Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep146: The Tides of Media and Innovation
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, We take you through the fascinating evolution of media and communication technologies. We begin by tracing the journey of written communication from ancient Sumerian pictographs to Gutenberg's printing press. The narrative explores how each technological breakthrough transformed our ability to share information, from industrial-era steam presses to the digital revolution sparked by the first email in 1971.
Our conversation delves into the parallels between historical technological adaptations and current innovations. We examine the story of a 1950s typesetter transitioning to digital technologies, drawing insights into how professionals navigate significant technological shifts. The discussion introduces the concept of "Casting, not Hiring," emphasizing the importance of finding meaningful experiences and team dynamics in a rapidly changing world.
We explore the transformation of media consumption and advertising in the digital age. Traditional media platforms give way to digital giants like Facebook and Google, reflecting broader changes in how we create, distribute, and consume content. The conversation touches on audience dynamics, using examples like Joe Rogan's media presence and Netflix's market evolution to illustrate these shifts.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan, and how are you? I am wonderful. Welcome to Cloudlandia, you are in the Chicago outpost. I am.
Dan: I'm sitting in a very comfortable spot, noise-free. I just had. Have you ever done any IV where they pump you? Up with good stuff.
Dean: I have yeah.
Dan: Yeah, I just came from that, so I may be uncomfortably exuberant.
Dean: Uncomfortably exuberant. That's a great word there, right there.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, uncomfortable to you.
Dean: That's the best.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, we have a good service.
Dean: The only thing I miss about Chicago comfortable to you, that's the best, yeah, so anyway, we have a good service. The only thing I miss about Chicago. Dan is our Sunday dinners. Oh the Sunday roundtable.
Dan: Yeah, it's a bit more informal now so we don't have a big gap. It's not like the Last Supper.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: We have Mike Canix coming over and Stephen Paltrow.
Dean: Okay, there you go.
Dan: They'll be on straight carnivore tonight.
Dean: Okay, good, I like everything about that.
Dan: Yeah, it's a little bit of snow on the ground and snowing right now, but it's nice.
Dean: Oh, that's awesome. Well it's winter here. It's like cool. Yeah, I almost had to wear pants yesterday, dan, it was that cold.
Dan: I had to wear pants yesterday, Dan.
Dean: It was that cold I had to wear my full-weight hoodie. But yeah, but it's sunny, it's nice.
Dan: I was just in the hot tub before we got on the call the Chinese intelligence, who are listening to this phone call. They're trying to visualize what you just said.
Dean: Yes, Well, I had a great conversation with Charlotte this morning and something happened. That is the first time I've done it. I literally I talked her ear off. I reached my daily limit of talk interaction. We were talking for about an hour. There's a limit. Yes, I pay $20 a month and I guess there's a limit of how long you can engage by advanced voice tech.
Dan: I'd give her a raise. I'd give her a raise.
Dean: So they were on her behalf demanding a raise. I'd give her a raise. So they were on her behalf demanding a raise from $20 a month to $200 a month, and I could talk to her all I want. I still think it's worth it. It really is. When you think about if we go through the personification again, if you think about what you're getting for 200 I mean, just the conversation I had with her this morning was worth more than 200, yeah, so you want to know what we were talking about. What were you talking?
about well, I am such a big fan of this, the big change uh book that I got for you.
That was oh yeah, by stuff like that. So I really have been thinking that the whole game has really been an evolution of our, of words, pictures, sound and the combination of words, pictures and sounds in videos, right, and if we take the big three the words and pictures and sound, that I, you know, we went all the way back to the very beginning and I told her I said, listen, what I'd love to do is I want to trace the evolution of each of these individually. I want to start from the beginning of how we let's just take text, you know, as an example for words, and so she's taking me all the way back to the ancient Sumerians and the invention of kind of the very first kind of visual depiction of words and language, and then all the way up to the hieroglyphics of Egyptians and then into what would now be what we know as the alphabet, with the Romans and Latin, Romans and Latin, and the way that they were distributed was through tablets and they would post posters and things to get things out there. And so I'll pause there and I'll tell you that the lens that I wanted to look at it through for her is to go back and find, just trace, the beginnings of the capability of it, right, the capability of text. So that meant we had to have language and we had to have the alphabet, and we had to have the tools, the mechanism to recreate these on tablets.
And then the distribution of them. How were they distributed? The consumption of them, how were they received and popularized? And then how were they capitalized? Who turned business opportunities into? What did this new capability turn into business-wise? So, looking, those four, tracking those four things all the way through history, from the ancient Sumerians, all the way through, and so when we got to, you know, from the time the Romans created the thing, the first kind of commercialization was the scribe industry.
That became a thing where people were employed as scribes to you know, to write things, things, and then it came into the monks.
We haven't gone deep dive in these yet, we're kind of going through the surface level of them. But the scribes, you know, were the first kind of commercializing and distribution of the of the things. And then when Gutenberg came along, that sort of popularized and made it even more able to distribute things and on the back of that became newspapers and pamphlets and books. So those were the three primary things for hundreds of years. Until the 1800s we had steam presses which were large, just kind of mechanized, sped up Gutenberg presses, and then the roller presses which allowed to have long, continuous streams of printing, which that really led to the modern newspaper. You know we had almost a hundred years until things were digitized where the entire platform was built on that plateau of things.
And then it turned into newspapers magazines were the dominant things and mail. Those were the big distribution elements for a hundred years and then, once it got digitized, we turned into email.
The first email apparently was sent in 1971 or something, but it took 25 years for that to popularize to the level that everybody had email and it was the primary thing and that led to PDFs and eBooks and distribution on the internet. We talked about bloggers because, if you remember, in the early days of the internet the heroes were bloggers. Those were the sort of personalities pre-social media you know. And then she even used the words that once it became democratized with social media, that things like twitter and and you know those were big things. But she talked about Arianna Huffington and Perez Hilton and Matt Drudge as the kind of first real mainstream capitalizers of this digital kind of went full steam into only digital, when all the mainstream print media was still kind of holding on and and resisting the migration of free news coming through you know um, and then we get to the point now where all of that is completely available.
You know medium and sub stack and you know email newsletters taking off as a thing, and then AI bringing into a situation where now the machines can create and distribute the content. And it's funny just that level. I was on a Zoom with Joe Stolte the other day and you know, with even your newsletter, the AI-assisted newsletter you think about those as things, that learning smart, personalized text, media consumption as a really enhanced experience.
So I found that really that was the first conversation that I'd had with that kind of context. I'm visualizing, I want to like visualize a timeline of these benchmarks. You know along the way, and realize how long the spaces were between when things actually catalyzed, you know yeah, long in comparison to what?
Dan: long in comparison to the last.
Dean: You know where we are now that long in comparison to what? Long in comparison to the last. You know where we are now. That long in comparison to that. There was no ability to print words on paper until 1442 or 1555 or whatever. I think it's 1550.
Dan: Yeah, so 1455.
Dean: Somewhere around there. Somewhere around there, yeah that literally did not change for 400 years till now. You know, in the last 25 years we've gotten to where we can distribute it globally instantly to everybody, and that we've also got machines now that can actually create the content itself and distribute on on your behalf and so I think that's our ability to create that stuff. Like I, I wonder how long and how many hours of research power it would have taken to get this level of what I gained from my conversation with Charlotte.
Dan: Well, you would have gotten a doctorate, you would have gotten a PhD.
Dean: Yeah, and it would have taken years to study all of that and to go back and find it all you know, but it was very, I found it very all to serve this idea that I think, in all of those digitized four corners, that we have reached a, a pinnacle, where we're faced now going forward with a plateau that really it's going to be about the creative use of. No, I think that's things.
Dan: Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, just a little addition to charl's work the conversation that you had with Charlotte. One of the reasons why the Greeks have such influence Greek thinking on the world, you know they essentially created history. That was.
Dean: You know that was.
Dan: Thucydides. And you know, herodotus and Thucydides were two Greek historians and basically their histories basically really formed the whole ancient world. And then you had poetry. Homer was the great poet and.
Plato and Aristotle and many others, many other Greek philosophers, but Greece was the first country that developed a really first-class. The Greeks developed a first-class alphabet. I think it may have pretty close to we have 26 letters. I'm not quite sure what they had, but it wasn't. I don't know if it was fewer or more, but maybe only by two or three letters they had, but it was really the alphabet. That is the breakthrough.
For example, we have two artists that work for us. They're from Hong Kong and growing up they learned all the. They learned all the ideograms that are in Chinese you know, and you know, and it's years and years and years of study where the alphabet you know. A reasonably intelligent first grader, or maybe even earlier these days, but a six-year-old, can basically grasp the alphabet and be using that skillfully, you know, within their first year of grade school, within first grade and that's what the alphabet did and that's why, you know, the literacy really came in.
But even then, when you know in Gutenberg today there weren't that many literate people, you know who could actually? Read, you know. So it wasn't so much the technology Well, the technology was crucial, but it wasn't so much why things. It's just that it took 400 years for the entire population to become literate. You know, and you know to have formal education to empower literacy.
That took a long time because people were working manually and they didn't have need for reading. They had to become good at things. Fixated now for about the last eight months on british navy historical novel assault taking place around 1800 to 1800. You know, and you know the majority of sailors on the ships didn't read they, they didn't have right reading, you know but, they were very skillful. They knew the wind, they knew the waves, they yeah, you know, they had phenomenal teamwork and they were very skillful.
They knew the wind, they knew the waves, they had phenomenal teamwork and they were very handy. They had a lot of hand skills and everything else, but it's been only recently that your progress in the world really depended upon reading.
Dean: Literacy yeah.
Dan: Yeah, you had to go forward. I remember that's one story. Just the Greeks. The Greeks that became very powerful, their philosophy still. I mean, every day in universities, or probably universities, there's discussions about what Plato said about this, what Aristotle said about this. So that's still. You know, the power of that over generations is really quite extraordinary. The other thing, if I want to add to that, my sister, who's 89, the man she married, who died about 10 years ago. When I met him, this was in the 1950s, he was a typesetter for a major newspaper in the.
Cleveland area and I would go down there and you'd see he put together a whole page of it and you know, and he had to do it backwards, he had to put all the letters. He had this vast, you know, he had these, they were like wooden shelves that had, you know, were divided into, you know, into 28 different, 26 different spots, and he would just pick up the letters and put them. But he made the complete changeover, starting around the 1970s, 1975. He made a complete changeover to becoming digital. It started becoming digital even in the 1970s.
And then he just kept progressing, layer after layer, until he was the production manager for the entire network of about five you know five municipal newspapers and everything like that yeah so his history sort of matches what you and charlotte talked about.
Dean: Yeah, and I found that really an interesting like multi-track way to look at it, as the technology and then the capability that created for the creation of things, the distribution of those things and the capitalizing on those things, because that's kind of like the cascading layers that happen. And I think if we look at where we are with AI right now, we're at that level where it was available below the surface until two years ago and then now it's sort of widely available as a capability. But all the things that are going to really come, I wouldn't say it's widely available used right now. I heard somebody talk about that. If we think about, like, if ultimately AI is just going to be internet, you know it's like if we think about what internet was in 1996, that's becoming. It's almost like chat. Gpt is the AOL of of what made the internet popular, right as everybody got on.
AOL and had access to email and kind of gated browsing.
Dan: Yeah, the interesting thing that you know if I just take your example from this morning, it's because you're a good prompter that whole thing happened. The whole essential skill. You know, if you take all the technology, that's a technology, charlotte's technology, and that's there, it's waiting there. It's waiting there to be used. But unless you have a good prompter it won't produce what you produced this morning.
Dean: I agree with you 100, and that's why it's all in the prompt prompting.
Dan: That means knowing what you want. It's actually a visualization skill because, you visualize something you know like in, not exactly because you, how you did it is unique, but my sense is that you had a question in mind, or you were just curious about something, and then you were able to put it into words. This was strictly spoken, was it? Yeah, uh-huh, yeah, so you didn't type anything in for this.
Dean: No, I did not.
Dan: Because it's strictly on an audible level, right, exactly, yeah. Anything in for this? No, I did not. Strictly on an audible level, right, exactly yeah. But here's the thing that no one else in the world did what you did this morning, and the reason is because you were just interested in it you were just interested in something and you know, and it was in conversation form, so now tell me about this. Now tell me about this yeah well, what she?
Dean: was saying was guiding my things. You know what? It's very similar, dan. It's like if we were to sit down at a piano and look at the piano. There's 88 keys of possibility there. Yeah, unless you know how to prompt the keys to make the noises.
Dan: Do you know what I mean? It's just noise.
Dean: I think that's really what it is, and I think that chat interactions or AI interactions are going to be the piano lessons of today. Right Like for kids to talk about essential skills.
Dan: And the outcome is going to be the music and the outcome is going to be the music.
Dean: That's right. That's right, yeah.
Dan: I've done about. You know, with perplexity, probably last week I've done about 25, you know where I one. That was really interesting because it was related to the book that I'm writing Casting, not Hiring with Jeff and I was saying, you know, the big thing is that we're only talking, the book is only for a particular type of person, you know.
Because, you know he has a wide range of people that he's giving them our small copy of Casting, not Hiring you know, our 60-page book and then he's interviewing them if they're willing to read it, which takes about an hour. If they're willing to read it, then he wants to know what they think about it. You know, but there's, like corporate people that he's talking to, there's academic people that he's talking to, and I said, you know, jeff, academic people that he's talking to. And I said, you know, jeff, there's only one reader for this. That's a successful, talented, ambitious entrepreneur who wants to grow. Who wants to grow, wants to make the growth experience really meaningful and purposeful for himself or herself, but also for the team members, for the members of the company that the entrepreneur owns.
And so he said, yeah, well you know how big is that market and I said, well, let's. So I did a search and I had my question. I just looked at it just before I came on the call. I said I want you to, of all the companies incorporated in the United States, the total number of incorporated companies in the United States in 2023, because usually their number. You know that you go back about a year before the present year that you're just sending, because there's an enormous amount of data for that.
Dean: And.
Dan: I said what percentage of all the incorporated companies in the United States are privately owned? And it turns out it's 99% and 33 million, 33 million incorporated companies. And and then I put in another prompt okay, size of companies 1 to 10, 10 to 50, 50 to 150, 150 to 500, above 500, and 74 percent of them are 74 percent or one to ten. And then, and I said we're really talking basically about companies up to about 150 that's the reader.
They have companies that are 150 and everything like that, and it's really interesting that this is the only person they said but there's this huge market of other. You know, jeff didn't say this, but other people said there's. So this should be a book for everybody. And I said, if it's a book for everybody, it's not interesting to anybody that's true, exactly.
Dean: Well, that's so. Those numbers have kind of um grown, because I've always heard about you know know, 28 million, but I guess the most recent that would make sense 33 million.
Dan: And it would be bigger today because we're you know, we're a full year and into the first month, so it would be bigger. The incorporations go on. And the other thing about what you're saying is you can be so specific, Like you can really put down all the interesting things about the reader you know, about the reader that you're looking for and you know so, while the capability that you're talking and I have some arguments with democratize you know the concept of democratize because there's a certain sense people are going to have equal capabilities.
I think just the opposite is going to happen. The range from people with a little ability or no ability to extraordinary capability actually gets bigger and wider to extraordinary capability actually gets bigger and wider. And the reason is exactly what I just said to you that you're the only one in the world who's ever gotten that information laid out and has it back in a very short period of time. And it's strictly because what Dean Jackson was looking for.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. I was very curious about it.
And I think that it's something. I think it's a unique perspective, especially when we overlay the other things. We only got we were talking about then sound. We only got we were talking about then sound. And it wasn't until the 1800s late 1800s that Edison created the phonograph, that we were able to capture sound and the evolution of that. Then it took another by 25 years later. It was the beginning of radio. That now we have the ability to capture sound, the ability to distribute sound through the radio, that it ushered in this golden era of radio as the distribution medium. And she talked about NBC and CBS and ABC, you know, as the monopolistic NBC was really the big giant.
Dan: Yeah, they were the giant.
Dean: I mean, they were the powerhouse of radio 1995 was the, or 1925, I think was when they were founded, and then the others were by 1927. Yeah, but that took off the radios in every household and all of that, you know, laid the. That created the mass audience yeah really right, yeah, there was.
Dan: Uh. Really, there's a writer named tim wu wu and he's just. He's written about five books on just the extraordinary impact of the communication technologies, starting when you said sort of you know. First the telegraph and the telegraph with sound. That's really the telephones you have. Bell is in there. So, Morris and Bell and Edison. You have the combination. And then Edison also created the movie. I mean, he was the real. I mean, he's the person who created it that became famous for it yes.
There were lots of people. He's famous for the light bulb, he's the person who became famous for the light bulb, but there were at least five or six working light bulbs before Edison. It's just that Edison was the first what I would call the modern entrepreneur, technology entrepreneur, and he really grasped where all this stuff was going, more than any other single innovator entrepreneur, and he understood the stock market and he understood how to raise funds and he understood how to market.
Dean: You know, yeah, yeah.
Dan: So you know I'm getting a lot of patents, so we got two more on Friday, so we're up to 54 patents now. And I was talking in the breakout group on Friday, I said we're really piling up the patents, and so somebody said well, how many are you going for? And I said I can tell you exactly I'm going for 1,068. Tell you exactly, I'm going for 1,068. Uh-huh, 1,068. I mean, where's that number come from? I said Edison had 1,067.
Dean: Oh, there you go.
Dan: That's the best, and I grew up two miles from his birthplace. So the farm that I grew up two miles away is where Edison was born, milan, ohio, and very famous, I mean he's just a roaring, big, major human being, historic human being in that area, and he's one of my five historic role models. I've got Euclid, I've got Shakespeare, I've got Bach, I've got Hamilton, james Madison and Edison. And I said Edison put all the pieces together that created the modern technological world.
Dean: It's true, isn't it? Yeah?
Dan: He's the first person to create a formal R&D lab. He had in Menlo, new Jersey. He created his famous lab and he had technicians and scientists and engineers there. And then you know, and then he understood the stock market and he understood you know big systems, how you put big electric systems together and everything like that, you know. The thing is that that's a history of entrepreneurism, the thing that you put together with Charlotte this morning.
Dean: Yeah, that was my intention, Because it's always some individual who just decides to do something more with it.
Dan: They kind of apply your VCR formula to something that already exists and they say what's the vision? Well, you have to have the vision, but you have to see where it hasn't gone to yet. I mean, that's basically what you have to. Vision is seeing where things have not yet gone to, but could, if you organize them differently? You take the capabilities and combined it with reach, then you. That's what the future really is. Vcr.
Dean: Yeah, you know I've had a nice VCR advancement, chad, and I have been talking a lot about it. Chad Jenkins, chad Jenkins, I've been talking about the VCR formula and so I had some distinctions around vision, like what is vision? And I realized there's a progression that it takes like from an idea or a prediction. Is the first level that you got a vision that, hey, I think this could work, and then the next level of it is that you've got proof that idea does work and that opens the gate for you to create a protocol for predictable repeating of that result and that opens the gateway to a patent, to protection of that.
Dan: So you predict, you prove you protocol or package and protect the 4P progression. I thought, know you know what. You know what it is. It's the ability to see, yeah, let's say, a reasonable time frame, not 100 years from now, but let's say 10 years from now. Yeah, that, if this were available, a lot of people would like to have this.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: That's basically what a vision is. That's what a vision is. If it was available to them and it was easy to use. They don't have to change their habits too much to use it 10 years from now and I think a lot of people not only would they love using it, they'd be willing to pay for it.
Dean: Of course, yes, I agree, yeah, and so I thought that was very, that was a nice, I mean every drug dealer in the world knows how to do that.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, you think about everything started out with an idea. I bet, if we did this, that would be oh, yeah, yeah, I bet, prove it. I bet, yeah, you know, steve jobs with itunes.
He said yeah I got interested in music. But when I go into a store, you know, uh, and, and I hear a song I really like, or I hear a musician I really like, and I hear them singing a song, or her I, you know, I'd like to be able to just get that song, but they make it really difficult. You got to buy 11 other songs, or 10 other songs to get the one song you know and you know, and, and I'd like to have it. You know, I'd like to have it on a small machine. I don't want to. You know, I don't want to have a big record that comes home and then I have to have a lot of equipment and everything to put on it. And you know, and you know, I'd like to, I'd like to think of. You know, I'd like to have a technology.
Dean: Yeah, I'd like to think of.
Dan: You know, I'd like to have a technology Getting a call from yeah, I'd like to have a technology that, the moment I hear the sun, five minutes later I can have it. You know, Mm-hmm. Yes, I mean it's so I think it's imagine, there's a capability multiplied by imagination. You know that's kind of like what vision is.
Dean: But you know, the interesting thing is that was true 25 years ago when Steve invented the iPod and the iTunes environment, but then over the next 25 years's taken another evolution. Right, it was still the ownership. Instead of owning the physical thing, you own the digital version of it and you download it onto your device. But now, when it got to the cloud and all the songs are available and you don't need to download them, it's like spotify said listen, we own all the songs, we got access to all of them. Why don't you just pay us nine dollars a month and you can have all the songs and just stream them? Yeah, and, and that's where we're at now, it's like. But I think that the next level, the thing we're at now with ai, is that ai is actually, specifically, that it's reached the generative ai point where it it can actually create songs. That's what's happening now.
Dan: Yeah, it's clearly a productive capability that you're exploring here we're having a conversation about. When did you have this conversation with Charlotte? Just this morning, when I woke up this morning, Okay, this entire conversation that we're having would not have happened unless um no, you did what you did for an hour this morning right, that's exactly right, yeah now let me ask you a question here, and it goes to another technological realm and it's big data.
It's big data, and so I keep reading about big data. You know big data, and I said and it's accumulating all the data. Okay, and so you have all the data. Okay, and so you have all the data. I remember having a conversation this was probably 10 years ago and the Chinese were developing what was called an intelligence capability, where they could gather information about what all the people in China were doing at any given moment. Okay, and then they could make predictions based on that. Nice, if wait a minute, so you got one point, you got 1.3 billion.
Dean: You know however many Chinese there are they're being listened to, you know, and however many Chinese there are.
Dan: They're being listened to, you know, and they're. Whatever they're doing, that's being read. And I said how many Chinese do you have to pay attention to what all the other Chinese are doing? I said they must have about 6 million people who, day in, day out, are just listening and they're accumulating massive amounts of data. Okay, and then I say, then what happens?
Dean: then what?
Dan: yeah, then what? Okay? Okay, uh, and I said so, what do you do with all this data? You know, I said it's overwhelming the amount of data you have. So what's happening with it and what it tells me is that there's no way for you to really comprehend what all that data means.
Dean: Yeah, I agree. I mean there's no, but you can argue that's kind of what Facebook does with the algorithm right In a way, of being able to predict what you're likely to click on next.
Dan: That's how they're at it, Well that I understand, but that's on the level, that's a commercial level, because really they're selling ads. I mean what Google and Facebook actually are high-level advertising platforms.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly what they are. I mean, that's what they are.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, and once you've said that, there isn't much else to say.
Dean: Once you've said that, it's over.
Dan: Well it is what it is and it's a bias, obviously, because it's just, you know it's, if they're spending money, not ads for Google and spending ads for Facebook, they aren't spending money for ads in the New York Times, or yeah. So all the newspaper advertising has gone away and all the magazine advertising has gone away, and probably all the advertising on television, because the number of people watching television is actually going down, you know. Well the actual, I mean if you're following social media or you're you know, you're on the, you're on your computer and you're looking at things.
Well, your attention can only be on one thing at a time and if I'm spending you know I used to spend I would say when I stopped in 2018, I stopped watching television together, but I calculated that it was probably I was probably watching anywhere between 15 and 20 hours a week times 52. Okay, so that's. You know that's 800 to a thousand hours and I'm not doing that anymore, so for I got a thousand hours back. He's.
I would say 800. I just evened it off at 800. I'd say I've just got 800 hours back. It's just gone into being more productive. I'm incredibly more productive in creating stuff. I have you as a witness. You know that it's going up in numbers. The amount of stuff that I'm creating.
it's going up in numbers the amount of stuff that I'm creating. So you know, here's the thing. I don't think I'm unusual in this. I don't think I'm unique on the planet in doing what this is. I just think people are moving their attention away from something where everybody was paying attention to it and now fewer and fewer people are paying attention to it. It's like Joe Rogan, you know, I mean.
Dean: Joe Rogan.
Dan: The people are watching Joe Rogan. Who did they stop watching or listening and watching to? So that's the big thing. Where are people?
Dean: going with their attention. Yeah, and you know I just heard a podcast talking about that. Streaming, you know, like from television. It's gone away from kind of linear television where you know they show one thing on one channel at one time and you have to be there at 8 pm to watch that one show.
Watch that one show and you watch it along with ads, right? If you want to watch this happening now, you watch it and you consume the ads. Well, when streaming became available, you know, if you look at that convenience, that it was so much more dignified that we can watch whatever we want to watch when we want to watch it, and there's a price for that. Everybody has migrated towards the, towards that, and now the interesting thing is that the streamers are Wall Street redefined. How they value the, you know, monetize or attribute value to what they have.
Because for a long time, netflix was rewarded for the ever-growing number of subscribers. Right, like getting more and more subscribers. It didn't matter to Wall Street that they were profitable or unprofitable. The only thing that they staked the value in was the growing number of subscribers, the growing number of subscribers, so for. So netflix would spend billions and billions of dollars on attracting creative right that would. That would get people to watch the. You know, come to netflix to see, because they only had original programs you could only get on Netflix and they overpaid for all of that content. So now.
Wall Street a few years ago decided that hey, wait a minute. These guys should be like any other business.
Dan: They should be profitable and so it always comes down to that, doesn't it it really?
Dean: does so they said you know, now Netflix has to cut corners, pinch pennies. They have to make things. They can't afford to spend as much to make the content. If you look at the line items of where they were spending the most amount of money, it's acquiring yeah, content to do uh so that's where the peak era of who's the guy?
Dan: who's the guy who runs Netflix?
Dean: Sarandon Tom.
Dan: Sarandon.
Dean: I think, but in any event they.
Dan: No, I was just wondering if he's one of the people who gave $50 million to Kamala Harris.
Dean: Oh, yeah, probably.
Dan: Yeah, I said he obviously doesn't know anything about returning or getting a profit All right, exactly.
Dean: So the other, the thing that we're finding.
Dan: What's Reid Hoffman? He's LinkedIn.
Dean: Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, linkedin. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Dan: But those people are all not giving a million dollars to Trump for his inauguration.
Dean: The thing that streamers have landed on now is that they have free models you can watch, but now they have ad supported things where you can watch anything you want, but they insert ads that are unskippable ads and they're finding that is more profitable than the subscriber the subscription revenue.
That on a per user kind of thing. They make more money on people watching and viewing the unskippable ads. So it's kind of funny that everything has come full circle back to basic cable, where you are. They're all bundling now so you can get because people were resisting that you had to buy netflix and you had to buy hbo and paramount and hulu and all these things, nbc and cbs and all of it so now they're bundling them together for one subscription and having ad supported views. So the big winner out of all of it is that we've won the right to, and have demanded the right to, watch whatever we want to watch, whenever we want to watch it. We're not going to sit on, you know. We're not going to wait until 9pm to watch this and wait a week to get the next episode. We want all the episodes available right now and we'll choose when and what we watch and for how long we watch it. If I want to watch the whole series in one weekend, that's up to me yeah, you know it's an interesting thing.
Dan: Uh, here and this relates to the whole story you told the whole historical story, going back to the sumerians. But one of the things I really notice is that the moment a new capability appears and you can utilize it, it's no longer wondrous. You've just included that in your existing capability, I can now do this. You've just included that in your existing capability. I can now do this. It's really interesting the moment you get a capability that just goes into the stack of capabilities that you already have.
So it's not really a breakthrough because it doesn't feel any more unusual than all the capabilities you had. So today this is kind of a you know you were. You started the podcast here saying I just did something that I've never done before with Charlotte you know, and then people said who's this Charlotte that Dean talks about? Well, dean actually created this capability called Charlotte. He actually did that, but now it's just normal. Now, what else can Charlotte do?
Dean: I'm going to do this.
Dan: But a week from now you may have done this four or five times or four or five more things. These sort of deep searches, that you did, and now it just becomes part of Dean Jackson's talent and capability stack.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, in the of the VCR formula, the sea of capability, that all this capability starts out with one person who has taken it's almost like Always starts with one person. Yeah, and it's a curiosity.
Dan: It's a curiosity thing You're alert to. You know, in our four by four casting tool, the first quadrant is called performance, how you show up. And I've got four qualities. One you're alert. Second thing is that you're curious. Number three is that you're responsive. And number four you're resourceful. And I would say you just knocked off all four this morning with this search, this conversation with Charlotte.
You just knocked off all four. That's the reason why you're doing it. So the key to the future in profiting, but utilizing and benefiting from this technology is you have? To be alert, you have to be curious, you have to be, you have to be responsive and you have to be resourceful.
Dean: Yeah, that's great.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, we're living, and then you get to do and then you get to do things faster, easier, cheaper and bigger yes, this is great, dan.
Dean: We're really living in the best of times we're just talking, dean yeah, we're already in it, but it's endless.
Dan: We're into an area of just extraordinary, idiosyncratic creativity.
Dean: This is it that now we have. Everyone has access to every capability that you could.
Dan: No, they only have access to the capability that they're looking for. Oh, boy yes. No, they don't have access to every capability. They just have access to the next capability they're looking for.
Dean: Right, this is mind-blowing.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great, but it is similar. This was better than the IV.
Dean: Your exuberance is showing.
Dan: Or maybe before you have an hour conversation with Dean, you get an IV.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, you have an hour conversation with dean, you get an iv. Yeah, exactly, did you imagine it's a triple play of an iv yeah, with a conversation with charlotte, followed by a conversation with dan sullivan.
Dan: I will try the iv next week yeah, and then eat a great piece of steak. And then eat a great piece of steak that's right Followed by a Rib eye is great. I think rib eye is my favorite.
Dean: Yeah, me too by far yeah.
Dan: Well. I love it yeah, this is great conversation.
Dean: I agree, Dan this is Things are heating up. I'm going to upgrade Charlotte and give her a raise 10X, a 10 times raise.
Dan: Tell her about that. You know talk to her and say you know, not only do I think you're more valuable, but Catchy TP thinks you're more valuable, Charlotte, and we're raising your monthly to 200.
Dean: That's right. A 10 times raise.
Dan: Yeah, who gets that? Mm-hmm? Okay, and you think about it.
Dean: It's just so valuable. All right, dan, thanks, bye, bye.