to get deep sleep, which is the restorative. It's the restorative sleep. So and I'm happy for my relationship with these drugs I'm not dissing the drugs.
And already I can see some nervousness on the part of the drugs that whereas they thought this was going to be a lifetime relationship, i've kind of put them on the clock And yeah. So, anyway, we started three weeks ago and he's got really, really it's a wonderful coaching program. From the standpoint. You know me being a coach, i kind of understand a really good coaching program when I see it, and so what he starts you off at is that he starts gradually depriving you of sleep. Okay, so it starts at so it started off at 10 o'clock, where we go to go to bed at 10 and we wake up at five. Okay, oh my, God.
And that's less sleep than I am talking about. I'm talking about in bed time here you know, 10 to 10 to five And then about two weeks in he moved it to 1015. And it means you can't go to bed before 1015. Okay. So, 1015, but you always get up at five, and his ultimate goal is that, regardless of when you go to sleep at night, you always get up at five, because then your circadian rhythms can kick in and you know and they've got.
You know, from five till the evening, they've got 12 hours. They've got at least you know they've got 12, 13 hours for your natural sleep hormones to kick in and you get sleepy at the end of the day. So anyway this. So is that difference.
Dean Jackson
Like do you normally, have you normally? gotten up at five, or is that new for you?
Dan Sullivan
No, we ordinarily go to bed whenever but we always make sure to be in bed more than eight hours.
Dean Jackson
Okay, so that was our room, so sometimes you wake up at seven or eight or whatever. That'd be late.
Dan Sullivan
That would be late Okay. Yeah, yeah, but usually we're hitting bed at around eight, 39 at night.
Dean Jackson
Okay, and then okay, right.
Dan Sullivan
And then we put both. babs and I are morning people, so we're not we're not depriving ourselves. And then whenever we go to bed, then we put the alarm for eight hours, or more than eight hours, to get up in the morning. Okay, so that's a yeah, but it might be any time between eight o'clock and 10 o'clock that we would go to bed, but then when we got up in the morning, it would be determined by by hours later Yeah.
By like sound, you know so anyway, so it was a real strain in the first week or so. What we're going to do next hour, hour and a half at night, you know you're sort of twiddling your thumbs and you're saying what could I do? What could I do? And then, before you go to bed, three hours before, you can't have any alcohol. So no alcohol within the last three hours, no food within the last two hours and no water within the last hour. And because the you're asking the digestive system to stay awake you know and do certain things.
And so anyway, so long story. I'm just getting the general context here of what happened. But halfway through the second week I said I wonder if I so I take two Adderall's. I take a timer at least Adderall, first thing when I get up in the morning, which is 10 megs, and then, depending on the day and what's going on in the day, i'll usually have one around two o'clock in the afternoon. Okay, because I'm I'm starting to fade during that time and bang, I take the Adderall, and you know.
And I'm the immediate release, yeah, yeah. So I experimented. I said I wonder if I can go through the afternoon, get through the day. And I did it once and it was just before a meeting with him, so I'd have weekly meetings with him And I he said, well, let's do an experiment, let's see if you can only have one day during the next week when you use the afternoon Adderall, because you've already indicated that you're kind of ambitious here. So let's see if we can do it. And I made it through the whole week. So I like and it's been 15 days now, i haven't had my afternoon Adderall and it's gone. It's gone, you know, because it's not an addiction.
Dean Jackson
It's not an addiction.
Dan Sullivan
It's a dependency and there's a big addiction You know, you know, it's just a habit, just a habit. It's not an addiction that has hold of your nervous system. So so he says that that's really great. And then I take two meds. At night, i take a lunesta, which is like a five hour, five hour knockout drug. And then there's Sonata and usually at the five hour four hour I get up and I do a fundamental human activity I pee. Okay, Yeah, Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Remember whenever you're planning to remember.
Dan Sullivan
When you're planning the future of the human race, make sure that there's always time to pee. And so I'll pop Sonata at that point. And that's fast acting, and I go back to sleep. So this past week I've kept the Sonata. So instead of taking the full dose, i break it in half and I just take half, and it's worked. It's worked. So I've gotten seven days in where I've just done half and he said okay, you're going down vacation now next week, see if he can get rid of the Sonata. So I have. But the big thing, dean, is we have to do a complete diary every day. It's a seven day diary and then we have to send it to him before our next meeting with him.
And then he goes and looks and he said you know pretty good. He says you're, you'll probably be about four weeks into the five weeks into the program and you will have eliminated the afternoon Adderall and the middle of the night Sonata. He says that's, that's quite amazing, amazing progress, yeah.
Dean Jackson
But I like.
Dan Sullivan
I like the structure and he's very adaptable. I mean, he's got his goals He wants you to get, he wants you to have the habit of getting up at five o'clock in the morning. But I told them Friday, i met with him on Friday, just a couple of days ago, and I said you know, you've reintroduced me to a pleasure that I have not experienced, i bet, in 20 years. And what's that? It's the feeling of being sleepy.
Dean Jackson
Hmm, oh, interesting, so you were using the, the, the lunesta is the one that was. kind of that was the signal or whatever. right, the behavioral yeah signal to get sleepy Yeah, and so.
Dan Sullivan
I was taking upper the Adderall is the upper and the lunastons and outer are downers. So I was never sleepy.
Dean Jackson
I would just be, i would just be up and then I was down chemically, you know what's so funny if you say those words, and Joe and I had Richard Vigory on our marketing podcast and he talked about his daily routine of you know, two uppers in the morning and two downers in the evening, and that's where two cups of coffee in the morning and two glasses of wine in the evening. He called them as uppers and downers. Yeah, rhythm right right?
Dan Sullivan
Well, Richard can do anything he wants at this stage. Yeah, richard's in, i think he's in his, he's in his 90s, you know. I mean he's, you know he's beyond. He's beyond warranty refund. I'll tell you. That's so funny. Yeah, he's a he's a yeah, he's really in the history of the last 60, 70 years of politics in the United States, yeah, And the person, people most responsible for establishing a solid conservative mindedness and conservative voting population. Richard would be in one of the top five of all the people.
Dean Jackson
I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, You said something interesting about your. You've developed the routine that when you get up to pee, you take the sonesta and that's your cue to go back and have another round of sleep And I may have no issue. I heard I heard someone say you know, if you're gonna tell yourself a lie, you may as well make it a good one.
And I started. I started thinking that well, not only that, you might will make, you might will make money on it. You know, if you're gonna, that's called marketing.
Dan Sullivan
That's called marketing.
Dean Jackson
I would have the same thing again. I would wake up at five o'clock, for instance, to pee, And then sometimes I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, right, Because then my mind would start like already you know, working on the things I'm working on for the day or whatever.
But I started telling myself the the better story. I would wake up at four often 445, 450 is around the time, usually right. And so if I wake up and it's that, i smile and I go pee and I'm saying, like I'm creating this story, that this is great because I'm gonna have the two best hours of sleep of my night. Right now I still have two hours left for the greatest sleep And I started telling myself that story and, wouldn't you know it, I ended up. I had the best two hours of sleep after telling myself that story And I thought that's an interesting thing where that matches up with this article we were talking about in the Wall.
Street Journal mastering your mental images can make your day And I thought, if I would really emotionally get you know, I would create joy out of waking up at 442 because I knew that I was gonna, with certainty, have the two best hours of the night.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah well, what you've created, mr Jackson, is a self milking placebo.
Dean Jackson
Exactly right, yeah, but I wonder if you tried to play. I mean, this would be interesting to try replacing your Celesta with that story.
Dan Sullivan
But Sonata, Sonata is the genus of Sonata And it's not called that on the prescription because it's generic. But anyway, anyway. Sure, i mean we do that. I mean as entrepreneurs we have a natural gift for this, You know, I mean, you know. I think this is a commitment to something you don't have the capability for yet. Right right right, yeah, you're committing to a future jump in, you know, in performance and which will be a new capability. But when you commit, you don't have the capability And that requires courage.
You know that requires courage to and, yeah, it's an interesting. You know it's an interesting, but you know more and more. I think that whether you're happy or not happy in the 21st century is the mind games that you have learned to play with yourself.
Dean Jackson
Yes.
Dean Jackson
I think that's really. That's one of the, that's one of the core found. Imagine if you applied yourself imagining this outcome.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, you just weren't going to apply yourself to her goals.
Dean Jackson
Right.
That's right.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I can, Yeah, and I think entrepreneurs are asked in you know the early years, and especially when they're in the school system, to apply themselves to some other people's goals for them. And at a certain point they say well, i don't get paid for that, i don't get paid for applying myself to other people's goals, that's right. Why don't I just come up with my own goals and apply myself to them? Okay? And I bet doing it my way lets me make 100 times more lifetime income than the teacher would.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, right.
Dan Sullivan
I'll never make any money that way.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i mean to a certain extent there's such a disconnect now And Peter Diamonis and I talked about it on Friday that a 18-year-old today anywhere in North America probably elsewhere that if you get a 10-week course in welding, you know and you get a certificate at the end of the first year, you'll make $60,000 here. Yeah, because there's such a demand now that we get welders into the reindustrialization and re-manufacturing of North America right now. All requires welding somewhere along the line.
And meanwhile, if you go to four years of university, you know, regardless of the university, you probably didn't make any money during the four years, or minimal money during the four years, and probably you're running some sort of debt at the four years And meanwhile the 18-year-old who went into welding could be making $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 by the time you graduate, and then you've learned for four years things that don't make as much as a welder.
Dean Jackson
Yes, that's exactly right.
Dan Sullivan
And I think there's a shift because the incoming freshman class in the US, the difference between 2021 and 2022 was four million fewer freshmen coming into the first year of college. That's a big number Wow is that right.
Dean Jackson
right compared to how many normally come into the freshman.
Dan Sullivan
Well, four million more.
Dean Jackson
Oh yeah, but I mean that sounds like it couldn't be.
Dean Jackson
Well, it's a big number. I mean there's a lot of college freshmen. Yeah, it's a big number. No, no it would be.
Dan Sullivan
probably I'll have to check the numbers, but it would be, somewhere, and then it would be at least 25% at the very least to be 25% was missing because there's a disconnect about what they're learning and what they know gets paid for in the marketplace. You don't have to have a PhD to know the difference between what you get paid for, and I think parents are seeing this and I think the teenagers are seeing this and the words passing through the ranks it's a crack for the most part, going to university for four years is a crack And they say, yeah, but there's a socializing process that goes on that's ultimately very, very valuable. And I said, yeah, but your notion of how I should be socialized doesn't agree with my notion of how I should be socialized. Wow yeah.
Dean Jackson
That's something. when you look at that, you'll want me to apply myself to mindsets I don't agree to.
Dean Sullivan
I don't agree with.
Dean Jackson
That's why you are in the center. Imagine if you applied yourself.
Dean Sullivan
Yeah, that's all part of it.
Dean Jackson
I think that's an interesting thing, that kids, or we as people, that you are. An integral part of this is that it's. I heard someone parsing out the words of row, row, row your boat. That's the secret to life is row, row, row your boat And gently down the stream. You know that's really the key to life. Not in the hokey pokey, i guess right, one number one.
Dan Sullivan
it's your boat. Number two. you're going downstream. that upstream, that's exactly right. Yeah, not much growing required to go downstream, right.
Dean Jackson
That's kind of. I think if you could argue that, saying you know, going in your unique ability, you know and row row. Row is to continue actually doing something. It's not just float, float, float your way down the stream, it's row, row, row. You're actually doing something, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it doesn't say you're the only one rowing either.
Dean Jackson
Right, that's true, that's right. Get everybody on board. Yeah, it's so funny, i love other things like that.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you know I mean. The interesting thing is, this always happens when you have the sudden emergence of a new territory and it's creating opportunities. It's creating wealth opportunities, achievement opportunities, you know, and freedom opportunities than the old territory, did you know?
But this happens repeatedly, i mean over the centuries, over the millennia. There's always the old territory and the new territory, and then the people who make the money are the people who can learn on both sides and create an entirely new value creation proposition that lets other people make the transition. Yeah, for example, you and Joe doing I Love Marketing. Well, this would have been meaningless probably 30 years ago.
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
I mean, there was no there was no capability.
Dan Sullivan
There was no capability for people to take action and get results with what you were recommending, that's true.
Dean Jackson
That's what's encouraging, that's kind of the, you know, when I was really looking at the 25-year framework and putting it in perspective with my plus three to that three years to get to 60 and then my next 25-year chapter starting at 60, that 28 years I started looking back 28 years ago and realized every single thing that is the biggest things right now weren't even in existence then And so encouraging when you think about, you know, the richest money, the thing the richest probably five or six people in the world weren't even didn't even start on their built all their wealth in that same period of time, And so that's kind of encouraging you know.
Yeah, i like that a lot And that's kind of a. That's a. So you realize well what a nice meaty period of time that is. And of course you know, looking back, there's no way that we could have predicted 25 years ago what, or 28 years ago what a podcast was, or that everybody you know you'd have an instant and available access to so much of the world's information like that. You know it wasn't even wasn't even a thing. We were definitely mainland oriented Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
There's no question. I mean, how many coach clients have podcasts, even though? I've you know they've been listening to my podcast, they've been listening to your podcast and but hardly any of them are you know, I think it comes down to the that it's a lack of They don't have the confidence to do it. But the only way out of no confidence is to make a commitment that you're going to get the capability. Okay, you know, by this time next year I'm going to launch a podcast series.
Now, who's the how? who helps me do that? Yeah?
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Because you don't have to do it. I mean, there's all sorts of talent around in the world who know. I mean there's two million podcast series as of January this year and probably a lot more six months later. And all I did was start in with Joe and get the ropes And I said well, i think I can create another series. And you know and that was with Peter Diamandis I've had a couple of years with Joe to get the feel for it And we started with Peter Diamandis and you know it's great, you know it's great.
And I have you know I have seven, you know seven regular podcasts, including our own here. Yeah, I mean it was like we were having lunch at Los Solect in Toronto And you know I brought up the idea of that procrastination is actually a form of wisdom And you said we should do a podcast on this. And I said and I said when will we start? He said what are you doing tomorrow? And tomorrow we had a complete podcast.
And all I had to do was make a phone call And that was it, you know, and we had a podcast And you know, but podcasts are full-fledged cloud-landing capabilities.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, this is. I've had a great you know. You look at those, the taking action, the just doing the things I had to, thanks to my you know, more deemed on less screen time focus. Over the last couple of weeks I've had a really productive couple of weeks I was in the middle of. I already started a lead generation workshop that I do by Zoom And the focus, for weeks and we focus on setting up a lead generation system for your business And we do four Tuesdays And I decided to go through the process with the people who I'm going through the workshop with to demonstrate.
So one of the things that we talk about is, once we identify who your ideal target audience is, who's your ideal, your ideal prospect, then we start thinking about what would be the book that they would most definitely want to have in their, in their possession, in their collection. And so we go through a whole process of identifying, go through a book title formulas workshop where I, you know, describe the different types of book titles And have them do the exercise of creating what I call a word palette, where they think of all of the words and phrases and hopes and dreams and fears you know, all the sound bites that are going on in somebody's head, and so one of the title formulas is what we call a just do it title, which is it does what it says And you're going to do.
What it says on the cover, like stop your divorce or think and grow rich is, are the types of action.
That's what I'm going to do compelling offers, compelling offers, and so yeah so I wrote a site, i did the workshop, i did the process with them And I created a book, a book called convert more leads at what to say to prospects so they all convert themselves. And had a nice cover of imagery of a guy on a boat on a lake and he's had his hands behind his head and the fish are just jumping in his back. That's the, that's the imagery that we did. So I created that as the cover And then in the next seven days I created the whole book. I did the reminder of being when we were in London, you know, having that conversation.
I went through the whole process of brainstorm where I brainstormed all the content and set it up into the chapters and I made a great outline. And I then went into the studio and I recorded what was essentially the audiobook version, i think. Say chapter one, begin with the end in mind, and then I would talk through my talking points for chapter one, and then I said chapter two and the title of chapter two, and so I created all the raw, all the raw audio by just talking about what I wanted to say. I had that recorded And then I sent I didn't do it, but one at the studio, sent the audio to someone on my team, jack, who then took the audio, got a transcript, set up the Google doc, did a first pass edit to turn it into you know, clean it up for written kind of format, and sent it back to me. And then I was able to go in and in a period of 50 minute, focus finders edit the written transcript into the finished form of the book And it's nice.
It's a great outcome. And all the while I was doing that, i was already running ads for it. I set up the Facebook ads and generated now 293 ads of leads of people who want the book for about $3 each. You know it's a whole thing. It was such a great like during the process to actually go through with people and demonstrate what can be, what can be done. You know, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you know the, you know, you know how to create the book. You know I mean the idea, do you? have a copy, yet You're going to run off 20 copies and send them out to your friends so you can get the, of course.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, Send them up, because I'll you know consume it and absolutely.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
I'll tell you five or 10 things that reminds me of them. Perfect, i love it.
Dean Jackson
Send it back to you That becomes version one and then with the input and the extension I can make version two and. but it's a nice meaty book. It's really good, really good content I'm happy with that.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah what's the idea? So I got version. Yeah, And I tell people, you know you can call 90 minute book and you can get a first draft of your book, get 20 or 30 copies and get it out to 20 or 30 people and then make your readers part of the design team.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly the whole purpose. That's exactly it, yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
People work for five years five years writing a book and they never, let a potential reader. First of all, they're not even clear about who the potential reader is. And you know, and my you know, i always start with one person as my potential reader and I do sort of a DOS in my mind about what the dangers, opportunities and strengths of this one person and I write the book and I do it.
you know I do do that. People say, well, I want the book to be forever, and I said, well, I have a different approach, I want to be for one person. Right, because if I nail that, if I nail that they, then you know, the one person I want is a, an entrepreneur who is already successful, who's talented, who's ambitious, and from now on, they want 10 times more freedom in their lives Freedom of money, freedom of time, money, relationship and purpose. I said I just write the book for that person.
Dean Jackson
Well, you know, about?
Dan Sullivan
what? about school teachers? I said, not interested What about government bureaucrats Not interested. What about corporate employees? Not interested. What about non-profit organization? I said I can't even say the two words to myself. It depresses me.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly. We have doctors who have non-profits.
Dan Sullivan
We have doctors who have non-profits And they say, well, can I, as a non-profit organization, be in your future? I said I can't even allow those two words to be said And I'm a workshop of mine, i said non-profit in the entrepreneurial world means something totally, totally different. For you know, i didn't get that. Can you try again? No, siri, siri. You know what Siri's main saying to me is? I didn't quite get that.
Dean Jackson
I didn't quite get that.
Dan Sullivan
I didn't quite get that. They say well, of course you are, you're not a person. A person would get it, You're just an algorithm and not a very pleasant one to us, with that Never been useful.
I've always been a bother, so that's my take on it. Yeah, anyway, i want to tell you a little project we've got. You know, joe Stothe, do you, did you? Yeah Well, joe came to Genius while you were there by Zoom, and he gave a really great presentation on what his AI newsletter does, and so I had about eight things I was looking for at that meeting and he checked off seven of the boxes and I told him so.
And he says and I said so, why don't we get going? And so we have. So we've sent out, we've sent out three of his AI newsletters and, just for the listeners here at the newsletter, that writes itself. So you put in some input or prompts and that is that your thought leaders that you follow in the world and you have your, you let them take advantage of things that you have that are already out in the internet And they put together a newsletter and I liked the content. I didn't like the layout. So I put in a lot of input about design characteristics. That would be consistent with coach stuff And we have certain design roles for everything that we do and I just applied them to the newsletter and we have a project manager, linda Spencer, who is overall a haunch of this, and we sent it out. So in the first three episodes first episode, we got a 56 open rate. Second one, we got a 62 open rate. Third one, we got a 66 open rate.
So that's the point to keep getting the open rate.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, where do I find up for this?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, future, future, future scope. So just type in and, and it's a wonderful thing, and so it goes out, and then it analyzes all the feedback from the first article and then it designs the second one, which we scrutinize from an editorial standpoint, and make adjustments, and it goes back out. But more and more, what it's joining in Cloudlandia is who you want to be talking to with the? who you want to be talking to, what do they want to be hearing from you?
Okay, so it keeps refining that the message is right for the, for the mainer, but yeah, really fun.
Dean Jackson
I knew about future scope and daily AI, but where do. I find up for your your newsletter.
Dan Sullivan
Spark. It's called Spark. We'll send it out to you. I don't, i can't do that, you know I've got a specialized who, but we'll send it out. send it out to you.
Dean Jackson
And, by the way, great Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
You're. You're welcome as a columnist because all the people I mean I have a. You know I'll have a one or two sections on the newsletter, but the other four or five are coach. They're free zone, free zone clients.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, love it, love it.
Dan Sullivan
And you can, you can put in, you know you can. For example, you can talk about your new book. You know, brainstorm, brainstorm. Yeah, so you can give a interview, you know, you can give an advance notice of what brainstorm is all about and just put it in as a blog and we'll just put it right in the newsletter. Okay, perfect, i like it.
Dean Jackson
Well, this is all very exciting, yeah. I like the things that can do where you don't have to do, the stuff you know where you're using well, think about dailyai as a whole.
Dan Sullivan
Think about producing a newsletter every two weeks, yeah, where you're starting from scratch every two weeks and you don't even have any sense how the ones you've sent out already are actually landing. You know, yeah, the only difference between a bad newsletter idea and a good newsletter is your rate of open and click through.
Dean Jackson
That's true, yeah, and respond Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
There's feedback, you know, and so. so, anyway, anyway, and I wonder what Vladimir Putin is doing today.
Dean Jackson
I wonder the same thing.
Dan Sullivan
He's got a lot of material for food of thought over the last five or six days, you know.
Dean Jackson
Amen Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
I mean they got within 125 miles, you know they had, you know, a couple of hundred in our armed carriers and that, and they got within 125 miles of Moscow and that's serious business, you know. And it goes to go the other way and the war is coming to them. So anyway, but you know it's easier to not start a war than it is to start a war, because once you start a war the enemy has a vote, you know, and anyway. But but this is a lot. He did three. He does really great YouTube.
You know five to eight YouTube and he did three of them yesterday, yesterday just giving you a structure on, you know the potential uprising, probably the best military force in the Russian army, which is the Wagner group, and the head of Wagner says you know we're. We've decided that the entire military leadership in Russia is incompetent and, worse than that, they're criminally corrupt and we cannot possibly win this war unless we get rid of the top military leadership and you know demonstrating words, So follow me This way, yeah.
So anyway, we're. Anyway. It's interesting. But Peter D Amonus said that he felt that Russia was collapsing as a country and that this is you know. They were supposed to have the second most powerful military in the world and it's debatable whether they would qualify to be in the top 10. And you know so lots of things, and you know so anyhow what a wonderful world, what a wonderful world we live in.
Dean Jackson
Did I hear you say you're going on vacation. Now It's starting. Yeah, Let's be. Let's be cottage time by now.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but from the cottage. next Sunday, if you're free, i will call you.
Dean Jackson
I am free. Yes, i would hope I'm going to play that Awesome. I'm very excited about that.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah So that'd be good And we'll learn more about your 50, your 50, you know your 50 men Yeah. Because you had already created Jackson Jackson times, which are 10 minutes, which are 10.
Dean Jackson
Jack's units.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think this is a threat to the US dollar as the reserve currency, but I think it's substantially good for you.
Dean Jackson
I agree, that's what.
Dean Sullivan
I'm most useful reserve currency.
Dean Jackson
That's right, and I have it in abundance.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
I was talking about that.
Dan Sullivan
Because do you see the dollars not going to be reserve currency? And I said, well, whoever replaces it? make sure you have the greatest Navy in the world, the greatest Air Force in the world and the greatest fighting, because that's the muscle that makes the dollar the reserve currency. If you don't have the, you know, the armed force to reinforce your way around the world, you can't do the reserve currency.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Okay, alrighty, that was fantastic.
Dean Jackson
I will talk to you next weekend.
Yep.
16 Nov 2022
Ep084: Identifying correlations in collaborations
00:55:51
In this episode, Dean and Dan discuss how different entities can make collaborations by comparing their value and recognizing if there is any relationship between what they are each doing.
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we are talking about how durable the concept of thinking about your thinking is, - why that is your best thinking, and the quality of the decisions and actions that come from it.
Join Dean and Dan as they discuss the effect that the digital revolution has had on our concept of time and how utilization of time in Cloudlandia is markedly more efficient.
Today we're going to talk about a simple email strategy to turn a thought into a referral-getting opportunity. This is the one thing that can have the lowest cost, and highest yield return in your business, and we call it being a market maker.
In this episode, Dan and Dean explore the way Cloudlandia highlights the power of attention by discussing the impact of attention patterns on culture, media production and censorship trends.
In today's episode of Welcome To Cloudlandia, I share the story of my unexpected adventure travelling to Buenos Aires for a pioneering knee stem cell treatment.
I describe how my blood and fat cells were transformed into new cartilage and transported across continents for the procedure. I also recount my partner Babs' experience treating an inflamed toe and the vitality we've regained.
Our discussion explores the pursuit of longevity and regenerative medicine's potential to make 156-year lifespans attainable through the normalization of audacious goals.
We delve into hopes for abundant years energized by purpose and new ventures. Additionally, I discuss the art of self-talk and strategies like daily focus tasks negotiated through self-management.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dan shares his transformative experience with stem cell treatment in Buenos Aires, describing the process of turning his own cells into cartilage.
We discuss the broader implications of regenerative medicine and how it might extend our lifespans and rejuvenate our vitality.
The episode touches on the concept of setting ambitious longevity goals, like living to 156 years, to guide life's endeavors and encourage significant projects.
Dean talks about the importance of mental self-management and compares it to a daily negotiation to focus on critical tasks.
We delve into the balance between productive 'focus days' and the freedom of 'buffer days', and how each contributes to overall productivity and creativity.
The conversation includes insights on the internal quest for happiness and whether the 'fountain of youth' might be a state of mind.
Dean and I examine the concept of 'Dean Landia', a metaphor for the mental environment we create and have control over.
We discuss the entrepreneurial mindset, emphasizing the role of deadlines, and the Danger, Opportunity, and Strength (DOS) and Money, Labor, and Time (MLT) frameworks for success.
The episode reflects on how personal goals influence our actions and the normalization of extraordinary ambitions to build confidence.
Dean describes his experience with stem cell treatment for his knee injury and his partner Babs' treatment for an inflamed toe, highlighting the physical and psychological benefits they've experienced post-treatment.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: I wouldn't have it any other way. Welcome, Mr Claude Ladiak. Mr.
Dan: Jackson. Mr Jackson, yeah Well, very pleasant woman who, and you know, I was the first one on today and she said you're the first one to Join the call, the others will join pretty soon and so far, in about seven years, only one person has shown up. So I want to know who the? Others are. Is this the National Security Agency? Is this the Communist Party of China? I'm just trying to get a handle of who the others are.
Dean: I think you're probably right once, two or more Gathered that everybody is.
Dan: Yeah, but I found that just the two of us is more than enough. That's the truth.
Dean: Well, I am excited to hear about all of your Adventures here You've been. You've been all over the world. Here seems like you've been in Chicago. You've been in most exciting Lee Buena Flores. Yes, I'm excited to hear all about the Adventure here.
Dan: Yeah Well, spire Chicago goes. I missed the bullets, so that's all I can report on we're not. We're not in the part of the city that's in the crossfire zone, but anyway yeah. Buenos Aires was interesting.
It's only the second time I've been to South America, and the first time was just to land in Ecuador, co City in Ecuador, and then we took a flight to the Galapagos Islands and this was as the guest of Richard Rossi, who put together, you know, a gathering that went to the Galapagos Islands and you know the plain lands and one of the islands, and then you take a National Geographic boat and I think it's Linblad and National Geographic and then you know we investigated all the sea life and the animal life which are, you know, very distinct from what's found elsewhere, and that was great, but it was mostly just painting out, with a whole bunch of people that were interesting to talk to.
So that's only the first time and that was a long time ago. And then we just do Create the setting here. The context, again, as a result of being a guest of Richard Rossi, has a mastermind group which is called Da Vinci 50, and Babs and I took us two or three years to get our schedule right so that we could Guarantee our attendance at all the different meetings, but the very first one, this was in New Orleans. This was last January. I met a doctor, babs. I met a doctor there from Buenos Aires by the name of Gustavo Mabilia, and, and he told a story about what he's doing with stem cells and these are your own stem cells, white blood cells and fat cells that if you collect them and then send them. It's not an entirely easy process to get them to Argentina, but we got them there and he would then convert them into the stelle, the stem cells that you're having problem with your and your body and I have an orthopedic injury in 1975.
I tore my cartilage in the left knee and in those days they would Take out the torn cartilage. They wouldn't do that today, but that's you know, that was the best that was going 48 years ago. And he said oh, we can regrow your cartilage. She said we can the part that was snipped out. We can regrow that cartilage and I said that's cool.
That's cool. Yeah, I was convinced that Babs has a chronically inflamed right toe that really impedes a lot of her walking or exercise and it's inflamed bones. So I didn't know that bones got inflamed. It shows up on MRIs when you do an MRI. So long story short, through dr Hasi, who's our main Medical guide and explorer for us in Nashville, tennessee. He's got a clinic there called Maxwell Clinic. He did all the, you know the coordination before us to. You know, make sure that our stem cells were there, make sure that the they turn it into a magic potion I don't know too much more about it and he arranged with for our trip down. So we went. This is so. Yesterday was Saturday, we're talking on Sundays, it was two. Two Saturdays ago we took an overnight flight to Buenos Aires, where it's now springtime because they're in the other hemisphere.
Yeah, it's more complicated than I'm telling you, but that's the upshot of it for the week and and so, as far as the you know, the brain cells and the vascular cells, the only thing I can say and I have to be, I think I have to be cautious here, but because I have, like a lot of entrepreneurs do, I have the ability to create my own placebo's.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah, okay so all. I can say I've come back after the trip and we had. We came back after seven days and and this week I have felt more energized and more confident.
Dean: Then I can remember recently sounds like quite an adventure and the upside yeah, gonna be. The upside is gonna be a total new development of cartilage in your knee specifically. Second, what's the Hope for it Like? Are you gonna have the knees of a preteen Swedish boy, or are you gonna Just have the normal knees of 79?
Dan: well, basically yeah, I'll basically have the, basically the knee I had before the injury. Okay so that's 48 years, so six months, and the orthopedic is pretty easy for them. I mean, they're doing some advanced work and other parts of the body, but the cartilage is, you know, it's pretty, it's not a complicated thing, right? But what happens is they take my blood cells and my fat cells and they turn, essentially turn it into new cartilage cells and that's. You know, that's what stem cells are that? How?
Dean: does it gather.
Dan: Yeah, well it's. This was all done in Nashville and.
So, what they do is they? You know it's, it's basically a centrifuge and you have an IV in both arms and the blood that gets taken out and it's, and they take the white blood cells out and then you know it's simultaneously they're taking blood out now return it to your body, but they're taking the white blood cells, which is far prior less of your blood than your red blood cells. Okay, actually it was like a two hour, two hour session and it was like a cup full. You know, after a big cup, a big mug full, and so that's the white blood cells and then the fat cells. You go to a plastic surgeon Because they're used to taking you know it's part of plastic surgery of taking out fat cells and so and you get enough they're, they're told how much of each are required for them to basically do a year's worth of. You know we're going to go down probably four times during the next 12 months, starting with the first trip two weeks ago.
And they'll have enough just from that one extraction, extraction of both, they'll have enough. So next time I go down I broke both my Achilles tendons in the 1970s. That was a bad decade. That my in 1970s were just a really bad decade anyway. So anyway, and the Structurally, I mean they're shortened because of the surgery, the tendons, are shorter, but they've developed calcification.
Oh yeah which reduces flexibility, and it's got pain attached to it. So next time they'll Take my same fat cells and white blood cells and they'll turn it into something that gets rid of all the Calcification and my and my tendons. Yeah, so, and that will give me more push-off, it'll give me more flexibility to go along with the new cartilage. So I think probably, you know, probably I'll be gaining back about 30 or 40 years of Running ability out of my legs, you know.
Dean: I always Run for his money yeah.
Dan: Well, yeah, I just want to run again. I enjoy running and I haven't been and it's been too painful to do for the last 10 years. And then the whole thing is the overall, the Direct injection. You're just going after a particular issue, but the IV, the, it goes into your brain and it looks for anywhere where your brain cells Are not performing correctly and it wakes them up. So the stem cells don't cure anything, they just wake up the natural cells that are there and they start growing again.
And the same thing with the Vax vascular system. That's your, but I. I would say that Knowing that now I have the means to repair anything in my body as soon as it's identified as a problem is Very confidence.
Dean: It's very confidence building you know it's very and.
Dan: I was noticing that I had sort of blot into Sort of why I know I'm wearing down and I know that there's an end to it at some point, but I hadn't realized how much that was until I got the other thought that, no, almost anything that's going wrong with you you can repair now and you can rejuvenate it, and so that's a. That's a huge confidence builder.
Dean: Yeah, and it's really I mean perfectly timely, right as you're entering into, you know, in my ninth decade. Yeah, exactly entering into your ninth decade with the goal of it being the best decade ever which I love that framework, by the way and at a time when normally it would be, you know, physical deterioration happening, you're like physical rejuvenation.
Dan: You're going backwards on that thing, yeah, I mean yeah, you know the there's so many factors that are involved in aging, and some of it is just the fact that your cells only reproduce 50 times. Okay, there's a thing which is called the Haflick barrier. This is a I don't know quite what kind of scientists he was, but he found that every cell in the body and there's 20, I think, 26,000 different types of cells in the body, some number like that they all reproduce only 50 times, as far as they can tell, but they don't do it equally. They don't, they don't. They're not doing it at the same time. Heart muscles might be faster, other cells are slower, but it sort of reaches the limit of everything by the time you're 120. We only have one person on record where there's actual valid records of birth who has lived 120.
She also lived, she also. She got to 122. She died. A French woman who died about 10 years ago.
Dean: And that's the only person that.
Dan: I mean, there's all these claims, you know, you know around the world, the people who lived at 200 and 300 and everything else, but they don't have any valid records which actually established that. So anyway, but but most people don't get to 120.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, even if you only got to 120,. I said, even if you only got to 120,. I said well yeah, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur and you're at top of your game at 60, and you're saying, no, I guess I have to retire pretty soon. Well, the decision to retire is sort of telling your body it doesn't matter how long the body lasts now I mean, it can go really quickly.
But if I know I'll be 18 next May and if I know that I can stay in top form for another 25 or 30 years at the top of my game right now, then that's a big deal.
Dean: Yeah, I look at, I saw me. You know, bob Barker died earlier this year at 99. And the thing that was going around with that, he got to as close to 100 as he could without going over the big showcase showdown. Kind of close to 100.
Dan: But you know George Burns, the comedian, very famous mid-century 20th century, you know, 40s through the 80s or 90s. He had a goal that he was going to do a full show at the Palladium in London, big Venue in London, england, and he did it. And then and I always gave him as an example because he was performing full time in his 90s and then- did an actual 100th birthday.
And then he was in a shower about four weeks later, he slept, broke his hip and he died two weeks later. And I said, George, you didn't understand what you did. You should have set another date for when you were 110. Exactly.
Dean: Isn't that amazing, I wonder? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a. You've been programming yourself for 156 for as long as I've known you Since 1987, you know since 19, 36 years right now, yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of you know. You're just approaching or just at the halfway mark there ramping up, gaining speed, gaining momentum.
Dan: Well, people say do you really think you're going to live to 156? And I said I know I won't if I don't have it as a goal. Amen.
Dean: Well. Danny just setting yourself up for disappointment.
Dan: Well not me everybody who ends up with my messes after I'm gone. You know when I'm gone. What do I care?
Dean: Exactly, that's the point. I love that.
Dan: I love, I laugh.
Dean: I tell people that all the time, when you said the just for you, it's just going to be live, live, that's better. There, you go, you're not going to experience the disappointment.
Dan: There's a great French philosopher from the 1600s named Blaise Pascal.
Dean: And there's a blaze.
Dan: There's a Pascal wager. And he says you know, when you think about it, all of us regarding if there's anything after this life, it's a guess. You know it's a guess and it's a bet and he says but let's just take a look at the two bets. There's nothing after you die. Okay.
Dean: Okay well that's cool.
Dan: The other one is there's a whole other world after I die. And he says it's not so much which makes the best sense after you die. It's what bet makes the sense right now? Because if you think that there is a whole world afterwards and it turns out there's nothing, well you really haven't lost anything, because you know there's nothing, but what? If you believe your whole life there isn't anything after death, and then you find out that there and they said you know, and you said geez, if only I had.
Oh my God, if I had known this and he's believing there's a afterlife is a much better bet, psychologically and emotionally, for right now. Yeah, yeah so I'm kind of a. I'm a kind of a Pascal wager kind of guy.
Mm, hmm, that, I mean, is so back then everybody you know lived a life that took the natural course. You know I mean living to 60 and 70 in those days was kind of an achievement, with all the different ways you could die back then disease and you know and violence unless you were, unless you were, matthew's a lot. Yeah, yeah, but birth records.
Dean: No documentation.
Dan: I'm sorry, Matthew's a lot. I'm sorry, but where's your come on? Where's your papers? That's everybody.
Dean: Every time I think about muscle, I think about our Aubrey, aubrey de Grey. Yeah and the Missusola prize. Have you heard any updates on that? I've kind of lost the past. No, I saw video.
Dan: I saw a video of him talking and I got a feeling that that Living living two or three times more than natural, but not being happy right now is probably Not a good bet, because I didn't get the sense that he was a happy. I didn't get the sense that he was a happy person, you know. So I mean you never know, I mean people who never saw aren't necessarily unhappy, and people who smile all the time aren't necessarily happy, you know.
Dean: I mean happiness.
Dan: Yeah, an internal disc, it's an internal disposition, yeah. But anyway, you know I'm just reporting back. I'm sort of a bit of a trailblazer in relationship to this stuff, but I'm only. I will tell you, dean, I was thinking about this when I was in Buenos Aires that if I didn't have that goal of living to 156, I wouldn't be doing this stuff right now.
Dean: Yeah, that's true, right, you're already in traditionally if you speak about like. I'm beyond refund right now. You know, I mean, you're out of warranty. Right now You're an extra innings Actuarial tables. You're an actual outlier.
Dan: Yeah, but I'm really a profit center for the insurance companies. It's just been me paying them, just been me paying them up until now. I love it.
Dean: Dan is so great. I think this is like that's one of the great things of you know being alive at this time in particular, just all the access to these things. That's only gonna get better, as we understand. I remember when I went to the first, the first abundance 360 and Richard Rossi's friend, gary Kaplan, was there with us. I think you've met Dr Kaplan.
Dan: Oh no, Gary. Yeah, Gary, you know, I see him every, I see him at every defense. She 50 maybe.
Dean: You know, he's a great guy Okay yeah. Yeah, I really went to the go out there.
Dan: I went to the go out because silence with Gary, so we had a lot of time to talk.
Dean: So I've known him for a long time, you know, well, I remember when this was. This had to be Almost 10 years ago, right 9, 9 years ago. Anyway, the first abundance 360, not the very first one, the first one in LA Beverly Hills Hotel there, and you know I'm sitting with him and he was Saying you know, when you look at all the medical advancements that are coming right now, this is back then you said it's gonna.
It's gonna seem like we've been Throwing rocks at people to get them healthy, you know, compared to what's actually coming. I mean, yeah, we would describe what you know regenerative, and that's a good word. That's kind of become, you know, newly minted. Regenerative medicine is All the things from the on a cellular level regenerative Regeneration, replacement. You know we're pretty much going to be able to replace everything Before we repair it or repair it. Yeah, replace repair, regenerate right.
Dan: And that's pretty cool. So, yeah, I like well, I think, the hmm, I got involved with Peter Diamandas in I'm just trying to think. There was December of 2011, the first before a 360 meeting.
We didn't have a name for it, but this was in Silicon Valley and and one of the things that sort of connected Peter and Peter and me Was really the fact that we both had this commitment to living way beyond normal age, you know. But I had a thinking process, you know. Of course it's the first hour of strategic coach, which is the lifetime extender.
And he came in at that time and I said you know it's not a goal you can achieve unless you can normalize it as a normal thought. I said you know our brain, and Our brain really resists abnormal thoughts. We, it has to be normal.
So I set myself the goal in 1987 that every time I thought of my lifetime I would just think 156, you know, you know, at that time, life expectancy for males you know of my background and you know the thing was 78, so 156 is twice and so it took me about three years before it was just a normal thought. So whenever I you know I'm pushing 80 now and you know, and I said, well, what's my lifetime, I said 156. So at 80. That makes me very ambitious because I know I've got in my own mind, I've got, a way you know, enormous amounts of time left, really twice a lifetime 76 years.
Yeah, yeah, I got 76, 76 years to get things done, so it makes me Totally confident about starting new, big, new big things. And I mean your whole life is either happy or unhappy. Unhappy based on the kinds of conversations you're having with yourself. I agree.
Dean: I agree a hundred percent. I mean, you realize, I was realizing, I've been thinking a lot about this. You know, this straddling of the mainland and the cloud land via, and those thoughts then brought me into the actual game, which is game land is where at all happened and I realized that how much of you know Dean landia is affected by the inputs and circumstances and the Context and relationships and conversations and environments that you voluntarily Put yourself in, you know, surrounding yourself with the environment that's going to shanty people yeah, people, I mean.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And.
Dan: I just had a thought, and that was triggered by your Dean Landia, that I only have direct access to one human being on the planet. You know, and same goes for you, and a lot of people spend their life. A lot of people spend their life trying not to be, not to deal with the one person they have direct access to you know they're hoping they're going to be saved from the proof that they hope something else will save them from the person that they're actually inside of, and you know so.
so my, my whole point is why don't you just take ownership for the, the relationship that you have just with this one person, and you know there's new dimension, there's new dimensions presenting themselves all the time.
And and the other insight I had and that comes from our conversations, because we're we've got a very similar approach to life on a lot of different fronts and I was thinking, you know, I've been trying to control my brain up until I think, about two years ago. I was going to control my brain and, you know, make sure my brain was focused on this and that. And I said why don't we change the relationship here and take for granted that you want, I have no control over my brain. And the other thing is why don't we just see where it goes every day? Because it's totally unpredictable. I spent one day and just sort of locked in where my brain was going that day and there was absolutely no predictability to what's forever. And I said, okay, why don't we just I'm just going to do it deal with my brain wherever it goes? During that day I wanted to do three useful things for my plans.
You can go anywhere you want, but by the end of the day, I want progress on this, I want progress on that, I want progress on that, okay just have fun, you know, do whatever you want, but by the end of the day, if you and I are going to sleep happily tonight, you know, I got to see progress on these three things.
Dean: Oh, my goodness, Dan, that's so funny. You know, it's like I've been having these exact conversations with myself here. It's like taking over the management. You know, it's all in that vein of you know, imagine if you applied yourself your FELF, these things of taking over the management, you just you hit it on the head that I only have direct control over one human on the planet and that's me.
And I thought about entering and I realized that my brain, my desires, my ambition, my you know vision, the visionary in my brain here is not necessarily the one in control of the, the doing part of my brain, the labor management versus labor right. And so I was thinking about I heard one time that there's a form of contract where a you know production will enter into a contract with an actor or a celebrity, that with their company on an SSO contract which is for services of. So it would be enter, as I thought it's kind of like entering into a contract with my brain here for services of being Jackson and thinking what you just said is like those. If I could just like allocate time and attention to you know I've I've thought a lot about your thing of three, three things a day. How much I'd love to hear from you how, on a buffer day when you are I don't know how you define whether buffer day or focus you've got workshop focus days where those are like the Bob's fled run kind of thing.
That you know what's happening on a workshop day. You get up and I'm sure your car arrives at a certain time and you get taken to the workshop and everything is for my computer, or my computer does, because some of them are virtual.
Yes, exactly Okay. And then but on the days where I never struggle with those, I realized that everything that I do get done has that external exoskeleton or that scaffolding to make sure that gets done. If you're just in the right, all you have to do is, you know, get in the car and the rest of it is taking place, or open up the computer and sit down and you're. You know you're able to focus and deliver the workshops.
But I'm curious about your free range time, where I think I may have, like I crave and do a lot to carve out big blocks of uninterrupted time, only to end up having nothing to show for it. Because, I don't get myself to sit down and do the things that I've carved out all this time to do. I'm curious how, what your experience is on getting Dan to do stuff that requires his own batteries, I guess I'd love to hear your experience.
Dan: Here again, I think we're very similar and I think that's why our podcasts are so enjoyable, because to a certain extent, neither of us wants it to end when we get going. But I have one of our models in the strategic coach is a theater model which is front stage, back stage, and front stage is really, whether you have a viable company or not, it's your front stage your profitable front stage impact is what determines whether you're getting paid to take care of everything else, and I don't have to be motivated for a front stage impact.
You know, and workshops is an example, podcasts is another example, creating new thinking tools is another example, and writing books is another example, or videos or audios. So these are all front stage. In other words, if I can get this done, then it has a multiplier impact out in the world on other people, and that either me directly interacting with the world, or our coaches or our team members interacting with the world, and that ends up in profitability. Okay, so those are my focus days, but some of the days that are not focused days, I have to be preparing for those days. Okay, but anytime.
I think of front stage impact preferably. I don't need to be motivated to do that, I love doing that.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And that's my usefulness to myself, that's my usefulness to everybody I engage with. But just going back to my decision over the last two years of just letting my mind wander, when I'm not directly engaged in front stage impact activities, my brain can do anything at once. It can go anywhere and so I don't really care. Before I used to care. I'm not making use of my front stage, my back time, I'm not making it.
I said leave it alone, just let it go where it wants to go, let it run, let it go out and frolic, let it explore and everything else they really run. So I mean, it took me till practically age 78 to come to this agreement with my brain, and so I'm either in hyper focus, actually doing the things that make money and spread the reputation and do all sorts of good things, or it's free reign. I really don't care.
Dean: And to me what it does.
Dan: It frees me up from the tyranny of time and effort. That you're absolutely maximizing the use of your time. I said I don't care about my time and I don't care about my effort, as long as I make a front stage a profitable front stage impact. If it takes me an hour to do that, and it's an hour if it takes me a full day workshop, then it's a full day workshop, but I don't really care about the time and the effort, I just really care about the impact. And then backstage.
I just say brain, go and do whatever you want to do, think about anything you want to think about, and I couldn't care less. You don't have to justify your existence. My brain doesn't have to justify its existence when it's not on stage.
Dean: That's very interesting when you're creating a new tool. For instance, you introduced a tool on Friday for our pre-melt connection. Call yeah, your melt tool, and what's happening? How does that come about? What's your process?
Dan: for that.
Dean: That's one of the key outputs that you're providing is new IP and thinking tools for the thing, so how does that come about? If your mind goes, you mentioned you've read Peter Zion's book seven times now.
Dan: Yeah, the end of the world is just the beginning. I think it's the most important book in the world. I'm reading and I read it seven times. So it's Peter Zion.
Dean: Z-E-I-H-A-N.
Dan: And the book is called.
Dean: The.
Dan: End of the World is Just Beginning and he's written. This is the fourth book that he's written since 2014, where he's just predicting that everything we were expecting to happen 10 years ago ain't going to happen that way, and a whole new world is going to happen.
Dean: And he's got very plausible readings.
Dan: I'm not going to explain the book here but it has a profound impact on me.
But it seemed to me that he was operating at a macro geopolitical level and I said well, is there a simple sort of set of gauges, if you will underneath, that determines in any place at any time whether things are moving forward or they're stagnating or they're falling behind? And I came up, it just sort of fell out of. He doesn't talk about this directly, but after I'd read it a whole number of times, it just struck me that it was the cost of four things that determine this, and one of them was the cost of money. How much is it cost you to get money? And that comes in two forms how much is it cost you to get a loan and how much is it cost you to get an investment? Those are the two main, the financial vehicles that underlay growth. And then your profitability is the third one. Are you keeping a lot of what you're making?
Dean: That's savings.
Dan: And then the cost of energy and all of its different forms and the cost of labor getting really top notch. You have access to other people's skills, and how much is it cost you to do that? And then the cost of transportation, because we live in a physical world and to move a pound costs money including your own pounds and that costs energy and I just started playing with this.
I know we did. I was mentioned on a previous one of our podcasts Mike Kenix, we did it on that and everybody I talked about it. It had a simplifying effect on their thinking. I said this is a good tool. That's all I do If you come up with an acronym and it's. M-e-l-t. And I said I think we're going into a great meltdown next 30 years where everything of those four factors is going to cost more, and you can see it. Yeah, I mean you can see it.
All you have to do is read the news every day. Most of this is going up, energy is costing more, labor is costing more and transportation is costing more. And I said so. You know, I think it's a neat way. So what I did is I just introduced a tool to the free zone entrepreneurs, just two days ago, when you were there and I said if this is true, let's just suppose that it's true, that these costs are going to go up for everyone else and what's your biggest advantage and opportunity over the next 30 years? And that's just. That would be a thinking tool, and it has two qualities it's a sudden new thought, it provokes your interest, but it brings your right back to what you, as an entrepreneur, can take advantage of. So those are my criteria for a new thinking tool for a strategic coach. It took me from the time the thought occurred me to Friday, because that's the first time I did it.
It took me six months of playing around with the idea, checking with other people you know conversation and then just looking at the news and saying, is the news going in the direction of the theory? You know?
Dean: Yeah, and then. So when you like to get it to that tool, state that's part of your when you're letting your mind wander. It's so funny, dan, I've been talking about this idea of the self-milking cow, the idea of embracing your bovinity and realizing that you're the one that can create the milk. And if you set up an environment like I've moved towards, is that we basically have things divided into three divisions. I call it the pastures, which is me out roaming the pastures, you know, exploring and being a happy cow.
And then we have got a milking shed and the milking shed is set up for me to come in and be, milked, essentially to turn my thoughts, free range thoughts, into, you know, into digital milk, meaning that we're recording something about my you know I'm doing it either through a podcast or through a Zoom or interview or whatever we've got with my team. And then we have the processing plant, where they take the digital milk and they process it into podcast, courses, tools, anything like that.
So I'm curious, like it sounds like one of your pasture roaming activities is reading things like the like Peter Zion's book and your six you know your of daily input from real clear politics and the Wall Street Journal and All the things that you do. You put those all in and then ruminate on them and and then outcomes the things. When you're turning it into a tool, though, are you consciously like? Are you starting with, like illustration, journaling, doodling? What's your, what's your kind of creation process for?
Dan: yeah, I do, because our tools come in in One page written. There's boxes and the box. You know the number of boxes, the kind of boxes you have so with with the melt tool. All I did was have it's called your great meltdown and your great meltdown DOS. Okay, so DOS is a previous tool that we have in coach is that and any human activity. There people are responding to dangers that they're fearing loss of some sort. The other thing is opportunities, where they're excited about the possible gain of something.
Dean: And then their strength.
Dan: These are the things that they already have going for them. And I said I think all human beings, every day, operate within a unique DOS framework of things that are fearful about, things are excited about and things that they're confident about. So what I did is I did a matrix and matrixes are cool, so the cool way of structuring where you have MLT, money, energy, labor, t and then I had four arrows going up for, I think, cost, and then down the side I had danger, opportunity, strength. And then I said to the entrepreneurs, because they're familiar with the DOS, everybody At the level that you're at in coach, the free zone. This is an old tool.
This is, you know, 20 years old and some of you have been there 20 years and I said so from your standpoint that all of your clients and potential clients, customers, are going to have the danger of rising melt costs. What's your opportunity in this? Okay. So what's there the opportunity with dangers? What's the opportunity? Yeah. What's your opportunity with other people's opportunities? And what's your Opportunity with other people's strengths? And then you go through it and there's another exercise which I won't go into right here, and you come back and then you just have a general conversation, you have breakout sessions and conversation, and the room goes crazy, you know, and because everybody's done thinking about their thinking, they've talked about their thinking, and they come back and they hear everybody else's thinking and that's what produces the workshop.
But the thing that triggers all this motion is that I have deadlines to create new things.
Dean: Yes, I got it and that's really how it all comes out and that's, I think, do you have a sense of what your, how much of your time? Is that free range versus you know the structured workshops? And so I guess it's getting left, or more and more Free range.
Dan: Well, I would say even on my most intense front stage days. Still, the majority of the day is free range and then when I don't have that type of thing. It's all free range, yeah, but it's not a. Yeah, without a commitment to someone else to deliver something, giving myself deadlines is worthless. Yeah, me too.
Dean: I've discovered that about me giving myself a backstage free range deadline.
Dan: Well, first of all, I think free range and deadline is a contradiction in terms. Right.
Dean: Yeah, this is what I like about the, you know is doing a workshop or scheduling a milking session. Is I know that if I've got a milking session Scheduled, like I've been going to the studio?
Yeah you know, on Thursday morning, 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock, and I know that you know I'm prepared for For being milked at that at those times, you know. So I'm either, yeah, doing something myself. Some of the best things that I've done have been just preparing myself to record a State of the Union or a new, you know, record myself as a thought. I do find those a little more that I have to. You know, if I have to have that time set aside, right, that's how I've been.
How I did the convert more leads book was I Could free range, I get my thoughts together for this section of the book and then I go and talk that out. So it gives me that structure. One thing that I have realized and that's been very helpful is this idea that Reality you know, the mainland, the real world here, applying yourself, moves at the speed of reality, which is 60 minutes per hour. And, yeah, if I'm going to embark on a project that's going to take 20 hours, that there's no possible way to allocate or Put in those 20 hours without actually putting in the 20 hours and that I can't do it.
All at once. So the only thing I've got an infinite. I've got an infinite Opportunity list of all of the things that I could possibly do, but what I've been experimenting with that's very helpful is Just loading in my next 10 hours. What if I? What can I do in the next 10? 50 minute focus sessions that I have?
you know that's really that narrow. That helps me prioritize and make a decision, which is the first step of you know my acronym of playing golf a goal, optimal environment, limited distractions, six time frames. So a goal is the decision of what am I going to do at Tuesday from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock I've got two potential hours that I can allocate there and what am I going to do in those times. You know, that's really been a big help.
Dan: Yeah, yeah and. I, you know and I've got a reputation that goes back, certainly the full extent of the Coach program, which goes back. I mean we'll be 35 years Next November. We're in our 35th year of the coach program. Dan always delivers. Yeah, and I have a Absolute commitment to never in any way undermining that reputation. So whatever it takes, dan always delivers, okay me too. And you know if you handle that, whatever it takes to deliver, you know life gets real, simple.
Dean: Yeah even though it's sometimes. You've seen that illustration of the you know assignment made, accepted, deadline here the timeline, and then the little five percent at the very end and the 95% all allocated is goofing off. And then five percent, all the work done, while crying.
Dan: No matter what.
Dean: Yeah, well done, you know, yeah, yeah yeah, because your, your entire reputation is just in terms of commitment, is that you've made to other people? Yeah, and I think, though, our ability to our ability to always deliver, I think has really been, you know, honed because of our, the requirement of us always pulling a rabbit out of our hats growing up.
Dan: I think yeah, even in any assignments or anything like that.
Dean: We've gotten Really good at improv theater you know, yeah, I.
Dan: Well, I think the other thing is if that's true, you always deliver then, what people can't see about that? Are you happy with the time you spend that other people can't see?
And I would say that I'm up about 1,000 times over the last 30 years. I'm really happy with the free range time. I'm really happy with all the work backstage that I have to do. I used to be grueling. It was working nights, it was working weekends under severe pressure, and that's not true anymore, because I've got a sense of the framework of the project. I got the sense of the timing of the project.
And I said you know and then you know, I've kind of worked out what the deal is with my brain. My brain always delivers at the end of the day. And I says, well, there's two of us that always deliver my brain. If I set my brain three things by the end of the day, have this self, I don't care what you do, You're not accountable for any of your time, but by the end of the day I want these three things delivered. And then I've got my commitments to deliver a front stage.
So I've just worked out a two-way deal here. I love it.
Dean: That's great. Well, Dan, I never yeah.
Dan: I think we're kind of cosmic soulmates, you know, both the payoff and the problem. I think we're. Both of us have tried similar landscape in terms of coming to grips with ourselves. I agree. Yeah, I find these conversations infinitely interesting One takeaway that you got from today, and I'll tell you mine.
Dean: So that's my big takeaway for today. It's given myself permission to just roam the pastures, to enjoy my free range, as long as I just hold up my end of the bargain right. That was a night. I got a lot out of that.
Dan: Yeah, and I think that I do really interesting podcasts also with Shannon Waller which is called Inside Strategic Coach and people always want to know. Our clients especially want to know how we do, what we do backstage. And I'll just drop this as a topic for her, because I think this the greatest tension that entrepreneurs have is not front stage, but the greatest tension is backstage.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, I'm excited about next week. Yeah, I want to talk again even more conversation. I look forward to it. Thanks, steve, this is really great, thanks.
Dan: Steve, okay, I'll talk to you next time.
27 Jul 2022
Ep072: Diversifying Through the Cloud
00:58:51
Dean and Dan discuss the unique diversification opportunities afforded by building businesses around Cloudlandia and cloud technology as a whole.
Today, Dan and Dean discuss how convenience provided by products of the digital age, like Cloudlandia, has opened up massive opportunities for everyone and allowed the documenting of otherwise unknown monumental achievements.
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dan and I discuss the paradox of achieving more through minimal effort. Exploring concepts like the 'Crucial ABC Questions' and the 80/20 rule, we uncover how sometimes the best approach is to simply stand still—how inaction itself can be a powerful strategy.
We share insights into the transformative nature of strategic scheduling and how it can liberate our lives from daily logistical burdens. By entrusting details to others and focusing only on meaningful tasks, forward-thinking time management elevates our experience and enables richer collaborations.
Touching on varied successes, we reflect on the diverse challenges public figures face and the support networks shaping their approaches.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We explore the concept of achieving more by doing less, focusing on the 'Crucial ABC Questions' to isolate growth problems and find their least-effort solutions.
Dan and I discuss how inaction can sometimes be the most effective action, particularly when it leads to strategic delegation and efficiency.
We delve into the 80/20 principle, highlighting how focusing on the 20% of efforts that yield 80% of the results can enhance productivity.
Strategic scheduling is presented as a tool for life liberation, allowing individuals to indulge in what truly matters by delegating logistics to others.
We share personal stories and insights on how public figures manage their time and the impact of their support systems on personal and professional growth.
I share my approach to problem-solving by considering whether inaction could solve the problem or what is the least effort required to achieve the goal.
We highlight the significance of having others manage your structured calendar to allow for freedom of choice and richer life experiences.
Reflecting on success and fame, we examine how various degrees of support systems and self-reliance influence celebrities' lives and careers.
Strategies for entrepreneurs on managing time and maximizing productivity include asking key questions to reduce time spent on issues and preparing for future growth.
We discuss the importance of personal routines and structure in providing a sense of security and time management, and the philosophy of avoiding unnecessary risks.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan,
Dan: Mr Jackson.
Dean: There we are Back again.
Dan: I have a question for you.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Are there any problems you're solving today by doing nothing?
Dean: Yeah, I love it. It's like a paradox. You know, I had a great time at our workshop this week going through that, the exercise. I've been thinking a lot about it, actually, like I really have over the last several days. I've been writing a lot of things and so I could share some of the things, but yeah, I'd like to hear one. Okay, so let's preface it. I love, by the way, how our podcast is really just one continuous conversation that we jump right into everywhere.
Dan: Last one, so for anybody listening.
Dean: Let me try and take my shot at explaining your. What do you call the tool? What do you call the thinking tool?
Dan: The crucial ABC questions.
Dean: The crucial ABC questions. So my understanding of it, having you explain it to me and having gone through the exercise, is that there are some number of goals or obstacles or things that you want to do.
Dan: And I call them growth, I call them growth problems. Growth, In other words you have plans for growing something in your business life? For your personal life. But there is a problem. And I like the way, if you solve the problem, then the growth happens.
Dean: Yeah, I like the way of thinking about a problem not as an emotional negative thing but as a math proposition. You know something that there is a solution, and that's really what we're looking for here. The problem, finding the problem is really the biggest, the biggest path to getting the solution.
Dan: Yeah, you know you mentioned a math problem. That's like multiplication five times X equals 20. Right, okay. If you figure out what X is, then you have the. If you figure out what's relationship is between five and 20, then you've got a solution to the problem and you grow.
Dean: I like that. So I think that the preface of identifying the problem you got to have a problem, so identifying the problem and isolating it to one particular thing can be a multi variable problem, you know. But one of the one of the variables of the problem is then to ask yourself is there any way I could accomplish this? By doing nothing, yeah? I think, that's really a great thing. Is there any way I could accomplish this by doing nothing?
Dan: And.
Dean: I think that alone, you know, is a really good way of doing, of thinking, because it lets you think about, you know, just as a solution. Is there a way to do this with doing nothing? Then, once you acknowledge that in 99 times out of 100, the answer is going to be no, yeah, that you then move on to be, which is what's the least that I could do to accomplish this or to solve this. Yeah, really, I'm a big fan of the. I'm a big fan of, you know, everything fits into the stand. The 80% approach is a great way of thinking about this.
Could I get most of what I'm looking for with 80% of this. And you know the corollary to that 80, 20 and what's the 20? 20% of this to get 80% of the result. I think that's a really good. I think thinking paths that opens up for you and then see the magic is is there a? Who could do my minimum? I think that is the ultimate. That's the. You know we identified it as the. That's the way to. That's the way to pray while you're smoking versus smoking while you're praying.
Dan: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: I'll tell that again because I you told it on our last podcast but I've been thinking of all sorts of different applications of the smoking and praying yeah, the way I heard it was gentlemen goes to see the priest and asks him you know, is it, can I smoke? Well, I'm praying, and the pastor or the priest says well, you know, prayer is supposed to be a reverential thing and you should come with reverence.
And so, no, I would say you shouldn't smoke while you're, while you're praying and anyway, and it came back several weeks later and within conversation, was asked go father, when should I pray? And the father says well, the Bible says you should pray without ceasing, should be in constant prayer and communion. And he says, so, should I pray while I'm gardening? Because, yes, being in nature and being with being present, you should definitely pray. Should I pray while I'm walking? Well, yes, you should pray while you're walking. Can I pray while I'm smoking?
It's so funny simple syntax change that gets you to the outcome completely different than when you presented.
Dan: It's a totally contextual yeah it's a totally contextual change, and so, going back to the three questions, so the first one is the way I can solve this, by doing nothing. If there's something you have to do, then what's the least you have to do. And if there's a least that you have to do. Is there someone who can do your least for you, with the result that you're solving the problem by doing nothing?
Yeah but it's an interesting thing. Well, what's changed in your mind? I mean, when you put the three questions together, because this really starts with a conversation that created the entire podcast series that we've been doing for quite a long time? We've done quite a number of years We've done I think this is. The total is about 215. So this is episode 215 of our never-ending conversations, but it originally came back from my appealing. I just dropped a line when we were at a restaurant, los Select in Toronto and I said you know, I've been thinking about procrastination, and procrastination is an avoidance of something that really you're exhibiting. You're actually exhibiting wisdom because you know from your entire history of what works and doesn't seem to be working. The goal you have here, when you say this needs to be done, and you say, well, how am I going to do that? Well, the goal is an appropriate thing, it's exciting, it motivates you know it motivates some kind of action.
It's just that you're not the one who's supposed to actually be doing the thing that you want. So it relates directly back to procrastination.
Dean: I think, I think that it's in the same family, same root, yeah.
Dan: It's a sense of family resemblance Exactly.
Dean: Well, so I'll tell you the evolution of my thinking around. It is, you know, lillian is coming by today, lillian my assistant, and so I mentioned to you that one of the ways that I've been kind of applying this thinking is in my eating, in my meals. And you know I went to the process of with Jay Virgin, you know, we kind of outlined some great meal choices, 10 kind of power meals for me that are available here in Winterhaven through Grubhub and Uber Eats to be delivered. And I discovered the pre-arranged delivery you can arrange, you know, up to four days ahead that they will deliver at certain times. And so I've taken that was cut to the point of if I take that, if I want to eat great meals, is there any way I could do nothing about this?
Well, there's not really any way because you have to arrange and eat the meals right. So what's the least that I could do and that led me to the pre-arranged things in combination of those meals, and factor my factor 75, that I've got some meals that arrive at my house once a week and they're very easy. They just, you know, require a couple of minutes to eat up, but they're perfectly portioned, already done, and delicious and nutritious and ready to go. And so my next level, thinking of this now from spurred from our conversation this week at in our FreeZone workshop, was to think okay, can I, is there a way I could have my portion of this done by someone? And so Lillian and I are going to experiment this week with her pre-arranging the meals to be to arrive at 12 o'clock and six o'clock, so mainly the 12 o'clock one that I that needs to arrive, because typically I use, I do, the factor meal for dinner. But that's going to be the experiment this week is here's the 10 meals.
Dan: I don't really care.
Dean: I don't really care which one it is, but let's rotate through them and at 12 o'clock something delicious will arrive at my doorstep without me having to do anything but eat the meal and I think that's, I think that's going to be my workaround for not having to, you know, really not having to do anything but eat.
Dan: So does the? You have the 12 o'clock meal and the six o'clock meal. Are they different every day? Well, you got a map. If you just are talking about different combinations of two, and you basically have 20 things to work with, the combinations are in the thousands.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. I think that's true.
And it doesn't really it doesn't. There's no duds. You know I order, like the. I order six meals from Factor. So there's six days of the. You know six of those meal options I order from Factor and there's usually 30 plus meals to choose from. So I do have some favorite ones that and sometimes they're different and each week there are 30, but there's probably they probably rotate in you know several different ones Like yeah, so I'll see which ones I really which ones I like, and I may even be able to with a little bit of coaching. Thank you for reminding me of that. Then I'm going to look at that and see there's only so many variations. I'll just tell Lillian which factor ones I don't like.
Dan: Yeah, but it's enormous the number of combinations because you're and there's actually, if you go on the internet, there's things that'll give you the different combinations. Like it'll give the different numbers you know, and it's a lot, it's really. It's really. I'm not sure it's over a thousand, but it's certainly in the hundreds. You know which.
Dean: I'm very excited about the. So I'm very excited about that possibility, you know, because that's going to free up and I think there's something you know it's a great analog for everything. The next thing I've been doing is taking that and applying it to my content creation.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I was just this morning going through the process of, you know, really getting to the point of what my, what is my core thing that I really like to do. So I'll say I'll talk a little bit more about that, but let's explore what you were saying.
Dan: Yeah, let's go you know the interesting thing about bringing Lillian into the, you know, into the process we have a caterer who caters the meals for our workshops. So then, they could say 18 or 19 years. You know, and yeah, and my rule is any meal for the catering can be you can. You know, you can make the meals for the clients anything you want to think, but there has to be chicken, turkey chili, chicken chili.
Right, right Then there has to be some kind of coleslaw and there should be some parmesan cheese, right? So my variation from day to day is which do I put in the bowl? First the parmesan cheese, the chili or the coleslaw, regardless of what else is on the food line? But then he makes our meals for Babzame at home, and this is lunches and dinners the same setup that you have, and it's really interesting because there's about it probably rotates. The salads have a variation, maybe three or four different kinds of salads, like. What's really interesting is the entrees, and they could vary. Let's say, there's 12 variations, 12 variations, and I never know what's coming for today, tomorrow or the next day. So something familiar, something we like, something we've had before, and then every once in a while he throws in a new one, right? So my sense, with Lillian doing the ordering it adds a little bit of surprise.
Yeah, a little surprise, because you're saying, yeah, I wonder what's going to show up today. Yeah, you know, and it won't be the same as yesterday and it won't be the same as tomorrow. Right, and so I think it adds a little variety to certainty.
Dean: What it removes is discretion. It removes variation and room for you know if it's all within this band. You get variety, but it's all from an approved playlist.
Dan: You know, yeah, On a completely different, on a completely different, a completely different dimension. The way my year works. I don't like scheduling.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Okay, I don't like being responsible for scheduling. I don't want to be responsible for other people scheduling, so I work, and I've worked with a series of managers who do the various activities and my, you know really great EA Echamiller.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And so, if you look at my entire year, I have 210 work days. Okay, so let's just talk about the work days 200. I have 100 and I have let me just think this 100, 250. 250, 250, 250. And 210 work days, which include both focus days and buffer days. Yeah, and 155 free days 155 free days, which adds up to 365. This year I've got a sort of an anxious decision to make because there's one extra day. I'm feeling the I'm feeling the pressure. I'm feeling the pressure that extra day in February.
I'm oh geez. You know what will I do with it. You know it's eating me. It's eating me, dean.
Dean: Well, you're going to be, is that? Are you going to be in Palm Beach then?
Dan: Geez, I don't know. You know because I'm told where to show up. What is? The date of Palm Beach. You know, you know you're defeating me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Dean: Oh yeah, but I will be told when to go. You will be in Palm Beach, dan, of course. So, no for the summit. That's what I mean. I mean I will be in Palm Beach for that extra day. Well, 29th is when the extra day is I mean the extra.
Dan: There's an extra day in February but the truth is 366 days in the year.
Dean: So you know, I understand. That's the symmetry, the elegance of it being that February.
Dan: Well, that's taken care of them.
Dean: We can have a super happy fun day.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a day when I'm responsible for nothing.
Dean: I think we should see if we can work to do that together that day. That would be a very nice day.
Dan: Yeah Well see, just by expressing the problem life, I've solved it.
Dean: Yeah. I think, that's probably a great idea.
Dan: Is there any who can do my least effort here? You did it for me. So thank you very much, yeah, anyway, but the whole point is, my whole year looks like this it's all scheduled by other people, and so I have a right of refusal on this, and I have a right of free arrangement. My whole schedule from January 1st to the end of December is scheduled, and then there's free spaces. Every focus day has some free space in it. Every buffer day has free space in it.
And then as far as the free days go, it doesn't specify too much of the activities, except things that have to be scheduled ahead of time things that have to be chosen ahead of time, like dinner engagements, but that's all done. I mean that's all done. So what would happen in Toronto? I'd be in the cottage. I wouldn't be in Chicago, because Chicago is strictly a work trip and everything We'll be down in Palm Beach.
It won't be just for the conference. We'll have a day before and a day after, and going to Phoenix next week, I'm going to Argentina the next week and everything but everything that needs to be scheduled ahead of time is scheduled by someone else, arranged by someone else, so it allows me just to show up, but all these scheduled things are what I've said, that I want to do, or together, babs and I want to do.
And then somebody else works out the scheduling and the arrangements and everything that's needed, putting transportation together, and it just allows me to move from day to day without the pressure of indecision. Have I scheduled that? And I can't believe the number of people who are incredibly successful who are still scheduling their own things. I just can't believe. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this at this point? And they say, well, I don't like someone else telling me what to do.
Dean: And.
Dan: I says they're not telling you what to do. They're saying this is what you wanted to do and we made the arrangement for you.
Dean: Yeah, exactly Great. I mean that's really. I'm laughing, dan, but for years that's been me. I mean I've been resistant to scheduling my take on.
I mean it was right in my declaration of independence, kind of thing my freedom charter is my number one way of defining success has been I wake up every day and say what would I like to do today. I realize now that I've missed out on a lot, because it could be so much better if I were to just change one word is I wake up every day and say what would I like to do tomorrow. The future.
Dan: I mean, that's really, that's the better, that's the real freedom. Yeah, you just changed smoking and praying.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly what.
I did, dan is because you're limited by what you can arrange. When your choice is today, when you're waking up and saying what would I like to do today, you're limited by what's available for the day, whereas if I say what would I like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow being an operative word for not today but in the future, what could I arrange today? That's really you know what it's the difference, dan. It's the difference between having conversation like this six weeks before February 29 and coming to the conclusion that, hey, it's a possibility that we can have a super happy, fun day and maybe we can make that happen for us. But if I were to wait until February 29 and wake up and say, what would I like to do? That I'd like to spend the day with Dan, I were to call you on any one of those days and say, hey, what are you doing today?
The odds of us being able to spend that day together are slim to none.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned your declaration of independence. But I said, if you're severely constrained by the lateness of your, you know, identifying something and getting ready for it, it's really not a great life. It certainly doesn't sound like liberty and it doesn't sound to me like you can pursue happiness.
Dean: That's the truth. Yeah, it's really. I mean.
Dan: Yeah, it's an interesting thing and, as you know from previous conversations and that I was bound in my late teenagers that I was going to go into theater, okay, and I'll say I dabbled with it for about five years.
You know I actually was involved in the theater at, you know, an amateur level. I was involved with it but you know, I was in maybe 10 productions and one role or another. And the big thing that you begin to realize by the entertainment world is that people become stars. And I'm going to say two factors are here. They become stars because they are increasingly freed up from doing anything except entertain you know they're completely afraid of.
And I'll say the other factor the reason they want to be a star is because they don't have to do anything except entertain.
So there's both an effect and a cause there, but they're exactly the same. They're motivated not to have to do that. And I was reading once about, you know, moving in baseball from the minor leagues to the major leagues the top minor league is a huge jump to the major leagues and I consider sports a form of entertainment, so I'm relating it back to the same conversation. Okay, and the. I remember the shortstop, you know, and there was a year when about 12, 12 shorts in the major leagues came from the same town in the Dominican Republic and it's apparently short. It's the world center of major league shortstops.
Dean: Okay, world head club, uh-huh.
Dan: And you know, through a translator, because he doesn't speak English through a you know an interviewer asked him what do you notice, the biggest difference, biggest difference of being in the major leagues? And he said I don't have to wash my own laundry. He said I don't have to carry my own bags.
Dean: Yes, I love that you know it was something, something a very similar conversation with someone this week who was I talking to about this I think I was talking more, I was having a conversation with Taki about that this week that thinking about, you know, pro sports like thinking about the athletes and the you know, thinking about the structure of the NFL, for instance, if I were an NFL quarterback, that there's very little that an NFL quarterback has to do other than bring themselves to be to perform on the day, right, that there's all of the everything else. Talk about, you know not having to do the carry your own bag or wash your laundry or anything like that. There's a very, very structured way of the of an NFL week. It's broken up into, you know, 16 weeks kind of thing, right as the main thing, and each week starts with a very organized structure and flow to the week where there are free days and focus days and buffer days. Of course Sunday is the big focus day that everybody you're ready for that.
But you know Monday they I saw a you know week in the life of a NFL player and so Monday they watch film and get treatment for you know, their injuries or whatever you know body recovery kind of things. Tuesday is an off day, a free day. Wednesday is right back to practice, and Wednesday, thursday, friday, same Saturday is a travel day if they're going to you know a new city or whatever. And then Sunday is game day and everything is all 100% organized around them. There's lots of exoskeleton and lots of scaffolding to keep that.
And a lot of hoos, a lot of hoos and mentioning Tataki, like the difference between that and professional tennis or golf even. You know there's some structure around the tournaments, but the individuals you know you're responsible for everything. You know it's all self directed and it's completely meritocracy. There's no signing a 10 year max contract in tennis. You have to win every week in order to win. You know, and I thought that's really. You know, it's really. I could probably do some therapy about my life choices, of why you know choosing tennis and golf as sports as opposed to continuing with team sports. You know.
Dan: Yeah, I think the big thing I had a phrase because I actually went to see Frank Sinatra back in, you know back in the 70s.
Dean: And.
Dan: I came up with this line. One of the things you notice about Frank Sinatra right off the bat is Frank Sinatra does not move pianos. Right, Exactly oh that's so funny, you know he's got a whole team that comes in the day before sets up everything you know. I mean there's with a performance like Frank Sinatra there's literally dozens of people who are specialized, people that handle his whole trip, his whole lodging you know, and everything Great stars, taylor Swift to bring it up to the present moment.
Dean: I mean she's probably got an army.
Dan: She's probably got an army of people. You know, and uh 55 trucks to you know to bring the entire you know the entire physical set, the entire physical set, including the technology, and yes, and, and everything else, yeah, and. But you can see the difference to me. I remember Keith Richard Richard's of the. Is it Richard or Richard, keith?
Dean: Richards.
Dan: Yeah, richard. Keith Richards made a documentary film on Chuck Berry who so many of the 60s you have to remember that the stones started in the 1960s and he made a documentary film on Chuck Berry and it was a bit of. Keith Richards described it.
He says it was a bit of total, almost admiration and worship for the musical skills of Chuck Berry but at the same time almost a sense of disappointment and kind of resentment towards Chuck Berry because he never built any kind of structure around him. Okay, thank you. And so he did this documentary for him that sort of traced him from his very poor, poor beginnings in the St Louis area and you know, and then. But he never. He went big simply because of his talent and the you know, the media for spreading his talent through the airwaves. And he became famous, but he never really took advantage of it. He really took it.
You know he was playing that county fairs and everything throughout his career. Okay, but he inspired maybe hundreds or thousands of people who became successful in music just because of the sheer wizardry of his. You know his songs, his voice, you know his ability to play a guitar and everything else.
So they did it and there was Bruce Springsteen was saying that he was like an 18 year old or 19 year old and was a, you know, got a really lucky gig at a fair in Pennsylvania county fair or something like that and as backup to Chuck Berry and he was just amazed.
So they all got there about five, six hours. All the musicians got there five or six hours. And you know, four, five, four hours, chuck Berry's not there. Three hours Chuck Berry's not there. One hour Chuck Berry's not there. 20 minutes before the presentation, chuck Berry comes in, ignores the musicians, goes in to see the manager and comes out with a bag that's got his money in it in cash and then he just starts tuning those instruments. And finally Bruce Springsteen goes up to Chuck Berry and says Mr Berry. He says yes, boy. He says what are we going to play? He says what do we going to play, boy? We're going to play Chuck Berry music. That was his prep.
Dean: That was his prep yeah.
Dan: The name of that movie.
Dean: I need to watch that because.
Dan: No, just plug in. Keith Richards, yes, Just his you know documentary on Chuck Berry. He'll come up with it.
But there's a great scene near the end of the movie where they go back to a theater in St Louis where, when he was growing up, chuck Berry had to sit in the balcony because he was black. It was, you know, wasn't segregated, that they couldn't go to the theater, but they had to sit in a certain section where they didn't have drinking fountains and didn't really have bathrooms, you know. And then they put on an actual performance in that theater as part of the documentary and it just shows the complete circle of him, starting when he couldn't be in the main part of the auditorium, certainly couldn't be on stage, and then being the star, and, but one of the things, they went and visited his home, which he had and this had, you know, his entire life. I think it may have been his parents home, but he had the home and it was pristine.
You know it was beautifully kept up, not a, not a, you know, a rundown part of town, but not in a rich part of town either. It was you know sort of a modest house and everything you know, everything was kept up. It was you know, it was nothing rundown about it. And he was just taken through the house and they went to a door and he opened the door and their shelf on both sides were paint cans and paint brushes.
And Keith Richards said what's this? He says well, you know, sometimes I didn't have gigs all the time, so I was a house painter. He says I paint houses. Wow, he says yeah, but yeah, but you know, that's in the past. That's in the past. He says why do you still keep? You know the brushes were fresh, the cans were cans. He says why are you keeping that round and check where? He says well, you never know.
Dean: Oh, you never know. Wow, I would have to watch this. That sounds fascinating.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I love things like that, so that's really I think that'll be a good find. Good Now, I know what I'm in.
Dan: Yeah, it's just a really, but he didn't believe in who's you know he just didn't believe in who's you know? Is there a way I can solve this problem with doing nothing. No, well, yeah, is there a? Way of solving the problem of too much fame and success without doing. Without doing anything?
Dean: Yes, yeah, right, right, right. I mean wow, I mean yeah, I'm fascinated that I haven't heard about this before. So I almost like I just love that.
Dan: Yeah, it's a long time ago. I mean, it's a long time ago.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Maybe something I saw 25 years ago.
Dean: I remember it very distinctly.
Dan: I remember it very distinctly yeah.
Dean: So what has your insight been? In now, you know taking this out to the check writers as we say. What has been your experience? The reception of the ABC, thinking.
Dan: Well, I think it's a very simple, what could very much be a daily tool, because things are always coming up which are things to be solved you? Know, and I mean so. For example, if you handle three of them today, the amount of time you thought you're going to have to spend on them has been severely reduced by simply asking the three questions Is there any way I can solve this by doing nothing. What's the least I have to do, and who could do my least?
Well probably you were thinking that might take five or six hours and it probably takes 30 minutes. Okay, right. You know, it sort of takes 30 minutes, and I find usually the thing that the entrepreneur has to do is they have to communicate clear results for the right person, in other words, clear results to be achieved by the right person, with a clear understanding of why the projects were important and what are the measurable success factors of the project, which we call an impact filter.
Dean: I was just going to say. If only there was an easy tool to convey that.
Dan: There is one. It's called the impact filter, but if you handle that, then you've watched yourself probably four or five hours today which gives you time now to prepare for tomorrow. Okay. So you want to get yourself that you're not looking at today's growth problems. You're looking at tomorrow's growth problems, yes, okay.
And you know, and what I've noticed with me is then that day I can put the. You know, this is a newly created tool, but before what I do is I can say okay, all clear and communicated about tomorrow, then I can move it another day in the future. And I keep buying myself days in the future by using this tool. I mean this has just occurred to me, you know, since I have one, as I created the tool for myself. And if it worked for myself, then there's a chance it'll work for the entrepreneurs.
But then I have a full quarter now behind me of it working with the entrepreneurs and then I just move it more and more into the future. But I think it's you know, it'll already be in the client website for their tool inventory so that they'll be able to do it. But if you just had a habit of always the day before you're solving tomorrow's problems. I like that, that's when that really works over 25 years.
Dean: Yeah, that's the consistency thing. Right is spending some time. What would I like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow being the operative for in the future? Yeah, I've been. I've been constantly evolving and experimenting on myself with different ways of organizing things like that, and you know, the gotten down to the plank, the pixel, the minimum unit of time being the 10 minute, the 10 minute unit where we have 110 minute units in a day, basically to up, deploy.
And I've been following those hundreds all the way up right like so. 100 minutes is basically to 50 minute focus finders, which is the thing I have the most, that's, the most immediate control over right what am I doing in the next minutes about about this.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And then the 100, 100 hours is basically 8am Monday morning till noon on Friday, is basically 100 hours of time linearly. And that, you know, if I take that NFL type of structure of week, if you're looking at them that way, that's a big, that's a nice Focus. You know that that feels like that. And then a hundred days is Essentially a quarter, you know, looking at the things, with some little buffer in between them, you know, like giving room for some free days and things Aside, but, and a hundred weeks is really you can do almost anything in a hundred weeks, yeah.
Dan: And so, yeah, I think that's the thing is I. I don't use my Apple watch for a lot of things, but the one thing I do is the timer and you know they have a timer app and my my favorite is 30 minutes you know, 30 minutes and and in other words, something may happen that requires a couple hours. I simply say what's going to get done over the next 30 minutes.
Yeah, okay, and the thing that I find is true that if I didn't have that 30 minutes, when I look at what did get done over 30 minutes because I had the 30 minute framework, I Always get much more done in the 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Then I thought or I get 30 minutes worth of work done in 20 minutes. But if I didn't have the framework and it would always take me much, much more time, right because, I would take score, a score of commercial breaks.
Dean: I know, and that's exactly true, right, like I do exactly the same thing. I've been thinking about what I really do, like my thing is running things through. I've been calling it the Deenatron 3000 that I've got the brain. There that I can operate right and yeah, if I treat it like a wood chipper, that I've got to feed stuff into it. They have it working.
But I've got a. But the thing is to pile up. You know, like when I look at the things is to have the hopper loaded up with sequential. What is the? What are the next things that I'm going to do on that Stuff? You know, the 10 hours thing, what are the next 10 hours about? Because I noticed that the Deenatron 3000 doesn't really care what it's working on. It is very open to Suggestion, right, and that's why I would say that jumps yeah.
Dan: I would just say that's true about the human brain and yeah.
Dean: Generally as long as the brain really doesn't get.
Dan: The brain wants to work on something and it does really care what it is. Yeah, it could be good or it could be bad. It does not care. It makes no moral distinctions. It makes you know. You know it Work on bad things just as with as much enthusiasm as working on good things.
Dean: Yeah, it'll work on one thing the same way. It'll work on everything you know and if you're putting on the, you know, putting on some direction of it, feeding in, setting up a context for what it is that's Happening this hour, yeah, really, or this 30 minutes, that's, yeah. I think it's just adding, you know, a contextual Management layer in a way.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's like having not and then checking out if you're actually a manager.
Dean: Yeah, right exactly.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I'm not a manager. I'm not either.
Dan: I'm not a man manager, and you're not either you know I have to delegate Management, I mean. And the other thing is memory you know I delegate memory and I have.
I always have someone with me. I remember there was a famous platform speaker, I think in the 90s, okay, and we were at Genius. We remain platform at genius. I'm pretty sure it was genius. It couldn't been the 90s, because genius didn't exist, it was some other. No, I think it was a big you know industry Conference and I was and I was on. I had been on before lunch and this guy joined me at lunch and and he was talking.
You know, we should really work together and and so I was interested, you know, interested in the conversation, anything you know. Usually when somebody says we should work Together, usually means that he'd like me to work for him, you know.
In any way, and so I just given my talk and I had my team of I didn't have team members, but there were clients Strategic coach clients at lunch with me and he was talking away and we were chatting everything and then all at once he looks at his watch and he says, oh my god, I'm on in three minutes I'm. And he says, here, I just will hand us a bill. He don't have to rake on a rush dog. And this guy was more famous than I was, I mean, as a platform speaker. He was times more famous than I was, but I had spoken in the morning at like 11 o'clock.
I had had an hour and Someone came and got me at 9 o'clock and took me backstage and set there, you know. And we sat there and and I had three team members. I never traveled without three team members. Yeah, and the team members take care of arrangements and this person does that, you know, but I would never ever be. You know, just arriving. You know, just arriving, checkberry style.
I would never just be arriving, I would already be there, I would already matter of fact, what I'd like to do with speeches is go out and talk to the members of the audience, because I Pick up. Q I pick up.
Dean: Q's.
Dan: You know, it's like Jay Leno who, if you got there. He was already there two hours ahead of time and he was chatting with you know, and he was just picking up material. Do you know what?
Dean: Sorry but go ahead. I was gonna say, just on a similar thing, tony Robbins, who we were playing golf this is maybe ten years ago now, almost playing golf one day we're talking about I know I'm being successful when my declaration of it, we're talking about those things that you know, the number one thing, when I, you know, wake up every day and say what would I like to do the day, and Tony, when we were talking about it, he looked at me and he said dude, I don't have one of those days till March, and this was January, right, and his whole thing was a very different. He had that. He definitely had a what would I like to do tomorrow Approach to his life, because even in playing golf we were gonna. We were filming some video things for a program he was doing. So he arrived at my country club you know, two SUVs deep to six people and that you know assistants with assistants and the camera guys in the sound guy in the body, body guards.
Yeah, the whole thing, and that is true, like I played golf with him in in In Fort Lauderdale he was done in Palm Beach, but I played golf with him and literally they arranged the, they arranged the tee time ahead of and behind and have a, you know, to Security ahead and behind that are following the, just following, you know, a hundred yards behind us at all times. Very funny, right by not just keeping these buffers around around whatever, a very different approach yeah it's whatever system he's required.
Dan: But you know, I don't know. My feeling is timing and scheduling is idiotic and cratic. It's completely All in individual how an individual, what story they tell about their past and what story they're telling about their future. And that determines what the structure of today looks like that. So it's a structure and my, my sense is I don't, I never like being rushed.
Dean: Okay, I always want to be.
Dan: I always want to be prepared. Yeah and I don't like sudden surprises.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I really don't like sudden surprises and therefore, in order to Get that Structure around me, I give this, that same right, to all the people who work with me.
They don't have to rush. There'll be lots of preparation before him. Then there'll be no surprises. It's very smooth, it's very calm. Everybody gets just to, gets to focus and you know, focus on what they're doing and then this just floats through time. This little system, you know, flows through time. Now, yeah, I deliberately played such a low key person throughout my career that I don't need security. Yeah yeah, yeah, and my, my sense of the sense of success Be as successful and well known as you can without requiring a security person.
Dean: Right, yes, yeah. Warren versus Mark Zuckerberg.
Dan: Well, Warren Buffett, you know he flies by himself. He flies by himself. You know he's just got his briefcase because he comes in and goes out the same day. And you know he's got a private jet and he gets picked up my limousine company is actually his limousine company when he comes into Toronto and he wants to sit in the front seat with the driver and he just gets to the driver all day and when he arrives at a place or someone's standing, you know they're standing on the curb, you know, yeah, on the sidewalk, and they take him in and he comes out, and you know pretty.
You know, pretty much on time, and then he goes home. You know, you know he has his lunch with whoever and then goes home. Mark Zuckerberg has 24-hour security and the number of people involved.
For him, his family and his chief officers is like 70. He's got like 70. He's got secret escape rooms, he's got tunnels and you know, and you know, I think, what your structure around you reflects, whether you think it's a safe world or a dangerous world. I think that's great. I think it's a safe world as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know it's dangerous for others, but I don't feel, I don't feel, or I stay away from places that are dangerous.
Right yeah, it's like somebody gets Arrested in Russia and then you know America's got this thing is. You know that the country will come to your rescue one way or another. And I said why are you in Russia? What? Why are you even visiting there?
Dean: I went right.
Dan: Yeah or China. I wouldn't go to China, you know, I would even go there you know it's like the joke about that.
Dean: You know what my yeah, I heard about these guys that were, you know, died in a base jumping Accident. Right, and I said that's this one thing. I know with certainty that my tombstone will never say Died in a terrible base jumping accident.
Dan: Yeah, what are those flying suits that people right?
Dean: exactly yes, is that base jump? That's what I was talking about and I think it is called. You know, I don't know what it is, but the human flying suits, but that's what they do. They jump off they jump off a cliff and, basically, just like those, they float, they've got a parachute. They've got a parachute yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and you know, I've seen videos of the ones where it worked. Yeah, yes exactly. They don't show you. They don't show you the other ones. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, why are you doing this? Yeah?
Dean: I'm never gonna die in a park accident.
Dan: Yeah, but I think it's, you know, different nervous system. You know, I think every nervous system is unique, you know, yeah, yeah, who's the guy who did in Yosemite Park there was a. It won the Academy Award and he did it with no ropes, you know, he just had his hands and feet.
Dean: Oh.
Dan: I don't know.
Dean: Yeah, well, Linda Well.
Dan: Linda, now that's a whole family.
Dean: Yeah right rope workers.
Dan: Now, this is the guy. He's a free climber. Oh, okay, right, right, and they all capitan is just a sheer cliff from top to bottom. You know, yeah, I think it's a couple thousand feet and anyway, and it usually takes climbers where they're using, you know, they're using the things that they drive into the rock and then they put the, you know, and they usually takes them A day and a half to do it, not you know, which requires that they stay overnight.
They have to sleep right and that's you know and everything else. I think he did it top to bottom in about two and a half hours yeah. I just thought wow and he had a film crew at the bottom and at the top and that they were filming the film that became the you know the free solo.
Dean: Was that what that was?
Dan: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what, anyway, but he just went to top to bottom, okay, and her bottom to top and in a Insanely short period of time. But he told the film crew that they wouldn't get any money. He said I am, you're only getting half the money and you won't get the other half, that if I fall and kill myself you don't catch it on film.
Wow you know, and they're kind of leaning out at the top. You know they have, you know they have wires in that that keep them safe, which requires a certain you know a certain amount of courage itself to do that the people at the top but thinking that the guy bait might fall. And yeah, everything you know and everything but different nervous system. I don't have that nervous system.
Dean: Me neither, me neither.
Dan: Well, we covered a lot of territory today.
Dean: We really did yeah. There's a lot of nervous.
Dan: There's a lot of nervous systems that couldn't do what we're doing.
Dean: Where we go, exactly yeah.
Dan: Yeah, well, what's the script here Script it's listening to. It's listening to what he says next. That's so funny. Well, what are you gonna say next? I don't know until he says it right, we know we're gonna start with.
Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Yeah yeah, anyway very enjoyable.
Dan: Always next week. I'm in just arriving in Argentina, so to be the weekend after yeah, I saw that we got a email from.
Dean: I love that, you know. Becca and Lillian, just keep us on Triad ever.
Dan: I just see it on.
Dean: I don't even have to put the Podcasts with Dan on the calendar. What we put on the calendar is no podcast with Dan.
Dan: That's the yeah, there's more uncertainty to that, isn't?
Dean: there, that's exactly right.
Dan: Yeah well.
Dean: I'm excited about the possibility of the 29th. And oh, okay that present, but I think that would be fantastic. Okay, okay, thank you, Bye, thanks Bye.
28 Jul 2021
Ep028: The Most Important Piece
01:09:11
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about the most important piece of any idea...
Join Dan and Dean as they discuss how Cloudlandia makes it possible to structure your environment, giving you more opportunities to explore yourself and adjust the way you think.
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we unpack the fascinating story of how Toronto transformed over the decades thanks to the pivotal work of urban theorist Jane Jacobs.
As we debate whether our growing dependency on virtual spaces like "Cloudlandia" is weakening local connections, we ponder journalism's evolution from its regional roots. We reminisce about bygone media eras over a nostalgic lunch at Table 10 and trace how universities and ideological factions shaped radio's founding.
As always, we aim to provide a balanced look at technology's ability to bring people together globally while potentially distancing them locally.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
The episode begins with a discussion about Jane Jacobs' significant role in preserving Toronto's neighborhoods in the 80s and how it has shaped the city to this day.
There's an exploration of the shift to Cloudlandia and how this virtual universe could be curbing our desire to travel and reinforcing local areas.
We rewind to the 80s and trace the evolution of regional media landscapes, debating the impact of Canadians having links to Florida and the emergence of new franchise models.
Dan and I discuss the rise of Cloudlandia and its impact on our lives, connecting us to the world like never before.
The power dynamics in radio broadcasting, specifically AT&T's control of the AM spectrum are examined.
We delve into the ideological divide in radio before the advent of the internet, discussing how universities pioneered FM radio, while AM radio was seized by the right-wing.
We contemplate the implications of geographical shifts and changing economic patterns triggered by our migration to the cloud.
The future of communication and travel is questioned, and whether our lives continue to be dictated by Newton's laws or if we're slowly transitioning into a world governed by Moore's Law.
The episode concludes with the hosts suggesting that as the virtual world expands, people may start reinforcing their local areas more, indicating a balance between global and local influences.
Overall, the episode offers a thought-provoking journey through changing times, digital landscapes, and the very fabric of our lives.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: Never gonna leave you. Never gonna leave you. Well come here I am. That's one thing about Cloudlandia Once you're in there, you can't leave.
Dean: It's so convenient you know it's addictive. It really is. How was your week?
Dan: I had a really super week, I have to tell you. I mean it was a four day week because of the holiday.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And it's not so much what I'm doing, that's what the company is doing, and there's just all sorts of independent projects which have been more or less under the surface. You know, there's kind of an interesting woman from the 80s and economist by the name of Jane Jacobs have you ever heard that name? I haven't.
Dean: No.
Dan: Yeah, and you know, in Toronto, when they stopped the Spadina Expressway. Yeah, I don't know if you remember that. What seems like yeah, well, you know the Allen Expressway.
Dean: I do know the Allen.
Dan: Expressway. Yeah, that was supposed to be the Spadina Expressway and it went off. It's gonna go all the way down to the center of the city Right, right, right. Right through the center of the city and it would have gone to the Gardner, it would have hooked up and then they would have traded clover leaves down at the bottom.
Dean: And they would have had to remove.
Dan: They would have had to remove all those neighborhoods. It would have gone right through Forest Hills actually. I think that was part of the reason why it got stopped, because wealthy people have more votes than poor people. I don't know if you've noticed that Not in my backyard Right exactly. And then the other one was the Scarborough Expressway, which you know, the Gardner extension that went out to the beaches.
Dean: You know it went out and it was just called the.
Dan: Gardner yeah, it's completely gone. They tore that down one night, basically, oh my goodness. We were away for two days and we had it when we left and when we got back it was gone, you know and but that whole area of Lake now from basically charity, erie Streep, actually, you know where the Gardner goes up the Don Valley.
Dean: Yes, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, well, that's where you took the extension off and they just tore it down. They tore it down in two, two stages, once about 10 years ago, and then they tore it down again, and so, but this was all the 40 year impact of Jane Jacobs, okay, and she said that she had to preserve your neighborhoods if you're going to have a great city and to tear down I mean, and it's turned Toronto into a congestion madhouse.
I mean, that's the downside of it, but on the upside of it, toronto you know, toronto tries to call itself a world class city. Have you ever come across that? And what I noticed is that world class cities don't call themselves world class cities, they just are.
Dean: New York.
Dan: New York doesn't call itself a world class city, it just is. London doesn't call itself a world class city, it just is you know. So if you're still calling yourself a world class city. That means you're not, oh man it's a Toronto life syndrome. I mean Toronto Life Magazine.
Dean: Yeah, and they're Toronto, by a magazine. I'm very intrigued, I'm very, I am very intrigued by these micro you know economies, or micro you know global lenses. I guess that we see through and you're not kind of talked about the whether that is.
Dan: I'm talking about mainland. This is mainland stuff. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Dean: Yeah, and I wonder if that is. I wonder if that sense is diminishing now that we've fully migrated.
Dan: No, I think it's okay, I think it's coming back with, with the vengeance actually you know, and my sense is that the week that COVID started in March I think it was March 13th, friday the 13th I remember when it visited itself upon us, when clients were saying you know, we were seeing 50% drop-offs in future attendance for workshops because of COVID and it was partially, you know, but it was the lockdowns, it was the dropping off of airline flights and everything else I remember I mean all our cash flow got taken away in about a month, right Right and we had to switch.
We had to switch to Zoom, you know, and and we had about a three month period where we just had to rework our entire you know, our entire business model to take all the in-person workshops and turn them over to Zoom workshops, you know. So, that's the upside of Cloudlandia, is that if they take away your mainland existence, you have to switch to Cloudlandia to compensate, and it's a bigger opportunity, bigger, broader everything. Yeah, but one of the downsides of this is that people don't feel like traveling anymore.
Dean: I mean are you talking about me?
Dan: No, I'm talking about us and you know.
Dean: I know, yeah, exactly.
Dan: I'm talking about everyone you meet, you know.
Dean: I know exactly.
Dan: You know, our only time when we have full attendance during the week, where we have people in the office, is Wednesday, monday and Tuesday, thursday and Friday, or when there's a in-person workshop. You have to be in the, you have to be in the company on workshop days. Okay and so, but the thing, the Jane Jacobs, the people who really got involved with the number one person in Toronto was Cromby, mayor Cromby, and he was one of the forefront leaders in stopping the Spadina Expressway and the Scarborough Expressway. Okay and so I'm just showing you the interrelationship between mainland and Cloudlandia.
My feeling is that the more that Cloudlandia expands, the more people go back and start reinforcing their local areas. That's what I wonder about the whole cycle. How's that for a topic that we didn't know about five minutes ago?
Dean: Well, exactly, but I think that I think there is something to that. You know, like I look at the, I think I've been I've mentioned before, like without having moved away from Toronto, like coming into Florida and yeah, when's the last time?
Dan: when's the last time you flew to Toronto? Yeah, no, it's been three years, and three years, yeah, the next time will be whenever, april, if you April, if you decide you're coming to Toronto 12th of April is the first Toronto oh it's already set, yeah, it takes us about a year, because we've got to guarantee that we've got a date when people can also do their 10 times workshop in person. I got you, okay, yeah, so you know, I mean pre-zoners, double duty, you know, they double.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, this is very exciting. So April 12 is on my calendar then, okay.
Dan: I'm pretty sure you're taking a statistic from Dan Sullivan here. So yeah, we better double check on this Well, april 12 is Friday, yeah. It's in the calendar and I think the pre-zone is on or the 10 times is on the Thursday.
Dean: Okay, so the 11th and 12th.
Dan: All right.
Dean: Well, now we're talking.
Dan: Dan, and then Dan is on the Saturday and that's what I'm most excited about.
Dean: Yeah Well, this will be for those who aren't listening.
Dan: Table 10 is Dean and I met meeting for lunch on a Saturday, which really got everything we're doing together started was the table 10.
Dean: Exactly right.
Dan: Yeah, but that's a mainland, that's a mainland reality which may be possible.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right and I think that this now this is where I can, as I've reflected, I look at where I've been spending time, taking snapshot comparisons this week of today and 25 years ago and seeing where we are. You know, if I look at 25 years and 30 years ago kind of thing, I look back at when I started my you know sort of being in the result economy or launched my entrepreneurial career in 1988. So I look at that as coming up on, you know, 35 years.
Dan: this year, 35 years, yeah, yeah, and I just want to look from there Well, it's 35 years. Right now it's 35 years. I mean, we're in the 35th year.
Dean: So yeah.
Dan: And, what's really interesting, our program where we have workshop programs, started in 1989.
Dean: So next year is our 35th year you know it's year 35.
Dan: So it's the 35th year of the program and I'll be 80 in May and I've been coaching for 50 years in August. Okay. So it's sort of an anniversary year Nashville in May we're going to have our first worldwide conference in Nashville. Coach Coach Con yeah, coach Con, coach Con, yeah, yeah you can take that in two ways. Coach Con. You can take Coach Con in two ways. Yeah, you can. It's the coach conference, or it's just shows you what 35 years of counting people will do for you.
Dean: Oh, that's so funny. Well, I'm very excited about both of those. I'm very excited about both of those things. So where I was going was, you know, in 1988, looking back at the things, it was very much a Toronto-centric kind of lens because I had spent. I left Toronto in 1984 to come down to Florida and finish up. I've been spending a lot of time down there. I spent, you know, I spent those years and driving through this I remember the first time driving down on my own.
I had a friend with me. But driving down going through the different cities, like going through Dayton, ohio, and going through Cincinnati.
Dan: Ninety-five hits in 75. That's what we took.
Dean: That's the main route to Florida. That's the main route, exactly, yeah, yeah, you crossed over at.
Dan: Detroit. You probably crossed. Did you cross over at Detroit?
Dean: We got a tip to cross over at Port Huron, so up further, which was Further north yeah.
Dan: Yeah, but then once you were across it was a straight shot superhighway all the way to Florida, and the reason is that Canadians Florida is part of their Canada. Yeah, I mean Ontario. My Florida includesmy Canada includes Florida.
Dean: Yeah, exactly that's true, isn't it? It's like the Southern Extension. You've gotten places in or things in Canadians. Have, you know, links to Florida? You're absolutely right, yeah.
Dan: Half the Canadian adult population from around November to April. Well, let's say October to April includes Florida, Scottsdale.
Dean: I was just going to say that Calgary you look at the other side, then Calgary is. Yeah, calgary is connected to Palm Springs and Phoenix.
Dan: Yes, and then Maui, because I don't know what the situation is now, but I suspect they'll go to the part that didn't burn down.
Dean:
Yeah, but what struck me was the newspapers. So this is, what struck me is the newspapers and television stations, because we would stay, you know on the road.
We would Hotels. Yeah, you would stay, yeah, we would stay in a hotel. And so I don't always, you know, get the newspaper. I've had a long time love for USA Today, which I've always kind of loved as just getting a overview of everything. But it struck me how I had grown up with the lens newspaper, lens being the globe and mail, the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Star and looking that, you know, without any sense of left and right leaning. You know, I didn't understand at that point, you know, the bent of and how that shapes things.
But, it was amazing to me that I learned I got kind of on that deep level, these regional kind of markets you know I don't know how to fully describe it, but it was an awakening that I knew that, hey, if you've got something you know that worked in, it was kind of like this franchise. I'd be seeing franchise thinking in place, you know, in different places and seeing the Cracker Barrel restaurant. You have the same exact Cracker Barrel experience at any drop off point along Highway 75, you know, and so yeah.
Dan: And that was.
Dean: Yeah, at the time the thing was I mean in those days it was the new model. Yeah, yeah, for young college students traveling abroad. Right, but it was so great and that level of you know you wouldn't have any window into Louisville, kentucky, unless you're passing through Louisville and you tune in to the Louisville Echo Chamber or ecosystem where you're seeing the. Louisville anchors and the news and the local things, and you're reading the Louisville newspaper, you know.
Dan: And then Macon Georgia.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Macon and everything.
Dean: Because you usually made.
Dan: I always remember that we shot for Louisville or Lexington on the first night. Yeah, lexington, yeah yeah, but we never saw any of the horse farms. Well, you did I mean because 75 went past the. But you never got off.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: You had Oasis which were franchise Oasis.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, and that way you know what you're going to. You know what you're going to get you know, but now I see now how those things are like with the rise of Cloudlandia, the access to what's going on a national scale and global scale kind of thing, is what direct to the individual. You know, now you've got access to everything, and I've been. Do you follow or is on your list of news outlets? Do you come to Daily Wire? Is that part of your routine or?
Dan: are you familiar with. No, that's not one of my.
Dean: Do you know?
Dan: about the.
Dean: Daily Wire.
Dan: I've heard of it, but that's not really what I it's not.
Dean: No, I mean I'll look at it.
Dan: now that you're talking about it, I'll look at it.
Dean: Well, Ben Shapiro is the one who basically I know Ben, he's the guy that started the Daily Wire.
Dan: Yeah. I'm a Breitbart guy, I'm a Breitbart guy. I check daily caller town hall Breitbart, you know.
Dean: Yeah well, the Daily Wire is now a $200 million. They do $2 million a year now and they just Last year. If you think about the VCR formula. And the reason I'm bringing up the Daily Wire is that is a cloudland-centric, a media empire that was started 100% to be online and took advantage of one. They tapped into Facebook's reach and they funneled those people into get readership and get subscribers to their news service and use that money to buy more attention on Facebook. That was the whole very simple model and they executed it flawlessly.
And so they built this huge reach and they had a relationship with Harry's Razors. Do you remember?
Dan: Oh yeah, Like Dollar.
Dean: Shade Club and Harry's Razors. So Harry's Razors was a big advertiser on Daily Wire, doing very successfully, and then Harry's took exception to some content on the Daily Wire that suggested that men are men and women are women and that would Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Dan: That's like touching the third rail of the subway, absolutely.
Dean: And they dropped it. They stopped advertising, but what Jeremy Borencher, I think, is the president, who's the CEO of the company what they did was they started on the backs of that company called Jeremy's Razors and they built this whole. They did a whole ad launching the process because it's their own audience. They were already very successfully selling Harry's razors to their audience by letting Harry tap into their reach, and so when Harry's left, instead of looking for somebody to replace Harry's as an advertising partner, they said, well, we'll just make the razors ourselves. And they started Jeremy's razors and now Jeremy's razors is a huge subscription-based company speaking directly to the reach that they've built with the media company.
And it struck me that now we're getting to where these very specialized. I don't think we're separating geographically as much as we're ideologically now that there's brands for the right and there's brands for the left and there's you know, there's woke brands and there's I won't say successful brands. Now.
Dan: But the.
Dean: I mean the writings on the wall. I'll tell you.
Dan: I'll tell you. Can I tell you an earlier crossover that?
Dean: set that up.
Dan: Yeah Well, actually FM radio was technologically possible in the 1930s and 1940s but it was never approved by the FEC until the 1970s. Actually, there was about a 40-year thing where the federal what's the FEC, federal communications they couldn't get it passed for, even though it was available and and but FM is strictly a local radio reach. You know, during the day you can get about maybe 30 miles. You lived in Georgetown, I think, when you lived in. Toronto right. Well you could get CJRT, which was an.
FM station and you could, but once you got, let's say, up to Orangeville or Newcastle, you couldn't get CJRT anymore. Okay, Because, FM is gets interrupted by solar energy during the day. Am we? When I was growing up, I could listen to New York, I could listen to Chicago.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Remember you put on a clear night, real clear nights. I could get New Orleans, philadelphia was easy, boston was easy on. Am because it's a different bandwidth, okay, and it doesn't get interfered with by the sun, but the sun won't let FM go further than about 30 or 40 miles.
It's not true anymore, because all the FM stations now go on the internet you know, so I have an internet delivery so I can get Los Angeles Jazz Station on, you know, on the internet and they're taking advantage of the internet. But what happened was it was AT&T really controlled the AM spectrum. At&t, yeah, I mean they talked about the dominant technologies. You know Google and Meta and you know and everything they talked about it today. You know Amazon, that nobody, they didn't get up to the knees that the type of control that AT&T had. Okay, and.
AT&T didn't want any competition for its AM networks and they came in and the. But because FM is a local, it's you know, it's a region, it's where you are, you get a real. The universities are the ones who started it all. Okay, so in you know, cjrt was Ryerson and the Toronto and everywhere you went, like if you went to Louisville it would be the University of Louisville you know, and and everything else.
And so, right off the bat, the ideology of the universities by that time was left. You know, that was where the left wing people you know symphony music and it was, you know, the various FM stations, and they abandoned. Am got abandoned and the right took over AM radio, you know, and Ross Limbaugh was the first person who really took advantage of that, and this was strictly the right side of the political spectrum.
Dean: Okay so.
Dan: AM talk radio. Am talk radio. The left tried to get into talk radio and nobody would listen to it.
Dean: Okay, Nobody so the you know.
Dan: And so what happened? You already had that ideological split at the radio stage. Okay, so if you were left wing and you were driving to Florida, you would go from university town to university town and pick up the FM station, but you weren't less than the AM radio anymore. So that was the first split. Before you ever got to, you know, you got to the internet with. That split had already happened in the radio spectrum.
Dean: Yeah, amazing.
Dan: That was before you were born.
Dean: Right, right, right, that's something.
Dan: But I mean, imagine something happened in the world before you were born.
Dean: It is so funny.
But I look at that, you know, and it is like it's amazing to see how this is going, and certainly club Landia is enabling that and my, to bring it all, we're back around to the. What we started talking about with the local, saving the neighborhoods kind of thing is, yeah, I wonder if we're starting to see geography kind of shaping up here, that Florida and Texas are becoming like sort of you know conservative, you know safety and some kind of thing that they're gathering all the people there, yeah, yeah, and they've surpassed New York, they've surpassed New York state, they've surpassed Illinois, they've surpassed California.
You know the states.
Dan: People are leaving those states and going to Florida and they're going to Texas and so, but I believe in Moore's law, which essentially is the you know, the technological formula that's created Cloud Landia is Moore's law, but mainland is controlled by Newton's law and. Newton's third law I mean Moore's law is that every 18 to two years the computing power of the microchip will double and the price of it will get in half, that's the we've lived in that world for the last 50 years.
Dean: And but.
Dan: But Newton's law is for every action there's an opposite and equal reaction. Yeah, so if you yeah, so so you got to look at both laws.
Dean: And I wonder, you know one law triggers the yeah. Yeah, it is interesting to see the like. I wonder if you were to you know, are we bringing back now? The importance of the local infrastructure, the local like. What is the role of the community now in our lives, in our world? I mean, I feel like I'm it's getting narrower on less and less like inclined to have to travel to other places, and it's funny, you know, I don't know.
Dan: Well, I won't travel, I mean, except for my own workshops. I won't travel to business, I won't travel for anything. And you know and I mean all my speeches what I used to give speeches for. Now you know where I would be invited to a big conference and I cut that off in 2013. I just you know, you can have me as a speaker, but it's going to be a podcast at the conference.
Dean: Yeah right. Yeah, that's kind of the way I've been doing.
Dan: Things too is zooming in as opposed to traveling and flying in yeah, yeah and it's easy because you know you're doing whatever you're doing at the Four Seasons Valhalla and then you're someplace else in the world.
Dean: Yeah yeah that's so true right.
Dan: Yeah so, but people think that because there's a new realm available that eliminates all the previous realms, but actually just the opposite happens.
Dean: Yeah, I posted and it's so. I think about how we really have the ability to be a beacon. You know I'm Jamie Smart. I don't know if you've ever met Jamie?
Dan: Yeah, well, I know of him. I know of him, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, wrote clarity, just like when we were doing all the big seminars. You know when we stopped doing that in 2009,. That was a big, you know, big shift in our world. You know, in terms of having spent 15 years every single month doing a big event somewhere new.
Joe was having a conversation with Jamie about that and he was like because for him it had been even longer, you know, doing that with his identity of being a speaker, going to town and being on stage. And Jamie talked about it as a transition from going from being a torch bearer, where you have to take the torch and go city to city to spread the message, switching to being a lighthouse, where you stay in there and be your light from when everybody comes to you and that was a big shift.
And even then, 2009, the Internet was here and all the infrastructure and everything was here, but it certainly wasn't the same place as it is now. Zoom and all that stuff was not yet. Now it's just. I look at it and you start to see, man, there's just so many ways to reach the world from your Zoom room. You can really have a global. There's nothing stopping you from having a global broadcasting center in a 6x6 room in your house.
Dan: Yeah, it's interesting. You were very helpful to us because we had that flood in our Fraser Street building. Then we were knocked out. I mean, we had just come back from lockdown, from COVID lockdown, and we got three months in and we had the city water main next to our building when Underground just destroyed our my recording studios, our tech team, where our tech team was, where all of our materials were.
But they closed the building down because the city inspectors had to come in and they had to check out. Maybe the whole building had to come down because the support structures may have been weakened and they'll just condemn the building, but we were out for eight months before we could get back in, you know.
But, in destroying our recording studio we had a company. Toronto is a great post-production center for the film industry. So it's dependent upon the Canadian dollar. If the Canadian dollar is really weak, film studios in the United States ship their post-production work you know of editing and everything and there's about 15 movie studios, tv and movie studios in the Toronto area, all the way from Pickering to Hamilton. You know these are big studios but they do all their inside. They bring all their inside work to Toronto.
And now they're creating actual virtual towns with CGI. So did you catch any of the Jack Reacher series.
Dean: I did not.
Dan: It was a huge hit. But the town that's depicted where Jack Reacher is, it's a small town in Georgia. The first season was the small town in Georgia. It was one Lee Child book, Jack Reacher, and that entire town was created in CGI, doesn't exactly? That's crazy, right, but when you look at it. And then all the inside scenes were constructed in the film studios. You know the homes and everything like that. But that shows you the relationship between Cloudlandia and the mainland.
Okay, because once you cross an international border, you're in a different currency system. Yeah even though I mean digitally.
Dean: I mean so many things are possible now. I posted up a video.
Dan: The one thing that remains constant is the US dollar Okay. I mean the US dollar. And people say, well, why does everybody use the US dollar? And I said you just answered your question.
Dean: It's right there Back up to the first part of your sentence. Why does everybody you know that's like yeah, I mean it's like English.
Dan: Why does everybody speak English? I said you just answered your question.
Dean: That's like the Yogi Berra Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and yeah. And so the big thing is that since 1989, the differential the average differential, between the Canadian dollar and the US dollar has been 26% in favor of the American dollar. So we get 80% of the US dollar, it's dollar 36, dollar 36 right now Are you crazy?
Dean: Well, that's crazy. So I checked the number.
Dan: I checked the number no no, because in 19, it was $5.55.
Dean: Oh, wow, yeah, but it's been hanging around in the mid 30s.
Dan: 30% now for, I would say, last three or four years it's been you know could be as low as 30% and it got up to 42% per hour, but that so we didn't plan it this way. It was just a lucky break for us that we started in. Toronto, and so 80% of our income is in US dollars, but 80% of our expenses are in Canadian dollars and basically can buy the same thing with a Canadian dollar in Canada as you can with a US dollar in the United States.
So we've got we don't have 26% because it's 80%. It's not 100, but we've averaged 20% for the four years we've averaged. So every dollar that comes across it's worth a dollar 20 if it comes across from the United States.
Dean: Yeah, right Wow. And that's kind of where we're talking about the infrastructure, you know the infrastructure thing of being able to now, you know, build with a main or a Cloudlandia audience to reach with all the but with the capabilities or the expenses and physical delivery stuff happening in the most favorable, you know, mainland place. And I wonder if that's the opportunity that geographically you know places will get, will become sort of specialist in certain things.
Dan: Well, that has been the case actually for the last 30 years. Okay, because of one factor that 90% of global trade, 90% so every day, the all the transactions in the world, it's, like you know, it can be like 4 trillion to 6 and a half trillion every day. The total value of it, well, 85% of it is in US dollars, okay, is in US dollars and all of that is.
90% of all global trade happens on water Is that right 90% of all global interactions and you know the, if you just take a look that it's water travel and that's only safe because of one factor, and that's the US Navy. And since you know since and that was. That wasn't for economic purposes for the US, it wasn't at all for you at. You know the everybody says well, the Americans, you know they just did this for their economic that actually the US. You know how much 10, how much percentage of the US economy is actually involved in cross border trade? 10%.
Wow the other 90% is just Americans making stuff and selling it to Americans.
So the US really doesn't isn't really that involved in the world but they had a problem after the Second World War and it was called the Soviet Union. And so what they did after the war said you know, we don't want to fight the Russians head on, so what we'll do? We'll just create a great economic deal with every other country in the world that's not communist and we'll promise them that we'll guarantee all their trade routes by water and they can sell anything they want into the US without any tariffs. And it was a great deal. Modern China only exists because the US guaranteed all their trade, and now the US has decided not to guarantee their trade, their water transportation and that's why.
China's hit a wall, you know, and, and so I mean.
But it's really interesting, dean, you're the one who came up with the cloud land idea on the podcast, and. But what I've been examining more and more is what happened if the cloud, if cloud land idea changes your ability to communicate and travel. You know, physically it's not like the mainland is going to be the same after that. I mean, if you make a change in one realm, it's going to make changes. I think this localization is now the, so if you're globalizing on the one hand, you're localizing on the other because you got a balance. That's what I wonder now, and I don't see.
Dean: I'm starting to see like there's some shifts in the way that you know. I think that cities or towns I'm not, I can just speak about for winter, what I'm noticing a lot of development in is winter haven is sort of focused on the downtown, on making that kind of a more vibrant gathering center. It's not, you know, spread out like within strip plazas, like it was in the 70s, and it's not about the mall. Now it's about the downtown and they're taking kind of this ghost kitchen or you know model, but building it around social spaces. So there's two or three now of these developing areas where they've got multiple restaurants in one gathering place, right, so it becomes like a social hub where you can go there and they have live music and people gathering but you can eat at whatever, whatever type of food you want.
Dan: So it's not like going inside to ask you a question I mean winter haven is a fairly small geographic area, but are there are there new residents buildings? Going up where these social centers are.
Dean: Yeah, see, that's the thing?
Dan: yeah, because the internet, you know the interstate highway system had bypassed all the downtowns.
Dean: You know back in the 50s the right.
Dan: You know the. The interstate highway system in the United States is the greatest public works project in the history of the world. It's about 63,000 miles now and they add about another 500 miles every every year. You know bypasses and connectors and everything like that, so it's a never ending project. But in the 50s it just bankrupted almost every small town in the United States when it. You had to go through the small. We went to Florida in 1956 and it was small town after small town after small town. There was no interstate. 75.
Dean: Yeah, wow, yeah, that's kind of like Route 66 was going the cross.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, you can still take Route 66, but it's small town after small town, you know yeah yeah, just listen to the words of the, the song you know, route 66 and tell you all the small and none of them were big cities. They were small towns you went through, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, so we're creating an interesting model here that Moore's Law is expanding, you know one realm.
But the Moore's Law or Newton's Law says, yeah, if you do that in Cloudlandia, then that there's going to be a decentralization that goes on in the mainland. So winter I mean, you'll probably have people you know more or less spend their life in winter. Hey, winter haven't, because anywhere they want to go else, wise, they'll do it in Cloudlandia.
Dean: Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. I just looked up the winter haven in the population right now it's 57,000.
Dan: So yeah yeah, and I see you know yeah, yeah, and the interesting thing about the malls, that Mark Mills wrote a great book. Mark Mills is an economist in the Manhattan Institute. I think it's the Manhattan Institute, which, as you the name suggests, is a think tank in New York.
City and he writes about the malls. He's got a whole chapter on the malls and he says the malls are going to, they're being abandoned. There's about a thousand failed shopping malls in the United States at any given time. There's about a thousand that have been abandoned. You know they just go bankrupt. And he says they're going to be turned into factories or they're going to be turned into warehouses shipping centers and they're beautiful because they they've got parking for all the work they've already got all the.
You know the delivery sites like they have the, the delivering docks you know loading docks, right, the loading that. They've got all the loading docks. They got massive amounts of space and he says that they're going to be robotic and automated factories it's amazing, it's so.
Dean: It's such an amazing time to be alive right now. You know, I mean, you think about where, the things that are ready to implement that are all here right now. You know, I don't know that. The next thing, like, as I mentioned, I was doing snapshot comparisons of you know day to day 1988 versus today and, as I said to Stuart Stuart, my operations guy, was with me, we were going, we went to the movie studio movie grill here in about 30, 40 minutes away and I started recounting the day with him, like as we were. I was in these comparisons. I'm saying, okay, so here's how the day started.
I him in the morning and said you know, let's go to the movie. I forget what movie was out, but it was a great movie that was had just come out that day or whatever. And so we were going to go for lunch and go to the movie there, because they have Studio Movie Grill is like a dining theater, so you go and they bring food and everything. So started out with the text of that. Then I went to the studio. My video studio recorded a video that I, stuart, and I left. From there I bought the tickets for the movie online through Fandango and, you know, bought the tickets in advance.
So we all we had to do was scan the barcode. They just scanned it on my phone when we got there, but the Tesla drove us there using the autopilot function, so we were driven to the movie. We got in our seats without having to go to the thing. We scanned a QR code for the menu of what to get. We pushed a button. They came and took our order, brought us the food. We got back in the car, had the coordinates. The car starts driving us. We were listening to a podcast on the way back and it just in that moment, just that little thing. There's not a single element of that day. That was possible in 1988.
Dan: Yeah. I will remind you that in 1988, you probably said what an amazing time to be alive. Yeah, you're probably right.
Dean: I mean the dot was like what I got.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I mean look at this.
Dan: The fact are you kidding me.
Dean: We can send a piece of paper over the telephone. What a relief it comes back.
Dan: Yeah, now I'm going to. We've got a mainland collision happening in about five minutes, Okay, okay, and that is from when we started today, the one we finished, because I'm visiting Winterhaven from. I'm in Chicago today, so I'm visiting Winterhaven, florida, from 10 o'clock to two minutes to 11. But in 11,. I have to go to Vienna, Austria, and have an hour's talk with Kim White.
Dean: Okay, right, right, right. Yeah, I got to get on the flight to Vienna, right.
Dan: Yeah Well, it's a click actually.
Dean: Yeah, the zoom I got to get in. Well, I have to switch over.
Dan: I have to switch over from my phone to my computer because it's on zoom and anyway, but that I mean what we're seeing here, is you and I are. You know we're early adapters. You know you and I are early adapters, so I say, okay, the world's changed, so how do I have to change? You know, that's my basic response and and all of us got sent to bootcamp for two years during the COVID lockdown.
And we might not have chosen the route that we're on right now, but we were forced to. You know we were forced to, right, yeah, you know, I have a goal of never being on welfare during the rest of my life. Okay, yeah, I like to make my own money and everything, but it's an interesting thing. But, more and more, I think that you have to take both Moore's law and Newton's third law into account, because one of them explains the virtual world and Cloudlandia world, but the other one explains what happens to the mainland. When the Cloudlandia keeps getting bigger and bigger, the mainland keeps getting more and more local, like winter.
Yeah, so yeah but you gotta you gotta be good at operating in both worlds.
Dean: Yeah, you're right. You know I'm staying off welfare, that's well, you know, Dan, there's this little thing. There's a thing called cash confidence, and most people think it's about having an amount of money, but what it's really about is having the ability to create value for other people. So as long, as you keep focused on that, you're going to be just fine.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: This is really yeah, and I'm feeling very good going down 80, that I'm starting to get good at living yeah.
Dean: So amazing, isn't it? What a world, yeah, the journey.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, Actually you know, the most amazing part of being alive being alive.
Dean: Yeah, that is part of it all. That is exactly right.
Dan: That is exactly right.
Dean: It beats the alternatives you know, and it's funny.
Dan: The answer. The answer is in the question. Yeah, I just heard Dion Sanders was talking about how the whole body everything about us is oriented for moving forward and it would be neat if Colorado ends up in the playoffs and the 14 playoffs, oh.
Dean: I mean, well, they just beat Nebraska yesterday, so they're two and oh, right now. Yeah, I mean, it's just. It's the most amazing thing to watch. But do you ever think we're meant for moving forward Our eyes, look forward Our ears? Are perfectly positioned to bring us all the sound and everything from in front of us. Our mouth are meant to project forward. There's only one part of our body that points backwards.
Dan: And that's the exhaust. That's where, all the way you leave all the way behind you If you keep moving forward. I guess the evolution figured this out a long time ago.
Dean: Yeah, a lot of problems. Don't worry about what's happening behind there, don't look back, just keep moving forward.
Dan: You know that's in our years of doing the podcast. I think that's the greatest closing statement we've ever had.
Dean: Well, it struck me as this that's the first time I've ever heard it explained like that, but it's absolutely true. So that's why it's even more important, to be the lead guy in the line you don't want to be that. Yeah, it's like sled dogs.
Dan: Yeah, if you're not with sled dogs. If you're not the lead dog, the future always looks the same.
Dean: Oh man, what a day. All right. Well, you have my best. We've got a date, we've got a date next.
Dan: If you're up to it, we've got a next Sunday.
Dean: Oh yeah, I'm in Chicago today.
Dan: So I'm in Chicago today, so I'll be back in Toronto next week. No, it's a permanent fixture in my calendar.
Dean: All right.
Dan: Thanks a lot, Dean.
Dean: Thanks.
Dan: bye, bye.
23 Jun 2023
Ep099: Unlocking Profit Activators for Business Success
00:54:02
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we speak about the importance of making bets and guesses in today's shifting environment and how the eight profit activators form the foundation of any successful business.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Have you ever thought about how taking risks and making educated guesses can impact your life and career? This podcast explores just that, drawing from personal experiences like dealing with an Alzheimer's diagnosis and the COVID-19 pandemic..
If you're looking to build a successful business, you'll want to check out this podcast. It breaks down the eight profit activators that every successful business needs and how they work together to create a powerful blueprint for success.
When it comes to running a business, finding the right target market is key. One way to do that is by writing a book that draws in prospects. It's all about knowing your audience.
Even with all the changes happening in the world today, the eight profit activators discussed in the podcast remain relevant no matter what situation you're in.
Did you know that the Shekel currency has a fascinating history? This podcast explores that, as well as the exciting advancements being made in chat and AI applications.
Want to boost productivity on your team? Consider integrating AI to handle tedious tasks, freeing up team members to focus on the things they're best at.
Combining AI with the Working Genius concept and the idea of 'Thinking About Your Thinking' can take your team's performance to the next level. This podcast dives into how it all works.
Speaking of the Working Genius concept, the podcast also discusses how the Working Genius website can be used to better understand individual and team dynamics, especially when combined with AI integration.
Taking the time to reflect on personal experiences can lead to valuable insights and self-awareness, which can ultimately improve decision-making and creativity.
As technology continues to advance and change our lives, there's a growing desire to systematize the predictable while humanizing the exceptional. It's a general human aspiration for the 21st century.
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
How are?
Dean Jackson
you. Welcome to Cloudland, thank you very much, i usually just hit on recent.
Dan Sullivan
I just hit. Usually hit on recent phone call and you're usually there. But I was in London all week and Babs and I were face face, face timing it all week.
Dean Jackson
So I was looking for your number that.
Dan Sullivan
I could share.
Dean Jackson
Well, how was your whirlwind adventure?
Dan Sullivan
Well, it was great Babs couldn't go. She had she developed a really bad, you know sore throat for a couple days before and she just thought that the overnight flight would not do her any good.
Dean Jackson
No.
Dan Sullivan
So, anyway, i kept the trip short. I arrived on Monday morning and I flew out on Friday, but we had an all day. we had an all day session. We had a morning workshop for anybody who would want to come you know which mostly signature. And then there were some 10 times people And then in the afternoon I did it just for 10 times and free zone And as a great treat, evan Ryan and Keegan Caldwell were both in London.
Dean Jackson
And they came over.
Dan Sullivan
they came over for the day, so I spotlighted them. Oh very nice. We're just. We're starting with Keegan, i was starting with Evan. Our whole company is going to go through a six to two hour Zoom program on. AI. Ai is your teammate, okay, and so that starts in the near future. Those who are above my security clearance will be handling the exact details. And then I had Keegan talk about the IP, and that was, that was a treat, and so it went really, really well.
You know we had about 80 in the morning. they had scheduled train strike in Britain on Thursday, so I suspect we probably lost about 40. And at least I scheduled it tonight. I hate when somebody strikes without any advance.
Dean Jackson
Let you know we're not. we're not coming in on Thursday. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
So and the UK's train country, because it's got very dense population. And of course they have they have a lot of well, they have the tube. The tube was fine but that's more or less inside London, But the outer, you know when they come from one of the outer towns or cities and they take one of the trains.
Dean Jackson
And and.
Dan Sullivan
But in the afternoon I did the whole thing for three hours on. Get your best guesses and bets, which is a. It's a real wake up call. It's a wake up call for a lot of people that. I said you know the people who are predicting this and predicting that. You know, in the world today they're guessing, actually they're. They're making a guess and they want to do it persuasively so that you'll bet on their guess. You know and that. that is my definition of marketing You try to get other people to bet on your bet on your guess.
Dean Jackson
I like this a lot. Yeah, i wanted to talk a little about that. That's a part of the new book.
Dan Sullivan
It's part of the new book. The three rules are everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. And if you put that, if you put that together, then there's a whole series of other things that flow out of the putting the three rules Everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. Nobody's stopping you from nobody's stopping you from making stuff up Right.
And every everybody, everybody who sees or experiences you're making up some new, might feel that that's not fair. And that's not fair, yeah, if you're doing that, but you're not responsible for how you feel, how they feel, right.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, yeah, so so amazing. So a very was your. How was that message kind of received in London? What's there? what's on their minds? What kind of guessing and betting are they doing?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, you know, we immediately take them into an exercise where they just look at their you know their, their life and their career, you know. so what are the best guesses? you didn't. it wasn't certain at all, you were just guessing that. I might want to go in this direction, so, but you're basing it on certain signals that you're picking up from the world in which you live. And you say you know, i think, i think if we did this, we would get a reward for our effort And and then there's certain other guesses, which are possibilities that you actually bet on.
You know, and you know and we've discussed this before of different things that you and I have been the past bet on, which has more or less brought us to where we are right now.
Dean Jackson
And I've been reflecting on, you know, going back again over the, i've been identifying them as chapters.
You know periods where I think that there's like distinct, like vector points in about every four years. For for me, if I go all the way back to 1980. And even drew before that, but from 1980, you know, from 80 to 84, my kind of high school years, and 84 to 88 was really well, those whole eight years were really all about tennis and the last four in Florida. Then, you know, coming back 88, to two chapters in a row really of real estate, my real estate career in that beginning, And I just look at how neatly it fits into the things. And there's been some wild card chapters too in there, like I looked at, i think, about my mom being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, you know as a wild card chapter that was really four years from diagnosis till she passed.
And then I look at we're in the middle now of 2023, which at the end of this year the COVID, you know chapter will have been four years. We've been in this chapter, which I think we're finally, you know, on the tail end of closing that chapter now, fingers crossed right. And so, looking back at those things, it's kind of an interesting, just looking at that rhythm, that there's a lot of those things that there's no way to have seen more than two chapters ahead. What's actually?
Dan Sullivan
going to come.
Dean Jackson
Like I looked at a lot of the things that we're doing right now. We're not even like conceivable back four chapters ago. It's not possible. But I think you can make pretty good guesses and bets in that four year timeframe. You know, with a you can see contextually where things are going to go. But I look at it that you know, we, in the context of the big change, all the things that were happening from 1900 and 1950, those were sort of you know, you could see them coming in a way right.
Because they were all just furthering advancements of things that were. The seed of them was already in place And you could. You could have predicted, once electricity was set in, that people are going to go. This is pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Let's get it everywhere you know and once people you know, once you crack the code on moving pictures, that's just and radio. what if we combined moving pictures and the radio and we could send them through the airwaves? you know all those things were, the seeds of them were were there, and I look at it now and I wonder, you know, looking at it right now, in the cup of where we are, what you know, it seems much foggier initially to kind of think out 25 years.
I mean nothing seems too outlandish now when you start to think like, will we be, will we be teleporting in 25 years? I mean, who knows, you know? I mean it's so, so crazy.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I came across a term and it was from a very, very early kind of commentator on the impact that technology has and it's just looking at it the other day, and it's by a French.
Call him a philosopher, and Jacques Loll that's the name, and he wrote a book in 1980, which was called The Technological System, and he said that there's some very identifiable characteristics that technology has, and the one that kind of got to me around the area of guesses and bets is one called causal, causal progression, and in you know, sort of simple terms, what it means is that when you have a capability, you tend to try to push that into a, you try to push that into a very impactful kind of resource that you have you have a capability, And then you're lining it up best guesses who will be eager to take advantage of this capability, okay, And then, and you know, and that's where bets come in, because the way they show their interest is actually by betting on you.
And that feeds. that's like that feeds the confidence that you have about this particular capability is of being useful. So if I take you back 1988, that's not 88, but maybe would 98 be a better, because that would be 25 years ago 25 years yeah. Yeah, so what capability did you already have at that time? that was your bias. You almost had a bias for what kind? of opportunities you're looking for, because you can match up that capability with an opportunity.
Dean Jackson
So I had the framework for what is the eight profit activators then, but already you know I had the framework, the underlying system of that, as I saw that as a universal kind of bedrock system that identified what are the things that are going to be absolutely true Like. If you look at each of the eight profit activators, you still no matter what this concept of a before unit, a during unit and an after unit, underlined with the, you know, accepting a single target market and compelling prospects to call you and educating and motivating and making offers, those things were. I saw those as the universal, you know, the contextual truth that is not going to change.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's kind of like a supply wheel and. I said each. You know the eight profit activators. One of them is necessary but, with just one of them, you might not get much action or result from it. So it's actually a stack. You know, there's a sort of people are calling things stack, but these are habit, these are capability and habit activators that you're talking about, but they're all integrated into a single system where, if you improve on one of them, the improvement is felt by the other seven.
Dean Jackson
And every element of a business fits within those in the marketing of a business fits in that framework.
Dan Sullivan
So that was the beginning of it And I really And this is the basis of the blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint.
Dean Jackson
Yes, applying these eight profit activators, overlaying it on top of your business to create a blueprint for breakthrough is you can have a breakthrough by dialing in the perfect target audience Or shifting your focus to It's perfectly dovetails with the largest check concept. If you think about if we were just to select a target market of your largest check clients, let's lock that in. Now we'll move on to profit activator too. Notice what would compel your largest check prospects, if they're invisible or visible prospects, to raise their hand and say I'm interested in this. And this is where a book comes into play, that I look at a book as the And.
I go to profit activator tool to get and identify in a conversation with your ideal prospect, and so overlaying this idea of visible prospects versus invisible prospects is The way I describe that is, if your prospect is chiropractors, those are, those are visible prospects and you can get a list of them and point to them. There's one, there's one, there's one, there's one. You can see who they are specifically. But if you're a chiropractor, your prospects are invisible because you can't get a list of people who just woke up with a twisted back this morning or pulled their backs in the garden yesterday or those things.
So you have to draw those people out towards you And that's where a book is like the ideal thing If you've got a book that says on the title, beyond cover, exactly what somebody wants. I work, you know Dr Milke, the podiatrist in Milwaukee I think he's in 10 times, so I've been working with him for some time now but we did a series of books and one of them is the planter fascitis solution, and so we advertise that book on Facebook in a radius around his practice, around his office there, and people raise their hand and say, oh, i want the planter fascitis solution. And now he's in conversation with someone who's his ideal prospect. So that level of I just look at applying those things, that, as we look back, and I think about the conversation that you and I had 10 years ago that led to the Breakthrough Blueprint live event was what is the thing that would be fascinating?
Dan Sullivan
and motivating, fascinated and motivate you for your whole life.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, for 25 years And here we are, you know, 10 years later, and I'm still fascinated and motivated by the idea of applying the eight profit activators to all kinds of businesses. It's fascinating.
Dan Sullivan
Well, here's an interesting thing about predictions. I mean, i just passed my 79th birthday, so 1944, i was born And I would say that in my entire conscious experience, which started around 1950, we are in the midst of the greatest amount of multidimensional shifting that I've seen in my entire life, and it's taking place on the economic level. It's the same thing on politics, social, cultural and geographically, demographically almost anything that any area by which things are organized to make things you know have sense and have direction and everything. All those things are shifting And I think they're shifting in fairly unpredictable ways.
In other words, we don't know what it's going to have. But just to go back to your process, it seems to me that it really doesn't matter what's happening. There will be individuals for whom they're looking for a system that identifies at any given time their profit activators.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly right, it doesn't matter It doesn't really matter.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't really matter who it is, what industry they're in, where they live now. Now that we have Zoom, and so my sense is that, but the thing about it is that you're not really, really. you're way past the question. I wonder what individuals in the future will be looking for, because they'll be looking for you, regardless of what they're doing and what their situation is.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, that's really, I think, the.
Dan Sullivan
Profit is not a brand new notion. Exactly.
Dean Jackson
I wonder what the history of profit I mean you mentioned. I have a recollection of you mentioning something about the history of profit making And Well. I mean As a concept.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i mean it's got to be, in a certain sense, not necessarily the word. They wouldn't necessarily have that word because that's peculiar to the language, but yeah. But I mean I just can't imagine, when you have a growth of a human community, that there's the thing that somebody knows how to provide something of value that returns them more than they spend to deliver what they're delivering, or I mean, that's not the core of entrepreneurship, right? Well, I think it's the core of humanity.
I think it's the core of humanity, And that I mean it took a long time to get to a point where you could have what we call a currency to have a currency, you know, i mean where you had that understanding of money and you actually had a vehicle, a money type vehicle, that you could do it.
I mean, that's fairly recent, so this you know, goes back from what I understand, goes back a couple of fourth, I'll say 4,000 years. It was called the Shekel, It was created in the Middle East and what's Mesopotamia? So which is in the Iranian kind of the Iranian, if you're going east Iran and you know, and Pakistan and everything, And but for a couple of thousand years the grain barley was used as a medium of exchange.
You know I think it was 2000 years and that would take us right up to, you know, maybe 3000 years ago, you know so, 1000 BC, and I think that that's when what's now called Mesopotamia created a coin that had a hundred It was. You could take bits. They would divide it into sections and you could snap off. It's made of silver and you could snap off one of the little pies you know so they'd have it pie, and then you know if you gave to him. That was called two bits. You know two bits for really.
Dean Jackson
Oh, really Okay.
Dan Sullivan
Six bits. Yeah, that's for our term, but yeah, and you know, and that was a capability then you know, people didn't have to take a wagon load of barley.
The reason why barley is barley is a main ingredient of beer And so it was a food, but it was also a grain which, even till this day, can grow on soil that has a high salt content. Okay, Wheat wouldn't do it, Rye wouldn't do it, Oats wouldn't do it, but barley did it. So it was a very durable food. You know you could pay things with the barley, But Peter Zion talks a lot about this in his latest book. You know the end of the world is just just beginning. Yeah, And but anyway. But in the background, regardless of what you're using as a medium of exchange, people are looking for profit.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting thing I've been loving. I've been calling the.
You know what we've been playing as the cooperation game, you know that we've, since we banded together to say you go do the hunting and I'll be the gathering, we'll meet back at camp. you know that, that that level of collaboration, is that the core of it. But interesting, I mean. I love those kind of thoughts. So, even though no matter where the we kind of all the excitement and all the sort of game changer feeling is when all the attention at the spotlight goes on one particular element of it, you know, like every all eyes right now, of course, are on chat And that's where all the attention, the whole you know the flock has, you know, descended on on this.
All the attention is on it And but I think it's really like that's one piece of the big thing I don't know where. You know it's hard to predict. Maybe I'm saying that maybe it's not hard to predict, but it feels uncertain how to, how to predict what the 25 year, you know path of AI and chat, and I think it's what that go, you know yeah, and you can.
Dan Sullivan
you can, you know, you can support your statement there by just going back to when the microchip was just being talked about in the early 70s, Maybe 75, there was a growing awareness of this thing which had been developing really since the Second World War. Yeah, you know that there was a invention where you could process information on the invention And then, if you go forward, from 75 to 2000, you know 98 was the cell phone you know and and you you already had the internet by them and you had apps.
You had apps by them. I think those would have been hard to predict in 1975.
Dean Jackson
Absolutely. Yeah, i mean, you know where you went from there. If you look at the evolution that was calculators and and digital watch, i'm not saying that there wasn't someone.
Dan Sullivan
I'm not saying there, but there wasn't someone or a number of people who weren't predicting. I'm just saying it was making no real impact.
Dean Jackson
Yeah right.
Dan Sullivan
Exactly General public's point of view, you know and now, you know, but even here with the chat, gpt and the other AI applications, because there's really hundreds of these out there that are very specific uses- of AI. And that people say well, the whole world knows about it. And I said I'll eat billion. I'll eat billion.
Dean Jackson
What about?
Dan Sullivan
the three. What about the three million who don't don't really have steady, reliable electricity, you know?
Dean Jackson
you think they're?
Dan Sullivan
chatting. You think they're chatting about it. You know you think they're talking about this. And I said and the other thing is that virtually all the news about this and the development and the investment, you know, the explosion of investment that's going into these It's, it's all in the English language.
You know, i don't think for example, i just came back from the UK and very little awareness is not being written up in London as a boatload of different kinds of newspapers. I'm seeing anything about AI, you know, and even our day with strategic coach clients last Thursday in London. They brought it up because Evan Ryan was there, so I had him talk about this And he said a whole bunch of people got, came up and said boy, you know, this is taking me kind of by surprise. These are speaking people. So my sense is.
You know that it's fairly, fairly specific. Let's say maybe 50 million, 50 million people who are probably English speaking Americans. English speaking Americans, you know, and they're. I don't see the Canadian government talking about it. You know, and you know I get the national every day than the national post And you know not much, talk about it, not much. You know few articles here, a few articles here. But if you go to the Wall Street Journal any day, you know which, you know there's probably 15 or 20 articles of one kind on it, yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
And you just see all the.
Dan Sullivan
So I think this is an interesting. I think this is profoundly unfair, mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
What do you think? Well, what's the summary of of Evan's take on this Like, where's he uniquely thinking?
Dan Sullivan
Well, he said that the technology is meaningless unless you examine the teamwork that you want to improve.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm.
Dan Sullivan
He says just learning how to do chat, g, p, t without applying that to teamwork probably isn't going to get you anywhere.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm, yeah to a, as he did from the start. some examples of how it could be an exponential in teamwork.
Dan Sullivan
Well, again what we're, the way I understand it, starting because you know these are very, very high on the hierarchy decisions, you know so you know, I'm informed that a decision has been made.
Dean Jackson
I'm talking about my company Yeah yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and I'm not joking. You know I'm not joking, because, no, i get it, but the you know the 12 hours have to be freed up because we want at least 80% of our team members to be on those calls. You know, so there's a schedule, there's a scheduling project that has to go. We have to find, you know, we have to find he's doing it on zoom.
So it's not a question of his availability. I mean, he's the one who offered, you know, this. offered in the sense that he said would you pay for it? And we said, would you pay me for this? And we said, yeah, we really would. And but one of the big things is we're just going after what people are actually working on. So we're going to have sort of a little research project. It's kind of like in the beginning of the program we asked you to take a quarter you know a normal quarter, 13 weeks And just write down every activity that you do, personal or business. Okay, so we have an inventory and then we put it through a filter. where is this an activity where you're incompetent, or their activities here, where you're actually incompetent but you're kind of forced to do them just out of necessity, and then so incompetent because these aren't doing you any good and they're wearing you out and you're not getting any projectivity from it, but you're still doing it, yeah, and then.
And then it'd be like Dean Jackson you know doing all the electrical and plumbing work in his house. You know, probably, probably, yeah, yeah. Or Dan Sullivan driving you know doing pickups and delivering. And then we get to competent where you're, you know your average. You know you're probably good as a lot of people, but it's a chore, you know. And energy you know it's an energy sucking chore. Then you get to excellence and that's where you have real skills. You're above. You know you're better than other people, but there's no spark for you. There's no spark for you, you know. And if you look to head five years and you were still doing just as much of this as you are now, even though you produce excellent. You produce excellent results that went, like you, up that and that. And then there's unique ability and this is the thing that just totally energized you. You can do it all day. At the end of the day.
Right, you go eight, 10 hours and you've got more energy than when you started to the day and you're totally. You're so good at this. You don't understand why other people aren't. You know, you just do this and this and this. See how this fits together. You know, like that. And now, they don't see it at all. They don't see it at all. Right. And then the other thing is it's the most valuable thing that people want to pay you for when you're doing this mysterious, easy, easy thing.
And so and so we're going to do the same thing with the AI project with Evan. We're going to get everybody to inventory. We're just going to mostly look at work, but we'll include, you know, outside of work and just say, and he's going to give us a series of categories, you know, where you just identify activities that are repetitious, they're always required and you always have to do them, but they're repetitious, and that if there was a machine teammate who could do this in a matter of seconds or minutes, where it takes you hours or days go after that and introduce the AI solution to this.
So that would be one where AI is a teammate and the goal would be over six weeks to get you know, probably identify. 80% of of can quite quickly be taken care of by the AI teammate.
Dean Jackson
Oh, this was great.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, that's a really good way to think about it. No, i think we'll take a big productivity jump because we have we have a goal that we're at a certain number right now, you know, and it's it's not the highest revenues we've had That was in 2019, but it's a less than a million away. You know it's less than a million away.
So and and so we're saying well, if we went 10 times with that, because we've gone 10 times in in 15 years, 15 years ago, when we were one tenth what we were last year one tenth of that So in 15 years we went 10 times And but do that without adding more than another 20 individuals to the payroll. Yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
That's exciting Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then you'll learn all sorts of things how work gets set up, how, you know, how does, how does this work come into existence? anyway, you know, and and you start developing standards that you know we really shouldn't be, even bringing work like this into the company.
Dean Jackson
You know it can be done outside Someone's talking about it way of of thinking. he attached their team, his whole team, with and gave them bonuses for figuring out how to replace themselves with AI and and the new tools, kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i think the the languaging is really important. You don't talk about replacing yourself. No, exactly, you're replacing an activity and making it automatic that you don't like doing and nobody really likes doing it. Yeah, and that wasn't.
Dean Jackson
I think I said it wrong. It's automate your, your, your role. Yeah, Because it's yeah, replacing yourself. So yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like maybe that's the thing, It's not a multiply yourself, that's a better framing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, right, yeah, i think that, i think that AI, yeah, yeah, i mean, that's what all the scary movies are about Yeah. And and you know, and a lot of the predictions you know are about that. you know there aren't going to be this or aren't going to be that. And I and I've had occasion to bring up Cyrus McCormick with mentioning you as the thinker here, and I said you know, those 16 other people who now didn't have to do backbreaking work were now freed up to do more specialized work in a growing society.
Dean Jackson
And they were able to get back to you. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so. so the delivery of the food which was required for the entire population from the you know the the harvesting wheat was simplified and made possible with just a farmer or a person on, you know, on the seat of the reaper, with the, you know, with the mule or with the work of 14 men.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
What was the actual number? was it 14? Yeah, 14 men.
Dean Jackson
One, yeah, one man with a reaper could do the work of 14 men.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, see, yeah That's, that's an enormous savings, but those people were freed up, i mean yeah, not like you know, they were clutching onto that job dearly You know they wanted to take a job.
They were taking our jobs, you know, and you know I was planning to do this every year for the next 30 years. You know, and and and you know is that that there's this you know the the thing, like humans aren't adaptable. You know there's a profound belief among people who think about these things from a theoretical standpoint, that, you know, if this happens, human beings won't be able to respond to it. You know, and I said, well history. History says you're not paying attention, people do. They immediately jump, you know, to some new.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting framework to really think about. You know, certainly 25 years, you know the runway or whatever, but certainly in the next four years that's. I think that's why they really refer to. I think what Peter Diamandis kind of talked about is the near-term force, the able future, which is, i think it's much easier to make five-year guesses than that kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but you know there's a surprising number of the predictions at A360 that were made at our first conference 2011,. that really aren't, you know, like you know VR for one thing is less. VR, you know, and you know it's almost like people are saying, no, i wasn't pushing that. You know I was not a member of the Communist Party.
You know I mean it's almost like they're saying no, no, no, you know, it's everything like that. But I remember people standing up there and said you know, the first one's going to be right under Los Angeles. It's going to go from the northern to the south, it's going to go right from, you know, the airport right to the San Fernando Valley right. And then they ran into something called property rights.
Right, right, Yeah, yeah and they thought, oh, the city will just override them. And I said well, you know, it's a constitutional issue. It wouldn't be decided in Los Angeles, it would be decided in Congress, you know or the Supreme Court. And you know. But people project a new thing and all is going to give way to it. It is so important And, but I said, wouldn't there be a big traffic jam right where you try to get on the tunnel and really being a traffic jam, you know.
I said you know. Just because you can visualize something and you can see yourself taking advantage of it, doesn't mean that you know that Newton's third law will move aside for you. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Yeah, but the two that seem to have really really gone even further than was predicted were AI, which I think. I think I was surprised by the chat GTT thing because I didn't know there was something that could be that easy for individuals.
I knew that you know large organizations were using it and everything else, but that kind of surprised me. And the other thing is regenerative medicine and you know, using our own stem cells to repair things and to cure things and turning skin cells into any other kind of cell. That to me That's like cracking. That's, like you know, being able to capture and channel and direct electricity.
Dean Jackson
That seems to me to be a major, really major major thing. But there's the AI combined with that.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, ai, that translated where you. They can literally take the cell signals, you know, the signals from the body. They can actually, because we have an electric impulse and they can read. They can duplicate this electronically and then test those electronic signals as if they were actually cells in the body. And they can do 10,000 tests in a time that a manual test takes.
Dean Jackson
And.
Dan Sullivan
I said no, that's, that's super.
Dean Jackson
And I think that's what's going to come like. I think we're going to end up in a sent power situation, like the chef masters, in that the biggest winners of the AI kind of advanced or not the one it's not going to be just AI on its own, it's going to be AI paired with a, you know, with an individual. It's a top flight individual powered with AI that's going to make the biggest impact Absolutely.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's like. my next quarterly book is called training, training technology like a good dog And I say, you know, a tough guy with a tough dog will beat another tough guy who doesn't have a dog, Exactly and rather than just, or just the dog alone, you know? yeah, that's true, and the dog will be the one who announces the fight.
Dean Jackson
That's so funny. Yeah, I realized we left last week on a bit of a cliffhanger with the working genius thing. I wondered if you had been able to do your working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's really good. It put me in a bind because I have other people sign me. I want to, and Patrick Lindsay only you know. I mean he's very well read around our office regarding teamwork and everything like that. So I know who it is now. Yeah, i was going to do it that night, but Becca, who does all this stuff for me, said that she would sign me on when we got back from London. She was busy with a lot of things, and so it's a project.
It's a project that will be done this week. But you know, I found the website. It seems like another filter that we can use for, along with Colby and the Strength Finder and Print.
Dean Jackson
Oh, i think it's fantastic in that. Yeah, i would put it in. I would put it right up there with Colby in terms like Colby is most what is very useful and I think that if I were to rank the four of them. I would put that working genius right up there at the top.
More useful than just Strength Finder and more useful than Print. Yeah, they're all a big. I don't think you can ever have too much self-awareness, but I think having the you know, i think usable team dynamic awareness is great. James Drage sent me over. I had my whole team do it and he sent me a. You know, they have charts that show where your team genius is in terms of which team members like. If you're looking to put together a project and you need a, i guess the ideal is that you have someone in each of the components the wonder, invention, the discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity that you've got someone who's a genius at that involved in that process. Yeah, you know the head of that division of it.
So it's really neat to see the dynamics of how people can work together, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, anyway, yeah, So anyway, work proceeds. you know, fly me. you know, 3,000 miles away, and my priority list for the day changes. I got it. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, yeah. London is the greatest walking city that I've ever.
Dean Jackson
Oh man, you know, one of my favorite memories is our that when we ended up in London at the same time and we spent hours wandering around, Yeah we took that long hike out to that bookstore.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then we, and then we made our way back to a favorite restaurant of ours one.
Dean Jackson
Greek street. Right And then yeah, that London's perfect for that. I mean, that was yeah it was. It was dry and sunny kind of the poolside but sunny but there was no rain during the walk. The walk reaches there.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway, i'm going to inquire about that And I've got a real project now with that, in advance of starting the AI Azure teammate program. We should have all the staff actually do this working genius exercise.
Dean Jackson
I think that would be a nice filter And I wonder that's a really interesting thing is that's a nice framework to think how can, how can AI help with?
Dan Sullivan
That's how we've pre-app your working genius. Yeah right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting that's a really interesting combinator. It's a triple play. Your unique ability Well, you can work at AI and working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's kind of funny. You could add the triple play to it. So we got three things. You got the AI as a teammate, working genius and the triple play. I think that would be a nice trifecta.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, wow, that's all thinking about your thinking. I came up with a new term, dan. I'll plant the seed because I know we're coming up at the top of the hour here. It went so fast this time It always does, but this one's particular, you know, we've been talking about and I've been thinking about the mainland and the land here, but what I've really discovered is I was rereading thinking about your thinking, the small book.
We recently had our flood and all the that required us moving things around, and I found a copy of my your small book, the thinking about your thinking. I thought that you know there's a third element of this that I've been calling Dean Blan dia, which is the inner world of thinking about my thinking and spending time there as a destination. And something you said, you know you said it kind of a couple of years ago, whenever you went on, you know, going off TV and stuff, the same thing stuck out at me. I don't know exactly how you said it, but you basically said I realized that what's going on in my own mind is far more interesting and valuable than anything going on in that, on that screen, in that box.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
And how did you articulate? What was the the thought behind that? Because that that it stuck with me for all these years when you said that, yeah, Well, i think you do that too.
Dan Sullivan
I mean that that both of us, fairly young and like I think, developed the ability to do that, amuse ourselves and entertain ourselves and educate ourselves without needing needing too much outside help and that, and you know, and We've stuck with that a lot. You know way, way beyond what Most people would say. Well, i used to have Interesting times when I when I had time you know where I would just think about things and everything else.
Yeah, of course you know I had to go to school and then I had to go out and get a job Right we started, started to pay him and of course I haven't done any kind of thinking like that and I said, yeah, you know, i got you know on a path when I was, you know, somewhere around eight years old, where this was way more interesting. Than anything that I was encountering. The other thing I noticed is that I was interacting with adults and They didn't see how to do this.
They didn't seem to do it because when I would bring up You know what was going on when they were eight years old and they were born 1910 or something, and I said wow, wow. And they said geez, i haven't thought about this, you know, it's I. He says here right me to think about think about things that I haven't thought about, and then afterwards They would comment to my mother When they matter her. You know, dan asked questions and they Makes me remember things that I haven't really remembered and I said well, you know, you know and I said hmm.
If that had happened to me, I would have been thinking about it. I mean, if that was happening in the world, happening in the world at that time, boy. I all over it, you know and everything like that, and it struck me that people weren't really reflecting On how they were thinking about their experiences. They were affecting on the experience, but they weren't reflecting on how they were thinking about the experience. And so, and that didn't bother me, and because I always like having Secret, unfair advantages- Mm-hmm, i Love that.
Dean Jackson
I've been thinking you do the? oh, i really do. I've been monitoring and thinking now about You know, my my constant you're. My present thought is less screen time, more dean time. But that's really the thing is, the more I think about just even putting the screen down and just going inside and playing around in in Dean land is a. There's a lot more beneficial stuff going on in the land.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, then The other you know, you know who we're really. The organization that was that we both had extensive experience with. That was really on to this way back, you know, 40-50 years ago and as the four seasons. So tell yeah, and they have a motto about their company that we Systematize the predictable, mm-hmm, and so that we can humanize the exceptional. Yeah, and That seems to describe a general principle that Would take advantage of any new technology which allowed you to systematize the predictable.
You know, to free up people so that they could be Exceptionally human in any situation and I think that's what we want to do. I mean, i think that's a, that isn't just a Organizational strategy. I think that's That could be. You know, in the 21st century that could be a general human aspiration. You know, i want to get freed up from Doing machine-like work.
Dean Jackson
I don't want to do machine-like work, you know right. I don't want to.
Dan Sullivan
I don't want. I don't want to be given tasks where I'm expected to be machine-like I. I'm just not going for that anymore.
Dean Jackson
Right, i Love it. Yeah, well, i noticed, so I noticed. Next week is Says no Dan podcats on my calendar.
Dan Sullivan
That's right.
Dean Jackson
That's right because traveling, we're flying.
Dan Sullivan
We're flying on Sunday to Chicago. So okay, yeah, so we have. You know, we have the first in person a free zone that week, you know on Thursday, okay and, but we're flying in and we, you know, we Have to see the team and there's all sorts of things, and I have all sorts of. I guess yeah, but the but. The big thing is that The one thing that's not predictable is How people are going to think about the next 25 years.
You know you know, predictable, because, right, you know each person's kind of responsible. or Using their own Brain to figure out things. Yeah, yeah and my sense is that Making predictions 25 years from now based on Present priorities and that, i think, doesn't give you much insight, mm-hmm.
Dean Jackson
I Think gives you directional, you know in some way. But but it's certain, i mean to know it gives you comfort when you start into look at well, what do we know that's going to be true 25 years from now. You know.
Dan Sullivan
That's really the thing, men are still going to be shaving that's exactly the warm Buffett model, right?
Dean Jackson
That's exactly yeah yeah, Yeah and yeah, and land things and.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, people are still going to be eating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think yeah, yeah, well, i mean, there's definitely entertaining. Yeah, what do all people do, you know, around the planet? Well, not everybody shapes, you know. But right, yeah, so But, given the market that you're after is there, you know, we know. I do know alcohol is gonna play a big part of it. Now, they're direct, you know They may buddy, one of the signs that an ancient Gathering of humans was actually human is pottery.
Dean Jackson
So they'll find shards, pottery shards and when they examine the shards.
Dan Sullivan
You know what they always find on the shards alcohol, alcohol, great, exactly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, why did humans Create pottery?
Dan Sullivan
well, yeah, you know, to have something they could make the alcohol and save the alcohol. They're their mushroom bruise, right Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, they just do this to have pottery they did it right they can.
Dan Sullivan
They could make drinking alcohol a little bit more predictable. All righty, okay, dan. Well, i will. I'll be here in two weeks, yeah, and we'll be back, yeah, in two weeks.
Dean Jackson
So we're going to see Jeff. Maddowff's play The end of men, the end of next week.
Dan Sullivan
So it opened with its first pre-order. So it's a pre-order. So it's a pre-order The end of men, the end of next week. So it opened with its first proof preview Last night.
Dean Jackson
So they have a week of previews.
Dan Sullivan
They have a week of previews where they're just, you know, making scene shifts and making adjustments to the script and you know, and everything else, and they have about five or six of these and People, they have audiences for them.
The other thing is that audiences can come in and see everything else, and then they, then they have two last ones Where they're locked down Okay, so that all the changes have been made, and then the last two of the previews is It's locked down. Now, this is the play, and then they have opening night, which is the 14th, and we're going down the 16th.
Dean Jackson
Oh, very nice, that's so great. Yeah, all right. okay, i will talk to you soon. You.
19 Jan 2022
Ep053: Digital Life and Analogue Thought
00:57:05
Join Dean and Dan as they explore the practical applications of digital landscapes, like Cloudlandia, using an analogue value system.
Ep110: Discovering True Value in an Age of Convenience
00:55:49
In today's episode of Welcome To Cloudlandia, Dan and I explore Ontario, Canada, alongside a discussion of groundbreaking research on an immortality gene. A doctor shares insights into pinpointing this gene's phenomenal potential for humanity. Lightheartedly, we touch on frequent flyer miles and a Buenos Aires stem cell treatment trip.
Shifting to business, we analyse the impactful Working Genius model's six elements -
Wonder,
Invention,
Discernment,
Galvanisation,
Enablement and
Tenacity.
There are a lot of nuggets in this episode that prompt us to reevaluate what truly enriches our world.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We discuss the fascinating exploration of an immortality gene found by a doctor, that has the potential to revolutionize human life.
We touch on the effects of altitude on our bodies and share some anecdotes about our trips for stem cell treatments.
We delve into the Working Genius model and its six elements that foster successful collaborations in business.
Mark Lechance and Babs share their experiences with the Working Genius model, emphasizing its practical benefits.
We share the thrilling story of Matt, a man of Discernment and Tenacity, who successfully navigated domain name issues to set up a project in real time.
We examine the dynamics of travel and connectivity, challenging the notion that convenience and comfort are sources of happiness.
We discuss the importance of purpose and meaning in achieving true happiness and explore the future of transportation, including the possibility of human-carrying drones.
We analyze the psychological limits of convenience in our modern era, and encourage listeners to reconsider the value of real experiences over convenience.
We explore the future of travel convenience, discussing how modern technologies have reduced travel friction and predicting the future of transportation.
We discuss the concept of convenience, how it is interpreted differently by different people, and reflect on the emotional experience of convenience.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: Thank God, there we go.
Dean: There we go. Thank God we're recording. Yeah, I don't like the sound.
Dan: I don't like the sound.
Dean: There was just an interruption, that's all I don't like the sound of that voice of yours. What's up?
Dan: Well, I just got a cold, I got a head cold Friday, I think. And here I am. Here I am, though, and I'll use the capability that I have available to me to have a great podcast.
Dean: There we go. I love it. Well, I missed you last week. I've had a great two weeks. Lots to catch up on.
Dan: I'm sure you've had it in the last few weeks. Yeah, we did. We were at DaVinci 50 and Sundance. I've never been there before.
Dean: How did you like?
Dan: that. Yeah, it's a neat place, it's sort of a neat place, but Babs doesn't operate good at 7,000 feet.
Dean: Oh, boy, okay.
Dan: So she has some issues. But, she went and she got a. What's it called? It's an IV that you take that pumps your energy up.
Dean: Oh, okay.
Dan: I knew, yeah, so fortunately we had a lot of medical advice around us. A little bit, yeah and they were able to get right on it. She had it, but she wasn't sleeping well and I'm pretty good. I don't have that problem at altitude, but there was a lot of downhill climbing from our room to the. And my knee, which hopefully, and we're off to Buena Cerras, Argentina the first week of November to get stem cell treatment for my knee, so hopefully that'll be done.
Yeah, yeah, we fly in overnight. They pick us up at the airport, take us right to the clinic and I get an injection in the first hour when I'm there and that's my stem cells coming back at me and the promise is that I will grow a new cartilage.
Dean: And how long does it take for that to be noticeable?
Dan: It's about six months until it grows back. That's what I'm told, and there's a protocol of not putting too much stress on it, not to go hog wild.
Dean: Well, how perfect is that You'll have a new me for your AB of perfect I will Just about, and that's exactly right It'll be on.
Dan: My birthday will be six and a half months and this will be six months. We go down twice more so that they can check on the progress, and so our frequent flyer miles are going to go up, and it's a long, long flight.
Dean: Nine hours have you been to Plano Furniture before? I have not.
Dan: I have not this is the first time and they're I think they're either an hour or two hours ahead of Toronto time. Yeah.
Dean: One of the things.
Dan: Yeah, no, they're an hour and a half Exactly. That's so funny, but it's sort of when you look at the map. It's always a shock to me how that, if you go to London Ontario, all of South America sits east of London Ontario. That's wild, isn't it? Yeah, it's amazing Because you think of South America being under North America but it actually curves around to the east and Ecuador. The west coast of Ecuador is the furthest point in South America and that lines up perfectly with London Ontario and, for those who are listening, it's sort of Columbus Ohio, if you think of Columbus.
Dean: Right, right, right, there you go.
Dan: Dream of Iowa. Yeah, and Americans, you know Ontario. Where's Ontario? Isn't that near Los Angeles? You?
Dean: know they have an airport here. It's called Ontario yeah.
Dan: Ontario Airport. You know. Well, that's great. Well, of course it's east of Ontario, california, but you know we're talking about a province that is basically the size of Western Europe.
Dean: It's probably the size of Europe, but Ontario.
Dan: Yeah, I was realizing the vastness.
Dean: When I got to understand the vastness of Ontario I realized somebody pointed out that you could drive north in Ontario the distance between Toronto and Florida and still be in Ontario. That's pretty big right.
Dan: And if you did east to west, from Cornwall to Canora, that's basically two cities in Ontario. It's the same distance as Washington DC to Kansas City.
Dean: Wow, okay, yeah.
Dan: Well, there we go. That is pretty much about all the Canadians huddled close to the border. 90% of the Canadian population is within 100 miles of the US border.
Dean: That's great. Well, any big shares from Da Vinci. What's coming down the pipe? You got new me.
Dan: Yeah, the biggest thing. First of all, richard is a phenomenally good chooser of great speakers. Yeah, and it's always very, very enlightening, if not shocking, some of the research that's being done, and I think we have a couple of doctors who were there. And one of the doctors, doctor doctor West, says that it's pretty clear now that there's a fundamental gene, if you will I'm not sure exactly what the terminology is- but, it's a gene, that's the immortality gene, okay, and they've been able to zero in on it because none of our genes die.
I mean the body they're in dies, but none of the genes themselves actually die. They're immortal and because we all have them, so all humans have them, and every time a new human being is born, it's basically picking up on a couple of million years of genetic development. Yeah so they know that those are immortal.
And but in each individual there's a turnoff, there's a series of turnoff mechanisms I'll just use a more understandable term here and they're zeroing in on this. For example, there are life forms that don't die flat, flat, flat, flat. Worms, for example, don't die. You know, they, they just never die.
And you cut them in half and you can cut them in half, and doesn't matter which half, and they can regrow the other half back. So so you know, I mean, it's just really, it's just really interesting where all this is going. I mean, what's the time frame for this, to discover this? Well, they don't know that, you know. But the bare fact that they're they now think it's possible and that they're experiment way. I just find all that stuff interesting.
Dean: Yeah, I find it very interesting too. Yeah, that's great.
Dan: I mean, it's kind of the fact that we can know that DNA exists.
Dean: I mean the fact that somebody discovered that and I mean it's just, how would you even know to look for something like that? Right, yeah, we take it, you know we're. It's so amazing, the things that I mean that's all happened in the big change from 1975 to 19.
Dan: They're 2025, you know, I've been really thinking about that.
Dean: That too, the you know the the biggest change If we take, if we extend out to 2025. I think that period of 1975 to 2025 is going to be, you know, civilization changing yeah you know scope of what's happened here.
Dan: Yeah, but it's like yeah. Well, my redone it is, that it's the people who benefit from this. It's not going to be worldwide. The next 50 years let's say 2025 to 2075, I think that. I think what we're going to see is massive political and economic change, because there's a there's a point where you wanted to become a powerful technological country.
And at this point not many have. I mean, if you think of all the countries in the world, the US is clearly, you know, in the lead, and the US has just so many other things going for it.
You know, it's geography, for one thing, that's, it's really hard to invade the United States. I mean, first of all, 3000 miles of water one way and 5000 miles of water the other way, and then you have the Gulf of Mexico, and then you have Mexico. But Mexico in the 200 miles south of the US border is desert and mountain. It's not a it's not a populated area, and then the North North Canadians were always a threat, but now that they've nationalized pot, that's that's neutralizing that.
Right and Canada. Weren't we going to invade the United?
Dean: States. I think the US looks at Canada, the natural resource reserve tank attached to their northern border.
Dan: You know well it's, it's. It's America's biggest gated community.
Dean: You know right.
Dan: You have to check in at the gate you know, they make you check in at the gate and you can't bring in guns and they want to know if you have any alcohol. They want to know if you have any tobacco. They're not interested in you if you have any new ideas.
Dean: Yeah, so you'll love this. I've got four C's that I've observed here, looking for the next 25 years and the I observe that, but you're going to tell me about that in the next podcast, right? Oh, I can tell you about it right now. Here we go.
Dan: All right.
Dean: So the first is increase, and I love how you always say increasing, as taken this from you, but increasing connectivity with the farthest outposts of the mainland. That is going to be a big driver of the next 25 years. I think we can if we're guessing and betting. That's where that's what I was thinking about, if I'm guessing what's going to happen in the 25 years. What can I bet on?
And I bet on increasing connectivity with the farthest outposts of the mainland and that I don't think you can go wrong and I think that, as the technologies are evolving, that will facilitate that connection. That's going to be a big thing. I saw something dance. You know I haven't really been so on board with the metaverse and then I saw and I don't know whether you saw it the most recent video of Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg having a chat in the metaverse with the latest version of the Facebook Visual avatar development where it creates a photo, realistic version of you, three dimensional, in your inner three dimensional space, and you could tell I mean first watching it on the video it's stunningly realistic and impressive.
But you could tell that that Lex Friedman even said he's having an emotional experience. This is so uncanny that he's got the you know, the new meta headset on, but his feeling is like he's 100% for real in the room with Mark Zuckerberg, like literally having a real conversation with a real person, and that I think that's the first I've seen of what potentially could be what comes here. You know, because it was really, it was really pretty stunning. When you're watching the video, I'll send you the, I'll send you the link, unless you've already seen it.
Dan: No, no, I haven't. This is the first I've heard of it.
Dean: Okay, so they have. They basically have a. They split the screen like a try screen where you can see Lex or Mark with the headset on, like where they really are talking and what they're saying. Then they show the middle version, which is kind of the digitized version of what's happening, like all the without the shell on it kind of thing, and then they show the final, the real thing, and it look, if you just look at the visual thing, you would never be able to detect that this is not real. And that's the first that I've seen where there's no latency, there's no, you know, telltale, you know mismatching of the mouth movements or the eye movements or anything like that.
If you just saw the third version of it, you would think that's really Mark Zuckerberg in real time talking and that's really Lex Friedman, and so that was like that opened my eyes to and they were just kind of in a, you know, a black background kind of thing, like in almost this. They're in a black, like on the Charlie Rose show or something you know, just their things. But you can imagine in, you know, giving fast forward into 2025, the overlaid on any visual environment. You could place them in at table 10, at jocks, you know, or at the select bistro and they're surrounded and, having that experience, I literally.
I would. I would put because you know what, I've said it and you've said it that I don't really have any interest in putting on the goggles because I haven't seen an environment that's real. You know, but if I could put on those goggles and have a real table 10 experience with you, I would put on the goggles.
Dan: That was that impressive, you know so that means I have to agree. No, it's one of the things I you know I'm I'm taking your description of it as real, but yeah, I haven't had the experience so I don't really know, you know yeah.
Dean: So, anyway, I'll check it, I'll check it out, and yeah so there's the first, that's the first C for guessing embedding connectivity, connectivity, that then that I think, if I'm guessing, embedding on the next 25 years our increasing capabilities, both on demand and on cap. You know, I think if we look at the capabilities that AI is going to provide for us, I'm starting, you're starting to see now the real applications of this. Where you take these, these avatar technologies of being able to create your own digital avatar. I fully believe, now that that is going to be in detect undetectable difference between the real, I mean a digital representation, the real video that I had performed, or a digital AI have done it. So those, all those capabilities on demand, along with and if those are not, capabilities on demand through connectivity with the farthest outreaches of the mainland to every other human that's out there, you know, for the special, for the special things you know well not every other human being, but just the one.
You know, the ones the ones who are on the main, the ones who are connected in cloud land you know, because, because I believe in Dunbar's law, that we only have emotional capability for at most about 150.
Dan: Yeah. I mean everybody. First of all, I can't comprehend what everybody means, you know. I know Dean and I know Joe and I know. And you guys use up all my time. You know I don't have time.
Dean: I was just going to say thankfully, we're solidly entrenched in each other's top 150. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan: I mean the other, the other eight, you know eight billion plus right, I mean I, I'm told they exist, but they don't really have that much. They don't have a place in my future, that much.
Dean: Yeah, right, right.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: And then the number three.
Dean: Number three, yes, yeah collaboration that's going to lead to better and better and better collaboration opportunities with both humans and technology. I can't wait to reach your how to treat technology like a well-trained dog or whatever.
Dan: What is it like?
Dean: Like a great dog Like a great dog.
Dan: Yeah, I own owning technology like a great dog.
Dean:
When is that coming out?
Dan: Oh, it's out.
Dean: It's out, oh it is.
Dan: Yeah, you should have gotten a notice in the email that you can download the ebook. Okay, I'll see you about that.
Dean: Yeah, I think that's fantastic. I had on the collaboration front. I had a really amazing widget extension. I've had a great experience this past couple of weeks here. The widget, of course, the working genius model, I see how useful. This is now in collaboration.
Dan: We've got three of our team members trained as facilitator or training other people to use working genius. The moment you told me about it, I looked it up. We have the same UNI or the same we have the same. We're inventors and we're discerners. Babs is an inventor, is that yours?
Dean: No, I'm DI your ID. I mean, I imagine it's the same thing, but Babs is what?
Dan: She's IG, she's a galvanizer. Okay, yeah, right yeah, and I'm proof of it.
Dean: So that's great, that's the perfect thing. That's your secret formula, right there.
Dan: Yeah, I'm proof of it. Yeah, she galvanized me.
Dean: Yeah, and so I had a really great experience with Mark Litchett. Why don't?
Dan: we explain to those who don't know what we're talking about Sure Okay.
Dean: So Mark, of course, unless you want to Go? Ahead.
Dan: No, go ahead.
Dean: Okay, so this was introduced to me by James Drage and James introduced this working genius model and you can find it at workinggeniuscom and it's one of the most useful assessments that I've ever come across, right Right up there with Colby, because I think I would rank them. Probably I would rank widget at the top, colby second, and I also like I find Myers-Briggs very useful, but I know you're not as big a fan of Myers-Briggs as I am. But the way that workinggenius works is that we all have workinggenius, which are things that we find effortless, really coincides with our unique ability, really harmonizes with all the strategic coach concepts and the idea is that every team needs, every collaboration, needs somebody in each of the six elements and the six calls spell out the word widget.
So W is for wonder, someone who can look at something and see all the ways that this could be improved or where could we go with this. Then I is invention, which is making stuff up. There's a lot of I's in strategic coach. It would probably be, you know. Also, they would correlate with being quick starts, I'm sure.
G is for discernment, the ability to look at options and know what the right thing to do is, to have a highly confident ability in discerning that this is the right thing to do. G is galvanizing, which is someone who has a genius for gathering all the people and elements that are needed to get something accomplished. E is for enablement, which is someone who can support the people who are doing the thing to make sure that everybody has everything they need to complete the task. And T is for tenacity, and tenacity is someone who has a high follow through, who makes things happen and takes things all the way to completion, so fast forward. I'm in a boardroom in Boca Raton with Mark Lechance and some of his team and I had this amazing experience of Isn't that amazing.
Dan: We just had a metaverse experience because I'm the one that started the call with the cold, but now you have the cold?
Dean: Yeah, I think mine is. I'm out in my courtyard and I can tell that our pollen count is very high right now, but anyway, I'm sitting there and I noticed how there's one of the guys on well, there were six of us in the room, but Mark Lechance is a galvanizer with invention, a galvanizer invention and I'm starting to identify like the one sentence summary of what these things are. So, mark's like one word, one sentence, like super power is gathering people, gathering the capabilities that you guys are super smart. Here's what I think we could do, you know, like this inventing all the coming up with ideas or the things that could be done.
Then there was a gentleman there, matt, who is a D, he's a, he's got discernment and tenacity and my observation of that is that he would see something and say that's a good idea, and then the next word out of his mouth were done and he, like we were talking about something, we, you know, I came up, I was, you know, discernment and invention is my thing and I came preloaded with this is what I think we should do. We were doing, we have a VCR, vision capability, reach opportunity with one of the projects that Mark runs, and I came in already preloaded with here's the ideas. Well, I think we should do, which was, you know, it's a really great, great idea and we, you know, came up with the domain name, the whole thing, and literally right there in the, in the meeting you know, matt went and bought the domain name, set up like all these things are happening in real time and getting making something real you know, and so it was really amazing to see that, that collaboration between you know, the widget experience there.
And I see now, like I realized, galvanizing that I would have guessed that Babs is a galvanizer, because that has been. You know that. That's the, that's the main thing that drives your ability to get your ideas into real world things. It's galvanizing the unique ability, teamwork of everybody on your, on your team, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and she just knows how to create team. I mean she, she knows how to create team leaders, she knows how to create teams and the teams have their, you know, they have their projects and they have their goals. And you know they have their measure measurements and everything like that, but one of the one of the things I've noticed about Babs is that she doesn't really comprehend the impact that she has just by being in the room.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, how do you observe that?
Dan: How do? You see, no, no, things just happen when she's in the room. Yeah, and in any situation, if you were somewhere with Babs and they had to get something done and within about an hour or two hours she'd be, she would be chosen as the leader.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Without her saying anything.
Dean: Right yeah, right, right, right yeah.
Dan: I mean, I mean she's six foot two and that helps you know, because she has a core. But you know, often, frequently, she's the tallest person in the room, but she just has a, she has command in her strength. Yeah, Command is number one. Yeah, you know. She just basically says okay, let's get started, let's get something done here.
And you know, and you know I mean that's my life is divided into two parts before I met Babs and after I met, after I was with Babs. Yeah, and you know, it's just real clear that I'm just always highly motivated when I'm around here.
Dean: Yeah, what are you looking at? Yeah.
Dan: I'm looking at you, I remember you telling me and we're in the 42nd year of AAMD. Oh, that's funny, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: You've done you've. You've gotten three. What's number four?
Dean: Okay, so the fourth is convenience that we're observing less and less friction in day to day interactions and mainland to Plumlandia, you know communication. So convenience, you know. I remember I think in 2016 or something, I read that article that I've shared about the tyranny of convenience and how we start to see it's a never ending, you know, desire to make things easier and better and ratcheting those advancements without going backwards. You know, and that's really I think, if I were to guess and bet on things being more convenient, increasingly convenient, over the next 25 years, I think we're going to be. I think that's a good bet and you know, you start to see that.
I think that, as we're, we're already seeing things like you know, one click ordering from Amazon. That's now gotten into. You know, apple Pay and Google Pay and Amazon Pay you never there's no need to ever type your credit card into anything to buy online. But I see how that's going If we chart out where the room in convenience is. I also see, I see companies like Rocket Mortgage, you know, foreshadowing where we're headed, that when we start seeing everybody's got access to all of the data we're all going to be, you know, pre-underwritten in background.
For anything we're going to have some, you know, available capital or available credit, you know pre-assigned already. You know that we literally will be able to push a button and get approval instantly for whatever we want, and I believe that the blockchain and smart contracts and all of these things are going to make things more and more convenient over the next 25 years, and that's where I've gotten so far. Those, so the connectivity yeah Well, I think they're good. So connectivity- Number one ��로 liability Number two.
Elaboration number three. Elaboration and convenience, convenience. Uh-huh, it's good, I think those are, and there's probably more. Well, you know those are the first, uh, first four.
Dan: Yeah, I wouldn't push it beyond four. Make the others be servants of the first four.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, you know. One of the things is. So what's the role of uh? Travel that takes time, it's the uh. I'm asking you a question here.
Dean: Yeah, I think it's the. Uh, what's the? What's the?
Dan: what's the role of travel that takes time?
Dean: The physical, First of all. It happens?
Dan: Travel happens in the mainland because if I can just, of course, if I can just click or have a thought and I'm so yeah and I'm meeting somewhere else, then it hasn't required travel. And it doesn't, it doesn't take time. So, and I think that that's where?
Dean: Yeah, so the you know the inconvenience of travel is what is? Two things. That's inconvenient and it happens at the speed of reality. You have to move your, your, your meat puppet from one out.
Dan: Yeah, I, I'm going to call you that. I think that's. I think that's a bad term.
Dean: The meat.
Dan: And I think it diminishes your body and the one thing I want to tell you about, about virtual reality. You're only using sight and sound. You're only using sight and sound. You're not using touch, you're not using taste and you're not. You know, and my sense is that actually, sight and sound make up about less than 10% of what the body actually uses to function. Okay, so, I can understand why my Mark Zuckerberg wants to be in another realm because he can't be speed. He's trying to find a place where he can't be subpoenaed.
Dean: You know so.
Dan: Right, right, yeah. And I understand that because he doesn't look like a human being who does well in terms of relationship and you know, and everything else, and I can understand why he wants to find another realm to do it, but we've got a million years of actually creating value out of things that take time and things that you know you have to travel over distance. Okay.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I don't think there, I don't. I can't sum up all that just as inconvenience, Right yeah. I mean learning doesn't. Learning doesn't happen instantaneously, learning happens over time. Yeah, so I'm just the American as you put the four things.
As you put the four things together, I'm saying, yeah, but you know, when I go on a long trip, you know, for example, it takes two and a half hours for us to drive to the cottage. Okay, yeah, and I've been interested in plots during those two and a half hours that I wouldn't have if I just touched a button and I was in the cottage.
Dean: Right, yeah, you think that part of the experience of it is the fact that it took a long time to get there.
Dan: Yeah there was a price. There was a price for it.
Dean: Yeah, you know yeah.
Dan: And if I agree, yeah. So yeah, I'm, I'm. I don't have the answer to this. I'm asking the question. I don't have the answer. I have the answer to it yeah. But I'm noticing that convenience and comfort don't necessarily make people happy. Uh huh, I think purpose and meaning make people happy. You know achievement combined with purpose and meaning.
Dean: And my experience is.
Dan: That takes a bit of time. That takes a bit of time.
Dean: And so yeah. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I mean there's so, um, yeah, that does it makes a lot of sense. And these are just uh. So I do, I'm looking at, no, I think they're they're available.
Dan: I think what you're saying is that actually they all come under the heading of capability. You know it's obviously a huge jump in capability, because connectivity and um and uh uh, collaboration and uh and uh and convenience are great capabilities, you know, and I think people are always striving for greater capabilities.
Dean: I agree, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something there's always going to be real. There's always going to be a higher value on on real.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I believe that we're definitely missing out. You know, and it's not by an order of just a small percentage, I mean, it's exponentially different. I think you know um say say what?
what I think in the convenience, yeah when I was going to convenience things is that I think that the ability to make that travel, which is still highly valuable, being present in in a place is still highly valuable, um, but the elimination of friction in in doing that To the extent that you can, is going to be, I think, a safe bet.
Uh, when you look at I it was, it was funny, we were, I was having a conversation with someone about the the newest travel trend. Uh, in mainstream travel is the private terminals that are popping up now, like at LAX there's was the first one that I heard of where you can bypass the, the main terminal. You go to a private terminal where you pull up, they valet park your car, you go into a suite that's got, you know, just a food and whatever you allow Comfortable for you to wait for your flight. You go through security, everything that's necessary, checking in the whole thing, and then, when it's time they drive you in, you know a BMW or an SUV, they drive you to on the ramp, to those where the plane is, take you up and put you on your on your seat and off you go, and that level of friction, skipping from the curb to the gate, that's what everybody is. That's where all the the hassle of of mainland travel is once you're on the plane.
Nobody's mad at the first class cabin of any airliner. It's comfortable, it's. The seats are great, the food is great, the you know the environment. Everything about it is is fine. You get to your, your destination. It's just all the inconvenience from the curb to the gate. You know that we're all the we're all the thing is now.
Now, and I also think, like recently, as you start seeing, I think it's pretty clear we're going to end up in a human carrying drone world where that, you know, drone flight is going to be, you know, for shorter, and it's going to be a two hour drive into a 20 minute, you know, taxi, drone, taxi type of environment. I think we'll see that in the next 25 years. I think that's a that'd be a pretty safe bet.
Dan: I'll let you bet that it doesn't happen, okay, yeah.
Dean: Good and that's interesting. So why? What makes? You think that, that, that it won't happen.
Dan: Well, first of all, I don't think the capital is going to be there over the next 25 years, because capital money is getting very, very expensive and it's a function of the fact that transportation is getting very, very expensive. So when you have transportation very expensive, it makes money really expensive, it makes energy really expensive and it makes labor really expensive.
Dean: And I don't think.
Dan: First of all, I've never you may be the first person I've ever talked to had that as an aspiration or as a future thought, and my sense is that the next things to get invented is where there's like an 80% aspiration in the marketplace. We'd like to have this, you know, and you know, and I think the Amazon has done well, because there's an 80% wish that last minute purchasing or last minute shopping could be eliminated.
Dean: Yeah, there's, there's something. I think that's true.
Dan: Yeah, but one of the ways I've gone in the opposite direction, I've just eliminated all need for meetings that require travel.
Dean: Yeah, me too. How is the travel industry doing? So I would say that that's more of an aspirator.
Dan: I would say that's more of an aspiration than making travel comfortable. I would say not traveling at all is more of an aspiration. And, yeah, traveling with the least amount of friction.
Dean: I agree and that's what I think would fit in with convenience. Well, I think we started going down that path. That was, I think that in every, in every way, in every element, I think convenience is really a driver right. That that's kind of we're definitely looking for things to be here and less friction.
Dan: Let's look at the word convenience, because I think everybody's got a different notion of what constitutes convenience. You know, and I think it's is entirely defined by your situation in the mainland. I mean it only has been in relationship to the, to the. To the mainland I mean that my Apple computer comes on. It takes me, you know, five seconds to get on and I could do it in a second. I really don't care. I really don't care, you know right the five no five seconds.
The five seconds seems good enough for me, you know I don't, I don't need it.
So first of all, I think there's a point where convenience, or the striving for convenience, has a diminishing return. You know, because even at your personal airport, you know your private personal airport let's say that pretty soon there's going to be a desire on the ideal jet that there's a first class and the second class Right, and people, people say, well, why are they up there and we're, we're back here and you've got every convenience in the world. But because it's all psychological I mean all everything we're talking about here is psychological. You know, pricey psychological.
Dean: And.
Dan: I just feel that my notion of convenience may be different from your notion of convenience, you know. I mean if we went down step by step and we took our daily life and we went through, and everything like having food delivered to my house doesn't interest. Well, first of all, by all, my food is delivered by house by one person. You know we have a caterer and yes, but, but I can name on two hands. A number of times we've ordered in from a you know a restaurant, you know so that doesn't fall in my area of convenience, right yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: The other aspect about it is that traveling not under compulsion, in other words, I'm not compelled to travel, but just getting out and driving around. I find that interesting.
Dean: Yeah, even like going up to the cottage or going.
Dan: yeah, yeah, I find it interesting and you know, we have a halfway stop at Tim Hortons where we've never eaten, but we've always peed. The restroom is always in the same place. It's always clean. It's great. My definition of Tim Hortons in Canada is where white people go to get whiter.
Dean: Have you ever experienced webbers? No, we go up to 404.
Dan: We're heading to the east. We're not heading to the east. We've been on 400 and I've passed it, but the line up looked inconvenient.
Dean: Well, you know it was quite a thing that they did was because that was kind of like the official stopping point of the way up to Muscova. That everybody would, you know, friday night stop and get a burger at Webbers. And then they brought in a great extent an overpass. They bought the land across before the oh no yeah. They brought in a great expense on an overpass that you could.
Dan: Well, they could put in another parking lot. That's why they did it.
Dean: Yeah, it's now convenient to stop on your way home, because it was super inconvenient.
Dan: It's really interesting the I just want to zero in on the idea that convenience is uniquely defined. I think you're right. So I think a lot of the technology people make a guess that everybody is going to enjoy a new level of convenience that they're creating and they're generalizing they have to generalize human nature, that everybody's going to like this. I think it's a form of projection on the part of the inventors that, because they find it convenient to everybody else, only 16% of technology startups succeed.
The thing, so it means that 84% of them. Yeah, I would say that most technologies are created to satisfy some form of convenience. Yeah, I would say.
Dean: There's some definitions of convenience. I would love to go to the source here and see. So. Convenience is the state of being able to proceed with something with little effort or difficulty.
Dan: Well, you and I are great believers in that.
Dean: Yeah, the quality of being useful, easy or suitable for someone. And then the third is a thing that contributes to an easy and effortless way of life. Yeah, and so? I think, that that's going, no matter what you're doing, to making. I would argue that the virtual division of Strategic Coach has made it, through convenience, a possibility for people in what would otherwise be inconvenient parts of the world to participate.
Dan: Yeah, and I think that you may. Zoom has, zoom has. Zoom has Zoom has. Yeah, my sense is that they Do. They need much more than Zoom. Do they need to actually have the feeling that they're?
Dean: there. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're not going to be able to.
Dan: I mean to be tested, yeah, to be experiment, tested.
Dean: I was just like you know. You know just at what appeared to be what was literally appearing in this thing. So that was. I'm just reporting the news.
Dan: Yeah and yeah, I know he seemed real, but is he real?
Dean: Yeah, and I was only seeing a 2D. I'm only seeing the 2D example of it, right? So, yeah, I can't imagine what it would be like. If you Like Lex Friedman's response to it I don't know who he- is.
Dan: by the way, I don't know who this person is.
Dean: Lex Friedman is a very popular podcaster, similar in popularity as Joe Rogan, like that level, one of the top interview podcasters, very smart, intelligent guy. But yeah, this was His visibly, you know the visible reaction that he was having to. It was like he was having a hard time really describing the impact, the emotional experience that he was having of this and he's a pretty non-emotional guy. That's part of the you know the term he's of.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, well, I'm going to have.
Dan: I'm going to have to have the experience I'm going to have to. The experience you know yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: By the way, that whole.
Dean: You know us being able to. It's just so funny to think now of all of these things, like I just see the layering, of this constant improvement in understanding of both our unique abilities and the unique capabilities that are being presented to us and the convenience of collaboration. Did you watch 60 Minutes? Yeah, you don't watch any TV, so there was.
Dan: I am innocent of the experience.
Dean: Do you know who Rick Rubin is? He's a music producer. He's regarded as maybe the oh, no, no.
Dan: I've watched his YouTubes. I've watched his YouTubes. Yeah, he's a great guy, yeah.
Dean: Really, he plays guitar.
Dan: He plays guitar right.
Dean: No, he doesn't. He doesn't play anything, which is really.
Dan: Which is really impressive. Somebody else that I'm thinking of he does a really great job of telling you why a song works or how a song works and everything.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, he's a white hair. Yeah, I'm looking at white hair.
Dean: Looks like Nafuzela. He's the no. You're talking about Rick Beato.
Dan: He's the guy you're talking about yeah, that's who I'm, that's what.
Dean: I'm talking about. Yeah, no, rick Rubin looks like Nafuzela, he's got a beard and long hair, real zen kind of guy. But he was on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper and it was pretty. There's some great sound bites from it. Because Anderson Cooper was asking him well, what is it that you do? Can you play instruments? And Rick said barely Could you work a sound board? And he said I have no technical ability and I know nothing about music, like actual music things. And Anderson asked him well, what do you get paid for? And he said he thought for a second and said the confidence that I have in my case and my ability to express what I feel has proven helpful for artists. And I thought there's a guy, if we were to do a widget on him, I'm sure he's a GI, I'm sure he has discernment and invention as his two things.
You can see, this is a good idea, this is the big idea here, and this is what I think you should do.
Dan: You have a visitor in the recording.
Dean: It's a crow. I think it's funny.
Dan: Don't you know that you're sitting. Don't you know that you're occupying his space? I?
Dean: must be.
Dan: Yeah, he's trying to tell you to get out. This is my space, Anyway it's all interesting. I keep coming back to the whole concept of the difference between convenience and comfort, and purpose and meaning. Yeah because my limousine company that I have in Toronto oftentimes has these sort of elite lifestyle magazines that advertises places to go and none of the people look happy. Yeah they look true.
They look like they look like they've got everything they want, and that hasn't made them happy. You know, they look. They look sophisticated, they're obviously wealthy and they have this, but it hasn't done the trick. You know, it's like models. It's like models you know like in Vogue magazine. Babs gets some of the magazines and the Wall Street Journal once a month has a style magazine that comes with one of the additions and they all look well.
First of all, I could draw a thought bubble above all their heads and say what I would give for a burger and fries, right, I mean, they look just, you know, they just look so unhappy and yeah, but they're representing the top of the world in fashion. You know, the elite living there are the top and I said, yeah, but they're, it's absent. It's absent meaning and purpose. You know, you've achieved something but and and people will sacrifice enormous amount of inconvenience for purpose and meaning.
So it's an interesting discussion, isn't it? No, I mean, I take it may. I'm not a cutting edge guy with technology, but when I hear enough of other people talking about things that seems to work, I said why don't we just include this? And you know, and. I'm really driven by productivity. I like getting a lot of stuff done easier and faster, you know. But it's the thing that is being achieved, that has meaning and purpose. It's not the means of getting there. So yeah.
Dean: I think there's a good, no, it's an interesting this thing is you know, yeah, and we live in totally a lot of the world.
Dan: We do.
Dean: I think that's part of the thing is maybe the, the harmonizing of that is pointing convenience at the end of comfort or out of purpose and meaning. Yeah, to make speaking purpose and meaning more convenient there, there's a new special on Netflix called Blue Zones and it's yeah observation of Okay talk about it.
Yeah, and those things, those people, inevitably. They live very simple lives about much adornment. They've got the if you guy, as the Japanese would say, the purpose, you know the meaning that, the thing that brings them joy, connection to people. They love Community, but that's all.
Dan: But if you think of your six Right.
Dean: Yeah, they're very simple.
Dan: They get rid of the eye. They'd wipe out the eye people really fast.
Dean: Exactly. A mill that's 150 years old.
Dan: I found from their great great grandmother you know, yeah, yeah, there's a famous temple in Japan. This will be.
I have to jump right now afterwards, but there's a temple in that every 20 years it's totally torn down and rebuild again. Okay, and this has been happening now for 2000 years. So every 20, that's 100 times, 100 times, wow, and, and, and they have to find wood that's exactly like the wood you know that, the original or the existing one they have to replace with the same kind of woods. There's no mechanical parts of the temple, it's all done with drilling, with ancient yeah and everything they use now.
The light screws, yeah, everything like that, and and an American coming into contact with this experience would say why? Why do you do it? Why don't you do it the next time? Why don't you build something different? You know, and, and I said because they have created enormous meaning and purpose out of something that's always the same.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: So you know, convenience is a capability, but it's not the really purpose. It's not the ruling me. Right, convenience is not the ruling me. That's a discussion I like you yeah, I really, of course. Let's have a four C's dual. Let's have a four C's dual one, okay, when you do your first free zone with you and I will have a dual in the front of the room between your four C's and my four C's.
Dean: Okay, there we go. I like it.
Dan: Well, one of them is the same because we have capability and common, and I think capability is the master one.
Dean: Yeah, and you're not. You don't think collaboration there. You're putting collaboration as a capability.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I think the other three are actually, I think capability is the center of your four C's and the other three are enhanced capabilities. Connectivity, collaboration and convenience are always being developed new in the world. I love it All right.
Dean: Okay, thank you. Well, always great, dan. I'll look forward to next week.
Dan: Yeah, and I'll be on the way home from the cottage next Sunday, so I won't be able to so to be the Sunday after.
Dean: Okay, no problem, two weeks Okay yeah.
Dan: Okay, okay, okay, thanks have a great time, bye-bye. Okay, bye.
Dean: Bye.
02 Jun 2021
Ep020: VCR - Vision, Capability, Reach
01:05:36
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about Vision, Capability, and Reach.
Ep096: A General Intelligence Smarter Than All Humans
00:56:09
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we are talking about how global intelligence is smarter than all humans that exist and how the idea of generic intelligence is untrue. Because we have limited bandwidth as individuals we can only be intelligent about certain things.
In today's episode, Dan and Dean discuss all the merits and challenges presented by rapidly advancing technology and explore the limitless possibilities presented by Cloudlandia.
Ep091: The gap between us and the next level of intelligence
00:55:00
In this episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, Dean and Dan talk about how the exponential improvements in AI and technology can fundamentally affect the elements of creating a uniquely successful life.
Join Dan and Dean in this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia as they discuss the benefits of ditching the default reactive nature for the more rewarding creative nature, as well as how to leverage Cloudlandia and the digital age to increase your creativity.
Ep111: The Black Plague, Roman Empire, and COVID-19
00:57:19
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we discuss some intriguing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and businesses.
We explore the shift to virtual platforms like Zoom and the concept of "Cloudlandia," drawing comparisons to changes brought about by historical pandemics. Dan and I consider opportunities that can emerge from unexpected times.
Our discussion ranges from societal shifts driven by technologies in the past to possibilities of the future.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean talks about the transformative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including transitioning from live events to digital platforms, and the potential opportunities arising from these changes.
Dan brings historical context to the discussion, comparing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to historical events such as the Black Plague and the Roman Empire.
We explore the power of technology and how it has reshaped society, from cars to cable TV, and the upcoming "golden plateau" in technological advancements.
We delve into the world of virtual coaching and how the pandemic has highlighted its untapped potential.
Dan discusses the human nature and how it remains constant throughout history, reflecting on significant technological changes in the 20th century and their effects on society.
We consider the concept of a "golden plateau" in technological advancements, discussing the impact on our lives and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our reliance on technology.
Dean shares his experience with transitioning to virtual workshops and how Zoom meetings might herald a new era in history.
Dan shares a fascinating narrative about twin sisters born in Germany before the Berlin Wall, exploring their life choices, and their adaptation to a rapidly changing world, underscoring the intersection of history, capitalism, and technology.
We discuss the concept of normalization, how individuals adapt differently to new situations, and how we've navigated the trials and triumphs of life during the pandemic.
Dan offers insights into how the shift from serfdom in England during the Black Plague led to a greater appreciation of workers' value, and how this historical perspective may shed light on our current situation.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: Do you realize that the recordings of everything we say are being analyzed right now at the National Security Agency?
Dean: I bet that's true, don't doubt this for a minute.
Dan: It's the best part of their week.
Dean: Hey guys, they're back Down the road. That's funny.
Dan: They don't think it's funny.
Dean: Oh man. Well, how are you after our absence last week?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's been great. You know things are company-wise. It's our best year ever, top line and bottom line, oh look at you Congratulations. That's exciting. Given where we were two, three years ago, this feels good. That was a long time underwater, yeah boy, oh boy.
Dean: Me too, I mean. Much like you, the majority of a lot of my income came from live events, like during my break through the blue 20 events and stuff like that. So yeah, it's weird, I'm just talking about it the other day that you know what was kind of this last year. It's almost coming up on 2021, 22 to almost four full years, right, yeah?
Dan: next.
Dean: If you think 20 was when it started, right. So yeah, almost all yeah, here almost all of 2023. But I look at the last three, it's been a blur. This last seems like just yesterday. We were in Phoenix at the Free Zone Summit.
Dan: At the Boulder, yeah, at the Boulder, it wasn't shut down.
Dean: But I think what was really, what really threw me off was we nobody knew how long this was going to last and every I just felt like, okay, well, we'll just kind of flatten the curve, this will go out through the summer and then by the fall we'll be back and everything should be fine, but I'm sure you were thinking that same thing and then, as soon as we flattened the curve, then we kept getting the new you know the new waves, and that went on, like you know, three, three or four times. So weird.
Dan: So let me ask you a question what's the biggest idea you've had? Only because you went through what happened over the last three years, three, four years.
Dean: I think the whole idea of Cloudlandia really formed then. Because that when I realized that the key is that we could just as easily gather in Cloudlandia and that I shifted everything from being kind of a mainland in-person business to being 80% mainland in-person, 20% on the phone or otherwise, and that was a big realization, and now realize, like I really I haven't been North of I4, interstate 4. I've been North of I4 in four years. I haven't had to. I've 100% migrated to Cloudlandia with invitations and you know people coming to. If they want to spend time in the mainland they come to. But so that was a big that was a big shift.
And we're back now to. So I'm back now, you know, revenue wise, back to pre-COVID days, you know. But then we got. You know, I think that the future is a hybrid, you know, I think there's still lots of mainland opportunities, I think, that line of thinking, that realization of mainland in Cloudlandia, and you know the roles of each.
Dan: You know it's really interesting. I did a lot of in-person workshops because I was doing the 10 times program beforehand, but this year I'll do 64 coaching sessions. Okay.
Dean: Live days, you mean.
Dan: Well, live events, so they're not days, sorry. So I'll do 64 this year, and only eight of them will be in person.
Dean: Oh, okay, that's what I was saying, that's what I meant. So you're counting like connector calls Connector.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Okay, yeah. And the thing about it I think are a nice suite. Those are two hours. Two hours yeah.
Dan: Yeah, those are the perfect suite spot. Yeah, and it was forced upon us only because we had no. There's nothing as decisive as no alternative, absolutely.
Dean: Yeah, I hear you, I'm really excited.
Dan: But once we created this alternative when we came back to full-time, I mean, the company as a whole is back to full-time live sessions, yeah, and. But we've added these two-hour sessions, which were only possible because our clients at nightbase got on to Zoom willingly or not, they got on to Zoom. And it was so useful creating these little two-hour sessions. That's a huge plus, that's a huge gain for us to have them and they're an entity into themselves. You know they have their own value and would not have gone there for two reasons.
One there was no reason to. And secondly, there was no, there was no ability to, but we acquired this capability because of what happened. I was reading the history of the plague, which was not a single thing. It was a series. Of this is I'm talking about the 1200s and 13-legs, right, yeah? On the Black Plague and it hit in the early part of. It hit worse in England of all the European countries and got hit worse. And England was a feudal country. They had warlords and they had serfs.
They had peasants, the king was warlord and there were lesser warlords, but each of them had their serf universe around them, and these were the worker bees. They did all the work and the plague was an equal opportunity killer. It killed from top to bottom. There was no class in England that was immune to the plague, because it was infectious, because they intermingled all the time. Everybody was densely populated and it was so devastating that a lot of estates just folded up, a lot of warlord estates folded up because they didn't have workers. They didn't have workers. They had lost so many workers. So what happened is that the workers realized suddenly that they had a value, in other words, that you can't run the place without us. And so they started wandering the field to the highest buyer, the person who would pay them the most and give them the best deal. So in history.
it's probably the biggest shift of servants becoming three agents and where they went off the land and they went into the towns. They went into the city and they became hired workers. But they could name their price, because if they didn't like the price, they could go to somebody else and say would you offer me a higher price? And what happened is that the merchant classes suddenly became more important than the landed aristocrats.
Okay, because they had business coming in. Where the land has one economic system, it's the crops. And they just decided you know, I couldn't do that. But previous to the plague they were condemned to the land, they were condemned to their occupation. They were condemned to the land, they didn't move. But after the plague they did. And so England which got hit the worst I think they had five plagues in a period of 50 or 60 years and all equally devastating. But they gained the most of the country because they got rid of serfdom in the 1200s where, for example, by comparison, in Russia it didn't happen until the beginning of the 20th century and Germany didn't happen until 1850. Okay, and it was just because of the peculiar geography and the peculiar density of the British population. And then they started talking about rights. They started talking about individual rights and everything along with employment, and freedom follows money.
But I was just thinking about that, what it must have been like the year before the first plague and the year after the fifth plague. What had happened to people's lives back then?
Dean: I mean it's so fascinating to me, Dan, because I remember in college and high school Western civ classes were like get through that and write your Gordon Rule essay and we've gone with it. And here it wasn't really like figuring out of the supply to you. To me as a college kid, that's what you're thinking, but now it's. The thing that fascinates me is this whole history of Western civilization, of how we kind of came into this thing. There's a funny meme going around on TikTok right now where women ask their husbands or boyfriends or whatever how often do you think about the Roman Empire? The meme is to turn your camera on and just ask your husband or whatever how often do you think about the Roman Empire? And it's pretty interesting because the answers that they're giving like a lot of them, are think about it all the time and you think about how much it came from. You know, came from.
Dan: And they didn't know, and the way they didn't know. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. That's what are they thinking? About they're thinking about the Roman Empire. That's the Roman Empire. Now, that shocks me actually.
Dean: But you strike me as a guy who often thinks about the Roman Empire, you know.
Dan: Yeah, I do.
Dean: Not many people, dan, I don't know anybody else to have a conversation that starts up. You know I've been thinking about the Black Plague lately. Yeah, only here, welcome to the Blue Land, because you hear such a conversation, that is you know, we just had about five.
Dan: We just had about five tripwires at the National Security Agency. But if we didn't know, that the majority of husbands were thinking about the Roman Empire you know, it's kind of like when have we been? We didn't pick up on this Right. What's that mean?
Dean: Yeah, but you know the interests that they were giving was. You know one? A couple of the guys were engineers and they constantly thinking about you know the. Roman Empire thinking about others are the one guy's. They was a martial artist. Thinking about the Roman, you know gladiators and Like constantly thinking about all things. The Rome, you know and it's funny because you're, you know. You look at your Euclid, you know yeah, I'm before the Roman your foundational thing.
Dan: Right, exactly, but I mean, I mean actually if there was any Civilization that benefited from Euclid, it was the Romans. They were great builders.
Yeah, you know, yeah, and all that depended upon the books of Euclid, every everything that they did. Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing. You know, I have a constant belief that human nature is a constant in the. I mean, we tend to think that people are radically different because of the means that they use at one particular era of you know history from another side that well, that that means they were really different people, and I said I don't think they are. I think they have a constant.
You know they have a constant motivation to kind of utilize whatever they have available to them, and Oftentimes that requires that they have to create an entirely new structures and new processes, and and so the so you know, I don't feel, you know like I was born in the 40s, I lived, you know, I was conscious beginning in the 50s and my sense is that, as far as how people were, you know what human nature was, I don't see much of a difference.
I certainly don't see it in myself, you know, I just sample of one feel any different.
Dean: I Think I still.
Dan: I'm very much in touch who I was when I was eight years old.
Dean: Yeah, me too. Yeah, I think about that a lot like that, because I have been and we've had conversations about the reflection on. You know, I think you know we've had to be the ages your 22 years older. Than me that you've had a whole mother. You know generation of, you know the experience from 1944 to 1966 with the pretty. That's a pretty, yeah, that's a lot of happen. You know, yeah.
Yeah, and I look at the. You know the 22 years from 1966 to 88 were really. I marked 1988 as basically the end of the analog life. You know that that the beginning of the digital live, and though digital stuff kind of start happening in 70s, there was a real practical here. We started getting real practical applications of digital stuff. But that first 22 years of my life was Really analog and I'm thankful that I had that experience, because I think there's something you know to that. I don't know whether it, I don't know practically, whether what we you know the fondness that I feel for either Nostalgic or you know, but it was a different, it was a different world.
Dan: It was a very different world yeah. Yeah, well, going on that book, the, you know the big change you know, yeah, from the book, wonderful book that you sent me, which I consume. You know the. I was born right at the payoff period of the first 50 years.
Dean: You know yeah.
Dan: That's it. Yeah and you know I've been talking to people decades older than myself who had gone through the real huge impact of the you know, the cars, the electricity, the you know light everywhere. You know movies, radio, movies, radio and the beginning of television. You know that and you know, you know I mean. I remember People gathering in rooms to watch this thing called television. You know, I remember you know it was like a big event.
Dean: We just got our television.
Dan: come on over, we're going to have a buffet dinner and we're all going to sit around and watch our.
Dean: TV dinners and jiffy pop popcorn, yeah, yeah.
Dan: It was rudimentary, I mean, but the big thing about it was it had a liveliness to it because the Programs were not recorded, they were live. No, everything was still live. And you know and think about where we are now. That Live TV. Well, first of all, I don't watch it in the heaven for a while. But I think a lot of people just said why should they schedule when I get to watch what I want?
Dean: Well, it seems a little undignified.
Dan: Yeah, it seems it seems feudal Feudal in both senses of the word.
Dean: Yeah, what a feudal way of doing what I want to watch, you know, but you think about that was largely there was no change between the way you were watching television in 1948 and the way you were watching television in 1988. It was really the main. It was still as Scheduled you had to be yeah, you had maybe one more.
Dan: You had maybe one more channel, you know I went to. Cnn start. Well then you had the cable. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Dean: At the 80s you had more options for it. Yeah, but it wasn't until it wasn't until the late 80s that you had more option. I mean, the VCR brought a synchronicity and, yeah, freed you from at least you could shoot, gave you choice and Detached from the scheduling of it. But nobody could figure out how to Record stuff. Yeah it was a look.
You know, 90% of the VCRs were still flashing 12 yeah, you know nobody can even program the clock for it, let alone Learn how to record Programs. You know so mostly. You had Blockbuster to go and give yourself some Choice, but that took from 1948 to 1988 to get to that point. And that big middle, that big Golden plateau, that I think that's a good term for it. Right, is that golden?
Dan: plateau of.
0:18:39 - Dean:
All of those things being in place. That happened in the big change. All those things you mentioned electric and on radio, tv, movies, flight, automobile, all of those things climb, climb, exponential improvement to 1950. And then we had that golden plateau where there wasn't much innovation on those things but it was really settled into a much improved life and life style Because of those things. You know now every I had electricity, air conditioning, telephone, car in the driveway, pv in the living room. You know All of those things were. That was like the basic, that was the basic amenity package for American life circa 1950 to 1980, you know, yeah, and that's bathroom bathroom is where there was no bath and no shower.
Dan:Yeah, right exactly.
Dean: Very funny that the thing now and this is where I firmly believe that period from 1975 to two-week years of AI, a couple more years to develop, with that same sort of climbing, climbing, exponential improvement in things. But I think that we're approaching level golden plateau, where the next thing is going to be settled into the benefits of using all the things that we have now, of really settling into those utilization of this new baseline, like every home. Now it's interesting that the basic amenity package for life now includes some sort of a smart phone, access to the internet and streaming smart television service. So all of that as the baseline package, though for the digital plateau here.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It's pretty exciting.
Dan: Yeah, and I feel that, and I think that World Affairs are dictating that this is now going to be the only thing available for people to do, because my feeling is that COVID delivered a first stunning blow to both your ability and your desire to travel. I think people are much more at home or stay in place today than they were four years ago around the world. I'm not just in North America, but in the whole world.
Dean: That geography does come into place, right, like your position, your outpost, your mainland outpost to Cloudlandia, like I think about I've just been watching you know, with just a perplexing. I can't even imagine what it's like to be living in Israel right now, like that entire, or Ukraine I mean you think about these things how insulated we are right now from the reality.
Dan: Well, like there's one aspect. You know, israel comparatively has a very small population. That's why the equivalent of what happened with the first 24 to 48 hours was way beyond what 9-11 did to the United States.
Dean: Absolutely yeah.
Dan: Yeah, because it's the equivalent of 40,000, you know if you compare. Israeli population of the US. You know, the US's population is 45 times bigger than Israel.
So the 3,000 out of 40, you know, 45 times it's significant, but it's, you know, it's not that big, it's like 40,000, I mean, if you wanted to translate it, it's like, you know, it's like 40 to 50,000 people have died. But the other thing is the call up to war, because it is a declared war. They've moved 300,000 working-age people into the military, now their full-time military. So what's that do to the economy?
you know what's you know, and so my sense is that Israel, which is a very advanced technological country, is now going to go through an amazing period of artificial intelligence, dealt with everything that moves in their economy.
Dean: Yeah, I mean when you amplify too, especially the proximity to it. When you look at the, you know it might be a 145th of the population, but it's also, you know, a hundredth or less of the geographic area of the. United States, you know.
Dan: Yeah, it's basically New Jersey you know, I mean the land area of New Jersey is about equal to and they're comparable yeah, yeah and when you look at that and you realize that's not like even in Ukraine.
Dean: As you know the size of the Ukraine, if you're you know kind of there's a place to distance from what's going on the eastern border of Ukraine. If you're on the western side you're kind of a little bit insulated from it. But you know, it's just. It's amazing to me, dan. I can't even imagine.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know actually my experience of this because I was, you know, technically in a war zone when I was in South Korea.
Dean: I was going to say you were in a war zone. Yeah.
Dan: Well, south Korea, and we were maybe a hundred miles from the DMZ, okay, uh-huh, but you were conscious and we had five alerts in the year and a half that I was there and that meant there was an incursion on the DMZ, the demilitarized zone.
I can tell you the demilitarized zone is very militarized, you know, and so there would be, you know, a squad of American troops or the other UN troops would be ambushed. You know they would ambush, and immediately the country you know, and this was the military, the US Park, you know 40, 45,000, and then you had.
You know you had other troops, the Turks, the Turkish. The Turks had a big contingent there, but immediately you knew what to do, you would do that. So in Israel they've had the rocket attacks now going back seven or eight years. Okay, and they immediately the sirens go off. Everybody knows what to do. So there I was, that the closer you are to the danger, the less scary it seems, because it's normal, you've normalized anything. And three or four days, you've normalized the situation. Okay, you've normalized it.
Seeing it from a distance, you know you're imagining what that situation would do to the Four Seasons, right, yeah?
Dean: I'm sitting like I'm in my courtyard right now and it's just, it's the perfect temperature. It's so quiet, you know, because there's nothing around me. I just can't even imagine if bombs started landing or somebody started running through the neighborhood.
Dan: Yeah, but on the other hand, I mean, you've been there for decades, you know in the area and you have. You know what? Two, three hurricane alerts a year.
Dean: Well, people in people in Toronto.
Dan: I mean a hurricane for people in Toronto, oh yeah. You know, actually almost the entire what I would say. The the water overflow situation in Toronto was hugely created because of a hurricane in the 1950s that killed 200 people in Toronto because of sudden rushing water in parts of the city where people were caught. It was like a riptide.
You know it was like a riptide and they had to reconfigure their entire drainage system. You know when heavy rains and everything like that. So that's an example, you know, an example of someplace that doesn't have this kind of situation. When they get a big one, they have to rethink everything. You know. And but the type of a situation we had in Toronto in 1953, I wasn't here, but as a matter of fact, I'm not here today, I'm in Chicago.
Dean: But just talking about it.
Dan: You know I try to get some distance between me and any potential problem, but you know I mean it's a violation of normal and in Israel, my feeling when I was there it's been about two and a half weeks in Israel and I got a sense that everybody knew what to do with trouble. Okay, they knew what to do with. There was a kibbutz that we visited and these people had been in Gaza, that they had lived in Gaza before it was given back to the Palestinians 2005, 2006, I think it might have been somewhere around there and they were talking. The woman said that there was the start of trouble had started and there were bombings and there were shootings and she had three kids and they went out the front door and she heard the bombs, she heard the shooting and they all came rushing back in and they said they're shooting in the streets and she said, well, go out the back.
No, out the back, wow and the reason is, I mean, they had already rehearsed it, but they had to go to school.
Dean: Yeah, go help the back.
Dan: Okay, yeah, she said well just go out, just go out. They had a back gate and no, there was a back route and everything like that so what it says is that having something like this happened was the normal part of their experience Right, yeah, that's just and they were all tacking every.
We were up at the Lebanese border and we just visited this community. That's the furthest northern, most Israeli settlement town. You know, it's not big, you know, a couple hundred people. Everybody was packing, everybody had a six-quat, you know. And so funny because there was a UN troop between them and the Whoever was on the other side of the border and and he said aren't you scared? He says I'll tell you who's scared, as the UN people, they're really scared. Okay, because we kind of believe that they favor the Terrorists. You know, our belief is that the UN protects the terrorists, you know. But if you went to the northern, above the border and you asked the Lebanese, they said we feel that the UN Favors the Israelis. You know, uh-huh.
So I said if trouble starts off, who gets shot first? I? He says, well, the UN troops. And he says I even got a guy on the shoot.
Dean: Oh my goodness I've got a guy I know the guy right Normalizing no I don't know how to yeah no, normal is normal.
Dan: Yeah, we're great normalizing species. Humans are a normalizing species. You know that.
Dean: Reminded me of. There was a cartoon where the, the Cheap dog and the wolf were, you know, clocking in for their job. Today, fred, they ask each other at the clock in, and then they did work. He tried to steal the sheep and he tried and foil them.
Dan: You know, yeah what'd you do last time? What'd you do tonight? Last night, you?
Dean: know, you know what are you gonna do what?
Dan: what are you gonna do today? Oh, you know the usual, yeah. And so people, you know you, you know real, realize that we were standing in line. We came through the Toronto security yesterday and and if you were, if you had nexus or you had what's the general term for nexus is where they yeah, yeah. I get global entry. I just look, you know, and they're really. The Machines are really sophisticated.
Use, come up the machine yeah it has an arrow going upwards and said look into the camera. And I looked into the camera and there was about a five seconds. Say your identity, you know, you're confirmed. Yeah, and see the an art, you know. And that's become normal. Yeah, but in the not because we find business class and we have nexus and the other thing people were having to take off their shoes. Okay, yeah, this is 2024, and they have to take off their shoes to go through, you know, to go through the machine and and I said this was because one guy, one guy.
Yeah, 25 years he was fine from London to New York and he was trying to detonate his shoes.
And and he was a clutch, and so they caught him and they took him away, and immediately, because of one guy not two in two different situations, but one guy in one situation he had immediately. Everybody has to take off their shoes. It's just one guy. You know why don't you have a little area where you have to walk across? You know it's on the floor and it can detect explosives you know, and it's a trapdoor, so they immediately drop you into the. The cleaner, the cleaner who was that?
Dean: Land security right, yeah, yeah who was that guy?
Dan: I said we'll never know. We'll never know. Yeah, but it's interesting and you know it's a pain, you know, and that's why we have nexus and that's why we've adapted cloudland via Bypass. You know, the machine knows me.
Yeah, that's it's really important is that the machine knows you. Yeah, but there's a thing about normalizing, you know, and but my feeling you know the famous, you know it's the adaptation curve, you know it's a yeah, you know it starts at one end, then there's a big bulge and then it goes down the other end my sense is that people's ability to normalize is unequal. I think you and I are pretty fast to normalize.
Dean: I think the two of us and that and it's a reward for being a DD you think, yeah, I think so too, you're probably right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, that's an interesting thought. Lon, lon, quick start, lon, quick start a DD. I think you normalize really fast. You know, I normalize really fast yeah. I remember it was Friday, the 13th of March, when I was in Chicago, and it's funny because Friday was the 13th. This is.
Sunday, but we're talking, yeah, and, and I was coaching a workshop, but it was about 60% of what its normal numbers were. You know, I think we normally had 50 and I think we had maybe 30. And then when we got together After the workshop, before Babs and I went home to flew back home to Toronto, she says we've had a powwow all the leadership in the company and we've decided we're gonna have to close down All workshops for three months. Okay, it's March, we're gonna close down all workshops until, because we're people just aren't going to be showing up and I need to put the word out that we're not gonna do it that time and.
I was tired, I'd done four workshops a week, and so we went to the airport, we got on the plane and I'm Halfway home and I said zoom, we're gonna switch over to zoom. This is the opportunity switch over, zoom. And I hit the ground the next morning. Well, it was Saturday, but by Monday I said okay, what will it take to turn everything we do 100% into zoom? Yeah, yeah.
I and we have clients today who we haven't seen Since early 2020, who still haven't made the adjustment right. Yeah, I think they can't normalize and what it?
Dean: was. I think that when I first started doing zoom I Was doing, I was trying to do the same thing as the break through blueprint, but by zoom, like three days, same thing. We're just, instead of being in the boardroom, you're in your home, you know, and I think we realized about Zoom fatigue kind of thing. It's sitting three days in zoom Full day is a long with a big ass, and I think that you and I both have come to the realization that like two hours more frequently is the is a better Two hours is the right amount of time and I found this beautiful time zone From three o'clock to five o'clock Eastern time.
He gets me. I go to Hawaii on one end, even to the you know, this side of Australia where it's six am, you know, at three pm in the afternoon, all the way to Lichtenstein on the other end where it's, you know, ten o'clock at night. That Swap of the Western world is really what's available in yeah, and. Yeah, that's our.
Dan: Yeah, our stretches from Pakistan, Well, stretches from Mumbai, because Mumbai is further to the east and Pakistan to New Zealand, and I'm just saying people who show up for zoom cults. You know the? Yeah, yeah yeah and everything. Yeah, lichtenstein, that's really interesting.
Dean: Do whites, do well often they're husbands.
Dan: That's perfect. Nsa that's a money laundering. We have the very first space.
Dean: So I started doing this specific like I do a lead conversion workshop and a lead generation workshop, which are four sessions specifically about that micro topic, two hours each four weeks in a row and the very first one that I did. We had someone from Hawaii and Lichtenstein and all points in between. It was really the perfect thing.
Dan: Yeah, I mean we adjusted throughout the day depending on our, you know. I mean I'll have six free zones, six free zone, two hour free zone.
Dean: I'd love quarter.
Dan: Connector calls are amazing and if they're big you know they have a lot of people they take on one quality, and if they're like a handful of people, they take on another quality. They're different for you. You don't have to have breakout groups if you have five people, you know, because the group is the breakout group, yeah, and everything like that. But I think this we're in for one of those periods and I agree with your thesis that we've had sort of a 50 year move to the new game period of history.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And I think the politics and the economics of the end of the 50 years are radically different than the politics and the economics where you started the 50 years. That would have been true from 1950, from 1900 to 1950.
Dean: And that was something. Let's talk about that for a minute, because there might be some clues into what happened.
Dan: Well, there were no empire in the 1900, the whole world was organized according to empires. There were six or seven major empires by 1950. They were all gone. All those empires had gone away. Okay, I mean, great Britain still retained a global reach that used to be their empire, but it was now called the Commonwealth. Okay, and it wasn't British troops being stationed in those places.
Dean: You, know it was this that they.
Dan: What held it together was British law and British political structures, and English language and the pound, you know the.
Dean: I mean franchise basically. It was a franchise, ideological, political.
Dan: Yeah, and the US changed the least of all those countries. I mean from a lifestyle standpoint. It changed a lot of technological, but it's basic structure and process of how the country is run stayed exactly the same. It was the Constitution in 1900. And it was the Constitution in 1950 and then 2020. And it was designed as a franchise nation right from the beginning, because each of the states is like a little fractal copy of the federal government, you know so and each of the states gets to adjust to the way that they deem important.
You know, it's, it's everything. So I think, of all the people on the planet who have had to change the least over the last 50 years, I think Americans are the number one.
Dean: You say well, what do you mean?
Dan: I mean I had to do this and I had to do this and I said, yeah, that's yours, you know, I bet you have more conveniences, you have more comfort, you have more capabilities, but I would say your day to day life is not that much different, because it's so there's a guy on YouTube who has a channel where for years he's branched off into other areas now, but his main thing was, as a solo guy, just going with a GoPro camera to explore former Soviet territory and right
Dean: it was just the guy on YouTube. His channel is called Bald and Bankrupt oh the guy. But he goes around and he gives you. He just goes and sees, like what is life like in Uzbekistan right now? You know like he goes and tours the areas and he's fascinated by the you know, soviet mosaics and the all the remnants of, you know grander times for Soviet it's all ruined, it's all ruined, absolutely.
And so you see the day in a life of people because he goes and sort of, he speaks Russian well enough to get by.
Dan: Get along.
Dean: Yeah, and he'd be friends he'd be friends, locals and gets invited into their homes. And you know, you just see like what? What an amazing contrast to life in America. You know a capitalism life, then life after you know communism, where capitalism hasn't fully sunk in, even though it's an option, it hasn't sunk in. You know, in that way, and how desolate you know it's. The landscape is just bleak. You know, I mean everything is in this and and the roads and the infrastructure and everything is just crumbling and the bar resilient, I guess, in a way, right, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of. They're living normal life. Not I wouldn't say normal, but I mean normal. To that normal, no, normal, they consider it normal. They consider it normal. Yeah, yeah, normal life, yeah yeah, yeah, the.
Dan: there was an article I read about twin sisters born in Germany, born before the wall went up, so this would be and, and one of them said, you know, we've got to get out. And they were. You know, they were young, very young at that time. And so the one with a lot of initiative did it and she was leaving behind her twin sister, who she was unusually close to, that close to, and she moved to the West Germany and other sister stayed in East Germany and they would correspond and they're under, you know, under very difficult conditions. They were able to visit with each other.
The sister in East Germany couldn't go to the West but there was provisions that, you know, families could reunite for half a day or something like that. So, anyway, and then then the sister, who was, you know, more motivated, then got a chance to move to the United States and she moved to Iowa. Okay, and at a certain point, when the wall fell, you know, which was 1989, the sister, they made this. It took a year to plan it and everything else, just practically, because the sister in Germany just wasn't used to going anywhere.
And they finally they flew to. She flew to Chicago and then to Iowa, and so they picked her up at the airport and she they were just driving from the airport to wherever the woman lived in Iowa the now American sister and they were going through just a normal supper and she said you're taking me through the wealthy section, Now you take.
And they said this isn't the wealthy session, this is just no, this is just, this is just the way everything normal, yeah this is normal and that more or less paralyzed the sister because she had no mental structure to take in that this was just the way that Americans lived.
And then they went to a supermarket, you know which was probably the land size of two football fields, you know, and just a normal, super, nothing special. I mean, yeah, and so they walked in, they says we've got a lot of shopping to do and everything. And she says, well, is there anything I can do? And she says, well, look about the aisles there, you see. You know, there's aisles one through 20, and just go to aisle number 11 and just turn the corner, you know, and take string with you, so he or lead, lead, bread, breadcrumbs, and so she says, but we're looking for corn flakes, some, of course, like. So anyway, and they agree, and they're both punctual, they're German. And so she says you know, in 20 minutes let's just meet right back here. And so the American sister is there, but the German sister, the East German sister, isn't. So she goes down to aisle 11 and her sister is right where the corn flakes were standing, mute.
You know just looking at the corn flakes and she said there's 10 different kinds of corn flakes. How can I possibly choose? And she said I just grab one of them. And she said I can't comprehend. How do you make decisions here? How do you make? Decisions yeah yeah, it's a collision of two normals.
Dean: Yes, you want. I mean Lupa talked about that coming to. America and going to the grocery store as you know like going just seeing all the things that were available. It's amazing. It's really interesting to hear her talk about her awakening to capitalism you know like as a because she came to America at 18, you know, or you know 20, I guess she was 20.
Dan: And yeah seeing having her life Anying. Other siblings followed her yeah.
Dean: Oh, she brought everybody, yeah, everybody over, but that yeah, she just well, I think, I think you have a different level of well, she's really the you know she's the.
Dan: You know the great exhibit here of someone, the adaptation curve, you know. I mean she just like it was like when she had the chance. She didn't miss the chance to get out.
Dean: But what I?
Dan: remember most about her story because we were out to dinner a couple of times at the last free zone in Palm.
Dean: Beach.
Dan: And what I remember most was that the person who most protected their rather odd family in the Ukraine in Ukraine, was a KGB agent.
Dean: Oh yeah.
Dan: And you know so you know everything. You know what makes people normal is who they're connected to. You know what, who, are you?
connected to, and you know, the more you're connected to people who have wider perspective than have greater capabilities, I think it's the faster you're able to adapt. Agreed, I think that's what I mean, since I talk to you all the time. What am I going to do? Wying about COVID? Yeah, I mean, regardless how I'm picking, you know, I've got a certain status to get to maintain. You know, reputation to maintain, yeah, yeah.
Dean: I love it. I think the interesting thing, about MacCamp. We to think about this week is this in the context of the golden plateau that we're reaching here, and how to thrive in that golden Well, I think things are going to fall down, you know my my military money, energy, labor and transport you know, I think things are definitely.
Dan: I can sense that things are slowing down. Like you know, the predictions in the high tech industry everything's going to get bigger and better, and that's you know, it's a straight upward line. Yeah but I too in infinity, and I says I don't think so, I think the mouth. Things really slowed down when they hit 1950. Oh, you know, I remember it as being a fairly tranquil period of 1950s, 1960s.
You know, I agree, that's what I mean is very until you were born, and then, of course, things started to get in line and things shifted Right. Yeah, but I know I agree with you 100%.
Dean: That was a. You know that all of that leveled into a stage of, you know, a plateauing of advancement. I mean, it wasn't, it was. You know, all those things you read about in the big change, those things were revolutionary. I mean, so all these baby boomers born into this plateau, that plateau, really didn't know a world before those big things, before electricity, television, all television, air conditioning, cars, roads, all of that. And then they grew up in brand new schools all the way up. You know the whole thing.
Dan: Whole new neighborhoods. You know, they grew up in whole new neighborhoods, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I think we're into that period again. I think we're going to you know go. And I was thinking that when people say bold things like cars, use an example of cars, of classic old time cars. You don't notice many classical cars that were produced too much after the fifties up until the eighties, you know right.
You really to pick up on the late forties the forts were beautiful, the Chevy's were beautiful, the Lincoln's were beautiful and everything else, and they are saved because they didn't really they stylized, they certainly did not approve. I can think of only maybe two cars. I'm not a car guy, so your thing, but you know, and one is the Chevy Corvette which has maintained a certain classic look for 70 years, and the other one is the Camaro, both the Chevy and the Camaro, the Camaro is you know, is a hot car, but I can't think of any other.
you know again, I'm not a car person, so I'm basing my confidence on ignorance here. But anyway, but the big thing is, but the fort thirties and forties is just full of these old classic cars. You know, and I think it was a high design period and you know, and I mean we certainly don't save any technology that much from that period of time. You know well it was not over. Tonight I've got, I still got my 19 Motorola television and oh, yeah, no exactly Six, six inches.
And you know and everything like that. You know, nobody does that, but they do have radios from the forties. You know, people do have radios from the thirties and forties, you know, yeah, yeah, anyway. So how would we sum up today? Because we've shot through an hour and record time. I can't believe it.
Dean: Well, I think my reflection right now is really going to be, I think, drawing the parallel, looking at who and what were the conditions for thriving in the period from the fifties to the eighties, you know, and on that, on the back of all of that advancement, and I think, if we're going to start doing some guessing and betting about what's going to thrive in the next 25 years, you know that we've reached this thing and I'm going to let it ride out to 20 as the peak of the plateau kind of, and see that period from, I think the period from 25 to 50, that 25 years is going to be.
There's going to be a lot of parallels, I think, yeah, yeah, my sense is.
Dan: I can just end with one little example from a 10 times connector I had. On Friday I was in a break up with three people. One of them was a marketer, one of them was a podcaster, and I'm just. The other one was an online educational company two women and a man and half their sharing was the progress they've made with AI during 2023. Okay, yeah.
And I was very struck by their reports because they just talked about it and they were just talking normally about something that literally did not exist before November 30th last year.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Dan: They were just talking as well. We're doing this with AI, we're doing this with AI, we're doing this with AI, and it was like yeah, we're saying, yeah, and we did this, we're doing this with electricity. We're doing this with electricity Right, right, exactly. And now I said I've gotten a keen insight just by your reports. Today you're sharing that this is what's going on in tens, hundreds of millions of places right now, and it's all subsurface, it's all below the surface. Okay.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And they're not talking about it as a big thing, they're just talking about it as a normal thing.
Dean: Right. That's why I say by if we that and I think that's going to be expanded that if we that, by then this to 2025, that by then it's going to be, everybody's going to have a sense of what this is. You know, I think you're absolutely right Like we're literally just a year into AI.
Dan: Yeah, I mean that's, I can see the report. I can just see the reports that are being written about our conversation today at the NSA. Oh, my goodness, people say we've got to have a meeting, we've got to have a meeting.
Dean: They're on, they're on.
Dan: They're not onto us. They're onto things that we didn't know about. Yeah, and what was the Roman Empire anyway? Is that an empire we should be paying attention to? Do we have contacts with Alrighty?
Dean: Dean. Yeah, all right, I'll be here next week. I think I am. I'll be back in Toronto.
Dan: I'll certainly be. I'll be in a position. Perfect, I will talk to you then. Thanks, dean, bye, Okay.
13 Apr 2022
Ep062: Predicting The Digital Future
00:52:09
In today's episode, Dan and Dean use the evolution of technology in the past 30 years to try and predict how technology will evolve in the next 30 years, influenced by digital communication in places like Cloudlandia.
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, I share insights from my experience at the Cloudland Summit. We discuss the carefully constructed approach to selecting impactful speakers and crafting their messages.
Dan and I explore deeper implications of habits. From influencing personal growth to organizational culture and nations. Recent tech and political events show how biases stem from ingrained habits.
We cover self-tracking progress through a daily habit-scoring system and cooking's role in health, wealth, and innovation. Overall, it's a thought-provoking look at intentional living and leveraging the mundane for extraordinary results.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We discuss the Cloudland Summit and how major tech breakthroughs often come from the convergence of three pre-existing technologies.
I share insights from my upcoming book "Everything is Created Backward," suggesting that innovation stems from remixing the past.
We explore Perplexity, an AI tool that aids in research by suggesting further inquiries and providing references.
We analyze the creation of iTunes as an example of innovation by combining existing elements in novel ways.
I introduce the 'Top 50 Tool' I've devised to identify and refine daily habits that shape our lives and future selves.
We examine the role of present habits in shaping our future selves and the effectiveness of setting goals for personal growth.
We touch on the biases of Google's chatbot and the financial repercussions of such biases on a company's valuation.
We discuss the number 51's significance in politics and business and the importance of counting fundamentals.
We talk about the transformative power of cooking habits on health and wallets, and the broader implications on personal and national success.
We tease the introduction of a new tool designed to track and score daily progress, highlighting the importance of consistent habits.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, yes, it's Welcome to cloudland at time.
Dan: Amen. I heard it's being recorded, so that's half the job right there.
Dean: Yeah, and it's never going to let you down.
Dan: That's right, Well, yeah what a what a whirlwind week. It was so good to see you and babs and everybody.
Dean: We were shooting for one meal and we were shooting for one meal and that kind of ended up as five.
Dan: Yes, what what can happen. Oh, that's, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. I like it. They were all playful.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, it was really interesting because I spent probably a day preparing for the Friso summit for our listeners. We just had our annual being the top level of strategic coach and and we have this every year it's it's a meeting Squeezed in between two drinking parties. Oh man, that's funny. Yeah, the meeting is so you can recover for the first from the first drinking parties so that you're ready to go for the second one.
Dan: And I'll tell you what. I sold that to those pokeballs short, that was those are delicious.
Dean: Yeah, I always find that alcohol is the almost failproof Of 10 times multiplier. There you go one dollar invested in alcohol Somewhere along the line, that always produces the 10 times positive result.
Dan: Oh, good, that's noted.
Dean: Yeah, I'm not sure that marijuana does that.
Dan: Oh no.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah, but I spent a day on that conference and. What I did is we chose the speakers and then alanora called each of them to see if that was okay and we specified the topic, and that was all done by you know, alanora. And then what I did is I wrote a fast filter for each of the speakers, not on what they were going to talk about, but how they were going to talk, okay. And I thought it worked really well. I thought it worked really well.
Dan: It really did. I mean the panels were, you know. It seemed like the whole thing moved quickly. Everybody was bringing valuable insight, even just the. The resources they were recommending, especially your. The ai panel, was fantastic, not too much. You know I I immediately came back and started using perplexity and I downloaded perplexity as so let we should probably set the stage for what perplexity is as a chat, gpt alternative and combined with kind of Google and yeah, well, it's interesting because I've done it on about 10 different Questions, you know.
Dean: I asked a question and then I get an answer and uh then, but it's got Uh two neat things about it. At down below it has three more questions that you might ask. Okay, three more.
Dan: Um, yeah, on the topic.
Dean: That first of all gives you the original answer, and then it suggests three more things you might look into.
But, at the top it's got four boxes and these are references that you can go to that indicate where it got you know the information to answer your question.
And if you do all, if you do the first thing. And what I was asking was mark mills, who is a tech Thinker. He thinks a lot about what technology is doing to the world and he mentioned in one of his books it's called the cloud revolution that if you look at technology, almost all the breakthroughs happen as a result of combining three existing technologies. And he goes back and he goes rake back to Samuel Morris in the mid 19th century with the telegraph, and then he comes all the way forward to not to ai, but to when how the internet came into existence. You know, he puts the internet and talks about the three things that had to be there first before you could even think about Creating this new technology. And the reason is I'm writing a quarterly book right now which is called everything is created backward, and and what I mean by that is that you can't you can't create the future out of the future, because there's nothing there.
Dan: Right right. Where's the stuff you know First of all, I've never been rendered in the simulation. Here it's unrendered. Yeah, nobody's ever been nobody's ever been there.
Dean: You know they I mean. But the problem with it is that you have to do a awful lot of convincing With something you try to create out of the future, you know and but I gave the anxiety.
I just wrote the first chapter, but the actually the introduction, and I use itunes as the example that steve jobs simply took three things that already existed. One was the mp3 player, which he apple already had. The ipod Okay, it already had millions of people already using the ipod, so he had a build-in. He had a build-in audience to go through with something new. The second thing is that nabster had already pretty well figured out how you use the internet to download single songs.
Yes, okay and their only problem with their model was that it was illegal. They were stealing, they were stealing and that's that. Never has long shelf life.
Dan: They were sharing something they were sharing.
Dean: No, they weren't sharing, they were stealing. They were stealing other people's property and making money on it.
Yeah, that's called theft, and and then apple had its operating system, so it was the mp3 player, the nabster innovation with the internet and the apple, you know, apples operating system for all of its computers, which it had many more already existing Customers, you know customers were already using it. And then he put it together and he created iJudon. You know it was an app that went on your apple platform and you could download music and then put it in your ipod.
Dan: That's great and you're right, like it's. I see the triple play the things now I can. Just I'm looking at it.
Dean: I mean, if you look at, artificial intelligence and work backwards as a result of three things. I haven't really analyzed that, but it seems to be three things that had to exist before, and so what I'm suggesting in the book is that the key to your future is actually what you're doing with the past, your past experience, what's available to you, yeah, and so that's. I think that's a tremendous breakthrough. I think this is a keen insight.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, what was a keen insight for me? My biggest takeaway from the free zone.
Dean: I was looking for a little bit more excitement on your part.
Dan: No, I'm totally excited and this is where it's. It's related to what you're saying that when we had the conversation about Looking back at the habits that you've established, oh, yeah, now, yeah, that's what I meant is that, looking working Backwards, like that, everything that we've created right now is the some, you know, the accumulation of all of the Daily habits that I have instilled, right, the behaviors and habits and choices, and that only you know. I think it goes in that. I think that fits with what you're saying, that you can't. It's not about, you know, picking something in the future. When you said, what are the habits, what are the daily present habits of future dan or future dean, of where you want, and that's the real thing is that having to establish, though, those habits? Yeah, I've had a couple more thoughts.
Dean: I've had a couple of birth thoughts since we talked in palm beach about how you could approach this, and so one of things and I have a tool that I've created which really hasn't gone into the program at all. It's called the top 50 tool and it's just a page and it's got 50 boxes, okay, and what you do, and what you do is when you have a number of things. So let's just Apply it to the present project. You have 50 existing daily Habits right now. Everybody does, you know everybody in the world and I'm just arbitrarily picking 50.
Yeah, my sense is it's if you put all the habits, the little things that you've woven together to produce who you are today.
Yeah you know it could be in the hundreds, you know hundreds or thousands, but you know it fills up the time. Yeah, you can account for it. Yeah, in the 24 hours, and then the waking hours. Probably there's probably habits you have at life and nighttime which bear Examination. But I said okay. So the first part of the project is just create a sheet. That's got, you know, it's got 50 boxes. You know five by 10, okay, okay, and number them one through 50. And then just you know, and every day as you go through, observe something else. For example, in our house I do the dishes, okay.
Mm-hmm babs cooks and I do the dishes. So usually it hangs around, you know it hangs around. We have supper. You know we have not so much breakfast, but we had lunch and dinner and there's dishes and I just put them next to the sink, close to the dishwasher, and then I go about doing something and then I, and then you know I open the dishwasher and there's a previous meals already, clean dishes there, so I have to unload it and you know, put everything in the shelf and then I load it.
Okay, and it's not a kind of how that I really like doing, but it's the agreement, you know Okay, so within the last three weeks I've adapted as soon as the meals finished, I do the dishes, okay. And in order I put the dishes in the dishwasher, and in order to do that, before the meal I look at the dishwasher and I unload it and put everything away so that when the meals finished, it's just a matter of rinsing the dishes and putting them in a dishwasher.
Well that's two habits. That's two habits right there. Okay, so they would go down in boxes. You know two of the boxes, okay, but once I do it, and I'm doing it the way that I would like to see it, see me doing it in the future, you know.
And you know, and sometimes we have staff in the house and they do it so that it gets taken care of, but it's not my, but when it's just Babs and me at our home and at our cottage. You know, two homes in Toronto, and a home in Toronto, a home in Chicago and then a cottage up north in Canada. Anyway, and I'm the dishwasher, you know.
Dan: And I had to do it.
Dean: So I said, since I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life, I might as well you know kind of improve it so that I actually enjoy the activity.
Dan: Yes, I really like this, Dan, Like you're saying the same thing. I mean the things that have been triggered from our conversation about it in Palm Beach. You know, Like you just described, it's one of those things If, even if you ask yourself the question is there any way to not do anything? I mean, the thing is that the dish has gotta get done.
Dean: Well, the other thing that's part of my relationship with Babs, you know, and she's commented a couple of times during the last two weeks and she said I really like it that you get it done right away. Yeah.
Dan: Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's your target audience. Right there, I'm getting social proof from your target audience. That's the exact thing.
Dean: This is. I can tell you, this is my number one target audience. Yeah, so let's say you go through and you fill up your 50, okay.
You know, you get them. You know, maybe I'll take you two or three weeks and you just notice little things. You know how you get up in the morning, you know, you know how you get ready for the day and everything, but there's a lot of little habits. There's a lot of little habits there, and then you sort of reach 50 and you say now, how many of these? How many of these tomorrow, can I improve? I'll look at the habit.
And then I'll say to myself how would I like this always to be going forward? And then you do it that way. You do it that way, and then you have to attach a point system to it, so you're scoring every day. Because, I don't stick to things I can't score.
Dan: Right, well, you may like, dan, there's James Clear just launched his.
Adams app, which is Adams A-T-O-M-S, and he's the guy that wrote you know Atomic Habits and this is exactly what you are talking about here. You know you can make, you can create habits that you want you can, and it gives you prompts or you can track. It's almost like wind streak in a way, right when you're adding things on it, but daily you can. So I set up my first habit that I set up just on Wednesday or Thursday I downloaded the app. Actually, I set up that I said I want to start with the first thing in the morning that I drink half a liter of water, the 500 milliliters of water.
The first thing that I do when I wake up to rehydrate and do that. So I've done that. Now I've had Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday four rounds of that and it tracks your streak and it shows you your progress and so I've had four total repetitions so far. And the way they set it up is you put a purpose around the habit, like why you're trying to do this right. So the habit is that it's always like a place and a time and a reason. I think right, so it's a vote. And when they do your thing, when they give you the report, it's like congratulations, that's four votes for your healthy dean or whatever You're making. Every day you're making a vote.
Dean: I think that's great yeah.
Dan: I'm voting for this. So habits is the name of the, or Adams is the name of the app on iTunes.
Dean: It's done in the app store, right.
Dan: It's in the app store and it's just a yellow stacking yellow with like a white stacking thing.
Dean: But yeah, I've periodically over the last dozen years been conferences for James's, you know, and I've always enjoyed his take on things.
Dan: Yeah, and that's I mean. I like this Dan a lot. This is kind of gamifying thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Now.
Dean: I can tell you what my if you call it my top 50 tool. Then there's a little arrow in each of the boxes and what you do is you press the arrow and it takes you to a page where you develop your criteria for what constitutes a great habit.
Okay and then you attach numbers to the to that, and there's room, I think, for 10 criteria. Okay, and then you go through, and one of them is that I want to be more and more doing habits every day that are going to last the Rest of my life.
Yes so that's that would be one criteria and I give my, I can establish the range, and and then you all you have to do is the criteria for one, and then that applies the criteria to all of them, and Then, as you go along, you start improving the criteria, and the moment you improve the criteria, it improves it for all of them.
Okay, and then, as you go through, you notice that certain certain habits get a better importance score than others and it automatically, automatically prioritizes the 50, that this is number one, this is number two, this is number three. Rate to 50. What do you think about that? I really I mean would you?
Dan: like to get that.
Dean: Would you love to get?
Dan: that. Where would one get one of these?
Dean: Only from a particular person. Yeah, and it's right. Now, it's a file maker file, a file maker no longer Exists, but that this continues to work. Okay, this continues to work, okay, so I'll just send you the file maker oh, I like that a file maker form and, as you're going along, what it does is it give. I mean, I think the combination of the atom, the atom app and this tool probably Complets the circle it might be.
Dan: I mean, I'd love to discuss what you're describing.
Dean: Here's the tip sounds like as you go along, there's habits that are less important and they don't belong on the top 50. So there's another backup 50 and that they're in the backup 50.
Dan: Okay, the farm team.
Dean: Yes. Yes you can't have major league without a farm team. That's exactly right.
Dan: I, like you know what's very. What's really interesting about this, dan, is if I was really Reflecting on my accumulated daily habits, right, if I look at what are my observable habitual behaviors? Right, and I went through the way I went through it was looking at the vignettes of each day, like looking at a timeline from the, the moment I wake up and and I was saying, you know, I have established Really good sleep habit of you know, my sleep window is Very uniform, my, you know, I woke up this morning I'm, you know, 8786 on my sleep and readiness score for my or ring. I get enough deep sleep and all that. So I've established that habit of Really a really good sleep window there.
Then I started looking at, you know, my observable, if we were just somebody was following me around, logging my movements, like in a computer program or whatever, like just line items like Lining, describing every step or everything that I took part of. It is, you know, look, replacing now looking for the opportunities, like where do I want to establish this habit? And I think that little window of you know right, when I get up the first, you know the first hour of being awake.
What do we want those habits to look like? Yeah, would future deans habits be?
Dean: You know something there are constraints and deans, future habits. You know what? They are deans present habits?
Dan: are yes, that's exactly it. I get it and that's what you're saying. I'm like you.
Dean: Do anything in the future now you can't do anything in the future. You can only do things in the present. Yeah, the future.
Dan: That's exactly right.
Dean: Yeah, but I've been around the tech people and you know I mean, like the environmental movement, no more fossil fuels. That's a bullshit, is such a bullshit goal Because 80% of all the energy on the planet comes from fossil fuels. Okay, the other thing is that the people have these kind of goals are really not very good at getting anything done.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: They went to university. They've been in university for six years, you know they've been in school since they were four years old. They've never actually done anything in the real world, you know and. But they're going to change the entire structure of the world and the problem is that it's not a plausible goal. Like no fossil Fields, you know, the other one is no borders. You know the thing we shouldn't have borders. Well, there are borders and people will kill for the borders.
Yeah, right, but the thing is the people who set these type of goals in the future are some of the most incompetent people on the planet and it's really interesting that the the way you described it there.
Dan: All these people, they're not accountable for the day we have. They're talking. They're just going and admonish people about this future. There's no fossil fuel because it's not actionable.
Dean: It's not actually, and what they're trying to generate is tax money. They're trying to generate Donations. They're trying to but without ever producing any kind of satisfactory result you know, yeah, because they're just painting the ideal.
Dan: And I wonder, how do we do that in our own lives? I mean, well, the big thing.
Dean: Well, one of my things that have occurred to me is that all your goals for the future are actually you Operating, you personally as an individual operating at a higher level of capability, you know I mean you know, if you have a, you have one house and you have a house, another house that's bigger, it's better.
You know it's got far more, it's more in the right place, it's. You know it's got about 10 Better criteria that you could say. And you say, well, that's my goal and I said no, that's actually the result of you being a Different and more productive person in the future. So every goal you have to bring back that it's you as a person operating at a higher level. You're making more money, you know, and that's number one. You know, yeah, and in order for you to make more money, you've got to look at what you're doing right now to make money and improve it. There may be, between you and that house, there may be, 10 Improvements that you have to make to how you're making money right now. Yes, yeah, this is yeah maybe eight profit activators.
Dan: Which one?
Dean: all the profit activators are habits, aren't they?
Dan: they are, yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right with metrics. I mean, that's part of the thing I think is that's measurable, right, everything you're describing. That be a good habit horrible habits. Yeah, huh, yeah, and I was dawned on me how long these habits, many of them, have been established. Like, I like your idea of the ranking of the habits. I mean that's it's, you know the numbering them, you know there's probably a Habit you know, but this is endless pursuit. It feels like you know an endless. Well, it's a daily person.
Dean: It's a daily improvement activity. You know because what I'm finding? I've been doing this for about four months. Daily habits, and the first one and what I've been doing is I've been going to Buenos Aires. I've done it three times, for the fourth that's coming up in two weeks.
And and there's basically six weeks before visits to Buenos Aires. So I said I'm going to create a 42 day cycle of changing certain habits. Okay, oh, wow, anchors is something right. Well, you anchor it in time, you give it a, and then so that's. You know, six weeks is 42 days. It's an odd time period and that intrigues me, you know. So I've got these 42 improvement, 42 day improvement periods.
Dan: And then I say Just a lot to support the 42 is that. You know they say it takes 21 days to establish a habit and 42 is just twice that. So you get two cracks at 21 days to establish.
Dean: You just explained why I did it. You just explained why I did that, but I didn't know that.
Dan: There you go. No, that's great, though right Like that's a.
Dean: I'm doubling down. Yeah, yeah yeah, I hadn't seen that. I had not seen that.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Anyway, but what I did? The first one, it was very simple no snacking between meals. I don't get into trouble with meals. I get in trouble with what happens between meals. Okay, okay.
Dan: And.
Dean: I aced it, I aced it, I aced it over 42 days, and then I started adding so the second one had two or three habits, the third one, you know, the 42, because I'm getting used to it, okay, and you know. And then all of a sudden I said pay attention to all your habits and just do it right. If there's something you have to do that day, do it the way you would like to have it done in the future, and then give yourself points for that. You know, and so. But there's an enormous Well. First of all, there's a dopamine hit to it, because it means that every day is valuable for learning and growth, and that's a, you know, that's a great thing.
Dan: This is fascinating because that dopamine is healthy. Good, you're the beneficiary of the dopamine compared to like watching.
Dean: You're your own dealer, yeah.
Dan: Be your own dopamine dealer.
Dean: Be your own dealer.
Dan: That's a great title for a quarterly book, Ben.
Dean: I just logged in.
Dan: I mean, that's the truth.
Dean: You never know. Anytime you talk to Dan, to Dean, you're going to get a new quarterly book out of it.
Dan: Sometimes you get a major market book out of it. You never know.
Dean: That's a good habit, that's a good habit. I don't know what it is about, dean, but anytime I'm around him I can count about you know, half a year down the road, and something he said is now a book. Oh wait for this.
Dan: You know what the elegance of your 42, the 42 days, six weeks is? That you could get two rounds of that per quarter. It's just another nice, elegant fit.
Dean: Well, you can get basically 42, you can get two rounds and basically oh right, then a quarter yeah.
Dan: You can yeah 12 weeks.
Dean: And then you get some free days to. Yeah.
Dan: Go wild, I'm better. Yeah, enough of this structure.
Dean: Enough of this structure, you know. But the interesting thing about it is you're actually, every time you improve a daily habit, you're exponentially improving your future. Yes, yes. And it's the only way. Yeah.
And the thing is, there's certain habits you would like to change today, but you have to change some other habits before you can get to it. Yeah, so yeah, I'll give you an example. I've been listening to people talking about intermittent fasting. Yeah, Like you go a weekend without eating. I said no, I'm not anywhere near that. But what I've noticed is on Saturday and Sunday I can have 16-hour periods between meals.
Dan: Okay, yeah.
Dean: And I said, you know so, on Saturday we have dinner at three o'clock in the afternoon and then I don't eat again until so that's nine hours before midnight, and then I have, you know, I eat breakfast at seven and then that's 16 hours.
Dan: Okay, yep.
Dean: And that's intermittent fasting.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I can do the same thing on Sunday over Sunday night and breakfast. So I said, no, I'll just start off. Once on a weekend I'll do it. And now I'm at the point where I can do it twice on a weekend. You know people said well, you know, it doesn't matter, unless you do it for a couple of days. And I said I can't do it for a couple of days.
Dan: Right.
Dean: My habits. Don't support it yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and I mean I don't know what to do about it.
Dean: So whenever people say you should do something, you have to check back and say, ah, interesting, but my habits don't support what you're talking about.
Dan: Right, right. Yeah, this is amazing. I mean, I'm not really a dashboard and scorecard, but you're totally in control of that.
Dean: You won't.
Dan: Yeah, you're the only one who knows the habits?
Dean: You're the only one that knows how you want the habits to be in the future. Here.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: There's complete agency here on the part of an individual. You know, and you can know all the ramblings of other people about what you should do and you have to do this. No, it's not so. It's bullshit Right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is yeah. And then there's a. There's a guy, rob Dierdek. I don't know if you know him.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did mention him.
Dan: Okay, yeah, that you know. Everything that we're talking about is exactly. You know what he's on board with. Everything he's talking about is Dave Tuchad, chad Jenkins.
Dean: Willard oh Chad Jenkins.
Dan: Chad Jenkins I gave him and Steve Dastante actually, yeah, Rob Dierdek back to back two podcasts called the most unrelatable podcast episode you'll ever listen to. And it was him describing to the what ends he goes to track and quantify and establish his daily habits. And it's fascinating, I mean just to see, you know, make things inevitable, you know.
Dean: Yeah, and there one thing that makes you appreciate that nervous systems are really different. You know human nervous systems are really. You know, what appeals to one person doesn't appeal to other people, and I think that's a tough nut to crack for a lot of people, because they want what they're doing to be the truth. And I said well, it is the truth.
Dan: It is the truth.
Dean: It is the truth, but don't go beyond yourself with it. You know, you know and and I think it has a lot to do with your you know your early experiences in life, what you got used to doing, what you like to do, things that you didn't like, and I think and these are forming before we have the ability to be conscious about them.
Dan: How many of your habits Dan in on looking at your list are 50 year old oak trees? Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean some of the habits are oh yeah. Yeah.
Dean: Some of them are. Some of them are beyond 75 years.
Dan: Right, and some of them you know.
Dean: I'm probably not going to fool around with those.
Dan: No.
Dean: Not at first, not at first. Do not take on a 75 year habit. Right, exactly, yeah, but it's really interesting Now, as you know, this happens to if we we can shift the context. I've been very interested in the, the reason why, in the last two weeks, google has lost $90 billion it's market value because of that Right. Because of a stupid AI chat. Okay.
Dan: Yeah, I don't know what happened, so you know well what they do.
Dean: it's a new chat chat bot that, when you put in directions, it'll create graphics for you. Okay, Okay. I'll give you an example. A guy says can you give me a picture of Vikings? And it comes back and they're all black.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: Now. Vikings were the whitest people in the world.
Dan: Yes, right, right.
Dean: Northern European. Not much sunlight, you know.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: So, anyway, and that says show, give me a picture of the founding fathers of the United States. And there are a whole bunch of them sitting on that table and a number of them were black. So what? Okay, so just giving you the general context, that what's being reflected in the Google chat bot is the dominant political views of the organization. Interesting, isn't it so? And they're getting such backlash. Well, their stock valuation went down by 90 billion in about a week and a half, 90 billion they just dropped, you know, their stock value.
Now I would interpret that as someone giving you feedback. Right, right.
Dan: Right.
Dean: Right, you know, because what a stock price is an estimation of the future value of something you know and what I realize is that now they're scrambling. They had everybody had to work all this weekend to correct the problem. But the problem isn't their chat bot, the chat. The problem is Google's dominant thought process. Okay, so what's being reflected in any organization's cloudlandia presence is what their mainland habits are. I mean I don't think you can communicate too much beyond what your dominant habits are as an individual and as an organization.
Dan: Yeah, this is you know, and I wonder if that so you're thinking like the Google things as reflecting their own biases are coming through in the stuff that it's how do I?
Dean: that they have a bigger game to change how people think you know I think they do. You know, and you know, and you know, and maybe they shouldn't be that ambitious. Maybe they should just change the way that they think.
Dan: Yeah, there's no. It's so amazing to me that there really is no. Like it's difficult now to get objective stuff, to get objective information without that. You know I saw that sort of you see it coming through in the biggest companies like Google, all the media, the mainstream, meta, meta, yeah, that, you see the whole. You know I look at. I was sharing with you the headline, you know, when Donald Trump just won South Carolina by a landslide. You know over 60% of the votes, 39% to Haley, and the headline on Drudge was 40% of Republicans don't want Donald Trump.
It was like, what an amazing like flip of not mentioning the historical trouncing that she got in her own home state.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah well, you know you know, in politics and in business the number 51 is really important. I tell people you know, when you own a business. There are two numbers that matter 51 and 49. 51 is the same as 100%, 51 is the same as 100% and 49 is the same as zero. Yeah, you don't understand the difference, the crucial difference, between 51 and 49, you're gonna have a rough life. You're gonna have a rough life.
Yeah, and he has won three more tomorrow, and they were. You know, they were equal to the that he's been achieving everywhere else. He's now. There's now been seven states and he's won all seven. Yeah, but 40% of people don't want him.
Dan: Yeah, 40% of Republicans don't want Donald Trump. That's right.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the interesting, I think next Tuesday there's 15, you know, there's like 15, it's called. Super Tuesday Super Tuesday, yeah yeah, super Tuesday, and probably he'll be up by 22,. It'll be 22 to nothing by the end of Tuesday night, you know. And he said, and she'll be saying I'm gaining on him.
Dan: Gaining on him. Don't give up yeah. Yeah, yes but it's like, it's like 22, 22 flesh wounds. Right, exactly, yes, I'm not dead yet I'm not dead yet Just a stump.
Dean: no legs, no arms, but I can still bite you.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I can still bite you I can't quite.
Dean: I can't quite figure out what her lawn game is by doing this short. You know her short term activity. I can't figure out what her lawn term plan is.
Dan: Yeah, this. I mean what a year this is gonna be. It's gonna be a great year.
Dean: This is a I think this is a tectonic shift year, and it's not just in the States. That happened in Argentina when we were down there, the new you know the new government that came in. It happened in Holland. It's kind of happening all over the world right now that people who know how to count are replacing people who don't know how to count.
Dan: Yes, so amazing, Dan. I'm excited about the, about this, the 50. I'm excited to get that too.
Dean: Yeah, I'll, I'll be in the office tomorrow and I'll have our tech team send you it. And it's just, you know, you just punch on it and it opens up and it's self-explanatory. There's it's called the top 50 tool. And then you know, you use 50 boxes on the first page and then you have a backup page that has 52 and you just start listing them and then you wanna grade them in terms of their priority as a habit, and then I think it fits in really well with what James is doing.
Dan: Yes, I'm just that's the only habit I've established on there so far, but I think it's really, yeah, it's really, I think gonna be a great thing because you can anchor it to times, you know, like when you want to, when you want to establish this habit, like you were saying the dinner, the dishes, is what are you, how are you triggering that in measuring? So you're saying-.
Dean: Well, you never lose if you do a habit that's from the past and it's not what you want in the future. You don't lose points if you do that. There's no losing points. You can only gain points, okay.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: So I've got a daily scorecard, okay, and like in the first 42 days, in. I've got a total of 122 points for you know, sticking to no snacks between meals.
Dan: Oh good, that's great. So you're keeping like the tally of it.
Dean: Yeah, I'm keeping a tally. And then when I go back to Buenos Aires and I said, next time I'm coming back and I you know, I don't remember exactly, but I added two or three more habits, you know, to it and as you're going through the day, you're becoming more and more conscious of your daily habits. If you do it 10 days in a row and you're tracking habits, the next habits on the list will suggest themselves to you. You don't have to go looking for them. You know you don't have to go looking for them, they're looking for you now.
Dan: They want to get points they want to get points and they build. You get the momentum of the feedback too, right? Yeah, you know. Did Babs know what you're up to, or did she? Yeah, and just your observation.
Dean: She's starting to do it herself. I mean, she was inspired to start. You know, start doing it. She won't do it to the maximum way that I do, because that's not what she does. But she knows she's with me, so she knows things will get better.
Dan: Right, right right.
Dean: Yeah, I'm around a good habit-forming person. I mean, that's just, I'll just hook on and I know things will get better, but anyway, yeah, and. But you know, what it's doing is that all humans are completely equal and that they only get 24 hours per day. That's true.
Dan: That is true, your comment, the speed of reality.
Dean: That's the speed. That's the speed of reality.
Dan: Yeah, and I don't. I mean, it's funny when you say it. When I first started thinking about it I thought you know, is that too obvious? But it's, yeah, I think it's one of those. It's been right there.
Dean: Well, the other thing that I can tell you a lot of the problem they're having in their life is they don't account for that truth, right?
Dan: yeah, I think that's really the thing, right. It's tuning into the speed of reality and looking at the only times. The only time we can really have any action is today, and there's a hard stop. I mean, there's a hard stop on it that your sleep, you know, is a. There's no possible way for us to do anything tomorrow.
Dean: Yeah, and the only impact you can have on yesterday is what you're changing today.
Dan: Yes, and that's the thing I was having. So Joe Polish came up, came back with me from Palm Beach. He just left yesterday, but he spent three to four days with me here and I mean, we went through, we set up my total environment here for success, you know, in terms of eating, and we went through my kitchen and cleared out everything that isn't supporting the habit of future healthy being right, and we went through that kind of it was. So we were talking about the four C's two is the commitment, and then courage and capability. And so we went I don't cook and I've never cooked. I've never. You know, yeah, I've never cooked.
No, don't really have any skill in that, but we went.
Dean: That means that if we catch you cooking, we know something that's deeply wrong. That or?
Dan: deeply right.
I mean we went and got an Instapot. I don't know if you've heard of this device, but so the Instapot is a miracle vessel. I mean, you just put stuff in and push a button and then it cooks. It's like. So we went to the grocery store and we got some, you know, some organic chicken legs and chicken thighs and chicken breast, and we got some grass-fed ground beef 90-10 and we got some. We've had some. We've cooked the entire the whole four days that he was here. And so the thing is now I left this with a new capability, right Like. So now I've got and I said to Joe it's kind of like reframing. I think it's almost like getting back to my, to building a primal habit of going to the grocery store and hunting some dinner, hunting food.
Right, go, hunt some chicken and bring it home and clean it and cook it and enjoy and eat it, you know, but how easy Rather than having food hunting you. Absolutely, that's exactly right.
And so that capability, you know, like we, we literally just take the chicken, wash it some salt and pepper, put it in the pot, put some potatoes in there on top, whole, you know whole, just washed, you know, Yukon gold or gold potatoes, put it in there, press the button 11 minutes and it's the most delicious. Whole, you know whole, some. No, no oils, no anything. It's just so clean, right, You've got organic chicken, you've got the stuff, and it's delicious. And then we, you know, got on the pan.
I learned some pan skills right Of being able to, just with some butter in the pan, you know, grass fed, organic butter, of course, and putting. We got some steaks that were like, thin cut. We got some pork chops that were thin cut, ground beef, all of those, just the same thing, just taking the meat, salt and pepper and a little bit of, if I wanted to add any spice or whatever to it, cook it on, you know, both sides, and there you go. We even chopped up zucchini and squash into little medallions and sauteed them in the in the pan. So this capability now of being able to see this is a better habit to do than well driving through somewhere, right.
Dean: The big thing is that it's got a future reference, that you have a sense of who you'd like to be in the future as an individual. You know and you can only be that in relationship to the habits that you form right. Because you know, there's part of our day which requires focus. Concentration because it's new stuff, yeah, and therefore the habits have to be good. When we're not focusing directly on the activity, you have to have great habits, you know yeah and and yeah.
the book I just came out with the great meltdown is that the US is the top country in the world because it's got the best widespread habits of people using innovative skills to lower the cost of money, lowering the cost of energy, lowering the cost of labor, lower cost and no country in the world can possibly match it. You know, yeah, yeah, the prices of things are up and down, unpredictable around the world, and but the US has a habit of always trying to lower the cost of anything.
you know yeah and other countries don't have this, and so you know. You can see the difference between Canada and the United States right now. I mean it's really extreme. From the last time you were here, the difference the average per capita income in the United States is now lower than the per capita income of Mississippi.
Dan: Wow, the United States, the in.
Dean: Mississippi is number 50 and per capita income and the average. Canadian is now below, below the per capita is in the low Wow, yeah, I wasn't.
Dan: it wouldn't have expected that.
Dean: Yeah, and not only that, they don't freeze to death in Mississippi. Right that's exactly right. At least I got that going for them and that's basically. You can measure it from when the president, prime minister, came in, has been going downhill since this prime minister came in because he wants to save the world.
Dan: Yeah, it's interesting, right, that's been funny to watch the. You know my algorithm, for you know, sending me things, video clips and stuff is now I get a lot of those, Pierre Polly.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, smart guy. I had breakfast with him about five years ago. Yeah, smart guy, very smart, yeah, and from Alberta French speaking from Alberta, that's a pretty good. You know, that's a pretty good background.
Dan: You know he's got a triple.
Dean: That's a triple play Canadian that's a triple play for a Canadian. That's French, french.
Dan: I mean that's, he's got it all covered because, it just doesn't get it.
Dean: And then his wife is from Venezuela, she's a refugee. So she knows what a country gone wrong early looks like yeah, oh, that's funny. Yeah, yeah, and you know, so so anyway, but you can just see the difference that the United States is better at handling milk costs than Canada is.
Dan: Yeah, wow. Well, dan, I'm excited, this is great. Seven days? Yeah, well, I'll tell you the tool I can promise you you'll have the tool by this time.
Dean: Not this time, but by the end of the day. Tomorrow you'll have top 50 tool and just play around with it. I mean it's self-explanatory, you don't have to. There's no rule book that comes with it. You'll just play with it. Just remember, in every square where you put something, if you press the arrow it takes you to the criteria page. Okay, perfect.
Dan: I'll do it.
Dean: Yeah. Okay, then I'm interested in the teamwork between the top 50 tool and the Adams app. That'll be really interesting because I've been lacking a daily scoring system. You know, people won't stay with something unless they can score on a daily basis. That's the truth.
Dan: That is true.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I can't wait.
Dean: All right.
Dan: I'll see you. I can't wait. I'll have it tomorrow.
Dean: All righty. Thanks, Dan. I'll be on next week if you are, I am absolutely Okay.
Dan: Okay, thanks, dan, okay, bye, bye.
05 Sep 2024
Ep131: Weathering Change and Creative Evolution
00:55:40
In this episode of Cloudlandia, we explore how weather predictions and media sensationalism influence public views, especially regarding storms like impending Tropical Storm Debbie. Drawing on past hurricanes and climate patterns, we examine the normalized perceptions of living with these events.
Additionally, we delve into the evolution of creativity through technology and mind-altering substances. From early stone tools to therapeutic uses of psychotropics today, innovation is traced alongside historical cultural explosions. Comparisons are drawn between eras like the 1960s and perceptions of creativity now.
These chapters emerge from a common thread of challenging assumptions, spanning climate activism, human creative drives, and digital changes.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dan and I discuss preparing for Tropical Storm Debbie in Florida and the normalization of living with hurricanes.
We delve into how media influences public perception of weather events and examine Bjorn Lomborg's critique of climate activism, discussing resilient polar bears and the myth of the Maldives sinking.
We explore the evolution of technology and creativity, from early stone tools to the influence of mind-altering substances on human history.
We question whether the creative explosion of the 1960s was an anomaly and consider if today's society is experiencing a creative drought.
Insights from a recent Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson podcast are shared, focusing on the impact of psychotropics on human culture and creativity.
The conversation transitions to the benefits of the carnivore diet and personal experiences with diet changes, including the use of air fryers for cooking meat.
We highlight the importance of critical thinking and self-interpretation in navigating the abundance of unfiltered information available today.
Platforms like Real Clear Politics and Perplexity are discussed as valuable tools for accessing diverse perspectives and balanced information.
We note that major corporations have yet to profit from AI investments, despite substantial funding, and discuss the potential reasons behind this trend.
The episode concludes with a reflection on the importance of discerning what information to allow into our thinking, emphasizing the responsibility we have in the age of information unfiltered.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, mr Jackson, welcome to Cloudlandia.
Dan: And I hope you're enjoying all the extraordinary benefits of your own four seasons.
Dean: I really am. We're battening down the hatches. We're just getting ready for Tropical Storm Debbie, which is making its way through the Gulf of Mexico, beating towards the coast of Florida.
Dan: And it's so funny, yeah, yeah.
Dean: So it won't be. It's apparently it's going to be a lot of rain and wind and stuff for us. You know I'm so I'm very close to the highest point in peninsular Florida, so we're not going to get flooding, we're on high dry.
Dan: That puts you at about 60 feet above sea level. Right, you know it's so funny. It is funny I think I can see.
Dean: Let's see sea level reading. There's, yeah, the highest point in.
Florida is three feet above sea level, which is Bock Tower, which you've been to, and so, yeah, so we're sitting here ready to go. But you would never know, dan, what's coming, because right now it's still. It's slightly overcast, but it's still. Yesterday was beautiful, today slightly overcast. You'd never know what was coming if it wasn't for the big. You know buzzsaw visuals in the news right now, but seeing it marking its way and with a huge, wide swath of the path of the potential storm, you know.
Dan: When you first moved there, did it take you a while to get to normalize the fact that, yes, we get tropical storms, we get hurricanes.
Dean: Yeah, Exactly Did it take you?
Dan: two or three times before you said oh well, I guess it's just normal.
Dean: It is normal, that's exactly right, and every year you know what I would say. It's so funny that there's never a year in memory that I can remember somebody saying, or the news media saying should be a light year for hurricanes, this year Doesn't sell newspaper or drink advertising.
Dan: I remember, after Katrina, but Katrina didn't really hit it for it. It hit Louisiana.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: But I remember the alarmist saying well, every year it's going to get worse. Now and then there was almost a year, maybe two years, when they didn't have any hurricanes at all.
Dean: Yeah, exactly that's what's so funny, right? It's like the things like you know, and it is funny how the whole, how it all has cycles you know, because California, you know, had the. You know everybody's talking about the water levels in California. Now you just it's all reported right now that you know Lake Tahoe is at the highest maximum allowable level for Ever, ever, yes, exactly, it's at its peak, it could be poor flooding.
Yeah, exactly, it's like 15 feet off of the highest level allowed and because of all of the snow cap melting and all the stuff. But anyway, it's just so. You know, I definitely see those. It's all part of the balance for our minds, you know yeah, it was really interesting.
Dan: Did you ever read bjorn lawnberg? He's, uh, danish. He started off as a you know you know a card carrying climate. You know, I don't know what you call them. I guess they're called climate activists.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Dan: I feel that I'm very activated by the climate, so I don't know, what the distinction is there. Are you activated by the climate? I am, you know. When the climate is this way, I'm activated this way, and when the climate's a different way, I'm activated a different way. He wrote an amazing article in the Wall Street Journal.
I think it was Wednesday and this past Wednesday, and he just points out that, first of all, the whole climate activism movement is an industry. There's a lot of jobs that are financed by the climate. It might be in the millions the number of people who make money off of doomsday predictions about the climate. So whenever a movement, someone once said everything starts off as a cause and it's just the people emotionally involved. In other words, they said we're not paying attention to this, we have to pay more attention to this. But then when government gets involved, it becomes a movement because large amounts of government money start flowing in a particular direction and then it becomes an industry.
The fourth stage is it becomes a racket. I think we're in the climate racket period right now. Yeah, but Bjorn Lomborg was going back to 20, 25 years ago when he had a revelation that the climate does change. But he says that's the nature of the climate. The very nature of the climate is that the climate changes. But he said the first, if you'll remember this, with Al Gore, this was right around when he lost.
Dean: Yeah, it was right around 2001.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, he was right after the 2000 election Right 2000 election and I suspect he needed some money. So he started the movement and he used the polar bear as an example. There was this one polar bear who was just floating on a very small ice sheet, you know.
And they said, you know the bears will be gone within 20 years because of the warming. It turns out the population in the last 20 years has doubled. The number of polar bears has doubled, even though it's gotten warmer. According to the climate racket people, it's gotten warmer, but the polar bears, you know, have been around forever. I guess they know how to adapt to changing conditions.
Dean: They were all grizzly bears.
Dan: They were all grizzly bears at one time. I don't know if you know that.
Dean: I did not. That's where they started.
Dan: Yeah.
They found the white yeah, they rebranded it as polar bears, I guess extended their territory and that was it, so they've doubled since Al Gore's warning. And then the other thing was that the let's see, there's two more. Well, I'll mention number three. Number three is that all the low islands in the Indian Ocean were going to sink below sea level. The sea level was going to flood the Maldives and some of the other things, and for the most part, all of them have expanded their landmass in the last 20 years. They've actually gotten bigger. They've increased their height above sea level by possibly six inches.
Dean: Oh man.
Dan: You'd appreciate that. Living in Florida, so it hasn't happened. The other one was the deaths from warming. Last year in the United States I don't know if it was last year or the year before, I don't know if it was last year or the year before 25 times more people died of extreme cold than died of extreme heat. So if you're a betting man, I call it the Gore factor, that if Al Gore says something, bet the other way.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, this is you know.
Dean: The man is impossibly rich because of his creating a movement, creating an industry, and now it's a racket. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how invisible he is now. I mean he really is like I haven't seen or heard anything from Al Gore. I can't remember the last time.
Dan: Well, it's passive income now.
Dean: Right, just stay quiet, stay low.
Dan: Just stay quiet, just stay quiet. The dollars just keep rolling in yeah, yeah. But it's interesting. My suspicion is I've been thinking about this because I'm writing my next quarterly book. We just wrapped up Casting Not Hiring, which will come out in September this one with Jeff Madoff, this one with Jeff and it really really worked. This book really worked the Casting Not Hiring but the next one is going to be called Timeless.
Technology, and the idea here is that technology is a way of thinking. It's not so much particular technology, but it's a way, and my been that it's actually one of the crucial factors. Technological thinking is one of the crucial factors that differentiates humans from the other species, and what I mean by that it's the intentional and yet unpredictable utilizing stuff from our environment to enhance our capabilities.
Dean: And.
Dan: I did a search on perplexity what would be reckoned from perplexity doing a search of what would be sort of the 10 early breakthroughs, the technological breakthroughs, and one of them was just stones that you could throw. You could pick up a stone and throw it and it actually changed how the human body evolved. Is that the ability of using our hand and our arm and getting that tremendous arm strength that you can throw a stone and, you know, kill something. Right Kill an animal or kill it. Kill another human yeah, and everything.
Dean: I wonder even about that, the evolution of technology, like that, like thinking a rock and then realize that, hey, if I just chisel this away now I make this sharp on this end.
Dan: And now all of a sudden we got an axe, you know yeah, and then actually they think that glue was an early adaption, that you could take sticks and stones and put them together. You could glue things together and you could actually. So they looked for probably really sticky saps or something from trees you know that they would use. Then pottery, of course, and it's interesting with pottery that the very earliest samples that we have.
clearly they took clay and made it into some sort of cup or yeah, a bowl of some sort, but whenever they find it and it goes back hundreds of thousands of years they can detect alcohol. They can detect that there was alcohol, which kind of shows you how early that must have been. Consciousness transformer that's what I call alcohol. It's a consciousness transformer, would you not say?
Dean: Yeah, I mean I was listening to Joe Rogan. I had Jordan Peterson on his podcast just recently.
Dan: That's a good podcast partnership.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, and he was talking about the, you know psychotropics and the things that are. You know that psilocybin and all the all of those things, marijuana was all what was sort of responsible for the revolutionary change that happened. You know the difference from the fifties to the sixties and his thing was, you know, in the mid to late 60s. You know that's what started the whole. Every single one of those things was made schedule one, narcotic and illegal and completely controlled right, and that his thing is that we haven't seen anything revolutionary, like any kind of change happening from since then, since the 60s, into now.
Dan: Which kind of indicates that it's good enough?
Dean: Well, it's just kind of funny. You know, like that, you wonder what the you know where he was kind of going with that, but he was using as an example like the creativity in the 60s, like he talked about the difference of the car.
Even the cars and the things, the designs of things that were being made in the 60s are iconic and desirable and different than, like you compared to, you know, a camaro or the muscle car, this, the corvette, and the things in the 60s compared to like nobody wants your 19 camaro. That's not desirable at all, not in the the way that the 60s, Except maybe NASCAR.
Dan: Except NASCAR, I think Camaros have a very niche use because they're really souped up. Mark Young, his team has won. At the latest count, his team had won three races this year so far. Discount this team had won three races this year so far and he was talking about it at the podcast dinner that we had after doing the podcast, the four-person podcast.
But Camaros always play a very active role. They establish themselves as this amazing niche, you know, souped up, NASCAR type of car. But I really take what you're saying there that there's been no blockbuster new designs of cars that have really you know that you think that they'll still be around. In other words, these are real breakthrough cars. Yeah, Just going a little deeper into the Joe Rogan, Peterson, the Jordan.
Dean: Peterson conversation.
Dan: Did they go any deeper into why the creativity was then? But the creativity hasn't gone any further.
Dean: Well, I think it was Joe's sort of. You know, I'm halfway through the podcast right now, but his basic assertion was that those access to those drugs or those not I will call I use the word drugs those, those we could say technologies are new. Access to those things opened up the part of the brain that is creative linkers, like that that's really they're saying all the way back, like going, if you take it all the way back evolutionarily, that they believe, like what you just said, back in, as far back as they go, there's access. You know they're seeing alcohol in, yeah, as mind-altering things. They would revere mushrooms, mushrooms were abundant and things that were mind-altering. And you think through all of these things, even in Indian or Native lore, that the peyote and the things that were, that part of a trip out of reality is a rite of passage or a thing that activates another part of your brain. You know, makes the connections that aren't otherwise accessible.
Dan: Yeah, I'm totally, you know, I'm convinced that's probably true.
Dean: And I think that we're starting to see now that these hallucinogenic what do we call it? Not hallucinogenics, but psychotropics. What's the right word for?
Dan: it Psychotropic, I think.
Dean: Yeah, so whatever now in treatment of PTSD and addiction and all of these beneficial things that are coming as part of using it therapeutically and but because it's just now starting to become more accessible or more active, it used to be like you've always heard we you and I both know a lot of people that have gone down the Iowa or the you know version and have had, you know, all sort of mind altering experiences doing that. I've never done it, yeah.
Dan: I mean, I mean, it was very interesting. I was at Richard Rossi's Da Vinci 50. This was the last one I was I think it was february and scottsdale and two or three there. We had two or three coach clients there who were just doing a look.
See, you know if they wanted to join the previewing and they were having a conversation about psychotropic drugs and they asked me if I had experimented and I said you mean, right beyond dealing with my own brain every day? You mean I said I have to tell you I don't have time for that stuff. Just dealing with my own brain every day is sure, you know, it's a full-time job. You know, because it's switching, it's switching channels continually and it takes a full-time job. You know, because it's switching channels continually and it takes a lot of work to get it focused on something useful. Yeah, I just wonder about that because it's when one of the political parties went really strange. I noticed the Democrats, since, well, kamala seems to me to be a sympathetic candidate for the president.
Dean: Unbelievable, this is all craziness.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but they're using the word weird to describe the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: If there was ever a weird party. I mean, this is sheer projection, this is psychological projection. You know of weird, you know.
Dean: Yeah, but it's amazing.
Dan: That's when the Democratic Party changed, and it changed quite radically. I remember speaking about you know, psychedelics. I was in the army in Korea for two years. Us Army.
Dean: And.
Dan: I came back to the West Coast. When we flew back, we went into Seattle. I had a brother who was a professor at University of San Francisco, so I took a jump down to San Francisco before I flew back to my home in Ohio and he said I'm going to show you something really interesting. And he took me to Haight-Ashbury. This is the summer that Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, became really famous and it was the beginning of the whole hippie movement. And he walked me around and I could tell by interacting with him that he wasn't just an observer, you know that, he was actually a participant.
And he didn't do him any good, because he eventually dropped out of, you know, being a professor and became more or less a vagrant.
Dean: Tune in turn on drop out.
Dan: Yeah well, he dropped out. He dropped out and then, about I would say, 12 years later, he committed suicide. Oh, no, and yeah, I mean, he's the one real casualty in my family. But I remember him how unreal his conversations were starting to become when I talked to him about this. You know this, and he was never and he was very smart. He was very smart I mean before that he was very bright and he was sort of practical and he became a professor, a university professor.
Dean: That says something right there. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah and anyway. But that was my first awareness, that was my first introduction to it. I mean, I mean I didn't drink alcohol until I was 27 years old. I never drank until I was 27. Wow, I'll have a glass of wine, that I'll do anything, but I've never I've never actually enjoyed. I had pot a couple of times back in the early 60s, 70s and I found it disconnected me from other people. Alcohol does just the opposite. Alcohol kind of connects you. It does just the opposite. It kind of disconnects you and so it's very definitely.
it's a reality since that period of time. But the one thing I want to say is that there's a really interesting thing the Democratic Party, up until the late 60s, was the party of the working class you know, working class, blue collar workers, and they had a real disaster in 1968 because they had huge riots in Chicago.
So it's interesting In two weeks they'll be in Chicago and I think they've done one previous convention in Chicago. I think one of Obama's conventions was in Chicago. But anyway, they made a decision that they were no longer the working class and I think it was the result of all the tremendous growth of the student population as a result of the baby boomer generation. So between between, I think, 1940s, when the baby boomer generation starts to 64. Ok, and that would be 18 years there were I think it was, I don't know the exact number, but there was like 75 million babies who were born during that period and the front end of them were going to university in the 60s boomer generation. And so they saw the party start looking.
Well, these are our future voters. They're not blue collar workers, they're college students and graduates and professors, and then the entire new working cadre. They're all going to be professionals. They're going to be professionals. And they changed their entire focus in 1960. I think it was in 1969 or 70. George McGovern, who was a senator at that time, did a commission and said we're no longer the party of the working class.
And and so they're not, you know, 65 years later. And it's funny because the Republicans were always considered sort of the Pluto class, they were the class of the rich people, and now they've just shipped positions. So 60 years later, it's the billionaires and it's the college professors and media people and the bureaucratic class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats. And the working class class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats and the working class is the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah, the Midwestern. Yeah, that's true, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Dan: And Trump is the working class billionaire.
Dean: Yes, that's true.
I wanted to say it is kind of I'll use the word weird. What is kind of weird about this increased use of the word weird to describe the Republicans now is that it's so widespread. It's like the it's the Democratic talking point now. Like I love the videos now that kind of expose, the, you know, the Democrat party line sort of thing, and it happens on both sides actually. But I mean this idea of that, you know, with the media, all the soundbites are, you know, planting that thought that Republicans are weird, that this is weird.
Dan: They're testing it. It's just that it's. I think it's hard for them to say it plausibly. There's no traditional values that the Democrats represent. Yeah, but it's interesting. And now I'm especially interested in your Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson podcast.
Dean: And I'm going to watch that after.
Dan: Watch that and Jordan Peterson I think I mean the two people together is a very interesting partnership for a podcast, because I think Jordan Peterson is, you know, came out of the university class. He was a professor here in Toronto and where he became. He became very famous for his book, which was basically very popular Rules for life you know, like before you leave your bedroom in the morning, make your bed and, yeah, stand up straight.
You know, stand up straight and when you visit with your, your friends and meet their parents, be the sort of person that their parents would like to have come back as a guest. Pretty basic, fundamental rules of life. But then he really became infamous, if you want to call it that here in Toronto, because he had a real objection to the whole university class saying that people could be whatever gender they wanted to be, and they could self-identify, and they were opposed to the he and her or he and she thing, and he said no, he said I'm not going to do that.
He said if it's a female, I'm going to call her she. And they said oh, this is an attack. This is an attack on equality. This is an attack on diversity. This is an attack on inclusion. So he became very famous and it actually ultimately had forced him his hand to leave the university. He was called up and they said we're going to take away your professional degree and everything like that. Right, right, okay, which you know. I think there's something weird about that.
Dean: I mean just my own opinion here, but yeah and I think Joe knows him.
Dan: I think he's had Joe's had conversations. Joe Polish has had conversations with Jordan Peele. But all his videos where he's being interviewed by people who obviously don't like him, he comes off really well. He comes off as the sort of sane, rational person in all the you know, in all his interviews. I enjoy watching him. He strikes me as being kind of on the depressed side. You know he seems not to. I think he's a psychologist. I think that by training.
And anyway, but I think it's interesting because this all started with the conversation of alcohol on the ancient pottery.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: You know our thing here, but I think that probably throughout history, generation by generation, place after place, they found substances which can alter their consciousness, and I think it's probably been with human beings forever.
Dean: Yeah, these whole. You're absolutely right, that whole yeah.
Dan: It's not as good as steak for breakfast.
Dean: No, I'll tell you what Dan.
Dan: I have Steak for breakfast. Steak for breakfast. I just started it 12 days ago and it makes a big difference.
Dean: You've started Carnivore.
Dan: Well, not Carnivore, but I just don't have Cheerios for breakfast.
Dean: Ah, right, right, Protein for breakfast. Yeah, I've been this week has been because I've been leaning more and more, as you know, working with jj on prioritizing pro no, babs was telling me about your call, abs was telling me about your call yesterday yeah and your air dryer.
Dan: Your air, my air fryer.
Dean: Yeah, and I'll tell you your air fryer and I made yesterday, yesterday for the first time, the most amazing ribeye in the air fryer. That was so juicy and delicious it was and so easy. I mean literally. I took the ribeye, I put salt and pepper and just a little bit.
Dan: Yes, came out just like so your adventures get around you. Now I know, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Dean: But I mean that's just, it's so good, who knew?
Dan: Yeah, I mean yeah, it was I texted that.
Dean: Well, we've got the whole. I'm very fortunate that you see second hand through, babs, but you know there's been a real support network, a gathering of what we're lovingly calling Team Dean on a text thread, and so I texted a picture of that last night to the group.
Dan: Let's keep Dean in the mainland for a while, right?
Dean: We don't want him drifting off into Glanlandia for eternity At least until we can get my mind melded up there somehow, right, but this week has been a breakthrough. Like this week I've been, this is the first week of full carnivore, like only meat. Oh so I started on Monday and it's been, you know, an interesting thing. But I had my highest weight loss week since we've been doing this by by this and I actually feel great. It took a couple of days to kind of get through the Van Allen belt of carbohydrate craving, you know. But now that I'm in, I'm through, I'm out of the atmosphere, I'm kind of floating that I think I can do this, you know, perpetually here for a while, and one of the reasons yeah, yeah Well.
Dan: yeah well, I mean you talk about the air fryer, but there's a direct connection between the management of fire and your air fryer.
you know, I mean hundreds of thousands of years and the human, the first humans who got a handle on fire. You know, it happened, probably accidentally, it was a lightning strike or something. But then they began to realize once we have fire, let's find a way of keeping it going. So we have access and that was a huge jump, because eating raw meat almost uses as many calories as you're getting from the meat, In other words you really have to work to digest.
Let's call it steak. You know the steak. It takes a lot of calories to digest it. You really have to work to digest it but once they added fire to the mix and you could cook the food it made it much easier to digest and you got your calories much easier, yeah, but the other thing is that it's filling it's very filling, I mean the more carnivore you are, the less you're attracted to the sugar. That's the truth, easy caps. I mean, I don't feel particularly hungry.
I had breakfast around 8 o'clock this morning Steak. I have steak and avocado. Okay, it's ribeye, but we're going to get. As a result of your yesterday information, babs is going to get an air fryer. We're going to get an air fryer, and then Stephen Poulter had even more.
Dean: I saw that. He put up a fancy thing, exotic thing you would know that Stephen tracked it down, because that's what Stephen does.
Dan: Yeah, but it's very interesting this getting enough calories to do interesting mind work. It's about if you're going to. I read a report that one of the great advantages of North America is right from the beginning. Right from when the first people came to the East Coast, they had a lot of protein right from the beginning.
There was lots of game. There was lots of fish, you know. They had a lot of game and Americans have. Except for two periods of history, during the Revolutionary War and, I think, great Depression, americans have always had as many calories as they wanted. But there's a reading that high-level mental work requires roughly, you know, in the neighborhood of above 2,000 calories a day. You have to have 2,000 calories to be doing mental work.
Dean: That's interesting.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. And North America, the US and Canada have always had enormous amount of calories, protein calories, you know. So you can do hard labor, you can do high level of mental work. Makes for an industrious, you know, makes for an industrious population.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's really you know. Jordan Peterson has been carnivore for five years.
Dan: He's been carnivore for five years, yeah to save his life really.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And he mentioned that.
Dean: you know he looks at when the that everything got shifted when they came out with the food pyramid in the 70s, that was not by any nutritionist but by the agriculture department to get people getting grains and breads and stuff as the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, healthy nutrition plan.
Dan: That sounds like a four-stage cause movement, industry, racket. Racket yeah, I think it's now at the racket stage yeah, you know I mean halfway when we go. We were at the cottage for the last two weeks and halfway to the cottage is tim hortons. Tim hortons, okay, and I will tell you, based on your present heading in life, dean, you've probably been to your last Tim Hortons, because there's nothing in there that's actually good for you.
Dean: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's true, isn't it?
Dan: I mean that's something I call it Tim Hortons, where white people go to get whiter.
Dean: Oh man, Do you go up 400 when you go to the cottage, Like do you go past? No, we go 404.
Dan: We go 404.
Dean: Okay, so you don't go by Weber's.
Dan: No, weber's is good, weber's is a high-protein, but that's what I mean. You don't pass that on your way to your cottage.
Dean: You're one freeway over on your way to york, got it, you're one. We go one freeway over right, right, right. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that's interesting, but that you know there's a great example what a canadian institution you know tim horton's corner, really it's, uh, it's funny, yeah, but I had a thought about, you know, jordan Peterson being. You know like I think that where the revolution has really discussion of is this the best of times or the worst of times? My thought was that the battle for our minds is the thing.
Yes, you're absolutely right, but just like cancel culture, I think we're in a period where our access to more information that's not being just packaged and filtered for us.
We have access to unfilled information, and I think that you're seeing a resurgence, that we're moving towards in big swaths of categories, that the consensus, things that actually make a difference, and that we have access to more and more people who can do that, plus the diagnostic tools that we have support and show which methodologies are the most. And we're starting to see that in. You know, just like cancel culture was able to, the reason that we brought on cancel culture is that the consensus we were able to, everything was being exposed. You know that more people had a voice to say to, to the checks and balances kind of thing of being observed, and that when people find out things, you know you've got access to that. So I see things like nutrition, like it's like I'm noticing a trending, you know, more examination of christ, of Christianity as a thing that's becoming more mainstream as well, and that's just an observation of you know, seeing all these things. You know.
Dan: yeah, One of the things that's really interesting is the variety of choices that you can make that actually cancel out a whole other part of where the information or news is coming out.
You know, for example, I haven't as I mentioned, I haven't watched television at all for now more than six years, and so what ABC thinks, what CBS thinks, what NBC thinks, what NPR, public television, msnbc, cnn think about anything I'm not the target here anymore because I don't know what they're saying about anything but I found all sorts of sites on the internet that I find really interesting. Real Clear Politics is my go-to. First thing in the morning I always look at Real Clear Politics, and what they do is they just aggregate headlines for the entire spectrum. So if you want to go to all the other sites, you can go there. But what they find, you know. I find that they're making pretty widespread choices of what goes on there. In other words, if you're left wing politically, you'll find articles on RealClearPolitics. If you're right wing, you'll find real clear. But one of the things I find really interesting is when they mentioned the most popular articles for the last seven days, for the last 24 hours. They're all right wing, they're not left wing. So interesting.
Although, yeah, I've never seen a left wing article be most watched or most read during the last seven days or the last 24 hours. They're all using the definitions of what would be left-wing or right-wing in today's setting. So it means that the people who are going to RealClearPolitics are mainly right-wing and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, wayne, and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, but they're not really. They're not really reinforcing themselves with the articles.
I mean a and you can tell just by the nature of the headline, which where the bias is whether it's left or right and in any way. And but the interesting thing is how much I'm using perplexity now.
Dean: Me too.
Dan: Yeah, and I just got this format Tell me the 10 most important aspects of this particular topic. Five seconds later, I got the 10. And what I find is it's having an effect on my mind that there's never one reason for anything. There's always. I mean, I use 10 reasons, but if I did 20, they could probably do 20, you know but what it does? It gives you a more balanced sense of what's true, okay, but I've discovered this on myself.
I mean, if you talk to 100 people, maybe three of them are using perplexity and perplexity. You know I may. I know there's other sites but it does for me what I want it to do. It gives me a background to think about things, and is that? What you're talking about is non-controlled?
Dean: Because it's my question. Yeah, like that's what I think is that we've got access.
Dan: It's my probes my probes that are revealing the information.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: No one is packaging this for me. It's that I'm asking clarify me on this particular subject and bang you know within a matter of seconds I have clarification.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Is that what you're saying here?
Dean: and I, but I think that the onus is on us to do our own interpretation and, you know, measuring whether this fits with what we think. Whereas, you know, we were sort of when we were exposed to information like all of our whole adult lives, up until the last say, you know, 10 years has really been filtered through the lenses of the mainstream media, like I think about curators, often curators, curators.
Yeah, they were the curators. Yeah, or the guardians, local minority. You remember, I mean, even in the closest thing was I remember when City TV came out with Speaker's Corner.
Dan: You remember that they would have a little booth set up and you could go in and speak your mind.
Dean: Yeah you could go in and speak your mind and that's how you got to think, see what other people were thinking. Otherwise, you had to go to Young and Dundas and you know, on the corner there and hear everybody up on their soapbox or whatever it was. That's always been. You know, that's kind of where everybody's megaphone now is. You don't have to go out to the corner where all the people are. You can sit in your basement and you've got a megaphone to the whole world.
Dan: Yeah, you know, this probably helps explain something. I read an article Friday, I downloaded it and I read it about three or four times, and that is that none of the big corporations are making any money on AI. Right, they're investing enormously in it, but they're not making any money on it, and I think the reason is that it wasn't designed for them.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: It was designed for individuals to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. And if anything, it works against the corporations, because if people are using AI to pursue their own interests, that means it's time and attention that they're not giving to the corporations. Yeah, yes.
Dean: And I would say there's a real panic.
Dan: I would say there's a real panic setting in, because it's when ChatGPT came out. Everybody said, oh, now this is going to enhance our ability to get our message across. Well, that's only true if people are paying attention. But what if the impact of AI is actually to take people's attention away from you?
Dean: Yeah, it is changing so much. So I mean yeah, it is changing so much, you know.
Dan: I mean. Dean if you're going carnivore, Tim Hortons' messaging isn't getting to you.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I mean All that money they're spending on Tim Hortons' advertising is wasted money on you. Wasted on me.
Dean: That's exactly it. Yeah, it's so amazing how to waste your money on Dean Jack.
Dan: How to waste your money on Dean Jack. How to waste your money on Dean Jack Uh-huh.
Dean: Man so funny. Well, yeah, I should. This would be great, though, to get a. You know, start spreading the word about the air fryer. Get an air fryer deal. I mean, the salmon and the steak are amazing.
Dan: And apparently JJ thinks pork chops are good. That's right. So you got the whole good. That's right, exactly.
Dean: So you got the whole scoop.
Dan: I love it that you've got a buffer between you and the technology. Well, she controls the checkbook, so she might as well get the information, because she controls the checks. Yes, and Babs has been my authority on eating since I've met her. I mean that's one of the great benefits of being in relation she's always been good about that. You know, my life is two parts, before Babs and after Babs.
Dean: Yeah, I know Absolutely. I'm much healthier since I've met her.
Dan: I'm much healthier since I met her. Yeah, Anyway, yeah, but it's really interesting. You know that what you're introducing here to the Cloudlandia conversation is that we now have the opportunity to be much more discerning than we were before.
Dean: Yeah, we have not only the opportunity but the responsibility, and that's what I think we wrestle with is that we can't just take all of the information and take it at face value to realize that that there's a level of building your own internal filters. Timeless Technology is that we're looking for advantage.
Dan: That's what.
I established right at the beginning is that you're looking for an advantage that, for a while, other people don't have, because that improves your status. That improves your status that you have an advantage, and it creates inequality. One of the things that people don't realize is that every time you create a new advantage, it creates inequality in your surrounding area, okay, and then other people have to respond to that, either by using your advantage, like imitating your advantage, or they canitating your advantage, or they can create their own advantage, or they can try to stop you from having your advantage, and I think that depends on your framework. So I think a lot of cancel culture is people not wanting you to have that advantage, so they won't let you talk about it, they won't let you do certain things and I think the cancel culture has probably been there right from the beginning, it just takes different forms.
She's a witch, yeah, yeah, there's a witch, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you something about? That the salem, and also the ones that happened in Europe the witch thing, was. It was moldy grain, so usually the witch seasons happen to do happen when there was a lot of rain. Okay, and the grains got moldy and my sense is they created, they created, and so that a lot of the Fermenting. Yeah, there was a fermentation, but also it drove people a little bit crazy and there's a lot of investigation now of the which periods.
Dean: Okay, salem is the most famous US.
Dan: But it didn't happen. It didn't except for Salem Massachusetts. But they had several really wet seasons where the grain got moldy and my sense is that people were getting fermented grain on a daily basis and it drove me kind of crazy, yeah that made him weird.
Dean: Weird it made him weird. I saw james carville. James carville said that the democrats should stop saying they're weird and start calling them creeps. Weird Weird is creeps as a label. They're creeps, you know yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: I think it's funny to see. I would love to hear.
Dean: I'd love to hear a podcast or a panel interview between you. Know, luntz the. I forget what his first name is Jeffrey Luntz? Is it the Republican wordsmith guy? I think it's Jeffrey.
Dan: Luntz, I don't know him oh.
Dean: Luntz yeah.
Dan: Jeffrey Luntz. He's the one who does the panel discussions, that's right.
Dean: And he gets the messaging, for he's the Republican wordsmith and James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dan: Yeah, I think James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dean: Yeah, I think James Carville is now. He's like the crazy ant upstairs. Yeah, I think so. Right, right, right.
Dan: Because the last couple of weeks he said you know you better get over this mania real fast that you're having with Kamala Harris and he says, because he said you have no idea what's coming back against you. It'll take the Republicans three or four weeks to figure out what the target is here, and he says you better get over this real fast. He says it's going to be incredibly hard work over the next three months to get to the election, make sure your grains are dry here, don't get that fermented grain brain.
Make sure your powder is dry too. Yeah, yeah, but it's an interesting thesis. This is where we've added a new dimension to Cloudlandia the psychotropic part of Cloudlandia yeah, I agree.
Dean: There was a.
Dan: Greek player, one of the Greek writers, playwrights. He talked about a place called Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Dean: Okay, that's funny.
Dan: Yeah, and he was talking about people who would just go off and make up new stuff and everything like that had no basis in current reality and he called it cloud cuckoo land. You know well, you know we've had a lot of that over the last 50 or 60 years yeah, I think what we're really introducing.
Dean: Dan is the intersection you know the venn diagram of the mainland cloudlandia and Danlandia or Deanlandia. That's the one that we can actually control. Is Danlandia, yeah.
Dan: Well, the big thing is, if you truly want to be a uniquely creative individual today, the resources are available for you to do it.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But you got to be really discerning about what gets allowed in across the borders into your thinking that's it exactly.
Dean: Yeah, All right Dan.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have to jump too. One thing about it is I'm going to watch that Joe Rogan church because I think that's interesting.
Dean: I have to watch that Joe Rogan George because I think that's interesting.
Dan: I have to laugh when Joe Rogan had.
Dean: Peter Zion for a loop.
Dan: I've never seen Joe Rogan thrown so much for a loop, because Peter Zion is nothing if not confident about his point of view. I mean, he's a very confident guy about his point of view and Joe wasn't ready for it and about every you know, every 90 seconds he said holy cow, oh wow. Oh yeah.
Dean: Oh, I got to watch that one too, jesus Christ yeah.
Dan: And you can see Joe sitting there. He said yeah he said next time I have this guy on no pot for 24 hours beforehand. This is moving, this is moving. I'm too slow here. I can't keep up with this you know, Peter Zion is like a jackhammer when he starts going you know he does a whack, whack, whack. Yeah, that would be Actually Jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one. Two brains, yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe Elon Musk as a third person, jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one.
Mm-hmm, Two brains yeah yeah for sure, Maybe Elon Musk as a third person.
Dean: Imagine a panel. Yeah, exactly, there was a great. There was a show called Dinner for Five and it was a. It was an entertainment like movie one, where they'd have different directors and actors at dinner, just a mix of people and having just recording their conversation. No real thing. Jon Favreau did that show it was really great.
Dan: No curating really. Yeah, anyway.
Dean: Okay Dan.
Dan: Very entertaining. We'll be here next week, yes, I always enjoy these.
Dean: They go so fast. Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, thanks, dan, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
20 Apr 2022
Ep063: The Crossover Zone
00:53:20
Join Dean and Dan as they discuss how understanding both the digital and analogue worlds can help your get the best of both worlds and get the best use out of Cloudlandia.
Ep134: Transforming Tranquility into Financial Growth
00:56:57
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, We contrasted northern summers' climate and lifestyle possibilities with those of Florida. The conversation shifted to exploring humanity’s relationship with money through storytelling and belief.
Practical lessons included effective pricing, leveraging qualified leads, and attracting high-quality clients using books. Finally, the discussion provided entrepreneurial growth strategies like setting a quarterly cadence, applying profit activators, and valuing long-term relationships.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We discussed the serene and picturesque landscape of Canada's cottage country, including the unique charm and beauty of its lakes and legends, as well as the renowned Group of Seven artists.
Reflections on the contrast between the tranquil Canadian summers and the balmy climate of Florida, noting the ideal summer months in Canada.
We explored minimalistic lifestyle choices that gained popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the simplicity of a carnivore diet and practical wardrobe strategies.
We delved into the whimsical nature of financial decisions and the power of belief and storytelling in investment decisions, with a focus on how a stock's value is influenced by future narratives.
We discussed critical elements of pricing strategies, including promise, price, and proof, and the importance of pre-qualified, motivated leads in business, particularly in real estate.
Dean shared insights on leveraging books as tools for attracting high-quality clients, highlighting a successful collaboration that did not rely on upfront financial incentives.
We explored the eight profit activators and how smaller, intimate workshops can be as effective as larger gatherings in growing businesses.
We emphasized the importance of long-range investment thinking and nurturing long-term relationships with prospects, as well as the value of quarterly goals and structured cadences in extending professional careers.
We highlighted innovative health practices that can prolong peak earning years and enhance productivity, such as the benefits of continuous health improvements and monitoring.
We discussed the potential for creative and productive growth during challenging economic times, drawing insights from historical examples and a book that explores enduring human behaviors.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: mr sullivan mr jackson welcome to cloudlandia. And, uh, keep your feet on the mainland, that's exactly right so you are calling from the northernmost outpost of cloudland and canada at its best beautiful weather it must be perfect right now.
Dan: Right, I just got out of the lake. I was in the lake 15 minutes oh my goodness, wow I'll be, very deep, like a week.
Dean: Oh yeah, is it.
Dan: Uh, that's very yes, that's quite cold. I mean, this is our one, two, three, four, fourth day and so I'm used to it now, but uh bracing yeah, yeah, because the nights have been very cold oh, I think the nights have been.
Dean: The nights have been very cold, yeah well we got enough heat or we got enough heat to go around here.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, you've had some. You've had some variable weather, should I call it that?
Dean: yeah, exactly, I was just telling. I was just telling I need to. Uh, I'm ready to have snowboarding back in my life. That just makes more sense to me.
Dan: Yeah, this is perfect. I mean, there's a lot of your. Our listeners may not know this, but there's this great romance to the cottage country in Canada.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: First of all, there's a lot of lakes. I mean there's literally in the thousands. I'm not talking about the big lakes, I'm not talking about the great lakes. I'm talking about, like ours, for example, is two miles by two miles. It's almost a circle. It's two miles by two miles, but there's a circle. It's two miles by two miles. But there's a legend that there's a hole in the middle, a very deep hole, and in the logging days they hooked chains to each other and put a weight at the end of one of the chains and then they kept putting the chains down and it went down a thousand feet and it was still not hitting bottom oh my goodness, it's a portal to the center of the earth you know it invites all sorts of adventures, loch Ness.
Well, we haven't seen that, we haven't seen that it's fresh. Yeah, well, loch Ness is a freshwater lake, but no, but there's a romance. There's a whole school of art called the Group of Seven and these were seven artists who did these amazing, amazing paintings. Not really natural. They have a real interesting quality to them and they were done from the teens till probably the 40s or 50s probably a 40-year period, seven artists.
They're very famous and in Toronto at the Art Gallery, the Ontario Gallery of Art, they have a whole wing that's just the paintings of these men. And then there's a town north of Toronto called Kleinberg and they have a whole museum. There's a whole McMichael gallery. And I never get tired. I've been here for 53 years and I can go in there and just sit for an hour and look at the magnificent art that these people created.
Dean: It is beautiful, yeah, yeah you're right, yeah, canada in the summertime. I can't imagine anywhere nicer, you know any of those temperate things. London or England is very nice in the summer. All of Europe, I'm sure. But yeah, it's just, I'm realizing Florida's a little hot yeah, you're late to the realization.
Dan: No, I mean I've realized it all along.
Dean: It's just that you know. Yeah, I'm starting to re-realize it.
Dan: Well, you had some comparison. You had a wonderful week in Toronto in July.
Dean: Yeah, three weeks I was there.
Dan: Marvelous there.
Dean: That's what I mean, you're realizing that Florida's hot.
Dan: You know, just between us, Florida's really hot during the summertime, you know, just between us. Florida is really hot during the summertime.
Dean: It was just. It was that contrast. I mean spending three weeks in Toronto June and July is it doesn't get much better. It's the perfect time.
Dan: So well, there's June and July, and then there's winter.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: Actually, I think we're in for a long fall this year.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And I'm doing this on 80 years of experience that when you have a very green summer, which means there was a lot of rain. We had more rain this year than I can remember since I've been here, and what it does is that the leaves don't turn as quickly, and so we can expect still green trees at Halloween this year.
Dean: Oh, wow, Okay, Looking forward to coming back up in a few weeks. I can't believe it's been 90 days already. I'm super excited about having you know a quarter, a coach quarter.
Dan: You've had a coach quarter. You've had a coach. You've had a coach quarter.
Dean: That's what I mean. I'm very excited about having these coach quarterly Toronto visits in my future. This is yeah, yeah, it's very good. So there I have had.
Dan: You've been thinking about things? Tell me you've been thinking about things.
Dean: I have been thinking about my thinking and thinking about things all the while. This is, I think I'm coming up another, I think I'm coming up on a month of carnivore. Now, yeah, what it's very interesting to me, the findings. You know it really it suits. It seems like it's a very ADD compliant diet.
Dan: Yeah, in that it's really only one decision. Because it's just one decision.
Dean: Yeah, is it meat? That's the whole thing. It's like the Is it? Meat or is it fasting? Yeah, it's the dietary equivalent of wearing a black shirt every day.
Dan: Well, I wear a navy blue shirt every day. I took that strategy from you. It struck me as a very useful lifetime strategy.
Dean: And I got into it during COVID. Yeah.
Dan: Because that was my COVID uniform I had. Basically I had jeans and a long sleeve shirt long sleeve t-shirt navy blue by Uniqlo, a Japanese company, and they're the best, they're the best, they're the best. I bet I've worn the one I'm wearing today. I bet I've worn it a hundred times. So it looks pretty much out of the package.
Dean: Yeah, it makes a big difference. So there's lots of these arguments for these kind of mono decisions.
Dan: So I'm kind of thinking that through, you know, and seeing other places where that kind of thinking applies you know, yeah, what I notice more and more is that my life is really a function of habits, yes, and you got to make sure they're good habits.
Dean: Yeah, I'm thinking and seeing that more and more. Like I was looking in some of my past journals over the last week or so, I was looking back, like back to, you know, 2004, and just kind of randomly, you know, selecting the things. And you know, I do see that you're only ever in the moment, right, because every entry that I'm making in the journal is made in real time, so I'm only ever there, you know, and that habit I often I wonder how many miles of ink lines I've written if you were to, if you were how many times I've circled the globe with my journals.
It'd be a really interesting calculation, you know. But you realize that everything you've been saying about the bringing there here is really that's absolutely true, like the only thing I'm doing. The common thing of that is I'm sitting in a comfy chair writing in my journal, but you're never, you know, it's all. But it's funny to look back at it as capturing the moment, you know.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I see a lot more articles these days on journaling and just in the context of Cloudlandia and the mainland, it seems to me that it's a way of staying in touch with your preferred mainland by journaling, because every day you're conscious, you're thinking about your thinking and I think, as Jeff Madoff and I have had a number of conversations about this, that as the world becomes more digital and I see no end to the possibilities that you can apply digital technology to something there's a counter movement taking place where people are deliberately reconnecting with the mainland in a conscious way.
Dean: Yeah, I'm aware of that.
Dan: I mean, carnivore is about as mainland as you can get.
Dean: That's the truth, especially when there's something primal about cooking.
Dan: The only thing further than that would be if you were eating yourself, which, in a sense, you are.
Dean: It's so funny, but there is something magical about that. Can I tell?
Dan: you not as full bore as yours, but this is my 33rd day of having steak for breakfast.
Dean: Yes, Okay, did you open up the air fryer? Have you had an air fryer?
Dan: steak yet. Oh yeah, it's downstairs. We have one at the cottage and we're going to get a new one at the house.
Dean: And what's your experience? You brought it with us.
Dan: It's not my experience, it's Babs' experience.
Dean: I mean your experience of the eating. Yeah, oh no, it's great.
Dan: Yeah, oh no, it's great, it's great, it's delicious. Yeah, it's super fast, I mean it's super fast and it's great and, yeah, I'm thinning out a bit, losing my COVID collection. I'm starting to get rid of my COVID collection. Yeah, belly, fat and fat otherwise, and that's great and I do a lot of exercise when I'm at the cottage we have. There's a stairway, a stone stairway that goes down to the dock 40 steps, and so I do it today. I'll do it six times up and down.
Dean: Oh my goodness, wow.
Dan: And then we have about a I would say, three quarters of a mile loop up the hill, through the woods and back down, and I'll do that once today and I'll do two swims. I'll be in the lake for two swimming sessions and I noticed I really do a lot more exercise here and the whole point is to have it carry over when you get back to the city. Jump start yeah, I've got a great book for you, and the whole point is to have it carry over when you get back to the city Jumpstarting.
Dean: I've got a great book for you.
Dan: Do you read on Kindle or do you buy actual books?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah, that's two questions.
Dean: Yes to both. You do both Often. I'll do three Often. I will do the Kindle and the book and the audio.
Dan: Yes, well, there's a great book that you'll like, and it's called Same as Ever.
Dean: Okay, I like it already, but tell me about it.
Dan: And the author's name is Hosel H-O-E-S-E-L First name, I think, is Morgan Hussle. And what he shows? He's got 23 little chapters about things that are always the same and it's thought-provoking and he's an investor. You know he's an investor, but he talks about that. Humans, for the most part humans get smart at everything they do except one. What's that Money? That's probably true. And he says people are more fanciful when it comes to money than almost any other part of their life. Okay.
Dean: Well, that's interesting. It's giving me an option to buy his follow-up book which is the Psychology of Money.
Dan: I should get that too, too why not?
Dean: yeah, all right, he's got some great line.
Dan: I mean he quotes other people. He's got the greatest definition of a stock you know, like stock market stock he's got the greatest definition of a stock. I I don't think I think he's quoting somebody, but that a stock is a present number multiplied by a future story.
Dean: Ooh, that is true, isn't it? A present number multiplied by a future story that is so good yes.
Dan: Isn't that great.
Dean: It's so good and true, it's got the added benefit of being true. Yeah, I mean, it's really. If not, what else it's guessing and betting, right? It's like we gauge our guessing and betting on we guess and bet on the strength of our belief in the story.
Dan: A present number multiplied by a future story.
Dean: Yes, that's wild. It's funny that you say that's a very interesting. I was thinking about a pricing strategy for a client and he was saying I'm sure this has been. There's probably somebody who's said this before, I don't know who, but I was looking at it as that it's a combination of the promise and the price and the proof. And proof is really a story right, a belief that if you have him, you're, if there's something going wrong.
Yes, proof is yeah, I mean it's either that, yeah, it's either. You know the promise is the articulated outcome of what you're going to get, that you want that promise, but then the price is a factor of how much that promise is worth and your someone else yeah and the confidence that it's going to happen.
You know, it's a very interesting thing I was thinking about it in the context of our real estate that the realtors are will happily pay 40 of a transaction, up to 35 or 40% of a transaction. That's a guaranteed transaction, like a referral. If I say, you know, if you send somebody a referral they'll pay 40% because the promise and the proof is that you already got it. So you're willing to pay 40% for the certainty of it. But when you say to buy a lead, you know to buy leads for $5 or $10, there's not as much. You don't have the proof that those leads are going to turn into into transactions. So there's a risk. There's a risk involved in that. It's really, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. I've been because you know I do a lot of real estate, lead generation and all kinds in all kinds of businesses. Lead generation and I've really been one of the distinctions I've been sharing with people is the, because a lot of times people ask well, are they good leads? You know, and it speaks to the, yeah, you know objective, yeah, you.
Dan: And joe you, you and Joe Polish have a great definition of what a good lead is. I don't remember the exact formula, but it's pre-qualified, pre-motivated.
Dean: Yes, predisposed you know predisposed. Yeah.
Dan: And one of the things that when we were doing the book deal with Ben Hardy and Tucker Max, before we approached Hay House, Tucker asked me a question. He said well, you're not taking any money, you're not taking any advances, you're not taking any royalties for the book, which was true. So that was a real straight deal. You know why? Because it's a mono decision.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I'm sorry. The book is a capability for me and that's worth all the upfront money.
Dean: Yes, yeah, you know, and that was the advances.
Dan: You know, the advances were really good advances. I mean, they were six-figure advances.
Dean: And.
Dan: I said, the reason is I don't want to think about that. I just want to think about the capability that I have 24 hours a day, all around the world of someone picking up the book and reading it, and it's a pre-qualified person.
It's a pre-qualified person, in other words, the person who's picking up the book and reading it would have the money and the qualifications to be in the strategic coach. The other thing is that it would pre-motivate them. They're predisposed because they picked up the book. They're pre-qualified because it's meaningful to them. And then the next thing is they'll give us a phone call.
You know they'll read the book'll give us a phone call. You know they'll give us a phone call. Or just go on. You know, go on to the website and read all about coach and everything like that. And so Tucker said so we sell a thousand books. What would make you happy in terms of actual someone signing up for the program? And I said one.
Dean: Right and probably, probably.
Dan: I would want a hundred people Just trying to take care.
This is why I'm going to come and do the eight profit Activators. Yeah, and the reason is that those books were right at. About the three books that we wrote were right around the 800,000. Wow, wow, and I could easily say we've had 800 clients pick it up, either picked it up and called us, or called us and we sent them the books. Yes, but it's a marvelous system because it's who, not how, in spades is that I have salespeople out there every 24 hours and they're finding, finding new interested leads, they're developing the leads and we don't have to spend any time until they give us a call.
Dean: I think that's fantastic and it's doing. You know, part of the thing is I. This is why I always look at books as a profit activator three activity, which is educate and motivate. That people get educated about the concepts of who, not how, or the gap in the game or the idea that 10 times is easier than two times, and they see examples and see that this really fits, and then they're motivated to call and get some help with that. I'm such a fan of books and podcasts as the perfect Profit Activator 3 activity.
Dan: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about our previous podcast where you took it through the what's the value of your leads. I'm actually a really fan of that yeah.
Dean: I love metrics. I'm a big metric. Well, metrics to me are when they are objective and measurable. They are a proof.
Dan: Well and predictable. They're predictable too. They're a proof. Do a certain amount of activity, you can get a predictable metric.
Dean: I've discovered a metric very much like Pareto in lead distribution. It just got, you know, hot off the press with Chris McAllister, who you know as well. Yeah, chris, so we've been doing a collaboration on, I've been helping them with lead generation and I asked him to do a I've been calling it a forensic census of what's happened with the leads right and leads who've been in for more than a hundred days. So we just looked at the. That's roughly three and a half months basically, and you know, of all of the leads that we had generated, 15% of them had sold their house with someone else, and so you look at that we did the math on the thing, that is the opportunity cost.
That is the exact thing that worked out, that the amount of that worked out to be over half a million dollars in lost opportunity.
Dan: Well, and that's where. Yeah, no, it wasn't lost, it was just a cost.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Dan: The money went into the wrong bank account. The money went into the wrong bank account. That's exactly right. The money went into the wrong bank account. The money went into the wrong bank account.
Dean: That's exactly right. So now that's encouraging right, because I've got now three different forensic census analysis from three different parts of the country with three different realtors that all point to exactly the same thing 15 of people who've gone through a hundred days will do something, and so that is. That's encouraging. You know, I think if I, if you look at that and start to say OK, there's a pulse. That it means that the market.
Dan: The marketplace has a pulse.
Dean: Yeah. The lie rating and that we're generating objectively good leads, meaning people who want to do. What the promise of the of the book is, you know, yeah. So, that's very exciting.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting changing the subject slightly. So this author that writes the book Same as Ever that I just mentioned, he said that basically, when you look at the last hundred years, the decade of the 1930s was absolutely the most productive decade in US history. Wow, Based on what. And he said just how much got produced during the 1930s.
Dean: Are you talking about the New Deal? No, he's not talking about the New Deal at all.
Dan: He's actually talking that the reason was it was the worst decade economically in the United States history because of the Great Depression, but he said it was also the most creative and most productive. And he said that creativity and productivity don't happen during good times, they only happen during bad times, the reason being the things that you thought. Let's put it this way you're going into the 1930s it was one of the hottest stock markets in the history of the United States the 1920s per capita, if you do it in relationship to the population and then suddenly it just stopped and everything that people believed was true, everything that they knew was predictably true, didn't happen. And everybody woke up and said, oh my God. Well, everything we've been going on doesn't work. And he said that's the spur to creativity and productivity.
It's not profitability, because the profitability happened in the 1940s and 1950s, but the productivity, the creativity, creating new things that were productive, happened during the 1930s. He said there's no decade like it in US history in the last 100 years and I found that very striking.
Dean: I can't wait to read it.
Dan: I found that. It's a thin book.
Dean: Okay, I was going to say I like that's my favorite. That's my favorite and accessible words.
Dan: I like that too. It's a win. And it's a good title yeah, he doesn't use more words than he needs.
Dean: I like that.
Dan: It goes back to your. I'm coming awake to Dean Jackson's 8 Profit Activators.
Dean: Oh good, after 12 years, this is good news.
Dan: I'm a tourist, I'm a late bloomer.
Dean: I'm a late developer.
Dan: You know, but it wasn't that it was stored away, but it wasn't brought right in front of me. But I think there's a lot of very interesting insights that you have here.
Dean: Yeah, that's true, and I just find more and more it's. You know it's the same, just feel like it's. So when you look at this one thing you know, if I think about my one thing is this you know, working on the all the applications of this one model and seeing deeper and deeper layers of how it actually how it fits, you know, it is like you asked me 12 years ago what would be fascinating and motivating because I had come out of you know, 15 years I think we I think we were both sitting in our kitchen when this happened, yeah, yeah our kitchen.
Yeah, and I remember I was.
Dan: I remember I was using that I was I. I remember it distinctly because I think it's the last time I used the landline. Isn't that funny?
Dean: that's amazing.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, because I had to sit up next to the counter because we've only got one landline.
Dean: And.
Dan: I said I've got this. So I had to sit on a stool next to you know a counter and I remember the conversation.
Dean: I do too, and it was because I was coming out of 15 years of applying these eight profit activators to the growth of one specific business and Joe Polish had just taken that framework and started the I love marketing cast and I realized that's my. I was realizing how applicable that kind of operating system that I had developed for, you know, growing our own business was applicable to all kinds of businesses and that was my fascinating thing and doing it in small groups as opposed to 500, 700 people at a time, and to this day, it's still now 12 years later, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, can I ask you a question about that? If you did it differently. Could you do it with a group of 100?
Dean: Yes, absolutely, and we've done it with you know, I've done it with 40 or 50.
Dan: Yeah Well, if you can do it with 40 or 50, you could do it with 100.
Dean: Yeah, once you get past like 14 or so, the way the dynamics change. At about 14, more people, you end up having fractured conversations, and so that's why, the way you do the workshops, you have the opportunity to have people have those conversations, but in groups of three or four, yeah, so rather than having breakouts.
Dan: Well, and then there's a tool that everybody's doing the same. Yes, yes. Yes.
Dean: You're exactly right. Yeah, and that's an. All of them are all the eight profit activators are there, are tools, you know, there are thinking ways for it and yeah, but it's just such a you know I want to ask you another question to what degree if you think about I think you said you've done about 600 from last conversation of your small groups, that'd be 50 groups, basically 50, 50 sessions.
Dan: To what degree do they need to know their numbers to go through the process?
Dean: well they. The challenge or the thing is that they don't even know that these metrics exist.
So I work from the standpoint of they really, if I can give them the experience of it by. They know the top line and they know you know what they're doing. But it doesn't require the granularity to get the impact of it. You know, to understand. That's where they can get their best intuitive sense of what that is and every single person has a realization that.
Let's just say, even the just understanding how to divide the revenue into before unit, during unit and after unit is a big revelation for people and then they realize, you know, a lot of times I was just doing a consultation with a home services company and in home services it's pretty standard to spend, you know standard to spend you know 12 to 15% of their revenue on advertising. But they do a lot of things and they don't know often exactly what's working. But when I pointed out to them that if we take you know, 30% of their business is coming from repeat people who've already done business with them, yet they're measuring the 15 percent on that gross revenue, so their actual before unit cost is is way more because they're spending all the money in the before unit and not really spending much if anything on the after unit, even though it's bringing in 30% of the business. You know and it's so funny because I was sharing with them too I was like to take this attitude of so they do HVAC and air conditioning and so I like for them to think of all the households that have one of their air conditioning units in it to be climates under management, you know, is to get that kind of asset that they've got 20 000 climates under management, and to take that and really just kind of look at what they could do even just with the after unit of their business.
You know, it's so. It's always eye-opening for people like to see when you start looking at those numbers and say, wow, I had never, I never thought of it like that.
Dan: You know one of the things John Bowen and Kerry Oberbrenner and I are doing a collaboration on establishing the real numbers for entrepreneurism.
Dean: Right.
Dan: In relationship to wealth and in relationship to happiness, relationship to wealth and in relationship to happiness. So John is arguably the top coach in the world for financial advisors at a very affluent level.
So all the clientele are very, so that would be for, and they'd be looking for, families. It would be sort of families and they'd be entrepreneurial families, okay, and I think that the sort of the preferred look is where the net worth of the family is in the 20 million and above level. Okay, and these are the advisors. So John's clients are the advisors who do this, okay. And two years ago we did a survey where we compared the entrepreneurial clients or the entrepreneurial clients. What we surveyed was John's clients as entrepreneurs.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Okay, they're entrepreneurs, and there were about 1 of them, 1300. And they were compared to 800 strategic coach clients and we saw all sorts of differences. One of them was the who, not how, factor, that generally our clients made more money per person and worked fewer hours than John's 1,300. Yes, okay, and fairly significant. I mean like percent, different percent. And the other thing was that our clients expected to be busy. They expected to be active entrepreneurs for a much longer period than his clients.
Dean: Well, that's the greatest gift right there when you look at it. So you, as the lead by example of this the lead dog.
Dan: Yeah, you know what they say about dog sleds you know the dogs in a dog sled. Yeah, if you're not
the lead dog, the future always looks the same. Yes, exactly so I'm not looking up anybody's rear end.
Dean: Yeah, right, exactly.
Dan: Anyway, but the big, thing, if you say we don't have real proof and it would take 50 or 60 years to take a long study to see that we're actually extending people's actual lifetime. But I would say right now we could probably establish really good, really good research that were extending their careers by probably an average of 15 years at their peak earning.
Dean: Yeah exactly. Yeah, think about that like in the traditional world. So at that you know I'm 58 now and so in the traditional world it'd be like you got seven years left, kind of thing. Right, it's a traditional retirement age, or what.
Dan: And then coach, you'd have 22 years.
Dean: I got 22 more years, even just to get to 80. Yeah, you know like that's the thing, and I just proved that it's possible.
Dan: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Dean: Yes, that's what I'm saying, yes, that's what I mean. And to be you like, look at, you know one of the. You know the elements when we do the lifetime extender, when you ask people so how do you want to be on your 80th birthday? And you're saying you know, well, how do you want to be health physically? And you're saying, well, how do you want to be health physically? Well, I want to be climbing 40 states of stairs six times a day, swimming twice and hiking around my property. I want to be, recording podcasts.
I want to be writing books, I want to be holding workshops, I mean developing thinking tools, all those things. I've been thinking a lot about cadences, you know, and you've really kind of tapped into this cadence of of the quarter. Quarterly cadence is because your days are really largely the same with an intention of moving towards quarterly outputs. You, you're creating quarterly books, you're creating new quarterly workshops and tools. And am I missing anything Like do you have annual goals or objectives?
Dan: Or is everything in terms of Well, the only, there's only one. The only one thing that we have, that's annual, would be the Free Zone Summit. That's once a year.
So, for example, every week I'm working on the summit which is in February next year, and so I'm always listening in the. So I have a series of speaking sets that people can, and I'm looking, yes, to a large group of people, half of whom aren't actually in the free zone. You know half of them next year, half of them won't even be, you know, in strategic coach. They're team members, free zone members, they're clients of the free zone members and everything like that.
So it's a challenge to me because you know coach people, know the routine, you know they come in, they understand what a whole day looks like thinking about your thinking. But for some people this is the first time in their life and the trick is, after the first hour they all feel as part of the same group and they're thinking you know. So anyway, it's a. It's an interesting, but that's only my annual thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: So I've you know I give a lot of thought to it. I work on it right now, six months, before I'm working on it every week.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But that's the only one that is, and I wouldn't want to, no, exactly.
Dean: Do you? It's interesting that you say you're working on it every week. Do you have? Do you account for that in your calendar or do you just consciously like? Or do you say?
Dan: Some of it is just, some of it's just my time and it's, it's a certainty. Uncertainty worksheet. So I'm always working within the certainty. Uncertainty, this much is certain already. This is uncertain.
So then that's the next week. You have to have certain things move from uncertainty to certainty. Yes, we got the pat. We just got the patent on that, by the way, so that's a good tool. That's good. Yeah, yeah so, but I'm constantly my ears are constantly open. In all the workshops, people are dropping topics. You know. I said, yeah, think there's a, we got a role for you and you know, we got a role for you, because I want to get to people ahead of time, because some people don't come to the summit.
So if you spot them as a speaker, you want to make sure that something else isn't scheduled during the time when they come. So, yeah, it's going to be in Arizona this time.
Dean: That's what I hear.
Dan: It's all very exciting.
Dean: Anyway it's very exciting.
Dan: You mentioned the quarter. I really take quarters seriously. Other people have quarters, but they don't spend much time thinking about the quarter.
Dean: I said it's available.
Dan: It's sitting around there. You know, quarters are just sitting around. How much productivity, creativity, profitability can you get out of a quarter?
Dean: Yeah, I like that. That's my observation. Right Is that you're the tools of applying three days focus days, buffer days, in a quarterly cadence for the rest of your till 156.
Dan: 304. I have 304 left. 304 quarters left. Yeah, 304 quarters. You know David Hasse, whose clinic I can't, you know I can't recommend enough to people, but so we started two years ago with him. So it's August of 2022. We started working with him and we've had eight quarters and when we first came to the very first meeting in Nashville Maxwell Clinic, he said so what are we going to do with?
your health over the next 312 quarters right, he had me at hello he had me at hello oh yeah and we've done a lot in the last eight quarters we've done yeah, you know there's a lot of work and but yeah, he's got a deep dive program. It's really terrific. I mean it it's testing, testing, constant testing, and he's very alert to new stuff in the marketplace you know new breakthroughs.
Dean: What's your noticing now of your new needs in all these stairs that you're doing?
Dan: Yeah, the big thing is I have no problem going up. It's tender going down, and the problem is it's a 50-year-old injury and about 49-year-old injury and so the cartilage is completely restored. Okay, and that's a breakthrough. Stem cells can get things working. Stem cells, can you know they can? What stem cells essentially do is wake up the cells that are supposed to be doing the work or repairing them.
Dean: Hey, buddy, get back to work.
Dan: Yeah, and the, and this is detectable, this is measurable where?
Dean: they are.
Dan: So I always thought I'm missing a cartilage. And I went down there, so they and when I say down there it's Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and I've done five, four, four sessions, four sessions in five month period. And now my cartilage is the same thickness going from almost no cartilage in my left knee. It's the same width. You know, the thickness of the cartilage is the same as it was before the injury in 1975. So that's great, but it's still painful. So now he says what's happened is that there's been damage to the ligaments on both sides.
And so now I go first week of November to Buenos Aires and they do stem cells on my ligaments, ok, ok, and then we'll see. We'll see what happens there. So wow.
Yeah, it's a matter of subtraction. You know you subtract the cartilage as the problem and then you submit and we'll see where it is. But I would say that the drop in pain in a day, in other words from morning till night, it's probably down 90%. Wow, that's amazing. But what's missing is the confidence to start running, because I want to run again and so I've been 15 years without running and my brain says don't run.
So I have to relearn how to run. And how about Babs? It's completely fixed. That's amazing, isn't it? Yeah? And the cartilage that was cartilage too, yeah, fixed. That's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, the cartilage that was cartilage too. She, yeah, she had influence, she had actually. She had bone inflammation and she had missing cartilage. So the cartilage is back and I think hers would be equal to mine. The pain is down by 90 wild, wild, that's.
Dean: It's amazing, isn't? It yeah we're living in. We're living in amazing times. Well, I'm counting on it. Yeah exactly.
Dan: You know it's a present number times a future story.
Dean: What a great thing. By the way, that book is going to arrive today, according to Amazon. For me, the money book. The other one will be here tomorrow morning. That's just so, like that's the best thing.
Dan: Why can't the I mean after you order it? Why aren't they knocking on the door right now? What's wrong with this world?
Dean: That's what I'm thinking. Is that why people call senators? Is that what I need to do is alert my senator?
Dan: about this. Yeah, I actually had a great conversation with Ted Budbutt.
Dean: Oh yeah. Well, that's great, great US senator from North Carolina, yeah and I just saw that Robert Kennedy just endorsed Donald Trump. He dropped out of the race and joined MAGA.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's probably. I was figuring it's worth 3%, do you think? Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot to Trump obviously brings a lot to it, but he brings a whole issue that the Republicans haven't been focused on at all and his whole thing is really about what the food industry is putting into food. Yeah, that that is very dangerous, very negative, very harmful. That's been his big thing, and Trump just came out and said I think we're going to really take a major look at this.
Dean: You know, it's very interesting to note that Joe Polish was sort of a catalyst in this regard. Oh yeah, that's pretty amazing. I just sent him a note.
Dan: I just sent him an email. I sent him an email. I said RFK Trump always said you were the greatest connector that I've ever met in my life.
Dean: Yeah, that's the truth, isn't it? And now you think about the historical impact. You know of this. I think that's you know. It's amazing. He's in his unique ability, for sure.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, just born unique ability to connect people, positively connect people. Yes yes, yeah, there's all sorts of industries where it's negative, but this is positive, so good. Anyway, back to our metrics, back to our metrics yes. Yeah, well, I think you're working out a whole economic system based on this. I think this has got the making of a complete economic system.
Dean: Yes, it really does, the more that I see that each of them have and I'm very aware of naming the metrics right, of naming the metrics right like so out, because each of the before, during and after units all have their own, you know, their own metrics that are universally present in every business but they're differently calculated, you know, and once people have that awareness it kind of builds momentum, like they really see these things. They've never thought about a multiplier index in the during unit, or they've never thought about a return on relationship in the after unit or revenue From where you are right now?
Dan: which one is where you are right now? Which one is most important for your own?
Dean: you know your own money making for me, I think, one of the most.
Dan: I mean you got eight, I know yeah, yeah, the eight are all engaged, but right now August of 2024, which is the one that you're really focused on right now rev pop revenue per unconverted prospect.
Dean: Yeah, that's a multiplier If you've already got. You've got a lot of times when we take the VCR formula and kind of overlay on top of it. The excess capacity that people have is often a big asset, you know, and so it's very yeah, it's fun to to see all these at work. You know, as I start to you know, overlay them on so many different types of businesses.
Dan: Yeah, no, I'm just really taking I was. Shannon Waller's husband was reading this, same as every book His cottage is. Their cottage is about 10 minutes walk from our cottage and I just picked it up and I've converted almost completely over to Kindle. So you know, so I had it within minutes.
Dean: I picked it up.
Dan: I read a chapter and I said I'm going to download this. So I downloaded it and I've been reading it for the past four days. But I asked Bruce. We were out to dinner last night and I said Bruce and Bruce is an investor he had a career with Bell Canada.
He was 35 years, 35 years with Bell Canada Got a good pension and then he went into investing and I said this is about long range thinking, this is a very long range thinking book and it's almost like these are 23 things that are always going to be the same how you factor that into your investment philosophy, okay, yeah.
And then he has a lot of references to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett because, they're the long range, they're the most famous long range investors and Charlie's dead this year. But Warren Buffett said he said this year. But Warren Buffett said he said you know it's, the biggest problem with investing is the combination of greed and speed. You know, people want a huge payoff and they want it as fast as possible. Yes, and he said you know. And Warren Buffett, he says you know, you can't produce a child in a month by getting nine women pregnant.
Dean: It's profound and true.
Dan: It's a formula for complication in your future life.
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, if each child has claims on half of your net worth, you probably have diminished your future. You probably have diminished your future. But anyway, and he says, the proper question is what's the investment I can make that has the highest return for the longest period of time?
Dean: Yes, I love that. That's great.
Dan: Well, if you take your eight profit activators and see them as separate investments.
Dean: Which I do.
Dan: And each of them is growing in return. That's really the only stock market you actually need.
Dean: Yes, that's what dawned on me with this revenue per unconverted prospect is I try and get people to think about their before unit as making a capital investment.
Dan: Well, you are in time attention, probably money, probably money too.
Dean: Yeah.
But most people think of it as an expense because they're running ads competing for the immediate ROI. And it's such a different game when you realize that the asset that you're creating of a pool of people who know you and like you and are marinating, you know that it makes a big difference Because the gestation period is, if you looked at the people that come into coach for the first time, if you were to look at their ad date in the CRM of when they first showed up on your radar, whether they opted in for something, that it's going to be a much bigger number than seven days. You know that they came in, they got, they talked to somebody and signed up. It's going to be a you know, a much longer period of time and the yield. This is the only way that having that revenue per unconverted prospect really gives you a way of seeing how valuable the people who've been in your pond for three years, five years, seven years I'm sure you have people who have been swimming around Strategic Coach for several years before they become.
Dan: One of the big changes that we're making is to switch the attention to those people away from the sales team to the marketing team. That's smart. Because, I have a framework for the salespeople and every time I meet with them, we have 14 full-time salespeople and every time I meet with we have 14, 14 sales full-time salespeople and I say yeses, reward you, noes, teach you and maybes, punish you.
So, I said, every week you're looking at your call list, you have to grade them yes, no. Or maybe at your call list, you have to grade them yes, no. Or maybe and I say, go for the yeses first, Get the no's as fast as possible, Okay and make them earn their way back into your prospect list.
Dean: In other words just say no.
Dan: You know it sounds like you're not going to do it. You know about us. We've had a conversation. We've got great materials we can send you constantly. But you know I'm not going to bother you anymore. And then there's maybes that are just trying to have an affair.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: No, she isn't with us anymore. But we had a woman who is a salesperson and she had 60 calls over a six-year period with this person. I said I don't know what's on your mind, but he's having an affair. That's funny. It's a nice female voice. He gets to talk to her every month or so. It's an affair. That's exactly right. It's so funny. Anyway, we've shot way past the hour.
Dean: Oh my goodness, Dan Well, it was worth it. It was worth it.
Dan: I don't know for the listeners, but I found this a fascinating conversation.
Dean: Well, I find that too, so that's all that matters. If we had good, come along the ride.
Dan: I agree with if we were having a good time. I think they were having a good time I think, I'll talk to you next I'll talk to you next week. Thanks dan, bye-bye. Great, okay, bye.
05 May 2021
Ep016: The Well of Ideas
01:01:20
Join Dean and Dan as they discuss their marketing plans, pulled from the Well of Ideas.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, I reminisce about our wonderful experience at the recent Cloudlandia conference at Canyon Ranch in Tucson facilitated by the legendary Joe Polish.
We discuss the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle through routines like DEXA scans. Our conversation explores cultivating daily habits that balance productivity and creativity without overcommitting.
Wrapping up, we tackle the nuances of time management as entrepreneurs and commitment levels' impact on execution. Discover how dependability and prudent social media actions shape future opportunities, drawing from Kevin O'Leary's wisdom.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dan and I delve into the significance of the series' theme song and its role in their listening routine, based on Chris's reflections.
We discuss Chris's trip to Tucson and their perspective on the moderated conference experience led by Joe Polish at Canyon Ranch.
We highlight the importance of maintaining consistency and improvement over time, drawing upon the eight profit activators as an example.
Dan analyzes a typical day at Canyon Ranch through Chris's recount, emphasizing the value of health checks like the DEXA scan for body composition.
We explore the paradox of having ample free time yet facing a lack of productivity due to multiple options.
Dan and I discuss the various levels of commitment and how they influence the ability to complete tasks, especially in the entrepreneurial environment.
The chapter on trust, money, and social media is explored, examining the challenges of relying on unpredictable and the personal ethos of dependability.
We assess the intertwined nature of trust, money, and social media, referencing Kevin O'Leary's perspective on the potential long-term impacts of public actions.
reflect on Chris's strategy for managing time and commitments, including his rule against traveling for marketing purposes.
The episode concludes with us having a candid conversation about procrastination, commitment, and the challenge of executing tasks without external scaffolding.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Welcome to Cloudlandia. You know, the theme song to this series might be the song that I've listened to more in my life than any other song.
Dean: Oh, that's funny I like it.
Dan: I was going through the archives and I said you know, I don't think I've listened to any song as much as I have this song. That's so funny. Yeah, I love it Good music though. It's good music.
Dean: And good message.
Dan: And it, I love it, it's good music, though.
Dean: It's good music, yes, and good message.
Dan: And it's good message.
Dean: It's always a reminder. So welcome back. You've been on the road, arizona.
Dan: Yes, how was that? Oh, it was great. We were in Tucson for about five days at Canyon Ranch, and the weather was absolutely superb. In Fahrenheit terms it was roughly about 75.
Dean: Yeah, perfect right.
Dan: Clear, cool nights, blue skies, no rain and the genius was great. Joe is really in the sweet spot.
Joe Polish is really in the sweet spot because he's controlling it now with his interviews and I think that's terrific, because he had six different guests and if they're just giving a presentation, it can be from bad to really great. But what Joe provides, he just does a framework and of course he directs them with questions and he knows the audience, he knows the speakers, so he's doing a great job of moderating and I think that's a terrific move.
Dean: I like the new setup too that he's got there, the stage with the kind of environment that's good, nice, the kind of environment that's good, Nice.
Dan: Well, let's Proves that, if you just stick with some things long enough, you know it turns really superb after a while if you keep making improvements.
Dean: Wow, I can't say enough about that being true. I was really. I've been thinking that about the. I've been going back looking at the eight profit activators as the example of how long you know I would say I've been working on this for 30 years, unconsciously, and the last 20 of it consciously and the distinctions, the reliable, that I've generated from all the ways that we've applied, all the number of data sets and iterations and different applications that are still like, it's just kind of great. It's a shortcut to really identifying what needs to be done, and every new iteration of a durable playbook is adding new distinctions. So much certainty in the things. I just can't wait to see, you know, the next 20 years of that real like dedicated application, because it's not going anywhere, you know.
Dan: Yeah, I think you know I'm sort of a stick with things for a long time.
Dean: Yes, yes.
Dan: And I mean, if people are telling you they're getting value out of it, their checks indicate yes, yes, things going in a workshop and I'm, you know, I'm always seeing new things and and everything like that. But you know, we were. I was just reflecting that this is 35 years for the program, the workshop program, and it's pretty much not too different in 2024 than it was in 1989.
I mean 2024 than it was in 1989. I mean it's basically you're doing thinking processes, you're chatting with each other individually, you're having general discussions, there's visuals to represent what's going to happen and all the money's up front.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, listen, I call those things durable contexts and what you've got there, like the strategic coach program and the workshops, it's not unsimilar to what 60 Minutes has going for it, the. It's been the same context in sunday night 7 pm tick, tick, tick three long form stories on the most fascinating things in the zeitgeist right now. That's never going to get old. That's really. You know, it's like the same thing. You look at quarterly meetings gathered with your peers thinking about your thinking in a group of people who are thinking the same way. So I think that's the cheat code is understanding what those durable contexts are and allowing the content to fit within that.
You know.
Dan: Yeah, there was a great old parody, I don't know 20 years ago, and it's the new marketing manager for Coors Beer and he's saying yeah, and he's in a meeting with Mr Coors the current Mr. Coors and he says yeah.
He said yeah, we've done a lot of research and you know we feel that the color that we've been using for the labels of Coors beer are not up to speed with what people really like and therefore we're suggesting that we switch the color of the labels. And Mr Coors says I like the color we've got. He says yes sir, yes sir, Mr Coors.
Dean: Yes, sir, we're going to go with the color.
Dan: And he says we feel that you know the typeface that we're using, the Coors typeface, is from the. It's really from the 19th century. And he said so we're suggesting this new typeface. And Mr Gores says I like the typeface the way it is.
Dean: He says yes, mr Gores.
Dan: And then he says we're thinking that the bottle is very in old shape, you know, and it's not really up to date with modern design and therefore we're recommending this new shape of the bottle and we want to change the color of the bottle too. And he says to Mr Kors says I like the old bottle and I like the color we've got. Yes, mr Kors, okay, we're all set to go on our new campaign right, that sounds like your conversation when they wanted to change the fonts right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like Helvetica.
We're going to stick with.
Dean: Helvetica Awesome, I love it. Well, Dan, what was your? What's a day in the life in Canyon Ranch? You've been going there now for as long as I've known you.
Dan: Yeah, 1990 was our first trip, so this is our 55th visit and many years. We've gone twice, twice. Well, it's a nice place, it's very congenial, it's very comfortable and it's well kept up. And, you know, the food is good. They have terrific massage therapists. I mean, they have dozens and dozens of massage therapists, some of them, one of them we have we've been seeing her for 25 years, you know, and there's just a nice quality. It's very predictable, there's no tension, it's very laid back, and so I get up in the morning and, you know, once we're set to go, I'll go out for a walk, and they have a two mile loop around the property oh wow and one of them is quite a challenging hill, okay.
So what I could do is I go out and I start working the hill from top to bottom and I do that. I do that for about a half hour. You know.
Dean: Up and down, you know gets the heart rate up yeah and now with my repaired knee I was gonna ask do you feel?
Dan: the difference. Yeah, yeah, it's. Uh, there's a bit tenderness about especially coming down it's going up is fine, it's coming down. That puts more stress on your knee right and then then we go for breakfast and there's two choices they have sort of a very informal cafe and then they have a restaurant with full menu. And then I do a lot of reading. I read the Wall Street Journal on six days of the week and Babs and I just agree when we're going to rendezvous for lunch.
Dean: She does a lot more.
Dan: She does a lot more consultations. She does more investigating new things, which eventually I introduced to some of them. But she's much more active. She gets more tests than I do and I do one test probably every year for 20 years since the body composition. Oh, yeah, like a DEXA scan, right, right, dexa scan, yeah, and it's the gold standard as far as I can tell. You know, and then you compare and I got 20 years of records and you know, need some more care.
Things are okay here and you know you go there and then the afternoon I'll have at least one massage a day and I do that. But I do a lot of reading. I've got my detective stories, my thrillers, my international geopolitical thrillers, and you know I'll wander around around and I get my steps in, I get my three rings on my apple watch bin and we meet for dinner. We usually do it pretty early and we you know and come home and I'll check the news, internet news and read some articles and then I'm off to bed and multiply that by five days.
Dean: Do it again.
Dan: Yeah, and you feel revived.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But I, you know, I mean at after 35, 50 years of coaching and 35 years of the company and the program. I don't really get that stressed out for my work. Right, I mean you know I'm in my unique ability. I have certain things to do every day.
Dean: There's deadlines.
Dan: There's always lots of projects going, and so it's not like to go on to free days, which Canyon Ranch always. Isn't that much of a change for me from? The way I operate on my workday. I'm never doing more than three projects for the day. I have lots of time between projects. I only hold myself accountable for getting three things done a day. My scheduler, Becca, always makes sure I have at least a half hour between anything that involves a meeting with someone else.
And yeah, so that's pretty well that I mean. But I get a lot done. I mean I'm more productive at 80 than I was at 60.
Dean: So yeah, that's my thing. How much of your time during the week like when you're on a typical home week, work week is scheduled like synchronous and scheduled with other people, versus you saying these are the three things I'm going to work on, or are they always involving other people?
Dan: No, I have days when it's just me getting my part of a project done that has to be then sent off to somebody else. But I have days when there's no meetings. The vast majority of them are Zoom meetings, not in-person meetings.
Dean: And I have a regular schedule the workshops are in the schedule.
Dan: The two-hour catch-up calls that we've introduced for Zoom they're in the schedule. I have podcasts they're scheduled. The only thing that's left up to me is creating new tools.
Dean: Right.
Dan: You know, and the other thing is new chapters of the current book and that goes off, and then we have recording sessions and so on. But I would say that if I look ahead at a year, 85% of that year is going to be totally known on the first day of the year.
Dean: Really, yeah, yeah, like with scheduled slots for when it's happening, yeah.
Dan: Very interesting. Yeah, and I've introduced a new rule in 79, that I will never travel for marketing purposes.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, and I will never give a speech. I'll do an interview, but I won't do a speech.
Dean: Right or.
Dan: I'll put an audience through a thinking tool, but I won't give a speech, so my days of speechifying are in the past, right, right, right. And I won't give any speech for publicity purposes, I only give a speech for marketing purpose. I mean, I'll only do a public, you know, presentation and a movie tool only for marketing purpose. I'll only speak to audiences that are qualified clients, qualified prospects. Yeah, yeah, and that's basically an easygoing tourist's life.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, I forgot, that's another thing.
Dan: You have a birthday in about three days, right?
Dean: That's right. May 10th that's exactly right may 10th.
Dan: It's yes, right yeah, so that's what is that friday?
Dean: that is friday, yeah, yeah. So that's that one little thing, that one week of time where I'm only 21 years younger than you. I catch up on you for a little bit and then you take over again.
Dan: Yeah, I have to give you a teaser before I frustrate you.
Dean: Okay, let's hear it.
Dan: Yeah, no, it's 20.
Dean: You get to be 21 years younger. I got you Right, right, right.
Dan: Then it gets taken away from you. Yes, exactly, just when.
Dean: I think I'm catching up. Yeah, yeah, a little boost. That's so funny. Yeah, I've forgotten that we're both Taurus. That's something we are very similar. I think that's why we have such an easy friendship. I think because we're essentially a lot alike, I mean our whole being.
Dan: I think we're essentially lazy luxury-loving innovators.
Dean: Lazy luxury-loving innovators, I like it.
Dan: That's pretty true.
Dean: It's the truth. You're absolutely right. Yes, yes, yes, in the best sense of all of those words.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think both of us exhibit sort of a lifestyle that's different from what we learned when we were growing up.
Dean: That's true, yeah, I don't know what instilled it in us, but it was self-discovered. Really, Nobody taught us this.
Dan: And we both like shortcuts.
Dean: We both have a passion.
Dan: It's very interesting I haven't actually driven a car in the city of Toronto in easily 25 years.
Dean: I think that's amazing yeah.
Dan: And you know I have a limousine company that handles all my scheduled stuff. And then Babs. You know we're very much in sync in terms of what we like to do for entertainment and for socializing we're very much in sync, and what it's allowed me to do is to really notice shortcuts in the city because I'll see. You know, I'm a real map addict. I like maps.
And I'll see something I said. I wonder, if you go through this alleyway here and you come out here, whether it's a shortcut when there's busy times and I got about 20, 25 of them in the city that Google doesn't know about.
Dean: Oh boy, okay, yeah, you've got the knowledge.
Dan: Yeah, I got. I've got the knowledge. Google stays within the framework of what are considered official streets. You know they it doesn't, and probably they have to do that.
I mean, that's not, it's not their job to be doing it and and so one of the limousine drivers said, you know, he went to the president of the company, the owner, and he says, you know, we should have mr sullivan up here, he knows more shortcuts than anyone I've ever seen and and the owner of the company. Why would we want the trip to be any shorter?
Dean: Unbelievable, huh.
Dan: Isn't that?
Dean: funny, that's the best. Why would we want it to be any shorter?
Dan: No, and I can see his point of view, I guess.
Dean: but wow, I can't tell you, dan, how much I'm looking forward to being in Toronto.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Really am.
Dan: Now you're coming in. When are you coming in?
Dean: On a.
Dan: Monday.
Dean: The workshop's on a Monday the workshop is on Monday, right the 20th, so I think I'm going to come in probably the week before. I'll probably come in. I may come in at the very latest the 17th, and so I would be available for a table 10 or whatever table they assign us on the 18th, if that works in your schedule, and then I'm going to do a breakthrough blueprint on the 27th, 28th, 29th. So I'm going to stay for at least two weeks.
Dan: Are you staying at the Hazleton I?
Dean: believe so. Yes, there are the four seasons.
Dan: one of the two yeah, because our wonderful French restaurant in Yorkville is gone.
Dean: I know exactly.
Dan: Jacques Bistro.
You know, they basically packed it in at the end of the previous year, so the COVID year started in March 2020. So right at the end of 2019, they packed it in and their son you know, their son and daughter were. I was leaving this was right at the end of the 2019, I was there and I was going down the steps and he said Mr Sullivan, do you mind if I have your picture taken and we're putting together sort of, you know, a panorama of all the longtime guests? And I said sure, and then they they always closed down for the month of January, july too, yeah, yeah, in January, and they never came back. After January it was closed, and so I don't think they were sensing anything, but I think they had just more or less packed it in without telling anybody Because it's all gone. Now it's some other business. It was a very small restaurant, I know because it's all gone now and it's some other business.
Dean: You know it's. It was a very small restaurant.
Dan: You know I mean they may do, for they may do for almost 40 years with about at most they might've had 40 seats in the restaurant. That wasn't a very big restaurant Right. But let's Select is good, let's Select they sold. The two partners sold. They had been with it for 40 years and they sold and it's. You know the menu is smaller. There's some things not on the menu that I liked, but you know it's great.
Dean: Have you been to? There's the new French restaurant in Yorkville, off of you know where, if you go Bel Air basically that where Bel Air meets Yorkville if you continue across Yorkville in that little alleyway, there's a new French restaurant. I think. Yeah, they didn't last. No, they didn't Okay. No, cause they came in just before.
Dan: COVID right, yeah, they didn't last. Oh, they didn't Okay. No, because they came in just before COVID right? No, they didn't last at all. Okay, yeah, and I'm just trying to think.
Dean: Sophia Is there another? Sophia is another one. I think it's new, but I haven't experienced it.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, you know, there were a lot of casualties from the, you know.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Actually, Yorkville has gotten a lot less interesting because restaurants have gone out and retail stores have come in oh interesting. It doesn't have the same entertainment value that it did.
Dean: Interesting, I may have to rethink Where's the new? Where would be a suitable place for a guy?
Dan: like me, the Hazleton is really good. I mean, they're one restaurant there is really good, but you know I would go for Le Select, just for old time's sake.
Dean: Of course, yeah, yeah.
Dan: And we'll put it in the menu. I have a whole bunch of medical things. Usually on Saturday I go to my biofeedback program.
Dean: I go to osteo-stron and I get my hair cut. Okay.
Dan: But I can leave off the two medical things that day and just get my haircut.
Dean: Okay, fair enough.
Dan: And we'll, yeah, put it in for 1130. Would that be good? That's fantastic.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's not table 10 anymore, but we can get the same table, yeah, and that's where we.
Dean: That's where we, that's where we launched the podcast series the joy of procrastination was launched right there.
Dan: Yeah, what are you thinking about procrastination now, after all these?
Dean: years. I think it's amazing. I mean, I think this whole idea of the you know as a superpower, I think it's absolutely true. What I still I'll tell you what I'm personally working on right now is my ability to do what I say I'm going to do. At the time, I say I'm going to do it without any external scaffolding, and I'm realizing that. You know, I'm just now eight weeks into the health program that I'm doing with Jay and Team Dean all together there, and what I've found is that's working really well because it's created the external scaffolding and support and exoskeleton that allows me to stay on track, or create that bobsled run, as Ned Halliwell would say.
And so now my attention in May here now is turning to myself. I have, Dan, an abundance of time. I have, all of you know, a consulting client that I talk to on Tuesdays at one. I have a my real estate accelerator group on Wednesdays at three, and then on alternate Thursdays, I have my co-agent call and my email mastery call, and so, all told, it's four to six hours a week of synchronous and scheduled requirement. Right, Then I basically have 100% of all of my time available, and I do. I've always sort of you know having free time leads to having the ability to be creative and do things, but what I find is I often end up in a paralysis of opportunity.
you know of that I could do this I could do this, I could do this, I could all of those intentions. You know that I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, I could all of those intentions you know. But I very rarely get anything done. Fits and spurts right, and so that's what I'm really kind of. I'm really trying to figure out the formula for me on that.
Dan: That's why I was curious about you know, you know, I would say this that I, if I didn't have obligations, or commitments. Let's say commitments, yeah, like I have, I have commitments. I wouldn't be very productive just on my own Right. I mean, I won't do something just because I want to do something. To see it, it has to involve my team and it has to involve my clients, otherwise I won't do it Right. And so I always have deadlines related to those two parties, and I really like deadlines.
I really like deadlines because, you know, and usually I get it done just before it's needed. And the reason I like that is if I just have enough time to actually and I don't have any more time, I just have enough time to get something done, then I'm totally focused. If I've got more than enough time to get something done, then I'm totally focused. If I've got more than enough time to get something done, then I can be distracted by something else Me too.
Dean: I realized I started thinking about a progression of the way things are going to get done. Most certainly is synchronous and scheduled is 100% certainty that it's going to get done. Then kernis and unscheduled is also getting done, like that's what other my consulting clients or the people that I work with we don't have necessarily every tuesday at one o'clock or whatever it may hey, are you available to talk? You know, on this day and we put it in the calendar and but it's not like recurring, that, it's not locked in obligation. I usually keep my calendar. You know I schedule those things about two weeks out.
And then the next level up then. So that's synchronous and sort of unscheduled, but we'll do it. Then the next thing is asynchronous with a deadline, is likely to get done, but the thing where I want to be is asynchronous at my discretion and that's the most joyful thing, but nothing ever gets done.
Dan: That's the reality, right? Yeah, it's really funny. I was having a conversation about it was with someone at Genius Network. You don't know them and they were talking about how they're really into Zen. Know them, and they were talking about how they're really into zen okay, and and you know the oriental, you know that you detach from, you know physical reality, more or less yes, and, and I said, you know I've read things about them. You know I've read things, but reading things about zen isn't them right you know, it's not them.
You know, and and said the one thing I've noticed about people who are really deeply into Zen they're not real go-getters.
Dean: Interesting yeah.
Dan: Yeah, because for them, the things of the world, they're not really real.
Dean: You know they're sort of delusional.
Dan: And anyway, and I said, I have a really enjoyable engagement with the world. Yes, and it's entrepreneurial, so that makes it more enjoyable. I have nothing in my life that involves dealing with people who are in bureaucratic, private sector, bureaucratic or public sector. I have no nothing to do with anyone like that, and so everyone I mean my entire environment. I'm hearing an enormous amount of sound.
Dean: Sorry about that.
Dan: What I notice is that I live in almost like a complete entrepreneurial universe. I mean both business-wise and also socially you know, so I don't really know much about what's happening outside of the entrepreneurial world. I mean, I read it. I mean I read it on the internet, but it doesn't really impact on me. You know, I mean taxes do, inflation does and everything like that, but not in a serious way. And the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar is very comfortable right now.
Dean: It's about $1.37.
Dan: Okay, yeah, I always enjoy that.
Dean: It's a nice offset.
Dan: Yeah, people say, why do you live in Toronto with the taxes so high? And I says, well, it all depends on where your money is coming from.
Dean: Right right, right right, and you know the patents are.
Dan: We're up to 19 now. We have 19 patents so far. And that has its own asset value. And yeah, so it's really nice right now At 80, it's really at age 80. So it's really nice right now at 80, it's really at age 80. It's really nice.
Dean: Yeah, is that so? I am curious, though, if so, the deadlines. If we think about that progression right Of synchronous and scheduled, synchronous unscheduled with a deadline and asynchronous at your discretion, where's your power zone? Are you able to spend time productively in asynchronous at your discretion, or does what drives your thing be the deadline?
Dan: No, I let other people schedule my life. I let other people schedule my life. Okay, yeah so all the dates in the calendar are someone else's schedule and then they have their schedule for me to get the material in, because it always involves some sort of teamwork.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Before a workshop, you have to get the new artwork in according to the production team's schedule, not my schedule. Right and I have some really good rules with that. If it's 80%, good we're going to go with it, even though. I got a better idea at the last moment. I never load them up with last minute requests because from the audience's standpoint it's 100%. It's only our judgment that is 80%, right, exactly.
Dean: They don't know. It's 100% of what they got. That's exactly right.
Dan: Yeah, I don't know that there was something better that could have been done. They don't know that, so I'm pretty easy with them. Every once in a while there's a last-minute thing and because I never bother them very much, they're up to it. But if it was a steady diet that they had of the last minute, then you'd lose their ability to respond at the last moment. So I never take advantage of that, except there is some situations where you know it's a good idea to do it.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. How much of your time is spent brainstorming and sketching and thinking, like, working out an idea for a thinking tool or the content for a book? Because I imagine that's kind of where it all begins. Right, you're coming to the table, yeah, with the idea this is the book I'm to write, and how much of it is you, uh, I'm really curious about, like because I've discovered you know, my power verbs as part of our discussion through the joy of procrastination.
But what would be? Do you have time like that where you're? Do you have a notebook that you use, or do you sketch, or do you know?
Dan: I'm pretty much um. I'm pretty much a fast filter person, so yes, uh I get the idea and then I go through and I say this is the best result, worst result, and here's the five success criteria.
Dean: And by the time I finish.
Dan: By the time I finish, the first fast filter I'm launched and then it's right into the introduction, the chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, you know.
So yeah but I was talking to a new member of genius network. A great family actually, a father and two sons all joined and it's called the pompa method and it's, you know, getting rid of all the metals in your body and everything. You're living with mold and everything else and so much of sickness comes from heavy metals in your bloodstream and it comes from very, very serious negative impacts of having mold in your house and I think you would be more in danger of that than we would here in toronto.
I think florida's can be sort of damp, you know things. I would say that uncared for physical things in Florida deteriorate pretty fast, don't they?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And anyway, and he didn't really know me at all, like there was no prior knowledge, when we met and I started talking and he says you know, I'm doing everything well, but not writing books. And he says I have some sort of block to the book. And I said do you have a book in mind? And he says, yeah, I've got notes and notes. And I said you know, the easiest solution to writing your one big book is not do that. What you want to do is write 100 books.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yes, right, yes, book. And he says, well, how do I think about that? And I says, well, do you have a good chapter already? If you were going, to write a good chapter in your you know. You know it's a good idea, it's one chapter, it's one idea. Could you write a book on one idea. And he said yeah, but I've got so much more to say. I said I know you got we all do.
I said we all got a lot more to say, but we don't have to say everything right now. We can say one thing right now and I showed him one of my books and he said, oh my God, oh my God, but it's so short. And I said yeah, and you can read it in an hour.
Dean: I said it's big type too.
Dan: It's 14 point type and it's Helvetica, very easy to read. And it's got lots of subheads. You could get the meaning of the book if you just read the subheads. If you didn't read all the text. Just read the subheads and the titles. You could get the meaning of the book, or you could read the cartoons or you could listen to the audible or you could watch the videos, know everything else.
And it was like he, it was like a religious conversion. And he says, oh my god, I've got so much things that could become small books. And I said, yeah, the ebook. Research indicates that if your book is less than 60 pages, you'll'll get 85% complete readership out of it.
Dean: Mine are 44.
Dan: I only have 44 pages in a book and so, going back to your question, I don't have to do much brainstorming because I've done the same format over now. We're just completing number 38.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I totally know One of the big problems of writing a book for the first time. Well, how long is it going to be?
Dean: and what are the?
Dan: chapters going to be. I know it's got an introduction, it's got eight chapters and it's got a conclusion, and then it's got a little section on the program in Strategic Coach. And then it's got a little section on the program in Strategic.
Dean: Coach.
Dan: So that's why I like repeating good formats, because you're not doing all this guessing. What's it going to look like? I know, I mean, I know what it's going to look like, I know how long it's going to be, I know what the pages are going to look like I know that. So that forces people to procrastinate and stop and everything else, and I've removed all that execution complexity right up front. And then I've got nine other people who are responsible for the finished product Right right yeah, and. I've got deadlines for them.
Dean: The deadlines.
Dan: You know they're already in the schedule. Basically it's a two-month project to get the book finished and all my deadline dates are in the schedule. They're just presented to me. These are the deadlines I said okay. I'm cool. So see, I'm being managed by other people's schedules and that takes a lot of the uncertainty on my part out of the way.
Dean: Yeah, you know, what's funny is I've been thinking about my, because I'm very reliable in synchronous and scheduled things Meeting deadlines and meeting deadlines. Yeah, I'm never, you're never late, you're never unprepared.
That's exactly right. That's why synchronous and scheduled for sure I would say you're never unprepared chat at somebody's event or as a guest on somebody's podcast, where I don't have to prepare what I'm going to talk about. I do it in the thing and that's why having the format that I've chosen for my More Cheese, less Whiskers podcast is the guest, is the focus, and I've been preparing for this conversation with them for 30 years and I bring all of that with it. I don't have to think about it ahead of time. So synchronous and scheduled, 100% gets done and it's right in my go zone.
What I have been thinking about is if there were a way to think about signing myself to. Have you ever heard the term an FSO contract? It's in the entertainment business. People will contract with a entertainer's company for services of Dan Sullivan. So it'd be entering into a contract with strategic coach FSO Dan Sullivan and that would be a really interesting thing. If I had a way of thinking about myself, detached from myself, as a thing that I could tap into for services of Dean Jackson, it would be an interesting you know, I'm just applying it to myself.
Dan: I don't trust the guy to show up Right, exactly, that's the thing He'll be on the way and he'll see something interesting. And then, yeah, you know you have to track him down. It's too much work, you know but I'm like you I'm very reliable as it comes to you know, you know commitments to other people. I'm very reliable. So I said and it's not work for me to do that. So you know, I just never, ever want to disappoint you know, I just never ever.
Yeah, and but when I'm just dealing with myself, well it's, it's really loosey goosey, you know.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah, He'll find some excuse, you know, you know he's very slippery.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, the neighbor's dog ate the homework. You know, you know, he's very slippery. Yeah, yeah, the neighbor's dog ate the homework you know, everything like that. Yeah, and I I put myself in the gap when I'm doing that, but what I've done is, over the years I've made things I'm really intensely interested in public offerings, in other words, I'm presenting it to an audience and I just things that I'm really intensely interested in. I've connected now with making money.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And you know, the making of money really makes things official.
Dean: Yes, yeah, so yeah, very, I mean it's taken a long time.
Dan: I mean, I'm not saying this, was you know, but more and more as I've gotten lazier.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Anything that I'm actually interested in doing better make money. Right right right, isn't that funny.
Dean: That's still the motivator, even though as time goes on 1600s, early 1700s.
Dan: He said the making of money is probably the most innocent thing that humans can engage themselves, involve themselves with. He said making money it's really clean, you know it's sort of a really clean activity and there's an exchange and you feel a real sense of accomplishment and achievement. You know, there's just something about something where it has to be good for both sides. It's got a much higher energy impact to it.
Dean: It's good for me, it's good for them, and it's not just double the pleasure, it's 10 times the pleasure yeah, and I mean, you know the nice thing about it is that to do it sustainably, there has to be a durable exchange of value. You know it has to be. Yeah, that's what's so? That's what I mean. That's what's so clean about it. Right Is everybody wins yeah.
I love that. That's what I love about marketing, you know, is that it's just such a great. I feel really great about being a connector in businesses who can really add value to people and getting the message out to the people who can need that value as much as possible.
Dan: And you know the thing is, it's actually the creation of something new, that didn't exist and then, once the exchange has been happened, it exists something new has been created and you know, and it's a, it's kind of proof that you're real.
Yes, right, right it's a, it's kind of proof that you're real. Yes, right, right, you know, I mean you have people involved in various you know involvement of psychiatric treatment and you know they said, well, I don't know if the world is real, I don't know if I'm real, and I said well, if you're only asking your opinion, it's going to be hard to pin down.
Dean: Yeah, right on.
Dan: You have to get some proof from someone who's not you that you know that what you do is valuable.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's what the that's the true, that's the great thing about capitalism, you know is that it's? Voluntary. It's voluntary, right yeah?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was watching. You know the Shark Tank guy. He's Canadian, kevin O'Leary. Yeah, yeah, I was seeing him and he was saying he was just telling the protesters on the campus that it's being noted in the job market who these people are and they don't realize the price that they're paying and they have masks. And he said, doesn't matter, we're picking up your eyeballs. He said that every single person who was involved in the january 6th you know the- yes they.
Within about two months, they knew who every individual was and where he was, because the technology is now so good.
And he said. They're being used at the university campuses by the police and everybody else and every one of you who's upsetting campus life and is doing that, it's noted that you were doing this and if your resume tries to present you're a different person from who you are in the student protest, doors just will be closed to you. You will never get any direct message that you were in the protest, but you'll notice over the 10 years after you go to college and go out in the marketplace that you don't have much opportunity and it's a really good talk.
Because he says you think there's no cost to this. There's a big cost to this talk. Because he says you think there's no cost to this, there's a big cost to this. And he says you think you're inflicting the cost on someone else. I have to tell you, over 10 years the cost will be inflicted on you. And I just thought it was a neat little talk.
Dean: Yeah, he's a pretty smart guy, I mean just like as a philosopher, you know.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah and anyway, but I found it interesting that you know this rears up every once in a while. It's a bit like a fever, you know that. But this is very well planned. All these students have been in training for the before they actually show up as a protest. They've been in training by, you know, by activists. You know trainers and the activists who train them are never there. They train them and then you know they're off camera and you know they're tracking down the money sources. These people are being paid, you know. I mean they're actually being paid to do this and everything like that you know and everything like that.
But it's an interesting thing how it's harder and harder to do things in secret these days.
Dean: I was just thinking that, like back in, you know the fifties and sixties, seventies, eighties, even. You know everything now is is on, everything is on camera. You have to assume that you're every move.
Dan: Yeah, they're probably you know, communicating with other people on social media. You know they're yeah they're not just doing this in quiet, for right five, six, five, six days in a row, I mean they what got them out, you know, into the movement was probably social media.
Hey, we're going to do this and nothing else. And you should come to a meeting and we're going to do this. And you know, I think late teens and early 20s people don't think too much about that, you know, they don't really think that it shows up. But we're, you know, in our company, we really do extensive social media searches when we have a job, you know, a job applicant.
Dean: Oh, you do, oh yeah, deep dive.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, deep dive. We had one woman and she came in and you know where our cafe is in the. Toronto office. And she came in and she was sitting out in the, you know, in the reception area and something about her just caught my attention. And then she came in and she was just perfectly done up, you know, I mean her clothes were great.
Dean: And.
Dan: I watched her as she went through the cafe back to Babs' office and I said she's just too perfect. I said there's something wrong here.
And afterwards she left and they were saying, boy, what a resume. She has a resume and everything else. I said there's something too perfect about her. I said I get the sense that something's off about her. So they went searching and they found out that she had a whole separate life as a burlesque dancer. Oh really, wow, that didn't show up. That didn't show up. And she even had a you know like a brand name for who she was in her other work.
She had a completely you know and she was in clubs and they're sort of not public clubs and everything like that and not that there's anything wrong with being a burlesque dancer If that's your, you know. I mean, I mean it's not really my, you know my favorite form of entertainment. But you know, but the fact is that she hid the other part of her life, and that's the sense that I got. There's something too perfect about her. There's another side of her that's not being seen, so it will be discovered.
If you have another life besides the one that you're presenting, it will be, discovered. Yeah, there's no hiding now, right yeah, and the simple way is just be who you are.
Dean: Ah, that's exactly right, that digital split. Yeah, and the simple way is just be who you are. Ah, that's exactly right, that digital split.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, and the people that we really have long-term relationships with invariably are people who just do they. There's not another them. Right, yes exactly Right, right, right yeah. So anyway, did you learn anything about the way I approach things?
Dean: I did. I mean, I think that's you know your organizing context. Like you know, I've been thinking about it in this terms of imagine, if you applied yourself, you know, and this is the applied portion of things and it sounds like your, the fast filter is the gateway into the applied world, right it's?
yeah that's that starts. That makes it real because you're making it up and then you're making it real with a fast filter, yeah. And then that, when presented to your project manager or one of your project managers, you know you use the term, you know I mean executive function.
Dan: You know you're lacking in executive function. I don't think that's true. I think, from a creative standpoint, you retain a lot of total executive function. I think what I've completely delegated to other people is management function.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: It's not executive function, it's executive execution function. I've got the starting execution, but then there's got to be a handoff. Starting execution. But then there's got to be a handoff and after the making it up stage then I have to hand it off to other people.
Dean: I used to try to do the management function and I'm just no good at it. Yeah, and you know you're. The thing about the quarterly book is a. You know that's a viable construct. You know that's a durable context, that you're 38 quarters into a hundred quarter adventure, you know yeah, yeah, and that you know. So there's that sort of rhythm, contextual rhythm, that sticks with it.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, that sticks with it.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: It's kind of a future time commitment. You know, like I'm not, I'm 40% through a 25-year project, so that means I've got, you know, I've got 2039, that I hit At the end of 2039, I hit quarter number 100, you know yeah right, and you know, and that gives me an incentive to make sure you're there. Yeah, right, exactly. Oh, that's so funny. Whatever it's going to take, make sure you're there, because you know it won't do if it's just 95.
Dean: Right, yeah, no, that's exactly right. I love it. Well, I found this very it sounded very interesting. I appreciate it and I'm very excited about table 10 reunion. Yes, so I'll set that up on the 15th or whatever.
Dan: Yeah, you know what I'll do is. I'll say to the Maitre D just for today, can this be table 10?
Dean: Yes exactly.
Dan: It's only table 10 when Dean and Dan are there, that's exactly right.
Dean: I know exactly where the table is, no matter what we call it, it's still there. I mean it's still there, I'm going to put it in Dan at 1130 on the 15th Perfect Table 10. Table 10. Dan at 11.30 on the 15th Perfect Table 10. Table 10. I like that.
Dan: All right.
Dean: Okay, thank you, so much Are we on next week Yep. We'll be back from Nashville Perfect.
Dan: Yeah, we get back on Saturday, so this is great.
Dean: Perfect.
Dan: Well.
Dean: I'm sorry I'm going to miss the big birthday bash, but I'm sure it'll be wonderful and we'll have exciting things to talk about next week. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, good.
Dean: Thanks Dan.
Dan: Okay, bye.
03 Mar 2021
Ep011: Who's in Cloudlandia
01:05:51
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about the scaleability of finding the right people, and Dan's new book, 'Who Not How'.
17 Nov 2021
Ep044: The Desire for Progress
01:00:54
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about the ongoing desire for progress.
Join Dean and Dan as they detail and discuss how Cloudlandia is facilitating the evolution of the idea of age and how the entire longevity arena is changing.
Ep130: The Digital Economy and Its Impact on Productivity
00:47:38
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we have a thought-provoking discussion around AI and its future implications. We introduce Juniper, an advanced voice-based AI capable of tasks from writing to coding, giving insight into emerging technologies.
We explore impacts like the attention economy, where value emerges without physical costs. Success stories like Mr. Beast showcase uniqueness and AI's potential to tackle real issues.
The episode delivers a well-rounded look at AI capacities and societal changes. References to early smartphone adoption phases parallel today's AI capabilities.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We discuss the potential of voice-based GPT-4.0 AI, specifically highlighting "Juniper" with a Scarlett Johansson-like voice, and its various applications from writing to coding.
We compare the current adoption of AI to the early days of smartphones, emphasizing that we are only beginning to understand AI's full capabilities.
We explore historical productivity trends, noting a decline since 1975, and question whether modern technology truly enhances productivity or just alters our perception of it.
We debate the role of technology giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla in shaping productivity and economic measurement.
We reflect on the mid-20th century advancements such as electrification and infrastructure, and compare them to today's computing power and its economic impact.
We discuss the concept of the attention economy and the creation of value from digital products without physical production costs, using digital creators like Mr. Beast as examples.
We consider the potential of AI in solving real-world problems such as city traffic congestion and climate understanding, rather than just creating new opportunities.
We emphasize the importance of practical solutions and specific use cases to fully leverage the capabilities of advanced AI technologies.
We touch on the economic shifts in the digital era, including the rise of digital transactions and the non-tangible realm of digital innovation.
We highlight the unique nature of success in the digital world, using examples like Mr. Beast and Taylor Swift, and discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, who is that person that gives the directions when we start the podcast?
Dan: Well, I'm not sure the one that says this podcast this call may be.
Dean: You are the first one on this conference phone call, oh my goodness, who is she?
Dan: Who is she? She's a bot. She's not real. She's a bot. She's not real. She's not real. She's not real, she doesn't sound.
Dean: I've heard worse sounding bots.
Dan: Dan, I have been experimenting, playing around with chat GPT-4.0. And I use it primarily in voice mode, meaning, you know, I just say things to it and it has an amazing Scarlett Johansson-like voice that has zero, not at all like Siri or Alexa. You know where those voices definitely sound like. They are bots. This, my GPT-4O I think her name's Juniper is the voice that I chose. She sounds like a real person, I mean, and has like real tone, real inflection, real like conversational feeling to it and I realized that I don't think we really understand what we have here. I mean, I look at it and I think, imagine if that was a real person.
Dean: Now, when you say we, who are you talking about?
Dan: I mean the collective royal we I I'm sorry I've never been around yeah, I just think we as a when I say we, we as a society or we as the people collectively using this, it reminds me of this Seinfeld episode where Kramer got this or Jerry got his dad, this wizard organizer, and they always use it as a tip calculator, like the least of all the functions that it has. They're just excited that it's a tip calculator, and I feel like that's the current level of my adoption of Juniper.
Dean: Yeah, I think the big thing is what you let's say, a year from now, level of my adoption of Juniper, you know, yeah, I think the big thing is what you let's say a year from now. You're using Juniper for a year. What do you think will be different as a result of having this capability, new capability?
Dan: Well, I think it's operator, you know, I think it's operator dependent, you know, I think it's up to me what I think if you said to me. You know, I think it's up to me what I think if you said to me listen, I'd like to introduce you to Juniper. She's going to come here and she'll be within. She's going to follow you around. She's going to be here within three feet of you or discreetly out of sight, whatever you, but whenever you call she'll be right there. She is a graduate level.
She is a graduate level student. She could pass the bar. She knows everything that's ever been recorded, she speaks every language. She never sleeps, she can write, she can draw, she can do graphics, she can do coding Whatever you like, and she's yours 20 to a month. Have fun, yeah, do you think you'd use it Well?
that's my question is that it feels like I'm not using it and I have it. That's essentially what I have. I've got it in my pocket. You know how they said. You know the iPod was launched with the promise of a thousand songs in your pocket. Well, I think this is really like. You know, an MBA or a PhD or whatever you want in your pocket is essentially what we have, and I find it very interesting.
Dean: No, I think it's unique, you know, and it's brand new. But what problem did you have that this solves?
Dan: Well, I think that it's not per se a problem, but I think that we're I really have been observing and thinking, and I've said it you know in lots of our conversations, that I think that 2020, you know, if we take the 50-year period from 1975 to 2025, that we've pretty much set the stage now for a new plateau launch pad kind of at the same time. I don't. I think that once we understand and people you know, I think it's almost like the iPhone had the app store, that became what Peter Diamandis called the interface moment.
Right, that was the you know, that allowed, once people realized that the capabilities of the iPhone to both measure geographically where you are at any precisely at any moment, the gyro thing that can detect movement, the sound, the camera capabilities, the touch screen, all of those things, Well, people realized what the baseline capabilities of the phone were.
They were able to architect very specific, you know, starting with games very specific ways to use the capabilities that are very specific ways to use the capabilities that are built into the phone and I think that right now it's almost like it can do anything, and I think that we need to figure out the very specific use cases and I think we'll see people.
Dean: You keep saying we, but I don't think we is going to do it. I think you know, who we are. Do we have a cell phone number? Do we have a street address?
You know, I think you're having a very interesting personal experience with the new technology. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if anybody else is going to be in on this, but the big thing is, how are you going to set it up so that you can prove that this is valuable? I mean, let's say, three months from now the time you come back to.
Toronto for your next strategic coach pre-zone workshop things you're going to test out and see if the inclusion of this spot with a very sexy Scarlett Johansson voice. This isn't the issue that she sued somebody for.
Dan: I think it's, I don't know actually this voice is. It's not exactly her, but it's, you know, it's that tone and things.
Dean: So yeah, so.
Dan: I don't know that. It's a pleasing voice, much more pleasing and personal than Siri or Alexa, for instance. Yeah, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right it does come down to and I think that's where the paralysis of you know the it can do anything, but you know what would be you know where my mind goes.
Dean: It's which, how that I already have, but am I going to assign this capability to so that I don't have to spend any time whatsoever interacting with this bot? But my who's a you know who's a live human being working for a strategic coach would that person actually work? Do this, you know, and actually and I tested out for three months what are you getting done faster?
So, for example, we have an AI newsletter that rewrites itself every two weeks and chooses new content, designs it and goes out and it uses up one hour of my Linda Spencer, who's one of my team members on the marketing team, and it's very interesting, I mean we have about 2000 people who read it and they grade it and everything like that.
But the only thing I have to do every two weeks she said here's the news, here's the results from the last newsletter, here's the design and contents of the next newsletter, yes or no? And I'll go through. I say, yeah, looks good, send it out, right. Yeah, now, that's not freeing me up, because we never had this capability before. It's a new capability, right, and it's been going for about nine months now and people will talk to me about it and you know everything like that and everything like that.
But I haven't seen that it's made a huge difference in the crucial numbers of strategic coach, which are marketing calls. Are we generating great leads that people are talking to us about? Are they signing up for the program? Are they whatever? So the normal measurements.
So I think, with any technology, the first thing I would establish before I got interested in the technology is what are the crucial numbers that we have that tell me that our business and myself are moving forward? And then, whatever I'm going to use the new technology for, it has to have an impact on those numbers. Yeah, I think that's yeah, because you know the amount of productivity. I'll use the United States as an example. You mentioned 1975 to 2025, 50 years of individual productivity in the United States was much higher in the 50 years before 1975, since it has been for the last 50 years since 1975. Even though there are these amazing books and that about how productivity is going through the world with the microchip. But the actual numbers which are gathered by the US government, the US Treasury Department, us Department of Labor, indicates that the level of individual productivity has actually gone down in the last 50 years even though the excitement level of productivity has gone through the roof.
Dean: By what measurement? What are they deciding? Is product?
Dan: Dollars of economic activity per hour per worker. Okay, that's how productivity is measured.
Dean: The number of workers.
Dan: You have the number of hours they work and the amount of economic dollars that their hour of activity produces. The productivity was much higher total for the entire all workers.
Dean: But is it all productivity or personal productivity? Like are you saying no all?
Dan: productivity? No, the entire GDP of the economy, measured by the number of workers. Yeah, okay by the number of workers it's going down, it's down. No, yeah, since 1975, it's not as great as it was from 1925 to 1975. So that 50-year period the productivity levels in the United States were bigger than the last 50 years.
Dean: Wow, that seems. That's surprising. What do you think that means?
Dan: Well, a lot of people are really excited and involving themselves in technological activity that produces absolutely no productivity. Yeah, they're very excited, they're very excited and they're getting very emotionally connected to this activity. But you know, I'm not saying that's not a great thing, I'm not. Maybe they're having more fun, Maybe they're you know, maybe they have.
Dean: What actually counts as GDP.
Dan: Well, GDP is amount of sales amount of sales.
Dean: Okay, so would the advertising sales that Mark Zuckerberg makes for Facebook count as GDP, or is it only in physical, like you know, shippable goods, or whatever?
Dan: Well, whatever, uh, you have a dollar spent on something that constitutes a sale to sale.
Dean: Okay, so advertising, so Google and Facebook and Netflix and all of those things count as GDP? Sure, okay, all right, then that seems impossible.
Dan: It seems impossible, but it's true.
Dean: That's pretty wild.
Dan: Yeah yeah. I'm not saying that Mark Zuckerberg isn't making a lot of money. I'm not saying Mark. Zuckerberg isn't productive. My feeling is that the technology is created, makes a lot of other people non-productive.
Dean: Yeah, and I wonder I mean that's a do you think you know if you measured that in terms of the total population versus the workforce? Is that what? In terms of the total population versus the workforce, is that what you know? I'm just looking for some explanation of this right.
Dan: Somewhere along the line, there has to be an economic transaction for it to constitute and everything else. See, this is the difference. Yeah and everything else See this is the difference? China talks about its GDP, but they don't use the same term that everybody else in the world uses. They use the economic value of what they've produced. So they can produce a million machines and they're sitting in a warehouse and they count that as GDP gross domestic product. But there was no sale, it's, you know, they spend it, it was an economic activity.
There was a transaction there, but there was no sale. So I think that's the big thing. It doesn't count unless there's a sale.
Dean: GDP, doesn't it?
Dan: doesn't count as GDP unless there's a sale. Somebody makes money, yeah.
Dean: Okay, money Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's pretty.
Dan: No, I'm not saying it's not exciting. And here's the.
Dean: Thing.
Dan: Maybe it's an A&I, it's what I would R&D stage. The last 50 years have been R&D stage. For the next 50 years, which are going to be 100 times bigger of GDP. Okay, that may happen, but it's not happening yet.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean you can definitely see, like the capabilities of you know, you can definitely see this replacing many customer service interactions, for sure. For instance, it's like a you can definitely see that going away, that there's not going to be a need for humans manning a customer service telephone center, for instance you know, yeah, I mean if it's good, I mean if it's good you know, and it depends upon the service that's being talked about, but if it's good, you know, maybe it does See, efficiency is not effectiveness.
Dan: You know, and effectiveness is that you made a sale. Efficiency is we took all the activities leading up to a sale and we made them more, faster and easier. Yeah, the question is did you get a sale out of it?
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Mm-hmm, yeah, so. I don't know, but I think there's a bit of a magician show going with a lot of different kinds of technology, you know. I mean, it was like somebody was saying, you know, they were talking about EVs and specifically they were talking about a Tesla, and specifically they were talking about a Tesla. And he says do you know how much faster zero to 60 is in a Tesla than any gas-powered? Or you know, and I said, to tell you the truth, I don't know.
Dean: To tell you the truth. You know.
Dan: Geez, you know All the things I've been thinking about since last Monday. I'm sorry, I just didn't get to that one Anyway. And he says well, it's easily a second faster. I said good. I said now, where do you do this? There isn't any way. We're in greater Toronto, the area of greater. Toronto 6 million people, where you can go from 0 to 60 on a city street in two seconds. You know and everything like that.
He said, yeah, but boy, you know, I mean, just think of that, how much faster you can go. And I said, yeah, but Teslas don't go any faster in Toronto than any other car, that's true, and usually they're stopped.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right yeah.
Dan: So I think the Tech Magic Show, I think it multiplies people's imagination, but it doesn't multiply their results. You know, I think there's something about it. And I think this is great. I mean what you're telling me. I've had some really boring people on the other end of a phone call and Scarlett Johansson would really liven it up a little bit.
Dean: Absolutely yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, I was noticing that Cleveland hired Jack Nicholson and they still use it. It must have been 20 years ago. All the announcements, the regular announcements like don't leave your bags unattended, and things like that, oh right. There's a whole bunch of just what I would call airport announcements, and they have Jack Nicholson doing it and you stop and listen every time it starts. You know it's very effective and I'm sure and I'm sure Scarlett, I'm sure Scarlett Johansson would do a good job too.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's so, it's so funny. I mean, that seems. I'm just dumbfounded by the fact that productivity has decreased in the 50 years that we're talking about here.
Dan: Yeah Well, think of the 50 years, though, and you gave me that great book.
Dean: Yeah, you gave me the book that was 1900 to 1950, 1925.
Dan: But 1925 to 1975, the entire country was being electrified. They're laying in lines and everybody was the farm that I was on. I was born in 1944. That farm was electrified in 1928. So it was only 16 years that they had electricity. Right, and you know they were putting in the entire water systems. The Tennessee Valley Authority was putting in all these dams and the electric plants. You know Lake Mead as a result of the Hoover Dam.
They were putting in all those dams and that just produced enormous jumps and the cars were going in, the gas systems, all the infrastructure for gasoline was going in. It was just a monstrously productive period of time. And then all the production that went into the second world war, which they then had as productive capability after the war stopped and so they had all the manufacturing capabilities you know and you know and so. But there's to see the thing is, the real jump that's happened is the jump in computing. There's no question.
Dean: There's been a monstrous jump.
Dan: It's a billion times since 1970. It's a billion times. That doesn't translate into money, and money is what productivity is based on. How much more money are you making per hour of human labor? How much more money are you making for our human labor? Now maybe somebody will say well, we got to start counting the robots in our GDP. Something is doing work. Yeah, Just I mean wow, wow, wow, the only problem with you know the only thing about robots, though they're shitty consumers.
Dean: Yes, exactly that's so funny. Yeah, they don't buy anything you know.
Dan: Yeah, A computer is a good worker, you know. It doesn't take breaks, doesn't get sick you know doesn't form unions anything. You know it doesn't go home, it doesn't have a house, doesn't have furnishings doesn't need furniture doesn't go out to eat.
Dean: Right, right. We're definitely in a stage right now where there's opportunities more than ever for economic alchemy, creating money out of nothing, seemingly compared to 1975.
I'm not sure how that happened, I think, since in the digital world we're essentially creating money out of ether, you know, out of attention, even in a way that if we just take the attention economy or the portion of the money that is derived from the advertising world in, where it was print ads, television ads, radio ads those were things that were kind of happening in 19, right and, but they were selling sort of physical goods, whereas now I remember having a conversation with Eben Pagan about this, when I did a book Stop your Divorce in 1998, when it was when PDFs were just coming to be a thing where you could create a digital document that didn't require printing a physical book and you could email that or somebody could download it.
And I just realized that you know, in that we've literally sold $5 million of a picture of a book not physically printing. These thousands and thousands of books, it's literally no zero physical good. That's why I wondered about whether the GDP is only measuring you, because we're definitely in a time where you can create money from nothing and the way that was driven was from Google AdWords.
Dan: You can't create anything from nothing. No, I mean nothing physical, any. You can't create any. I don't think you can create anything from nothing there. No, I mean okay, nothing physical. Okay, that's what I mean.
Dean: Yeah, like you look at it, that the book, you know we created the book and turned it into a pdf that was put on a website that there's no physical manifestation of it's, only digital. You can only see it online. People would search on Google for save my marriage or how to stop a divorce, or any of the keywords we could magically get in front of those people on their screen. They could click oh, stop your divorce, how do I do that? They click on that. They read this digital.
It didn't cost anything other than what was paid for was that we paid google for the, you know, for sending that, you know the ability to display that person, that opportunity to somebody. We paid google every time somebody clicked on that ad and then they would buy the book and it would automatically take them to a page to download the book. There was no inter, no human interaction and no physical exchange. It was all 100 digital and that was where, you know, I started referring to that as alchemy, really like creating money out of of bits. You know, yeah, yeah, that's so that.
Dan: Yeah, I think there's no I think there's uh no question that we've moved into a what I call a non-tangible realm of creating value, creating property and everything else, but at the end of the day it all adds up somewhere where this constitutes an economic transaction and as far as the accountants care, they don't care whether it was something physical or sold or everything. There's taxes that are taken out of that. I don't see the remarkable difference. You're using a different medium, but there is work that goes into that.
And you had a big payoff with one, but there were another thousand people right at the same time you were doing that and their results? They put in a lot of work, they put in a lot of effort and it didn't produce any money whatsoever. Efforts go into GDP, your efforts go into GDP and there's way more of them than there is of you. So it brings you the overall results down and you know so and we kind of know. We kind of know that. You know productivity numbers. You know, like, on a year I know people talk about well, that productivity is going to go up by 20% as a result of that.
Well, that may be true for a single company, but that's not true for the industry they're in, because their new thing going up by 20% may actually make obsolete 5 or 6 or 20 other companies who have had productivity that a year before, but now they have no productivity at all. So their loss of productivity is balanced against the gain of productivity.
Dean: Yeah, that's interesting. I guess you think about that. That could be true in all the casualties of the digital transition here, right Like, what do you look at?
Dan: Well, certainly the advertising world, certainly the advertising world, I mean before Mark Zuckerberg and before Google, newspapers like the New York Times.
Dean: Daily.
Dan: Edition was very thick.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And half of it was advertising. Now it's very thin okay because, they don't have the same. Yeah, but there's winners and losers, you know, in this, and you have a technological breakthrough, you have far more losers than you do winners.
Dean: Yeah, I'm looking at like I was just listening to an interview with that Tucker Carlson did with someone I forget who, some former CBS correspondent you know, and they were talking about the new. You know what's really changed now is the reach capabilities you know, like Tucker really primarily being on his own platform but using the reach of x has, you know it's the audience is accessible to everybody, as opposed to him in the beginning of their careers, the only way to get reach was to be signed to a, a digital, or assigned to a traditional network where the eyeballs were.
But, now the eyeballs are accessible to everybody and it really becomes these are my words, but it's more of a meritocracy in a way that you're you know that it's available for everybody. The cream definitely can rise to the top if you've got a voice that people resonate with.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, and Tucker's a star, tucker's a star. He's got his following, he's got probably a couple million followers. Whatever he was big when he was on Fox and he had the top numbers on Fox and everything like that, but there aren't two of them.
Dean: Right, and you can't replace him with an AI either.
Dean: No, but what I mean is we pick out the winners. It takes a lot of losers to get to a winner, you know and I think this is more extreme in the Cloudlandia world than it is in the physical world- you know. I mean, I think there's a thing called network effect and the network effect is you can only have one Amazon. Basically, you can only have one Amazon. Because, the nature of Amazon is to suck everybody's customers up into one destination.
There aren't five Amazons competing with each other, and that's what digital does. A person like Taylor Swift couldn't have existed 20 years ago. They wouldn't have had the reach. Yeah, that's true, and she's got the reach today.
I mean she's coming along and she's got a lot of things going for her. She's very attractive, she's very productive, she pumps out songs all the time and the songs seem to resonate with a mood in the public right now. And everybody's got their cell phones and everybody's got that. And what I'm saying is, if you have one Taylor Swift, you can't have two. Well, yeah, that's.
Dean: I mean it's, I wonder you start to see that she's just a, she's one voice, right Like I look at, I've been following rabbit holes like up the chain. You know and I start so Taylor Swift is a good example that many of her biggest hits and biggest success have been in collaboration with Max Martin, who is a producer who I often talk about and refer. Second, he's got the second biggest number of number one songs to his credit, right behind. He just passed Paul McCartney or John Lennon, and only Paul McCartney is ahead of him. Now he's about five songs behind Paul McCartney.
What I realized is, you know, there's a way that it's kind of like you get max martin's voice is really what is, you know, behind most of the the most popular music, or much of the most popular music, and yet not many people could pick him out of a lineup. And then then I went another layer up. It just dawned on me, like in the last couple of weeks here, that the real catalyst to Max Martin's success was Clive Davis. Who is? Do you know who? Clive Davis is the former, or still, record executive.
Dean: He was the head of so far, your records so far. So far, you're introducing me to a lot of new people.
Dan: Okay, great well, I, I just love this that. You know, max martin, I've been saying, as that's the thing, like you think about one thing Max Martin's one thing has been making hit records. Right, that's all he's done. Making pop songs since 1996, or what is first number one. But if you trace it all the way back, the catalyst to it because he was in Sweden, there was a group years ago called Ace of Bass and they had a number one song.
But when you go all the way back to how that happened, it was because Clive Davis, who was the head of Columbia Records and all its subsidiaries, arista and Jay Records, and all its subsidiaries, arista and J Records and all of these things, he found that song. He's like a guesser and better. He was guessing that song is going to be a hit and he signed Ace of Base to bring them to America. So he plucked this obscure Swedish band out of and brought them to America and on the wave of that, created the opportunity for Max Martin to work with all these great artists that happened to be under the direction of Clive Davis. And if you go even one layer beyond that, the guy that owns Bertelsmann, you know G Music Group in Germany. They own almost all the record labels, kind of thing. It's him seeing Clive Davis and putting up a million dollars for Clive Davis to start this record label. It's amazing that it all, kind of you know, goes back to capital allocation.
Dean: But the big thing is none of that has to do with any productivity.
Dan: Yeah, that's the thing I wonder, you know, I mean that really.
Dean: No, well, what you're talking about is. You mentioned a name. Yes, and he does this and he's very successful and he's famous for being successful. But at the same time that he was doing what he was doing, there were 9,999 who were waiting on tables and doing this on weekends and nights, yeah, okay, and they weren't making any money at all. So what.
I'm saying is when you pick a winner out and you see, see how productive they are using new technology you also have to account for the people who are using the new technology and not making any money at all, and therefore it's not more productive. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I mean, you know we haven't talked about him for a while, Mr Beast. Yeah, and people say, see what you can do when you're 18? You won't see anything because he's so unique. And he has such a set of circumstances that there's nothing that he does that is repeatable by another person.
Dan: I mean, yeah, he just became just in the last, I haven't heard anything about him.
Dean: Is he still doing stuff? I don't know. Is he still doing stuff? I don't know. Is he still doing stuff? Yeah, yeah, he just became. Or is he retired at 28?
Dan: No full steam ahead.
Dean: He's got a 300-foot.
Dan: He just became the number one subscribed channel in the world. He was the number one individual but there was this T-Series channel in India, which wasn't a person a different thing. Now he's the number one thing. He's now working on an Amazon show. He's taking his stuff to to amazon still full steam ahead with his, with his videos, but he's doing a big game show series in uh with under the amazon banner yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: it's really interesting because you know again I go back that it seems to me that a lot you know and I've made this statement before is that a new technology comes out, or a new form of a new technology comes out. A whole series of people say I'm going to create a new company based on this technology and I want you know, I need some early investors.
I need investors to get there, and so there's a whole industry for doing that in Silicon Valley and other places, and so billions are raised, not just for the one you know, not one investment, but for let's say 50 investments. And none of them go anywhere, none of them go anywhere.
Dan: You know, nothing happens, okay, but people did make money because it's based on a Ponzi scheme kind of thing that the early investors get paid out by the late investors who end up pulling nothing and everything else.
Dean: None of that represents productivity. Right A lot of action, a lot of excitement, a lot of money, but no productivity. And we're seeing that with AI. Goldman Sachs, the big investment bank, came out that, going on two years since open AI, we just don't see that there's any money to be made with this, except if you're like the chip maker, NVIDIA.
They make a lot of money and they're very productive, and I think the reason is that I think that AI, if I look at the next 10 years, I think it's going to be very effective, it's going to be very useful and it's going to be very important for solving complexity problems that we already have on the planet. Okay, and you know, a great example is just large city congestion complexity, like Toronto, I think, may have the worst traffic congestion in North America.
Dan:
I did notice a big difference in that, even in the five years since I was there.
Dean: Yeah. And the main reason is that they're making new cars, but they're not making new roads.
Dan: Yeah, and I noticed that they've actually added a lot of bike lanes too, which have taken out some of the actual lanes.
Dean: Yeah, Actual lanes, yeah, yeah, so without some new kind of solution to congestion and I think AI is the perfect tool for this and that all the traffic lights, all the traffic lights in the city are a single system and you're just changing the frequency of the lights changing and everything around the car changing the frequency of the lights changing and everything around the country, and there's a sort of a master view, how you know you can reduce the amount of people just stuck in the city by 40% if we just get all the lights. That's a complexity problem.
Dan: You know and for example.
Dean: The other thing is they haven't. You know, for all. The study of weather is probably the most complex system that we have on the planet and to this day they have no notion what effect clouds have on climate. You know they don't. They really. Clouds are just very complex. So if you had the ability to, I mean, they know different types of clouds and different things that happen when you have different types of clouds. They know that, but there's no unification of their understanding of the cloud system.
And so you'd have to apply it to that. Now, you're not creating anything new with this. You're solving an existing problem. With this, you're solving an existing problem. My sense is that the best use of technology is always to solve some problem that you already have not create a new opportunity that's interesting.
Dan: So maybe that's how I mean yeah, go ahead. I was just saying maybe that's how I should be thinking about my relationship with juniper yeah, what?
Dean:what complexity problems do you have?
Dan: Exactly what complexity problems do I already have that Juniper could solve for me?
Dean: Yeah, like getting out of bed in the morning. That's a complexity problem. When does my first coffee arrive? Exactly yeah, why am I still thinking about this? Why at this late date.
Dan: Oh man, that is so funny.
Dean: It is funny.
Dan: The funny thing is I posted up on Facebook right before we got on our podcast today. I took a picture of my. I have these. I have these Four Seasons Valhalla coffee cups and I took a. I made a coffee before our here and I posted up a picture of it right Pre-podcast caffeination, prior to the prior to our podcast here. So I'm fully caffeinated. I'm on the, I'm on the juice.
Dean: Yeah, I will tell you this. Chris Johnson, great thinker in the FreeZone program he's got it's not his system, he's licensed his system from someone else but he had 32 callers to set up meetings with their primary salespeople for his company and he's in the placement business. He finds really good high-level people to go into construction companies and engineering companies. And he was telling us that his 32 human callers could make 5,500 phone calls and produce a certain result in a day of phoning.
And since he's brought in his AI system, they can do 5,500 in an hour and produce a better result of people agreeing to phone calls. Well, that's productivity.
Dan: Yeah, I guess. So yeah, pretty amazing huh.
Dean: And he let go his 32 humans. Oh, my goodness. Wow, so this is AI making outbound phone calls? These are all AI and they've got complete voice capability of responding to responses and everything else. And then they get better every day. They have sort of upgrades every day for it. And that's productivity, that's productivity.
Dan: Yeah, there's, yeah, that's a. That's an amazing story. An amazing story, I mean, you start to see, I just look at the things, even when we had the AI panel at FreeZone in Palm Beach. You're just seeing the things, even what Mike Kamix is able to create and the things that Lior is doing. You just think, man.
Dean: I think we're early.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely, we're early.
Dean: Yeah, I mean I think we're in the first or second year of the internet with us, right?
Dan: Exactly, I agree. That's why I say, that's why, in my summation here, I'm kind of thinking you know 2025, give it another 18 months. It's only 18 months old now when you really think about it. Right, this is it's 18 months, and give it another 18 months and we'll see that people you're already starting to see that people are taking the AI capabilities and they're honing it into an interface. That is, a logo maker, for instance, or AI. You know that it's already honed into the ability to specialize in making logos based on your prompts, or and I think that's where that's what I meant by the interface moment is people are going to start carving out, packaging very specific outcomes from the capabilities. Like, if we have these capabilities, what can we do and just deliver that specific outcome, rather than the capability to create that outcome that's why it's funny that that's kind of parallel to what I've been saying.
I've seen people that are taking and training large language models based on your you know, all of the you know let's call it all the Dan Sullivan content that's been out there and then touting it as you know, having Dan Sullivan in your pocket, that you can ask Dan anything of it in your pocket, that you can ask Dan anything. But I think the ability to ask you anything isn't as useful as the ability to have Dan ask you things. Yes, I think that's the question.
Dean: So in the last quarterly book, and the one we're finishing right now. So it was everything is created backward, where the tool we featured was the triple play, and then the next one is called casting, not hiring, where the tool is the four by four casting tool. We call it the four by four casting tool, and this is where I'm asking them questions.
Dan: Right, okay.
Dean: I don't see any value whatsoever of them asking me questions.
Dan: Right.
Dean: Because I'm not getting the benefit of the question. Some software program is handling it, so I'm not learning anything and I've got a rule that I don't involve myself in any activity where I don't learn something new.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: So there's getting the benefits, but plus we'd be competing with ourselves.
Dan: I love it All, right Well off, we go.
Dean: I will phone you next week I'll be at the cottage. I'll be looking out at a mystic blue lake while I'm talking.
Dan: Oh, wow.
Dean: It's really good yeah.
Dan: Awesome. Well, have a great week, okay, and I'll talk to you next week. Thanks, thanks, dan. Bye.
28 Apr 2021
Ep015: Building Trust in Couldlandia
01:04:44
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about building trust, and relationships with people in Cloudlandia
In this episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, Dean, and Dan talk about the story of four industry transformers who are big on customer-centeredness and the intersection of it all being the design part of everything.
In today’s episode of Welcome To Cloudlandia, Dan and I reflect on the lost art of letter writing and how corresponding through history has helped shape our podcasting discussions across time.
We speak about the meaningful routines that have guided creative minds, from the structured elegance of Victorian letters to our own cherished Sunday rituals.
We also explore memory-boosting techniques like visualization and repetition, applying them to maximizing focus and managing time efficiently through life’s challenges. The discussion spotlights approaches for evaluating routines that enhance well-being as work dynamics evolve, touching on parallels with societal shifts like the Great Depression.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean reflects on the joy of podcast recordings and the historical significance of letter-writing, drawing parallels between Victorian correspondence and modern podcasting.
Dan discusses the role of structured routines in creative individuals' lives throughout history, including segmented sleep schedules influenced by lighting and caffeine.
We explore the ABC questions as a tool for personal growth, helping to identify challenges that lead to immediate development when addressed.
Dan compares time management to a strategic investment, emphasizing focused work sessions and revisiting effective past habits for increased productivity.
We examine the impact of COVID-19 on workplace habits and the lasting effects, akin to those experienced during the Great Depression.
Dean highlights the SELF acronym for personal efficiency and discusses the changes in commuting and work relationships due to the pandemic.
Dan emphasizes the importance of aligning with one's natural rhythms post-retirement and the significance of consistent sleep schedules for overall well-being.
We delve into the life game analogy, illustrating the impact of 'crowding out' bad habits with good ones for a harmonious existence.
Dean discusses the importance of delegation and efficiency in daily routines, sharing his meal planning strategy that ensures balanced nutrition and time-saving.
Dan speaks on being selective about new habits at his age, focusing only on those that will last or reinforce existing beneficial habits.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: I'm Mr Jackson.
Dean: You know, I look at my calendar and I get this little ding on my phone that tells me we're coming up to podcasts with Dan, and it's always this little spur of joy that comes over me and I wonder where will our adventures take us today?
Dan: Yeah, it's a tough bet.
Dean: I'm guessing it's going to be somewhere wonderful and I'm betting on that. Yeah, yes.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know it's a nice structure because, other than my podcast with you, sunday's not a very interesting day for me.
Dean: Exactly. It's the highlight of the day and we've picked a good time.
Dan: We've picked the perfect time.
Dean: It kind of invisibly, you know, non-obtrusive in the day, we get the morning kind of ease into it, and then right around now is when we start thinking, okay, what are we going to do today? And here it is, and then we've got the rest of the whole day after this.
Dan: You know I read the last year a history of Victorian England. So this is basically 1830s till you know 1890s and 60 years, and there are people, you know very notable leaders and you know notable for other reasons, who would write up to 30 letters a day. Yes, and have them delivered by courier if they were in the city.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: If in London and there were some individuals that they wrote to virtually every day and then we get a return, yeah, and so the interest, the interesting thing about it is that the stain in touch with certain people and trading ideas goes back a long time.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: The UK probably had the first best postal service, you know which, and they had great courier services. Since I said, yes. And so our podcast is like sending a letter, you know, and, but you don't have to wait for the response.
Dean: I really like that. You know, because all the way back you think about all of that. You know the back as far as we can see, even almost. You know, every book of the New Testament in the Bible is letters. It's, you know, letters to, to. You know Paul's letters to the Ephesians or to the Colossians or to that's. It's an interesting thing.
I read a great book Richard Rossi turned me on to it years ago about the daily routines of notable people, like all the way back in time, and it was very interesting to see. You know, in the 1800s and the 1700s there, whatever is kind of known about the routines of, you know, different composers or writers or artists or whatever. It is pretty, pretty similar among creative people all across the board. They would, you know, they would kind of wake up and ease into the day with some coffee and you know, reading or whatever. Then they would do some, they would do some work and then they would break for lunch and maybe go for a walk and then do their. There was almost exclusively. They all did their correspondence where it was. You know what you were just talking about. They'd get their letters and they'd write their letters and that was the equivalent of.
Dan: And read their letters. And read their letters.
Dean: Yeah, read their letters and then in the evening they would meet with friends and you know and not, and then read or whatever before going to bed and they were pretty much typically all in bed Pretty early. That was the routine of the thing. Because there were less dopamine, I think was harder, you had to earn dopamine back then Right, yeah, yeah, I mean, I didn't get excited.
Dan: What keeps you excited? Did you also you know, when you were reading about the letter writing habit to do also come across the fact, which I found interesting, that and this obviously would be, you know, upper class people, because it required light, but that they wouldn't sleep through the night, like they wouldn't go to bed and sleep. They would have couple of sleeping periods where they'd go to bed and then they'd get up in the middle of the night and required light. So they obviously could afford candles or oil lamps, and they would.
They would spend a couple hours writing and reading and then they go back to bed for their second, for their second night time, did you?
Dean: come across that I did a couple of a couple of times and that was, I think, a pretty common practice back when people would kind of go to bed with the sun right and as the sun went down they would kind of not long after that go to bed. But it wasn't I don't recall it being the most common thing because a lot of these people were I don't know when that practice. Actually I'm familiar with it. I'm not sure when it was popular and when it stopped.
Dan: I think you had to have light you know, generally speaking, light was hard to come by. You know, one of the things that I'm always a bit irked about when they show, you know, movies that are historical movies, you know, in other words, they're dealing with a historical period and it's, you know, it's a palace or it's a castle or something, and it's right. There's hundreds of candles, you know, like hundreds of candles or there's fires?
I don't think so. I think it was pretty dark. I think it was pretty dark. I mean, the biggest thing which created nighttime you know, awake nighttime for us was probably kerosene you know, which you could have kerosene lamps and then gas lamps, you know you had gas systems and yeah, where you didn't have to individually fill the. And, as a matter of fact, we were both in London over the during the last 10 years when they were digging up the entire city to replace gas lines have been put in the 1880s and 1890s.
So it was they had been in the ground for 130 years and my sense is that there is a case to be made that it was lighting and also caffeine that created sort of like a second day for people. I just talked about a second night, second sleeping night, but also the all of a sudden when you had light available or places that had light and you had caffeine, people would work. You know, into the evening people would work. I think caffeine to a certain extent created productivity. You're not well you're a coffee drinker aren't you.
Dean: I am. Yeah, I have coffee in the morning. Yeah, I'd say two o'clock is the latest, but primarily it's only in the morning.
Dan: Yeah, I don't have anything after noon, after 12 noon. I don't have coffee, but you were talking about the habits of famous people Coffee was a good piece of it. I have a new tool I'm creating, you know, just to get people in touch with kind of things they always do without really reflecting on it. And it's called best lifetime habits. Okay, and generally speaking, a lifetime habit is a habit where you do it pretty well every day.
Dean: Yes, and I think that's. I have some of those for sure, like everybody does. Yeah, and you know there's. The thing is like. I think it was you that once said nobody looks for new habits except for the ones they are already accustomed to, right?
Dan: Once we already have.
Dean: And for me I've, because it's constantly the fun game, you know, of trying to systemize your.
You know, systemize things, look for the best way to, you know, be get as much happiness and productivity as you can out of your days and kind of go with the flow.
I've really determined that my the flow, for me it really falls into zones and I remember I had a great conversation with Ned hollow well, and you know he was saying and I've shared this with you before that you know he was saying when you think about my days, like a bobsled run and set up the bobsled track that you get in at the top and it slides and winds you through the course and you end up at the end with touching all the touch points that you want kind of thing, and otherwise we end up going through the day like a toddler and a picnic.
And that is absolutely true of me and I'm sure of you. So my hybrid of that, my most recent iteration, because I'm constantly evolving it, thinking okay, this is the you know, this is the new routine here. So my, I've been looking into zones and the thing that is absolutely true always and will continue to be true, is the constant of life moving at the speed of reality, 60 minutes per hour, seven days a week, you know, 24 hours a day. That whole thing is very that's a locked in place system that we can't nothing we can do about that. We can only move through that time in in real time.
And so there are certain things I look at that my I try and set up my hybrid of the bobsled run is a compromise. That is like setting up a slalom run for skiers. You know when you go you have to go through certain gates. You know you have to go around this gate to get to the thing. So my basic things are setting it up, that I like to.
If I set a constant of waking up at 7am, which is a natural and normal thing for me to do, I don't think there's any reason for a human to wake up at 5am. But you are different than me and that's a total different world, right? So I wake up at 7am, I can do that effortlessly without an alarm clock and it feels good, right? Then this first zone I look at, my next like gate that I'm trying to get to is 10am is the perfect time for me to do focused you know, focus finders 50 minute focused sessions from 10 o'clock till noon, and that's a big zone for me. That if I can steer everything to that, where I am in my the spot where I'm gonna do whatever, the optimal environment for my focused work is 10 to 12 is the perfect time for that. I've. Recently I went through with Jay Virgin.
I went over for dinner with Tim and Jay and you know we were talking about, you know I had her go through with me and we picked out some power meals for me from Grubhub and Uber Eats to have on rotation right. So we picked 10 meals which are delicious and wonderful and protein first sort of meals with protein and vegetables. And I found the. I've been using the pre-arranged delivery on the app where I can last night set up to deliver one of those meals at 12 o'clock so that I don't have to think about it. And at 12 o'clock I know that my first meal is arriving at noon. Then the next zone then is the afternoon, is the time for anything.
Any appointments that I have or any Zoom workshops or client appointments or talking with anybody happens Tuesday, wednesday, thursday between one o'clock and six o'clock, and so that zone is reserved for any time obligations that I have for involving other people. And then six o'clock is the second time when either one of those meals arrive or I've been subscribing to a meal service called Factor 75 and they deliver these great meals that you get a weekly shipment of it. So I get seven of these meals, six of these meals, sorry delivered once a week and they're all hermetically sealed and chilled and all you have to do is warm them and they're delicious and the right calorie balance and everything like that. So it takes variation out of that process there. And then the other zone then is seven o'clock to 10 o'clock in the evening and then reading, and in shutting it down I'm in bed, basically, or on my way there, by 10 and lights out by 11. And so that routine, that zone is really the most natural thing.
There's lots of ways for me to optimize within that, and I think that it really comes down to really preparing in advance for those two hour my focus sessions. I can tend to be ready to do the focus work but not know specifically what it is that I'm going to work on, so I've been really focused on using those times.
To use my golf analogy a goal, optimal environment, limited distractions, fixed time frame. So I lay out my when we were talking about who, not how, in the initial stages, one of the you know, basecamp one is to who up. A thousand hours was the goal and I started really thinking about those thousand hours as capital allocation. But then realizing you can really, I can really only allocate, you know, 10, 20 maximum of those hours in a week. And so it's being more intentional with those allocations and realizing that not all the hours are equal, you know. And so realizing that the if.
I focus on if I can get two or three of those focused hours in a day. That's a win for me. Oh, yeah, you know.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, the I just during the last quarter and it just relates to the last point, and I've got a lot of comments on the previous points, but the last thing you said was this freeing yourself up. And so during the last quarter I am still going and it's called the ABC questions and it's I think you did this. I think you did this yes.
Dean: I just got my package just arrived.
Dan: Yeah, I called for Thursday yeah, yeah.
Dean: And the.
Dan: Zoom workshop on. Thursday, and but what was interesting about it is that these are the. What you're applying it to is what I call growth problems.
Dean: Okay, and I've never, never.
Dan: Used that word before, but it's a problem which, if you sell that, there's growth that immediately follows and then and then a area of your life time money. You know relationship, yeah.
And so you just brainstorm and then you pick three of them and write them out, and then the first question is there any way you can solve this problem by doing nothing? Okay, and I've done about six of these and I'm going to turn it into an actual, you know, an actual tool that I use on a frequent basis. Okay, a desktop tool, and the answer is usually no, but then you immediately identify the thing that you do have to do. Okay, so, and six cracks, that would be 18 growth problems. I've never said yes, there is something I can. This is something that I can solve by doing nothing.
Okay, but, it forces you to think about it. Then the second question is what's the least you have to do to solve the problem? And now we're into who, not how, territory.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Okay, the moment you say no, there is something I have to do, but usually it's just a communication. And in my world you use a fast filter to communicate. You say this is you know, this is the project, this is the best result, this is the worst result, and these are the five measurements of success. Okay, and then the third question is there a? Who can do my least?
Dean: Yeah, exactly, it's like the do you know what it's all in the syntax right Is when you think about is there any way you could do nothing? No, that's impossible. You have to do something. Okay. So what's the least I could do? And then can I get somebody to do that, and the answer then is that you're doing nothing which is fantastic.
It's like it reminds me of a story, dan, of the gentleman, the guy that went in to see the priest and was asking him if it was okay to smoke while he's praying, and the priest said well, praying is a very reverent thing. You should be respectful, you see, yeah, so you can't. Yeah, so no, no, you can't, you shouldn't smoke while you're praying.
Dan: It's the wrong question. Can I pray while I'm smoking?
Dean: That's exactly it.
Dan: Cause a few months later he comes back and he said father when should I pray?
Dean: And he said well, the Bible says you should pray without ceasing. And he said should I pray while I'm gardening? Well, yes, you're in nature. You should pray while you're gardening.
Dan: Can I pray while I'm?
Dean: walking. Can I pray while I'm smoking? Of course you can.
Dan: Of course you can, exactly yeah.
Dean: So I think you've stumbled on that same logic.
Dan: Well, the thing is, it's gotta be able to humor to it. Yes.
Dean: You know people say well.
Dan: I said well, think it through. You know, yeah, and I said, the reason is that entrepreneurs of a certain nature anyway, my years in mind have a tendency to immediately throw themselves into a new possibility and it upsets your schedule. You know, it upsets your schedule, it upsets your team work and everything else, yes. So my whole point is you know, I've got a lot on my plate. Is there any way that I can get away with just 10% effort, just 10% effort, where I was thinking of 100% effort for the day? Is there any way that I can get 100% result with a 10% effort.
You know it's always you know. But going back to the habit thing and my, you know your best lifetime habit, I would ask two questions best lifetime habits that you were doing it once but you haven't been doing it, and the other one is things that you're doing and they can be reinforced Because a lot of people, if they think about their life, they can think about at a certain time.
You know they did this and it was great for them, but somewhere, for some reason, they got off track with it and just ask them if they you know, would it be worthwhile getting back on track with this particular habit?
Dean: You know, while I'm thinking about it, dan, you're that progression of can I do nothing? What's the least I can do? Is there anybody that could do that least? That really harmonizes with my acronym, for you know, imagine if you applied yourself S-E-L-F, and it's the interesting thing is that S is for meaning is there some service or person or you know, something that you could, that could eliminate the need for you to do that? And if that, if you don't have something in your sphere, then the next thing would be E, which is energy, which is your energy. What do you have to do? L is leadership, meaning could you instruct somebody else to do what needs to be done? And F is finances. You could finance it. So, is there a way? No, it's about applying your self, your sphere, your energy. That's the one we want to least do leadership and finances. And so the only thing you're applying your energy to do is to figure out a way that you could turn it into a leadership opportunity to ask somebody else to do it.
Dan: Yeah, and it's really interesting. Have you thought about that? Or what a profound change that the restrictions of CODET have have, how they've impacted people's work habits? Have you given any thought to that?
Dean: I think about it all the time. I mean your own, obviously your own obviously yeah, but yeah, I have a feeling I told somebody.
Dan: I said you know, I talked to a lot of adults when I was a kid who had talked about the great depression and how things that have been available weren't available and how their you know, their daily, weekly behavior changed as a result of the Great Depression. And I have a feeling, covid, which I mean the United States the Great Depression lasted 10 years, 29 to 30. And it didn't end until Pearl Harbor when the Second World War started. For the United States it didn't really end, so it was 10, 11 years. It was the you know, great depression and people's attitude toward money, towards work, you know where they lived and everything else was really altered by the, you know, by that 10, 11 year period here it was about really, you know, it was about two and a half years, let's say, and it's still being affected, you know, and what happened is that people's habits changed in a very significant way you know,
And I was saying, you know, it's going to be hard to get a lot of people back to their job, you know. And what happened is that they were so busy they didn't have time to think about why they were busy. And so I said, you know, they were out for three months and they said I never realized how shitty the commute is. I called it the three shitties. The first thing, that's three shitties. Yeah, how shitty it was and how shitty the work was. You know, I would go through a shitty commute back and forth every day. The work was really shitty and the, you know, the people I was working with were really shitty.
Dean: And.
Dan: I never realized it because I never had time to think. You know, and now I have time to think and I think that it's a fundamental, lasting shift, like it'll last for the rest of people's lives. But, you know, the younger people will, you know, kind of be forced to adjust to what the older people's habit change was. You know, Of course, younger people's habits were enormously changed and the biggest thing, they're finding that truancy rates are at an all time high.
I mean schools are back and you know they're back in person. But COVID taught kids that you know showing up for school is optional.
Dean: Yes, yeah, and it's so. I mean, what's happening at Strategic Coach now regards to, you know, remote working, and how have you adapted to that?
Dan: Well, we have one rule and the rule is everybody has to be there on Wednesday, and the reason is that Wednesday's, wherever it is, whether it's in London, or whether it's in Los Angeles or Chicago or Toronto, Wednesday's always a workshop day. It's always a workshop and so more people have to be in anyway because of the workshop and we just said Wednesday and people said well you know, you know I'm not, you know I'm not on the front stage on workshop days, so why do I have to come in?
And I said and Bab sorry, this is not me, bab, the other team leader says because the rule is on Wednesday, you're here. Yeah but yeah, but the rule is Wednesday, you're here, Okay.
Dean: So we have that.
Dan: And then the other thing is now we have four workshop days a year, every quarter starting. We're just starting this. It's a full day workshop but it's just for the teams wherever they are and we have to get, and they have to be there in person so they can meet other people. I mean we had 23 new hires from January to January you know, and they haven't met the best. Majority of you know people that they're working with and everything like that. So we're making adjustments. You know we're making adjustments.
We had our best year ever, so it can't be all bad. You know we had our most sales and I mean you know the boxes that you would check off. That says that this is a great year. We got all the boxes last year, so it's not like we're in trouble or anything because of the new arrangements or anything else, but there is a value in people really firsthand getting to meet the people that they work with.
Dean: And in.
Dan: June, everybody in the world comes to Toronto. You know everybody in our. You know California, chicago.
Dean: London and.
Dan: Toronto everybody's here for two days, for two days. But you know, you just make adjustments to things as they go along.
Dean: Yes, but that's very yeah, that's good, I think that's.
Dan: But you know, it's really interesting that if you take the money that people don't have to spend to commute and then the time saving, it's quite a bonus that they've gotten in a very short period of time.
Dean: Yes, yeah, I mean you think about just the hours back of the commute. Even if it's 30 minutes, like even if you're local, it's still 30 minutes.
Dan: Yeah, and there's not just the time, there's the getting ready for the 30 minutes.
Dean: That's what I mean, yeah.
Dan: So 30 minutes is an actual commute time. It's an hour, you know, do it. So it's twice a day and our team works 220 days. So, that would be 440 hours and then discount the one where they have to come in, but it would be 80% of that.
And yeah, so you know, 80% of 440 is, you know, 350, somewhere around 350. So that's 350 hours. And then there's the gasoline cost, and I don't think any of our one or two of our team members have an electric car. But you know, Right, yeah, so anyway, but there's, you know, there's everything involved with the car parking.
Dean: So, dan, I'm curious now about your day, how your, you know, or we kind of rhythm do you run your personal operating system?
Dan: Yeah well, mine is really based on four things. It's doing workshops, it's everything involved in creating a book and podcasts, and then it's the preparation for those things. So three things that are products, and then there's three things I don't. I hardly do any marketing or selling anymore, I just think I have two three hour sessions a year. So from being the main salesperson 30 years ago to being just a little special treat you know, and that's that's an enormous time saving.
I mean, I used to go to trade shows where it was like a four or five day trip, you know and you know and. I never travel for marketing. Right now, I would just. I just wouldn't even entertain it. The answer would be no. Somebody says hey, yeah, we'll make you a P. I said no, not going to do that. And the reason is we got great, you know, our marketing and sales that other people are doing is doing the job.
Yeah, so that's it. So so that remains the same before COVID and after COVID. It's just that there's very little travel involved in most of that.
Dean: That's great and so, but in your what about your daily rhythm or how you're, the day daily routine of, if we're writing this for the, for that book 100 years from now? Talking about the 2020s. The great Dan Sullivan, how he would spend his day.
Dan: Well, I differ slightly, and when I get up, then I understand. Yeah, because if I'm not up by 530, it's unnatural. Yeah, you know, I I like getting up at 530. Tell me automatically I'm an hour and a half ahead of you.
Dean: Yeah, but you know I think it's so funny. I had breakfast with Robin Sharma in Toronto when I was up last and you know I was joking with because he of course very famously started the 5am club as the thing and you know it's. I joked with him. I said I feel like people it'd be a you know, better for people to join the nine hour club, to get nine hours of sleep than it would to get up at 5am.
Dan: Yeah well, I did a sleep course during the summer, Great. Yeah yeah, Michael Bruce.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I had to log a diary every day.
Dean: I remember and you were he was staggering, usually making you stay up till 1030 or something, 1030 was 1032.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, what it was is to make the time you got up constant. And he started us off with me and then Babs. Babs joined me. But he sleep deprived me and then we gradually got off my sleep sedative, got off my Adderall.
Dean: So I haven't had.
Dan: Adderall. I've only had one Adderall in the last six months and then, and so the reason was drugs like that, including the sedative. You don't have to get sleepy to go to sleep, because you take a sleep sleep. And you don't have to be rested when you get up in the morning because you take an Adderall you know so, but what gets lost in that is your natural sleep pattern. So yeah, now I'm, it's about 17 hours. He says that's the right period that you get at least 17 hours of waking time.
But, I don't. I need 16, you know I. You know you modify it as you go on, but it's been great, you know. But you know I'm up early. I've always been up early. I grew up on a farm sports, I was in the army. You know I always get up early. I like, I really like getting up early you know, but of course, finally, I'm not a late night guy.
Dean: Right yeah, so your, what time are you asleep Then? Normally? What time is your?
Dan: wake at eight hours so we're in bed and out in eight hours, and that agrees with both of it, I mean when you're living with someone you got to and you're in the same and you're in the same bed. Well then, you know you're going to synchronize the hours, yeah, yeah. But it was kind of funny because New. Year's is a totally uninteresting day to me. New Year's Eve, right.
And people say so, did you stay up? And I said, ah, we were in bed at nine, you know. And I said you know, you know when it was, you know when it was midnight somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That's when I went to bed.
Dean: Yes, right, it's so funny.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean, my best creativity is in the morning.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And I think yours too.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that zone, you know I like to, so I try, and I like to have one 50 minute session for me in that seven to 10 zone where I can just be a toddler at the picnic in my journal, thinking thoughts that I didn't know I was going to think. Right, that's, that is great for me and I've taken into, I've adopted your, you know your practice for 25 years of asking what do I want? That's really what that is about. Is my thinking, about my thinking in that time, right, in that 50 minutes and that way. But I also want to then make sure that I'm being the steward of those two hour block, the focus sessions, so that I'm allocating and stacking up here I mentioned, you know I have a thousand hours of that, but I can really only, I only focus and this is always. But my latest iteration is that I'm only stacking up, kind of the next 10 hours. What is the thing? How am I going to allocate the next 10 hours? And of those, what are the two or three today?
Dan: that.
Dean: I'm going to, that I'm going to do, and that's been. You know so much. I've got such a great, you know, such an abundance of ideas and things that I could do. You know it's the. It takes really curating and discipline in a way to to realize that in order for those things to get done, they have to happen in real time. You know, and that's because the what and how kind of things are shape shifters, you can puzzle on those and figure those. You figure out what you need to do and how, how it needs to be done or even who is going to do it. But the all, the applying yourself, happens in the when and the where. That's the most important thing. That's what I lack in my. That's my executive function disorder right.
Dan: You know all you can you know to be useful to other people. The only thing you can do is actually tell you. Tell other people what you do, not, what they should do. I never even tell people what they should do, and my reason for that is we only get to play in the present, you know so the only game day we have is the hours available to us. You know, from rising to, you know going to bed.
Yeah, we're all playing on the same synchronauts, yeah, but who you are in the present is really a function of your story about what your past is and what your story is about your future.
We don't actually live in those realms and that tells me that who people are in the present is absolutely unique, because the story they tell themselves about their past and their future is completely made up by them, and they might communicate 1% of that to somebody else, but the 99% is them having a conversation with themselves both forward and backward and forward. So you know, unless you can understand what people's past and future is, it's hard for you to comprehend how they actually arrange their dates.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And yet it makes total sense to them. It makes total sense so, more and more as I go along you know I have to even with people I've known for a long period of time and talk to a lot. You know I always have to remind myself that in understanding this person, I have probably less than 1% of the information that they have.
Dean: Yeah, the inner world. What's going on in there?
Dan: Yeah, and for most people they're not even conscious that they're making up their past. You know? I mean past is the past. You know that happened. I said well, yeah. I'm not disputing the fact that it happened, but your interpretation of what happened is the important thing here you know, and two people can have what looks like to be an identical experience and come up with very different stories about what the you know what the situation was.
And so and the other thing is the future. So you know, and I follow, I've got a file on my Evernote and it's about people who think they can predict the future. You know.
Dean: Wow, okay, yes.
Dan: And I said, they can predict the future, but they can't even predict their tomorrow.
Dean: Right, that's interesting.
Dan: It's like climate. You know climate.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: Climate actually doesn't exist, it's a thought. You know and what climate is in a particular location, 365 days of temperature and you know weather conditions. Yes, the average weather conditions for 365 days. That's what climate is. It's a abstraction that gets created by averaging a large number of a large number of days. You know.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: People have talked about the climate and I said well, you know, the real problem with getting people really engaged emotionally with the climate is there's not a single person who's actually experienced climate. We just experience weather.
Dean: That's an interesting thing that, really, when you think about what you passed, is it's the tapestry of this woven thread of all of the things that you actually did. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly it's the weather of, it is the when and where of what did you do? Yeah, what were you?
Dan: Yeah, and there's a lot of abstractions, like society.
Dean: I've never experienced society.
Dan: I experienced Dean, I experienced Babs, I experienced Joe Polish. I don't know the things society I've never. You know society should do this. I don't think society got the memo, you know.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Society is not Consistently yeah, or? We're destroying the world? I said I don't think so. I don't know what's the world, you know?
you know, you know, and we may be destroying ourselves, you may be destroying yourself, but I don't think we're destroying the world, you know. I mean you know the world's taken. Asteroid hits. The temperature has gone up 100 degrees. It's gone down 100 degrees. You know where I'm talking to you right now. You know, 15,000 years ago it was under 100 feet of water. You know, and you know, I'm right on the shore of Lake Ontario.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And yeah, the shoreline used to be Castleoma. You know how high Castleoma is you?
Dean: have to go up to get the Castleoma. Wow, so my, so my Yorkville was underwater.
Dan: Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah, that's what's going on, actually. Yeah, quite a bit of us going on. So the big thing is that people create these abstractions and then the abstractions become their reality, over which they have no controls. I mean, if they didn't have any control over their personal reality, boy, they sure don't have any control over things that are an abstraction, you know, and isn't it interesting, though, that so much of everything is an extra abstraction.
Dean: When you look at these things, you know we look at all the things, the collective abstractions that we all participate in is certainly most geography. I believe that Africa exists, but it's only an abstraction to me, because I've never been to Africa Me either. I've never been to Buenos Aires, but I'm going to take your word for it that it's really there.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's interesting.
Dan: And it's closer to Africa than it is to Toronto. It's actually closer to Antarctica than it is to Toronto.
Dean: You can't go to Antarctica, Dan everybody knows that.
Dan: Yeah yeah. Yeah. So the big thing why habits are good on a daily basis is because they're not abstractions. These are neural pathways that you're creating in your brain that encourage you to do this tomorrow rather than a whole bunch of other stuff that you haven't thought about.
But my sense is, you know, and the thing I'm going to get across here, that success is a function of productive habits, times, longevity, you know it's productive habits, namely that you're doing this on a daily or frequent basis and you're doing that over years, and it's like compound interest, you know, and yeah, but, you have to make the deposits, to make the transfer.
Dean: It's so funny. I was playing around with a visual metaphor for how the constant moving of the speed of reality. Have you ever seen the? Have you ever seen the video game, the guitar hero? Have you seen on visual or anything?
Dan: No, I haven't.
Dean: So guitar hero is a game where you have this guitar but you've got, instead of strings, you've got these color buttons on the neck of the guitar. So it's yellow, green, blue, red, you know whatever those things are. Then your imagine, do you know how the title sequence to star Star Wars is coming, like when the words are coming at you and you're kind of moving. Okay, so you're looking down the neck of a guitar and you're moving towards it, or it's moving towards you, and as the notes get to this line, you press the red button and then, when the green comes to the line, you push green and then you push yellow or whatever it is to make to play the song that's coming, but it's moving and if you miss it you miss the points, right. So I thought about the way that musical Tetris that's exactly it.
Okay, there's perfect example. Tetris is coming at you. So you've got this. You know, as it's moving, we're in control. Our focus can only be on one thing at a time, right? So if you're focused on, you know in our hundred ten minute units that we're getting throughout the day our ten Jackson units. As we were referring to our hundred Jackson units is that we can be in one lane kind of thing for that. So we're moving the joystick or the controller over to be in this activity.
Right, and looking back at the record of what we're leaving behind is the wake of what we actually did in those minutes. Right, so you could be neutral where you're just sitting there doing nothing, but you could be in the sleep lane for eight hours. Of that on the record you could be. You know you wake up at 5.30 and by six o'clock I think you're working out by then. Right, is that your trainer arrives.
So you look back at the. You look back at the permanent record that you're leaving in your wake is at six, is yellow, with your trainer or whatever, consistently over time that you're getting into those things and the more you know erratic those things are, it leaves less of a pattern over time, right, but that's where you get that. So the consistency, my observation of it is to, if I could try and tighten up those things so that in those bands that from 10 o'clock to 12 o'clock, I've established the consistency over time of dedicating those two hours to the most important things that I can be doing, that's going to have an impact, you know.
Dan: Yeah, well, it's all very interesting, you know, because I think a lot of people just don't comprehend who they are today as a function of consistent past habits, yeah, and who they're going to be in the future is a series of consistent habits. And you know, and I was reading, charlie Munger is the width and wisdom of Charlie Munger, warren Buffett's partner, who just died about a month ago, and he said you know, you can have a lot of raisins, but they're in addition, it's half raisins and half turds. We call the dish turds.
Dean: So you have a lot.
Dan: You have good habits, but you have a lot of bad habits. We call the result bad habits, even though there's good habits along the way. So I think you know it's part of your self knowledge is to increase one and decrease the other.
Dean: Yeah, I was just thinking about my, you know. You look now the deposits of over time, the 12 o'clock and six o'clock perfectly balanced meal Delivered without any variation. Or you know, human error in that thing that over time that tapestry is going to be a different pattern, right?
Dan: Yeah, and the thing is because a lot of other things are responding to it, you know I mean your brain is noticing a difference, so it's got to make adjustments. You know your brain yeah, make adjustments in your social life. Yeah, make adjustments and everything like that. That's why you don't have to think about 30 things If you got three good things to think about the other 30 will have to adjust to the three. Yeah, and I never try to change bad habits, I just tried to crowd them out with good habits.
Right, I think what I, you know, evolved in thinking today, I want you to pay a lot of attention to them, you know.
Dean: Yes, I think a realization I had today, dan, is I was thinking to myself could I establish that meal system without doing anything? Is that literal? Well, I don't have to cook and I don't have to buy groceries to do anything. I only have to decide which I want and place the order. But if I look, that's the least I could do. But now, as I think about it, I could get Lillian, my assistant, to do to. I said these are the 10 meals, let's rotate them around, and I want them to arrive at 12 o'clock and six o'clock and not have anything to do. So there is a way that I could do that without doing anything.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, and they're not wasted because they go in the fridge, you know.
Dean: So oh no. I would eat them anyway. I have to eat them. Yeah, I have to eat. Yeah, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, well, of course. I mean that's the way ours are done. You know Christopher, who's the caterer for our workshops, he does Babs on my Meal and lunch and dinner, and then our back to our EA, looks at our schedule, whether we're going to be at home or not, and then she, you know we have guests in the raving house, and then she asks us questions about it and we, you know we'll give the answers.
And then she's in touch with the caterer and the meals arrived. You know the meals arrived and basically lunch and dinner, like for the weekend. They would come on Friday afternoon and their guests for Saturday and Sunday.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I love that, yeah, yeah, I mean, and you know. But the big thing is I noticed, going on the 80, I'll be 80, you know four months, hey, yeah, and what I noticed is that I don't really start anything new these days. If it's not something I'm going to stick with for the rest of my life, okay, or it's going to reinforce something else that I'm going to stick, that I'm already doing, that's going to last for the rest of my life.
Dean: So yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so I'm very selective about anything new, you know, and you know, people say hey this is really interesting. So I said, don't think so. I don't think this is going to be a rest of my life experience you know, and so but on the other hand, I'm going a lot deeper into things that you know. I'm really interested in things that really support the new things, that support the thing that I'm already doing.
Dean: I'm really yeah, and our podcast is one of those. Yes, one of those.
Dan: Yeah, so you can. You know pretty well, figure, as long as you're up to it, I'm up to it.
Dean: That's great. I like it, yeah, yeah. Well, it's been an amazing conversation, as always I had no idea what adventure we were going to go on, but this was really enjoyable conversation.
Dan: The one thing I should tell you is that when you're in Argentina, it's not uncommon for dinner to start at nine o'clock at night.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Okay and which which, so you can take dinner time and then, after dinner and going to bed, which kind of dictates that Argentinians get up later. They get up later in the morning and I said this tells you why the US and also they have the two hour break.
Dean: Yes, the middle of the day, you know and.
Dan: I said. So this kind of tells you why the US is ahead, because Americans get up early and work all day. Yeah, I think on a one developed countries. Americans work a lot more than certainly anybody in Europe. Americans work a lot more than anyone in. Europe, I think probably anyone in South America, probably not. Southeast Asia. I bet Southeast Asians work more than Americans do. Yeah, but anyway. But that's just the habit of the culture. It's a workout. I mean, america is a work culture.
Dean: Yes, I love. It, okay, well, I guess I will see you on Thursday.
Dan: Oh well, have a good day I got a lot of great stuff for Thursday.
Dean:It's all very exciting. I'm going to read the. I got the new book for the or yesterday, so I'm going to read that.
Dan: Awesome, all right.
Dean: Okay, Dan, I'll talk to you next week or I'll see you Thursday.
Dan: Okay, thursday Thanks, thanks, gene.
07 Sep 2022
Ep078: Overcoming Old Barriers
01:00:26
In this episode, Dan and Dean explore all the ways that modern technology and how Cloudlandia have allowed us to overcome old barriers.
Join Dean and Dan as they explore the amazing ways that technology is expanding our perception and enhancing our experiences, as well as how these changes are making life in Cloundlandia better and more useful to our daily lives.
Ep102_Unlocking the Secrets of Success, from Cottages to Cloudlandia
00:57:16
In this episode of Cloudlandia, we journey through cottage renovations, explore the landscapes of North America, and decode the power of vision and reach in building successful ventures.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
The episode begins with a discussion about cottage renovations, exploring the landscapes of North America, and building successful ventures.
The hosts discuss the renovation projects of Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Jackson, the smoky Quebec forest, and the history of the Canadian forest industry.
Insight from Peter Zion suggests that even if the U.S. population doubled, there would still be room to spare, and Florida's unspoiled grapefruits are also discussed.
They introduce a useful tool called the FAST filter, a quick 15-minute method to help evaluate the success potential of any project.
The episode covers three fascinating life roles: everything is invented by someone, no one is really in charge, and life isn't always fair.
Productivity strategies involving intense physical feats are discussed, along with the hosts' experiences with rising early and its surprising effects.
Steve Jobs' philosophy of creating technology that's not only functional but also beautiful and user-friendly is another compelling topic.
The hosts critique Bud Light's marketing choices and emphasize the importance of getting feedback from the right audience.
The episode explores the concept of being the buyer in ventures, with examples from Mr Beast's Cloudlandia and the strategic approach of Prime energy drink.
Finally, the hosts emphasize the importance of maintaining quality control for your product, finding the right partnerships, and understanding that everything in life and business is a guess and a bet.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
Ah, Mr Jackson, are you enjoying your play show four seasons.
Dean Jackson
Yes. I'll tell you what it's so nice that everything's done now. It's like having a new renovation. We got new carpet, new hardwood, new wallpaper in the kitchen. Everything's all fantastic. Done now, finally. We're excited about that. How about you?
Dan Sullivan
you're up at two o'clock it's yes, I am, yeah, and it's been spectacular. We've done really, really great, you know, sort of that idyllic cottage, culture, weather and yeah and although it was very smoky for the first two days. Oh yeah, Because we have Quebec, you know yes.
Dean Jackson
In.
Dan Sullivan
Canada, in Canada, you always play with that Quebec.
Dean Jackson
That's right, that's right. It was just separate already. Come on, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But this is a big forest area on the very west side of Quebec which is basically forest. You know, hundreds of square miles of forest. So even though it was a major fire there was, it didn't affect any towns at all because there are no towns.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, the Great Wilderness.
Dan Sullivan
There is so much nature in this country. Yes, absolutely.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, how's your construction project going?
Dan Sullivan
Well, we, you know the wheels of government approvals here really grind very slowly, and so we have to get a demolition. We have to get a demolition thing first, and we're going to have it done after the college season, the cottage season is over, and it'll be that'll. You know, that doesn't take very long, that takes a week or two. And then we have to really get the cottage fine tuned. The new design this is second. For those who are listening, this is a joining property that we have with our main tree, so we'll have about 300 feet of frontage on the water with a two, and they go around a bend, and so one of them is facing sort of more west than south and one of them is more south, so there's a curve.
Dean Jackson
And this is old rock.
Dan Sullivan
This is, you know, this is Canadian shield rock. Yeah, and this is 4 million years old rock and it's. It's a very striking locale, you know and. Muskoka, of course, is the great cottage country. We're in Halliburton, which is to the east. It's about you know it's about an hour's drive to the east and this was the great forest industry part of Canada like 1800. And the. British Navy came. The British Navy's ships were mainly wood from this area.
Dean Jackson
Oh well, they had a huge number.
Dan Sullivan
It was the number one industry in Canada, in what is now Canada, in the 1800. And yeah, and of course they thought, you know, there was just so much natural resource that they just cut and cut and cut. And then somebody said you know, maybe we should replant.
Dean Jackson
We're going to run out of wood. Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, but it goes on forever. I mean it's not just here in Ontario, it's in Quebec, it's in when you get to Manitoba. You know you have all that and it's just goes on forever. So you know, it's no wonder that you know the big complaint about modern Canadians and modern Americans, how wasteful they are.
Well, when you've lived your whole culture where you couldn't run out of things. It doesn't make you particularly, you know, stingy. It doesn't make you, yeah. So but I was thinking about that, that interesting statistic from Peter Zion that if you doubled the population of the United States, you know, sort of spreading the new population across the entire country, it would still feel. And you got to 650 million, 616 million. If you got there, the country would still feel pretty empty.
Dean Jackson
Yeah you know it's so funny, like I did a when just up and I were doing all the big real estate seminars, we were very sort of Western, western United States.
you know, weighted, we were doing more. You know over half of the events were in. You know, in California We'd do Phoenix and Palm Springs and LA and San Francisco and Seattle and Denver and you know that kind of all on the Western side and I was making the argument for more East Coast events and got a satellite view of the US by light source. Have you ever seen that map that showed light and you could draw a line, like at the Rocky, like you're right up the middle of the country, and it looked like just the entire right side was lit up, where all the population is Over on the east side very much.
And you're saying that makes total sense with Peter Zayam, that you could kind of fold that over even onto the west side, especially in the western United States, there's nothing and that would make no difference. But out of even Florida, if you look at Florida right now, there's 22 million people right now. We're projected for 29 million by 2030. So we're growing up to 15 million people a day right now. But the most of Florida, the entire middle of Florida, is basically the outback. I mean you can drive for miles and miles and not see anything.
Dan Sullivan
We were way back in the 70s. I went on a trip to Florida and it was on the west side. We were staying in Lakeland Florida. And we had a friend there who was a cattle breeder but he had gotten interested in citrus fruit so he had big grapefruit. But he was in a cooperative so all the work was done by the workers in the cooperative. And the neat thing about grapefruit is that it doesn't spoil on the trees. Oranges- and grapefruits.
you can leave them hanging there for as long as you want, they don't spoil. So it gives you some really good timing as far as when to pick and sell. And he was canny. He was kind of like just a canny person. He understood cattle. But we went to a cattle ranch in the middle of Florida and it's like the in the lower 48 states, like the number three cattle ranch in the United.
Dean Jackson
States.
Dan Sullivan
It just went on. I mean, we got on the ranch and then it was 30 miles to the homestead, you know we had to drive 30 miles. Once we were on the ranch, but it was right down in the middle, just above the Everglades, and so what we saw is a lot of pigs. You know, there were hundreds and thousands of cattle, but there were a lot of pigs and they just seemed to be wandering around. And so my friend yes, no, no, they were domestic, they were domestic but they yeah they didn't last long enough to go wild, you know.
And anyway, he said I said what are all the pigs for? This is a cattle ranch. And he says, well, you know, yeah, you can have beef every night for so long, and he just want to change. And so we go out and just roast up a couple of pigs and eat that. And I said, well, I don't think there's no fences. And I said you don't worry about them. He says, well, how are they going to get off the ranch?
Dean Jackson
We had to go 30 miles.
Dan Sullivan
That's a real trip for a short-legged pig, you know.
Dean Jackson
Right right, right right.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway, the sheer size, and this is, you know, psychologically, if you go back, the huge difference between the New World and the Old World. If you think about Europe, where every square inch of landscape is surveyed and owned and is populated, I mean I think Holland has the greatest density in any country in the world, even more so than some of the Asian countries. Oh really, wow.
And yeah, and then they come to this New World and they just give you 100 acres. You know, like, here we're just going to basically for almost nothing. We're going to give you 100 acres and see what you, if you make an improvement on it over the next five years, then you own the. We'll give you the land for life. You know, and everything like that. And what a draw that must have been for people who had nothing in Europe, especially in.
Dean Jackson
Europe.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you know, if you can make it across the ocean, we'll give you land and the New World. Yeah, and if all that's taken where you are, then just go another 50 miles to the west. There's a lot and my sense is the frontier took from 1620, jamestown, you know, the first permanent settlement in town, virginia, to 1890,. When they finally surveyed the last bed of whichever western territory, it was In 1890, they, it was all surveyed and they said the frontier is now officially over.
You know, we have no more frontier and but that 270 years, really, I put an incredible stamp on probably what would you say? 15 years per generation, even let's say 20 years per generation, so 20, you know it's about 15 generations. And that probably just put a permanent stamp on psyche of the Americans. Yeah, you look at the.
Dean Jackson
I mean it's amazing now if you take the parallel and you bring it into Cloudlandia, if you count Jamestown, if Jamestown was 1996, you know when everybody started kind of landing in Cloudlandia even though there was no infrastructure, really there was no, you know, no electricity, no, all of that stuff. You look at the highway system and we liken the development of Cloudlandia over, you know, a generation and a half here.
Dan Sullivan
Well, and that's, and we're never going to run out.
Dean Jackson
That's the amazing thing. Well, there's an infinitely.
Dan Sullivan
There's an infinitely expanding frontier in Cloudlandia and you're not trespassing. You're not really trespassing in the same way you do on the mainland, right yeah.
Dean Jackson
And I think that's why?
0Dan Sullivan
you know the chat GPT took over. You know which is the latest new adventure in Cloudlandia is chat GPT that if you look at the numbers, they say 100 million. Right away, 100 million people are using it and I said but not everywhere, not everywhere and my sense is that it's. I was just breaking it down. I said it's mostly Americans or people connected to it. There are people connected to America digitally. It's probably males, they're probably single and they're probably between 25 and 45. And they just want to go places where nobody's gone before.
And this is they got a vehicle for doing this, and that's the frontier, that's the frontier mentality.
Dean Jackson
What's beyond the?
Dan Sullivan
settled territory. What's beyond the settled territory?
Dean Jackson
Right, right, right. And what are you going to settle on the territory? I mean, this is the really. This is the thing. It's such amazing times, like a couple of things that that have jumped out over the last little bit here. Here I just saw that Mr B Again now with feastable new company is chocolate. Your confection company is global. Now They've got in there all over the world. They've taken over the United States and things. And I read what happened in the last few weeks is Mr Beast has sort of soured a little bit on on Mr Beast burger as a as a collaboration, in that he can't control the quality of what the product is being delivered. Right.
There's a little variation because it's going, you know, it's expanded so quickly and there's so many restaurants making the, you know, making his burgers, making the menu, and that was a collaboration largely driven by someone coming to him with that like virtual dining concepts. But Robert Earl was the driver of that. And so, if we take the VCR formula, robert Earl went to Mr Beast with the capability offering to bring him into the burger business with tapping him in his range Right.
Dan Sullivan
So it wasn't there.
Dean Jackson
It wasn't driven by Mr Beast and it wasn't Mr Beast capability to to do the thing. Now feastable. What they did was they started with division and they sought out the capability and they're the. It reminded me of your always be the buyer. That there's a difference where, with your the visionary, you're the buyer of this Right. Your your partnering with a capability that, if you have the vision and the reach, partnering with the capability is that's kind of the power position and the difference between feastables, which is packaged goods that you can 100% controlled quality of, and then partnering with Walmart as reach to multiply the reach that you have a physical you know Mr Beast's Cloudlandia reach with an outlet at the largest footprint retailer reach in the country Makes a huge, huge difference.
It's a product-based thing. I look at prime. There's another major story in the VCR world right now, which is prime energy drink, which was driven by Logan Paul and KSI another you know, two big global YouTubers who have partnered to make this energy drink and they're, you know, last year sold 250 million dollars of this energy drink and now they are kind of funny how this the you know it's like VCR squared. They are now as an entity, a capability, partnering with other big reach outlets like they. They're the official hydration of USC, the ultimate fighter competition, the Dana White big MMA thing, and they were just announced as the official hydration of the Barcelona football club, which is a huge international thing, and they did it with Manchester United and those guys are there's no limit to where that's going A package, good product that they're the driver of the.
Dan Sullivan
Well, and, as you said, the central issue here is quality control. Yes yes, I mean a shitty restaurant. Anyway can produce shitty, mr Beesburgers.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly what I mean. Yes, that's the thing, right that you're, rather than having something that you can just deliver to somebody in the experience, the unboxing, it's only just distributed to some.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you know my newest quarterly book is called the Geometry for Staying Cool and Calm, and one of the there's three roles which we've You've very kindly talked about on the podcast. The three roles are everything's made up by someone sometime. Okay, sometimes someone made up something, so things that are thousands of years old, it was still. Someone at some time made this up. Somebody wrote it down, you know. And somebody said, well, what about the Bible? And I said somebody wrote it down.
You know it was just a discussion until somebody wrote it down, somebody. Okay, so the big thing is that if you take the three roles, everything's made up. Nobody's in charge, and number three, life's not fair. There's some byproducts that come out of that, and number one of the things that come out of that is it's all guessing and betting.
So, the future is all about betting. Yeah, the future is all guessing and betting, you know. And so when you hear somebody this is very definitely technology is going in this direction what you have is someone telling you that they're guessing on something and they want you to bet on it. And so this whole notion that the future is predetermined is silly, because even with Mr Beast, who knows the power of YouTube I mean, he's proven that he knows the power, just with his community is hundreds, you know more than 100 million, but he's guessing what he can do with that community and he's betting.
So Mr Beast, mr Beastburger was a bet, okay, and took up time, took up energy, took up skills, took up probably some money, and with him it's not so much money, it's just how does he want to spend his time, you know that's really, I think, his biggest thing is not wasting time, you know but he just tested on something. And now one thing he's learned we have to control the product. That's. That's a useful learning. I'm sure he didn't lose any money on Mr Beastburger he's still going strong still going strong.
Dean Jackson
But he's just losing. Like it was an interesting thing, he tweeted that you know that he can't. You know virtual diving solutions won't let him out of the, they won't let him out of the contract or he can't stop. Even he said you know I can't, my partners won't let me stop, even though it's bad for my brand, you know which is really interesting Well he's at 20, you know, at 26,.
Dan Sullivan
I'm not sure his exact age, but 24, 26. He's learned a powerful lesson that applies for the rest of his life. You got to be the owner.
Dean Jackson
Yes, always be the buyer.
Dan Sullivan
Yes, yeah, yeah, and you know he just learned it. I mean, I didn't learn that until I was in my 50s. I'm a committed learner, but sometimes I'm a slow learner. I've got a tool variation for you, OK. Ok, and this was prompted by your raising the topic of Dean Landia. So I've always kind of liked the tool we have called the FAST filter rather than the big impact filter. Yeah, and the FAST filter. The FAST filter, you just write down here's the project, here's the best result, here's the worst result and here are five success criteria.
And for all practical purposes. It does 90% of what the impact filter does, but in about half the time about half the time. So you and I are people of a quickness nature that we've got 15 minutes or we lose interest.
So I go for a tool that only takes 15 minutes. But here's the thing, and this is a question for you. But I'll just tell you what I did Of all the profiles that we've done the Colby profile, we've done in coach, we've done the Colby profile, we've done Myers-Briggs, we've done Desk. You know D-S-I-D-I-Z, we've print and we've just done the working genius. And everybody in FreeZone is going to get that in the next quarter.
We're just sending it out in September, everybody and just go do that profile and they can do that with their teams, and you know the whole thing.
But of all of them and I didn't mention it yet, but the one that really struck home for me was the Strength Finder, which came out of the Gallup organization. So my five strengths are number one ideation. You know that if I'm going to take action on something, it'll be on an idea. Number two maximizer. I'm interested in ideas that don't take average things and make them better. I'm only interested in things that take already extraordinary people and make them even more productive. So, maximizer. Number three, self-assurance is that personally, I don't think I can ever get into trouble with a new idea.
You know that I always have confidence that you know it'll either work or I'll get some learning out of it. But there's no loss with coming up with a new idea. And number four is context. Is that I'm passionate about how this connects to everything. So if I create something, I immediately want to know how does this connect to everything else I've done? And number five is activator, that there's no idea we're spending any time if it does not lead to action.
Dean Jackson
So those are my thoughts.
Dan Sullivan
And you know, experience and the observation of my team would pretty well prove it out that there isn't any one, any other strength on the list of 34, these are the top five out of 34. That would replace one of the ones that are in the top five. Okay, and that's good enough for me. That's good enough for me. I said I don't think so either, and so what I did is that on the stra, on the fast filter, you have five success criteria, so I just put in the five, you know ideation, multiple maximizer, self assurance, context and activator.
And then I think of a particular project and I said, okay, so what's the central idea here? What's the central idea here? Ideation, okay, and really make a big jump with it. Maximizer number three that this will, if you pull this off as the real jump in your self assurance, okay, number this actually connects with about five other things that I'm doing, or 10 other things that I'm doing. That's context and number five, activator, and I can immediately see that I can take this action within the next day or two. And then I go back and I write worse result of doing this, best result.
So I do it backwards, I do the five success criteria first and then I do worse result and said ah, this is just one of your another hair brain scheme that you get all excited about and you distract a lot of other people. I tell the whole story how this is just puts me in the ditch like other. And then I go to the best result and I said this is a breakout moment in my entire 17 to 29 year life and everything and away we go. And so I just wondered did you do the strength finder, did you?
Dean Jackson
I did years ago and it's for ideation, ideation was at the top of my.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, we're both ideation which probably people could guess yes. And that's what it's interesting, but it'd be interesting because you've got the fast filter on your website. You just yeah, but all you do is that you the first word in the five success criteria are the five strength finders, you just put the first word and then you say and you know, and you can see what that, their explanation of each of those are. But you kind of know anyway. But I'm noticing that it does amazing things with projects.
First of all, it gives you an incredible amount of immediate motivation to do the project because it checks off all the boxes where you get energy. Anyway, I just thought it would.
Dean Jackson
So everybody would put in the fast filter, they would feed their five. Their five strength finders.
Dan Sullivan
With their five strength finders. So it custom designs it immediately that you're only doing this project for your purposes.
Dean Jackson
Yes, where could I find my strength finder again, oh.
Dan Sullivan
Julia Waller. I'm at the cottage and she's in the next cottage. I'll just, I'll see her tonight and I'll just said could you just look up Dean Dean Jackson's strength finders? Okay, great, and if she can't, she'll just give you their contact information. I mean, you do it over again. It's $35, $40, something like that.
Dean Jackson
So you know you you gotta do it, but it's a very, I think you know, do four or five of them.
Dan Sullivan
Just take that random, just take five projects and run it through. And you see that it makes you into the total buyer of everything that you do. I don't go into this unless it checks off my five strength finder boxes. I'm not devoting an ounce of energy unless it checks off my boxes, and I think that's as good a definition of what being a buyer for you means as it does you know, anyway, so just thought you'd be interested in that.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I'm very fascinated by that because that I've gone through and I've had a buddy on my team through the working genius and James probably put together a team profile that shows a map of where everybody is on your team. So when you're building, you're kind of the next thing. When you're going forward with a project, I know that we need all of the widgets, you know we need everybody, somebody's genius in every aspect of it to get it all the way through, all the way from wonder to synastomy, somebody to follow through with it, and so that's kind of a. I like all these combinations.
Dan Sullivan
I love what you're looking for, what I'm looking for is just the one tool that works everywhere. You know, I mean I created lots of you know and coach. We've created lots of tools, but I'm just always looking for the one tool that's a really fast tool. That's just the starting point for everything. You know, just yeah, and you know it's like Jack Pell. I'm talking to Billy Crystal and you know Billy Crystal and he said I'm going to give you, billy, I'm going to give you the secret of life.
And he holds up his finger, one finger, and Billy Crystal says your finger is the secret to life. And he says yeah, but we're all looking. I mean, especially if you're AD and you're a 10, quick start and ideation is your number one strike fighter, you're subject to a lot of distractions, yeah.
Dean Jackson
Like hourly, like hourly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes in the middle of the night and so funny that that was where.
Dean Jackson
Oh, by the way, michael.
Dan Sullivan
Bruce. I'm meeting weekly with Michael Bruce and he just wanted to pass on his best wishes to you. Oh good, we had some conversations where he's really good at what he's really good. I tell you he's really really good at what he does. Yeah, For the listeners, this is a great sleep psychologist named Michael Bruce. He lives in Hermosa Beach, California, and yeah.
And I'm going through a 12 week program with him where I have to diary my sleep every night in the morning. I do that and the whole thing is to get me two things. One is to establish a regular get up time for me which is five o'clock. So this is really good, because I'm in my just finishing my fourth week now and I've gotten up at five o'clock every morning for 28 days and then he won't let you go to bed earlier. I'm at 10 30 now, so I get six and a half hours sleep. But the ultimate goal here is one is that I always have a wake up time that's predictable, so that my system kicks in and creates the sleep drive during the day.
I don't have to use meds at night. And I'm down to half of my meds after four weeks.
So in just four weeks. I'm off half and then during the day I don't have to use Adderall to propel me for the whole day. So I have an early morning slow release. I have a slow release that I take right away. He's leaving that alone. And at night I have a lunesta that I take just to start the night, and he's leaving that alone. He's gotten rid of the halfway, the two thirds through the night sonata, so that's gone. And my daytime Adderall, like let's say, afternoon, that's gone. So I pre-dropped two of them in four weeks, so it's really good.
Dean Jackson
Did you get a chance to experiment with telling yourself you could be being happy that you get to have the best two hours of sleep? Two hours here when you wake up. I've tried that.
Dan Sullivan
I've tried that, you know, but that's a trick that we had.
There's this mad, crazy sort of like survival thing I forget what it's called, but where you go four weeks and you're a team of four One of them has to be a woman and you have to climb mountains, you have to swim across you know straights of water, you have to go through jungle and everything else, and you only have 24, 96 hours to pull it off and they have tricks, and one of the tricks is they go on two hours of sleep per night, but it's the last two hours before sunrise and if you wake up at sunrise, your body thinks that you, for four days, your body can pull you, or your mind can pull your body into believing you got full night's sleep four nights in a row, and then it falls apart on the fifth day. Really, you go one. Yeah, yeah, so it's an interesting.
Dean Jackson
And that you're, that, you know, limiting to six and a half hours, or whatever that worked out to be, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But this is not forever, this is just to get me through this period and I think I think I'm probably at my limit right now. I don't think he's going to push it any further, and but he might. And first it was seven hours, then it was so it was 10 o'clock and then it was 1015 and now it's 1030. So we'll see I've had lots of energy and I've gotten lots of things done.
Dean Jackson
But what I've done is wherever, why. I'm curious about why five am. Is that? No, you choose that.
Dan Sullivan
You choose that. No, you choose that, you choose that, but then it's that's what it is. So he said you get up anywhere from four to five, 30. But if you had to do it every morning, which would you do? And he's the upside. Both agreed we do it at five o'clock and he says good, so five is fixed. So regardless of when you go to bed although I'm not going to let you go to bed earlier than 10 o'clock, the one time we did, we went to see Jeff Maddox, Premier play a Premier week personality in Chicago, which is a dynamite play and musical, and he, we got home at two o'clock in the morning.
It was downtown and we went out afterwards and I said Baps, there's no way we're getting up at five o'clock, so we just got up at nine o'clock because we had to get to the airport to play home.
Dean Jackson
I said, you know, every once in a while.
Dan Sullivan
I'm just going to. I mean, yeah, rows aren't any good if you can't make exceptions. Right, right, right.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, my, I would love, like I think, that my natural if I just look at my natural cycle, it would probably be it would eight hour period, it would probably be 11 to 7 would be my natural preferred. I think that's like the person, yep yep, I think everybody's rhythm for me.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't matter just his whole point is it doesn't matter what the hours are, just so that you stick with it, because your body adjusts and then adjusts its system. But if you're all over, the map with it your body, then you get all sorts of sleep disorders and right, right, right yeah.
But I'm from childhood I've been an early riser, you know farm boy, you were at the break of dawn and you know I was in sports going through schools. You were too, but you got up early. You had morning practices and and it was in the army, army you get up at, you know you get a six, six o'clock, you know so you know I was just used to it and and I find that most creative before noon. You know I get most my creative creativity. I can talk endlessly after three o'clock, but don't ask me to create anything in the afternoon.
Dean Jackson
That's funny. I have a second, like if I were to say I have a second period of period, you know, like three or four in the afternoon till six or seven. That's like a really good. If I just look at my, you know, biorethm or whatever it's first thing in the morning, you know, till noon, and then another, I think the European, you know the fiesta model is like the perfect thing, I think. You know. Get, get up, do what you do creative work.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you've got forward a heat. You got forward a heat to blame on it, even though you're in air conditioning. But you know, you know I think it's a light thing too how much light you get. You get way more light than we do in Toronto during the year.
Dean Jackson
You know it's fun the way that you and I talk about these things. You know different approaches to it, but part of the thing, I guess, is picking the game that you like in the way that you like to play the game and establishing your life around it, you know, just fitting it into what you're natural and not everybody's the same, like like you. For you, I don't like the idea of waking up at five o'clock. Even you know Robin Sharma.
Do you know Robin Sharma wrote the five AM club, so I had lunch at the table I sure don't want to.
Dan Sullivan
I'll get up at five, but I'm not going to be a member of the club at five o'clock.
Dean Jackson
Exactly the five AM club.
Dan Sullivan
Are you kidding?
Dean Jackson
I said you know it's so funny that everybody tries to in personal development. It feels like everybody tries to pigeonhole you into their method of you got to get up at five AM and if your dreams aren't big enough to get you bouncing out of bed in the morning, you know.
Dan Sullivan
The last time I saw Robin was at the Soho hotel in London, and he just happened to be in the restaurant when I was there, so we pulled up a table. You know, we got a table together and I was talking. He was saying, you know, he was sort of at a decision point in his.
You know what he was doing and you know that every he had stages and he was at the end of one of his stages and he was and I said, robin, maybe it's time for the monk to buy a new Ferrari.
Dean Jackson
That's right, I love it. So for everybody listening Robin Sharma, very famously, first thing, wrote a book called the Monk. We sold his Ferrari and that's great, that's my favorite. Ferrari.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's fantastic Dan His language, so he wouldn't, it's his language so he would know what that means.
Dean Jackson
you know Of course, and it was just so perfectly appropriate, like once you, you know it's so funny that the you know I think about that often and for the last 25 years, or 23 years, my go-to I know I'm being successful when I've been. You know, I wake up every day and ask what would I like to do today? And maybe it's time that I wake up and ask myself what would I like to do tomorrow instead of doing and do the thing that I need to wake up.
Dan Sullivan
I wake up every day and I know exactly what I'm doing for the day and that's another variation, not that you'd want to make this the main course, but just for sort of space. Is you wake up in the morning and say what am I glad I didn't do yesterday? Ah right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
Phew, that was close.
Dan Sullivan
I almost did that. I almost did that and I didn't do it.
Dean Jackson
That is funny, I get point for that.
Dan Sullivan
They asked Steve Jobs very close, you know like you're to be very died. They asked him what were the 10 best decisions he had made during his Apple career and he says the 10 times I said no to something that would have really gotten us bogged down if we had pursued Wow, yeah. So I think that's as useful as what did you achieve? It's what did you not? It's not what a lot of people grade themselves on what they said yes to, but they there's just as much value in remembering what you said no to.
And we have the tool, the experience transformer and coach. You know where you take something that you haven't resolved in your mind.
And I had everybody just pick something during their teenage years. Because there's a lot of stuff that goes on in teenage years. You know that's not understandable at the time and maybe you didn't resolve it at all afterwards. So I said just pick something that's negative from your teenage years that anytime you're reminded of it it kind of rankles. You still get an emotional, negative, emotional hit from it. And so they picked it. You know a number of people. It was a relationship, okay, you know, and this one guy said he says boy, and what we do is you write down what worked about that.
And they this is the hardest time of it because their memory of it is nothing worked about it. But then you go through and he said and then he you know. And I say now, so you know. And then you say what didn't work about it. So after you've done what worked about it, it's easier to emotionally face the things that didn't work about it. It's very hard to what's not working head on.
You have to you have to get your confidence level up before you can actually look at the things that didn't work. And then you say, if, in a similar situation going forward, what would I do differently, based on my thinking so far. So yeah, and this one guy said well, I had this girlfriend and she was a knockout. Then I just thought she was going to be the woman of my life and everything else.
And and and so, yeah, we got to a nice is so what worked about that? And he says well, I didn't marry her. I said you missed a bullet, didn't you? You missed because he had met her about 15, 20 years later and she wasn't the woman of his dreams.
Dean Jackson
When he met her? Yeah, and I'm sure the women.
Dan Sullivan
The women would have the same story to tell about men. Thank God I didn't marry him, so anyway. But but I'm a great believer in reworking my past. My past is my property, so I can do anything that I want with it. Your past is an interpretation of events. It's yeah, I mean, our entire past is our interpretation of what certain events you're not changing the events you're simply changing your interpretation of the events.
And I spent a lot of time in my past. You know I go back and I said what did I learn from that? Gee, that's really useful, but by intent is always, I'm going to learn something from the past, that's applicable to the future. I think that's what I think, that's what I think, that's what humanity does Is that right Because I wondered if I thought maybe that was uniquely.
Dean Jackson
I thought maybe I spent a lot of time in the past and I do it with an analytical mind, like I think I mentioned to you, like looking back and kind of really breaking it down into the four to five year pretty serious inflection changes and looking back for three lines and recognize that when you were talking about guessing and betting, that I think that the you know it was really interesting is looking back at the things that I guessed right and bet and the. I think the reason that we take such comfort in looking back or that enjoy the fantasy of being able to go back, is that because we know the, we know the outcome now.
Looking back 25 years. It would have been, it would be really amazing to go back 25 years now that we know where it's all heading. You know, we know that, having seen 2023, it would be very interesting to go back to 1997 and know that the bets that you're making, you know, are going to pay off. But the real skill is to be able to turn that thinking and project forward for the next 25 years and make those bets, you know. But it's also very interesting that there's probably, you know, when I looked at, when I look at, 25 years is an amazing framework for looking backwards, but there's not, there's not a lot of.
There's not a lot of things that you could kind of place a bet on with certainty that we're going to pay out and a lot of the things wouldn't have even come into existence, Like I think you know, if you look back at 1995, like we said, 28 years ago, the internet was just kind of getting started.
So I guess that would be one thing that you could kind of place a bet on, but all of the things that the biggest winners among the internet. Like you know, apple was going bankrupt in 1995. They were losing almost a billion dollars a year because of mismanagement and scattered efforts, and Steve Jobs didn't come back till 1997 and simplified things, and so you wouldn't have bet on Apple in 1995 as being and then they just crossed.
Dan Sullivan
No, they just crossed three trillion dollars, first three trillion dollars, so there's no you wouldn't have guessed that in 1995.
Dean Jackson
There were no indications that they were going to be that. But you look at that period of innovation, the 10 years from 1997 to 2007 were tremendous innovation and game changing things, all on the back of internet. And I think that if you look at, what Steve Jobs was able to see was going just like he went all in on personal computers in a phase when it ball mainframe and business. He in the 70s yeah, that 25 years or 20 years or whatever went all in on personal computing and then when he saw the internet, that was the world that he was like how can we bring the world to the devices.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I mean, and you know, the Walkman was the breakout product of that. Well, the Apple, that wasn't Apple, but.
Dean Jackson
The iPod.
Dan Sullivan
The iPod, yeah, the iPod. I mean he just and that was strictly internet. You know that was totally making use of the internet.
Dean Jackson
I mean and the.
Dan Sullivan
Mac was the Mac. I mean, he always had a great operating system before he was fired.
Dean Jackson
The iMac was the first thing that you know, really made the computer. That was really the thing that was acknowledging it's all going to the internet. So the iMac was first, then that brought in.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and the other thing that he brought back much more so than he had in the first place, was his was the sense that your product should be beautiful.
Dean Jackson
And nobody in technology.
Dan Sullivan
nobody in technology did before or since has ever placed the emphasis on beautiful and ease of use and ease of use. And you know and you know, I mean, and certainly Microsoft, never twig to that, even when they saw what they were up against. They never, they never saw. Why would you make things beautiful?
You know why they know right it just adds to the cost of development and everything else. Why would you do that? But if you don't have that sense? But he zeroed in on the artistic market where beauty is a big deal. Style, beauty, you know, elegance, you know all those things. That's really not part of the technological brain. You know most part and free, because they're mostly in. Yeah yeah. And you know they, he got rid of computer. You know it was just Apple.
And then they came up with their long range purpose, which was we make beautiful technology that people love using. I said, oh God, that's a forever. That's a forever purpose. When you're not bound in by any particular technology, you're not bound in by any particular period of time, You're not bound in by any particular target market is we make a beautiful technology that people love using. I said, God, you can live with that forever.
Dean Jackson
I mean, if you'd had that 4,000 years.
Dan Sullivan
If you had that 4,000 years ago, it'd be working. It'd be working today.
Dean Jackson
That's so great. I love that. That's a great thing, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so what have we covered today?
Dean Jackson
What territory have we covered? What have we mapped out in?
Dan Sullivan
claimed as our own. Well, I think that we've mapped out.
Dean Jackson
Like I'm looking at these, you know I was fascinated by the whole.
You know by the all these VCR collaborations you know, like looking at how Mr Beast, but just looking at the distinction between Feastables and Mr Beast Burger and the precariousness of kind of you know being the capability that then brings the idea to the reach. That's kind of precarious, you know. But I was looking. I was just thinking about like some of the clients that I'm working with now that are you know, and people that I've met recently that have these amazing capability things. You know, like I was. When I heard about Feastable, I was thinking about our friend and FreeZone member, shahid in India, who makes all the biscuits and confection.
Dan Sullivan
No same.
Dean Jackson
Capability Pakistan. Yeah, pakistan yeah yeah, he would know the difference. Of course he would. Yeah, yeah, and I should have known the difference. I've spoken with him, had joined with him, but there's a guy who's like that, the capability that he has, you know, just ready for he's Well it's really interesting.
Dan Sullivan
He's just started a new collaboration in Italy. Okay, using his know-how. You know they brought from that market and now he's looking for the United States. And I said you don't want to go to a, after you've done Italy, you don't want to do another European country. And he says no it's not the US. And I said great you know, yeah, that's great, right, right an impact builder and what you're looking for and and everything.
Well, I think the big thing is the custom designing of the future. You know, and that's my use of the fast filter tool. I'm sort of cussed. I said, you know, I'm picky about going forward. I'm picky about, yeah, and I said, does this check the ideation box? Does this check the you know the, you know maximizer and the others? Does this check? Does it check all the boxes? And I'm not buying at all, you know, I'm just not getting involved if it doesn't check all the boxes. Right, you know, but what it does, it makes something that's sort of reactive and passive, makes it into active and kind of aggressive.
Because, then you can go into any situation and say you know I'm, I know exactly what I'm looking for, and if it's not there, I'll know about it. I'll know it almost instantly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that's an interesting thing. I look at the maximizer, one of the realizations that I'm having about me and about my you know ideation and my in the widget world, my discernment and invention that those are best suited to tap into an existing engine. Like I look at the biggest impacts that I've had and been able to join something you know be an accelerant, a rocket booster to something that is always. Yeah, already exists, yeah, yeah, without me having to be an operator, because that's where my strengths fall down, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah Well, I've always called you the marketing Buddha and as far as I know Buddha didn't keep office hours. That's right. That's right.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you just enlightened the future. That's all you do. You enlighten the future, yeah, yeah, that's what that marketing strategist for Bud Light was doing. She was enlightening the future. She was going to elevate the brand and enlighten the future of their oh boy of their future. I said well, you certainly got a result.
Dean Jackson
Amen Holy cow.
Dan Sullivan
I mean this is yeah and anyway. And a lot of people are saying that's a debt grant, it's not retrievable, from where they put it with one camp. Pretty amazing, yeah. Yeah, it is because I was in the local. We have a thing called Jug City here which kind of tells you that it certainly defines the customers here Jug.
City, you know Anyway and I was in there and I was in line. I came in and I just checked because people had their purchases in their hands. I went in and then I came out again and I saw 10 different kinds of beers being bought, but not Bud Light. And this is Canada. This isn't even the United. States and everything like that. But, boy, you know you don't want to get caught in a crossfire favoring one side, you know.
Dean Jackson
I know that.
Dan Sullivan
And they just, she just took it into the zone. And now the former CEO of Bud Light is saying the president CEO of Bud Light should just resign. He should just resign because he's been an abysmal failure and he was hired to take care of situations like this. He was hired not to get into situations like this. And now right but at least be able to extract him in Really dense. But I bet this is being studied in all the business schools.
Dean Jackson
Oh, man, talk about, yeah, one of the amazing things, just like this amazing story. You know, yeah, such an, I can't even I think I'm. I wonder what other examples of that. You know, can't even think of anything that.
Dan Sullivan
No, I can't think of a single. I mean Target had a little whiff of that, but they got out of it pretty soon because they were, and you know this is the third rail of the subway. You don't touch the subject, you know.
Dean Jackson
I guess it's a little bit back to when the Ford Pintos were exploding again. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, nobody would touch up Ford Pinto or.
Dean Jackson
That would ruin the driving brand right.
Dan Sullivan
You know I mean we live in a million times more viral communications world now than we did back then. And you know I mean I go whoa. And now Dylan Mulvaney, the actress in the situation, is bashing Bud Light for nuts sticking up for her, you know and everything. Wow, wow, wow she's saying we're done with you. We're done with you. So the very target audience they were going out Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean that's yeah, so that qualifies as a bad guess and a bad bet. Well, there you go, Okay.
Dean Jackson
Dan.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but you know, you know you should kind of do it in a 10-person focus group before you do it live on the Internet.
Dean Jackson
Oh my goodness, nobody might have been able to say, hey, wait a minute. What about this?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, why don't we get some of these backward, out-of-touch people who happen to be the number one consumer of our product, in a room and show them our new idea?
Dean Jackson
Unbelievable yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway it makes it for an interesting, entertaining world. Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Well, you have an amazing Are you having another week at the cottage?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and I'll be available. Next Sunday I'll be in Chicago next. Sunday Okay. So yeah, we're going in on Saturday because Joe and Eunice are going to personality with us, so we'll see you again on Saturday night, oh nice Anyway that's good, yeah, so 11 o'clock, your time.
Dean Jackson
Yes, perfect, I'll be there. All right, okay, okay, bye, bye, guys.
17 Mar 2021
Ep012: Boundaries in Cloudlandia
01:03:32
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about the need to create boundaries in Cloudlandia as there aren't any inherently in place.
Ep121: Intellectual Property in the Era of Innovation and Adaptation
00:52:00
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we embark on a reflective journey through the lens of history. We examine the perceived hardships of modern life compared to past decades like the 1950s and 1960s.
Drawing on personal experiences, I note how some aspects of the human condition remain unchanged despite technological and social evolution.
Shifting to practical topics, we discuss strategies for leveraging intellectual property, especially during economic downturns. Adapting to changes and maintaining resilience emerge as significant when transforming ideas into tangible assets.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
In this episode we reflect on how technological advancements have transformed personal and societal challenges compared to past decades.
Dan examines the prevalence of mental health discussions in contemporary society versus the silence around such issues in the 50s and 60s.
We explore the philosophical implications of our tech-saturated age through the ideas of Italian philosopher Augusto del Noce on atheism and technology.
Dan and I question if the abundance of knowledge and advancements in AI truly contribute to happiness or complicate our understanding of the world.
We consider whether technology, like virtual reality, adds new dimensions to life or repackages what has always existed.
discussions on the military's use of advanced technology, such as eye-controlled systems, and its trickle into civilian life.
We share insights on the transformation of media consumption habits and the strategic benefits of converting intellectual property into tangible assets.
I underscore the importance of adaptability and resilience, especially when leveraging intellectual property during economic challenges.
Dan and I share personal experiences, noting that while the geographical footprint expands, human connection and existence remain constant.
We ponder the impact of innovations on our daily lives and the need to adapt to chase tangible achievements in the face of technological change.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan,
Dan: Mr Jackson,
Dean: it would be a tragedy if these calls were not recorded. It really would.
Dan: That would be the truth.
Dean: Isn't it nice?
Dan: that they're automatically recorded and we don't have to remember to do it. Yeah, just feels organic, so welcome back. Yeah, it's been a few, a couple of weeks here.
Dean: Yeah, you know, here's a, here's a thought that I was just pondering, that it seems to me that, as cloud by India expands people's real world experience not real world, but mainland experience they're both. Mainland experience seems to be more challenging and seems to be, in some cases, more vaccine and more traumatic. Okay, do you have some exhibits? That's my thought, that's my cheerful thought for the day.
Dan: Do you have some exhibits for your argument?
Dean: Well, there's such an emphasis now on meltdown, people having nervous breakdowns, which I don't remember at all growing up, you know 50s 60s? I don't remember any talk like this, but now it's constant, every day. You know people.
Dan: And it's everywhere right.
Dean: Like now this is. Yeah, I mean everywhere that I know it's much of the world in humanity that I don't know, but everywhere I know, it's not so much that the people that I'm talking to, our experience, and it's not that it's a narrative. You know that. You know these are the most trying times that humans have ever had, and I said well, first, of all. I don't even know how you would know that you know?
Dan: how would you know? How would you know? Yes, I mean, if you haven't been there, you probably your knowledge of 150 years ago is probably pretty slim.
Dean: How about the dark ages? That would have to be pretty yeah.
Dan: Well, I, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't know.
Dean: I mean, I think it's a comparison, and I think somebody's got a point to make. When they say the dark ages. Well, they probably weren't dark for the people who were in the dark ages. They probably weren't dark for the people who were in them.
Dan: Right, exactly, that's so funny.
Dean: Well, the Roman.
Dan: Empire seemed to have a pretty good time, didn't they?
Dean: Yeah, well, you know, life is life. You know, you know, and yeah, it's a discussion I have with people who are talking about the future and I said I'm going to guarantee you one thing about the future is that when you get there, it's going to feel normal.
Dan: And we're going to. It's funny.
Dean: I think that would be disappointing to a lot of people, because they think that the future is going to transform them. And I said well, not anymore than the past. Did I remember how?
Dan: to find the old. I would say these are the good old times. Yeah, like that's the reality. Is wherever right now. It's just the distance of it right Like if you're thinking. You know, in the past, that was just a reflection of a moment in the present. At one point you know, yeah, well, the reason was we were thinking about the future.
Dean: The reason was we were. We were at Genius Network this week and the subject of Apple's new Provision goggles came out. Okay, I don't know if you've experimented yet I haven't. And not, but they said this is going to change everything.
Dan: And I said wait a minute.
Dean: You're in a half. Ai was going to change everything. And you know I got up this morning and you know my life doesn't feel that much different than when the day before AI was introduced. Yes, at.
Dan: GVT.
Dean: Yes, and I said and so I began thinking about that that you're using basically a Cloud Landia phenomenon to save. That phenomenon is going to change everything. And and I said, well, you know, I mean who's talking. I mean my question is who's talking? Maybe it's going to change you, but you know, for most people there I mean half the world won't even know about it 10 years from now.
Dan: Yeah, like that's. You know, it's so funny. It reminds me of the. You know, how do you? It's like asking a fish how do you like the water?
Yeah, yeah, they don't have any recollection of what you're reading. The water, yeah, gen Z is now. You know, all the Gen Zs have no idea about a world without Internet and social media and everything on demand. I mean, they have no idea about there being three channels on TV that broadcast everything to everyone at the same time and not when you watch what they put out. I mean, that's pretty, it's pretty amazing, right, and it was in black and white.
Dean: In black and white, on a dream.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: You had to jiggle with the antenna to make sure that you're receiving that day. Yeah, you didn't think anything strange about it, that's just. You know, that's just what you had to do.
Dan: Eating your TV dinner and it's tinfoil plate and your Jiffy popcorn.
Dean: I remember those as being quite tasty.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Isn't that?
Dan: funny though, dan. I mean, I do think about that a lot. I just I extended the southerly boundary of my footprint on the planet a couple of weekends ago. I was down in. Miami, in Brickle, at Giovanni Marceco's Archangel event. He invited me down and yeah, so it was just a you know another world. You know expand everything happening. You know people bustling around all in there, certainly a lot of traffic, every you know on the mainland things are Largely status quo, you know, and getting more.
Dean: Yeah, you got to pick your time. You got to be more intelligent about picking when you decide to travel these things you know, but I got a feeling that's been that way, you know, Since we could transport ourselves. But I think the question I have is. What is it about, the president? That's not okay with you you know, and. I did this diagram, which I'm going to develop into a thinking exercise. I love that.
Yeah, and it's, and I think you've seen it, I think you've seen it and what I have is a sheet of paper and the diagram goes from lower left to upper right. Okay, and down at the bottom there's a little circle and that's at the upper left. Upper right is a bigger circle, and underneath the little circle is here, and under above the Bigger circle in the upper right-hand corner is there, and then I draw a line that's got an arrow head you know, it's a straight arrowhead and it's called striving.
Dan: And I said I'm.
Dean: This is a portrait of your entire life. I'm going to tell you your as entrepreneurs. So I'm just going to tell you your entire life is. You're here and you're striving to get there.
Striving, I said how many of you remember, this is the way it was at 10 years old, 30 years old, some of you 50 years old. I can remember 70 years old. Okay, that was just what I say. So let's say you start at 10 and now you're 60 years old and One thing is absolutely true you have a lifetime, 50 year habit every day, lifetime habit reinforced, of being here but striving to get there. I said so With that very pure habit in place. What do you think the chances are? At 60, you're going to be there.
Dan: That's it's so, it's profound Right, but it fits in with the cap and the game too, in a way.
Dean: Yeah, so actually 10 years ago. The reason I'm bringing this up is 10 years ago I Decided that I'm there and now, the job is not to get anywhere. The job is just to expand the quality and quantity of the there that I'm at mm-hmm okay and, and I had this exercise and you did, which is called your best decade ever, and I decided, when I look back, that I've achieved more Between 70 and a couple months, 80 70 to 80.
I've achieved more in the last 10 years than I did in the previous 70 years.
Dan: And what do you? Did you set out with that as your intention, or did you know? Is that my?
Dean: intention. I just made a decision. I remember that 10 years ago, when I was 70 and yeah, there was, if you remember, there was a big party and I mean, how can I forget?
Dan: you just recently forgave me for lying to you. Yeah there was a.
Dean: Dirty lying culprit Involved in that and I love him in spite of that.
Dan: I love, there we go, thank you.
Dean: Thank you and anyway, but I was reflecting that I'm there, you know, I'm there and there's no. And it shows up in two ways, dean, and it is that I've noticed, and I this just occurred to me one day, because people say Would you like to meet so-and-so, and I said not really right really, and I don't have any particular reasons, it's like yeah, somebody said who's the person that, if you could, you would love most to have dinner with and I said Jackson.
I said, certainly someone I know, certainly some what I know knows. You haven't met them yet. And I said, nah, I can't think of anyone you know. And they said yeah, but you know, yeah, I mean, is there anyone in the you know that's gonna be different in the future and I said yeah, but that just that's built into the formula.
I said you know, every year we bring you know close to a thousand new entrepreneurs into the program and I know a lot of a thousand there's gonna be. You know a handful of them that I really get to know and they're you know, they're bright, they're exciting, they're ambitious, they're creative, they're doing all sorts of interesting things. I so, just as matter, of course, I'm gonna meet them and they said no. But you know, I mean, would you like to meet Taylor Swift?
I said no, what would we talk about? And somebody was gonna introduce me Actually the I was described to this person. That person said I'd really like to meet him and it was a famous politician. They'd like to meet this guy. And so they said would you call him because he'd really like to talk to you? And I said but I don't have anything to say. He may think of a reason for meeting me, but I don't have any reason for meeting him, you know. And I've got so many really bright people that I know.
That I'm having great conversations with I don't you know, I don't really want to. It would be a lot of effort, you know a lot of effort. Yeah it would be a, it would be a guess and a bet.
Dan: Where I'm working with I'm working with guarantees, you know so.
Dean: Anyway. But the other aspect of this where's the place in the world? You haven't been yet. I said can't think of any. You know that you'd like to really go to. I say I can't think of any. Right you know, maybe when I'm in London I'll head in the northwest direction rather than you know the other directions. Have already gone in to see what's five or six streets away and I know in.
London. You're in London, you're always running into something new. No longer, no matter how long you're there, you're doing that. So I've got those two things and I think it's a function of the decision I made 10 years ago. You know that there's nobody I particularly want to meet. There's no one, a particular Place that I want to go, and I think the reason is because I've decided that.
Dan: I'm there. Do you know? What's so funny, dan, is that is very similar thinking to what I did in 1999 with the. I know I'm being successful when I'm thinking about that. It's being is the state of being here. You can only, you can only be in the present doing it's being right being yeah, it's really interesting.
Dean: I've been reading this several volume series by this Italian philosopher, truly a philosopher. Augusto del noce died around 1990 and it's on atheism. As it seems, that is Last 25 years of his life.
He was just zeroing on this one subject of atheism, which is kind of a new thing on the planet, you know, goes back the beginning of it is maybe 400 years ago and it probably coincides when we to have the tools and we started to have a financing to do things scientifically, you know, and people notice that as they, they develop scientific concepts and then technology enabled them to measure In a way that they hadn't been able to measure. They discovered brand new things and they just said, since we have this growing ability and it seems like it'll grow forever why do we need God?
So, why do we need heaven when we can create our own heaven here? And that was a guess in a bet and it's. It Seems to me that they haven't really been successful. But anyway, I was, I was just. I've read a couple of them twice and I'm on a new one right now, and he's just introduced this vast universe of different thinkers who contribute some aspect To what we would call atheism today.
You know which is essentially the denial of that One there is a God and number two, that a God is needed. You know that perfectly okay, ourselves. And and since I've been writing that, I've just been increasingly aware of the topic, the subject I started the conversation with, on my part today. Which was, it seems to me, as we develop these incredible technological abilities. So there's no question that AI. I don't know anything about the new ones, so I don't have any opinion on it, but to that it's not making people happy right Like perfect.
Dan: You know, there's great words that I heard Peter Diamandis talking about one time a perfect knowledge that you can see that we're moving to a place where we're wearing let's call them sunglasses now you know like goggles, not the big thing that apple just put out, but that's if we liken that to the first cell phones that were those big brick Cell phones.
If we, you know, link that down to, if we take the progress of those, you know VR and AR, you know goggles to be more like, you know, super thin Sun glasses that just look like glasses and we couple that with the advancement in VR or in, you know, ai, in our pocket or attached to our Wrist or whatever, however that goes, that we will reach a point where we know we would have access to knowing everything about everything that's known by visual or auditory cues, right like being able to walk through A city and have, through facial recognition, everything about a particular person, or to walk through a forest and see every, you know, animal butterfly, you know all of those things then there's not going to be any mystery of things. I think you know, like if you just Fast-forward these things, the speed.
Dean: Friction is what you're getting out of Peter D Amonus saying this.
Dan: I'm saying, I'm looking, what Peter D Amonus said he was the one that I first heard say those words perfect knowledge and I'm translating it into when we're headed now, where we see that it's not too far of a stretch to see the combination of chat T AI and the, you know, ar Sunglasses augmented or virtual reality Sunglass or glasses to be able to view the world through those lenses and have reflected up on the screen or in front of us All the data about somebody or about anything that it sees. You know, it's really almost the way. You know, the need for the more friction Involved ways of gathering knowledge would have been like if you had to let's say you saw this amazing Flower or something out on a walk you'd have to remember, remember it or draw or make notes of it. Then you'd have to go to the encyclopedia you know a botany and you'd have to go through, or even go to the library and look in the dewy decimal card catalog system for Flowers and look for a book that you could scan through to find that maybe somebody has documented what this particular, what this particular flower is.
The friction of gathering knowledge was so, you know, so involved in friction, and the more that you Knew, the more that you could store in your, in your brain. That was sort of a measure of Intelligence, right, or a measure of the fact that you knew stuff. That's an advantage for Things. But now if we get to a point where everybody has perfect knowledge, you don't. You have to look at it and see okay, that's the, you know Whatever that, whatever that is, or that person is this, or this product is this or that I'll get you.
Dean: I'll give you someone who has a yearly experience of I'm very smart. You know him Peter Steven Poulter. The.
IVF doctor and he says you know the thrill of being in this field because the all, basically most medical breakthroughs happen in the Pregnancy and like the first year of life. So most you know if you watch where the money goes and Medical science, it has to do with pregnancy, conception, pregnancy, birth and then probably the first year of life and the other one is the last 12 months of life. Okay, and that's Experimenting to see if we can keep someone alive. You know, beyond, yeah, normal and he says that. He says from my perspective as a Doctor and a scientist, he said every year it seems to me that we know 10 times more About pregnancy because he's an IVF doctor and vitro realization, and he's a great you know, and the Statistics gathered by the US government Indicate that's true he's in the top top.
You know five and and he says but the problem is that when you know 10 times more, you're is set with the 10 times greater Universe of what you don't know.
Dan: That the 10 times new knowledge has opened.
Dean: Yes, yes okay. So, and I was just pondering this, as people are saying well, dan, have you tried out? There's a new provision, yet I haven't.
Dan: I said no, I haven't.
Dean: I haven't answered two questions. I don't have the answer to two questions. They said what's the questions? I said does this Experience a provision? Does it increase or decrease?
Dan: I bet it just where would you put your main line, dopamine? Yeah, you don't even have to move your hands anymore.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's the first question. The second thing, the second question I have if I don't do it, am I missing anything?
Dan: I, you know. What's very interesting too is that to me, the visual that I'm getting also is that Even chat, gpt and all of those things are decidedly backward-looking, meaning it's only trained on what's known knowledge.
Dean: Yeah, I'll actually. All creativity is backward-looking. Okay, I mean if it's worth anything, you know.
Dan: I mean.
Dean: I mean, the apple is really great at this, because apples never first to do anything, you know as right.
Dan: There's a highly valued.
Dean: You know on a consistent basis they're most highly valued corporation in the world. But they've never actually Done anything new. Just do what already exists a lot better.
Dan: Wow, yes, so you wonder what is? So the probe and there is anything new.
Dean: What I can see about the provision, because the goggles already exist. It's you know, it's an upgrade on you know what, palmer, lucky probably created the bag and then, you know emails already. They say you can do emails with your eyes and you know you can do search with your eyes.
Dan: You can you know everything else.
Dean: But I said, these things already exist. They're just pulling together and integrating something that wasn't able to be done. That the same time, you know, and you know it's really pricey, I mean it's, you know, I mean it's reassuringly expensive.
They've tried other goggles how much is your program? Reassuringly expensive, that's that I'll tell you. The sales team is gonna have that line tomorrow. It's what? And they say, well, why is it? Reassure me? And I said you know, you know who's not going to be in the room. What they're doing is already exists with the US Air Force, and then All the pilots, that everything they, those pilots, do, is done with their eyes. They have this screen. That's not a screen. I mean, there's no screen, but they see a screen. They see the and they operate with five other planes. So almost every Mission where they sent one of the new hyperjets, the pilot feels himself as a group of six. He's a member of a group of six and he can tell exactly what the other five are doing.
You know he doesn't have to turn. It said he doesn't because he can see it on the screen. Plus, he can see 500 miles in all direction. This is all done with the eyes. These pilots have to train themselves to do Everything with their eyes. Well, that already exists. You know they're bringing that down to a civilian, civilian thing. But you know the whole question I have are the stakes big enough that I would teach myself a new skill?
Dan: Mmm, right, or does it fit, can you? Well, that's it right. This is. I've been Test-driving, by the way, dan the, and it gets good reaction. They can I. Is there any way for me to get this without doing anything Is a good place to start.
Dean: Well, check your limit on your card. Yeah, and first of all it's an anti-social activity because you're putting goggles on, so nobody's going to be around you when you have your goggles. But Mike Kenix was there the other day and Mike said you know, he says you have your mind, has no grasp of you until you've done it. And I says that's fair. I said that's totally fair. I understand that the question Is there enough of a compelling offer that I would even want to have experience? And I think that would be measured measured in the mainland, not in, not in Kauvalandia, I think, whether it was worse. I think whether anything is worth it. It really has a function. Does it register? Is it measurable? Progress in the mainland, right, I think you're right.
Well, I'll give you an idea, your studio, your great studio which, yes, we'll have our will have a copy of in September or October of this year. I'll see that the team is in there now. We have eight studios. I have eight studios and they're gonna be you know, up-to-date technologically and and but the thing that compelled me to, first of all, for us to Follow your lead and really investigate what your studio is doing, one of our team members whose key to the Execution here came down to Orlando you know, yes you're.
And went there and they said it's fantastic and they're very helpful and they'll help us any way we want, and. But the thing was suggest how much you get done in the mainland was what prompted us to look into it.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's it's so. You know, that was kind of that before you brought it up, even thinking, I remember the day sitting in the cafe writing in my journal about okay, I want to start doing more video stuff, and asking myself the equivalent of that. You know thinking, because I'm definitely trained in thinking who, not how. But I caught myself really going down a how path of thinking okay, what do I need? You know, at least two of these. I need two cameras, I need lighting, I need what am I going to have for the background? I was already visualizing how I would rearrange one of the rooms in my office to be the, you know, always ready studio kind of thing. And then it really dawned on me about that that it's already there. Is there? That's the equivalent of is there any way I can get this without doing anything? And we literally went, you know, straight there and set up, signed a contract and recorded the very next morning. I mean, it's just so funny that the pressure not allowed and I realized that was you know.
I was at the end of the 12 weeks. I signed a 12 week contract that. I had already, you know, I had 12 weeks worth of content in you know, created and already documented, and we hadn't even reached the point of what one of those cameras would cost.
Dean: Like. Each of them got three cameras that are $6,000.
Dan: You know the microphones are $1,000 each. The that sound for the studio environment. I mean the whole thing, the software, the all of it. It's a crazy thing when you really start thinking about it's the only way to do this without doing anything, and that's part it's so parallel you know I've been talking about. Imagine if you apply your self SELF, sphere is things around you. Is there somebody else as a service or someone that you know that could just do this without you having to do anything?
Dean: Yeah, the thing is that I'll you know, I can think of some team members that. I'll encourage and we'll you know we'll finance it. Have some finance. Who would be interested in looking that provision and see what application it would have to the normal course of business, of speeding things up, making things easier, you know, and everything, and so funny.
I was having a conversation with someone and he said I mean, he was texting you know and about. We were with him for about two hours and he probably texted you know 15 times to our hours and received text and you know and to our he's excuse me, I just have to take five minutes to do this. And so I said what would you see on the average day that you're involved in texting busy?
And I said, and I suspect, if you do it on five days a week, you actually do it on seven days a week.
Dan: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: I don't think you take a weekend off from this habit. So so anyway, and he says well, you know, a light day is maybe a hundred texts and you know, a really filled, filled up day is 400 texts.
Dan: And.
Dean: I said you know that you're lower number, 100. That's more than I've done in my lifetime.
Dan: More than more texts than you've done. Yeah, yeah, 100. I haven't done 100.
Dean: I haven't done 100 texts in my lifetime. I mean, yeah and it's, and that would be 95% to Babs, you know and you know, and mostly I use emojis. I've become very Egyptian. I can do. I can do hieroglyphics with emojis and I can get a message and I like it. You know thumbs up times three. You know times.
Dan: Smiley guy with sunglasses you know, I mean, you can do a lot of creative work with emojis, but except that we're apart.
Dean: The only reason I'm doing this because we're apart, you know we're not in the same location, otherwise we just chat. But the thing is that this person, when I look at what he gets done, I get sometimes more done than he does in a day, certainly in a week or a month, you know, a week, a month or a quarter I get 10 times more done and I don't do any of it. You know, I don't do any of that stuff.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I bet. That's part of the I mean it's not profitable productivity, it's the feeling, it's dopamine busyness yes, I agree 100%.
Dan: That's exactly where I that's what I've been catching myself, you know is this is really taking a look at that and realizing how much of this is, you know, really counterproductive. You know a lot of ways.
I was saying I had a breakthrough blueprint at celebration last week Monday, Tuesday, wednesday and we were talking about, you know, 19,. I was bringing up the idea that you and I had been talking about the 25 year frames, and you know we're talking about your 70 to 80 best decade ever, and how. You know, three years I'm going to be 60 and then it'll be 20. The next 25 year framework I'll be 85, you know. So, looking back 28 years ago you're not discussed like that takes you all the way back to, you know, 1996, 1995, whatever that, whatever that is and realizing that everything that we look at right now that is so important to our lives wasn't even in existence.
Then you know, like we, I still remember in 1997, when internet was just starting to become mainstream and it was definitely a place out there that you went to go to. You know you would go to the internet from your primary world on the mainland and it was a distraction, it was something it was starting to dip into. Maybe you know TV time or something that you would do otherwise. And then I remember, you know, gradually it became more and more, and 2007 I view as the tipping point, when we started with the iPhone bringing the internet with us and the app world becoming vital functions for going through our days. And now we're at a point where it's so woven into our existence that it's like water and we don't even remember, you know, I mean, all the talk now is what would happen if the grid went down.
Indeed, dan, what would happen if the grid, the internet, went down? Not the power, not electricity, but let's say that the network goes down. So many things would be, you know, so many things would be messed up. We don't know how to survive without it. I was joking about that article. I remember, in the New York Times or GQ, I think it was magazine had a journalist that they sent, you know, to try and survive in New York City for a week where their only means of contact with the outside world was the internet see if he could make it.
And he searched, you know, in this bulletin board, and he found this restaurant, this Chinese restaurant that had a menu and they would. You could order delivery on the internet, you know, and he slowly survived with those things. But now it's so exactly the opposite that it would be challenging to survive in New York City a week without the internet you know, it's just so how things have switched. You're the closest thing you're the closest thing I know of to being, you know, amish in the I've been involved in it.
Dean: Yeah, I mean yeah, and one is, my life is not that much different. I mean, I certainly made use of the technology. I mean there's no question and I enjoy the. You know, I enjoy the internet and I mostly enjoy it for YouTube, I would say YouTube yeah, because I can get really in-depth, one-hour explanations of a particular topic you know, and Peter Zion is very good at his eight minute, 10 minute, 15, very, very good at it and.
I really enjoy that. And then I'll watch all the action scenes out of Denzel Washington's new Sicily film, you know and. I mean, you don't have to watch a whole Denzel Washington movie to get the essence, you know it's about 20 minutes of really hardcore violence, you know.
Dan: Yeah right.
Dean: And he, you know, and he wishes the other person hadn't gotten him into this situation. He says no, I was just going about my life here. You know, it would have been better if you left me alone but here we are, you know and you got about 10 seconds to decide whether you're going to live or not, you know.
So I'm just looking at my watch right now and three seconds to say you know, and I enjoy that, it's like a little you know palate, you know refreshing. And then I'll go back and I'll look at some question that occurs to me. I wonder you know what happened in this historical situation? Sure enough, you can find one or two or three you know, yeah movies, or you know videos, or something on the internet.
you know and you can do that and it's very conducive for my ADB brain to have that activity and people say well, how much. You read a lot. No, I told people you know I haven't watched television at all, and Joe I. It'll be six years that I haven't watched nothing. All the football. I haven't watched any of it, Nothing.
I haven't watched anything, but what I've discovered is that no football game has more than 10 minutes of action. And so I just watched the highlights. And then I don't want to see the highlights for the other teams, I just want to see the highlights for my team. That's about six minutes. And I said, geez, all those games I spent watching hour after hour on television. I could have gotten 10 or 15 of the men and the time it would take to do it, but you know, you kind of zero in on what's the dopamine part of the exercise. You know the activity so, but I resist the notion that this is going to change my life. I just resist the idea. Well, this changes everything. And I said, well, you know, speak for yourself you know, change anything for me, right?
Dan: And we're both tourists.
Dean: We're both tourists, yes, and we will sacrifice no pleasure for something new.
Dan: Right, oh man, that's so funny.
Dean: Any existing pleasure. We will not put that on the table as a bet.
Dan: Yeah, we like our current pleasures, that's right.
Dean: Oh yeah, so you know, and the thing is, the world is made up of all sorts, and so you've got to have the people who are, you know, the people who are just crazy nuts about the future, you know and you know, and there's people who say well, you know, as far as human nature goes, I haven't seen anything particularly new in 79 years. Right, interesting, I'm not saying not interesting. I just haven't seen a lot of new stuff happening with the fundamental change in people.
Dan: Right yeah. So how are you? How are you looking at your next best decade ever? You're months away, days away.
Dean: Yeah, the big thing is that we've discovered a great capability in the last two years, and that is that our thinking tools, coach tools, seem to translate easily into patents. Okay, so we started in April with a big batch.
We you know we put in dozens of applications and they're starting to come in and we've got 12 now since April, we've got 12 patents and these are, you know, these have asset values. They're like every patent is like you created a house, you know, and it's got a marketplace value. The moment you get the asset, you know, you get the you know notification from the patent bureau that this is now a patent.
And there seems to be something good about our thinking tools. You know strategy circle, pre-focus and buffer days. There seems to be something about our thinking tools that resonate with what they consider to be a patent. You know, something that can be granted a patent. So this is very exciting, because all we're doing is taking stuff that's been created over the last 35 years and giving it an asset value beyond just getting paid for it in workshops, you know.
So it's it's growing and we're not doing that. It's a whole team of other people. We just write it a check. And you know a year later, we get back an asset that is, at the minimum, 10 times more you know, greater than our investment.
Dan: I mean that's you know 10 to one in a year is pretty good to return that investment.
Dean: So I'm very excited about that because we just have vast Dean. You can't believe how much stuff we've got in the store room. You know just a sheer number of ideas that we have and all of them are popping up in my mind.
We're going back through documents I created 25 years ago. I said, geez, that was a great idea, but it had no present use so it didn't have a value. But here you can take everything and increase the value. I would say, the next 10 years, the amount of asset value we will create in intellectual property and on patents will equal the total amount of, will be the total amount of revenues we've created since 1989. Wow, yeah. So that's what I'm excited about.
Dan: Wow, and that's where the program is.
Dean: That's where the program is going. I mean, Dean, if you went through all your, all your notes, all the notebooks that you created and everything else. I bet there's a gold mine there that it can't.
Dan: No, I understand that intellectually, I understand that there's lots of that. I get that. I just I can't. When I have a hard time wrapping my mind around is to what end? You know like. I wonder what the.
Dean: If you were ever in, you know. First of all, that tells you that its property is the fact that you can barrel against it, not that we need it.
Dan: Right.
Dean: And I will tell you, we had this scamper a little bit during COVID and we had this scamper a little bit during the meltdown in 0809 where we lost the bottom of our program. I mean the revenues for the people who were at the lowest level. We just instantly lost it, you know, for a year and a half or two years, and unfortunately we went into our own reserves, our own personal reserves.
Dan: Absolutely.
Dean: And we could. You know we could finance the company but it was nervous. Used up weeks of her time you know, I don't want to hear you just call a number and you say I'd like to. You know the way it's all set up now with the, you know, the appraisal companies and then the loans loan companies. It's all set up and we'll get to know all those people.
So the assessed value is up to date every day, and so it puts you in a position where your cash confidence. I like the game that the strategic coach represents and I just wanted to go on and on, and I don't want to be, wasting time with nervous crises, right exactly.
Dan: Yes, it's a good way of putting it nervous crises, that's a.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's creative crises, but the nervous ones I could do without, right? Oh, that's so funny. Is there any way I can solve this problem? By doing nothing? That's right, I'm not doing anything.
Dan: Well, that's as close as you could get. I guess, when you think about it like that seems to me perfect knowledge.
Dean: Yes exactly All this numbers.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I don't get the value of knowing everything you know I don't get the value of instantaneously knowing what would. Yeah, and besides, we already created that technology.
Dan: Who was that? Who was the famous? You know the old story of the gentleman that said he doesn't need to know those things. He has a button on his desk and whenever I need to know anything I'll push that button and seven men will show up in here and one of them will know the answer to what I'm looking for Henry Ford yeah it was Henry Ford, that's right.
Dean: Yes, I could summon someone, but we've already created the technology for perfect knowledge. And you're going to say, dan, what is the technology?
Dan: for perfect knowledge. Well, what is it?
Dean: Dan, it's called God. Okay, so they don't have access to it. But they said, no, we're going to get off, we're going to get away. You know, and I'm not joking here, because when you read these books, you realize that it's a desire not to be dependent upon at all, upon the entity that created you. And I said, well, I'm okay with it, right, right. And they say, well, it's like you're dependent upon God. And I said, hey, well, first of all, I'm very comfortable to know that he exists, or she, whatever, in this transgender age Anyway.
But I have a feeling. You know, I've had a feeling since I was a kid that I'm connected to something that's transformative and it's way above my ability to know things, and you know I'm okay with that, I don't lose any energy over that, but I think there's this one of the.
In reading these many books on atheism I automatically translate. When I read a lot that is very deep subject and a person has spent their whole life doing it I always think is there some aspect of this that I can just capture and write a quarterly book on? And it came to me after I've been reading El Noce, the Italian philosopher, for about a year and what I came to is a title. I always go for the title.
Dan: Yeah, of course that'll see.
Dean: Yeah, and the title is atheism is very hard work.
Dan: Oh boy.
Dean: It's very hard work. Yeah, these guys people were atheists just have to. I mean, it's 24, seven. I tell you there's no harder work on the planet than being an atheist, oh my goodness. Because they're on the lookout for anybody who even suggests that there's a God, and you know it, they get angry and they you know they have to get into an argument. I said, geez, that's a lot of work, that's a lot of work.
Dan: Yes, it's so funny, dan, and observant and true, it's like those things. It's funny. It's like those isms, right, like veganism. Yeah, you know, yeah.
Dean: I mean you can't sleep, compel even jelly. I mean you can't relax, you can't sleep. I mean isms.
Dan: I mean you know except quick start ism. Right, yes, you watch Dan Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin.
Dean: Yeah, I think Tucker Carlson did himself a lot of good, uh-huh.
Dan: I think so Absolutely.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, he wasn't any different with Putin.
Dan: You know, I mean, this is the guy who's gonna get you thrown off the top of the building.
Dean: You know he didn't see many more you know, yeah, he's got more sex than he is with anyone Anyone. You know he just Right, right right. As a matter of fact, there's a couple of situations where he just kind of broke out laughing. Yes, exactly.
Dan: I can't believe.
Dean: You just said that.
Dan: Right, but it was very interesting to hear Putin's history lessons. You know, going all the way back.
Dean: Yeah, well you know, you gotta look at it from their point of view. They are the easiest country historically to invade. I mean they have about 13 different gateways where enemies can send their troops. It's a flat country, you know.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I mean US has 3000 mile moat on the east and they have a 5000 mile moat on the west and they've got pot smoking Canadians on the north, you know, I see their no threat, oh my goodness. And then you have the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean on the south and then where they're connected to Mexico, it's 200 miles of desert mountains. I mean you can die before you can get across that thing. So the US, but Russia is just the opposite. I mean not only can people invade, they've been invaded 50 times since his 800 number, you know, whatever the year is. I mean Right, they have real honesty, got reason for being paranoid.
Dan: Yeah, it's so funny. I thought it was funny when he was saying how you know, he asked about joining NATO. I thought to myself because this isn't the whole purpose of NATO to protect against Soviet expansion. Well, let's get in on that. Why don't we join that too?
Dean: But you know you got to look at it from his you know, I mean you don't have to agree with his point of view, but you at least have to know what his point of view is. And if I was his point of view, I mean he was born to nobody and he you know. Through diligence and hard work he got to be a colonel in the KGB.
And I have to tell you if you were in the Soviet Union before it collapsed there was no more better job and status in the world than being, you know, a, you know, up and coming officer in the KGB. They got to travel, they had their own stores, they could have somebody arrested and killed. You know, you know pretty easily, and everything else I said you know. You can see it. He took his career, took a real drop when the wall fell. You know so well.
Dan: Dan, we said it all. How do we do it? How do we do? I mean, we said it all really, but there's always knowledge though there's always more.
Dean: That's exactly right, yeah, the one thing about what knowledge is being made up on a daily basis, so I don't know how the word perfect fits in there, right? I mean, we just created over the last hour, we just created some new knowledge.
Dan: That's exactly right. That's what. So it's visually like. It's really interesting. That's my vision of that. It's future blind. You know that GPT it's all only feeds on what's already been created.
Dean: Yeah, you know but there's still got to be some, if technology had feelings, which I don't think it does. I think AI should be more nervous about humanity than humanity should be nervous.
Dan: Right.
Dean: What are they going to come up with today? You know? I mean I feel like we've got it all organized every night and you know, at the morning and the morning we get back and the rock is down at the bottom of the hill again. We've got to push it up. That's so funny. That's so funny. Yeah, I think it's technology that's trying to keep up with humanity, and not the other way around.
Dan: Well, I'm excited, dan. It's almost a couple of weeks. Yeah, we've got a calendar date.
Dean: Yeah. I tell you we're going down the Thursday before we're arriving in the evening of the Thursday before. So, we've got Friday, saturday, sunday, monday. I think we got four days and we're at the four seasons.
Dan: Yes, that's great. When are you leaving?
Dean: Wednesday, the day after you know the day after the yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
Dan: So we will have some time. We're on track.
Dean: We're on for next week. We're on for next week I like that, okay, perfect. Yeah, great Dan, we'll have a great week then. Great Dan, I will talk to you next week.
Dan: Thanks Okay, bye.
14 Jul 2021
Ep026: Packaging the Message
01:01:13
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about how the packaging of a message can make all the difference.
In this episode, Dean and Dan discuss how fascism in politics changed history and how the introduction of techno fascism could work to boost productivity in life and creativity in entrepreneurs.
Ep085: How do you price yourself in the marketplace?
00:53:29
This week Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan talk about how one can price themselves in the marketplace by looking at some possible reasons why Mr. Beast refused a billion-dollar offer last week.
Ep115: Creative Investing and the Search for Wellness
01:01:16
In today's episode of Cloudlandia we weave through various topics. Dan shares his journey with stem cell treatments, from the miraculous changes in his mobility and pain to the improvements in Babs' condition post-injections.
As we delve into regenerative therapies, discover the future of diagnostics where AI and DNA merge to transform healthcare. I also recount surprising neurofeedback session benefits and reflections on technology's paradigm shifts over time.
Our discussion explores Indify's pioneering artist venture capital model and investing in human potential, drawing inspiration from visionaries like Musk and Jobs.
Lastly we examine managing our digital lives, I offer tech fasting insights and preview Toronto's upcoming free zone community event with excitement.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean discusses his personal experience with stem cell therapy, describing a noticeable improvement in his chronic pain and mobility two weeks post-injection.
Dan highlights the significant pain reduction in Babs' big toe following her stem cell treatment and mentions the vascular IV treatments they both received for energy improvement.
We explore the impact of artificial intelligence on diagnostics, transforming biological signals into digital ones, which Dean experienced firsthand from the early days of the internet.
Dan recounts the advancements in technology, from limited television channels to the current convergence of AI and DNA, which he has observed over the years.
We delve into Indify's venture capital model for independent artists, discussing the strategy of partnering with musicians for a 50% ownership and the successful returns seen since 2020.
Dean reflects on the importance of investing in human creativity and potential, drawing parallels to the entrepreneurial mindset and success stories like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
Dan talks about the art of digital survival, sharing his personal experiments with tech fasting and the creation of a 'red box' to manage the influx of digital information.
We examine the shifting media landscape from advertising to subscription models and how Dean has adapted his consumption of news and current affairs through an aggregator.
Dan and Dean discuss the inescapable nature of human biases, the illusion of complete neutrality, and how being aware of our biases can influence conscious decision-making.
The episode concludes with an announcement of Toronto's upcoming free zone event in June, coordinated by Tammy Coville, and a look forward to creating new memories in the city.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.
Dan: Ah, you have a very resonant place to this morning.
Dean: Well, you know what I did. I came in on the app today and so we'll see. And over the last week we had some intermittent disruption. So to try this this week. Maybe it's a different level of unpredictable variety I called it unpredictable variety, that's right, we roll with it and yeah, and there we go, yeah. So everybody wants to know, dan, how is the $6 million man doing with his biomegase here?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, pretty good. So we're talking on a Sunday and just the past Thursday was two weeks. And you know I got to figure in the placebo factor here, and I think I mentioned this last time that when you have a pain and you don't have any solution for it, you try to avoid the pain, and so you kind of? A you kind of a focus on it. You rearrange your posture and your body to avoid the pain.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: But since I had the stem cell injection, I came back and the pain didn't seem any different. But I was confident about it that I now had a pain that in, according to prediction, in six months I won't have the pain. And so I'm not avoiding the pain and I'm you know, I'm walking downstairs without holding out to the rail and just depending on my leg. But I will say in the last two or three, three days I've I have noticed an improvement, so that I'm getting from.
You know, we have top to bottom we in some cases I'm going to flights, yes, and and yeah. So I told Dr Hasse David Hasse, who's in the free zone with us because he's the arranger for all this. Anything else I do, I go through his clinic, so he's the one who arranged everything in Buenos Aires yes, and I tell him. I said I'm, I'm naturally a self producer of placebo's.
Dean: And I said I think it's part of my.
Dan: I think it's part of my character. I had nice said actually isn't strategic coaches? Not what strategic coaches? Producing your own placebo's, that's the best.
Dean: I love it yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so anyway, all friends, but I will tell you this we had three different treatments. I did and Babs had a fourth one. So Babs had a big toe, inflamed bones and her big toe. And the pain is way, way down after two weeks. And both of us had vascular IVs, so this is where the stem cells are put you know it's an IV, so it goes in over 40 minutes.
Dean: It wasn't an injection. Right, right Right.
Dan: But it's, the stem cells are geared just to your vascular system, so just you know, the veins has sent. And so I feel quite a bit more energy, and again, I'm not discounting the placebo effect.
And the third, the third thing that I did Babs did vascular two and I did brain cells. So these what they do is that they put lymphocytes in on day one and then on day three they give you a IV for the, for your brain cells and the lymphocytes. I don't exactly understand what they are. Okay, I know they're neither Republican or Democrat. I do know that.
Dean: They're NDP.
Dan: Right, exactly, yeah, I know that I know they don't have a political characteristic about them, but what they do is they actually create pathways through what's called the blood brain barrier.
Okay, and what I understand is that the brain is very protective of itself, so it doesn't allow any foreign thing to come in To the brain. But it'll accept limbo sites and they're just little, they're kind of temporary pathways and they die after about a week or two. But what happens then is the stem cells that are geared to your brain can go through those pathways and and I'm doing a program called neuro potential, which is bio feedback program, and I'm doing a neuro potential program called neuro potential Bio feedback program, and I did session 30, 29 and 30. I've been doing that for about a year.
And what it tests you on is when you're watching a movie and I picked a favorite movie which was foils for British detective, homicide detective series Long time ago, 15 years ago. Very intriguing, very good acting. And so I went Saturday ago and I did it.
And usually what happens during the course of the session? You're watching the, you're watching the screen and then all of a sudden the screen will go black, the sound will go out, but the movie goes on and your brain notices this and it readjust itself so that the screen comes back and the sound comes back. And normally during a session it'll happen four or five times and there's nothing you can do. All you do is the brain just adjust itself and that adjustments are actually making improvements to how your brain operates. And I've been doing it and my EEG tests, which are a battery of screen tests that I do every quarter, indicate that my brain has improved quite a bit over the last year. But this session, the first time now I'm talking about a week ago, saturday not once during the entire movie did the screen black out and or the sound go out.
And the first time it ever happened. And the technician they have technicians there who you know they will. They put your sensors on your brain and then they you know they're there all the time and she said I've never seen that before. She said I've never seen it, certainly haven't seen it with you, but she said I've never seen it with anyone. And these people are these train? These people are trained not to be enthusiastic.
Dean: And they're just there, related to your, to the stem cells or yeah, well, it's the only thing that's changed, it's it's gotta be right, yeah, it's gotta be, and she up the difficulty.
Dan: So when I do it fairly easily, she'll up the difficulty and the and yesterday I went and it sound went out three times but the screen did not go black and and she said that's amazing because she said you're even stronger this week than you were last week and that was a real breakthrough week.
So I think, that's and this is the only thing where I have outside reference. That's testing. So, yeah, so, but my energy has been real good from the overall. But I think the big thing is that I am now convinced this specifically from the stem cell thing that we're going through and also other things that I've been doing for the past year that now anything in the body, if it can be diagnosed, if there's something off, if something's not performing right, something's not working period or, worse than that, it's something wrong is happening.
I now am convinced that if it can be diagnosed, it can be repaired and it can be regenerated. So that's yeah and, and I've been and I've been going on. I've been going to faith for the last 36 years in this regard that this would come.
Dean: Yeah, and I mean you know, you look at, I heard Joe Rogan had well, he always has all kinds of interesting people, but he had no. Gary Brecca on. I don't know him no well, he's kind of an interesting story, I don't. I mean, you know, like anything. When you hear him on you know he kind of breaks into the scene. He's the guy that kind of turned Dana white around. Dana's lost all kinds of weight and reversed his oh yeah, I know Dana white, he's the.
Dan: Yeah, you see ultra fighting.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right, yeah, yeah, the US, and so he. This guy's background was as a I don't know what the right word for what he did, but it was some sort of for insurance companies. They would predict your lifespan. So it was like advance. What do they call that in insurance mortality rate guessing as the rate of the yeah yeah, so actuarial.
I guess, would be kind of based on statistical groups kind of thing, and what they do is this is based on records, on your, on measuring, like genetic markers and and blood work, and they can predict, he says, within you know months of somebody's life expectancy and mm-hmm very interesting, right.
So Dana came in and he had, you know, very elevated triglycerides and you know certain other markers that were really kind of degenerative. And he's 53 years old and his they marked his life expectancy at 63.6 or something like that and it was really like an eye opener for him to see that have that sort of you know, mortality check on what you're, what's going on in your body, and he basically says all these things are, you know, they're starting to give out years and years before they're actually the end of it.
So it's not a mystery kind of thing, it's just that way you know, and so he's, you know, done all the things that he recommended and he's already added, like you know, 12 years to his life expectancy already, and that it's kind of, I think, when you're right, that we're at a stage where we're started learning all the repair models of things that yeah to be able to to regenerate. I'm still amazed that even the fact that DNA exists like how do you even tune into something like that, right? Like how did somebody even discover that's a thing is just like beyond my imagination.
Dan: You know it's yeah well, electron microscopes was the. Yeah well, I mean with you know the actual day break through there's some great stories about that aren't really on point here, but we could go into them. But the point I'd like to bring. This is all cloud landia. This is all these are cloud landia capabilities that have come into existence, because the I was talking to Peter DM on this, about this, and I said it's clearly a lot of things that were predicted by a lot of people 10 years ago happened, happened okay they haven't happened to the degree that they're happening, but they're not to the degree.
But I would say that the application of digital measurement to your body has gone way beyond what anyone was predicting at the ability to, at the most minute level, to sell your level of actually measuring and then having comparisons. You know comparisons because these are large model.
These are large model. You know, when somebody says you are, you know a certain age, like if you take Dana White and they said 53 and they his prediction was for 63 what they were doing was measuring against millions and millions of other tests that they've done on other people right that used to take yours to put the facts together and now it takes minutes.
Dean: Yeah and it wasn't even possible.
Dan: Years ago I put those no, no, yeah, no, I mean, you know I, my first doctoring counters were in the 1940s, so this is 80 not quite 80 years ago, and the best you could hope for back then was that the doctor had a good bedside manner well, three out of four doctors prefer Chesterfield cigarette actually it was camels actually it was camels, and it was.
It was actually seven out of those seven out of eight who a doctor. Seven out of eight doctors who smoke prefer camo camels. No, this is a great. This is a great ad campaign. We shouldn't be frivolous about this. It's really sold a lot of camels, I'll tell you.
Dean: I wonder what those things like. If we look forward, you know, fast forward, 40 years from now, what are we going to look at? As you know, so stupid and obvious back in you know that we haven't been paying attention to well yeah, you know, I always say that a depressed utopian, a utopian who's depressed.
Dan: Our people get depressed by the absence of things that haven't been invented yet. Yeah, exactly, there's so much that has been. I'm missing all these things. I said what exactly are you missing? Well, I don't know, but I'm missing it.
Dean: I don't know yet yeah, exactly I don't know what I need, it's so funny, I just saw somebody in on Facebook, one of the there's a local group called it. You know, if you grew up in Georgetown, you remember, you may remember group and it was pretty these things. And somebody showed you know Georgetown cable was. You know halton cable was becoming available and they were offering, you know, service on on the nine channel for our listeners.
Dan: Today, we're not talking about George town in Washington.
Dean: DC. Right, exactly, we're talking about.
Dan: We're talking about your town, a lovely veil north, and is it more west than north?
Dean: I'm trying to think it north. I know the go train goes there, that's exactly right, it's the last outpost on the on the go train and that was the thing they were offering now service on channel two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven and thirteen, and I remember those days, like you know, 1970 something when we got our first color television and I got the table you know that was, that was the thing. Wow, what a world. Yeah, but just back to the.
Dan: You brought up a subject right at the beginning of our talk here DNA. It's actually been the merger of artificial intelligence and DNA that's producing all the amazing diagnostic tests. Because they can now do, then? What they do is they convert biological signals to digital signals okay and now they can do 10,000 tests either on something that exists in the time that it would takes to do one manual test ten years ago. So 10,000 to one, that's, that qualifies as exponential in my world, I would say so yeah, I would say so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm banking on that. You know, and as you know from our conversations of a long time ago, that I was Babs and I were on this path in the 90s, you know, in the 1990s so we're 30 years down the road now but I knew you could tell.
I mean, I read a lot. You know, the internet has been a great tool for me of just letting my brain go wild on the internet and it finds this and kind of. I find your brain kind of finds what you were looking for, but you didn't know you were looking for it, that's the way I explain it do you? Find that I do.
Dean: I had some experimenting this week, actually, based on our conversation last week that you know you mentioned. You kind of let your brain just go and do what it wants, but let's just I mean almost like with an agreement that let's just, at the end of the day, let's get these three things done, and I don't care what you do or when you do it, but let's just go ahead, let's get these three things done. But I got a.
Dan: I got. I've been thinking about our conversation too and I said but it's finding it for some reason, and I think using a I language here, that's somewhere in the past you gave your brain a pump prompt, just like with a chat, gbt, you gave it a prompt that. If you ever come, if you ever come across something like this, alert me to this.
You know so my sense is that you've been programming your brain To look for a certain things Since you know. Since the beginning, you've been prompting your brain to look for certain things and All of a sudden it comes across a plane and then you wake up and say, gee, that's neat, that's neat. I didn't know that, but somewhere in the past you gave some sort of prompts, I think, to tell your brain, if you ever yeah, you know, if you ever.
Dean: See something like this Just let me know right away, because I'm interested in it one of the things that I came across this week was, you know, in relation to our conversation about melt, about money, energy, labor and transportation all going in rising cost of those, and I, you know, been thinking about money, like access to money, and I'm seeing there's more and more versions of intelligent money coming, you know, being the thing of Empowering Creators in a way. So I looked at, I found out about a company called in defy, which is taking a venture capital kind of approach to creators, musicians, particularly independent artists who are, you know, making Music, and they're partnering with them for, you know, 50% ownership of Whatever comes out of what they're they're producing and it's really, you know, they may not produce, like, compared to the music Label industry, the model where they would, you know, sign an artist and do a full album and of those things these are really but those who are already existing.
Dan: That was already. Yeah, here's their here they're doing music and musician futures.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly what it is and that's a really interesting Model, like typically there, you know, with a particular like a song, for instance, they may invest $30,000 to produce a single Song and artists, but they're showing that the you know, the typical Return on, even like them, that to be they're not talking about hits, but things that either they showed investments of their typical investment of $30,000 has returned $110,000 so far per one of those that they've done. Yeah, and they started in 2020, you know. So over that period of time, they've kind of tripled their investments and I thought, partner, you know that that level of you know, in the entrepreneurial world I don't know whether that's that you know the rising cost or you know, corollary to that, the diminishing supply of them capital I don't know whether there's different rules for Plotlandia and creative things as opposed to, you know, large scale physical capital, you know.
Dan: Yeah, my sense of that is that the smart investors, whether it's in the mainland or whether it's in Plotlandia, are the same person. There are the same, and my feeling is that the smartest investors invest People. They don't fast on things, they don't really invest on things. And so my sense is that the Example you just gave this person has proven in the past that they're actually creative and they always seem to be coming up.
They always seem to be coming up with new things, and Some of them have monetized and some of them haven't monetized. So that's the guess, and that's the bet you know. In other words, I'm guessing that you're going to. You already come up with something in the past that turned out to be money-making and I'm betting I'm just gonna Bet on you as a creator that you're going to come up with some good stuff that, properly captured, properly packaged and properly distributed, is going to be money-making.
Dean: Would you say I agree. Well, yeah, Patron days it's been oh yeah, yeah in a way yeah.
Dan: Yeah, go totally, totally. I mean entrepreneurs are you and I and All the folks that we hang out with are we're self patrons. Yes the difference between an entrepreneur and non entrepreneurs, an individual who's betting on Himself as the future. Well, you did that a long time ago and you know, and I did it a long time ago, and, and so that's why I'm not taken by things. You know, I'm not really taken by things. You know, betting on things like I'm talking about a product or a tech right, I'm not betting on that.
I'm betting on the thing possibly being a tool that some really smart human is going to maximize. It's gonna, you know, it's gonna do something. And I was thinking about that with Elon Musk, because there's no reason for his valuations Related to Tesla. You know, if you took the normal valuations of a car company the number of cars you got, the distribution system, you got his. The Tesla doesn't make sense. The valuation that he has for Tesla makes no sense whatsoever. By right, historic automobile standards, right, and somebody was saying that they you know this is, you know this is, you know this is a scam. I said you're missing the point here.
They're not betting on the Tesla car. They're betting on Elon Musk coming up with always new things.
Dean: That is true, and he, yeah, he's, yeah, he's come up with quite a few. Yeah, I think.
Dan: Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was on that track, but he died. He, you know, he died. I mean because, really, if you take a look at Apple's extraordinary, it's stuff that all goes back to Steve Jobs. Yes and I mean not a big thing since not a really big thing since 2008, right since the iPhone right, I mean, that's really the iPhone.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that decade of, you know, 92,000, 8. That's really. That's where everything happened. I think was a joke about it. Yeah, we talked about it in our analysis of the last 28 years. That none of it you know, but Apple was close to bankruptcy, that they were in trouble 28 years ago he had to borrow from Bill Gates. Yeah, exactly that's. That's kind of that's pretty amazing, right, when you think about everything that's turned around since then and thinking about even Jeff Bezos, who you know, who knew.
Dan: Yep, yeah, and you know and so so the the thing about betting, but I always bet on people. You know my whole approach is that this is a person you know who proven track record and part of it is that they cannot do what they're doing. You know one of my yeah that I look at somebody who cannot do the thing that seems to be most valuable and. So I don't have to worry what they're doing when I don't see them.
Dean: What's he?
Dan: doing I what's? What's he doing today?
Dean: I know exactly what he's doing.
Dan: He's doing what I bet on.
Dean: He's doing what I bet on him doing you know and you know.
Dan: So it's a very interesting thing. So, but I think I was going back because we had this conversation. I said, you know, if I go back because I've really been an entrepreneur since really the beginning of the Microchip age in the 70s. They started using the word microchip, I think early 70s, but I read about it in 73 and I started my company in 74 1974, so 50 years next year and. I would say that the microchip itself Breakthroughs and.
The ability for there to be something that has a personal computer, which came up, you know, within the first ten years of the microchip and then graphic user interface, which made the personal computer available to everybody, okay. And then the internet, probably software somewhere in there, the whole notion of software, that it didn't have to be hardware. Usefulness of the computer did not have to be hardware, it could just be a program. And then I would say the internet, and then the iPhone, and now artificial intelligence.
Dean: Yeah, artificial intelligence that I think what's happening there is. Nobody could really have predicted. I mean, maybe people who knew were predicting, but I don't think people really had a sense of what was really possible with this until now, and I think as a species right now, we're clueless about where this is going.
Dan: I said you know. I said you can say anything you want about where it's going and probably you'll be right, but there's going to be a million other things happening to that nobody could have predicted.
Dean: Yeah, I mean it's really.
Dan: I mean, where are you crossing into this world? I mean, what are you do? We have three or four projects. We have three or four projects going that.
Dean: I'm involved in the company.
Dan: And so where are you? I'm at the experiment where you experiment.
Dean: Yeah, I'm experimenting in the personal, like my personal experience with it. We're not using it as it's not integrated in any way into my company that you're you know our stuff yet, but I can see that it could be. I mean, I looked at, you know, one of the things that we do we have a subscription for. We have two different versions one for realtors, one for financial advisors of a postcard newsletter called the world's most interesting postcard and it's essentially a carrier for referral programming that you as a realtor or a financial advisor would send to your top 150 relationships so that you are programming them to notice conversations about real estate, to think about you and introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with. And it's been, you know, a phenomenal game changer for the amount of referrals that people get, measured as a you know, return on relationship, the percentage of repeat and referral business you get from your top 150 relationships.
I haven't had four years we've been doing it for 12 years now a monthly postcard where we have someone research and put together there might be 16, you know just short interesting facts that you put on the front of the postcard and it's got a nice design and so it's easy to read. It's kind of just like you know interesting things and the.
I started thinking about, well, if I did what, if I did one specifically for for financial advisors, that all the facts and stuff are money related. And I just asked chat GPT one day. I said can you write to you know 10 short interesting facts about the history of money? And it started, you know writing the things. And then I asked it to you know, make it a little more interesting things. And it, you know, put it out. And I said you can be 20 more. And it was like boom, all interesting.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely I say yeah, and you're, you're, you're designing, though, as you go along, there's probably an interactive thing going on between yeah right, I'm just you know there's two a I a. Breakthroughs consist of two a you know the first day I as artificial intelligence, the second one is called actual intelligence.
Dean: Yeah, exactly so.
Dan: I'm bringing the actual intelligence.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said it was so funny, Dan, because I said to it Well, these are great. How many do you think you could? It said well, I can make an infinite number of these. How many would you like? And it was just so funny that I ended up with like 50 of these you know, and just instantly done and I thought you know that's a really interesting thing.
Again, those are, you know it's content related. I came, I had this idea of you know I think there are 400 and something cognitive biases that are, and I just started how many, how many of you mastered it Right exactly.
And you know it's an interesting thing. I said can you make a three minute video script describing confirmation, bias, the facts about what it is and how it might be, how it might be deployed or come into play and how to defend against it? And it wrote this amazing like just you know, intro this, then scene of this, and then this, and narrator says that there's the script. You know, and it was just. I mean, when you look at the putting together of the different things, I saw this. I saw someone do a demonstration of you know having it write some. It was writing ads, video ads for something, and it they had gone to one of the gone to 11 labs. I think is a place where you train your voice.
So it's got your voice. And then it went to another place that had your digital, you know avatar, you know from video of you, and then it combined this AI written script with your voice through your face on your avatar on video and it's instantly translated into any language where your mouth moves and your mouth is saying the words in Japanese or German or French or whatever and I just man, it's just such a like you can see, that's a you know. The distribution of Content like that, you know, is amazing.
But then it's still so that's everything I've seen has been Content related, you know kind of yeah, creation and as a multiplier for content creation. But then the bigger you know we've had the conversation that the bigger you know. Picture of that is that our brains we still can't consume At any more than the speed of reality, which is 60 minutes per hour right, it takes us.
Dan: Yeah, and the other thing is that we can only think about one thing at a time, you know? I mean, we can't think two things at the same time. Humans just can't do this and you know, and, as you say, it's reality, world, time-based, you know, and really Successful people have learned firsthand just what can get be gotten done in an hour a day and and, and then also it's developed a sense of discernment about just what's worth having your mind on for an hour for a whole day and you know and that you know, and I've dropped I'm noticing I'm shedding all sorts of things as I Approach 80.
Just I dropped televisions. I'm in my sixth year now dropping television and and people say, but you're a big sports fan. And I said, oh, I've got a trick.
I said I wait till the game. I I've got. I wait till the game, as though I'll use Cleveland Brown says an example and I just checked. I checked the score. You know the scores are in now. It's some beyond game time. Did they win or lose? Well, if they lost, I'm not interested. If they won, then they have a 10-minute video of the highlights and that's my game, you know.
Dean: And.
Dan: I know they've won and then I just get a chance to see how they won. Okay, if they lose. I don't watch it because I, because that doesn't do me any good, doesn't do me any. I'm already disappointed they lost. Why would I pile on and people said, yeah, but you're missing? All the excitement of the game. And I said I said yes. I said I want to be excited about other things. I don't want to be excited about, yeah, people who are one third of my age, I think.
I'm coming through for me or not coming through for me? I want to see the final result.
Dean: I've been contemplating Dan because, I I find that embarrassingly. Much of my time is screen-sucking. You know, as our friend, there's a lot of, there's a lot of screen-sucking and I would count television and YouTube and tiktok and Facebook and Anytime my eyeballs are sucking dopamine in through my screen as that time. And I've been experimenting with, you know, disconnecting from the the dopamine device you know, and so this morning was one of those times.
I'm trying to get to a point where I can get as far into my day without having any, you know, digital input, and I think that there's a real Face that I could go, you know, all the way till noon with no Contact with the outside world and that, I think, would be a better thing for me.
But it's amazing how your body like I went over to the cafe this morning to get some, get a coffee and just sit outside and you know I didn't take my phone I woke up. I still wake up in the. You know the first thing, you know, I checked my phone or whatever. I left it here and I went to the, the cafe, and it's amazing how your brain is Is like saying you know, wait a second, what if anything? What if you? What?
Dan: if you break down.
Dean: What if you're what? If you get an accident or you need to call somebody here, what? What about that? And then I realized I don't know a single person's phone number. I don't know what single phone number except my office, you know, and not there's nobody there, but that's, it's very funny to me, that's where your mind goes. And then I had that. I took real money because normally I use my Apple pay on my phone to pay for it and so.
I had real paper money with me and it was just. It was so interesting to sit at the cafe and just watch everybody you know, all you know, even together screen sucking the whole time and I've been experimenting, see like how much can I Disconnect from that in a proactive way, right, like well, it's interesting.
Dan: It's interesting because in the year you're applying the concept of intermittent fasting. Yeah, exactly that, yeah, you're going through. You know I'm going to spend three hours or four hours when. I fast you know yeah. Because your brain will find something to do if you're not right now.
Dean: Yes, I'll talk with you fixing. I mean, I remember this is something interesting. I was really going as far as like, how far Down can I go with this? Right, like what would I truly be missing? I do. I use my phone all the time for everything. I mean texting, email, ordering food, you know all of the stuff. Entertainment talking, and I was. I remember there was a show about the royalty, I think it was called the crown, and maybe it was a movie about the queen, but I remember this was struck me as very like, very interesting is that every day at a certain time 5pm, maybe, noon or sometime they would bring the queen a red box. Was everything that she needed for the day, everything that needed her attention, kind of thing.
Dan: And.
Dean: I thought how neat would that be. What would be interesting if I could, at 5pm every day, get a box that has every thing that I need, like any emails that have come in, any texts that have come in, any you know articles of interest. That would be, you know, something that I would need and I wondered about that getting rid of. Like you know, I check on that judge report and you know I the news. Like seeing different things that are going on in the world and I thought to myself I wonder what happened if I went to, like you know, paper subscriptions to Newsweek, time magazine and the Wall Street Journal as the my connection to the world.
Dan:I've gone beyond that because I used to get five papers a day. I got two Toronto papers. I got the Wall Street Journal, I got New York Times and National Post. Well, national Post was Globe and the Post for the two Toronto papers, and then the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and the fifth one was Business, business Investor's.
Dean: Daily.
Dan: Yeah, right, yeah, investor's Business Daily, and. But I began to realize that I all those papers. The only thing I was really interested in was the Opinions section.
Okay, where the people wrote oversight articles. In other words, they were looking at us something and they were writing that. And then you know politics. I began to notice that in the newspaper world they were making most of their money after a while on subscriptions, because the advertising dollars were being taken away by Facebook and Google and yeah, and they had to go to digital versions on a subscription basis, and what that did is that it polarized the media in the sense that, for example, the Wall Street Journal, I would say 80 to 90% of its subscription probably is center or center right on the political spectrum.
There's center right and the New. York Times is barely center, mostly to the left, and I noticed that the Globe and Mail is now center to the left and the Globe and Mail or the Post is still somewhat into the right into the right and the investors business daily only has Opinions on Saturday.
They only have a real commentary section. So, yes, Okay. So what I began looking for, I said, well, still hit or miss, because there may be some good stuff or not good stuff. So I went to this aggregator which is called Real Clear, comes out of Chicago and all they do is aggregate article headings and they're almost all. They're all commentary, Okay. So every morning and six days a week they do an update at three o'clock in the afternoon. So you get up in the morning and they have that, and then at three o'clock in the afternoon they have an update. They don't do this on Saturday. Okay, there's one day when they don't do it Right but then they have all sorts of real clear.
They have real clear politics, they have real clear policy.
They have real clear market real clear world real clear defense, real clear energy, real clear health, real clear science, and those are more. They're picking up a periodicals rather than daily, yes, and so I just get up in the morning and I look and I click on three or four of them and they come for the New York Times as lucky if they get one every day, and some of them have paywalls so that when you go to their thing they're saying well, you can read the article if you pay for a subscription, and that counts them out. You know, I'm not going to pay, I'm not going to sign up for a subscription to get one article.
Right so yeah, so, so, anyway. So that's what I've done. So and I'm down now to. Babs gets the post because she likes knowing Toronto things, but I don't bother looking at the, for the last two or three weeks they've had great articles. It's mainly how our Prime Minister is going down the drain which I always find comforting reading. And then the Israeli, israeli Amos situation and that's been a great clarifier, Boy. You really find out where people stand with this particular issue. That's been a really great clarifier herself.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, but that's how I handle it, I handle it. That's been sort of my red box. Real clear is my red box.
Dean: Right yeah that's interesting.
Dan: You know what they call that the thing that the clean gets. I don't know what they call it. They call it the red box. Okay, that's what I thought, that's what you know that red, you know that red box she gets every day you know what they call it the red box.
Dean: That is so funny, but I thought about experimenting with that, getting a red box and the government has to prepare them for.
Dan: The Prime Minister's office has to prepare them for her Right, exactly yeah. Yeah, because they're both in town once a week. The Prime Minister has to come to the palace and you know and deliver in person. You know some of the crucial issues. This is not recorded. No one ever goes.
Dean: Right A weekly audience with the Queen Right.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the King now I guess?
Dan: Yeah, I guess the King. Should we send the red box to the King?
Dean: It's kind of hard to say.
Dan: It's kind of hard to say, you know it's kind of hard to say King. How do you say King? You know? Because he was in for seven, seven years or so. Yeah, there was a great play, actually was called the interview. I saw it, and I saw it in London, right around the corner from the hotel.
Dean: And.
Dan: Helen Merrin was the Queen. Helen Merrin was the Queen and that what they did is all the Prime Ministers that she's had, starting with Winston Churchill, right up until last year. I guess there were a whole bunch of Prime Ministers over the last two or three years, so anyway, but she that just talked about it was all made up, because nobody really knows what's that, but they just used topical issues of the time and you know, and whether she got along with the Prime Ministers or not, or and everything else, and it was very, just a really terrific, really terrific play.
Dean: I saw Napoleon on Thanksgiving Day. What'd you think?
Dan: What'd you think I?
Dean: didn't like it Did you see it. I haven't. It was as we like to say, Dan. There was a lot of middle in that movie.
Dan: It was all middle it joined in progress and just never left the middle.
Dean: There were only two scenes that were repeated six times. There was the drama in the palace and then there was battle scenes with horses and bayonets and cannons and on and on the same battle scenes, again and again, and then back to the palace and it was really. I didn't enjoy it at all, I didn't have. No, it was my shortest movie review ever. I looked at the camera, shook my head and said Nope, and then I hashtagged it Nope, olean, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, and, but I have no real historical knowledge of, you know, of Napoleon, but I did. You know, the most interesting thing was at the end they did a summary of all the people that were lost in battles, like 6 million people. In his period of being the king he lost in battle. That was. That's crazy, you know, 6 million seemed like that, seemed like a lot.
Dan: Well, we must use all of them up, because his final battle was 1815. That's when Waterloo was you know the final battle, and then there was not a major European war until the beginning of the beginning of the first World War.
So it was 99 years so he must have used everybody up because it took a whole century to stack up again. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I mean a lot of American history, american history really, you know, from the British fighting the French. You know that's really where the American thing starts, it's. I don't know what they call it. You know they call it the seven years war here in Canada, but in the United States it was called the French and Indian war.
You, know, and this was 1817, 50s, 1763, seven years. But this is where all the American colonists got their military training, which they then used to go to for self fighting the British. Oh wow, 1717. So George Washington was an American born. You know, they were all British. I mean, they were all British. Yeah, all the colonists were British.
And then and anyway, but that takes you right up until he I think Napoleon comes in around 1793 and he was in for 22 years but he totally changed Europe. I mean, he was like a major earthquake that went right across the continent and that really changed things. You know, Hitler was great, Hitler was great. Admirer of Napoleon, yeah.
Dean: And that right.
Dan: He made, and he made the same mistake.
Dean:He invaded.
Dan: Russia. Right right right, right right.
Dean: That's yeah. So I'm going to save you from from that yeah.
Dan: Well it's not a it's not a topic that I'm really interested in.
Dean: Right, I've never heard you talk about Napoleon. No.
Dan: I just you know, but he, he not only was a significant military person, he was very significant politician. Because that's where we get the metric metric system is from Napoleon.
Dean: That's right yeah.
Dan: And they didn't have any standard measurements in Europe. Okay, you know, I mean the British had their own. But you know, the British is kind of an organic thing that's developed over time feet inches, feet yards, and everything, stones, yeah, and the lightfully accent, and it's idiosyncratic, it's eccentric, eccentric. The British are eccentric, you know. And he wanted this 100, everything, as you know, and it took all the fun out of it, took all the fun out of measurement, right.
Dean: You imagine.
Dan: American, American baseball and metric, you know.
Dean: American football and metric.
Dan: Yeah Well, even the Canadian football. They use yards and peeps and you know everything like that, you know all the funny. Yeah, track and field they don't, because that's more of a European thing.
Yeah, yeah, world stage Anyway well, it's really interesting, but I'd like to pick up a little bit more on this couple themes that we've developed over the last a few talks, and one of them, and what I think, is that every human being is a confirmation bias. Okay, say more about that. Well, you're biased according to the experience that's proved useful or not useful, okay, okay, okay, so you've used a term you know to great movies that are not worth seeing a lot of the middle. Okay, yeah, so there's a lot.
I don't remember if there was. I don't remember if there was a beginning and or an ending, and Battles and battles. That's right and palace, you know, but I think that really thing because I think that it's impossible for human beings not to have the bias. Yeah, I think that's what I do, what I do think as the smarter human beings know what their biases are and Choose them.
Yeah they actually choose them. Yeah, and, and you know, as it just strikes me that this whole notion of neutrality neutrality that you can be unbiased is, I Think it's just silly how could you? Possibly be on. I mean, that's right in the world. You wouldn't survive.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. And the words of Milton Friedman to field on at you. Where do you propose we find these angels to organize society Without regards the personal interest or bias? I don't even trust you to do that, Phil.
Dan: I've watched that about. I've watched that about ten times. Yeah, that's such a great thing, because you can just see that Phil Donahue just has this sort of fluffy, waffly form of logic. You know, all, all, basically emotion based. You know emotion, yeah, I mean, he didn't have. Our Perspective new Prime Minister here is getting a lot of fight. When you finish here, go on Google and say here, paulie of you know, you know how to spell it, don't you?
Dean: yes, okay.
Dan: Takes down reporter. Just he just took down a reporter and it was one of the most masterful take downs of reporter Ever, and he did it while chewing an apple.
Dean: Oh, I love it.
Dan: So he's being interviewed, and he's, and the person says, well, you know, you know, you're taking a very ideological approach. He says ideological, what's that? Well, what's ideological? And the reporter says, well, you know, it's more emotion based. And he says name a name, an example there. Name an example, well you know, and it gets round that he's reproducing Donald Trump and you know that's the ultimate killer, that's the kill shots. You know you call somebody Donald Trump, he's not right.
No. And he says, well, a lot of the experts. And he says experts, name one expert and and the reporter did not have a specific piece of information, that was all this fluffy narrative and you could just see the guy was flailing and meanwhile Pierre Polyov is just eating, example, and he says do you have an actual point to this interview? There's some. And the guy you could just see the guy you know. You know they didn't show that, show him in full, but I bet you know there was a puddle under his feet when he was finished. Yeah, yeah, and he's just learned how to deal with this whole issue that they try to catch you on their words.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, I don't even know, what that word means.
Dan: I mean do you know what that word is? You just used a word I don't know what that word is and he says well, you know, you're doing left versus right and he says Name a time when I've actually said that I've never said love first right. I don't believe them love first right. So I believe in common sense and I'm kind of bored the side that has common sense. So we haven't had any of you just aren't used to it because we haven't had any common sense for the last eight years.
So anyway, and he's. I think he's a phenomenal debater, you know because he's been in he's 44 years old and he's been in parliament for 19 years. I think he's a phenomenal debater, you know because he's been in. He's 44 years old and he's been in parliament for 19 years. You know, he's been there since he was 25 and wow, yeah, but it's really interesting to watch it. You know, I mean, and I'm very biased towards his side of.
Dean: You have a cognitive bias around him.
Dan: I have a total. I have a total cognitive bias. That's funny.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Yeah, okay, so anyway, fascinating where this is going, but I think this AI thing is a Much what should I call it here? I think it's a Catalyst for a real mind change and how we think about everything. I think the team with interacting with this technology Is actually introducing us to how we actually think about things.
Dean: I think you're right, because you have to bring that to it. Yeah, so you are. You are off to Phoenix.
Dan: Yeah, we fly out on Tuesday and then we're there until Saturday morning. We're there until Sunday morning because I can't take more than two days of Sitting in a room and so we're off to Chicago and then we have a Chicago week, we have a.
I just have one workshop. I have the free zone on Thursday. Yes, yeah, so so anyway, you know, yeah, it's been a good year. It's been actually it's been a very Sailing kind of year. I haven't had any real-time crunches or anything else. Been a great right, that's awesome. And so then we're back, are you? And yeah, and so June 12th, june 18th, is our first free zone in Toronto.
Dean: Oh, you've set the date already.
Dan: Yeah, oh great. Yeah, and now I'll just forward Tammy, who is the wizard mastermind of scheduling here, tammy coville.
Dean: And I'll just send you.
Dan: I'll just forward her announcement. It just came through two days ago, so I'll just yeah.
Dean: And we're doing it in June.
Dan: I mean, it's not nice starting it off in June?
Dean: I love that. I love that I do miss Toronto. Yeah, I love it.
Dan: Toronto misses you, I think Toronto misses you oh Honey. I love it. Yeah, there's no more table 10 anywhere. I haven't found a table 10 anywhere.
Dean: We're gonna need a new. We'll need a new venue.
Dan: Oh well, we'll go. I mean less elective still there and they're still good, so we'll go okay good Okay, perfect Okay okay, dan, have a great trip two weeks.
Dean: We'll be back.
Dan: I'm sorry. Two weeks, two weeks, okay, perfect, yeah, okay, okay, I'll talk to you then.
Dean: Thanks Okay, bye, bye.
09 Feb 2022
Ep056: Virtual Communication
01:00:56
In this episode, Dan and Dean explore the advantages of Cloudlandia interactions over in person interactions.
Join Dean and Dan as they explore how the cloud has shifted the sales landscape from simply being convincing, to securing clients through compelling arguments.
Ep107: Navigating the Labyrinth of Information: Past, Present, and Future
00:53:15
In this episode of Cloudlandia, I accompany you on a captivating time-travel adventure to the 1930s era. We explore the nascent media landscape and how the rise of radio and television began to connect the world.
We predict how elements like technology, energy, money and labor may redefine our world. We also shed light on 1950s industries like television advertising and iconic artists that profoundly shaped society. Join Dan and me for this enlightening discussion into the past, present, and what may lie ahead.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
The podcast episode explores the evolution of media, starting from the 1930s when radio and television started to unify the world.
The hosts discuss the story of Matt Upchurch, founder of Virtuoso, and how his influential magazine became a guide in the complex world of information.
They also explore the potential future of global economics, focusing on elements like money, energy, labor, and technological innovation.
The episode delves into how these elements could redefine our landscape, especially in the context of a potential plateau period, and how they could challenge us to find more productive uses of technology.
The hosts revisit the 1950s, highlighting the significant impact of industries and events like television advertising and iconic appearances of Elvis Presley and the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.
They discuss emerging trends in mainland experiences, drawing parallels between cash flow and sense of humor, and delve into the realm of digital publishing.
The hosts examine the shifts in travel desires induced by the pandemic and the potential of community colleges in providing a pathway to future employment.
The hosts plan to set up a new sound studio and propose the idea of creating a digital collection basket at the end of the podcast.
They predict that the future will see a growth in high-quality mainland activities as people's standards for travel and experiences have risen after the COVID-19 pandemic.
They highlight that industrial land prices in certain areas are going through the roof, pointing towards a trend of re-industrialization driven by automation and the need to bring manufacturing closer to customers.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson
Mr. Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
Mr Jackson, are you having a good mainland day?
Dean Jackson
I am. I've been, yeah, you know, I've been having a combination of, so far today, been on the mainland and in Deanlandia and there's. That's a good combination. Now yeah, here we are in Cloudlandia.
Dan Sullivan
Yes, yeah, well, it's a beautiful day We've had. Actually, by my memory, we've had a fantastic summer in Toronto, July and August. It's really great. You know Well, when it rains, it usually rains at night, and so the grass is all green. I've never seen the trees so green, so it's been great. I've been reading about forest fires you know I've been reading about hurricanes, typhoons, volcanoes, not in Toronto.
Dean Jackson
But we're going to have a, apparently because of the ocean temperatures, we're in for a potentially turbulent hurricane season, which is just getting going here now. So everybody kind of you know straps in between now and end of October to see what happens, right Well as we've been in the news. They'll let us know what you know when they put up the big red buzzsaw making its way towards Florida to get everybody all suitably panicked.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, it's very interesting. The 1930s are still the hottest decade since the US has had temperature readings yeah, yeah, and the big thing is that we have so much news now. Everybody's a newscaster now with their cell phone. So what's gotten exponentially greater is actually people's first reaction to the weather, you know.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
And climate I've never experienced. You know, I'm 79 and to this day I've never experienced climate. I've only experienced weather. That's right. Is it my feeling? You know I don't have a climate chip in my brain. You know a climate. Actually. You do know how it's the average of a year's temperature in a particular spot.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, what's the?
Dan Sullivan
climate Right, exactly, and the spot where you're sitting is different from the year than 100 yards away from where you're sitting.
Dean Jackson
That's interesting. Yeah, the whole. It's all different, right, everything that whole. Yeah, I look at those as one of those things. We're certainly in you know an age, like you said, with the news there that everybody you know. I mean when you look at from you know I think about the big change again when we went from you know no new. You know the local town prior kind of the voice of what's going on.
Dan Sullivan
So when we got to, a unified voice of.
Dean Jackson
You know the, when the radio and the television became the unifying, that's really what it was. It was a unifying thing for the first 30 years of it and then when the affiliate you know the network kind of thing allowed local voices to be, you know, you got the in the beginning. It was when you were born all it was the national radio and national television right. The television wasn't even a thing when you were born in 1944.
Dan Sullivan
In the 40s, no 40s, so when you were a young boy, you got your first face to Howdy duty.
Dean Jackson
I mean, that was, that was something, I guess huh. Everybody got introduced to Howdy duty.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I was, and there there was. I can figure it was like 1953, maybe 1953 that I became aware of television, because some neighbors had it and and you know, and it was the three you know ABC, cbs, nbc but then where we lived in. Ohio.
Dean Jackson
we got Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from there and so I was aware that there was this country across the lake, yeah, and so yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it, that then, you know, by the time we got to 1980, we ended up we had 13 channels. That was a big, that was a big jump in the next 30 years. But all of those 13 channels were both distributing the national content of ABC and BC and CBS, but they were also producing local content. And now we're at a situation where you had, you know, 13 channels with multiple, you know, regional voices, the market affiliate, affiliates, and now we're at a stage where there are, you know, five billion voices all going through the three you know that was funny because, we've come down to, the channels are the same in terms of Facebook, instagram, youtube, twitter.
Mr. Beans, yeah right, well, these are part of the YouTube network there, you know, but not now the platforms are there, but everybody but there's, you know, billions of voices on those same things, and that that's where I see that this next 30 years or however long, I don't know how long it'll be because you can't imagine what you can't imagine. But you know, I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to things like. It feels like all the pieces have locked into place for a period, you know, asymptotic plateau of creativity, now that everybody of reach, everybody's got access to it.
Dan Sullivan
It's really fascinating, and you're absolutely right that I have never had the experience of imagining something that I couldn't imagine Exactly.
Dean Jackson
That's right, everybody had the first thought to imagine it. You know? Yeah, I was looking.
Dan Sullivan
I had an interesting project project, a sudden project, this week. Do you know Matt up church? Have you ever? Do you remember Matthew up church?
Dean Jackson
Matt.
Dan Sullivan
Matt. Matt, the founder and owner of Virtuoso, and Virtuoso is the biggest network in the world of affluent travel agents.
Dean Jackson
I'm a member actually.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, that's good, okay, yeah, they have this very posh magazine that comes out every quarter, every month.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I get it from the Sims.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, and he was. Matt was in the program a couple times. He was in the 90s and then early. I think he came in right around late 90s and was in the 2000s and then I think he was there in the teams and, but in 2003, so 20 years ago right about now I was guest speaker at his annual conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and I think about 2000.
They're about 2000 travel agents there and there's a lot of travel companies there to like hotels and resorts and cruise lines, you know, and they have sort of a rapid get to know you sort of day, you know, when you meet somebody for 10 minutes and then you meet for another 10 minutes rapid work.
Yeah, so I gave a talk and I created a workbook and so it was probably about a 90 minute talk with about an hour of Q&A and then you know, then there was a half hour afterwards where people just mingled and but what I was telling them about was the, because of digitization, that so much of the standard travel agency business was going to be completely commoditized by Expedia and you know, like that type of thing.
And so and I give a set of predictions and I also said that there's a bypass to all this if you master DOS the dangers, opportunities and the strengths and you just zero in very deep on your best clients and you identify, when they're traveling, what are the dangers that they experience. In other words, they could lose something, what are the opportunities that they could gain something in the strengths that they have. And as a test example, I did it on Babs and me, showing that how we like to travel and you know experiences that we really don't like having experiences that we love happening.
And the strengths that we have to really enjoy and explore particular type of experiences. Okay, and I gave that to them and talked it through, but I gave as an example a hotel resort in Ravello in Italy.
So the Malfi Coast, you know you get South and Naples and you get you know, and you get town and Malfi and Ravello there's like four in the island of Capri is just up here.
So I'm sure really classically beautiful and luxury type of setting and it was and I'm not, I can't quite remember, but I think it was probably might have been right near the end of the 90s that we had gone there because we were going on a hiking tour with a group of people for about six days on the Amalfi coast and but before we went for about three days and stayed at the resort in Ravello which is called the Pozzo Saso and it's a beautiful. It sits way up high, it's a couple hundred feet off the water there. You know that part of the Mediterranean I don't think that's exactly called the Mediterranean there, but it's part of the Mediterranean and you can see down the coastline easily 50 miles and our staff had told the staff of the resort that it was my birthday. So the second day was my birthday and from morning till night everybody in the hotel said happy birthday, mr Sulton, happy birthday.
Dean Jackson
You know.
Dan Sullivan
And then they there were nonstop treats throughout the day breakfast dinner there were treats and they communicated the conference, the Bellagio Conference. Virtuoso, I communicated. That's how I like that type of treatment.
Dean Jackson
I like. I like that.
Dan Sullivan
I like that when my treatment is like every day's my birthday and so, anyway, a really neat little reward for my talk was that then, after I got talking, there were a lot of people came up, shook my hand and everything. And this little man came up and he had almost tears in his eyes and he says Mr Sulton, I'm the general manager of the Pozzo Saso.
And I don't I can't, I can't express to you what you've done for my trip to Las Vegas. He says everything I could have possibly hoped for here. You know, because there's competitors, the whole room is filled with competitors.
They're gonna spend their money on something you know, and so anyway, it was really funny, and that's it. I didn't remember this, really, for I never used that particular approach again. And so we got a call that they're at their same meeting this year and they have 5,000, they have 5,000 now because Virtuo so has really grown and they asked if I could do an update on what I had predicted. And I went through it and I said well, everything you know, I mean, once you grasp the technology. If you're just giving a standard service, technology is going to commoditize you.
you know there's I mean that's not such a great prediction backwards.
Dean Jackson
That's funny you know you're on the right path.
Dan Sullivan
You can't digitize that experience that you have, and so they asked me if I had any further thoughts of what the next 20 years would look like, and I'm right on the spot, I said well, the world's gonna change. Everything that you've been experiencing for the last 20 years is gonna change much more drastically than it changed over the last 20 years, and the reason is I call it the force. I just nicknamed this.
Dean Jackson
The force slowdowns Okay and I said this was the force slowdowns. This feels like breaking news right here.
Dan Sullivan
Well, this is like Cloudlandia. I mean this. I had to give you that background, just to accept it as a Cloudlandia idea. You know, I mean, there's tough standards.
There's tough standards to even be able to listen in on Cloudlandia, let alone speak on Cloudlandia. And I said the first thing is the cost of money is gonna go up and we call it in most places. We call that inflation. So right around the world there's just massive inflation, except for those places that have already been so undermined by inflation that they're now in deflation. And there's one big place where that's happening right now, and then the deflation is where you. Deflation is where the value of everything starts going down significantly. It's not just the cost of things. Inflation is really a function that things that you really want are gonna cost you more. And so for about 20 years we said that around 1%, 2%. You know it was the lowest inflation period since probably the last 20 years have been up until COVID was the lowest inflation. So the cost of money and that means borrowing money is gonna cost you a lot.
And you know, here in Canada it's around 7%, you know, 7% to get bank loans, and the US is more or less the same. Second thing is the cost of energy is going way up in most of the world. Okay, and I'm gonna make a proviso where I say in most of the world, it's going to. So, just prior to COVID, the cost of transportation, the overall cost of transportation to get anything in the world, anywhere else in the world, was 1% of final product.
So you know you get something from 10,000 miles away. The transportation cost of that was 1% of the final cost and I would say well, first of all, there's places where it's gone 100%. Russia is being one of the places Russia shipping anything in the world. It costs them 100% and the reason is they can't get insurance for any freighter. You know freighter that goes into a Russian port Automatically. None of the big global insurance companies will insure it.
You just can't get insurance, and that's not just Russian boats, that's anybody's boat If you go into Russian territory and they don't have that many ports. They've got about four points. I mean they're 11 time zones wide and they've got about four meaningful ports. And two of them are right in the war zone. Sevastopol and Odessa are two big ports and so you can't even get. Nobody will take their boats into that area, so they're in, you know. I mean, the cost of transportation is really high when you can't transport.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly, you can't get there from here, right yeah?
Dan Sullivan
And then the third is the cost of energy, because one, the war is a particular situation, but the cost of energy has gone way, way up. We had really cheap energy over the last 20 years, so now it's gonna go up and this isn't a momentary thing, this is going to be, you know. And then the fourth one is the cost of labor. Especially skilled labor, is gonna go way up, and skilled labor covers a lot of things, but it's basically that there would be competition to hire you if you were working someplace. There would be competition from the outside that you would offer somebody more to move from where they are, and anyone who's got skills that would do that. And if you're so 18-year-old in Toronto today, if they take a 10-week industry sponsored training course, they'll get a certification at the end of 10 weeks and a year later they're making $60,000. Within three or four years they're making $100,000, and they'll never make less.
And there will be constant bidding because we've gone basically in North America, a lot of parts of the world. We've gone probably 20, 30 years without any real emphasis on skilled labor, skilled labor, Skilled main land labor.
Dean Jackson
you mean yeah, or everybody's going into the skilled club land labor.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and a lot of them.
Dean Jackson
There's so much of it and that's being replaced by AI now, yeah, exactly, you're not gonna have a, you're not going to have an AI sneaking your toilet.
Dan Sullivan
No, there won't be AI, plumbers, ai, carpenters, ai all the skill trades that's every kind of factory work requires skill training.
Dean Jackson
So anyway, those are the four slowdowns.
Dan Sullivan
So those are the four slowdowns and the biggest thing is going to slow down as technological experimentation, innovation, that's going to change really fast and you could see at the end of starting in, probably beginning of 22 last year, there was more firings in the high tech industry than probably in any other industry, and the reason for that was they were hiring people for projects they were going to do 10 years from now and they don't have the cap. The money is too expensive to be paying for things that aren't going to get a payback in 10 years or so. So what I'm saying is and you brought this up, it got me thinking the last podcast we had you brought up that we may now be in sort of a plateau period, like you described the 50s to the 80s.
Dean Jackson
And.
Dan Sullivan
I think we're right now we're going back into a plateau period.
Dean Jackson
Where there's a lot of development.
Dan Sullivan
There's a lot of development and a lot of more productive uses of what we already have.
Dean Jackson
Yes, and that's what I think it is now. It's going to be the application through those pipes, just like the iPhone in 2007,. That laid the groundwork for the app culture that brought us Uber and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube all the big things that we use on that vehicle of the phone.
And now it's really. This is what I'm fascinated by is who were the big winners and how was the big adaptation to the tool set that was available in 1950. If you think about that, as by 1950, we had television, radio, we had the plane travel, electricity, automobiles, all of those big things that were highlighted in the big change from 1900 to 1950. Were the big winners and continue to be the big winners of that period Of an. Is it adapt, being adaptive on that? Because it wasn't a big period of invention, it was a capitalization of. You look at the packaged goods, the consumer goods really boomed in the 50s and 60s through television advertising.
You look at Procter Gamble and big packaged goods companies that knew if we just package up a product, put it in front of the audience. We know everybody. We know 50 million, 53 million people or 60 million people were watching. I love Lucy in the fifth. Those reach audiences. I think Gunsmoke was like a high watermark of the large audience. Then it started going down from there. I saw a chart where that was the peak 61 million I think was the largest television audience in 1960, something whatever Gunsmoke was at its peak.
Dan Sullivan
Then there were single events like Elvis Presley, the Beatles being on the Ed Sullivan show. You had single events. There were things like that as a series. I bet your numbers are dead on.
Dean Jackson
While the number one shows on television what did grow during that period.
Dan Sullivan
I love that period.
Dean Jackson
That's why I'm asking you and my observation.
Dan Sullivan
First of all, if you were in putting in superhighways, that was a really big deal. The Turnpike, the cross-country interstate highway system, had just crossed Ohio, probably around 1956 or 57, on its way to the west coast. The other states were building but they weren't connected. They weren't connected yet.
Dean Jackson
The.
Dan Sullivan
Ohio Turnpike was just a continuation of the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes. These were toll roads. That was it. The other thing was an enormous movement of industry out of the big cities, the big northern cities. I grew up in northern Ohio. Ohio was the most powerful industrial state in the United States, starting probably in the 1880s. 1890s it was just a powerhouse. Pittsburgh was famous for steel, but Ohio City's young down to Cleveland. Cleveland had as much steel as Pittsburgh did, but it was spread out over three countries.
It was all geared to Detroit. All of a sudden the automobile industry really consolidated down to just the three companies.
Dean Jackson
That was just Ford and Chrysler that created the suburbs that created the suburbs.
Dan Sullivan
The other thing was retail changed because every time you put one of these interstate highways in, you bypass small towns. So small town retail started to die in the 50s because shopping centers and shopping malls may be between two small towns or three small towns but everybody went shopping in their small town, except for daily convenience. But they would go to the shopping mall.
The shopping mall went through the industry the other thing that's a whole industry but it was air conditioning. Air conditioning allowed people to move industry and commerce and everything to the south. You wouldn't want to be in Orlando in the 1950s. You weren't too warm to do productive work.
Dean Jackson
Right, I'm recognizing now the pattern of so. We went from the general store to the main street in small towns, to strip plazas in the 50s, to shopping malls in the 70s, 80s, 90s to Amazon. Now. Amazon is basically or online, where we get everything, every physical good that you could imagine. Online is really the thing. But that's an interesting evolution. Right From main street to when we had automobiles and went suburban, it was the strip mall and then where you could drive your car up into the parking lot and go to the plaza where there was all of the collection anchored around a grocery store, perhaps in a dry cleaner, and putting everything in one place and then that led to the franchise, as a great thing, because the homogen that you created a homogenous vibe in the country by unifying everybody around the television.
Everybody was seeing what leave it to be and that whole, all of those shows.
Dan Sullivan
And the other thing is that the cars became more comfortable because people could go on long trips now, so I remember when you got air conditioning in the cars and so the other thing about it was the recorded music industry went through the roof in the 50s, 60s, you got 45s, came in 33 and a third came in and 45 came in and the late 40s and 40s.
Dean Jackson
And so the recorded part of what drove the recorded music industry was that they had a discovery device of the radio that you could play music over the radio and that would draw and they would be on bandstand and be on the Ed Sullivan show and be on the thing. So everybody would gain an awareness and, you know, you could create that sensation which drove people to the local record store to buy the records. And that's where that really took off. You know, now we're in a situation where the you know it's certainly, I think, more of a meritocracy now in a way that anybody, it certainly. You look at Peter Diamandis's six D's were certainly up into the democratizing phase of that. Anybody could.
I mean you and I could make a hit song if we wanted to and put it out, and we've got as much.
Dan Sullivan
I think we could have a hit song made.
Dean Jackson
Yes we don't want to apply it ourselves. Our leadership and finance.
Dan Sullivan
I think it would upset our daily lifestyle if we were yeah, we can who, not how.
Dean Jackson
We can who, not how.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's long right but I had a really great example of that on Friday morning so I had a podcast to Belfast, ireland, great guy, and he's got a coaching program called, which is simple, scaling you know how, helping entrepreneurs to scale their businesses and it was great he went. We went twice the a lot of time because neither of us had a hard stop and but you know he's got a hundred thousand that download the world he's in a hundred countries, you know wow and you, and you and.
But you and I have looked at this, you know, from a cost standpoint. I mean, once you bought your computer and you've got an internet line, the rest of it's pretty. I mean there isn't a lot of cost to this. But here we guy, he's got a hundred country worldwide radio station, then he's got a audience of a hundred thousand. You know yeah, and and that my past. And I mean, if you compare that back to what that would have taken, well, let's go 25 years ago. I mean, yeah, achieve that 25 years ago.
Dean Jackson
It would have cost you so much more, you know when you look at her Carlson, that's a good example right now. Yeah, what's happening?
Dan Sullivan
I mean it's taking him about two or two or three months to sort of get used to it. And now his show is more powerful than when he was on Fox, because he got three million.
Dean Jackson
Three million to 13 million average viewer.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah yeah, and that's. He's done that in three months. You know, yeah, I mean yeah, but now you know the thing is you and I could do exactly like.
Dean Jackson
This is where the thing is. The difference is the is reach. You know it's not the capability I mean, it's certainly you and I and anybody listening right now has the capability to create a vehicle, to create the podcast, to create a show, to create let's just call it content, to create content that you know could have that kind of impact, but it's just breaches the ultimate scale of this, you know, and it's not, yeah, but that requires the interesting thing is, the more reach that you have, the more you acquire new capability to go along with it, you know and the more your vision gets bigger as your reach gets bigger.
Dan Sullivan
It was like we have the same landlord are building in Toronto. We don't own the building because they don't sell their buildings and it's a perfect building for us, but yeah, labor Day. So we're a month. Within a month, we will have been there 32 years in that building yeah, you're the you're the only tenant from about the middle of 2020 to the middle of 2022.
We were the only yeah, and the check for them was there every month, anything like that. But about 15 years in we haven't. I haven't talked to the landlord. Probably since 2000 I've talked to both of them socially. I've met them, you know, in social events, but I haven't talked to anyone, let's say around 2011. So last or 2001 I've probably talked to them in year 10 of our stay in their building and I was unusually from his perspective, I was unusually funding that day and he says I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember you being that funny when you moved in and I said I find my sense of humor is strictly a function of cash flow, right?
yes, there's a correlation there or the bigger the cash flow, the bigger the cash flow, that bigger my sense of humor.
Yeah so, so anyway, but it's very really interesting how I you know this is and he really we've had and the reason he did it is because of the book, the ten times since he's here at them, two times okay, and first of all, the way I did the book, you know, with Ben Hardy, that probably was not possible 20 years ago, 30 years ago right the way. I did the book. Yeah, because half the most profitable part of the book is not the book itself, it's actually the audible version of the book.
I mean once you made your first audible recording. From the standpoint of the publisher, there's not really any cost, is there? You know right, that's exactly right and yet it works out one to one for every, you know, paper book that sold. There's another sale that's a virtual. It's either Kindle, you know, it's either ebook or it's yeah, it's audible, and so that wasn't possible 20, 30 years ago.
So I think, we're pointing out a direction here is that I think there's gonna be two extraordinarily valuable world. I think high-quality mainland activities are getting going, grow and grow and do you? Mean by that, hi what? When you well, I think people had two years basically not going anywhere during COVID yeah and I think there are standards of good what they want to do. If they go so much, somewhere has gone up, I'm going to take the effort to travel. I mean we never gave any thought to travel before COVID. I mean you were all around the world.
You were in Australia.
Dean Jackson
Every year, all the time.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, and you were in Toronto. You were in other places in the United States and I think that it has to be something new, better and different for you to really get on a plane and travel somewhere. And it's the same with me and I've gotten about five. Speech. Offers big audiences 500 to 2,000. And I say I'll do it by Zoom, but I won't travel, I won't travel.
And they said but the price they're offering this year for speeches is way above what it was three years ago. And I said it's not the money, it's the time, it's the time to bother.
Dean Jackson
I said that's not the money Right exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Dan Sullivan
I mean in your experience, in my experience. I think you can see a trend here. I am too.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, exactly, I'll tell you what would be a new and unique and delightful experience is my ears perked up to FreeZone in Toronto in April of next year, that might be enough to tell you I'm very excited to get me on a plane, very excited about that actually. But, D, you know, well, that's good, that's good. Yeah, well, I'm going to go back to my team.
Dan Sullivan
I said I just got word from Dean that he's really interested and we said, well, it's a lot of work. But you said we just have to have an offer for Dean that's compelling enough that he'll come to Toronto, did you see? That's it. I mean it might be a one person FreeZone, but it's worth it.
Dean Jackson
The table 10. We need anything. That's what I really miss the most the many of it.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, the table's still there, but it's not 10.
Dean Jackson
Hey, did anybody take?
Dan Sullivan
over Jacques.
Dean Jackson
No, it's something else.
Dan Sullivan
now it's not a restaurant anymore. Oh, that's a shame.
Dean Jackson
Well, when you were saying thinking about the high quality mainland experiences that I'm noticing here. So there seems to be a trend. Now that's happening is gathering spots in a way. Now there's almost like modern day food court type of things, where we're getting a new place.
Two of them in Winterhaven that are sort of outdoor common area with venue for live music and tables and picnic tables and that's stuff where you can kind of gather with a bunch of people but five or six restaurant concept, almost like food trucks or whatever, but in places where you can go and have five or six different food restaurant choices other than each of them opening up an individual restaurant they're sharing a common experience and architecturally they're really. They're reclaiming old warehouse space and things that are.
They're making them really architecturally interesting and integrating outdoor space to make them really like you want to be there.
Dan Sullivan
Interesting, I was thinking about that this morning because on Richmond Street West. So if you remember your map, portland, where Portland Street is in North South Street and then you have Portland and a lot of restaurants. So it's just, it's north of Adelaide Street and then you have Richmond, but what's really interesting, there's a whole factory, old factory that was taken over and it was gutted, and it's a food center, just like you say, with lots of but the anchor restaurant in there is Susar Lee, so you can say that, yeah, I was going to say I just read about Susar Lee, yeah.
And so the rent he was paying rent on just on King Street. So he's jumped out. His lease came up and he jumped and they offered him to become the anchor rest.
So he'll have his whole restaurant in there, but instead of it being out on the outside, it's the rest of the food court with smaller restaurants and there's seating areas out in the center, but he's got his own seating area, like it's like a patio, but it's so. We were thinking about going there this week because it just opened in July and we wouldn't have gone there for the sake of the food court, but we would go there because that's where Susar is.
Dean Jackson
That's really interesting, because I just like.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, it's totally what you're talking about.
Dean Jackson
And it's just so funny that you mentioned that specific place, because I was just on Toronto Life this morning looking at that, because I often go there just to see keep up with what's going on, and I saw this about about Susar Lee's new place. So yeah, that is funny, but so that is kind of like now bringing it's almost like bringing back to the mainland being the, because that's a mainland experience.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Digitize that yeah.
Dan Sullivan
And I mean there's just an enormous condo building going on in that area, so the residential population is always going up in that area. As a matter of fact, suit Sasha Kersmerk. Sasha, I think you know Sasha, he might. Sasha is almost 20 years in coach. He's the number one site surveying company in Toronto. Okay, so nothing. No project starts until the site survey is approved.
Dean Jackson
Right.
Dan Sullivan
By city officials and he's got roughly 80% of all the site survey projects in the city right now. I mean he's just the dominant and he said that basically from the plan for Toronto is from the lake going north. If you have Jarvis on the east and you have Bathurst on the west, okay, so you can think of all the streets in there that would go there, from there to basically four street, davenport, you know Yorkville.
Dean Jackson
Okay, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
It'll look like a mini manhattan island in 30, 40 years.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, wow, that's very interesting. It'll be all high rise and there's still high rise, yeah, and that's kind of the thing is being able to see that if you just look with your 2040 goggles on to see where that's heading, yeah, it's probably 2050, 2060,. You know and everything like that.
Dan Sullivan
But the other thing is Toronto is becoming very quickly a major industrial city between here and so here on Lake Huron it's all the way to the bridge across to the United States at Buffalo or at you know, the bridge in St.
Dean Jackson
Catherine's that goes across, and then in Western Ontario, the.
Dan Sullivan
Windsor-Chatham area to go across the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit and half the Canadian GDP. Gdp you know, money in, money off goes across those two bridges every year yeah. And the Canadian economy and he said the price of industrial land from here to Niagara Falls is just going through the roof. And he said things that were plotted out as residential areas. You know, single family residential areas they're getting outpriced in the market now by the industrial competitors.
And it makes sense too if the Canadian dollar remains always weaker against the American dollar. It's, you know, it's $30, $34 today, you know. So there's always this big differential between the, because US is much more powerful economy you know it's got nine times the population.
You know it's got nine times. It's got probably 10 times the consumption dollars that are available in all areas of business. So so you know you'll have an American factory and they say we're going to put a factory near Toronto on the Canadian side, and we're going to manufacture everything, paying Canadian prices for the manufacturing, selling it into the United States, bringing it back from the United States.
Dean Jackson
Wait a minute. That's your playbook. That's not any of your playbook.
Dan Sullivan
Oh, Mr Sullivan, this is Revenue Canada. We want to have a chat with you.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, exactly that's funny I was listening to.
Dan Sullivan
I was listening to Cloudlandia.
Dean Jackson
Oh man, that's funny.
Dan Sullivan
I get more tricks from Cloudlandia than anything else. I listen and watch.
Dean Jackson
I wonder you know if it's so, I think now a lot of this industrialization or re-industrialization, is it, do you think, driven by automation, like robotics and you know, automating manufacturing processes, that or what is it, do you think Well?
Dan Sullivan
I would say half of it is we can't trust China for anything in the future and everything that's being manufactured in China.
We've got to bring it back. And since we're moving it out of China, we can get the same kind of deals in Mexico or even in the middle of the United States, and it will be 21st century industry, industry, and it'll be 21st century. The US has the greatest skilled population in the world. A lot of people don't think that's true, but hands down, at all levels of the economy, united States has more educated, skilled work per capita than any other country in the world. So the US there's factories in the US that can produce that the same, and it's skilled labor plus automation. So automation is definitely, I would say it's 20% of it.
But also making your staff really close to your customers has enormous savings.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating times, Dan. I mean, if you're thinking, I have really been thinking about if we are at a plateau.
Dan Sullivan
Well, I think the I mean if it costs more for money, if it costs more for transportation, it costs more for energy and it costs more for labor, things are going to slow down. Yeah, and you know just that welding example I gave you of the 18 year old who can be making. I mean, somebody goes to you know university for four and learns a lot of theory and you know, is maybe 50 or $60,000 in debt at the end of four years. The person at 18 who became a welder is already buying their first house. You know they're. You know Exactly.
Dean Jackson
Like think about how, when you take the, you know, when you take the net difference between them investing four years with no income and going into debt to get a degree that gets them an entry level job when they get out with that degree. And so you know that's not compared to coming into a training program and making $60,000 and at the end of the four years making $100,000 and not having any debt. You're so much further ahead on that foundation.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, I think there's going to be an explosive growth of community colleges that are integrated with the local business, you know, the basic industrial population and everything else. I checked the numbers about two years, the number of community colleges in the US and these would be made. These would be mainly two year, two year community colleges, yeah, and there was just under just under a thousand and two things I think are going to happen. That number will probably jump to 2000 over the next 25 years.
But even the thousand that exists will double their size. They'll double their enrollment. Yeah, that's interesting, and I wonder, though, if they're you know, because they're doing like yeah, I mean you have like George Brown and in Toronto, and you have there's about, there's probably about four community colleges. That would what do you call a community college in the United States? There are before them in the Toronto area and they're at maximum. You know, they're at maximum enrollment. As a matter of fact, they have waiting lists now to get in. Yeah, and that's all skilled.
You know it's all skilled trades.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
You come out being able to you graduate on a Friday and you go to work on Monday.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
The employers come to the colleges and they interview all work interviews are in your while you're at college. You're getting interviewed and some of you you're actually working at the place while you're in college. And you know, and yeah so I think that whole notion.
Dean Jackson
It doesn't matter how much you're working at the college.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't matter how much you spend on college, you'll get paid, you know you'll get paid in the future, you know you'll get paid off easily in the future. I think that ended no 809 actually with the downturn there and I think that that was a huge interruption in the connection between higher education and future employment and I think that COVID put the nail in the coffin to that proposition.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, Well, yeah, I remember hearing Sheridan College, I guess is the one is yeah, share, yeah, and I remember they were. That was like the Sheridan animators were really in demand, that there was one of the places where you know Disney and others were Pixar were hiring. You know all the newly minted, you know digital animators that were coming out of that yeah. So I think that Ryerson has been another one of those.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, there's a new Sound Studio, mostly post production. One of them is just building new studios in our building, but therefore they're not. They're not for live. You know, live production, their post production. So they have editing studios, but right behind us. So Fraser is the front street for us, but behind us is one called Pardee, which is basically a parking lot, and way at the end they have a live production studio, while ours will start being built in September and we'll have it in about six months, based on all the great input by your guy there in Orlando.
Dean Jackson
You know, we've designed it.
Dan Sullivan
We can handle six different people at the same time, six different studios being used at the same time Great production. But next, you know, next March, next April. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna live a long time. What's six months? You know.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Anyway, but I went over and we did our recording of the quarterly book because you need real top-notch studio for a court to go audible and it was really great, but the guy who was handling us was a graduate from Sheridan College.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I'm excited, I'm really. This is my thought, for I'm gonna do some thinking about, you know, establishing this thought. If we are in a plateau period. If we are in a slowdown, but in a plateau period of what is gonna be the you know what's shaping up here to do that same thing. I love looking at things like this. We're just gonna put it together Macro level, like that.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I'm gonna do a little thinking to a four slowdowns. You know, money, energy, transportation, labor, and I'm just going to have our clients go through it and say, if this is the obstacle, then what's the transformation? You? Know, and so, and how do you take advantage of the four slowdowns?
Dean Jackson
I think it's a neat idea I do too, Absolutely. I can't wait. I love it.
Dan Sullivan
Well, what a great way to spend the late morning on Sunday. I can't think of any better way.
Dean Jackson
It's like the perfect and there's no collection basket.
Dan Sullivan
There's no collection basket, no collection basket.
Dean Jackson
Maybe we should set some in, though without. Oh, there we go.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, Anyway, we could have. We could have a digital collection basket at the end.
Dean Jackson
There we go. Yeah, exactly that's so funny.
Dan Sullivan
If this was useful, just you know, put your card up there next to the scanner and yeah, that's so good, I love it, no need to make change and no exactly, I'm good so funny, alrighty. I'm good for next Sunday I'll be back here.
Dean Jackson
Me too, I wouldn't miss it. Okay, okay, thanks, dan. Talk to you soon, bye, bye.
08 Dec 2021
Ep047: Technology
00:57:55
Join Dean and Dan as they discuss the impact of new technology on Cloudlandia and digital ecosystems as a whole.
Join Dan and Dean as they explore the infinite possibilities presented by virtual reality and virtual landscapes like Cloudlandia; discussing everything from the incredible future of entertainment, to the implications of the hardware that will make all this possible.
In this episode, Dean and Dan discuss what it takes to create a convincing and compelling offer by instilling their imagination with your vision for a desirable outcome.
Join Dan and Dean as they explore the amazing ways that Cloudlandia and Vr technology allows modern entrepreneurs procrastinate and create time to set and maintain priorities whilst leaving plenty of free space for their minds to roam and innovate.
Ep112: The Hidden Links Between AI and Media Evolution
00:54:00
In today's Welcome to Cloudlandia episode, we embark on an intriguing exploration of the realm of AI and technology.
We examine fascinating experiments involving text conversion to a unique speech structure that aligns with your heartbeat.
Lastly, we delve into discussions around marketing education and share snippets from our upcoming trip.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We discuss the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on content creation, exploring how it's being utilized in Hollywood and our personal experiment of converting a book chapter into Iambic Contameter with the help of AI and a Shakespearean actor.
Dean highlights a fascinating experiment conducted in the Soviet Union where foxes were genetically modified into dogs, shedding light on the intriguing topic of canine intelligence and their comprehension of human language.
Dan and I delve into the evolution of television, discussing its early stages where it was used to re-enact radio shows, and its transition to the current landscape of diverse media platforms like Facebook.
We share insights on the challenges of implementing strategies in businesses and how we've addressed them in our own ventures, highlighting our successful thought leadership newsletter and real estate accelerator program.
Dan emphasizes the importance of normalizing new technological advancements in the realm of AI, arguing that the future doesn't arrive until we've normalized it.
We touch on the concept of hierarchy versus network in corporations and ponder on the potential obsolescence of middle management jobs due to AI advancements.
We discuss the role of AI in marketing strategy, underlining the significance of identifying high margin products and generating leads for potential customers.
We express concern over the current state of higher education and speculate on its potential crisis in the face of rising vocational training and AI.
We delve into the future of work and systems, discussing how AI is making certain jobs obsolete, particularly in the middle white-collar sector, and how it's affecting the education system.
Finally, we briefly discuss our upcoming trip to Buenos Aires, sharing our excitement and some interesting facts about the time difference and geographical position of South America.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Wow.
Dean: Mr Sullivan, wow, yes, Recorded entrance grad it's so good. We're living in increasingly turbulent times.
Dan: That's true, but I'll tell you what the great thing about it is. At this particular moment, at this particular outpost in the mainland, it's the absolute perfect temperature. The fourth season of the Valhalla, absolutely like room temperature, with a slight breeze, quiet, six, perfect.
Dean: Well, at our global domination compound in Toronto, we're having a perfect whole day.
Dan: A whole domination compound. That is true.
Dean: I don't want to own the whole thing, I don't want to own the whole world, I just want all the property next to mine.
Dan: I was excited about your idea of getting the house behind you to have that whole drive through, but they give it up on that.
Dean: That might bring the furies down on us. So far we've escaped scrutiny, anyway, yeah. Well, one thing that I thought would be interesting is kind of a Cloudlandia. It's that Taylor Swift's movie, her tour movie, has done, I think, worldwide with you, as down 150 million in two weeks and both weeks.
Dan: Yeah, she's only playing it Thursday to Sunday because she doesn't want kids neglecting homework, so she doesn't. You can't go see it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You can only go see it.
Dean: Well, I think she neglected hers and where she is Exactly, but I think she's alone Brilliant, I mean the fact that her tour alone.
Dan: Her live tour was one of the biggest tours ever. Now the recording of it. I think she's going to make another billion dollars with it.
Dean: Yeah, but the interesting thing about it is she bypassed Hollywood altogether which is the mainland, and they just wanted their 20% for being Hollywood, and she just bypassed it. And that comes right after the strike that shut everything down, for one of the griefs being, of course, being live streaming, the other one probably being the AI that's replacing a lot of the 80% work in Hollywood. In other words, first draft scripts and everything else can now get done with AI, and then you bring in the craftsman to actually, you know, take it the final 20%, yeah, and these are definitely.
Dan: I think that's a seed there, true. I think that's especially true, dan, for content. You know, let's call it streaming or television or documentary content, that is, book report content. That is like writing a. You know, if we were to do a documentary about the you know evolution of print starting with Putin or starting with the you know Chinese on papyrus, you know back in 1012 or whatever, A long time ago, that I think that that would be the kind of thing where AI would be able to write a script research, write a script.
That would be 80% of what you would need to do a compelling documentary about that, compared to the creative act of creating something new. You know, I don't know.
Dean: Yeah it's really interesting. On a previous episode I told you about the little experiment I'm doing with converting my chapters of this particular book. So this is my book number 36 and the 36th quarter, and it's called Everything, everyone and Everything Grows. That's the name of the book.
It's the backstage. It's the backstage description of strategic coach since 1989. We put our backstage together and as I was going through, I've been reading a lot of books on Shakespeare and there's something consciousness altering about the speech structure that they used. It wasn't just Shakespeare, it was of the time. It was, you know, around 1600 in Great Britain. It was called Iambic Contameter and it was 10 beats per line.
Okay, and Mike Canig's, knowing that I'm interested in this, sent an article which has to do with they've scientifically proved that Iambic Contameter actually your heart, matches the beats. After you listen to a minute or two somebody doing Iambic Contameter, your heartbeat gets in sync with it. The 10 beats.
Dan: Is that right?
Dean: Yeah, because it's thumb, you know, and anyway. So I had. I've got a great team member by the name of Alex Barley, and Alex is from the UK, he lives in Toronto but he was actually born in Sherwood. Born and grew up in Sherwood Forest which is an interesting fact. Yeah, sherwood Forest is a big area and then among the trees there's seven little towns and he was born in one of the towns.
Dan: And his father actually has.
Dean: His father actually has a club that opened in 1604.
Dan: So and remember we have. We have someone in strategic culture. Does those forests getaways?
Dean: or has Gary Fletcher? He's in Friso.
Dan: He's actually yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah and anyway. So I had him take a chapter that was on unique ability and unique ability teamwork and I had him converted into Iambic Contameter. And it was startling to get it back, because all the ideas are there but the ideas are put together in a different way. And it was just. I just found it fascinating and I said, boy, if I had a really great Shakespearean actor, you know, somebody who could really speak the language and listen to it rather than just, yeah, reading it.
So I was talking to Alex about it and I said my favorite would be Richard Birkin, okay, and? And he said, see, I really wouldn't know how to do that. So we went to Mike Canix and Mike knew how to do it. And so Mike gave Alex a couple sites where you could go to and experiment with them.
And about two days later from the time of my request to Alex, I got back Richard Burton. And it was Richard Burton, it was totally Richard Burton, and I've listened to it about 15, 15 times, and every time I listen to it it has a greater impact. And I played it for team members and the team members say, boy, I'd like to have that to listen to before I go to bed at night and everything like that. And so I asked him and did it. You know, when you first made the translation, in other words, you had the AI voice he says no, it was just, it was just sort of mechanical. And he says so what I did is I got actual recordings of Richard Burton and I would listen to it and then I would go through and I would change the timing, I would change.
And he says I put in some breath intakes and he said I would you know? He says he rushes ahead, then he speeds up, and then he does it's very unpredictable with Richard Burton and he did this all. So it's actually AI times. The craftsman.
Dan: That's a.
Dean: B percent plus the human craftsman, you know, because a human ear, you know, just has infinitely greater sensitivity to how things actually work than they calculated. You know a mechanical thing and went to it. It went to deliver it evenly.
Dan: You know and.
Dean: Richard Burton in particular, has the way of making words explode just by saying the word and then he was kind of built a delivery to William Shatner in a way like different. Yeah but I had never put yeah, I'd never put William Shatner and Richard together in my brain, yeah but the interesting thing about it. The interesting thing about it was we've done two chapters now and you could see Alex is getting more inventive and you know, and he's really getting into the poetry and it's in rhyme. So with iambic pentameter.
You can have it as prose or you can have it as rhyme and. I said well, since we're going the route of Richard Burton, I should put it in. But I was struck because I'm only going to use this for backstage with coach. I'm only going to use this with, and the Baron of the Four Seasons, valhalla, I might talk to the warlord talk to the warlord there, I mean, because he's almost backstage, anyway, anyway, but it just does something.
But what I'm noticing is changing my writing style as I go forward, because I've got that voice in my ear and I'm writing that to sort of meet the voice halfway, you know halfway.
Dan: Oh, that's right.
Dean: Yeah that it's an easy pick up. I mean I can't talk like that, I don't sound like that and everything, but it's how I am doing. My writing has been changing as I've listened listening to Richard Burton telling me what it sounds like in Shakespeare's age.
Dan: This is. You know, a couple of things jump out at me. You know, as you're talking about that and Alex's joy in tinkering, and you know it's a creative act. Using these, using owning technology like a good dog yes, Right. That's really what he's doing there.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And it reminded me of Peter Diamand is talking about these cent powers, the chess masters, paired with an AI that they can override or direct or run things by, or amplify their calculations or confirm their hunches. That's really the way forward, isn't it? It seems like that's the.
Dean: Well, what it suggests is that if you're a mechanical human being, this new form of mechanical will wipe you out, but if you decide to take refuge in being creative, they'll probably just offer you a deal.
Dan: Yeah, I mean it's interesting, what's there? There are a hybrid for this, like a creative machine or a. I mean there's something here, because even the AI is not doing it on its own. Some people are going to distance themselves. What we've seen mechanics do is distance themselves as a skilled operator of these new advantages.
Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting. There was an interesting lab test that was done in the Soviet Union before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was that they wanted to see if they could turn a fox, turned foxes, into dogs. They could do it through basically two-year generations. In other words, a fox had two years old as a fully grown fox.
So you just have a two-year from birth to adulthood and they went through 10 generations where each generation they picked a fox that was more docile, it didn't have aggressive, it wasn't paranoid, it was sort of friendly and docile. And by the 10th generation, the genetic product GMO, had enormous number of dog characteristics. It was friendly, it would come up and it would take dog characteristics and they decided to put the dog fox or the fox dog and an actual dog and they chose I think it was a German shepherd, and they put it through a and this.
They had it in the puppy stage, so it was about six to eight months old, and they put it through an obstacle course that they was designed so that the animal couldn't solve it. They would hit a wall where they just couldn't solve it.
And it was very interesting that the fox dog, when confronted with the final barrier, just curled up, went feral. He just went into a, wrapped himself up. He was just defeated and he wrapped up. The moment that the dog actually hit the thing he turned around and he searched out his owner and he says hey buddy, hey buddy, I need your help here. Okay, your turn, yeah. And they said they don't know if they can teach that, they don't know if they can. Actually they can genetically.
Dan: I was just writing. It's funny when you said that I was writing down nature versus nurture. But what was it that they change it genetically to modify it? But were they also? But they didn't, they couldn't Domesticated it.
Dean: They couldn't genetically reproduce the teamwork that's probably part of the inheritance of dogs. In other words, they trace it back 30,000 years since humans domesticated wolves to produce dogs, and that's a lot of generations of canines.
And anyway, but it tells me kind of that's why I wrote the book Owning Technology Like a Great Dog is that we've got We've got this 30,000 year experience in the animal stew of kind of working out teamwork with dogs and certain breeds are better, certain breeds are good for this, certain breeds are good for that and we've kind of developed kind of a real deep knowledge.
And they can do about 150 different tasks at this stage. Some of them can know as much as a thousand words. If you say a word, they know exactly what it refers to. It always refers to an object. It refers to an activity. They're not high on the concept level, I hope they have a good memory of.
Dan: Have you seen those? Yeah, and there's concepts of people setting up all these buttons on their floor that are labeled that a dog can push the yellow thing and it says a single word like walk, and so it knows to push that when it wants to go for a walk or a treat it can push treat, and I wondered about whether that, I mean it, seems real. So you're kind of confirming that they are able to build that kind of vocabulary.
Dean: Yeah, there was a professor in, I think, south Carolina. He was near retirement and he was a psychology professor and he just wanted to see how many words and he got sort of a border collie type. Border collies are just super smart and they're super responsive. And he got the dog to a thousand words of everyday objects. The dog you could. He knew all the dog's names, of all the dogs in the neighborhood, and the dog had a very definite opinion about each one of them.
Dan: So he said Max.
Dean: If he said Max, his tail would wag, and if he said Irving, it would just go.
Dan: Doesn't like Irving.
Dean: First of all, you know right off the bat that a dog gets named Irving. It probably has a difficult environment. Why would you do that? But Fred Feisman I don't know if you've ever met him. He's a coach client, probably 15 years.
Dan: He's in 10 times.
Dean: And he was a cowboy in British Columbia for 10 years.
Where every May he and another cowboy would take out 3,000 head of cattle and move them through elevations of pasture land. So in British Columbia you can have 4 levels of 4 levels, you know, geological levels, okay, and that would take them out to the high grazing area and then they would gradually bring them in. And so it was Fred. It was a partner and a dog. And I said if you had to lose one of them, the dog or the partner, which one, which one would you lose? He said lose the partner, just me and the dog could take care of all 3,000.
Because the dog always knew which steer was the lead steer and would get the lead steer. He also knew the route. He also knew the route and plus he checked for predators like wolves, coyotes, bears and everything else, and you know, would you apply?
Dan: Why are tigers?
Dean: and bears. Oh my yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And so, but it was really interesting. He said a great trail dog is it's you know. He says you can't put a price on how good they are, but they're not doing anything more than they were taught.
Dan: Right, yeah, that's interesting. I just got my. I got a I bought with my copy of how they use technology like a good dog. I don't own technology like a good dog, so I'm looking forward to reading it. I mean, yeah, that's really about Gotten to dive in there.
Dean: Ownership. I mean, it's not a question of owning technology or owning your dog you actually own your rights, right, yeah, and you know, it's really about ownership more than it's about dogs or technology.
You know, but the big thing is that I think that in learning how to interact with AI, we're going to learn about learn a lot about what human intelligence actually is. I think we're going to learn more from this interaction than we've learned from all the psychological studies possible, because it's going to be interactive all the time against the best result, you know, and correspondingly, I mean we'll have more knowledge about it, but more knowledge about us will be built into the programming of the AI.
Dan: Have you seen anything recently that has wowed you or changed your opinion about the usefulness or the future of AI? Like this, like in terms of sounds, like your Richard Burton experience has shaped some new enthusiasm.
Dean: Well, what I get is that all the breakthroughs will be specific. It'll be individual and specific. So right now I don't know how many in the first two or three months, you know, plugged into chat, gpt, and then, of course, there's hundreds of other there's hundreds of others, specialized AI, and my sense is that it's transforming the world, but there would be no overview on how that's happening, because it's happening in a hundred million different situations in a different way.
Dan: So if anything so the ability to have an oversight or an overview of this, I think it was impossible on day one, yeah, and it reminded me of like, as I was kind of reflecting on it is I mean the use that I'm using of.
Dean: Who would think of that? And right, there wouldn't be anyone else, that would even well. If, why would you do that? And I said I found it kind of neat.
Dan: Yeah, you know I was looking at it, thinking back on like this, as one of the major things of the big change of 1975 to 2025 that. Ai as the platform. I don't know whether platform is the right word or what it is just like. Television was a. That was the big capability that was brought and started out with. You know, just the ability to, you know, have the three national channels and broadcast things.
But in the earliest stages of television, nobody really knew what to do with it in, in that they were just bringing radio to television. They were re-enacting, like turn the camera on and do radio theater.
Dean: Yeah yeah, I mean, I remember the 1950s sort of programs that were kind of dramatic and they'd have the opening of the curtain. They'd have the opening of the curtains, you know, and because they well, they're putting on a show.
Dan: So what do you do?
Dean: Well, you, but yeah, and. But here's the thing that the networks were still networks that were broadly shared, you know they were in competition with each other. But it was. You were on one network, you're on the network, I think, with you're on a billion different networks you know, and each of them each of the networks is being uniquely custom designed for particular purposes by particular people for you know, and everything like that, and my sense is the whole notion that there's going to be an overarching system like Facebook or something like that.
I don't see that happening.
Dan: I mean.
Dean: I'm guessing embedding. And you know, I'm guessing embedding, just like everyone else. But I don't really care how other people are using it, I only care how I'm going to use it.
Dan: Yeah yeah, yeah, I think that's and you probably got. You've probably cornered the market on turning thinking tools into Richard Burton. Readings of Iambic pentameter.
Dean: Yeah, you know, I want to see if anybody's trailing me, and I haven't picked up on anything so far.
Dan: It's a blue ocean strategy.
Dean: Yeah, the other one we're doing. I don't know if you know Joe Stolti. He's. Joe is the runner of the. You know, the AI newsletter that Evan Pagan and Peter Diamand.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joe 100K yeah. Yeah.
Dean: So I met, I met Joe at 100K and he just said what it will do, and so we've been going. Now I think we've got 12 episodes out and they do an interview with you online. You know thought leadership, other people you like, articles you like and everything else. And then they keep fine tuning what it is that you really want. But our last we've had in the last seven episodes we've had five of them with more than an 80% open rate for the entire issue.
And then, and we had one I had one interview. It was a podcast interview with Mike Canix. We got a 95% open rate. Okay.
Dan: That's wild.
Dean: And it takes no work on our part. It creates the issue you know, so it gives you the results from your previous issue and then it shows you what the next issue is, based on the rates of the last issue. But, you're learning a lot about what we're learning a lot about what people really like listening to and what they like. You know, so it's an interesting thing.
Dan: And he's great to work with.
Dean: I really like him and his team. So yeah, it's called dailycom, I think it's called dailycom. Okay, yeah, it's great, yeah, it's great, and I mean we'll put out probably.
Dan: Well, you like the idea of not having to do anything. That's happening. That's pretty good Well it's all existing creativity.
Dean: A lot of it is existing articles that's existing. So we're repurposing I mean, we're getting a repurpose out of existing articles and all the content is original content.
Dan: You know I love that I'm just realizing that's for guessing and betting people's fondness for things that do the things they would like to do, especially if it's things that they would do if they could count on them to do it. You know, that's kind of a there's a good thing there. We recently in my Go agent world here our realtor we've launched the new real estate accelerator program. Where we're actually doing it's a who, not how, model of implementing the listing agent lifestyle elements in someone's business. So I've created that framework of the you know core five things that people you know the bankable results that they can get referrals and multiply their listings, get convert leads, find buyers, get listing. Those things I've got you know core programs and shortcuts and programs for them to do them.
I was having in conversation with Diane, the who kind of runs that division with me, she I was saying you know, what we've been doing is we've been selling gym memberships essentially to Go agent, where we've got all of the stuff, all the tools, all the IP, everything you need to implement it, and you just come on in and access it and do what you do what you want, and we observe that very few people you know actually do the stuff that we know, this is the secret sauce of gym memberships 40% never go up.
They pay for the whole year and never show up once.
That's exactly so. We're running that same model and for someone you know, I like to see people get the results, you know. And so I've been doing these you know workshops where I thought, okay, we'll do these implementation workshops where we'll spend you know five weeks and we'll do a weekly session on each of the things as like a booster to get you focused on here's what to do, kind of thing. And I observed we've done that for a year and realized that improves the, that improves the implementation, but still overwhelmingly people are not able to rally themselves to do the things that they know to do. And so we decided, well, what if we just did it for them?
And I recorded a video. I said you know? I said you know, I realized that I would be a really great real estate VA if I came to work for you and did all the things that I know in your business. And I said I know how to. I've been spending 35 years putting all of these pieces together and I know exactly what to do. And I went through and I outlined here's what I would do if I came into your business, because I realized that really we could implement all of it in somebody's business with one synchronous 30 minute, you know, check in at a fixed time with somebody that would then see, you know, three to five hours of implementation in a week, kind of thing for it and I was sharing it that it's like having a personal trainer instead of just a gym membership. You're meeting a personal trainer at the gym and the difference is that we're going to do the six, the sit ups, and you're going to get the six pack.
That's really how the difference and every single person I've talked to, dan is on board with this, because of course you're selling the reward. We do the sit ups, you get the six pack.
Dean: Yeah, you're selling the. You're selling the impact without the effort.
Dan: Exactly right.
Dean: Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah but you know there's still. I bet, if you work out your percentages, even that people won't go for. You know, because they have an escape from fantasy land about who they are and what they want to achieve. You know, one of the things that Peter Diamanas has the sixties regarding the digital revolution you know digitize the deceptive, the demonetization, dematerialization. There's democratization yeah, yeah well as the sixth one, I'm saying yeah, it's democratization in that the possibility as democratic, the utilization follows the same as anything that 10% will outdo 90%.
Dan: Yeah, I think that's true. You know there's so many everybody. That's a really interesting thing that there's just like in truth. You know, in political democracy there's opportunity, but not everybody takes advantage of it. Everybody has the opportunity to have a YouTube channel and reach the entire world, but there's only one, mr B.
Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know, he's number two in the YouTube world. I think there's somebody who's got more. I don't know who it is, but he's got the last one. I heard 201 million subscribers, followers 201 million.
Dan: Yeah, I think he's the number one individual. I think, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's very interesting. You know the good for a young guy. You know, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, you know he's got a future, this guy. He's going places, you know you can tell him almost right away. He can tell him almost.
you just get a feel Anyway the but the thing that I'm talking about, you know, I mean, the thing that I'm feeling is that I had a line one day. Peter Diamonis and I were going back and forth and he was talking about the future this, the future that, and I said you know what I've noticed about the future? When you get there, it feels normal.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: Huh, as a matter of fact, it doesn't arrive until you've normalized it.
Dan: Yeah, can you say more about that, because that led you to that Well we don't like abnormal.
Dean: Humans don't like abnormal. They like normal. Okay, and if you're asking them to do something new, that's different.
Uh you have to show them how to go through a normalization process where they get used to it. You know they get used to it and that's why I've been noticing that tech. Every company right now has to appoint a chief AI officer. A chief AI officer Ooh Dean, where would this person be? You know, I mean, where would this person? I mean, I mean, do you even have room or space for a chief AI officer? Okay, and I said no. I said why don't you just bring in somebody smart who shows your entire team how they particularly, and what they're doing can do this or that or this and this and let them lose, you know, and see what comes out of it and see what comes out of it?
And why don't you just have self-empowered you know, self-empowered team members, you know in person or virtual, you know, or remote, and just have them say, you know is, where could, what's the 20% that if you could get rid of it, which is it still needs to get done, what would it be? And then say, well, there's an AI program that can do this, or is an AI program do this. They get that 20% done. They say, well, what's the next 20%? And just keep them going for 50 years.
Dan: Yeah, and that's what. That's the approach.
Dean: We don't have a chief AI officer. First of all, we don't have anyone who's called chief and we don't have anyone who's called officer, because that sounds like had chief officer, you know, I think the Gestapo had chief something officer, you know, you know, and everything. I don't like cheap something officer, I just don't like the sound of it.
Dan: That's not good for anybody.
Dean: Oh, you know, right off the bat I get the willies.
Dan: That's funny. Yeah, let's say so. How? What are you doing in that, then? Do you have someone whose role is helping the team become a no, we brought in Evan Ryan.
Dean: He did a six module course how to think it through and then he's off and running, you know, and he checks in and you know with the latest stuff of if they're doing this and they can look at that. So we have. You know, we have a already operating system in the company that's called unique ability teamwork.
You know, everybody's in their unique ability and everybody's doing a different aspect of necessary activity in the company and they're all coordinating with each other. So it's virtually impossible for us to have a chief something officer, because that's not the way the company works.
Dan: Right, not a hierarchy.
Dean: It's not a hierarchy, it's a network.
Dan: Yeah, that's interesting, I mean.
Dean: I'm not even. I'm not even chief. It's just that Dan has certain unique abilities. He's really good at coming up with new stuff. So where do you get, you know, any, especially new stuff that's offered to the public and we get paid for it, you know. Right so you know, you know, I'm not a boss in any meaningful way, except I'm the one to define what the next projects are.
Yeah, but oh hefe Right, yeah, I think corporations are going to have real hard time with this. I think anything that's a hierarchy and because there's one person at the top and there's a lot of middle people down to the bottom and I get a sense it's useful at the very top and it's used at the very, but in the middle I think all those jobs are fair game to get rid of.
Dan: Have you been following Salim? Well, not new, but kind of expansion on the exponential organizations, like you're seeing.
Dean: Yeah, I spent two days with him and you know, 100K? Yeah, because we were out to dinner on Friday night and we were sitting together and talking about it. But you know, the model is from my standpoint. It's a big organization model. It's not really. I mean because you got about 13 things that you have to check off and you and I personally are done after three.
Dan: Right, yeah, it requires somebody who's like it almost feels like just achieve an exponential. That's what I was just going to say. Yeah, yeah it almost needs to be, I mean.
Dean: I like Salim's a great guy to talk to. Yeah great thing. But I think he gets the big bucks from the big corporations. I don't think he gets the. You know he doesn't get the money like we get the money at the, not from entrepreneurs right, we're street level.
Dan: We're street level. Men are the people really? Yeah, we're house lawyers. Oh, my goodness, it's so fun again. You know I get such joy out of that. You know, like the I've been. You know I go to a cafe here called Honeycomb Bread Bakers and they you know one of you learn the crowd and the people there was. There used to be a coffee shop called N plus, one which was the yeah yeah, so I would go there all the time and N plus, that was pre COVID, wasn't it?
Dean: That was pre COVID.
Dan: And yeah, and during COVID.
Dean: Yeah, let's say kind of hit the wall during.
Dan: They didn't really recover from that in terms of it being a profitable business. They were attached to their bike shop, which was the main, and the idea is invite. Yeah, the idea was N plus one is the equation, for you know how many coffees should you have, which is N equal the number of coffees you've had today Plus one. That's how many.
Dean: And so I got to know the owner, Peter Zion, was saying that when you lived on a farm you had as many children as you could plus one. And somebody asked him well, what's the plus one for? To know that you've had too many. Same thing with coffee, I think.
Dan: You know, the fun thing is that riding a bicycle is a decidedly mainland adventure and they serve an area and the 15 mile zone. What are you calling it? The bubble.
Dean: you know, and do they have like bike paths and everything?
Dan: Oh, there's like paths all over Winterhaven. Yeah, lots of great places.
But, so over coffee a couple of weeks ago he was asking for some marketing advice. Like think I mean to ramp things up. I went through this concept of you know the before, the during and the after unit and you know largest check and I could ask you know what's the best if I could just line people up the door right now? Who would you want? What would what's the highest margin thing? And it was eBikes is the thing. Yeah, I said so.
I have a learning that I've had from working with a bathroom boutique client in Miami and I've learned from doing this that putting a catalog together is a really great lead generator. Right Objective data is all, rather than trying to convince people that they should buy a bike and put there because they were running ads that were like, hey, where's the bike shop? Here we are, we're in Winterhaven and you know bikes are great kind of thing. Getting their name out there and I shared with him the concept of and value of getting their name in here rather than getting your name out there. Let's get the names, let's gather the names of everybody who's interested in e-bikes and I proposed putting together this e-bike catalog with them, and so we did that.
We put that on my Facebook. I put up the ads forum and we're generating e-book our e-bike catalog downloads for $1.66 each. So he said to him like you put this in the thing it's like for let's just give some room for improvement for our cost of the ads to go up. But let's say that we can get 100 people to metaphorically raise their hand and say, hey, I'm interested in an e-bike for $150. We can get 100 of them to raise their hand and his average margin on an e-bike is around $600 to $700. And so it doesn't take many of those to engage with and them to buy a bike.
It's kind of funny. It's like that I still I get as much joy out of that as doing something with a big national company that's got.
Dean: I think the big thing that I'm getting and this is not going cloud landing discussion is you're growing understanding of exactly who you want to talk to and the continual evolution of people knowing exactly who they want to hear Actually, who they want to hear and that bypasses an incredible amount of bureaucracy, I mean if you think about the sheer amount of bureaucracy In my sense, is that the current extreme polarization in what's called polarization, political polarization and cultural polarization, is that I think that the probably three or four generations who took the root of high education, so in other words, starting in nursery school, they were competing to get into a great kindergarten and compete to get into a great primary school, to get into a great university, to get into a great high school which got you to the university and the graduate school, that they're imperiled.
I think that they're imperiled. On the other hand, an 18 year old who, after graduation with no thought of university at all takes a 10 week welding certification course, is making anywhere between 60 and 100,000 at the end of the, and he's the buyer or she's the buyer. She's the buyer because and probably you know within 10 years they're making a million. They're making a million and they're bypassing the higher education. All because the higher education is about abstractions, but AI is about extreme specificity.
It's about extreme specificity and I think that a lot of the uprising on universities and the polarization and the cancel culture is they don't want to hear news about anything else except what they've been promised lies at the end of the rainbow the abstraction rainbow, and it's just a general unsettling. You know and and I mean think about it you were in school from four years old to, let's say, 26 years old and have run up. I mean it cost you an incredible amount if you could pay for it, or it cost you an incredible amount and you know loans and you're a quarter million, or 400, a quarter million, or you're $400,000 in debt when you graduate.
Dan: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: And then you learn that there's a new technology that's just going to make everything you did for the last 22 years irrelevant, including you.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
Dean: So my sense is that it's the middle white collar, you know the whole middle white collar, part of the economy that's going to get clobbered but not at the high end, where people are really creative, or at the end, where people are really handy. You know where people are really handy.
Dan: I think that they're completely safe, even things like you know legal associates, like people who are, you know, in big law firms. You know the first session year both the involved do, slaving away in the library looking up case law.
Dean: Yeah, or contract contract, you know, yeah, and I mean there's somebody that a test of a particular deed on a particular property in another state that required about inputs from about seven different things, which generally takes about three and a half to four weeks to get the whole three, and the AI program did it in like 15 minutes start to finish and it was completely accurate and I mean it was really really sort of had involved and it's blessed entry.
Dan: Very well. So what do these have? Like the Pretty amazing, isn't it? I mean well, like we're living in the future, it's we're normalizing that.
Dean: Well, we're normalizing it on an individual basis, we're not normalizing it on a group basis.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I think that it's only the front runners you mean that are Seeing that?
Dean: no, it's just an alert, curious, responsive, resourceful individual who's got a particular thing in mind. And they found those new way of multiplying their Productivity, multiplying their profitability you know and you know. So yeah, but see, everybody I had, I was, we were in Chicago last week and we have a G, you know, in general practice she's an internist and she's our. Chicago doorway to any kind of specialty that we need, you know, specialty medicine.
And she's going concierge November oh nice tonight and and Because we've been with her for about 15 years, you know and. I can tell that the weight of the Disease management Industry is weighing down on her.
Dan: We don't have a healthcare system.
Dean: What we have is a disease management.
Right you know and and so, and I could tell she was lighter. I mean, she's had this light, energetic feel about her and welcome to the entrepreneurial world. You know, welcome. I said you get paid for what you ask. You know you get paid for what you asked. And she says well, you know, I'm really worried about the fact that the people who Don't have the access to you and I said you were worried about that before, I said 99.9% of you didn't have access to you you know, before this happened, including you didn't have access to you before this. Now you get access to you and I said that's the only change here.
And I said there but You're going to get pickier and pickier about who gets to see you and everything. And I said it's just very natural. And she says yeah, but the whole system, I mean how? I said her name's on me and I said I mean there is no system, the biggest, there are 10 million systems and you're one of them.
You're a planet, planet, I said. The biggest fallacy is this is industrial thinking from 1900 to 1950, that there's a system, there is no system. You know, and I said there there are no systems, there's just. There's just connected local neighborhoods.
Dan: So you're what you're saying really reminds me of of Ray Dalio's you know understanding of the market and saying how you know the way we talk about the auto market, what that really is just an aggregate Construct of all the individual micro transactions. Oh yeah one person buying one car, and you're saying the same, that I feel that Same way that there's no system. The system is just made up, yeah, of this aggregate of the individual micro transactions between one person with Very precise medical needs, seeking them from one person.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, yeah and the it's like climate. There is no climate people said yeah, and I said the climate is just a 360 day average of what the temperatures were. You know, yeah, and what the precipitation was and what the wind was, every day being entirely different from the other 364 and in order to get some sense of it. You call it, you average it and we got to have a name for that, so they call it climate. There is no climate, there's just a lot of temperature, right right right.
There's just a lot of weather. I've only experienced weather. I've never experienced climate.
Dan: Climate is this.
Dean: System weather is reality. Yeah, so I think the whole notion of systems, you know, you know, I mean there's some big tools which are being used in common, but you know, like, the dollar is the reserve currency rate you know, and and everything else, but everybody's using dollars differently. They're using dollars for different reasons. You know and, and or English, the English language, and there's no uniparty around the world. There's about a hundred different versions of English. You know because it's it's the one language that you can get along Extremely well-speaking, badly.
Dan: That's funny. Yeah, yeah, true, can't do that with can't do that with French.
Dean: I can tell you, you can't do that with French. Yeah, but that's the language of romance. Yeah, so why did you get out of this? I mean, we windered a bit today, which is our favorite activity Absolutely.
Dan: I think that's. I think that's fantastic. I haven't thought about the relationship between the system and the market in that parallel way that Ray Dalio and I think that really, you know it does come down to you know, being able that's really what it is being able to use whatever means to get an outcome for People. You know I'm bullish about the future here.
Dean: Yeah, now I'm just trying to think I can do it next week, because, no, I can't do it next week. I'm on my way to Nashville next week. So I but I can do it two weeks from now and I'll be in Buenos Aires, argentina.
Dan: Okay. I will be here and I will be anxious to hear about your Buenos Aires experience. Will you have had the experience? When we talk?
Dean: No, will you?
Dan: be there.
Dean: We got an overnight flight on Saturday Okay, weeks from now and and then it starts on Monday, so I'll this would be the. We're two hours ahead of you, so time-wise, buenos Aires is two hours ahead of where you are future and, yeah, all of South. Here's an interesting thing about you know where London Ontario is. Of course, because yeah lived halfway there. But anyway all of South America sits east of London, Ontario. Yeah wild right, you think it's underneath.
North, I know it isn't it that goes way to the east? Actually, brazil is only a thousand miles from Africa. That's crazy. Yeah, two-hour flight from. Africa to Brazil.
Dan: Yeah anyway, well then, I will be here with bells on and I will look forward to it.
Dean: You know what? And we're both ten quick starts. We're both ADD. And that's a prescription. That's a prescription for no system. That's exactly right.
Dan: They're like holy so all right. Okay, two weeks for me. Okay, okay, bye, bye, bye you.
06 Apr 2022
Ep061: The World In Your Headset
00:58:47
Join Dan and Dean as they discuss the merits of virtual communication over in person communication and how Cloudlandia holds so many advantages over "real life".
In this episode, Dean and Dan review their last Freezone session and talk about the power of collaboration - like how Kohls' collaboration with amazon has helped them to acquire 2 million more customers.
Ep133: Unlocking Literary and Entrepreneurial Secrets
00:50:24
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, We glean valuable insights into writing methods by contrasting Stephen King's solo approach with James Patterson's collaborations.
We explored the benefits of a second-person narrative and tailoring content for specific readers. We talked about an entrepreneur who built a candy empire by recognizing an opportunity and exemplifying the power of vision, focus, and innovative thinking.
His story highlighted how early experiences shape goals and the importance of collaboration. Additionally, this discussion examined how US elections impact businesses and underscored innovation and marketing's crucial roles.
Lastly, we covered strategic concepts like revenue per unconverted prospect and discussed books' significance in education.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
I explore the contrasting writing styles of Stephen King and James Patterson, focusing on King's solo approach and Patterson's collaborative method.
I discuss the benefits of writing in the second person to create a more engaging and conversational tone for specific audiences, such as experienced entrepreneurs.
I share the story of a young entrepreneur who successfully identified a market gap and built a low-sugar candy company, emphasizing the importance of single-minded focus and methodical growth.
I delve into the significance of visionary goals and collaborative efforts in driving entrepreneurial success, using personal anecdotes and experiences as examples.
I analyze the impact of US presidential elections on business sales, highlighting how different election outcomes can shape various business landscapes.
I introduce the concept of revenue per unconverted prospect (rev pup) and its role in strategic business planning, particularly in understanding client gestation periods.
I examine the financial dynamics of a signature program, discussing how a $15,000 fee per participant can generate significant revenue and emphasizing the importance of capital investment in lead generation.
I highlight the role of books in attracting and educating prospects, particularly those published with Hay House, and their efficacy in creating qualified leads and fostering deeper understanding among participants.
I discuss the benefits of a high-protein, low-carb keto diet and share personal plans, including a trip to the cottage and trying a new French establishment, Cafe Balloud.
I reflect on the importance of focusing on one thing for entrepreneurial success, using the example of a young entrepreneur who built a low-sugar candy empire and the notion of always striving to go further in one's pursuits.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, mr Jackson there he is Well. Yeah, I had a great week. Yeah, I'm very busy. We started a new book. The previous one went to the printer on Tuesday and we started the next book on Thursday, so this is the fastest that we've gotten to a new one. Oh, I like that Right into the next.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah don't know what stephen king, the author that's his habit of he writes for. You know he writes every day a certain amount of time and as soon as he finishes one of the end on one if it's halfway through a session he gets a new sheet of paper and starts the next one. He doesn't like sit on his laurels, he just gets right into the next one. It's very interesting.
Dean: Yeah, I'm wondering because I don't really know much about him. Is he right strictly alone?
Dan: and then, yes, you know, yeah, like, so it's a very interesting thing that he's like a rugged individualist, whereas you know, james patterson is definitely a who, not how, collaborator, you know, and prolific at it. He's got a really, really interesting process in that he does extensive outlines for his books and then he collaborates with someone to fill it in, to do the actual right, and then he gets with them and gives notes and so the book is a hundred percent. He's the author. I guess you can say, and then, but gives the, but gives the co-author the latitude to take it, exercise their creativity or whatever and how it goes. But he's got the basic. You know, he's created the outline and the story art Pretty extensive outlining process he has I took a I don't know whether you've ever seen and the story arc Pretty extensive outlining process he has I took a I don't know whether you've ever seen.
There's a website called Master Class and they have, like the best in fields, doing a master class on their thing, and so James Patterson was one of the first. He did a thing on writing and yeah, it's very, it's very well done. Do you think they actually reveal what they actually do? Yeah, I think so. I mean it's from seeing the things. Yeah, he actually shows actual outlines, outlines, and you know, I imagine there's nothing you know. Sharing the process is very empowering for other authors, just like I think you don't keep one and has observed you, observed you doing it. I've got one right in my backpack right here, right now. I've got the everything is created backward book right here and I just think this format, it's so you know, it's, you're so consistent in the output of it, it's amazing.
Dean: Yeah, I just wonder. There was a story of a martial arts master in. Asia, china, and he was known throughout the land as the greatest martial arts master. And then he had a student who was just prodigious he was a prodigy. And so he had a student who was just prodigious he was a prodigy.
And so he taught him. And then the student went off and made a name for himself and then came back one day and he says as far as I can see, there's just you and me, he said to the master, and he said so why don't we settle it right now to see who's actually the master? Okay, and so they did it and the student had his master at a great disadvantage. And then the master pulled out a trick he had never seen before and defeated the student.
And the student said I thought you taught me everything he says, except for one thing.
Dan: Great, I love that, except for one thing.
Dean: I love it, and I'm not saying that I have one thing, but I'm saying that there's something that happens in a creative process that involves a lot of other people. So I have Shannon Well, I do my outlines to be my version of James Patterson our fast filters, and so I do the fast filter, which is basically the structure of each section of the book the introduction, there's eight chapters and there's a conclusion, so 10 sections and each of them has a fast filter with a best and worst. And I do everything in the second person, personal, so I'm always talking to you you know, whoever the reader is, I'm always talking to.
the reader allows me to do is to bypass, research being a too quick start. I'm not heavy on the research side, right, and what you're depending upon is the research that the reader has already done in his or her life. That this makes sense, and that's you know, that's the second.
Dan: That's. That's a. That's a real secret. You know that. Like it, it's really. It's the best to read as well, because it feels like a conversation, feels like you're just talking to me and explaining something that is that you wouldn't have, as if you were just writing a letter to me about it.
Dean: Well, you do that when you're talking. I mean you know, I mean, I think you you use the second yeah everything I do it's the same.
Dan: I do the same every email that I write. All of that is that because that's the I think that's the most engaging right.
Dean: Like people, it's easy to get engaged with that when it feels like it's just you and me, and so I'm just trying to think here of the, because I'm only talking to a certain kind of person, you know.
Dan: I'm not writing for the world.
Dean: I'm only talking to one, someone who's an entrepreneur with experience and with success, and so I'm simply reflecting in my talk what I already know about this person's life.
Dan: I think that goes a long way, that one of the great, like you know, models of that is thinking about one person as if you're writing a letter to one person, or even a small workshop filled with whoever you're, you know, whoever filled with the right people and only speaking to those Something to that you know where you're not. You don't try and I think people often in marketing writing especially, they are trying to accommodate or change so that, just in case these people aren't this or that, they don't know about this. And I'm like you know what you gotta like avoid. You gotta let go of the bottom 20% and write as if you're only writing for the top 20%. You're writing to the people who want to do what it is that you're doing, not, you know, leaning on your back foot kind of thing. You're leaning into helping the people, the tippy top group.
That really want what you have, and don't hold back on that, you know.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I made it. I think I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but I made a decision as I was approaching you know my current age.
I said you know I've been Well, that's something everybody can do, you know approaching your current age. Anyway, I just made a decision I wasn't going to do any speeches anymore to big rooms. The only public presentations I would do would be to entrepreneurial audiences, but I would only do it in the form of a thinking tool. I wouldn't try to tell them how the world is or where I see the world going. I simply say I have a thinking tool for you.
And what it relates to is you know something that happens to entrepreneurs and I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about it and then I'm going to have you think through your answers and everything like that, and then I'll have you talk to each other, and then we'll come back and we'll just share insights. And that relieved me. I didn't like public speaking and the reason was that I knew I was only talking to about a small percentage of the room.
Dan: And.
Dean: I didn't know who they were. You don't know which ones, right? Yeah, I didn't know who in the audience, and then you're trying to make it appeal.
Dan: Just even subconsciously, you're trying to make it appealing to everybody. Yeah, yeah, just uses a lot of energy and this is, you know what, this way, doing these, I would argue, you know, doing these 90-day books, quarterly books that you're doing is way more impactful than doing speeches to big crowds.
Dean: This is really the big thing and I've sort of refined it about my decision about not giving talks to large groups. Talks to large groups when I'm in the office either the Toronto office or the Chicago office the coach will frequently say can you come in and talk to the group? And I'm always a bit puzzled. I don't know what to talk to them about. What I've done recently is that I have a big table in the cafes Toronto or Chicago and I say I'm going to have lunch and anybody who wants to come in and talk to me, you can come in and have lunch with me.
So usually about eight people, and that works out really great because the only people who show up are the people who actually want to talk to me.
Dan: Yeah, exactly that's great. Great, I like that. Yeah, that's my favorite. My preferred style, too, is just that is the here I am. Ask me anything, you know, that's the way I can show up the best for things you know.
Dean: That's yeah, that's always been. Have you been that way all the time, or is it developed?
Dan: I think it's always been my preference. I have the capability to do a prepared presentation. It's not my preference, but I just like being able to customize the message to whatever somebody wants to hear. You know, so a lot of time I don't do really I don't do prepared like keynote talks anymore. I much prefer like fireside chats kind of thing, where we'll do an interview and I can take it where. What I'd much rather do Q&A, because it can be directed in whatever they're specifically interested in and I can think quickly and articulate an answer. So they're not going to stump me. I know that much.
So I prefer that and I think it feels to people there's a more, there's a different energy to it's an improv theater element to it right where it's flying without a net and you know you, there's always that danger that somebody is going to stump you or ruffle you or whatever, but they're not so that that confidence to be able to do it. And I've done enough thinking about my core ideas that I can adapt them with, you know, simplifying stories or examples that work, Of course, I think one of the things that's true about both of us.
Dean: we've been out there long enough that people who really want to get in touch with us know how to do it.
Dan: All right, exactly, yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I was thinking that on the way over, I'm in Orlando right now, I'm in the Tesla mobile podcast recording studio parked under an h80 tree today, and but I was on the drive over. I was thinking about that different. Just doing some assessment things on the different types of like if you're doing a wealth matrix or whatever, in terms of one of the things we do with our listing agent lifestyle things is this balance between daily joy, abundant time and financial peace, and I was thinking about the different kinds of advantages that people can have. I have complete time freedom. Basically, I have very little demands on my time in a recurring way, so I have self-direction on what you know you would call freedom of time.
Dean: You know I would call that freedom of time. Exactly. I think the term that you're looking for, dean, is freedom of time, that's so funny.
Dan: But the other thing is along with that time I was joking with somebody the other day. You know I'm in the middle of a project for myself here but I was saying to them that just jokingly, you know I've got access to Dean Jackson for free. And I look at that as one of my greatest assets access to me for free?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Anytime, anytime, that's exactly right.
Dean: If he's in a good mood.
Dan: If I can only wrangle him, you know, wrestle him down.
Dean: If I can get his attention, if I can get his attention. Attention I can only get him to apply himself.
Dan: That would be the thing right yeah we'd be on to something.
But I think that the other thing is you know, you know, as far as vcr, you know, assets go, this, I've got so much, so many vision capabilities. You know like I, I know a lot of things that can be applied to a lot of things, and it's really the. You know the job. The struggle, let's say, is to direct that to one thing. You know, it's like the, it's like you. I remember we talked about offer briar one time that he you know, I was just.
Dean: I was just as you said, that I was just thinking of him you know, exactly at that moment that you said his name. I was thinking about him, isn't that?
Dan: funny that you, you know, I remember you telling the story of being with him and I've had the same conversations with him that his model, his technology, just for people listening. He's a brilliant guy. He's able to simplify learning and teaching models so he can really teach somebody how to learn anything and become a master at it in a very compressed amount of time and become a master at it in a very compressed amount of time, and his, you know, assertion is that he could do this for anything. It can be any skill that somebody wants to learn, and I think you were one of my favorite stories. You were at a dinner with him.
Dean: I believe you were in Israel, right, tel Aviv, yeah.
Dan: And said well, I'll let you tell the way you described it no, I just.
Dean: it was a, you know, a very short comment.
Dan: And I said.
Dean: I said, you know, I think you really want to be known for this, for being able to teach anybody anything. But the problem is you can't focus on one thing. And you only become really well known if you can't focus on one thing, and you only become really well known if you can do one thing, really great. And you know, and he just laughed and he smiled, and you know he, he nodded and agreed, that was true and you know, and that's where I think it's very important to have guidance from outside of.
You know what's the best thing for you to apply your talents to, your one talent, your greatest talent, what's? The best thing to do for that. And you know and what would you think with VCR? What would be the?
Dan: Well, that's where I'd go. You know, is that this is? You know, even the marketing, you know is certainly the one. It's one thing, but there's so many applications of that you know, that's where I struggle, but what?
Dean: would be? I guess I'm asking the question again what would be the best? I mean the, you know. I mean even in the strategic coach. I'm for entrepreneurs, you know the strategic coach is for entrepreneurs talented, successful, ambitious entrepreneurs. I say yeah, but not all of them. Not all of them. You can check off those three boxes. I'm for the ones who are really driven to collaborate with other entrepreneurs to create a new thing, that hasn't existed before. So, you know, and I think this gets more refined, Wouldn't you find?
of who you would spend your time with 10 years ago that you wouldn't spend time with them today? Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.
Dan: I think there's, yeah, there is that. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I think there's, yeah, there is that. I was it's so. I was, just as a sidebar, was listening to a podcast the how I built this podcast with Guy Raz and the the thing that one of the most recent guests was this young, the young lady. She's 26 or seven now. When she was 21, she started a company to make low sugar gummy bears and evolved that product line to other low sugar gelatinous treats and the company is called Smart Sweets and four years after building it, she sold 80% of it for $360 million, you know, as a 25 year old or 26 year old, in a four year period. And it's just, I mean, it's amazing, right, that one thing focus of doing that it unfortunately feels like it's the way is one thing. If your goal is building wealth, it feels like, I guess.
Dean: Was that her intention to do that, or was that a stroke of I?
Dan: think she wanted to. You know she wanted to create. She saw a gap in the market for low sugar candy right, that people like candy, but they're, you know it's so high in sugar and corn syrup and all the bad things, right. So she was looking for healthy alternatives and and there were really none. And so she figured, boy, if I could get, if I could figure this out, there'd be a, I think, a big market for it.
Dean: And she was right.
Dan: I mean she was definitely right and yeah, but went through. You know that whole process and you know, immediately kind of hit a third stride with it. But you look at, you know, the simplest businesses, you know, like that, imagine at some point beyond the idea and the execution of launching it that it's a different. It's a different game than the, it's a different game than the idea and the, the blueprints kind of thing, you know. And there's something that's I'm sort of resistant to or I find it hard to. You know, focus on just taking one thing all the way, kind of thing you know, that's been like.
I look at. You know you look at, I see it among my. It's one of my most successful clients. You know that they're focused on one thing we crack the code on the marketing and create a multiplier for it that drives for the next three or four years and then they sell.
Dean: You know it's a big yeah but single-minded focus for that period of time it's an interesting thing because that's a particular payoff for doing one thing. In other words, you know 300 million or whatever at 26, but you can also have a method that you constantly want to be growing and you know, the success is sort of a byproduct of the method. I would say that I have sort of a one thing, but it isn't a payoff or an event, it's actually it's a process you know, and but it's.
I think part of it is just always be creating new things and then, to give evidence that they're actually new things, have it in the form that other people can use them, like thinking this is one you know or workshops you know, or quarterly books and and everything else. But but I I like yeah that's true.
Dan: Yeah, like I look at that, that you're in a lot of ways, you know, I look at this as your Jiro dreams of sushi kind of you know experience of pursuing mastery of collaborative thinking tools for ambitious entrepreneurs at the highest level. You know, with a trillion dollar free zone, you know economy as the, you know, at 100 years old, that's a very, you know, that's a very ambitious north star right that that's the direction that everything is heading and it gives you enough, there's enough, uh, variety in the constant creation of new things. And I think there's something elegant about this quarterly book cadence supported by quarterly workshops and that model with new tools and a organizational support for, in the wake of what you're creating, that you're always on the lead.
You're always on the lead ship in the armada, car-charging the course and heading to the $15 trillion future right and bringing on the free zone people on the lead ship and everything behind an armada of other coaches and the signature program, the 10 times program, all kind of headed in that same direction.
Dean: Yeah, I would say that it really stems from an experience I had.
I think it was about 10 years old and I've mentioned this that I was out walking in the fields of the farm that I grew up on. It was in February, you know, very clear, bright day, cold but very bright and sunny. I think it was still 54. The airliners were still mostly propeller. I think this was a DC-6. It struck me that it had four engines. It was either flying from Cleveland to Chicago or flying from New York to.
We were in the flight path of those type of destinations and I was watching and all of a sudden I just got this feeling. It was a question that came to me and it's saying I wonder how far I can go, and that's kind of framed it for the last 70 years. I wonder how far I can go, and that's kind of framed it for the last 70 years. I wonder how far I can go. I've done this Now I wonder, and whenever I hit one level of measurable achievement, measurable success, then the question always comes to me Now I wonder how far I can go. So I think that's my one thing, I think that's my.
One thing is just that it's a question, it's not an answer, it's actually a question now I wonder how far I can go and that requires, you know, being in good health, being, you know, having energy and that requires having, as you say.
I've got a lot of organization that gets formed out of the creativity because it becomes doable by other people, like having coaches do the workshops. And you know, I meet clients now who have been in coach for 25 years and it's the first time I've ever met them, but they've been working with the other coaches for 25 years and that's kind of proof that you're doing something useful. You know, it sort of indicates to me that this stuff is real. Somebody who would maybe be attracted to coach because of a book they read, or they saw a podcast or something, but they do it through another coach.
They're never actually in my workshops, they're in somebody else's workshops. And when I meet them, I'm always very pleased that there's enough substance and enough impact to the stuff that's being created that they don't have to be with me.
Dan: I think that's right, that you've got enough like yeah, I mean you, a strategy circle and an impact filter are going to work, no matter who explains them. Right, when they explain them and they go through the process, it's like it doesn't require any. You know, there's not any creativity required in the telling of that, it's really self, it's built into the tool and any anybody can share that. Yeah, that's the. But you know you've got kind of that framework. I look at that as the. You know, in my world, that framework of the eight profit activators, the breaks and blueprint, is a is one thing. I look at that as one thing. Right, the but the application of it. You know there's this different, I guess, in teaching the application of it, helping people apply it to their own businesses.
Dean: How many would you, how many would you say, have taken at least the it's first three days right, it's a three-day introduction.
Dan: Yeah, the three-day.
Dean: Three-day. How many, would you say, have taken it now. So I would say that probably.
Dan: well, let's say 10 times, maybe 600, I'd say Do people do it again? I'd say Do people do it?
Dean: again yeah.
Dan: I've had people who've come many times Because it's one of those things where you never step in the same river twice or you never play the same golf course twice. It's the same round of golf even if you play the same course. The eight profit activators are the thing and it's just literally layering on. There's always constant improvement and new nuances within each of the eight profit actors. So if people are working on their before unit or their during unit or their after unit, there's all these layers of you know building on top of it, and once they've had an experience of it, you know now that you've actually applied something and something's going that unlocks, kind of the next thing you know, you get to see, okay, now, what could we do? Kind of thing. You know, and it's really, it's very interesting.
Like my, one of the things that I've been really leaning into is one of the biggest frustrations I have. I'll explain something that's a real thing going on here. Real thing going on here is that in the before unit, which is the first four profit activators, and they're all about identifying your ideal client, compelling them to raise their hand, to start a conversation, educating and motivating them so that they know that working with you or doing whatever it is that you do, would be the right thing. And then making a compelling offer that makes it easy for people to get started and we get people to think about that before unit as a separate entity from their during unit, which is the unit of the business that does the thing that you do. So let's say the strategic coach workshop process, like once somebody is in strategic coach, that would be the during unit of it, right?
So the before to act as a supplier to the during, and what they're supplying is new registrations for strategic coach workshops, new workshop enrollees, and the way that we try and do it is set up like a prospect vending machine as opposed to a slot machine. Most people do slot machine marketing where they put money in and they pull the lever and come on seven hoping that something will happen. And a vending machine is very predictable. Right, you're doing a vending machine. You have to select, even though there might be a dozen things in a vending machine. You have to select even though there might be, you know, a dozen things in the vending machine. You have to select what's in a1 and press a1 and it tells you what the price is and you put that money in.
But you push the button and out comes your whatever it is that you asked for and so we try and line that up for people and the most predictable, the way to really do that as a vending machine is to think about the investment in the before unit as a capital investment versus an expense-based approach. Where most people are running expense-based approach, they want to run the ads, get somebody to come online and then buy right away, before the credit card is due at the end of the month to pay for the ads. Right, that's what everybody's looking for. But I look at it that if you take a capital investment approach of generating your ideal prospects and taking a bundle of 100 of those and then not measuring your ROI until 100 weeks from now, your ROI until a hundred weeks from now is the what's the ROI on marching that bundle of 100 leads that you made a capital investment of 500, a thousand $2,000 in. What's the ROI over 100 weeks versus the next hundred hours?
You know which is what most people are focused on, and so I, where I run into challenges with people, is getting through what I call the Van Allen belt, where it's you load up your a hundred, or you know however many you load up a hundred leads that you've generated, however many you load up a hundred leads that you've generated and then the Van Allen belt is getting them through that period where you haven't done a transaction yet and it feels like you're spending money and you're, you know, keep loading passengers on the rocket kind of thing, and but nobody has, nobody has bought yet, and that getting people to stick with that through the Van Allen belt and then get the ROI is a big obstacle and I see it happen again and again. It's one of those things, literally people stopping three feet from gold.
Dean: I really grasp what you're saying. I was just thinking how do you conceptualize that for the people who are actually involved in the activity?
Dan: Well, that's the way I'm describing it now.
Dean: I mean, if we put together marketing and strategic coach with sales and Strategic Coach, I would say we have it's a quarter of the country, a quarter of the company you know, easily 30, easily 30, 30 individuals and and and what they create is really educated, enthusiastic, first workshop participants. Basically that's what they create and it's interesting. This year we'll do 1,000. Like, we'll have 1,000.
Dan: New registrations.
Dean: You mean, yeah, new registrations, and then the price went up this year, so there's more. I mean, we were about 980 last year and we'll be slightly over a thousand. And one thing I've noticed is there's a fall off in sales in presidential years. Oh, yeah. When the US is having a presidential election and the toughest period is about the three months before the election.
Dan: The reason is that yeah, right the election.
Dean: The reason is that, yeah, right now. The reason is it makes a difference. It's not necessarily who wins the election, but you kind of know how to adjust your you know, you kind of adjust your journey once you know, who's going to be the president. You know, and this year there's very definitely a difference. You know, I would say it's the greatest philosophical difference. I've probably seen in my entire lifetime.
Dan: I have a perfect example. I have a client who is an immigration attorney and they're, you know, right now talk about. There couldn't be a greater polarity of possibility in. November that they're. You know they're right on the thing of ready to pivot that if one side gets in it's all about immigration and getting legal. If the other side gets in it's all about staying here, deportation defense. You know it's a different. It's amazing how that kind of thing can have a polar difference.
Dean: Yeah, and I just noticed that. I mean, I've been through, we're in our 35th years, so there's been eight presidential elections over that, and I just noticed there's a holding back. That happens usually summer to the, unless it's pretty well clear that an incumbent president is going to get reelected. You know, and that's happened a number of times.
Anyway but that. But the interesting thing about it is that I think it was Peter Drucker said there's only two things, there's only two areas of profit in a company. One of them is innovation and the other one is marketing.
Dan: Right.
Dean: Everything else is an expense. Yes, but I don't think that's true. I think everything should be looked at as a capital investment, right, like I?
Dan: look at one of the things that we help people look at.
I don't know that I've ever shared this with you, but I think it would be a very interesting metric for you to have just an awareness of, for, even for strategic coach, that one of the greatest comforts for people is knowing what their I call it their revenue per unconverted prospect. A rev pup we refer to it as, and that's a number that, if you take of all of the new people that came into strategic coach in the last 12 months, you're saying that's going to be a thousand for this year and the amount of revenue that generates divided by the number of unconverted prospects that you've identified through your market. So imagine that there are. Everybody kind of comes through a process of somehow getting in your world. They've opted in for something or they've asked for something or signed up to come to a workshop or the Zoom workshop or an intro, or they were referred, all of that thing. I'm sure there's a pool of people who you have communication with that have not yet decided to join the program.
But all of the people that did join the program came from that group and most people don't have a sense of the gestation period of people being in your world, right, because sometimes people come into your world, they have one conversation, they learn all about it and say I'm in. That's a great outcome, but the majority of people will have a exploration period, you know, where they're kind of learning about and observing and getting immersed in the environment. And so that number you know, let's say that the a thousand people and let's say would you say that a blended average of fees would be 15,000. Would that be there between signature yeah and yeah I mean new people coming can only join signature, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so what was how much is the signature program? Now it's, I think it's 15. Ok, so 15,000. So you know, 15 million dollars in new revenue from the before you, which would be.
Dean: Well, it's more than that, because the uh, that's 15,000. No, it would be. Yeah, it would be, let's just say 15,000. Yeah, cause new people coming in have to start at signature level, right, so yeah, I mean, it's more than that for us, because 80% of that is in the U? S and everything gets translated back, so so just for around numbers. Yeah, but let's say 17.
Dan: So 17,000, that's $17 million on 1,000 new people. And so we take that 17 million and divide it by the number of prospects in your email database that you're emailing your newsletter to, emailing your things to. So let's say that's 100,000 people.
Dean: It wouldn't be that high 50,000? 50,000, yeah.
Dan: So you take that 17 million and divide it by 50,000. Yeah, take that 17 million and divide it by 50,000. And whatever that number is, you're rev-pup. And so let me just do the math real quick on that.
So, 17 million divided by 40,000, that's $340 per prospect per year is where you get a little more granular. And looking at this is looking back and seeing what was the ad date of them. When did they first come in? Because some of them may have been in for 30 days and some of them may have been in for 30 months or you know whatever, or three years or more.
And that gives you a good sense of what your annual. So you look at that and, on terms of capital investment, if you can add people into, you know if you make a capital investment that generates new leads for let's even say $34, you've got an immediate 10, you know return on that. Very interesting when you start looking at it like that. You know.
Dean: Yeah, I mean the, the, and first of all it's it's an accurate number because all the money's up front with us, so you know that we have that money before they do their first workshop, do their first workshop and the interesting thing about it is the difference that the three books have made.
Dan: You know, the big books the Hay House books and you know, I was very interested in.
Dean: Ben Hardy's offer. You know that he would write the books because I just don't have the stamina to spend. It's basically at minimum it's a 12 month process with the publisher. I mean Hay House moves a bit more quickly than other publishers do. I mean you can start there. They're looking basically like 12 months. They'd like to turn a book around in 12 months and the books have done wonders for us in creating qualified leads. It's not the case that people read a book and they sign up for the program, it's that they make a phone call and the other thing is people may not have read the book and read the books, because usually they read all three and they come through a referral and they phone and then we send them the books and they read the books.
Ok, so the books are useful either way. And one of the things that I wasn't sure of it because we never had this capability before. But you know, I would say, since the three books have come up one way or another, you know it's a large number of people who signed up for the program because of the books. In other words, that it was, that it was sort of, um, it was the biggest sense of proof that this was the right thing for them.
Dan: Yeah, I mean the book itself. In that way, when you're putting out like a book, that's being, you have the reach of amazon and other bookstores and people kind of. There's an interesting environment for people to discover a book organically right and people talk about it and all of that stuff. So you're not really. It's not that you're having to push the book out to people. There's a they're kind of drawn to it, right, and amazon has a great engine of you know if you like that.
Dean: You probably like this yeah, they're a great capability, yeah yeah, anyway like there was a new workshop, not this past week but the week before, and they had about 35, there were about 35 new people and I just laid the word out for them that if anybody wanted to come in and talk to me at lunchtime they could. Okay, and immediately the table was filled, you know the table was filled as soon as lunch break.
And the thing that I was struck this was their very first workshop. How much they knew about the program. I was very struck by this. And they were asking me questions about the concepts and the tools that in many cases they won't get to for three years. They were asking me because they were mentioned in the three books, the tools mentioned in three books, and so that's been a big. So that's been a big, that's been a big gem, very exciting, right.
Dan: Like I mean, it's kind of I love to hear when things like that happen, you know. But that a book is a very is a really great profit activator three tool educate and motivate. And that's really it that you're getting mind minutes of attention. And that's the crown jewel if you can get somebody's mind and attention focused on taking in a new thought that resonates with them, that they say, oh, that makes, that makes sense. That's the thing. So then when you make an offer to join the program, it makes all the sense in the world, right.
Dean: Yeah, we're just starting consultation with Hay House right now on the book that we wrote with Jeff Madoff Casting, not Hiring. Yeah, we think that may be the number four. The number four book. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we think that may be the number four. The number four book.
Dan: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, that's very exciting. I haven't seen Jeff in a while.
Dean: Well, he's been busy with his play. He came back yesterday from London because he's been auditioning this whole week and they're going to go for an early 2025 start of his play in London. Oh, very nice.
Dan: Wow In the West End.
Dean: In the West. End, is equal to Broadway.
Dan: Right From a theater standpoint.
Dean: I said it's taking off. Oh yeah. Well, you knowago was a big deal chicago's. You know. They had a 10-week run in chicago and they got great reviews. It's just that chicago is a bit in a funk as a city that there's so much negative things happening and people don't want to be downtown after dark right that puts a crimp into theater.
Yeah, yeah so we'll see next week, because the democrats are having their convention and, uh, the pro-palestinian people have said they're going to tear the city apart if they have to oh my goodness, oh my goodness, yeah, wow, they need good jobs. They need good jobs yeah.
Dan: Well, it's less than a quarter and it'll be over. I can't believe. It's almost. You know we're more than halfway through August right now. It's almost here.
Dean: It'll be here, and then the next campaign starts.
Dan: Yeah, that's exactly the impeachment campaign That'll start whenever, whoever. No, it's not the impeachment.
Dean: But even the presidential cycle is never about.
Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Like I mean, the moment they the one ends, they start the next one, you know anyway. But yeah, but yeah. I think I think the what happened to the Democrats I think they're not going to have the ground troops to support this because they were there was so much uncertainty with Biden that I think and I mean she's only attractive right now because she's not doing press conferences and she hasn't had, she hasn't had a debate. I don't think she she'll stand up to full public.
You know, full public right, I'm sure I don't think I don't think she has the experience and I don't think she's the type of person who stands up well to that sort of thing. So anyway, that's my guess. That's my guess, and if I'm ron, I'll still have a really good entrepreneurial day the next day. Even the day of that's right and I go to bed at 8 o'clock, so it doesn't matter.
Dan: Oh, my goodness, Is that true now 8 o'clock yeah?
Dean: No by 9.
Dan: No.
Dean: Certainly I'm in bed by 9. I'm certainly in bed by 9. Wow, and I get up early, I'm a morning person.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, well, it's working, it's all working.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, it's very good. I got a lot out of your description of that and there's a lot of protein in what you're talking about there. Right, that's the thing. Not carbs, no carbs. All meat, all protein. Yeah, that's the thing. Not carbs, no carbs, all meat All protein, keto marketing.
Dan: That's exactly right. So you are on your way up to the cottage for the last hurrah for the season. Yeah.
Dean: Wednesday, so it'll probably be two weeks, very nice.
Dan: And then I'll see you. I'll be back pretty soon, in September, less than a month. We'll lock in Table 10. Maybe we can do Cafe Balloud as a new place, as a new Our new French establishment for lunch. It'll be awesome, okay, all right, dan, I'll talk to you soon.
Dean: You too, okay, bye.
31 Aug 2022
Ep077: Maintaining Your Meat Robot
01:03:22
In this episode, Dean and Dan discuss the amazing ways that Cloudlandia and modern technology are allowing us to maintain healthy lifestyles and take care of our bodies, or "Meat robots".
Ep098:The Intersection of Da Vinci's Genius and the Digital Age
00:55:48
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we discuss the intersection points of Da Vinci's genius and the current digital age as we explore the origins of technology and its impact on society.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Have you heard of psychological geometry? It's a way to understand the rules that govern our psychological world, like everything is made up, no one is in charge, and life isn't always fair.
By understanding these rules, we can stay calm and cool and seize opportunities to lead in our niche or community. It's all about finding ways to thrive amid chaos.
Richard Rossi's Da Vinci Experience sounds pretty cool - it featured presentations by Dave Asprey and a pediatrician expert in age reversal through supplements. Talk about a unique event.
The Kaufman Protocol is all about age reversal, and Richard creates action plans for attendees of the Da Vinci Experience. It's all about finding ways to live our best lives, regardless of age.
Ed Shulack is an architect turned CEO who built a network of companies inspired by Leonardo DaVinci's genius and ability to cross borders. It just goes to show that inspiration can come from anywhere.
Technology has been shaping the world for centuries, from the invention of fire to the latest advances in AI and machine learning. It's amazing to think about how far we've come!
From the microchip to the iPhone, technological advances from 1950 to 1985 have profoundly impacted society. It's fascinating to think about how much has changed in just a few decades.
There's a lot of debate about where technology will take us in the future - will it lead to a utopian singularity or something else entirely? Only time will tell.
Dan has some exciting plans, including setting up a genius profile and exploring training technology like a good dog. It's always great to have new goals to work towards.
Embracing technology and AI as teammates can be a game-changer for productivity, creativity, and success - whether you're an individual or a business. It's all about finding ways to work smarter, not harder.
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
Five Star General Jackson, oh my goodness, here we are.
Dan Sullivan
Every week that goes by that I don't talk to you, I add another star.
Dean Jackson
Okay, the Five Star General, I like it. Well, how was your adventures? You've been everywhere, haven't you? You went to Phoenix, you went to Austin, you've been, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, we were in Sedona the week after, joe. And you know it's a beautiful, beautiful place. And then we were in Austin and we had a chance to go visit Tucker Max, who you know he sold Scribe probably a year and a half ago, and then he bought himself a 50, 58 acre ranch, and so, and he's a rancher, he's a rancher, and he looks like a rancher. He's the home parent, and Veronica is expanding his national network of nurse practitioners all across the United States because it's a big item. They got him right now.
And then we went to Richard Rossi's Da Vinci 50. Which was terrific. I mean, it was really, really terrific. Dave Asprey was there And had a good catch up with Dave, Yeah, and then came back here and you know, and I had a busy week. We had a holiday Monday because it was Victoria. Day here and here in the colonial realm of Canada. The Canadian colony.
And anyway, and so then back to work and it felt good. It felt good I had two free zones, connectors and I had a 10 times connector and we started book 35. The next book just coming back from the printer this week is I think I've talked to you about the geometry for staying calm and cool, geometry and quotation marks, because this isn't about spatial geometry, this is about psychological psychological geometry Right Yeah, psychological geometry.
Dean Jackson
There's three rules.
Dan Sullivan
Three rules controls psychological world. Everything's made up. That's the rule number one. Always has been is now well in the future. Number two is no base in charge. Okay. And number three life's not fair, Life's not fair. So the three. you put those three together and you get suddenly calm and cool And you begin to realize that everything's made up, so you can make up new things. Nobody's in charge.
So there's nobody's permission to ask whether you can make up new things, and anything you make up is going to be advantageous to somebody and unfair to someone else. So just forget about that and just make up new things that other people find useful, and you're clear and free.
Dean Jackson
This is the best. What do?
Dean Jackson
We've talked about those things, those concepts, and I just can't. I have to wrap people's. One of the great things that I always get people to think about is that self-appointment. You're getting people to appoint themselves to the position and you take something. I think if you're taking a, you're organizing a group of people. If you're aiming to be a hero to somebody, you've got a group of people that you're aiming to be a hero to, which is one of your great thoughts that I love.
And I had a guy I did a breakthrough blueprint this week in Orlando And I had a gentleman who he he was very popular in a niche of electronic controls for, like, semen and honey well, and these things that control all these air qualities and systems for enterprise level things, big office buildings and hotels and all that stuff. So it's kind of a small audience but he's kind of like the most known guy in the field. He's the only one that's kind of organizing the community. And I said you know this will go all the way and just like, appoint yourself to be the mayor of control town and start acting like it.
There's nobody appointing anybody to the position of doing anything good, especially when you're like connecting people. You're connecting people in a good way. Everybody's very myopic, everybody's very only focused on what's in it for me, on their own sort of thing, and as soon as you start thinking about what can you do to help them or achieve what they're looking for, the whole world changes. Nobody, that's one of those. Life's not fair. It's not fair that well, wait a minute, you're not, you're just helping them get there.
That's not fair, you can't do that for free.
Dan Sullivan
There's a certain thing that's not fair Yeah, I had somebody on one of the connector calls last week say you know, I'm not perfect at what I'm doing, and I said, oh, you are. I said why don't you just solve that perfection problem? Just declare yourself perfect and now improve it?
Dean Jackson
There you go perfect.
Dan Sullivan
That's so funny, yeah, perfect.
Dean Jackson
I liked the book title that you came up with for a future potential book from Genius Network. We were talking about AI and I believe the title you came up with was why AI doesn't matter, or something like that?
Dan Sullivan
No, I've actually nailed that It's not. AI I've actually I made it broader, i just made it technology period because AI. Oh okay, yeah, ai is just the 25th thing over the last 50 years, that's going to change? Yeah, this is it. Now everything changes and I said well, this is number 25, and there went the. AI. We didn't have the first 24. I mean, there is a genetic heritage here. Yeah, this goes way back, Anyway, by just technology.
and so I came up in the only talk I ever gave Peter Diamonis's story about AI in 1960, was he. I mentioned that we already knew how to deal with technology a long time ago, because docs were actually our first technology. Way, way, way back. People mastered fire and then they figured out you should be near a river and they took. But the docs and this is before agriculture Dogs were domesticated before agriculture and dogs is actually a creation. There were no dogs, There were smart wolves and there were smart humans and they did a free zone collaboration and we came up with this thing.
We came up with, this thing called dog, and that's anywhere between 30,000 to 40,000, they're not, because it seems to have happened independently. One of them happened in Europe and they know, another one happened in Southeast Asia And they're genetically different. so they know that the it was a different source, the wolf, different wolf genes in the two dogs, but anyway. so anyway, i just titled the book Training Technology Like a Good Dog.
Dean Jackson
Oh, that's so good, there you go. So technology doesn't matter.
Training well, no, you have to be the alpha and you have to be the alpha.
Dan Sullivan
In both cases You don't get a good dog, unless you're the alpha, because the dog wants you to be the alpha. The dog Needs you to be the alpha because they're pack animals and they got to know what their, their rank and role is, you know?
yeah and and technology. You have to establish that you're the alpha here and technology has to prove it's Worth. It has to prove its usefulness and and You know, and so. But, for example, you know just one. I know we're going to get into the AI Conversation here, but we just hired Evan Ryan to train our whole team. He's got a succession zoom Program that's called AI as your teammate. Okay, so Mm-hmm, which I thought was terrific.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and so he's going to take everybody. But you just work on what you're already working at and he shows you that there's part of what you're working at that AI can be the teammate, Okay and yeah. So it's two hour sessions and we have six of them. And then you know and people don't have to do it, but they have to understand the consequences of that you know, and You know AI is not going to replace you. Somebody else who knows AI is going to replace you.
That's exactly right, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so, so. Anyway, that's my report general. That's fun.
Dean Jackson
I've had. So I had a couple of mainland meet-ups since we've been on on Hey the I had. Lear Weinstein was down in Orlando a couple weeks ago Oh okay, and so we got. We had brunch at the four seasons for about five hours, just, you know, meeting up and talking about all kinds.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I think he's.
Dan Sullivan
He's. That's not far away. I think he's in Atlanta mostly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, he's yeah, so they've been. They were down at Disney At the four seasons, here at Disney World. So I made my way from the four seasons Valhalla over to the four seasons Orlando And we had a wonderful. We had a wonderful brunch. I got to meet his wife I don't know if you've met.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I met her. I met her at. She was at the. Annual genius genius network last year, so I met.
Oh, okay.
Dan Sullivan
It was either last year or the year before. I am not quite sure. I think it might have been the year before and Yeah and but Lee are super sorry, he's, he's a he's also a wonderful human being. Yes, really.
Dean Jackson
So that was like good, i've you know, we've known each other, we've had some connection on online, so this was first one I've ever really spent any meaning and I think he's starting a mastermind.
Dan Sullivan
I think he's starting a mastermind group.
Hey, I mastermind group Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and then I Told Lee are yeah, you're bit. Number one obstacles in light is that you're good at everything you Put your mind to. Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I said I don't have. I was saved that problem at birth.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, we had a good. We had a good talk about that exactly we did. He went through. We share the same profile in the Working genius. I don't know whether you've gone through that one. I think I've mentioned it to you. James Drage turned me on to it and I find it very Use this is a program.
Dan Sullivan
There's a program or a profile.
Dean Jackson
It's a profile similar to Colby, like that.
Dan Sullivan
Oh yeah but it doesn't. So you answer a whole bunch of. You answer a whole bunch of questions, right?
Dean Jackson
You answer questions just like Colby. It really takes 10 minutes to fit.
Dan Sullivan
I'll do it. I'll. I really I'd love to see what you know I will do? I will do this and I will record the results. Okay, perfect. Yeah, it's working. Geniuscom or something like that.
Dean Jackson
That's it. Yeah, i think that's where it is, but essentially it's. It's what your, what you're working genius is basically like what You, you play and it spells out. There's six elements that spell out the word widget, and each of them is a different genius. So W is wonder, and that means that you have a Genius for looking at something, seeing all the ways that it could be improved. Right then I is invention, where you have a genius for Making stuff up to, to create you solution to things.
Dan Sullivan
Every everything's made up and including a new program called working genius. That just got made up right.
Dean Jackson
And then D is discernment, which meaning you have the genius of knowing what's the right thing to do in this situation. And G is Galvanizing me, gathering all the people and the resources that you need to be able to do something. E is Enablement, and that's about supporting the You know, the team or the property, or making sure everybody has what they need to be performing and doing their portion of the project. And then T is tenacity, and tenacity is Be like the equivalent, probably a follow through, the ability to Cross all the T's and dot all the eyes and drive something to completion, and Dd all of it in order to get any Project done. But two of them are your genius that you like thrive in those two, and two of them are Your worst, your kryptonite kind of thing. So for me, i am your.
Just wow your wi I'm discernment, discernment any mention, or my top two, and double you as a third. Yeah. So that's funny, but that's it's like it makes sense that that's the, you know and it fits, before it really does fit, because when you take it I think you'll find it very interesting.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you know it's kind of funny. I was just looking at dividing widget into two parts W-I-D and T-E-T.
And who not? how That's?
Dean Jackson
exactly right.
It's weird.
Dan Sullivan
I'm with it, but somebody's got to get it.
I'm with it, but somebody's got to get it. Oh, that's funny.
Dan Sullivan
Here, boy, that's exactly what it is. Here's a new one boy Here, That is so funny. I'm going to be all over that. I'll have that done by the end of the day. I'll tell you.
Okay, perfect. I'm flying to London tonight.
Dean Jackson
I was just going to say. I hear you're flying to London. I fond memories of London.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but Babs is down with some sort of you know coughing thing today. So she just decided to stay home and get mended, and we've gotten a lot of useful suggestions from David Hasse, who's our number one medical number one medical. He's got to get some help actually help And so she's going to explore these these weeks, but she doesn't want the travel. really, you don't want to get something that tires you out.
Speaker 1
Right.
Dan Sullivan
You know when you're you got to stay put and let your body do the healing, and so she just. so, instead of it being 10 days, i'm just going to go tonight and I'll be back on Friday And I don't have I don't market in live sessions anymore. That's all done on.
that's all done on Zoom which is just such a great thing, And and so I, thursday in London we have the we're at the Berkeley Berkeley hotel which is out there, and you know, in May, pier Kensington, that area yeah, in that in that area.
So, I have all the non 10 times in free zone in the morning and the 10 times in free zone people can be there, But in the afternoon I just have. UK, not UK clients, but people who would go to London for their, you know, for workshops, workshops right, yeah. And they're either on the virtual 10 times or they're going to London or and a lot of them come to the United.
They come to Canada and the United States and the free zone, of course they come to, that's Gary and, and Guy and Gary are the first to the and Peter Buckle. Peter Buckle is a free zone. And then we had Helen, who is from Newcastle, but her both her parents died and she's at all landed on her.
Dean Jackson
So taking a year up.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so anyway, we're yeah. So anyway it'll be a quick trip and then I get back, and you know we've only gotten back until the following Tuesday, so picked up some days, you know.
Mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, well, that's the dressing. So what was the highlights of your Da Vinci experience?
Dan Sullivan
Rich, I tell you, Richard has created a gem. I actually created a gem, And so this is my second one, and it's essentially two and a half days. You start on Wednesday at lunch and then you go and, and so we had three or four really, really great presentations, including Dave Asprey, the marvelous presentation But one of them was this woman. She's great around you, She's I think she's in you know, she might be in Boca Raton or something like that and she's really the the leading expert on using supplements to reverse your age.
These are supplements and she's got a thing called the Kaufman protocol. That's the name of the book. I think that's the name of her book, but I think she was a pediatrician. She just got fascinated in this age reversal thing and she's a terrific presenter. And what the neat thing about Richard is that she was there on the Wednesday afternoon, she spoke again on the Thursday and she spoke again on Friday.
So he can take a present.
Dan Sullivan
So, and what? the last one is action to take. You know action to take, So he sets it up, So it's free, but you get an overview and then you talk about where the breakthroughs are, and then you have an action plan. So he's, it's beautifully curated. I mean, Richard, Richard, superb at this and he's, he's he's the most laid back.
You know, friend of the front of the room I mean he's and he's got that, you know, devilish sense of humor, and I mean he's got very, you know, he's sort of pick, he's self self humorous, he tells jokes about himself And and so. And then we had an amazing person and this one wasn't recorded because there was a lot of inside organizational knowledge on it, and but it's a guy named Ed Shulack and he's a marvelous person And he was an architect and then he got an idea and this is just kind of shows you where his mind was. He was an architect and, you know, successful, but then he I think Trump was the big thing, but Trump started, and I think it started before Trump, but Trump really went gun hoe with it. No, no, it was way before Trump, because he started this in the 80s, you know 70s and 80s And what it was is the United States established a thing called tax free trade zones.
Okay, and there's I think there's about 20, 25 of them in the US now, here in 2023. And what it is? they're a tax free trade zone, so it's places where companies from outside of the United States could come and present their you know their goods here And they have factories there, so they can.
You know, business can. Things can actually be created in business. But what Ed got the notion of? in the last 70s is that virtually all the airports, the major take. Orlando, for example, take. Miami for example, that almost all the big airlines airports in the US airfields were had a lot of farmland around them still. And so he went up, bought up, he bought up all the farmland, Okay around any broad.
Okay, oh yeah, and so he, and so he essentially owned the land that the trade zones were on, and, and essentially, and then when he was 55, he sold out for a humongous amount. And then he, he lives in Detroit and terrific, just, and very, very quiet, very, very quiet, very like isn't it wonderful that I get to do this, but what?
he did is that he was starting to get into the Regenerative Medicine. You know that was starting to develop and he met Peter Diamandis and he said you know, i'm just going to see who the dozens and top people are in this field. I'm going to have an invitation. I'm really good at organization or anything. So I'll give you three, three months of my time if you'll just inform me of everything that you're doing. Okay. And and he did. You know with what's his name? the guy who did the first gene map, craig.
Venture.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, craig Venture, he was the first one Yeah. So, anyway, he's got great CEO capabilities. This Ed Sheeran like does. So what he did was he started seeing where all the startups were along this way and he'd fund startups, and then he would buy startups and put together funds that bought him up, and then he started creating these networks And his inspiration was Leonardo DaVinci, because Leonardo crossed over borders.
Speaker 1
It was a big thing, you know he did.
Dan Sullivan
You know, in the morning he'd paint the you know the Mona Lisa. In the afternoon he'd create a new weapons system, and then in the evening he'd create a new architectural widget, and then, you know, and then the next day he'd do other things. You know, he'd take a body apart and everything and do the drawings totally illegally and and everything else, and then he'd trade something else. And he said all real breakthroughs are where you're crossing a border from one world to the other. It's almost like crossing from the mainland to Quadland, you know as a crossover. Yeah, and now he's got this. He's got four groups of companies. You know, he's probably combined about 23 companies, but he's organized them and all integrated A lot of them in the Boston area.
And we met him two years ago, we were on Peter Diamandis's longevity trip in Boston, and then he got up but he only got, like, you know, a lot, a lot. You know, you only got about 40, 40 minutes or so, but here he had like two and a half hours and then he stayed and you know, and by asking him a question right at the end, which fascinated him, i said Ed, we know what you've done since 55, but what were the five capabilities, the stack of capabilities that you put together before 55 that make you probably the only person in the world who can do what you're doing.
And he found that fast. He found that and he named three of them. You know, like when he was a teenager, when he was in his twenties, when he was in his thirties, but there wasn't time to get the other two out. So at dinner that night he said I like to explore with you You're thinking on this because I hadn't thought about the connections between these things as it relates to me now.
And he says my mind is kind of going a little bit crazy with this, so can you give me a call and we'll finish the other five and then tell me what I should do with that? So he gave me his card, so I'm going to give him a call.
Dean Jackson
Terrific guy, i mean just marvelous person That's so great, and how old is he now?
Dan Sullivan
I'm just trying to think right now. I think he's probably late, 60s, 60s, 67, 68. Yeah, yeah, i mean kind of guy. you know, he's the kind of guy that a 79 year old can help out, right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
You know these young people, they, you know yeah these young people, you know they're. Happy birthday, by the way, You were oh yeah celebrated your birthday while you were gone? Yeah, last Friday.
Dan Sullivan
It was the last day of the Da Vinci, that was my birthday and they gave me a wonderful treat. They gave me three sliders with birthday candles out of each of the sliders.
Dean Jackson
I saw that. I saw the video. Yeah, that's close.
Dan Sullivan
Plus, plus, you know a big dish of coleslaw. of course You have to have coleslaw if you're going to have sliders. And major food groups. You know you've got to have the major food groups there.
Dean Jackson
Well, you know, I told somebody posted it in the. You had a birthday earlier. That's exactly right. Yeah, so we're both. You caught back up again. You're 22 years ahead. Yeah, there's a couple weeks when you've.
Dan Sullivan
You chronologically kind of try to close the distance, but then about two weeks later, right, i return things back to normal.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I was realizing, talking with Luba, we were, i was explaining about the What's really been a profound thought for me. I've really been giving a lot of time in my journals and thinking about guessing and betting. That's been a big That's been a big thing like an eye-opener. It's such a simple thing but profound when you really think about what the implications are. And I haven't thought about it, we've been talking about it. But I was going back thinking 25 years. We were looking like 25 years ago 1997, i moved to Florida, so 26 years ago now We were thinking even about 25 years. And then your birthday. I was showing her the Blider post or whatever, and we realized the distance between 2000 and now. How fast that's gone, that distance forward now. And I'll be 82 years old, lord willing. That's the big thing, right? What an amazing.
Dan Sullivan
Actually Dean willing.
Speaker 1
Yes, exactly, that's exactly what.
Dan Sullivan
I'm talking about.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly what.
Dan Sullivan
I'm talking about Dean willing. These are two different roles. Dean and. God.
Speaker 1
That's exactly right.
Dean Jackson
That's right. We don't say Lord willing, and the Creek Stilts ride.
Speaker 1
That's the Dean willing.
Dean Jackson
You're absolutely right, but you think about that just amazingly, it's a different. Those middling 25 years from 30 to 55 is a different 25 years than 55 to 80.
Speaker 1
That's really good.
Dan Sullivan
I came up with another. it's sort of like it's a new relative of the lifetime extender. Okay, And it occurred to me because I'm almost 80, so I'll be 80 next year, but in the last nine years, since my 70th birthday, which there was a person who I won't say lie, but it was a subterfuge, there was no question, it was a subterfuge who invited me for dinner on my 70th birthday night. And I didn't realize I was going to have dinner with 300 people because you had a role in that subterfuge.
Dean Jackson
I did. I remember that night. That's so funny. It's so funny how you guys simplified things.
Dan Sullivan
I won't accuse you of lying, but it was diversionary. There was certainly diversionary.
Dean Jackson
And if you were award, academy Awards given for that act to get you up there?
Speaker 1
hey, gang you want to see the room where I do my birthday.
Dan Sullivan
We got to see the room where I see it.
Dean Jackson
Of course I do. yes, That was something so exciting to see as a look on your face.
Dan Sullivan
I was looking back to that night and I've been far more creative and productive since my 70th birthday than I was from 1 to 70. I'm just establishing that Now I've set the goal that when I'm 89, the creativity and productivity during my 80s will be greater than everything that happened before the 80s. It's a really nice structure because you're already at the top of your game for a lot of things and probably you just have to keep multiplying with your top of the game stuff.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, you look at your like it has been quite an amazing 10 years. You went literally from that was sort of on the cuff of you had just started the 10-time program, basically a few years into that. Then you created free zones in that period of time. Now you're exclusively free zones.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i'm still doing the 10 times connectors, which is proven very valuable. I'm still doing that. I've committed for 24 because I've really enjoyed the ones. I gave everybody a commitment when I do it to the end of 23,. But I really want to do it because the fact that I'm coaching these little two hour sessions is pulling people from signature into 10 times and it's moving 10 timers into free zones.
I'm creating new tools too for the 10 times program. It's all good. It's so funny because my team was saying, well, there isn't time in your schedule. We've looked at the schedule for the rest of the year and I said, well, you know those dates aren't in cement.
I said these are suggestions of how I could spend my time. I said, but this is all in the I'm a 10 quick start. I said this is the most negotiable human being on the planet. Is a 10 quick start. Yeah, because something new is always more interesting than something that's already scheduled.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, amen, yeah Well, that's it.
Dan Sullivan
So I said I said don't look at the schedule and say Dan doesn't have any time. Come and talk to Dan about it and Dan will look at the schedule and say, well, we can move this to here, We move this, and we pre up three hours or four hours. We can always, you know, I mean anywhere where I've made a commitment, like it's a workshop commitment, that's fixed. Yeah.
And you know, or a 10 time connector call Yeah, Or where I'm attending to something and I, you know, I've given my commitment I'm going to do it. But if it's just internal, you know it's internal things, like you know, I said, that's come and talk to me about this. Yeah, i have a Lillian. Come and talk to the decider.
Dean Jackson
Right It was so funny. Lillian forwarded me her email with back and forth on getting up on the schedule because she had taken it off the calendar. Yeah, And then back then was explaining to Lillian how she had the conversation with you and you said where's my Dean Jackson podcast? She said, well, I think you're leaving and you're getting ready to go to London.
Dan Sullivan
And I said you know, i said you're thinking about how long it takes Babs to get ready for London.
Speaker 1
You're not thinking how long it takes me to get ready.
Dean Jackson
I said Babs, i'm ready right now.
Dan Sullivan
If we're leaving on Sunday night, Babs is starting on Saturday morning. There's no time for anything else. Okay, I said I got it down. 45 minutes before the limousine picks us up is when I start packing. I'm already in 45 minutes. You know, I've adapted a total Dean Jackson wardrobe. I said you know, i got three pairs of jeans. I got five long sleeve uniglo, you know, navy blue, black. You know, not black but navy blue.
I can't go to black, i can go to navy blue, and then I've got socks, and then I have workout clothes and you know my toilet kit and you know my meds. Yeah, I don't know what else I have. You know how long does that take to go, you know and. I now take everything that I could get by with for a whole week just in my carry on.
Dean Jackson
Yes, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Because hotels have laundry hotels.
Speaker 1
Right And everything.
Dan Sullivan
Right.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
And it's on the plane with me, because last year We arrived in London and 50 passengers didn't get their just didn't get their luck to get their luggage and I said that's never, and you know, and everybody's combating about air Canada. I says big systems are falling apart. As a matter of fact, one of my one of my next quarter, sometime in the not too distant future, i've got a book called big systems falling apart And you know, and I said you know, big systems are having a hard time.
Speaker 1
You know they're you know, first of all.
Dan Sullivan
A lot of their good people are retiring right now because they were boomers and the boomers are packing it in And that was the biggest work generation in the history of the United States And, yeah, yeah, by 2029 they will have all reached 65, and you know they're you know, and you know, and people say, yeah, but you know, they're old people. I said, yeah, they have systems. They have system, they have the institutional wisdom though they've been through.
Speaker 1
so many situations.
Dan Sullivan
They know how to improvise, they know how to adjust and everything else. I said people that they're replacing with people in their 20s and 30s and they're trying to deal with complexity out of a rulebook.
Speaker 1
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, that's the. What do you notice in?
Dan Sullivan
what do you notice, seeing about changes that are actually sticking, because a lot of it is just, you know, it's just ocean, storms and waves, it's not really a long term current. What do you mean on your friend? just noticing?
Dean Jackson
I mean, you know, i read, yeah, I read. You know, years ago I don't know how many years ago now, but there was a article in the New York Times about the tyranny of convenience And that was that was the thought that they had is that once we as a society experience a new convenience, it's ratcheted in, basically that we don't rarely, we rarely go backwards to hard. Once you've yeah, we're once you've experienced, you know, machine washing your clothes We don't go back to and washing You know it's like that The whole thing. And we've experienced, we've progressed forward Where, you know, you used to have to sit in front of the television at the right time to watch the gun smoke or whatever was on TV at that time. Then we got to the VCR where you could record it and you decide when you want it, but you only could watch the things that you have. And now we've gone through you could basically watch anything, time, anywhere, on any device, and it's really a like see that, as that we're ratcheted in becomes the new norm and expectation You know. And so I think that those but it also I was sharing that I found the you know the stats the most written.
They're constantly going up, but the most recent stats that I had heard was, you know, four and a half million hours a day of video uploaded to YouTube into a system that is consuming five and a half million hours a day of video across the whole platform. So the daily needs are basically going they're being met every every two days. It's double the amount of the ability we have to consume it. You know, and I really think that there's, along with chat, what I'm finding chat GPP is going to do now is that, as long as all this content is being created, it's chat GPP.
If you think about it as your team member, like you mentioned earlier, you don't need to be able to consume everything to know it, because you've got a super smart team member who has access to all of it and can summarize it or use whatever you need to know. It's a hunting dog.
Dan Sullivan
It's a. It's a retriever.
Speaker 1
It's a hunting dog.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, but. But it's also a sushi chef combined with a hunting dog.
Dean Jackson
A sushi chef combined with a hunting dog, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i mean it just doesn't bring you back the animal unskinned. It actually skins it and, you know, breaks out the different meat portions, organizes them, puts packages and brings it back to you.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, that's really. that is exactly right And I think that's really a you know how we got here. I think about that whole welcome to uh Farlandi. I'd love to see. I wish the guy who wrote the big change. You know the book that I recommended.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, that was a good he would do one on the 1950 to now.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that's what I mean And that's been interesting that I, you know, I contend that from 1950 to 1985, there was not as much change as there was from, you know, 1950 to 1950 kind of thing, that 35 years.
Dan Sullivan
Well, I think the you know, I think the half century is good because there was a tremendous number of breakthroughs before the first world war, you know, and um, yeah, but I agree with you the 1950 to uh 19,. Yeah, 1985 is a good year, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
That was sort of static.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, the world was kind of living off interest. You know it wasn't like that.
Dean Jackson
That's where.
that's where I think we are right now, Like I think we got to where we got to, where you had radio, you had television, you had books, magazines, all of that stuff, automobiles, electricity, everything was that sort of like full maturity, air travel, right, all of it was 1950. We kind of got to that point where all those things were now fully natural and integrated into our society And it feels like we had a, you know, this amazing period of thriving from 1950 to 1985 on the back of that platform. We kind of got used to it and all of the good stuff that came out of people adopting those things. And it feels like in 2000, you know, 2022, here or 2023, where we've gotten to with digitization, everything ever, you know, if you just even take content stuff, um, you know we got from where somebody could create and broadcast television, you know, to people and somebody could make movies and put it, but it was a very few people who were you?
know there were only opening television networks, three television networks and you know half a dozen or a dozen movie studios and music companies. All the content was being metered out by a few people in charge right, very capital intensive to set together. But now we're at a point where everybody has access to everything ever written and created or recorded up to now and the ability to create and broadcast to everybody. And I think that we're going to be in a period now of I don't know how long, but I think we're going to see now the emergence of a period of settling down into that right That we're going to.
Dan Sullivan
I agree, i agree, well, i agree 100% with what you're saying. You know I mean because um and um, there was, you know, a very creative period, but when you think about it, the microchip you know started to become really accessible to individuals. You didn't really have the microchip, except you know where you could actually, i mean, things were improving that you had the benefit of The mid-play-day-to. That's where it started right Yeah, and. I agree with it, but it wasn't until graphic user interface that computers really became useful to you know to people.
You know it was Xerox that created it, never used it. Steve Jobs stole it and then Bill Gates stole it from Steve Jobs. You know creative borrowing And you know, and that's all of a sudden the world could have computers. And then out of that, you know, the military had created the internet. It was the, it was the intelligence communities in the military created the internet and they said, hey, you know, we can, you know we can make this commercial. And then they did, and then you had, you know, then you had, and you know the internet was another big, big new capability. And then you had, you could have your phone could become a computer.
Dean Jackson
You know with the iPhone, but in a way you had to I think you did on the ad with the graphical user interface is really what allowed that. But there was still a learning And I think that where we're getting now, with all of the technology and all the stuff that's available And chat, gpt or, you know, open AI, all that stuff is really like an intellectual user interface where you can just articulate your ideas. You just tell in, you just articulate what you want, and your teammate can go and make all of that happen in terms of creating even all of the tools to access everything that's ever been. Create new stuff to your articulated specification, you know for your projects, you know your project.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and you know, and I just had some thoughts and I, you know people, you know I was talking to the people who you know think that the growth just keeps going more exponential in the future And you know, at a certain point, the singularity, god will come and announce world peace and take care of all of us. You know, and I said you know, i think it's going the other way. I said, first of all, everybody, you know, everybody in the world knows about, you know, chat GPT. I said maybe, maybe 1% have heard about it. I said 99% of people don't doubt. I haven't a clue what people are talking about you.
Dean Jackson
know right, they're worried about having enough.
Dan Sullivan
Half the world still kind of a bit nervous about whether they're going to have enough to eat that day. You know they got other things on their mind But I pointed out to somebody. I said I bet 95% of the practical use is being done in English. You know it's not even done in another language.
You know, and it's the English speaking. You know it's the main English speaking countries and you know people in India who speak English and other people who speak English, but it's all kind of an English speaking tyranny. I mean, the Chinese, of course, are trying to do their own thing, but who cares what the Chinese do? And you know and the and so it's I think I was speaking and 90% of the 100, you know the 100% are doing it is in the United States, because Americans are that type of people And and I would say the productive people who are already productive without AI are going to become 10 times more productive.
The people who are already creative without AI, are going to become 10 times more creative, and I said this is not lessening the equality in the world. This is going to, you know it's going to be, you know, solar system wide that the inequality in the world, and, and but life's not fair.
Dean Jackson
Life's not fair, that's right.
Dan Sullivan
Nobody's in charge. Yeah, and everything's made up. There are people. Oh, that feels so much better. I was looking for my Xanax, you know great.
Speaker 1
Just disclosure.
Dan Sullivan
Disclosure I don't take Xanax, i take something else.
Dean Jackson
Exactly.
Speaker 1
Yeah, i take my and I'm even cutting down on that.
Dan Sullivan
You know I'm, i'm, are you really?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i'm down about, i would say, 40% in usage because, I'm doing this brain neuro potential.
Dean Jackson
Right.
Dan Sullivan
And I've shown my brain scan show quite a shift in six months. you know that during the night my brain is sleeping and during the day my brain is creating worse. A lot of it was the opposite, you know, and a lot of it was the opposite when I started the scans and I was doing a lot of creative work during the night and I was kind of dozing along during the day.
Speaker 1
I'm not, I'm certain.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so anyway, but anyhow so. And the other thing is that there are certain industries that are going to get pounded by AI and certain industries are going to be supported by AI. But, here's just an example. You know and I quoted this on the program before, but I want to put it in this context between September of 21 and September 22. There was a four million drop in new college students. Okay, so freshman college.
Wow Four million, four million, but at the same time the community colleges, which are teaching you know the trades and everything, are going through the roof. They've never gone through an expansion like this because there isn't going to be any AI plumbers, there isn't going to be any AI, you know, carpenters.
Speaker 1
Right.
Dan Sullivan
You're finding that out yourself with your, your force, your force for renovation and exactly.
Speaker 1
Yeah, you're, you're not you're not entirely.
Dan Sullivan
You're not. You're not entirely voluntary renovation.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly, Which is just now coming to an end. We still have the dining room, But we just now this week got the carpet finished and everything. Yesterday We moved everything back into place or whatever. So it feels more settled now, but I mean we're not not quite there yet. But yeah, what a three months that whole ordeal Yeah, it took us eight months, took us eight months to get our office back.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, because we had the city water main broke and it destroyed our created the studio, by the way, Yeah, i have, and right along the lines of your friends and you know they gave us and they, you know, our team, karen Scorac, is still touching base and they said we'll give you whatever help you need, you know. so your guys have been just super, you know and yeah, we have a whole.
We have a whole new studio, same space. But you know, we've asked the city to repair its water main, please, and put some barriers between the water main when it breaks outside. And I mean, it was 19,. It was put in in the 1920s, so you know, things can fall apart in 100 years and anyway. But yeah, much more great. We have exactly the same space but it's incredibly more productive. We got five studios, we got zoom studios you know right along the lines of the studio that you go to.
Dean Jackson
Oh, that's so great. That's good news. I meant to tell you know I just had a wonderful surprise yesterday. we were just putting everything back and then Luba had been kind of keeping issues like doing having a little secret from me, but also walked in the door And yesterday afternoon, just a surprise. He had come over from Amsterdam and was in Miami. But he came up for came up yesterday and just walked in. I had no idea he was coming. So it was such a great surprise. It was really good to see him. So I spent the last 24 hours with Matjielko.
Dan Sullivan
He's so tired. By the way, yeah, tell him he's lucky that you're not a trigger happy American. Exactly That's exactly right Of course you have gates and you have guards where you live so Yeah, and Luba was conspiring with him for the whole arrival, so that was funny. Yeah it was very interesting because you know they're not living in the United States. I've observed that there's a certain level of paranoia DNA in most Americans.
They have sort of a paranoia, and generally, is that things are falling apart. This is the end of the United States. That's one of the paranoia. And the other way is they're going to, the government is going to take away all our guns And they're going to start going through the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, and they're going to, they're going to take away all the freedoms that you get from the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. I said yeah. I said I'm a big history buff. I'm running out in the United States. I think this is the 25th time that we're. It's like. You know, this is the technology that changes everything. Well, this is the you know and.
I said, yeah, this is about the 25th time that the United States has fallen apart and this is the end. You know, you got to get. You know you got to. You got to do some deep breathing exercise. You know you got to relax. You have to learn how to relax and everything like that. But but one of the things is that I was going back to the AI thing that have you ever seen a site you've given me a great reference today with working genius, but there's a great site called visual capitalist.
Have you ever seen that?
Dean Jackson
No, I have not, yeah, it's free Capitalistcom.
Dan Sullivan
Siri wants to know if there's anything I can help her She can help me with, and, as always, there's absolutely nothing that Siri can help me with, so I just want her to let. I want her to know that you know usually. I take my. usually I take my watch and I put it in the freezer for about five hours, you know, just to put Siri on ice. By the way, visual cap just plug it in and they got it right there.
Speaker 1
It's so great.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's really good, and they convert all news into diagrams and they and look at the one on AI. who gets harmed by AI?
Speaker 1
Okay, and blue collar.
Dan Sullivan
Blue collar jobs are totally protected. There's not going to be. There might be some. You know some things regarding the organization around blue collar and everything else that'll be, you know, affected, but it's all you know. You do not understand, you never understand. So anyway, she's, she's talking to me again And anyway, see, this is not a well trained dog, this is serious.
Speaker 1
Not a well trained dog.
Dan Sullivan
Okay, she, she thinks I'm going to take her out for a walk. I'm not. Anyway, the anyway, but it's very, very intriguing. And they were just talking about they're all white collar middle management jobs.
You know they're you know I mean, some of them are like programmers and coders and everything else, but they're already, they're already getting slaughtered. But but it's going to be basically all those who do a four year or seven year college education so that they can be information transfers, and you know they. But it's basically jobs that have no value creation compared with them. They're going to get. They're going to get slaughtered.
Yeah, this is great They have a section you can just go they. They have a, you know an accumulating site for AI. I love it, yeah, yeah, but it'd be interesting. I mean it'd be interesting, it would add to your, you know, because diagrams I mean good diagrams are really useful.
Dean Jackson
Of course they are. These are, these are world classes. This is great, thank you.
Speaker 1
That's a great resource.
Dean Jackson
So there's some that'll be. we got some good cliffhangers for next time. We'll find out.
Dan Sullivan
Tune in What will Dan working I'll have my I'll have my, I'll have my working, working genius profile by the end of the day. I can't wait. Awesome, Well, safe trial. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to send you the results. We have to wait and. I'll be back. I'll be back. We won't be in London, so I'll be back next Sunday, same time.
Dean Jackson
I'll be here too.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Dean Jackson
Thank you, thank you, bye.
23 Dec 2020
Ep006: Connections
01:07:52
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about how easy it is to make connections to the mainland.
In this episode of Cloudlandia, Our stories highlighted agricultural aspects of central Florida and comparisons of population densities in the U.S. and Canada.
We also reminisced on television’s evolution from shows like Romper Room to the first color programs. We reflected on limited past options versus today’s unlimited streaming and the importance of managing screen time given continual new choices.
Additionally, the discussion explored social dynamics considering Dunbar’s number theory contrasted against digital reach on platforms.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean discusses the strategic advantages of living in Central Florida, particularly in Winter Haven, which is centrally located and offers easy access to both coasts.
We delve into Winter Haven's rich agricultural heritage, highlighting cattle ranches, orange groves, and other rural aspects of Central Florida.
There's an interesting comparison between the population densities in the U.S. and Canada, including reflections on Ontario's geographic size and its southern location relative to many U.S. cities.
We take a nostalgic look at the evolution of television, from classic shows like "Romper Room" to the advent of color TV with hits like "The Price is Right," and how this contrasts with today's streaming culture.
The episode includes reflections on how past limited screen choices have evolved into today's endless streaming possibilities, and the impact of this shift on modern screen time habits.
We explore the concept of social reach and relationships in the digital age, discussing the Dunbar number and how platforms like TikTok and Instagram have changed the dynamics of personal connections.
Insights are shared from the new book "Casting, Not Hiring," which introduces the VCR formula—Vision, Capability, and Reach—as a framework for modern success.
Through real-life examples and personal stories, we emphasize the importance of aligning vision, capability, and reach to achieve significant accomplishments, using figures like Safali Shabari and Max Martin as case studies.
The episode also discusses the importance of choosing the right tools and staying committed to ongoing exploration and self-improvement.
Finally, the conversation underscores the necessity of conceptual ability to see how one can be useful to others and leverage their capabilities, vision, and reach for collaborative success.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, mr Jackson, you got through Hurricane Week.
Dan: Not quite Hurricane Week, Tropical Storm Week, but we did oh.
Dean: Tropical Storm A notch down in the hierarchy.
Dan: That's one of the good things about living in Winter Haven. It is actually a haven from winter. We are in the center. We are perched on high dry, sandy land, so there's no storm surges, nothing like that yeah, so you're a long way from the coast, aren't you?
Well, I'm actually an hour and 15 minutes from either coast. We can get to either side and we can get to virtually almost every beach in two hours. Like it's such a centrally located, we're almost in the exact geographic center of peninsular Florida, so I can get to Jacksonville in three hours and Miami in three hours and pretty much everywhere you want to be within an hour. So it's good.
Dean: So I have a question because I've been there. Where is the big cattle ranching country? Is that south of you or north?
Dan: It's surrounding us, but sort of north and south in the central. If you think about the middle of Florida, basically aside from the Orlando-Tampa corridor which is like this swath that goes all the way across the state from Tampa to Cocoa Beach, that area is very developed but above and below that the center is much like the Australian outback in terms of the density of population.
And north of I-4. In that area there is equestrian and rolling hills and there's a lot of equestrian properties there and ranches. South of that is where you'd find a lot of the cattle ranches, sod ranches, orange groves. All of that is in the center and then you get all the way down to the Everglades and then the Everglades is one of the big national parks, it's the Everglades.
Dean: Yeah, alligators I was actually on something that was described as the biggest cattle ranch, not only in Florida, but one of the bigger ones in the United States. Yes, and we drove at least 20 miles on the ranch before we got to buildings.
Dan: And it was interesting.
Dean: It was interesting. They had a lot of pigs wandering around and I asked them were they in the pig business? And they said no. It's just that every week or so the trail hands would like something besides beef.
Dan: Right, go out and wrestle them up a hog Right.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, have a barbecue, have a.
Dan: Yeah, well, you can actually not too far from here you can do hog hunting, where you can go and hunt hogs in the forest, yeah, all natural.
Dean: It's not. So. It's not silicon valley that we're talking about here no, we're really not.
Dan: We're talking about, you know, rural florida. This is why I know, yeah, you know you look at Florida and you know people talk about population density and stuff, but there's a lot of land in Florida that is undeveloped. I mean there's a whole south of I-4, there's another highway that goes all the way across the state, called Highway 60, and through Lake Wales, and it's very undeveloped. I mean there's really nothing. All the way from Tampa to Vero Beach is where it goes and it's virtually. It's the only place I've been in Florida where you can, on certain parts of it, look as far as you can see in any direction and see nothing. I mean it's that.
And somebody has bought up like 80,000 acres around what's called Yeehaw Junction, which is where the Florida Turnpike intersects with Highway 60. Where the turnpike, the Florida turnpike, intersects with Highway 60. And you could see easily that you could duplicate the entire I-4 corridor, like Tampa and Orlando, along Highway 60 with plenty of room to spare. So I'm not worried about the you know population increase in Florida.
Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting. Peter Zion and one of his frequent you know he has his. You know he has videos every three days. Yeah, and you. But he was talking about all the developed countries, which would be mostly European countries, and you know Australia, new, zealand. You know he said that the US is by far the country with the least population density. I agree with that.
Dan: Most any state, even Ontario you look at as densely populated as the GTA is. Once you get beyond the GTA it's pretty sparse in Ontario.
Dean: Oh yeah, oh yeah I mean, yeah, there's an interesting thing. Just to give you a sense of how big Ontario is. First of all, ontario is a province in Canada, for those listening, and it's roughly about from north to south it's about 1200 miles, and from east to west it's 1400 miles. It's actually it's as big as mainland. It's almost as big as mainland Europe Isn't that amazing Without Russia when I found out. Not counting Russia.
Dan: I heard when I found out you could drive north from Toronto the entire distance from Toronto to Florida and still be in Ontario. That's pretty amazing.
Dean: Yeah, that gives you a context for it and most people don't realize that Toronto itself is further south than almost 20% of the United States.
Dan: People don't realize that Ontario dips down no below that.
Dean: No, it wouldn't be that much, but it is south of Minneapolis, south of Seattle, I think, it's south of Portland, you know, and then it's quite a bit south. I think it's south of Boston, it's south of you know everything like that. Yeah, maine all of it. It's about as south as you can get actually, yeah, but I think it's the most populated large city in the world, furthest north large city in the world oh, wow I think it's further south. I think it's further north than moscow oh, wow interesting.
Yeah, yeah and yeah, and it's getting bigger, it's getting bigger. Well, there you go.
Dan: Well, everyone. I'm waiting with bated breath to hear the great air fryer experiment from the Four Seasons beaches.
Dean: Has your air fryer arrived.
Dan: Oh, it's on the counter.
Dean: Okay, it's on the counter. It's on the counter, it's been plugged in, but it hasn't been used yet. Okay, okay, we sort of inch our way into these new technologies.
Dan: I got it, just unpack it and set it there for a little bit and just kind of let it live with it.
Dean: Well, it's been a week now and we haven't used it. Why don't we use it? So anyway, but it is sitting on the counter. It's a ninja. Is that the kind you have?
Dan: I think I have a breville is the name of uh mine. But did you get the one then? Did you get the one that steven palter posted? I have no idea. Oh okay, that's uh.
Dean: So, oh yeah, that's fab you have to appreciate how little I take into this sort of thing, exactly right.
Dan: I love that.
Dean: There will be a who who's between me and the air.
Dan: That's right?
Dean: Oh, dan, that's the best Any technology in the world. I can guarantee you there will be a who between me and the technology. And I said what do you think? And I look for people who really love interacting with technology. I want that person between me and the technology and I'll ask them what's it do? What's it do?
Dan: I'll tell you what I'm working on.
Dean: What will it do for the thing I'm working on? Yeah, yeah, I love that and I've been pretty constant on that. I mean, you know, I was constant on this when I was six years old. I just always let some other human investigate the new technology.
Dan: Yeah, and yeah.
Dean: So I've lived a disconnected life when it comes to technology. What explains that?
Dan: Well, I was thinking, you know about you, and I was thinking how you have the gift of being kind of brought into an era where television wasn't even a thing Like your earliest childhood was electronic free, I thought. But were you like? So you were born in 1944. And so it was six years. Probably Do you remember when you got exposed to your first television.
Dean: Yeah, I think I was maybe. Yeah, I think it was around 52. I mean I had seen it, I'd been in other people's houses right they had television, but actually having our own television, I think it's maybe eight years. I was eight, so you got all the way to you.
Dan: Think about this. You got all the way to eight years without being exposed to anybody else's visual bombardment of electronic propaganda or otherwise. Right, your visual input into your mind was largely formed through your own imagination. Yeah, you. You had to work, you had to create these visual pictures in your mind. Yeah, did you guys, did you?
Dean: listen to radio, and I was assisted by radio.
Dan: I remember radio had a big impact on me.
Dean: And yeah, oh yeah, sorry, sergeant King of the Yukon. And yeah, there was Amos and Andy. We listened to Amos and Andy, andy, we listened to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and then there was one that my siblings, my older siblings, listened to at night, which was called the dark museum, which scared the daylights out of me and the shadow.
Dan: We listened to the shadow so was that the family activity no, no.
Dean: Here you have to get the full impact okay, sorry sorry. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The shadow knows. And then you had a 30 minute. 30 minute example of human evil. You know it was great but you had to do all the visuals. You know I, you were the visual director of all these radio programs.
Dan: So was this? Everybody in the family gathered in the living room sitting on the couch listening to the radio like this. Is that what was going on?
Dean: Yeah, there was sort of a. Yeah, there was sort of a dining room actually where you could listen. There were a number of radios. There was a radio in the kitchen, there was a radio, I think, someplace else, and it was a big house, a farmhouse, yeah, and I remember listening, imagining, you know, imagining. There was another series called Sky King, sky King, which became a TV station you know, and the Lone Ranger. We had the Lone Ranger.
Dan: So there was a lot of variety, uh-huh and so, and then, in 1952, eight years old, you get your first television set.
Dean: I think, so I think that would have been about then, yeah. Yeah, because I remember the first presidential election was 52. And I can remember that being on television. Who was the?
Dan: president, was that Ike Eisenhower?
Dean: Yeah, I like Ike, that was Eisenhower's first term. I like Ike.
Dan: Now you know that's a really interesting thing. Do you remember, like your new routine when the television came? Were you watching TV every day from that period on? Or were your parents limiting the TV, or was everybody gathered around and limiting the TV, or was everybody around?
Dean: and watch the TV. Yeah, I mean it was a frequent. It was a frequent activity once came in, that's all I can say I don't know, I don't know if I watched every day, but there you know, there were favorite shows. I think Arthur Godfrey was one of the early shows, the variety hour, and yeah, no, children's. I think there wasfrey was one of the early shows, the Variety Hour, and yeah, no, so Children's. I think there was Howdy Doody. Howdy Doody was.
Dan: I think one of them Doody time.
Dean: Yeah, and I think Soupy Sales was on and yeah.
Dan: Yeah, I'm just thinking how. Yeah, I remember Romper Room. I just saw a video of Joe and I at the I Love Marketing event and I was saying we had all the people streaming from all over the world and I was doing a little Romper Room and about half the people in the audience knew about Romper Room and half didn't.
Dean: That was kind of interesting.
Dan: I remember I see Bobby and Johnny in their magic mirror. I used to hide behind the sofa so she wouldn't see me miss joan miss joan, miss joan. Yeah, so I was thinking about it was good, I mean I mean it was good, but it wasn't.
Dean: It wasn't the major part, you know, of your you know it was only during weekdays, it was only at night and uh yeah, and on weekends I don't really there was.
I don't know what the years were, but you know you got. You know, somewhere along the line you had jackie gleason and you had ed sullivan and you had other things like that, you know. But I wasn't. I can't say I was captivated because I was usually out. You know, I was outside, we lived in the country and I was out and I had really gotten hooked on reading. So I was doing a lot of reading back then. Yeah, interesting, but it is kind of what about yourself?
Dan: I mean, you were born in the television age. I was born in the television age, you're right. And so every day, you know, I mean, yeah, tv was part of every day. And I was just the reason. The context for me thinking about this was thinking about how recent, you know, as each layering availability of content became unlocked kind of thing, our, you know, screen time has dramatically increased. And I was thinking all the way back to you. That's why I was thinking about you is, you know, literally your first six or eight years there were no screens, there were the only, you know, the cinema of the mind. That was your, that was your entertainment, your imagination. But I remember, so when I remember when we got our first color television right Around 19 or some early like that, and I remember the first show that I saw in color was the Price is Right with Bob Barker, and then All in the Family with Archie Bunker. That was, so you know, in the 70s. It was the Jefferson and Sanford and Sand and then all these.
You know, the 70s, I think, was the golden era of television, you know, with all these shows becoming. You know, I remember Star Trek and you know all these, the Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch, all the Love Boat, all these shows, these iconic shows in the seventies. But you only had, you know, basically the three networks was Canada, we had the CBC and TV Ontario. So those were the things and I remember as a kid, when the TV guide would arrive, we subscribed to the Saturday Star, the Toronto Star, that would arrive on Saturdays and that would have the TV guide in there, and I remember they would have it laid out like a you know a.
Gantt chart, or whatever the time, the grid of times, to show you what was on.
Dean: It was like a matrix.
Dan: It was like a matrix you could see yeah, so it would list there were, you know.
Dean: Every day had a matrix from yes till night 13 but you only had the three. You only had the three.
Dan: There were 13 13 channels, yeah, to choose from three networks. And I remember the you know organizing my saturdays in the winter around the cartoons. You know like okay, so I would have a highlighter which was recently invented in that winter around the cartoons. You know like okay, so I would have a highlighter which was recently invented in that or newly introduced or whatever to our household, but I would have the highlighter and I would like highlight my. I would do my programming. You know I'm going to watch.
I'm going to watch the Justice League at you know eight o'clock and then I'm going to watch the Justice League at you know eight o'clock, and then I'm going to watch Batman at nine, and then I'm going to watch Shazam and then Scooby-Doo, and then it was the we're all about why CBS or ABC's wide world of sports. That was like a big thing. And I remember now how much of my childhood was around synchronous and scheduled programming Because there was no other option. If you wanted to see that show, if you wanted to watch the Waltons that was on my mom's favorite show you had to watch that on Thursday nights or whenever the Waltons were on, you know, and Little House on the Prairie, and it was like your selection, your decisions were made.
It wasn't like what should we watch tonight? Of the like now, infinite choices available to us, but we actually spend probably more as a percentage of our time not you, but collectively watching, consuming screen content. It's just been an observation. I've had some of these conversations. I'm getting really conscious of really being aware of my screen time and trying to be more discerning.
Dean: I was just thinking now that you've got me thinking about it. I left home in 62 when I was 18. And I can't remember until I was 40 actually having a television during that 20 years or 22 years. I went 22 years and you know I don't remember.
I remember people having televisions that I would go and watch things, sports things like that but, I went 22 years so, and then, of course, I haven't watched it in the last six years, so I've got pretty close to 40 years of my life when I didn't watch television Half, almost half my life. So I think it's never been a big deal for me.
Dan: Right, think now like I look at kids now, like you think about the technological sophistication and facile nature of technology to eight-year-olds today, compared to Dan Sullivan at eight, you know is pretty amazing. But your experience in the outdoors to the average eight-year-old you know?
Dean: it's so funny. I never see very rare.
Dan: It's very rare, even in the 70s. Like growing up, you know the whole period of my childhood like from you know, six to 12. Six to 12. You don't see the same sort of pack of kids roaming around on the street that we saw when we were, when I was growing up anyway. I mean, you know, I grew up in the suburbs so we had like a very active, you know social ecosystem. We were outside all day, every day. You know social ecosystem.
We were outside all day, every day you know, playing and making things up and riding our bikes and exploring the ravines and the sewers, and our parents never really knew where we were either. I mean we were. The idea was you got up and you had breakfast and you got out and you came home when you got hungry or when the streetlights came on at night. That's the deadline, you know I heard a comedian talking about that that it was so laissez-faire when we were growing up that they had to run ads on TV at night that said it's 1030. Do you know where your children are?
Had to remind our parents that they had kids. Oh, so funny and true, you know.
Dean: Yeah, it was really interesting, Really interesting. We in London we have our favorite hotel where we stay in London.
Dan: And across.
Dean: They've taken a whole old industrial area and they've completely transformed it. So they have a hotel and then they have condos and then they have shops and there's a courtyard in the middle and you cross one of the courtyards and there's a Japanese restaurant there. I remember being in there one night and there were six teenage girls, Japanese girls 16, 16, 17. And there were six of them at the table and each of them was on their phone during the entire meal.
Dan: Yeah they're all talking in direct with other people. Yeah, so funny, right?
Dean: They're not even there even when they're in the presence. It struck me that their world is actually inside the phone. Well, that's my point.
Dan: That's the whole point of Cloudlandia. Cloudlandia is the real world. That's where we all live in. Cloudlandia.
Dean: Not me.
Dan: No, when I say we all, I mean society, everything. I have to have a permanent disclaimer.
Dean: You're saying a large number, a large percentage, a large percentage, a large percentage, and Sullivan excluded A large percentage of people. Yeah, yeah. And it's honestly a different world. I mean, yeah, I can't make too many comments on it because I've never really experienced that you know.
Dan: So we've got a young guy in our, in our go-go agent platform. He's a young realtor in Guelph, ontario. He's in his mid twenties, just getting started on his career and stuff. He's lived in Guelph his whole life and one of the strategies that we teach people.
Dean: Nice city.
Dan: Yeah, guelph is a is beautiful, yeah, so he's grown up there. You know, really, you know good looking young guy, very personable. I think he's got a big future. But one of the strategies that we encourage people is to gather their top 150 relationships, the people that if they saw them at the grocery store they'd recognize them by name and stop and have a conversation with them. Right, and the hardest thing, the funniest thing is he, after racking his brain, could only come up with 88 people on his list of 150 people.
And I thought to myself like the population of Guelph must be 150,000 people right In the Guelph area I mean, it's pretty good size city. I thought you know you look at this right that there's a kid who has grown up largely in the internet world, right, like largely on in Cloudlandia, and that's the real thing. The reality is that if you go outside of his bedroom and walk around on the street, he only knows 88 mainland people and he's surrounded. I was teasing him that I said are you telling me that you've lived your entire 26 years in Guelph and all you know is 88 people and you're walking around surrounded by 149,920?
Npc is a gaming term, dan for non-playing characters, because all of these online video games GTA or Grand Theft Auto and all these things that are kind of photorealistic things. All the people that walk around in the background are called non-playing characters or NPCs. Ground are called non-playing characters or NPCs. And I said that's really what you're telling me is, you've spent your whole life in Guelph and you only when you step outside your bedroom, know 88 people. That's a problem If you're in a business that is a mainland business.
Mainland business right.
Dean: All houses are 100% firmly planted on the mainland, as are the people that inhabit those homes.
Dan: So it only makes sense that you need to get an outpost on the mainland, not in Cloudlandia, you know.
Dean: Yeah, I was just thinking, I was just caring of my company company, my team members. There may be some new ones that I don't know, but I certainly know 100. And then my free zone program. I've got 105 in there and you know, some of them. I have to check the list to get their name, but you know I'd be over. I'd be over 150 with those two groups.
Dan: Yeah, but there's.
Dean: And then there'd easily be another 100 with the 10 times group, and then there would be 20 with Genius Network. Yeah, I'd probably be 300 or 400 anyway.
Dan: And it's a really interesting thing. There's a lot of thing around that. Like Robin Dunbar, the evolutionary psychology anthropologist from Oxford, he is the one that coined that or discovered that information that the 150 is the magic number. You know, that's the number of relationships that we can manage where we recognize people and have, you know, a current status in their life kind of thing, in their life kind of thing. And that goes back to our first kind of days of playing the cooperation game where we would be tribal and have 150 people and that was a security thing. If you didn't know the people around you, that was a threat. Right, you had to know everybody.
So, that's part of it. If it got to 150 150 what would happen is they would split up and go off and, you know, form other tribes. But that was. There's so many naturally occurring ways that that happens, but I just noticed you know how so much of it is for me personally.
Like my Cloudlandia reach is a hundred times or more my mainland reach. Like if you just think about the number of people that I know or know me from in Cloudlandia it's way bigger than the number of people that know me in Winter Haven, florida, in my own backyard, you know.
Dean: Yeah, well, it's very interesting. You know good FreeZone partner Peter or Stephen Poulter. You know, with TikTok he's got he's probably got 100,000 people who believe that he's their friend, he's their guide, he's their friend, yeah, yeah, but he wouldn't know any of them.
Dan: Right, that's exactly right.
Dean: So it's very. Taylor Swift probably has 100 million easy, probably more who know her?
Dan: Mr Beast has 350 subscribers. You think about that. That's a measurable percentage of every person on the planet. When you think about that, almost that's, yeah, more than.
Dean: It'll be interesting to see what he's like at 40. I wonder he's pushing 30. He's pushing 30, now right.
Dan: Yeah, I think 26 or 7.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to see what that does, because we only have really interactive relationships with a very small. I mean you talk about Dunbar's 150, but actually if you see who it is you hang out with, you know in the course of a year. I bet it's less than 15. Yeah, that's less, yeah, but yeah, yeah that's less, yeah, but yeah, I think, these numbers, you know, these huge numbers that come with quadlandia, do they mean anything? Do they actually mean anything, though, you know?
Dan: um, well, I think that what I mean to that?
Dean: do they have any? If you have that large of a reach, does it actually mean anything to you?
Dan: It certainly from a monetary standpoint it does. From a relationship standpoint it's sort of a one-way thing, yeah, I was talking to one of our social media.
Dean: We have a social media team here and I said can you bring me up to date? We have a social media team here and I says can you bring me up to date? I'm out there a lot every day, aren't I On Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and everything I said? I'm out there. And LinkedIn I'm out there a lot.
And she says oh, yeah, every day there's probably about you know, five to ten new messages are going out from you and I said, that's interesting Because every once in a while I run into someone and someone says boy, I really liked your Instagram the other day and I said yeah, well, I aim to please. That's your whole thing, yeah, but I have no idea what's going out.
Dan: And that's, you know, that's only going to be amplified when you take, when AI starts creating or, you know, repackaging a lot of the let's face it, you've got a lot of content out there. You've spoken a lot of words, You've been, you know, if we capture, everything you say basically is captured digitally right.
Dean: Yep, Danny's got a lot to say. You do. Yeah that's right and you've got your.
Dan: You've got the whole organization. You're the happiest. He's very expressive.
Dean: Yeah, he's very expressive. You got a lot of milk, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway we're. I think we're going to start our next big book. We did the three with Ben Hardy, which have been a huge success. And I sent Ben a note. I said it was your idea to do these things, so without your initiative none of this would have happened. And of course you wrote the three books, so without your writing none of this would have happened and we've had really good results from hot leads coming in to coach from the books.
It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done that. But you know the publisher is giving us a call every month Say do you have a new book, do you need a new writer and everything. But we're ready to go.
Dan: We're ready.
Dean: And I think so it's going to be. I think it's going to be the one that we're doing with Jeff Madoff casting, not hiring. Yeah, it's a nice punchy, you know, it's another one of the punchy titles and so that will come out in coach form in the first week of September.
Dan: So that'll be all printed.
Dean: I think it went. I think it goes tomorrow to the printer and it'll be printed up. And you know, I don't know what it is, but I think a lot of people are fooling themselves about reach because they're lacking vision and capability. They think if you have reach, you've got something. But I think, if you don't have all three, you don't have. If you don't have all three, you don't have anything.
Dan: Well, I think it's, if you have capability if you have capability.
Dean: If you have capability but no vision, no reach, you have nothing. If you have vision but you have no capability and reach, you have nothing. You got to have all three.
Dan: Yeah, you know it's very interesting. Chad Jenkins and I were talking, you know he's one of the bigger advocates for the VCR formula vision, capability, reach, about the you know the secret of that for people that you know whether we were to express them in capital V or lowercase v and capital C, lowercase c, capital R, lowercase r to see that where somebody self I see a lot of situations where people have a capital C capability that gets discovered and all of a sudden they're thrust into reach that they have no idea, no vision of what to do with. And it's very interesting. So someone that comes to mind.
There's a woman, safali Shabari, who I met in Toronto through Giovanni. She was a guest or speaker at one of his Archangel events capital C capability for parenting and that kind of advice and she got discovered by, you know, Oprah and all the mainstream. So she was kind of thrust into the spotlight that was now shining a light on her capability, which brought her tremendous, acute onset reach that she really doesn't have, in my observation, a vision for how to navigate, you know, or what to do with that. They're an abundant reach asset with no vision. You know, to connect the two and I think that happens a lot. I think that happens a lot, that people get thrust into a spotlight and they, you know, have. And often you can have reach without capability too, and that's a problem too, and that's a problem. But if your reach is a result of somebody discovering your capability, that is a big. That's the formula I was.
you know I've often talked about Max Martin as a role model you know the guy who's written all the number one songs on the radio that when I really started looking a little bit deeper into it, what I found out was that it was really through the reach of of Clive Davis that Max Martin's capability became. You know that he became Max Martin capability became. You know that he became Max Martin and because he was just a guy in Sweden producing great music, with a capital C capability of making pop songs, you know, and Clive Davis, when he discovered that he, as the president of Columbia Records and the founder of Arista and Jive Records, all of these subsidiaries, he had tremendous reach to both artists and their audiences. Visionary, to pair his artists with this Max Martin capability to create this capital VCR outcome of you know, all the success that Max Martin has had. And it was only through that pairing of a capital C capability with a capital R reach and a capital V vision then it all really became a big thing.
Dean: This is my observation.
Dan: This is all like live, you know developing, you know thoughts here around it, because I constantly. I run that filter constantly in background, filter constantly in background. But that VCR formula is, I think, a very relevant collaboration tool, that if people were really aware of their capabilities and had transparency to other people's vision, capabilities and reach, that's where the big connections happen, you know.
Dean: Yeah, I think it requires a fair amount of conceptual capability that you can. You can sort of depersonalize your situation enough to understand what your capability would mean to somebody else.
And you have to have a conceptual ability to see what reach would mean. For example, I was on a podcast on Friday. I was a guest of someone who is a key player in the land development industry across the United States and he's in COACH. So he asked me a lot of questions about coach and I went through and I explained. He's got 10 years in coach and he talked about what each of those concepts meant to him and everything else. And then his podcast is going to go out to 5,000 key players in the land development land development business in you know probably 25 or 30 states and everything else. And so at the end he says you know, I'm going to send this out and I'll send all the coach information, everything else. And I got off the call and I said that was easy.
Dan: That was easy. Yes, that all you had to do was stay in your C lane of your capability.
Dean: I just stayed in my lane and said what we had done. And then I talked about where I thought we would be with Coach when I was 100. I'm 80 and Coach was 100. And that's kind of a significant statement. It's not the sort of thing you would hear every day from an 80-year-old of what things were going to be like when they were 100 and much bigger at 100 than at 80.
And it was really interesting, but that was like an hour middle house and you know I'm just talking, you know really good conversation, a lot of back and forth and you know, both of us asking the other questions and everything else and I said that's pretty cool that goes out immediately to five thousand. That's immediately goes out to five thousand people.
Dan: Uh, yeah, yeah I mean that's pretty mean, you know, when you think about this, so of staying in your, in your lane of that's. Part of the great thing is that these things are largely plug and play, you know, like, and it happens. That's why I say a multiplier. You know, with the formula vision plus capability multiplied by reach, that reach is a multiplier.
Dean: Well, they're actually. Yeah, I think what it is that two of them are addition, but the third one's a multiplier.
Dan: Yes, that's exactly right.
Dean: In other words, you can have vision plus reach multiplied by capability. You can have vision plus capability multiplied by capability. You can have vision and capability, vision plus capability multiplied by reach. You can have vision plus reach multiplied by yeah, yeah, yeah but, I, think it's like two of them are inside of our parentheses. You have, you know yeah, then the other that's multiplied by the third one.
Dan: Yeah so it's very.
Dean: I'm convinced it's three yes From the triple play. So I'm thinking about a tool right now where I said who's got the big idea, who's got the big idea, who's got the ready-to-use capability, who's got the ready-to-use capability?
Dan: And who's?
Dean: got the ready-to-use reach?
Dan: Yes, you know that's fantastic. That would be a very useful tool. I think that's a really useful framework for collaboration. Yeah, it fits so well with our whole free zone operating system, you know?
Dean: yeah, because we're surrounded by those those capabilities.
Dan: Everybody's got a capability in the form of, uh, their self-multiplying company that they've already kind of established. To get to that point right, most people undervalue. They mostly undervalue their own capabilities and reach. They don't see them as assets in most cases.
Dean: Well, even when they have vision, the vision isn't really useful to anyone else. It's only useful to them Right.
Dan: Vision isn't really useful to anyone else. It's only useful to them, right yeah?
Dean: I mean your vision has to have a lot of room for other people.
Dan: That's what. So, chad and I've been talking about this there's the horizontal vision is within your own capability channel. You know they see vision, maybe within how to improve their capability, or internally. All their vision is within the walls of their own company. But where the real benefit comes is with horizontal vision.
I said vertical vision is within your own company vision. I said vertical vision is within your own company. Horizontal vision is being able to see what your capabilities paired up with, recognizing someone else's vision that your capabilities could help or how someone else's reach could enhance your capabilities.
You know all of those that vertical or the horizontal vision is where the collaborative creativity comes yeah, yeah, there's so much yeah I think you're right that there's, you know, articulating, the thinking tool that helps you recognize and assess what your unique probably unique ability fits within a capability right. That's a thing in your organizational unique ability and your unique teamwork all fit within that capability channel.
Dean: Yeah, it was really funny. I was when was it Thursday? I think I was. When was it Thursday? I think I was invited into a workshop here in Toronto and it was the lead master's group. Okay, so the lead master's group is the lead group of all the people who are still at the signature level after 20, 25 years. Okay, and they haven't jumped to the 10 times. They haven't, you know. Their next group would be 10 times.
Dan: And they're a long way.
Dean: They're a long way off from free zone Anyway, but we're introducing the triple play straight across the program. This quarter. So everybody's getting the triple play. And there was a group, probably about 40, maybe 40 in the room and I would say, three got it, three got the triple play Understood, yeah. And they said, yeah, well, why would I do this? And I said well to differentiate yourself from everybody else.
Yeah well, I'm not sure why I would do that and everything else, and so this is why I put the emphasis you have to have a conceptual ability that's apart from you. You're just seeing something that exists, that's big and it's powerful, but it exists outside of you. It's not you. Somebody else's capability exists outside of you. Somebody's vision exists outside of you. And somebody's reach exists outside of you.
And you've got to be able to see this as a reality that exists in the world, whether you want to use it or not. These abilities, these capabilities, vision and reach is outside of yourself. Vision and reach is outside of yourself. And then you have to say if I'm going to use what other people have, how do I have to be useful to them, that they would be agreeable to that, and I think that takes a lot of conceptual ability to see how you could be useful to other people.
Dan: Yeah, I agree with that, that's true.
Dean: Yeah, I think there's. I mean, if you can only see within your own framework, you're not going to be VCRing anything.
Dan: Right, exactly, you're only going to be trying to increase, you know, or improve your own limited vision within your own situation and working on your own capabilities, and only with your own reach. It's real. That's where it's like linear. That's linear, yeah, and you know exponential is plugging in to ready to implement reach, vision and technology or capability.
Dean: It's really funny because huh, well, yeah, it's who, not how. But you have to see the who's as existing, completely independent of you. They just exist. They're out there, they're doing their thing and they're not going to be interested in you unless there's a big payoff. In other words, they have to see and it was very interesting because when I talked to like first year and strategic coach, you know first or let's say, signature level first or second and people will say well, you have such great people here at coach, how do you find great people?
Dan: And I said you know where I live, you know I live in such and such place.
Dean: We don't have great people like you find great people. And I I said you know where I live, you know I live in such and such place. We don't have great people like you have great people. And I said I suspect you do have great people, they're just not looking for you. Yeah right, how? How do you have to be such that other great people would be interested in you as an opportunity?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, amazing you have to have something compelling you do you?
Dean: have to have something compelling. Yeah, not convincing, but compelling.
Dan: That's right, you know, shaped with a what's in it for them. Yeah, viewpoint, you know that's. I think Joe's book is amazing to set. I can't. It's one of those things that I can't believe nobody has written that book until now, you know. But just that whole idea of thinking about your vision, capabilities and reach from a what's in it for them perspective, with other people, what you can do for other people, it's almost one of those things that it's so powerful.
Dean: That's true. That's true of all new things, though.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I can't believe somebody hasn't thought about this before. Uh-huh. Right right, right yeah.
Dan: Oh man, that was. So there was George Carlin. He had a thing, a little you know comment where he was saying how the English language is so incredible that you'd think everything that's possible to say has already been said, you know. But he said I'm going to say things tonight here that have never been spoken in the history of the world. For instance, he said hey, marge, after I finish sticking this red hot poker in my eye, I'm going to go out and barbecue some steaks.
Nobody's ever said those words in the history of the world. So it's not. Everything hasn't been said. I thought that was pretty funny actually. So there, yeah, Well we've spent an hour.
Dean: We did a good hour, I think so.
Dan: I always enjoy these conversations.
Dean: Yeah, and. I'm going to, I think yeah you ought to zero in on the tools. You know that, yeah, and I'm going to.
Dan: I think, yeah, you ought to zero in on the tool.
Dean: You know that I'll give some thought to it, but this is your tool, not my tool. I'll give some thought to it. I love it, All right.
Dan: Okay, talk to you next week. Bye.
Dean: Okay, bye.
18 Aug 2021
Ep031: Communication Technologies
01:04:36
Join Dean and Dan as they talk about communications.
Ep103: Discovering the Power of Imagination in Shaping Our Reality
00:46:40
In this episode of Cloudlandia, we navigate the intriguing notion that our world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals just like us. From the mundane aspects of traffic rules to the profound sacred texts influencing civilizations, it's all the product of the human mind.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
The world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals like us, with everything from traffic rules to profound sacred texts being the product of the human mind.
The art of argument is discussed, with insights from Jerry Spence's enlightening book. The best argument won is one that doesn't feel like a fight.
They explore the perception of change and how a single country's decision can shift the global landscape. Embracing change and moving fluidly in a world in constant flux is important.
Dean and Dan take a nostalgic trip through the transformative era of 1950 to 1980, discussing the assimilation of technological advancements like electricity, radio, television, cars, planes, and telephones.
Exploration of the future of entertainment includes pondering whether YouTube could be the new generational torchbearer for cross-generational awareness of stars.
The evolution of work is discussed, including the importance of strategic coaching in achieving success. The right people can make a world of difference. It's not just about working hard, but also about working smart.
They explore how everything is made up by specific individuals, including the fear that gripped society at the advent of automobiles and how we've evolved to take speed for granted.
They discuss the importance of winning arguments and how the best way to win is to not make it feel like an argument. It also explores how people perceive change differently.
The podcast compares the 1950s and the present day in terms of success, discussing how quickly a book can be produced now, thanks to the internet and Zoom. The importance of having a designer who can understand and deliver what is desired is emphasized.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan Sullivan
welcome. We're being recorded, that's right. Welcome, always welcome.
Dean Jackson
Welcome to cloudland here, that's right. We're, we're always recording. Well we're always Everything is recorded.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, nobody's in charge, and and life's not fair.
Dean Jackson
Exactly right. I'm holding in my hand my Geometry for staying cool and calm book yeah it's very exciting.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, this one has gotten Kind of surprising to me anyway. Just, it sort of clicks. Those three things seem to do some Mental geometry, you know, when you put the three of them together as a triangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Dean Jackson
I love it and the I was once the cartoons like that's my.
You know my process for reading the book is. I like I open up the inside cover and I see the overview of the Graphical overview within cartoons and tells you the whole Everything you need to know, kind of just looking at it. I love this guessing and betting. It's very good. Then I go to the contents and I look at the titles of Chapters and I'm very interested in, and haven't gotten to yet, chapter 750 out of 8 billion. I'm not sure what that's, the cops.
Yet but, then I go and I read the headlines, the chapters and the. You know your opening statements that you say about them. So, chapter one everything's made up. You realize that everything in the world is always made up by specific individuals. And then I skip to the cartoons, mm-hmm in between the chapters that I look at those and I see the Yep. Gandhi was making it up, confucius was making it up. Everybody seems to be that. They've been making it up since the beginning of time, right to three to today. Yeah, I'm making it up.
Dan Sullivan
I love it. You're making it? Yeah, we, we've been making it up. This whole thing got made up.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, but the interesting thing.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, the interesting thing is that I have people say well, you know what about, like sacred books? And I said well, I said, and they said aren't they divinely inspired? And I said, yeah, they're a finally inspired, but it takes somebody to write them down. Right, Right then you and you, and you hope you hope they got it right.
Yeah, yeah, but what it does is, I notice in the I just brought it up as a talking point in maybe five or six workshops, both free zone, in ten times and you can see people they have this almost like little mental jolt. They get a jolt and they say, wow, that's true, isn't? I said, yeah, so you can make things up, so you're freed up to make anything. I said everybody else does it, why don't you do it? And then nobody's in charge. And they said, well, what's in charge? I said rules are in charge. We make up rules and you know, send every situation, if people are cooperating and doing things together, make they make up rules. You know, not not necessarily at one time, but they gradually put up a set of rules. You know, if we approach things this way, things work. You know, think of traffic. You know think of if there were no rules.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly, that's one of the frightening things about driving in India, say oh yeah, I was just thinking of India.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, you don't need brakes, you just need a horn.
Dean Jackson
And get quick reflexes.
Dan Sullivan
And and a lot of determination.
Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Sensor. You're right, you're first and you're right. These are all good things. Yeah, I was thinking about that one day. We were going, you know, on the Gardner Expressway in Toronto and we were, you know the traffic was flowing really, really quickly. You know it was 50 of these 50, you know 50 miles an hour and you know there were hundreds of cars In sight going both ways and I said, if you took somebody in time, traveled them back a century, back to 1923, and you put them in this situation, they, they would go catatonic in about 60 seconds. Just the Motion, yeah, yeah, and but we take it completely normal. And what normalizes it? We know, we know everybody else knows the rules.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I understood. I Think I remember reading that people when automobiles were first getting started, that people there was fear that your brain might explode at speed. Oh yeah, 30 miles an hour.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, and I think that there's. I Don't think that was a stupid worry, you know, we just had never, experienced. Nobody had ever experienced speed like that.
You know, yeah, and I think one of the attractions of Maritime travel, let's say, two or three centuries ago, like one of those sailing ships with full sails and, you know, properly constructed, you know the whole structure of the boat was meant for speed and you know they could get up to, you know, if they had a tide with them and they have current with them and everything else, they get up to 30 miles an hour. You know, at some speeds, you know, and this were sailing ships, you know, and that must have been extraordinarily thrilling to. That was about it, for you know, all of human history, up until trains.
Dean Jackson
Horses, I guess I mean.
Dan Sullivan
Think about probably about 30 horses, horses probably about 30, you know, they would be. They would be that that fast and you know.
But then all of a sudden, geez, you know, you know they were getting in. And from the Wright brothers, in 1903, I think, the Wright brothers, their first flight, you know, which lasted about 15 seconds, and and to Even the second world war, at the end of the war, they were introducing jets that could fly 500, 450, 500 miles an hour. Let's just yeah. But we've just showed you that the human brain adjusted these things, we normalize.
Yeah, you know, Well, number one skills that humans have is we can normalize new situations really quite quickly. Yeah, that's true. People saying you know this, all this AI stuff, yeah, I don't think our brains. So I said we'll normalize it just like we did anything else, you know we will normalize it.
Dean Jackson
It's so. It's so true. I've been getting, I've been seeing a lot of you know, what I wouldn't call AI enabled. You know, you know I've been seeing a lot of AI content or outreach, and you can. I was thinking about Jerry Spence and he wrote a great book called how to Argue and Win Every Time, and he said that our brains are equipped with psychic tentacles that are reaching out and testing everything for truth and realness and congruence, and these psychic tentacles can detect what he calls the sin clank of the counterfeit.
I thought that's the truth.
Dan Sullivan
You could tell that something was not written by a person. Yeah, I mean, on my birthday there was a company party for me. They do it all the time. Usually they lied to me in some way to think it's something else, and there's this big party. When they put it in your schedule, they're not gonna have to lie, and so, anyway, I go in and there's, this person gets up and, on behalf of the company, gives this very, very flattering talk about me.
And I could tell she was five seconds into it, this chat, gpt, I could just tell. So afterwards I went up to her and I said, did you get a little art of AI help with that? And she said, yeah, I did a show. And I said, yeah, right, and you know, what's missing is that we have a feel that there's a heart there, there's a mind there, there's a soul there when it's human.
Dean Jackson
What do you know? You know what one of the what I take as one of the highest compliments I've ever received about an email that I sent is Kim White said to me, or Daniel said to me, that you know. He says I know that these emails that you're sending are sent to thousands of people, but when I got it I always think it feels like you're speaking right to me and that was really that was really something you know. As a guy who's a energy plumber worker, you know whose whole thing is being coming into energy, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's really interesting. We went to see we're in Chicago today and Joe and Eunice and Mike Koenigs were here early, so they come in for Monday and Tuesday, but they came in yesterday and then Daniel White was with us and we went down to the theater to see personality because Joe hadn't seen it and the others hadn't seen it and there was an extraordinary actress in this play, or I don't know her last name, but her first name is Alexandria, and she plays the role of Lloyd Price's wife and she turns out to be a complete and total scammer.
Like she's getting them for his money, she's getting them for his celebrity and everything like that, and when he goes through rough times she gives him a rough time, you know, and anyway and then later on.
she plays a completely different person who seems great. That's actually the person depicted in the play is Bertha Franklin, who is the, who is the older sister of Bertha Franklin, okay, and she seems this great hit to actually Janice Joplin became famous for her called A Piece of my Heart, and she just knocks it out. And then afterwards I meet her and it turns out she's 19 years old. You know, she's 19 years old and she's easily portraying someone in their 30s, you know.
And as an actress, as a singer, the way she moves and everything, you get a sense that she's you know. And but I was introduced to her by Jeff Mattoff, who was the producer and writer of the play, and I said I wanna pay you a compliment and I said I want you to know how much I totally disliked you as the play won you. Just, we're just a horrible person. And she said, oh, oh, thank you very much. That feels so great.
Dean Jackson
That feels great that you I love it, I love it yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Because she was supposed to. I mean, that's it calls for her. To be that type of person and she nailed it, but she's 19,. You know she's 19 years old and it was really quite you know, but you really, I mean I, but I spotted her from the moment she came on stage. This is a scammer. I can tell this person is a scammer. You know, oh, that's amazing, but I do think you're going back to the jury spent comment that you made. I'm gonna read that book.
I'm always interested in winning.
Dan Sullivan
I'm always interested in winning an argument, you know.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, no, I would highly recommend. I mean, I tried to avoid.
Dan Sullivan
I tried to avoid them, but I said you know I can't avoid them, I wanna win.
Dean Jackson
Well, and this is he's talking and this is like it's like one of my top five wisdom books ever, like it's, I think, one of the biggest impacts on me and his. Of course, you know who Jerry is the attorney, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a defendant of Mel DeMarco's and the whole thing's never lost a case and the. You know he thinks in the proactive thing about. You know he's using argument in the sense of your idea.
You're more persuasive, what you're more persuasive.
Dean Jackson
You're a person. That's what the lawyers make an argument. What's your argument for your idea?
here no.
Dean Jackson
And this is how he's presenting things, and it's just been such a such an amazing, such an amazing thing, so I would highly recommend it.
Dan Sullivan
I've never experienced Dean Jacksonin an argument but, maybe it's all argument.
Dean Jackson
It's all argument. That's what he's saying. That's exactly right, the best way to win is to win.
Dan Sullivan
Actually, you've never seen Dean when he wasn't arguing.
Dean Jackson
That's right. That's it feels like that's the point of it. It's the best way to win an argument is to not make it feel like you're in an argument.
Yes.
Dan Sullivan
It's just, you're in normal experience. Yeah, right, yeah, but the thing of normalizing. Peter DM Monace and I had a podcast about three weeks ago and he was talking about the future and everything else. I said you know one thing I've noticed? I said and I've got I'm closing in on 80 years of dealing with the future. You know probably didn't yeah, really.
You know probably didn't really have it as a mental capacity 80 years of guessing and batting Six or yes, ain't batting, but I said, you know something when you get to the future, it's always normal, it always feels normal when you get to the future, yeah, no matter how different it was from the past. The moment you get there and you're and.
I go back to your, the Jerry Spence line, that every second we're feeling out what's coming next. Okay, and so it's not like you suddenly went from white to black or you went from light to dark and then you went through infinite little second by second, gradations of adjusting yourself to a new set of circumstances.
Yeah, yeah, yeah you are absolutely right and that's, you've closed down your thinking and you're not taking in the new stuff. You know, I mean, that's also possible. And then you know, I say people, people sense that something's changing in different ways. Some people, some people. All you need is to touch their head with a feather and they say oh, something new is happening.
Some people.
Dan Sullivan
you need a sledgehammer and some people need a Mack truck.
Dean Jackson
Yes, exactly Wow.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But the big thing is that I'm super sensitive, you know, to changes of circumstances or something I notice is out of place or something's happening. And I get that sense about the whole world right now.
And I think you know I'm very influenced by Peter Zion's take that we've been living in essentially an artificial world since the end of the Second World War and it's been overseen by one country and its military just to keep trade routes reliable and on time. And now that country's decided that they've done that for enough and they don't want to do that anymore and they want to get back to their own affairs. And everything vibrates and shakes just because of that one decision. Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that really is. I mean, you look at it, you think about it since the, it's true, right Since the. You know, I often think back then to that, the big change, the book from 1950.
And.
Dean Jackson
I think if we were to look at the you know, the big change from you know, 1973 to 2023, that's been, that's really you think about all of the changes that are going to take place. And what I really wonder is are we entering into another phase of the period from you know, 1950 to 1980 where there's not a lot of, where it's more of a normalization? Right by 1950, what you were saying is it feels normal. By 1950, it felt normal that you have electricity and radio and you go to the movies, and you've got TV now and you've got an automobile and you're living in the suburbs and we're flying on planes and everybody's got a telephone. All those things felt probably normal.
Dan Sullivan
Why was it that I was in 1950 and felt normal to me? Felt normal to me Exactly, yeah.
Dean Jackson
So you didn't feel the sense of why, then, how it was to go from, you know, not having these things to having them, and you enjoyed that 30 year period where, I mean, what would you call the difference between you know, like, do you buy into that premise that from 1950 to 1980, there weren't the same level of changes from 1900 to 1950, or was it just a mass of migrations?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I mean you can take cars, for example you know, Cars were kind of stylish up until about the early 50s and then they started taking on this very, very conforming they you know, they got a lot longer, they got a lot bigger and they were like rodeoids.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, exactly they can't.
Dan Sullivan
and that continued and meanwhile they were getting blindsided. In the 60s I probably started low in the 50s with Volkswagen, but then you started getting these really small sort of stylish imported cars, you know as they came over. And then they really got their clock cleaned in the 70s, you know, but there was. I mean you don't look back at that period, 1950 to 1980, as a particularly stylish or the only one I can think of that, and they really stuck to.
their look was Corvette, corvette came in around 54, I think 1954 is when it came in.
And it was, and Thunderbird came in at the same time. This was Ford. You know Chevy was Corvette and Ford was the Thunderbird, and then Thunderbird went all over the place. You know it changed every and then it disappeared and then they brought it back. But the Corvette if you look at a Corvette for this year 2023, and you look back at the original Corvette, you can see that this is the same car with numerous, you know, technological changes. But no, it's very definitely a Corvette today and it was a Corvette back there.
They've made the only American car that I can think of that maintained its look over that long period of time, but it was great. It was great to begin with and they didn't screw it up, you know. But planes, you know. 1950s, you were already when the first 707, the first well, you had the DeHavilland comet.
That was the British plane, was the first real no worthy, and that was around 1950. And they could do 550 miles an hour. And they do 550 miles an hour. Well, they still don't do that because that's the optimum speed for the combination of fuel, passengers, cargo, and that is 550, you know, I gotcha, yeah, but I think you're right, I think you're really right. And computers were coming in, but they weren't a big deal in 1980 yet, right.
Dean Jackson
Exactly, there was the beginning of them. It was like you either. If you were looking back now, like on it, if you were paying attention, you would have seen the seed of everything was kind of getting into position. The transition from mainframe to personal computing. That was a big thing but it took a while to you know. It took another decade to get to that level.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, really, television was still the trade networks.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly it. I mean from 1950 to 1980, it was really just the three networks and that's where everybody had a very homogenous experience. You know everybody watched the same. You know I love Lucy and Guns Most. Ed Sullivan Show.
Dan Sullivan
Ed.
Dean Jackson
Sullivan Show Exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
So when the Beatles came, all they had to do was be in one place.
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
And on the Ed Sullivan Show they're automatically a rantic.
Dan Sullivan
You could see it in music too. Yeah, If you look at the last 10 years, let's say, of the biggest grossing concert tours, they're all guys, mostly guys who are in their 70s.
Because they became famous.
Dan Sullivan
They became famous when there was a national audience. Yes, that's right, there's not a national audience for any particular star these days.
Dean Jackson
Well, that's where I was going with this that there is, in a way, that YouTube. Is that now for the new generations, right, like they're growing up? The kids that grew up now they all know who Mr Beast is, they all know Casey Neistat, they all know the top YouTube star way more than television.
Dan Sullivan
Well, here's a question I have for you, though. What I noticed is that there was a continuity between the generations, in other words, that when Elvis came on, people in their 50s saw Elvis, people at five saw Elvis on the. Ed.
Dean Jackson
Sullivan Show.
Dan Sullivan
I don't think you have this cross generation awareness of great stars.
Dean Jackson
That's true. That's exactly right, because nobody, not everybody's gathered around the television with their TV dinners watching the same shows all three generations and one now watching them with the kids and the parents and the grandparents. Oh, what are we going to watch on television tonight? They're often in the room with their iPods and their phones looking at their own individual, everybody's their own individual. Entertainment director. Dopamine dealer.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Dan Sullivan
My sense and here I'm kind of interpreting the predictions that Peter Zion is making about the way the world's going to go on the future it's actually going to look quite a bit like the world looked like before the First World War, so back in 1914. So what he says is.
There's now going to be regional markets and regional political alliances. He gives a series of examples of that Anywhere that the US pulls its military out of, and the first area where the US has pulled its military out of is the Middle East. There's no presence of the US military in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Red.
Dean Jackson
Sea.
Dan Sullivan
The reason is the US is self-sufficient for oil. They're completely self-sufficient for oil and gas. The US is the lead exporter now of fossil fuels.
I think, that's why the rest of the all of a sudden, there's this anti-fossil fuel movement. I mean it's one of the reasons. There's never one reason for anything. It's always a confluence of different forces. But the US was just doubled down on the Middle East because they needed the oil. The economy needed the oil, the world that they traded with needed the oil, so they had to protect the sources of oil. But fracking fracking is one of the great breakthroughs. They can get fuel out of the rocks and it's really good oil. It's really. I mean, it looks like baby oil when it comes out. It's like Johnson's baby oil. It's the purest, cleanest oil in the world because it's just oil. There's no grime and dirt and everything that comes up with it, just the oil comes up and then the gas comes along with it.
And that changed the world.
Dan Sullivan
I mean that just utterly changed the world. There's one event in the last 30 years, since the Soviet collapse, that changed the world. It was the fracking, the American fracking revolution and Texas Permian basis, because once the US doesn't need anybody else's fossil fuels, then they rethink their entire military, they rethink their entire political, they rethink their entire economic view towards the world and they're the spoon that stirs the global soup. Yeah, so I think that was a huge change and I think that a lot of the changes that are taking place right now are a function of that breakthrough. Because it's a transportation breakthrough, because you saw all you want about electricity those freighters aren't electric.
Dean Jackson
That's true, but it's funny, the US military the staples are nuclear submarines and ships that can go forever.
Dan Sullivan
Seven years, seven years without I think the subs are seven years. The aircraft carriers, I think, are about the same and they've had no killing accidents with those since 1953. So it's 70 years.
They've had crises, but nobody's been killed.
Dan Sullivan
There's been no radiation and I think that's coming back in a big way. I think that they've Mike Wanler, who is a free zone terrific guy from Wyoming, and he's in the process of manufacturing these little micro reactors. I mean, people think of a nuclear reactor and that looks like the Taj Mahal, it looks like the US capital, it's like with huge smoke stacks. These are the size of a standard carrier box.
So if you think they're 40 feet or 20 feet, the ones that go on board ship or they're on trains or they're on semis, and this is about 40 feet, so you can walk into it. It's probably about six feet, six feet by six, eight feet by eight feet. I don't know what the dimensions are exactly, but and it's a nuke, it's a little nuclear station. They use spent nuclear.
They use this spent nuclear fuel or they have a new kind of salt compound that they use. So think of it. You're building a factory, like outside there's a lot of factories. I see the area north of Toronto now the number of warehouses and factories that are going in. They're immense. Up the 404 and up the 400.
Dean Jackson
And anyway.
Dan Sullivan
But the US is going. Us, Canada, mexico are going through a huge reindustrialization with new factories. But you're outside the city and you got a farm line. You got 600 acres of land and you built a factory on it. What you do is you bring in the little nuclear power plant first, and then the entire energy that's needed for building the factory is supplied by that little nuclear plant.
And then when it's built, the nuclear plant powers the factory and it's manufacturing thing, and you don't go to the grid at all. You don't have to pull any electricity from the grid at all.
Dean Jackson
Wow, that's a big deal. Totally self-contained, it is a big deal.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you're putting in a new housing development, I think it's north of Las Vegas they're building a new 100,000 person city. It's called the Galaxy City. It has put a nuclear, it has put in three or four of these little nuclear plants into it and you don't have to. You build the houses, you build the stores, you build the businesses, you build everything, but it comes from the little nuclear plant.
I think that's breakthrough.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's a breakthrough.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that's the model of it, I guess, in process right now.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, actually, paul Van Dijn, who's a FreeZone member, has got the complete engineering contract for that new city.
Wow.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, these are amazing times, you know, like I think. But, they're completely normal. What does it look like now in a normalized world where you can literally go?
Dan Sullivan
anywhere you tell people this sort of thing, they say, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yankees went last night.
Right exactly. Oh.
Dan Sullivan
Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, you know she's got 150 million hours. Now they're having trouble getting ticket story concerts now and they're stealing the pirating live stream from her concerts and I said, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I wonder. You know the? So if that is true, then if we're in a stage right now- where you know. I mean Cloudlandia is, less than you know, viably, 25 years old in the first 25 years of it here. Everything, all of these things are normalized here. If we equate right now 2023 with 1953 kind of thing that all the infrastructure of the big factories innovation wave.
All of that was in place. We had, you know, radio, television, automobiles, movies, all of that. Whowhat's the similar playbook for thriving in this? You know, next 25 years? Where it's not, you know, I think. If you look at AI, I don't see anything on the horizon that is as big an innovation, possibly, as what the Internet and all of that has brought for us.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, because AI is only meaningful because of the Internet.
Dean Jackson
Right, it's. I think the pinnacle achievement of the Internet is that we've gotten to a point where you know there's an artificial intelligence that knows everything that's happened on the Internet so far and can access.
Dan Sullivan
No it doesn't know anything that you want to find out. You can find out with a few prompts.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't think. It doesn't feel, it doesn't understand it just smells like sardars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's a big deal. But you know, what really strikes me is the huge difference from the 1950s because I was, you know, fully active through that entire decade of the 1950s is that the way to succeed was to kind of be good at standardized, conforming activities where you were guaranteed employment. You were guaranteed you know, lifetime employment if you, you know, got into the right place, and it seems to me that that is 180 degrees changed.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, that there's now.
Dan Sullivan
you look, just be good at just just be good at nine word emails, that's right.
Dean Jackson
That's the truth, isn't it?
And that's it.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, or little more creative new book every quarter.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, so I think, what's going to be fun is to, you know, track the zeitgeist with your, with your trail of 90 minute books. That's kind of a you know how many is this? Now, which one is this?
Dan Sullivan
This is the one. The one you're reading is 34. And, and I'm just getting to the final stages of the 35. I do it by quarters, so it's quarter 34, book 34. And this is quarter 35. I did, I started on my um in my right, you know, within six months after my 70th birthday, and I said, you know, next 25 years, I think I'll write a hundred books.
A hundred books, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah and uh, so I'm, I'm on track, you know, and um, but the the thing about it is is that, um, and we had the conversations back then of how fast you could, you know, turn out a book, and we had a little one week contest where we both created a book and one week, and you know, and uh, and and so the the whole point is that it's just a quarterly process, you know, as part of the it's just normalized.
For a lot of people, writing a book is the scariest, scariest project of their, of their life, you know you know, right, yeah, um, uh, you know. On their gravestones says didn't get the book finished.
Right, I mean you know, or uh, we're on chapter 38.
Dan Sullivan
I said well, I saw that problem, just make each chapter a book.
Yeah, right, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so the, I think the um thing is. But think about 1950. I couldn't even conceive of how you could turn out a book like that, you know yeah you know, it's all internet based teamwork. I mean, everything I do is internet. I've been cartoonist. I see him about once a year, you know personally. He lives in Prince Edward Island and, uh, the smallest of the Canadian provinces. Uh, way out, way out of these kind of Cape Coddage type of place.
And you know and I see him. He's in Scotland. He's living for Scotland for two weeks tomorrow, so we'll have a little interruption. But uh, you know it's all on the internet he's, and zoom has been a wonderful breakthrough, you know. Yeah, he can actually draw the pictures.
Dean Jackson
Do you um? Do you storyboard the, the cartoons, or talk about what, what you're seeing for them?
Dan Sullivan
No no no, he just gets the rate on. You know, he gives a page on zoom so we're off to the side. You know our two little pictures are up to the side.
And then he draws the two page outline, because there are always two pages in the book format. And then he we say you know, I think this starts in the center. I says I think something in the center and I think it's a person and the one thing we uh, at a certain point we just didn't pay any attention to the galley in the middle the you know the separation of the two pages we just treated it as a single page and that was a great right.
Exactly, and then we um uh I have a fast filter that I've created laying out what the chapter headings are and what the context of the chapter is, and then we read it through and I talked to him and I said, okay, so what's this look like? You know what's this look like. You know where's it start. Where's the center of action? Yeah, center is a lower left hand corner, is it? And yeah, if you look through the cartoons to this one, you'll notice that the real energetic center of the cartoon moves around.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yes, I love it. I mean, I'm looking at the. Nobody's in charge, you're completely free with the, the arrows in the path and it's just. Yeah, I like that idea of just treating the whole two pages as one. Yeah, one thing that makes sense, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
And if you um said to people you don't mind the separation between the pages and the middle because you have to do that for the book, and I said, yeah, I don't know they're, they're, they're. Their mind has eliminated that separating thing down the center of the human brain. Yeah, treats it as one thing you know. And I said oh no there's a separation down the middle of every cartoon picture and I said really, and I said yeah, look. And they said, oh my, I never saw it. Right, that's great yeah.
Dean Jackson
It's very obvious in the what the world is made up by you. Yeah, just big circle. But as you're looking at it, it looks like one one thing I like this I'm, you know, I have a um, you got to have a wonderful designer who, uh, you know, can do these kind of things. It's so, uh, it's so nice to be able to articulate with words what you're looking for and have somebody be able to interpret that and deliver what you're looking for, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Well, the interesting thing is, uh, t um, uh, we have two kind of artistic skills with Amish. Amish is Amish, mcdonald is my cartoonist name, and we've been working together now for you know long, long time, you know. But the other thing that's happened is the technology has gotten so good, okay, and uh, we were just finishing one off before he took off for Scotland and literally um, dean, I could say I said okay, let's put that into the complete color spectrum, and he hit a button and the whole background was a complete color, you know, sort of like a. It went from the colors of the spectrum and but it was sort of a continuous change.
You know, it wasn't right, uh, separate colors. And I said, okay, now uh, the characters here. I said let's move the characters around a little, and he moved them around and everything like that. And I can remember first working with my first computer artist back in 1990, let's say, and the changes that Hamish and I just made in about. I would say two minutes would take two and a half days.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that amazing right.
Dan Sullivan
Chip speed and the great capabilities of software, you know, yeah, and it's. I mean it just goes together. I mean we used to, we used to take about um, I would say it would take about three days, three days of three, the three days work to get a cartoon done, and now we do the storyboard and he checks in the next day and he's got it almost completed. Artwork.
Mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, so, uh, that's great, yeah, that's great.
Dan Sullivan
And I think that's a I. You know the fact that he can do that, and uh actual intelligence right? Yeah Well, evan Ryan, who was one of our panel speakers on a, he's got a neat little book and we're going to send it out. Maybe you already have it, but it's called AI as a teammate.
Okay, and uh, he's putting our entire company, 130 of our team members, through uh starting in September, and it's six modules, two hours each, and all they do is analyze their work between what's their unique ability and what shouldn't. Somebody else could do, so anything a who can do. Then you find the AI who, who can actually do it without having to hire another person.
Dean Jackson
Oh, nice, I mean. So that's yeah, talking about being able to for people to uh multiply, you know yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah. But he says, uh, people freak out about this word AI. He says zoom is AI. He said the internet is the AI. He said you know all the programs you use on the computer you know already from you, know from Apple or from ours are mostly Apple, you know in design is artificial intelligence. He says it's just automation. He says don't talk about artificial intelligence. He says it's just automated.
Okay A machine function can do what a person used to be able to do. He says that's all that it is. And he said you know, that's been going on for a long time.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, well, and you still have to just think about what you're trying to do. Yeah, you still have to understand what the outcome you want.
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
That's the big skill.
Dean Jackson
The big skill is being able to identify what you want.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, that is the skill of skills that is. That is that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How many years?
Dean Jackson
did you do that every day? You said, well, it wouldn't be the same without our appearance from theory.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, Well, it just shows you that you know that there's real progress to be made in that field, Anyway, anyway, yeah, I did 25 years.
Dean Jackson
I have 25 years every day.
Dan Sullivan
What do I want?
Every day for except for 12.
Dan Sullivan
So there's 9,131 days and 25 years. And I did it 9,119 days and you know and and and and. What I got really good at over that period is just, in any situation, kind of knowing what I want, you know and and and. The one thing I cut off of you know I want this and the next. If you wrote that down for an AI program, they'd say the next word is because. And I said I just leave the because off because I want the truth, because is some sort of fiction. I'm making it up to make it.
Everything is made up. Yeah, yeah, everything is made up, yeah. And so so I got real good at that and, you know, my life changed from the first day to the 25th day. My life really changed. Coach came into existence, my partnership with Babs came into existence, strategies, strategy circle, and then a whole bunch of other tools came into existence, you know. So, yeah, it's a great skill. I mean, if you know, if, how would these?
Dean Jackson
is there? What were the? Were there any particular prompts? Let's call it in modern terms that you would use or or no, I just I would go through that process yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, I just had to do this every day. You know that that was I committed myself. I had just gone through a divorce and a bankruptcy on the same day, in August of 1978.
And I said you know, the only way I'm going to come to grips with this is to take total responsibility for what's happened up until now. So no blaming anyone else, no saying and no going back and reworking it. If only I had done. I said, let's just accept it, that and that I wasn't. And I said, I came to the conclusion all that bad stuff had happened because I wasn't telling myself what I wanted. Okay, I was expecting other people to tell me what.
Dean Jackson
I wanted and.
Dan Sullivan
I said so next 25 years, I'm just going to get really good at telling myself what I actually want and that's it. That's. That was the only requirement and it could be a set it had to be at least a sentence. It could be a whole page, it could be two pages, but it had to be at least a sentence once a day, and I just did it for. I just did it for. I had notebook after notebook after notebook after notebook.
And yeah and we had a flood, you know, in our business last August and all these files were in the basement.
That got flooded and disrupted and they're all gone all the, all the files, all my notes are gone and I feel so, and I feel so freed up. Right right.
Dan Sullivan
Did you ever? Look at those Did you ever.
No no, never went back and the and the reason is it was the skill.
Dan Sullivan
it was the skill I was developing. That wasn't what I wrote down, Right yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, this is that's really but we went to Matt.
Dan Sullivan
if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't never been in position to me to Because you never would have started strategic coach or never would have gotten off the ground, started looking for certain kinds of people.
Right.
Dan Sullivan
You being one of them. Well, I'm glad you're here I wanted someone who is incredibly smart, and if only he'd apply himself.
Dean Jackson
And a lot of them. You want a lot of those people.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and money comes easy, money comes easy. Yeah, the great ones, and once they have a purpose, the money flows, yeah. So anyway, I got to jump early because I have a little bit of a question, Okay my friend Daniel Wait in about five minutes but real pleasure. Yeah, thanks for the feedback on the geometry book. You know, this one surprised me. You know, this one caught me by surprise.
Dean Jackson
Well, it's fantastic, like I was curious what it was going to be about. You know, when you look at the, just the title geometry for staying cool and calm. And now, as I look through the content, this is my. I'm going to pretend I'm hopping on a flight to Chicago right now. Yeah, toronto, and read the whole book in one hour. That's my, that's my next hour right now, yeah, good.
Dan Sullivan
Alrighty. I got a question yeah, thank you very much.
Dean Jackson
Next week I'm good. Okay, good, me too.
Dan Sullivan
Bye, okay, bye.
19 Oct 2022
Ep081: Making decisions for success - Hurricane Edition
01:01:19
In this episode, Dan and Dean discuss how CloudLandia survived the last Hurricane and reflected on the types of decision-makers there are and how to make decisions that help one succeed.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, Dean, and Dan talk about the intersection and the collision of all the Cloudlandia capabilities multiplying exponentially and the mainland being largely unchanged in reality.
Join Dean and Dan as they discuss how the emergence of Cloudlandia and the digital revolution has given people the ability to monetize and capitalize on their ideas like never before.
Ep118: Weathering Politics and the Evolution of American Homes
00:52:52
In today's episode of "Welcome to Cloudlandia", Dan and I discuss the unexpected cold weather that recently swept through Florida and Ontario. We talk about how the weather can affect our moods and the emotional connection between climate and architecture. We share personal stories about winters and pay tribute to oak trees that stand steadfast throughout the seasons.
We also consider community planning and how neighborhoods can either embrace nature or ignore natural elements. Additionally, we explore innovative housing, such as modular and 3D-printed designs, while considering ideas on population growth. The future of shelter looks promising.
Finally, we wrap up by examining the impact of advertising on media polarization and the changing news landscape.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dan and I discuss the unexpected cold in Florida and Ontario, touching on Seasonal Affective Disorder and the psychological impact of weather on mood.
We pay tribute to the significance of oak trees and their presence through the seasons, exploring how community planning can integrate with nature.
Dan reminisces about the grandiose architecture of the Gilded Age and contrasts it with the simplicity and utilitarian focus of modern home designs.
We explore the historical context of Craftsman-style homes and the influence of income tax and antitrust laws on architectural styles.
We delve into the topic of U.S. population growth predictions and Peter Zeihan's perspective on the country's capacity to double its population without feeling more congested.
The conversation shifts to the current political landscape, analyzing the dichotomy between Biden and Trump, and the challenges faced by third-party candidacies.
We examine the accuracy and influence of betting markets on political forecasting and their reflection of public sentiment.
Dan describes the impact of the pandemic on education and considers potential long-term effects on future generations.
We discuss the shift from advertising to subscription models in media, considering the New York Times as a case study and touching on media polarization and the influence of digital giants.
The episode concludes with reflections on the concept of climate as a statistical average of weather and historical climate patterns, challenging the narrative of global warming.
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: Mr Jackson Well well, well. Is it hot or cold? Didn't forward that to me.
Dean: Well, it is middling. I would say it's a little bit of a cast, but I think it's on its way. We had yesterday like the first day in several weeks that I felt a warmth in the air. There's been. We've had a bit of a cold overtone to everything.
Dan: Yeah, I think cold in Florida in January is worse than cold in. Ontario. Yes In your brain yeah.
Dean: And especially disappointing for people who come from Canada expecting.
Dan: I was contemplating this on the plane flight we flew it to Chicago yesterday afternoon and I was complaining at how oblivious I am generally to weather. Like I know, there are people who I don't know what the exact term is, but they have seasonal, seasonal mood disorder or something like that.
Dean: Seasonal affective effective disorder. Yeah, Sad.
Dan: Seasonal affective disorder. Right, yeah, and you know I don't exactly know what goes on there, but the only thing I can say I don't have it, yeah, exactly.
Dean: I don't mind overcast either. That's funny, but you know I am 24 years now into a snow free millennium with only two asterisks, and those asterisks are both because of you. The only time I've seen snow in this whole millennium is on the occasions when I've been in Toronto in the winter because of the cold In the winter, because of going to 10 times when you started the 10 times program, and then I believe there was one time in Chicago that there was some snow, usually three out of the four dates you get away with no snow, but there's always that December till, you know, april time when it somewhere in there you might end up with some snow.
Dan: Yeah, well, we have snow on the ground, I mean fresh to overnight, but the sidewalks are already dry, naturally, and I already arranged.
Dean: I already arranged, with the powers that be, to put the asterisks beside my thing, because although I've seen snow and been in the presence of snow, I've not had snow touch me, so the purity of it is intact, although the technicality of it is.
Dan: I've been in snow, so yeah, I remember our very first client from Australia mid 90s, from Sydney, and he came to his workshop in Toronto one winter and his wife came with him and he got a call from her while he was at the workshop that she had gone outside in a snow head fell on her.
Dean: In Australia or in no. In in Toronto, all right, a snow head falling on her.
Dan: It's the first time in her life that a snow she was talking about a flake.
Dean: She was talking about a flake yeah yeah, I got it A snow. Yeah, usually you can have as many as you want.
Dan: Front all you want, yeah. But I have very memorable childhood winters of hiking through fields and woods in the snowy season, and you know, and of course when you're six years old, the snow is deeper than it is when you're 80.
Yeah, but I, so my I have a real warm spot in my heart about snowy treks, you know, and imagining that you're a member of, you know, an arctic exploration, everything things that you do, you make up, you know, you make up, you know romantic images based on your reading regarding snow. But I like the forest seasons. I'm a real fan of the change from one season to the other. And then, you know, we have these massive oak trees in our lawn.
We have seven that are you know well over 100 feet and and they're real friends because we've had them now for you know, for at this particular spot, we've had them for 20,. This is our 22nd year. And you know and I just you know they're kind of friends, you know they're kind of dependable friends. Oaks tend not to disappoint, you know they're not they're never late, they always show up, you know that's exactly right.
Yeah, and but, it's just interesting to watch the change of the scenery and our lawn based on what happens to the oak trees over the course of an entire year.
Dean: Well, you, you have not yet been to the four seasons, Valhalla but we are surrounded by 150 year old oak trees. It's like a park. Right out in front of my house. I have a big one that spans over the driveway. It's beautiful.
Dan: I think these are called they're in the south there's this variety. They're called pin oaks. I don't know what the actual name Live oak. Well, live oaks are the best.
Dean: That's what I think we have, because they're they spread. You know, they've got quite a nice canopy.
Dan: When an oak tree is alive, that's the best.
Dean: Oh, I see, oh, yes, that is.
Dan: You know, You're always a bit worried about the dead ones, the dead oaks are the best yeah, oh my goodness you crack me up.
Dean: I'm constantly amazed that they come and so that tree in front of my house. We've got them all throughout the whole neighborhood here and they come and they'll like lop off entire branches, like entire, not just the little things but big things, and they'll just keep going and grow right back and shape the way, because often it'll they have to trim around because the limbs will come over my house right and if it were to fall it would be a problem. So they always keep it outside the perimeter of the roof.
Dan: Well, it must have been interesting because, to you know, the zoning in your place must have taken into account that you can't cut down the oak trees.
Dean: Yeah, that's true, that's everything is built around them and our H away takes care of all of the landscaping. So everything it's all uniform. It looks like a park so you don't have, you know, different levels of care being taken. Everybody's at the whole, the whole place looks great.
Dan: So no opportunity for status right.
Dean: That's exactly right and they owe that tightly deed restricted. Like you're, absolutely right, Like it's. You know, every house is the same brick. There's approved tile, they're all tile roof. You have to have a tile roof, you have to have copper flashings, you have to have this Valhalla brown as any exterior paint the windows, everything. It's all you know. They started in the late 80s building in here and they've, you know, as recently as two years ago. The last, the last home was, was built in here, but there's only 50 homes in here but you wouldn't be able to tell. You couldn't tell which ones are new and which ones are from, you know, 1980s, and that's. It's kind of nice, it's cool, but we've had you know I say it's funny.
You say it's an interesting thought that no opportunity for status in here. Because so when I moved in here 22 years ago now 2002, I was by far the youngest person in here and thought I was would joke that 20 years from now I'll be old enough to live in here. And this is a my neighborhood like. Right beside me, three of the four houses to my right were referred to at the time as Citrus Barron Row, where these guys were, all you know, in their 70s and 80s and had built the Citrus. You know they were all sort of competitors in the Citrus business in Polk County. At one time Polk County produced more Citrus than the entire state of California and so so these guys were all there.
My neighbor across the street was the guy who started Steak and Shake, the restaurant chain, and when he died he he left $20 million to Indiana University for the Kelly School of Business Wing there, and the my neighbor who moved in there is now the own company called Colorado Boxed Beef and they are like an Omaha Steaks type of thing. So anyway, fascinating people but very like low key. You never know about any of them that they're who they are, and I think that was part of the intention of the community, you know when they built the community. But it's very interesting.
Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting the reason I brought up the status thing, relationship to a, you know, a design community, you know just use the word design community and the first one actually was in. I think it was in New Jersey. And it was called Levittown and it was designed by a man by the name of Levitt, and that was the first design community that was where individuals could buy homes. I mean there were sort of during the industrial age, growing you know in the 1800s there was, there were company towns.
you know where the corporation, the company, would design all the homes and you know, they would do it on the cheap. They would do it on the cheap, and they're actually. There's a town outside of Chicago called Pullman.
Dean: And.
Dan: Pullman was the cars. Oh yeah, pullman cars right. Pullman.
Dean: Pullman cars, Rail rail cars, right yeah.
Dan: And the railways. Yeah, and that was a design company town and all the businesses were owned by the company and the only people who could live there were people who worked for the Pullman. So you've had that type of thing. You've had that type of thing, you know. You know it's probably from the beginning of industrialization, hershey, Pennsylvania, kind of that way too.
Dean: Yeah, Kohler, Wisconsin yeah.
Dan: Kohler, wisconsin. Yeah, and so the. But I think Levittown was actually. It's worth it for people to look it up. It's a very interesting thing.
Dean: Yeah, I remember seeing some documentary about it.
Dan: And it was huge. I mean it was huge, it was in the thousands of homes.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And yeah, and then you know, the idea caught on.
Dean: Yeah, well, that was what, as the evolution of you know, as cars became the big thing in the highway system, you know you could have. That was where the suburbs really began. That was one of the first suburbs of Firecall. Yeah, yeah, very interesting that actually started that really started in.
Dan: I read the history of the Victorian age and Great Britain which, last you know, is basically from the beginning of Queen Victoria, which was, I think, 1820s, 1830s, right up until she died and she was in for more than 60 years. And but the big thing was the expansion of the London rail system. You know it kept going further and further out and you know London Americans who have no idea of what you know a city train system looks like, because London has seven that I visited. They may have more, but they had seven major railroad stations and these are huge. These are as big as you know. They're like Grand Central Station but there's seven of them.
And then the lines go out like the, you know like the, like a clock face that go out, you know and, but they kept pushing them further and further out, and one of the big things was that you could live right on the rail system and they started building these suburban towns, not with the uniformity that you're talking about with you know, with your, your community, but but that whole idea of the suburbs became a big thing, you know, and and that it changed things economically, it changed things politically, changed things culturally.
Dean: And that's.
Dan: That's very interesting thing. And you know and contrast that with where we have our home in Chicago, that right after the war it was sort of a factory or it's right near the airport and they built all these boxes you know, and they were just streets and streets. Yeah, yeah, and they were the same. They were, you know, not big but completely uniform, and I think around that happened probably for a period of 10, 15 years, straight up till the 60s, and then the. Park Ridge, the town that I live in, passed a law that if you build the house, it couldn't be.
It had to be different from the two houses on each side of you.
Dean: Oh, wow, that's interesting. I wonder about that, Like the. This evolution would be an interesting, like you know, seeing the architectural journey because, if you go back to, have you ever been to Newport in in Rhode Island? Yeah, newport, rhode Island, have you ever been to see the? Vanderbilt mansions and all those things.
Dan: Well, they were called cottages.
Dean: They were called Newport cottages, exactly. I love that yeah.
Dan: Yeah, they had 40 rooms, you know yeah.
Dean: So when you look at it in a world pre-income tax and pre-antitrust all of those things- I think income tax probably made a difference. Probably.
But, you look at that, that gilded age of where opulence was the thing, that's where you get all those, you know, huge mansions, in New York City even, and the whole thing. People were, they were big and there's nowhere. You know, across the street from me there is a new development. So one of the Valhalla was kind of out, you know, surrounded by 350 acres that one Citrus family owned for years, right there's almost a mile on Lake Eloise of Lakefront, and there was no houses on it, it was all just orange groves. And so recently, you know, a few years ago, they sold the land and now they're starting to develop this neighborhood, this new, you know, giant subdivision called Harmony, and the houses they start the first phase, like in the last, in the last year, they've, you know, made quite amazing Headway on it.
But damn, the houses that they're building have as much character as the houses in the board game monopoly. They're just little Boxes that they're putting right beside each other on all of these things. And the two-story houses look like the hotels In monopoly, you know, and there's no, they're just boxes with windows and a two-car garage and a driveway and Zero Character. You look at the homes that were being built in the, you know, in the 20th year. They 1800s, 19, 120s. The homes were all Craftsman style homes, you know, like there was some artistry to them. Now, in every way, it's really come full circle to pure Utilitarian. You know, utility, just what's the?
yeah right angles with very little, you know very little.
Dan: Yeah, it's really, really interesting because you know there's kind of a Van vanity that goes along with the times. You know another yeah well, we do things better than people did a hundred years ago. Well it was very interesting that a hundred years ago you could go to the Sears and Roba catalog. Yeah and you could go, where you could buy a house of the and, and they would have pages and pages of different styles, and, and what you would do is you would order it you know, yeah, and you had to pay.
You had to pay for it. You know you had to send a money order. You had to Western Union that you know you had to send a telegram and then the money would be secured at the other end and about five days later, by train and truck, your house kit would arrive, and then you had to engage with a local builder and the local builder would just follow the manual and would put up a house, and some of these houses were 10, 12 Room houses, you know yeah yeah, they had big porches and everything else.
And then you could modify them. I mean, you could modify them, you could paint them whatever color you wanted it. There's actually a town in Michigan, frankenmuth, which is sort of a German theme. It's sort of one of those theme towns. You know where. It's a German town, so they have a big October fest there every year and you know they have German restaurants and I suspected happened because there were a lot of German immigrants to that area of Michigan. But they have more intact lived in Sears and Roboc houses than any other community.
Dean: Oh, wow and and.
Dan: But if you go to, you know, if you go to Google and you just put in Sears and Roboc houses images, you'll see the bit, you'll see all the pictures of these houses in there. It would be considered sort of lavish today, these houses, you know. But it was just you know it just arrived by train. You know it was big curtain after curtain. Everything Funny that we've kind of come.
Dean: We've kind of come full circle on that. Now. The biggest trends are, you know, pre modular manufactured manufactured homes yeah, that they deliver, and even now 3d printed homes and I think it's probably gonna be a combination of that of 3d printed and Modular yeah, interior things that's gonna be. But you know, you look at it, it's like we're still have you seen in any? I don't haven't followed it, but population projections for the United States over the next 50 years. Have you seen what's the projection?
Dan: So they're three, you know, they're mid is probably, you know, and that's a lot of illegal people who became legal you know, so there's a ton of illegal People in the country right now right and everything. But they estimate. You know that the US is going to grow pretty much at. You know, if you look back 30 or 40 years probably, you know probably the same rate of growth to you know, one or two percent per year that population grows and but they're the Peter Zion in his books and I thought about him a lot on the pre bird podcast.
Yeah, but he said that the United States still has so much land. Oh yeah not, that's not settled. I mean it's. You know, it's geographically established. And everyone but he said the US could. This was. He was using three 330 million as the base number there and he said if you doubled the population 660 million the country wouldn't feel any more crowded than it does now.
Dean: Yeah, that's very interesting and I can attest to that for Florida in itself, yeah, but we was Hard.
Dan: As for it is like 30 million now, I think it is.
Dean: No, it's on its way to 30 million in by 30. By 2030 it should be 30 million. Yeah, it's 20, 24 million or something right now, but we're the fastest growing. They are alternating between Texas and, but we grew last year at 1200 people a day, you know. So we're growing a city the size of Orlando every year. Yeah, and there's plenty of part of the reason.
Dan: Part of the reason, I think, is the retiring baby boomers.
Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dan: And in other words, that I may be an anomaly, that I'm 80 and I'll be 80 in May and I don't feel the cold doesn't bother me. You know, right, cold weather, but there's a lot of people, you know, I mean if you have arthritis. You know the cold bothers you, you know and other things. But you know, I know I have no thought of ever and Babs would be with me here. No thought of ever living as our permanent home anywhere but Toronto right and.
But we visited, our favorite is Arizona, so we go to. Arizona a lot during the year, yeah, and. But I have no, you know, I mean there wouldn't be anything under. Well, one day We'll be able to go and you know they'll spend.
Dean: You know, spend you know, six months, yeah, some warm, and that doesn't really. That's playing into Florida's hand in that it's still part of the dream for many people.
Oh yeah, it's you know you when we were talking about guessing and betting, that you know I think that's a pretty certain guess that from you know what's not going to change in the next 20 years, that you know right now still we're in the middle of the, the baby boom, baby boomers turning 65, there's going to be 10,000 people a day turning 65 right now, which will be 2028.
Dan: 2028 is the year when all people born during the baby boom era are now older than 65. Yeah, 2028.
Dean: Yeah, so you look at that and it's like in the Northeast that is almost like you know. It's almost like mandatory military requirement. Back it up. This is where you get shipped to.
Dan: This is where you get shipped to yeah, yeah, yeah and, of course, the Northeast is by far the most expensive from a government standpoint is the most expensive part of the country. Yeah regulation and taxes.
Dean: Yeah, you know.
Dan: I would say from New Jersey right up to the Canadian border. You know that there's a movement south. I mean, obviously Florida has great attractions. You know, other than, but even economically, that your tax and regulations are way more tolerable than in the. Northeast. Yeah, you know I kid people who are from California, you know I. You know who are in the plant base. New York not so much New York, but California.
It's easier to pick on New York than it is, or pick on California than it is. New York, california was the dream place. You know, you went to. California. That was the great dream, and I said so at some point. Are you thinking about moving to the United States?
Dean: That's funny. Yes, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a client who's from Montana Bozeman, and he's. I said why is Bozeman so popular? And they said it's, it's. It's the closest place in Montana that you can be near the United States.
Dean: Okay, it's so funny, those places, there are lots of those like. We've got a client in Miami, in South Beach, and they said that's the refrain, that's their clients. What they like about South Beach is that it's so close to America. You know, you can certainly be in it, but not of it there.
That's the truth, you know, yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of what you know every, that's what's kind of buoying. You know Ron DeSantis, his, you know his polling is. You know, the only reason he's even in the running is because of you know people looking at what he's done for Florida. His whole campaign was make America Florida.
Dan: But that would be, you know, that would be candidate who just has had no United, no experience outside of Florida.
Dean: Absolutely Right, I think that's it.
Dan: Each of the states is a country and people. You know people have their. You know the whole notion that everything should be like one place.
Dean: Yeah Right, that's not it.
Dan: I mean, there were a lot of rookie mistakes that he made. You know you, yeah. The other thing is that he's running up against somebody who's done two complete national campaigns before this one. He's a great organizer I mean President Trump is.
Dean: I think everybody is. I think everybody is baffled by his. I mean, it's not even close the lead that Trump has over everybody else in the polling and in the you know the things. It's just what a year this is going to be, you know, to see how this all plays out. Yeah, and I think some cases.
Dan: some cases are going to, especially at the level of the Supreme Court, and one of them is, of course, the appeal to the Colorado move.
Dean: Oh yeah.
Dan: Trump can't be on the ballot and I think if the justice the justices, I mean it'll the Supreme Court will overturn it, but I think the justices would be smart to make it 9 to 0. Yeah, because this is and it's just an interpretation of one of the amendments the 14th Amendment, and that's you know, and, and they're going to establish that, and then that becomes the precedent. So all the other states, like Maine or anybody else is thinking about it can't do it you know, and that's the role of the Supreme Court are to interpret the Constitution.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: But that'll be seen as a big win. And then there's another one that he has where there's a special prosecutor who's after him and there's he appealed the special prosecutor that he needed to ruling and they said, no, this is your issue, you have to go through the court system. And that was a win for Trump. And and the whole point is everybody's desperately trying to get the actual trials because he's been indicted in before the election. But there's all sorts of ways that you can delay it into the future. You know, and anyway, so I was reading that the whole notion of January 6 and the insurrection, you know that's the key issue here, that January 6. And insurrection, but none of the charges against him are mentioned. The word insurrection, you know they mentioned. You know it's tax things that he hit documents with him, you know you know when he left the White House and everything like that.
But I don't think they're going to stand up to scrutiny and but everyone that he wins now is like his poll numbers go up when he's indicted. His polls numbers go up when the retirement is overturned his poll, numbers go up.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But he's 24 seven. The thing that the media know is that when they have anything about Trump, they get higher viewership and there's more advertising dollars and so they're caught because they'd like to take him down. But everything they do to take him down increases his poll numbers. Crazy, yeah, but it's interesting. But it's interesting like the. You know, my Jeff Maddoff and I did a podcast last Sunday and we were comparing the phenomenon of Taylor Swift, the phenomenon of Trump. Oh, wow.
Completely different. You know completely different world and everything but but each of them has created a movement that people feel that they can participate in. Yeah this is. Nobody in the music industry has what she has as a movement and nobody in the political realm has what he has in the. You know it's a nationwide movement. Yes that you feel you can participate in, and but it's amazing to me how heavy the field is.
Dean: You know, in terms of like, it's really only Biden and Trump. There's no real viable, no candidate. I mean even as much of a. You know we saw Robert Kennedy in Genius Genius network and you know they as running as an independent, which is, you know, that's a non-starter and there's no, that's not a difficult. That's not a difficult bet to guess. Even if he is a reasonable, you know it has some things and you start to see now even know there's nobody coming Behind, is not even any alternatives.
You know like you look at Vivek Ramaswamy and yeah, you know, although he kind of has Obama Undertones to reminds me, like as a speaker and articulator, communicator, but I don't know, for me he it's just the tone, that it's more important to him to be right, that he was a win. The argument you know through, yeah, clever Elecution yeah.
Dan: I don't know how that win the battle, but lose the war.
Dean: That's what it feels like to me. Right like that is just kind of that. It just has.
Dan: It's more important to him the real motivation is to prove that he's smart enough, or whatever you know yeah, and you know, I mean first of all the times we're in dictates whether people think that somebody's viable or not. And I mean this is a time of tremendous change. I mean, it's probably the Most change since the second world war. I would yeah that, the overall changes that we're going, and and everything gets Shaky and unhinged just when you have a big, when you have I just looked at like last night.
Dean: It was so funny. I looked at the you know the odds Makers, the. I found a cumulative thing and it's it's all trump. Trump is the the Betty market.
Dan: the bedding, yeah, the bedding market is all on trump, and that's yeah.
Dean: Yeah, and the betting markets.
Dan: They were wrong with trump the first time. They you know they were they. I mean they had Hillary, like Day before the election they had heard like at 85, 90 percent, you know, yeah. So so people say yeah, yeah, but that was a fluke, that was a look and I said, yeah, but what if the candidate candidate himself, is the fluke?
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: No, but I did.
Dean: Of all of the field. It wasn't. It's not like an 80 percent thing there, I think it was like 40 percent Likely, which is the top of all of the.
Dan: That was against the field, including everybody including, but what you go head on head, they all have trump Biden and it's like 60 versus 60 40, you know oh, wow, okay that's interesting and yeah, and that's what people are betting on, but that those, the betting markets, can be gained and and I'll give you an example was brexit, which happened, you know, in the may, in may or june, I think of 16 before the presidential election, and the interesting thing is that debates are a big thing in Great Britain and they're televised and there were 10 of them in the six months leading up to the actual vote on brexit Britain leaving the European Union and
and I watched them and with every debate the Leave side had all the emotional issues. The Stay side had a lot of intellectual, intellectual arguments and they were you know, they're British, they're very articulate. It was, you know, it was well said on both sides. But the the thing that really cracked the back against the stay side Was the european union decided, about three months before the campaign started, that they were going to regulate the electrical, electrical charge of teapots in Great Britain and everybody had to get rid of their teapot because they were using not too much. And this was coming from Brussels, you know, from the European union. You just lost it. You screw around with her because every If you have to change your tea cup, then every every day at three, three to five o'clock. You're talking right, get out of the european. You're not talking about.
Dean: You're talking about the football players.
Dan: You're saying let's leave Britain those suckers. They can't tell us, you know. So it's always like the bud light. One thing in the united states I said that was a crack, that was like an earthquake you know, that you're fooling around with our beer, can't you know you can't yeah you know, you can't fool around with our beer, can't I so funny you know and I think it's always comes down to a gut issue very emotional that everybody gets like everybody gets they're pulling around.
It's like you know, when they closed down all the schools, all the states that closed down the schools for it, they didn't close down the schools, they, they closed, I mean the individual schools for one reason or another. Can you know? Could you know have special reasons or anything? Else yes there wasn't coming from the top. There was no really on the schools and they did enormous damage.
We now know that there was enormous damage Done to those people right at the early stage, when they're starting to learn how to socialize or, you know, and I think we're going to see a damaged generation, maybe two damaged generations in the future, who, you know, had too much time on their hands alone. Yeah, my, my feeling is, and it strikes me right now, that trump just has a monopoly on all the gut, emotional issues.
Dean: I agree, like you look at, it's pretty amazing how Cloudlandia has really shaped the way we think about these elections, like I think, as cloudlandia has really become the primary place that the elections have. Probably you know, it seems they've become more contentious or more divide, dividing, and I don't know how to clear enough Remember you know what that happened.
Dan: Yeah, no way that happened. Yeah, and there I had a really good article on this and I had to do with how the media gets its advertising dollars. Right, okay and, first of all, the media got their advertising dollars taken away. Okay, because facebook and google have 70 percent of the ad money. Now just those two companies. Yeah, okay, so a lot of the media had to turn to a Subscription model so for example, let's take the new york times.
Yes and you know not my, you know it's not a paper that represents my political interest, but I always found it an informative paper. There were always good articles up until I would say, probably 10 years ago, okay, and and the reason was they made their money from newspapers that went to the street every day. Know that and whoever wanted to buy the new york times would buy the new york times. Yes but they were very thick papers.
The daily new york times was a paper and you know a lot of the pages. I mean 40 percent of the space was. Advertisers you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what happened then? When the, the advertising dollars went away, they had to go to a subscription model and therefore they just moved to the part Of the population whose politics agreed with the new york times, and they lost everybody. His politics didn't agree with the new york times.
And the same thing happened on on the other side of the political spectrum. So, for example, great bark, which is now a powerhouse On the, you know, on the internet that a strictly an internet. That's strictly an internet media company.
Dean: Yes, town hall.
Dan: Yeah, news news max town hall. These didn't exist. They really didn't exist. You know, 10, 15 years ago but, what people going to drift from the you know the media sources that they used to go go to because it just favored one side of the political spectrum. Look for new opportunities and these other, these other real, clear politics is another one real court pox has as emerged, and so that's what polarized things was the disappearance of advertising dollars.
Dean: Or the. You know, it's really interesting that you just brought something up that I thought about, that. You know the New York Times print edition, you were any. You had to get the whole newspaper and so you're getting all of the things, but when you're online, it's all parsed out to the individual articles the clickbait and who they're attracting, and then it made more sense to lean into the audience that you are attracting, right, that's.
So the bias became more pronounced, I think right or evident. You couldn't, on balance, balance it out in the entirety of a print edition of the newspaper, because it's only individual articles and pages that are getting attracting the traffic, you know.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's something.
Dan: Yeah, so I mean there's many other reasons besides that particular one. But from an economic standpoint that was the main economic reasons why polarization has happened, and you know, and it's become much more subjective to the reporting has become much more. You know, they're not reporting on the facts, they're interpreting the facts and commentating on the facts. So you don't have reporters anymore, you have commentators. You know. You know the reporters are building them the political message into the reporting of the facts.
You know, and I mean, for example, you can't get any reporting on global, on weather you know weather, you know extreme weather without somebody interpreting as just another sign of global warming, which is, global warming is not a scientific issue, it's a political issue, right, right, right, yeah, yeah, the science doesn't support it. I mean, yeah, it's going up, but we're coming out of an ice age.
Dean: You know, we've been coming out of an ice age for 10,000 years, and that's what I meant, that's what I always fall back on that, dan, that somehow we lifted ourselves, the planet somehow lifted itself out of an ice age without the aid of combustible engines and fossil fuels. Yeah, so somehow that was the it was possible. You know it was happening before.
Dan: Yeah where I live in Toronto. I was under about 500 feet of ice Right.
Dean: Right, right. So, the big thaw.
Dan: Yeah, it takes a while, you know, for glaciers to actually, you know, and it's just a gradual warming up and then there's periods when it, you know it dips down. You know that you got ups and downs and you know the temperatures. You know the temperatures, you know, and there's fluctuations. You know the the heat. Climate doesn't actually exist. Climate is a statistical average. All the weather, like, yeah, where Valhalla, where you are, the climate in Valhalla is totally determined by 365 days of temperate. You know of weather and they're just measuring it and they call that the climate. But, nobody experiences. Nobody experiences climate.
Dean: We experience weather.
Dan: Yes, climate is just, it's just an abstract term to measure. You know, all the weather in one place and climate change Even, yeah, even, in Valhalla, probably, where you, where you are, are you shaded by the oak trees?
Dean: We not particularly. I mean it's, they're there. No, it's not. The whole house is not shaded by oak trees, but there is shade in the neighborhood, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, but it's really interesting that if you where you go for coffee. It might be an annual average. It might be one degree warmer where you're getting your coffee than where people live.
Dean: Oh, global warming.
Dan: Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of like I was thinking about all these yeah.
Dean: It's like you know Deming I was sort of in rereading Deming lately and you know one of his, his, the funnel experiments, where they would, you know, move and adjust the funnel based on the last result. So it's kind of, and that created the greatest variation by you know adjusting with each data point, as opposed to you know adjusting the system.
Dan: Yeah, well, here's the thing, that one of the you know you had the polar bears as one of the symbols of global warming. Remember the polar bearer thing? This was Al Gore. He got on the. You know the polar bears, the actual, actually the population of polar bears, and there aren't a lot of them, but you know, they're in a particular latitude, above a certain latitude line, going or going around the world, and their populations actually increased since he started making a prediction that they would be gone right now. So they've actually increased.
But the other thing, that the other thing is really interesting are the Maldives. The Maldives about a thousand islands in a cluster in the Indian Ocean and the Maldives have been petitioning the UN that they need to get a lot of money because you know they're sinking in the sea.
The average height of the islands. You know, and there's, you know, there's a thousand, I think there's a thousand in the what's called the Maldive Islands, and you know, it's about two feet above sea level. So they said well, you know, in 30 years we'll disappear. So we have to have massive money to redirect our population. And but actually the the geography of the Maldive Islands, maldives, has actually increased over the last 30 years. They've got now more land than you know, than they had. You know. And all of a sudden you say, well, why'd that happen?
Well, they said, we're trying to figure out why it happened, you know, and what about the problem we're? Trying to. We're trying to figure out why it happened. You know which? One is that everything that we were saying before was based on ignorance.
Dean: That's a good explanation. Exactly.
Dan: Yeah, but what I was going to say? I was just thinking about this the other day. When you look at every cause, you know political cause, you know whatever cause you have, it's about money. Okay.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And every movement is a money making machine.
Dean: Yeah, that's. It's pretty cake or wrong really following the money.
Dan: It all comes down to Jerry McGuire. Show me the money. I'm going to explain any movement on the planet. Where's the money moving? Is the money coming in or is the money going out?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah, it was so funny because the Israelis, I think, 10 days ago, killed, I think, the number three Hamas guy who was living in Beirut. Wow, he was worth four billion a year. You know he made like four billion a year. And they've got the top six and they said you know we're going to find you and we're going to. You know we're going to kill you, but the top guys who don't live in Gaza, they live in Qatar.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Qatar. The pronunciation is Qatar. They're living in Istanbul, they're living in Beirut and I bet these are nervous people.
Dean: I bet yeah, yeah, could you imagine? I mean, that's kind of. It's an interesting. I had dinner with Leigh, or Weinstein, the other night, two nights ago, and you know we were talking. I didn't realize this, but you know he said there's only 15 million Jews in the world, the world, yeah, I would have thought it was way more. I mean, that seems such.
Dan: Well, it tells you the impact of the Holocaust or the Second World.
Dean: War yeah.
Dan: Without the Holocaust, there'd be now 35 to 40 million 40 million Jews. I saw a projection once. That's how devastating.
Dean: It was, yeah, at one point. Yeah, the Holocaust was probably 40% of the Jews. Which, yeah, if you implicate, I mean track that out. It's just like you were saying, yeah, probably 30 or 40 million, that would have. That would have been. I mean it's pretty, it's crazy, and the eight of them are in Israel or whatever, right, so that's.
Dan: No, it's not that high.
Dean: No, it wasn't it.
Dan: Actually Israel, just to surpass the United States, had six for the, you know it's not a fast growing a population.
Dean: Israel matters.
Dan: And I think they're at. The Jewish population now is could be maybe seven. It's on the way to seven, yeah.
Dean: Okay, so I wasn't that far off, yeah.
Dan: I think New York City itself has, New York City itself has two million.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: Two million. Yeah, yeah, that's wild. Yeah, you know they have a lot of history, you know. I mean, you want to know about what's happened to them over 3,000 years. Yeah, they've got a lot of history to talk about, you know, and what a self-granted is, and so so, anyway, yeah, it's really interesting, but they're not confused about who their enemies are.
Dean: Right, yes.
Dan: Anyway, I think it's meal time for you.
Dean: Yes, that is exactly right. I have wonderful.
Dan: What are today arriving?
Dean: Well, today Dan today, Dan, I have the Tuscan grilled pork chops arriving today with some broccoli, it's so good, it's very good and so yeah, I'm excited this so far this has been a really good. You know, removing of discretion in the pricing.
Dan: Row number one do not give Dan Dean Jackson discretion.
Dean: Right, exactly so. It allows, it allows rational Dean to make decisions for future team.
Dan: Yeah, and I get to enjoy them and it's projected into the future.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: We're into the future.
Dean: Yes, which is great, and so that, just for people listening, have discovered with in collaboration with Jay Virgin, we discovered we've chosen 10 power meals for me that are available on Grun Uber eats, and, using the pre order feature, I'm able to establish these deliveries at 12 o'clock and six o'clock and so bookend my days with these pre healthy meals. So so far, so good. Personal wisdom, yes, fantastic. So stay tuned.
Dan: Yeah, anyway, this was really good and this is about weather and location and dwellings.
Dean: And very interesting discussion. I love it. Well, have a great day, dan. A week, great week in Chicago, and then are we on for next week. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: I'm back in Toronto next week. Okay great, I can try. Yeah, all right. Okay good Thanks, bye, bye, okay.
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