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Feb 7, 2024 • 56min
Ep119: Mastering Time Management
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Jan 31, 2024 • 53min
Ep118: Weathering Politics and the Evolution of American Homes
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Jan 24, 2024 • 53min
Ep117:Observations on Perception
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we take you on a journey through history and our complex relationship with time and its perception.
We discuss hidden economic forces that shaped pivotal history and debate if we live in the "best or worst of times." I share my experience with breaking free from television, only to be pulled back by sporting thrills and gripping shows, a reminder of how addictive media can be.
As we wrap up our discussion, we reflect on exciting developments on the horizon. We celebrate entrepreneurs who have adapted their businesses to thrive online.
 
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean talks about time perception and the fascination with having foreknowledge of events, particularly in the context of financial markets and the desire to possess tomorrow's news today.
We explore the human ability to adapt to a wide range of temperatures, humorously comparing our ancestors' robust survival skills to modern reactions to climate change.
Dean reflects on the concept of whether we are living in the best or worst of times, citing both the remarkable conveniences of modern life and the psychological challenges posed by the battle for our attention.
Personal anecdotes include Dean's success in abstaining from watching television for over five years, despite being tempted by his loyalty to sports teams and the immersive experience of a Netflix binge.
There's a discussion about the skepticism surrounding medical advancements and the difficulty in discerning credible health information in an era of conflicting opinions.
We examine the impact of technology on spontaneity and control in our lives, touching on smart devices and drawing a parallel to the controlling nature of HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey".
Dan shares insights on entrepreneurship, reflecting on the adaptability required to thrive in the digital age, such as the growth of his coaching program and the shift from in-person workshops to online formats.
We delve into the process of book production, noting the importance of releasing work to make room for new ideas and discussing technological advancements that have expedited the process.
Dean talks about integrating AI chat into books to allow readers to interact with content and contemplates whether AI could help guide readers through material by asking questions.
Coordination for an upcoming trip to Chicago is mentioned, where Albie will be joining Dean and Dan, indicating excitement for the visit and the promise of future stimulating discussions.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan.
Dan: I'm almost tapping in here.
Dean: Almost. That's exactly right as close as you can get without going over. We're you know we're going to be 12 hours away from it here, it's all very exciting.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, we were talking to Kim Daniel. He now calls himself. Daniel White and he phoned us from birth Australia from the future from the future from the future. So they're already. They're already into New Year's yeah, that's so funny. What a weird world, what a world for a world, you know.
Dean: I saw an infographic that there's an island. There's two islands up where Russia and Alaska joined. They're separated by three miles. You can see the other island. I like it once called tomorrow Island or something. What the American side is. You know 24 hours difference because it's right after the straddle the line divides them is the international date line. So they're three miles away, and yet they're 24 hours apart. Yeah that's really interesting.
Dan: You know people often have these quizzes. You know it's either you're reading the quizzes or you're being asked the quiz.
Yeah, and it's.
Dan: if you had one superpower, what would it be? Have you ever had anything like that, so many? I have you know I think about or you were you were a witness to this question being asked. And mine is that I would like to have tomorrow morning's Wall Street Journal yesterday.
Yeah, exactly Exactly. How great would that be, that could be.
Dean: The thing is literally what you should. That could be a loophole, Dan. Maybe we should go to these islands and subscribe to the Wall Street Journal on tomorrow Island.
Oh man.
Dan: Now take a bit of work. I mean, you still have to learn what to look for, and you know you'd have to have the means by which you could, and but that just reminds me. I think everybody would like to have that superpower.
Dean: They would like to have advanced understanding of the future Well you know what's so funny is one of the things that I wanted to talk about today, because it's, you know, explore. This idea is because I ranked it up there as one of the top concepts of the year for me, and that is guessing and betting, and essentially, what you're saying is it's absolutely true. The reason that would be so valuable is that it would bring certainty.
If you look tomorrow and see what the closing stock price of a any stock was today. If you knew that in advance, that it starts out at X and it's going to be X plus. Y at the end of the day, you're betting with certainty, and that's a pretty interesting. That's what I really thought about the that concept, and I'd love to hear a little more, because well, I think it's, I think it's been.
Dan: It's a thought that's been in the human brain since the first humans.
Dean: Yeah, I agree, you think that not knowing, I wonder where. I wonder how would that have manifested itself then in the beginning? Knowing where, the, I guess what would it be? Knowing where, the where the food is going to be, or something.
Dan: Well, I think, you know, I think probably it manifested itself in the first days of people just noticing the weather, you know, like wherever they were, that you know, that. I mean I think they probably, if you did Colby's back then, like a Colby profile that that the earliest humans really varied in terms of you know what they were skillful at and what they focused on Okay. And. But my sense is that there were some people who were more conceptual, who could notice patterns better than others.
And they could make sort of predictions which you know as it regard weatherers. That regarded, the wildlife around them or the you know. The you know availability of food. They would immediately go to the top of authority and in whatever group they were, because they just had a sense of what was going on and a better sense of tomorrow than anybody else did.
Dean: Yeah, that's really yeah must have freaked, I mean, imagine, not knowing with. I guess the first certainty would be well, even though the sun went away, it's going to come back up again, Yep, and then getting that certainty that, okay, there it is. And wait a minute, it's colder this time of year than what's all this white stuff. I subscribe to the Gary Halbert philosophy. He had a saying that God gave us a sign by planting palm trees in all the places that were suitable for human habitation. So if you wake up and you don't see any palm trees, keep bending south. That's his philosophy.
If you see palm trees.
Dean: You know you're in the right place.
Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and then you know you, it's very interesting. Everybody worries about global warming or they are making large amounts of money warning about global warming. I think that's more of a ladder than it is that they're actually worried. I think they've discovered a new way to make money? Yeah, but but if you think of the variations in temperature that humans can deal with, okay. So, for example, in North Africa, in the Sahara, people go about their business when it's 120 degrees up, 120 or plus, you know, in the Sahara.
And at the same time there I've been in Alberta in Canada, when it was 44 below and everybody went about their business.
Speaker 3 Yeah, so that's a difference, that's a difference.
Dan: Fahrenheit wise, that's a difference of 164 degrees Okay. And humans at one end, people are going about their business. That's the other. They're going about their business and they're freaking out about a one degree change, one or two degree change. And I said I mean, who of us doesn't go through that, even you know, in idyllic spots like where you live? Yeah, there's still a variation of 20 to 25, maybe 30 degrees during here, right, Right.
Dean: Yeah, no, it's been. It's been a little cold here Like I. Literally, I almost had to wear socks with my shorts today, dan, it's that's how chilly it was, wow, yeah.
Yeah.
Dean: And I have a hoodie on Wow. Just to stay one because I'm committed. I'm still sitting out in the courtyard have you done trauma?
Dan: Have you done trauma therapy on this?
Dean: No, you know, the funny thing about I mean, what they call the whole climate change is, you know, if we look back, it's a fact, scientifically accepted, that we were in an ice age at one point and somehow, without the aid of fossil fuels and combustible engines, the earth warmed itself out of an ice age. And now we're having a nervous breakdown that we're gonna, because of combustible engines, throw the whole thing off into.
Dan: I don't know, it's just See as an entrepreneur talking to an entrepreneur. That proves to me that there's money to be made in nervous breakdowns.
Dean: Give people nervous breakdowns. That's the thing, yeah, yeah.
Dan: You know, it's like the Jerry McGuire movie. Remember Jerry McGuire movie.
Dean: I do. That's a great movie. Where's the?
Dan: money.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Show me the money. Show me the money, show me the money. And I think that when you're trying to analyze any event on the planet which is being interpreted in economic, political well, not economic but political, philosophical terms, I say I think your first question has to be okay, who's making the money?
here yeah right.
Dean: That's absolutely true, absolutely true, and it's gonna be. Yeah, I think that you know I was sharing a couple of weeks ago the idea of my contemplation on whether this is the best of times or the worst of times.
Dan: And the answer is yeah.
Dean: That's exactly right. But what I realized is that there's, in terms of every physical measurement, every convenience, access to information, democratization of virtually everything. It's the very best of times. There's never been a better time than now, and on the worst, the best things that I could come up with are the most, you know, the things that would qualify as making it the worst of times, where all the battle for our minds and it's that creating those there's a lot to fixate on. You know that really has nothing to do with us in. You know, in reality, like when it's all mental, the inner game is really the battle, for Dean Landia is strong, you know.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's true, and just to bring you know the latest update, I'm now in my Almost six, five and a half years of not watching television.
Dean: I know I thought like amazing.
Dan: Yeah, and, but this was sort of the test for me this fall, because I'm from Cleveland originally and. I have the normal sports loyalties. Like I rude right, you know, I root for the teams I rooted for when I was eight years old and the Cleveland Browns are having a really quite an extraordinary season as the result of a 38 year old quarterback. Yeah, I've heard his name Joe Flack, oh, oh.
Who was sitting on a. Who is sitting on a couch Watching television or lying on a couch? Six weeks ago, when Cleveland went to their third quarterback of the year, went down and they brought him in. And he's been easily the best quarterback in the league over the last four or five years. Yeah and Just, I mean he's. Here's the Hollywood ending that they go to the Super Bowl and this guy comes off the coach and wins the Super Bowl. That's a great.
Dean: Yeah, it's the Kurt Warner story right.
Dan: Oh yeah yeah, this is even more because Kurt Warner was about 31 or 32, yeah, when it happened, but this guy's 38. He's he played 16 years and nobody wanted in this year. So it's just got all the makings of a great just a terrific Hollywood script you know, and. But ask me how much? What? How many minutes of Watching the Cleveland Browns this fall have I done?
Dean: well, you told me your secret Was that you watch the YouTube summary of the game.
Dan: Well, first of all, I watch whether they won or lost right, okay, perfect yes. If they lost, I don't watch the summary if they win. I watched the video.
And what I've discovered I?
Dan: what I've discovered is that no football game has more than 10 minutes of actual highlights.
Speaker 3 Right.
Dan: Yeah, and then? The one I like the best is where they just show your team's highlights when they want, which is about five minutes.
Yeah right right, right.
Dan: So rabbit pan. First game was 97 Jim Brown, olive fame and perhaps the greatest running back of all time. It was his rookie season and he broke the one game rushing record Day for touchdowns 200, 200 plus some yards. That was my first and I was addicted. It was like drugs, right. You know, you don't you give the first sample away free, and then the drugs do the selling for the rest of my life. Yeah and so anyway. But, tempted as I may be, this fall I did not watch a minute of television.
Dean: Wow, that's great, and you know I'm watching the.
Dan: I'm not watching the highlights TV, as a matter of fact, I'm looking at the TV. It's across the room for me.
And.
Dan: I don't even know where, I don't even know how you turn it on, oh, boy. Fantastic. It's like the Dark Ages. I've lost abilities that the Romans said. You know the whole.
Dean: You know, on the other side of that spectrum is Yesterday. I had two amazing things happen. So yesterday I Got up and I got coffee, and sometimes what I'll do is I, like Jerry Seinfeld had a series called comedians in cars getting coffee and it's just a fun.
You know they're 10 minute episodes, 10 12 minutes kind of thing. I think I'm someone in, so I sometimes I'm having like coffee, I'll sit there and I'll watch a comedians in cars getting coffee, and so I turned on Netflix to do that. And Netflix has this thing of pushing to your home screen, you know, through your algorithm or whatever, the thing that would be the most interesting to you, probably. And there was a series called money heist, which was a big thing.
You know, in 2020, when we were all in Lockdown based, this money heist series came on and everybody got, you know, fully addicted to it. It was really well done. It was just from Spain and it was Dubbed with English voices, but really well done. So, in any event, the third installment of this money heist series was front and center on my Netflix home screen yesterday and I Ended up no, this was Friday, sorry, I ended up watching the whole series on that Friday and the funniest thing, dan, is that I, for the entire day, thought it was Saturday and I didn't realize until the end of the day that I got an extra day.
Do you have those things where in the holidays the days just kind of blend all together? Because I haven't had.
Or anything you know and the way you do that, in the way you do.
Dan: We each, we all have our own approaches, you know, right on that was so.
Dean: That was the funniest thing. I watched the entire series of Fantastic and, but it felt like I just borrowed from my leap year day.
Dan: Something got that day. Now I'm thinking got.
Dean: I said something got heisted. That's exactly right.
Dan: That is exactly right. Well, you know, everybody makes a big deal about this today, but I don't think it was any different. Everybody wants to make Case that the world and humanity has never experienced before, of what we're experiencing to work, and I resist that thought. And I say well, first of all, we don't know, do we? I mean we? I mean we don't know what was going on in the world when we were five or six years old, you know, I mean yeah.
I mean, we were just struggling together handle on walking and running and Everything else. But people make all these things like Something like this has never happened before in human history and I yeah. I said first of all, vast majority of people haven't got a clue what happened 10 years ago so you know. I mean and you know some of some people it's last week and. Anyway, and I said actually probably, we all want to believe that our own age is something special.
And I said okay, well, that's something to remember that regardless of what age you're in, people want to believe that it's sort of special. Okay, and I get that, but my sense is it's always been special. One it's always been special, or two it's never been special. And but if you go back, and If you go back and read the thinking of people, where we actually have the documents Greek 2500 years ago, totally understandable, translated and Very thoughtful and you could learn a lot from these guys.
Okay so so are there people smarter today than our Air stock? I don't know, because I'm not sure how you would compare a smartness over in 2500 years.
Dean: Well, I mean, I think you can point to certain things. I mean you can point to Even just in. Let's just take medicine. You've just returned from your second trip to Buenos Aires to get stem, stem cells for generating cartilage in your knees Right and others and others.
Dan: So it's turning into. It's turning into repair and also prevention. So they're now doing proactive stuff for you know your brain and your vascular system and everything.
Dean: Oh, I remember. Yeah, so you know. I remember walking in Regents Park in London with Jamie Smart. We were walking around and he was telling me, you know he had written his new book at the time Clarity was out and he was saying how, in the 18, people thought that bad smells cause disease and so people would walk around with posies and fragrant things to ward off disease. And turns out that it was germs that caused this disease.
And so when you think about, you know, 2,500 years ago, advancements in medicine, you know we were, I mean, leaching and you know bloodletting and all of these sort of you know superstitious things I think were happening and they were thinking that some diseases were demonic possession. You know that's really what was going on, that bring people had seizure, that they were possessed by the devil or by demons. And so now you fast forward to today and we have DNA that with certainty can point to what your genetic predispositions are, and stem cell, you know, can go in and repair or modify those things.
I don't know.
Dean: I mean, I think that we are, I think, life expectancy. So I think in many ways we're constantly ratcheting forward society, right, and I think, with now access to you know it used to be. If you just take even 50 years ago, you know it used to be that all of the research and development and advancements in medicine were all done in silos, where you know proximity to those people or you know had to be around. And now we're at a point where every advancement that's documented and available is, you know, instantly analyzable by artificial intelligence and machine learning. So we have access to not just our own thinking but the analysis and you know computation skills or whatever, to everything to the hive mind. You know. I think that's really what we've evolved to. Is that you know it's not individual thinkers who you had to. 2,500 years ago you had to be in at the Agora to listen to Aristotle talk, to get the wisdom of Aristotle, or somebody had a scroll that had written down something that he said. You know Now it's like everything I don't know.
It's such amazing things that we have access to everything that's ever been said and can project forward in the style of what Aristotle would say today about certain situations. Like you told me, your story of having something interpreted and written as Shakespeare would write it in the Iambic pandemic right, and so I don't I mean, it's like in certain things any argument that today is not a pinnacle of achievement or Well yeah, I think we I've been, you know, pondering over the years what constitutes smart, because it's very clear to me that you can find examples of people thousands of years ago.
Yeah.
Dan: If the person were in the room and you could understand the language they were speaking they would strike you as being very smart.
Speaker 3 Yes.
Dan: Okay, and the couple of weeks ago in Congress we had three presidents of prestigious universities who, over a period of about 15 minutes, indicated that they're not very smart Harvard, mit and Penn, okay. And they were asked a fairly simple question Would anything happening on your campus in advocating genocide to Jews, with that constitutive violation of code of conduct? And they couldn't answer the question. Somebody 2,500 years ago could answer the question. So my sense is it's kind of like you're as smart as who you hang out with.
Yeah.
Dan: And you're as smart as your ability to deal with the your own unknown factors, like we all have unknown factors, and so my sense is that intelligence and smartness has to do with your creative response, or your either creative or reactive response to kind of the conditions that you're living in. You know.
You know, and, for example, it's pretty well known now that the people of the South Pacific pledged all over just understanding the color of waves. They could see that there were different variations in the color of the water sea water and they could make predictions based on that. I doubt if there's any human beings today who can do that.
Yeah, but I wonder yeah, I mean that's so the thing that I'm saying, I think that human intelligence is kind of a constant and you know, people in the earliest humans were kind of smart in relationship to their circumstances and we probably couldn't survive for a day what they could survive for a year, you know, because we didn't have their knowledge and experience. So I think we have access to great medical breakthroughs right now, but I haven't met a regular doctor yet that knows any of those breakers.
Dean: Right? Well, because there's a whole.
Dan: I just use my general. I just use my general practitioners for drugs drug dealers.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Good drug dealers.
Dean: Yeah, but there's a whole. You know there's a whole, especially in these medical things. There's a lot of. That's one of these nervous breakdown things that there's a whole lot of. For every advancement or every miracle cure or protocol, there's someone, there's a vocal and official sounding opposition to it.
Yep.
Dean: It's really. This is where it's really difficult.
Dan: You can count on that. Is to discern what the yeah, because somebody's pension is at stake, somebody's reputation is at stake, somebody's livelihood is at stake because of something new, because of something new Because they stopped growing 20 years ago and they've been on autopilot and suddenly they've been interrupted. Something new what we've?
Dean: got to stop. Is you look at something as devices, as vaccines? That's been the. You know the number one kind of contention in the last four years is the whole. You know the on both sides. You know it's either is it a miracle or is it killing you Is. You know and you don't know the normal answer.
Dan: The answer is yes, and the answer is yes.
Dean: Yeah, I mean it's so funny. But true, right Like so.
Dan: I mean the whole thing, that there was some wisdom, that they had before COVID, which they disregarded. One is that what you have to do is go for the 65-year-olds and older and protect them.
Yeah.
Dan: Protect the humans that are over 65. That's because there's a likelihood they've got a lot of other conditions that this will put them over the edge. This new thing will put them over the edge. Okay, no they want to start at six months old, they want to start at a year old, you know.
Yeah.
Dan: I mean, the masks were bigger than the child's head, you know Right, and everything like that. It had nothing to do with medicine. It had nothing to do. It had a lot to do with control. Yes, yes, and I don't know if we've learned anything about vaccines over the last four years, but a large portion of the public has learned not to trust healthcare experts.
Public Right, especially public healthcare, that's what we've learned. Yeah, I mean, that's what we've learned Exactly.
Dan: Yeah, like, don't go to the water hole at sunrise or sunset, right? Yeah, I mean, that's the truth.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I mean creditors show up for easy eating. Yes, you know. So my sense is a lot has been learned over the last four years, but I don't think it had anything to do with vaccines.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I agree, and that's, I think, from the you know, for the general public, for people you know observing this, it really creates the sense of you know, nervous, breakdown level things, of you know that there it feels like you're there's no right answer, that it's wrong. You know that you're either COVID's going to get you or the vaccine's going to get you and you can't make the right decision. People are not there's no uncertainty in the decision.
Dan: Are your Tesla is going to explode.
Right, exactly, or they're going to you know, and there's the thing, right.
Dean: That's all part of it. That's what your Tesla is going to be shut down. You know that the government's going to control. Yeah, I mean, there's so much, yeah, I love this.
Dan: You know, I mean I'm not. Babs loves her Tesla and she has the same model you do, and she's had it for six years and she loves it and I love Babs, so it works. But I really liked my Beamer. I really liked the Beamer we had before.
Dean: You know what?
Dan: It didn't get any smarter in the garage overnight. And when the car goes into the garage when the car goes into the garage before dark and we close the door. I don't want a smarter car. When I pick up the phone, oh my goodness.
Dean: You know, what's so funny is I think it's so presumptuous, so fun. I wake up, I get in the car and it tells me it's nine minutes to Haven Bakery, haven Cafe. It's like telling me that. Or at Honeycomb Cafe, it's telling me nine minutes, traffic is okay. It's presuming where I'm going.
Dan: Well, why can't you just take a chance? I wonder how the traffic is going to be this morning. To see that there's a pleasure has been taken away from me.
Yeah yeah.
Dean: It's so funny, right? I don't have any, you've got certainty and I just push the button and let it drive me there. So that's the greatest thing you know. It's so funny.
Dan: Yeah it's like you know it's 2001,. Stanley Kubrick's movie. What was the astronauts name? I forget, but that Hal was talking to us. What do you think you're doing? Was it Doug? Or I'm trying to think he's.
Hal Dave.
Dan: Yeah, hal was the computer you know yeah. Which is just IBM. You know, if you take IBM backwards, you come up with Hal, but anyway, and it's saying what do you think you're doing, dave?
You know, like that.
Dan: It's nine minutes to the coffee show, Dave.
Dean: Right. Why are you turning left?
Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, why are you?
Dan: even wondering Goodness, that is funny though that your car.
Dean: You wake up and your car is smarter it was. Oh man.
Dan: Oh, you said it at the beginning. You said it was the beginning. Dean, that's all a fight and competition for your brain, that's what it is.
Dean: It's the absolute truth you know, and I think that you, you know, I think you've cut off the good portion of that access to your brain by removing yourself from programming television and you're becoming the program director.
Dan: Well, think about this as an entrepreneur, that if you want to know the distinction between an entrepreneur, and a non-entrepreneur you know and I think about this a lot because I've been at it for 50 years right now, and I've asked that question a lot, you know. Do you think entrepreneurs are born? And I said well that I couldn't attest to it.
Yes, they were born, but you know, or you know, is it learned? And I said well, I don't know the answer to that question, but I would say that the entrepreneurs I know were on a path that was decidedly different, probably before they were 10 years old. They weren't going along with the crowd, they were.
they were doing something individual, kind of on their own because, they were very curious about something, and most people who aren't entrepreneurs were more socially addicted. You know what did the group think and what they had, but if you think about that, you're a self programmer. The big thing about entrepreneurs is that we're self programmers, in other words, we program the next day, we program the next week, we program. You know, here we are on New Year's Eve and both of us are programming the next year and it really doesn't have to do with anybody else's programming.
Dean: Yeah, that's the greatest thing. This is going to be a big 2024, it's going to be a big year. I mean you're about, you're going to turn 80 in.
Dan: May, yeah, and it's 50 years coaching 50 years coaching since and the company. The program is 35 years old, so yeah, they're at 35th and yeah, I mean, yeah, they all three of them happened this year, but but I mean we just came off our best year ever. I mean just in terms of you know new people into the program and everything else.
Yeah, we hit 52, which was great. 952 new people in the program that's awesome, and except for two presentations, I didn't have anything to do with that. That's a real, that's a real good measurement for me.
Dean: Yeah, for sure. And now this year, this will be your first year with only free zone workshops.
Dan: No that was.
Dean: This was your first year.
Dan: Yeah, this I stopped, I stopped. I'm just trying to take one. Did that Cross over?
That's what I'm wondering, yeah.
Dan: No, it was January of last year, January.
Dean: Okay, so this year was yeah, I've gotten a full year full year with only free zone.
Dan: Yeah, right, and you know, really caused a lot of tension for a lot of people in the company and everything else and I said, well, it's going to happen sometime. Why don't we just make it happen right now?
Yeah.
Dan: And you know there was pushback and you know the usual sort of thing. But my way of creating change is just to create a vacuum. Yeah, right, something's going to fill it.
Speaker 3 Throw your hat over the fence. Yeah.
Dan: So I announced in the middle of just trying to take care. I announced in the middle of 2021. So it was June of 2021. At the end of 22, I'm not going to do any more 10 times workshops.
Right, yeah, I remember.
Dan: People said, well, how are we going to do this? And I said my security clearance doesn't go that high, I just have no idea. I just know that after the end of next year I'm not going to do any 10 times workshops. Okay, and. I've done this enough in the past. People and Babs and I had already worked this out, so that wasn't Babs and I are saying that something's going to happen. Well, that's not negotiable.
Dean: Right, yeah, that's awesome.
Dan: But we have five coaches, who you know, who had to jump to the next level, and they did a good job and the renewals are more or less the same as if I was doing the workshops at the end of the first year, pointing off here, pointing out there. So you know, and you know, and I think we had 180 people who moved from the signature level to the end times. So that was great.
Dean: Oh, I didn't have a.
Dan: I didn't have anything to do with that, and the more things that can happen in the company that I don't do or don't even know about, the better I feel.
Speaker 3 Yes, yes, that's yeah that's pretty exciting, I'm talking about. I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I bet it.
Dean: I'm sure any dip in the you know 10 times conversions or whatever was offset by people in 10 times who want to stay with Dan moving up to freedom. Imagine that was offset by that. Yeah.
Dan: Well, it pushes. It pushes both ways. But the one thing that we realized, that I hadn't thought of that. Really worked out great, and it's only because of COVID. It's the two hour.
Zoom workshops, yeah, so every quarter.
Dan: I do six two hour 10 times workshops and I do two hour free zone workshops and that little two hour thing, which was only possible because of COVID Nobody, nobody watched Zoom before. Covid has made a world of difference. It's made a world of difference. So I was only going to do that for a year and now I'm going to. I've extended it to the end of 24.
And I like that yeah.
Dan: But I like it, I like it and everybody else likes it, and it seems to work. But I don't think that would have ever happened if I hadn't just said no more full day in-person workshops.
Dean: Right, yeah, that's fantastic, so you're coming up now. This is interesting, then the when did your quarterly book? Did that start on your birthday? That was the end of the end of 2014.
Dan: So next December it'll be book 40.
Dean: Right, okay, there you go. And we're just curious about your intention and your plan for your 80s being the best decades.
Dan: Well, I'll do 40 more books because I'm not to 100 yet. So, and they're getting better. I mean, I can tell the feedback from our longtime clients. They said you know the books are really, they're really getting more interesting. They're not just program tools that you're explaining, you're doing right, doing all sorts of different things, but the insight I had, dean, was that a lot of people spend years, even decades, on books Okay, which, yeah, aren't finished, which aren't finished, right, and they they maybe have 20 or 30 chapters and each of the chapters are kind of interesting, not equal to each other but their interest.
I said, why don't you just take one of the chapters and turn it out as a book? And of course you and I went through the early days when you could do this quickly, when you had the 90 minute book idea and are continuing to do that. And then I think it was who was it that came up with they could turn a book around in a week for you if you just send it in for them. Who is that Amazon? Is it Amazon?
Yeah, I think it's Amazon Exactly.
Dan: Yeah, amazon yeah, and we use.
Dean: yeah, I mean it's yeah.
Dan: And yeah, and perfectly good, you know, perfectly useful, and but we've got our own. You know print shops here in Toronto and it's a lot cheaper than in the US. We found out that a point to realize for you living in the States that getting a book printed in Toronto is about 40% cheaper than getting a book printed in Chicago, dollar for dollar. You know Canadian dollar.
Dean: Wow, Even after the exchange rate right.
Yeah, yeah.
Dean: After the exchange rate yeah, yeah, you're, yeah.
The other thing is yeah, my head.
Dean: You know it's not a unique. You have a one of one style of book. That everything about it, from the double cover to the thickness of the color cover, to the paper stock on the inside and the color scheme, and you know it's one of one. There's no, there's nothing else like it.
Dan: Yeah, and I've told people you know you're sitting on books. I mean you're always talking about writing the book. But where's the book? You know, why don't you just get the book finished? And they said well, you know, you know. I said I said you're thinking about it too much, you're not executed. I said just get the book out there. I said it's not going to change the world, it's not going to be a bestseller, they're not going to make a Hollywood movie out of it. So Right.
And what it does is it gets some old ideas in your head out so that you can have some new ideas.
Dean: Yeah, the truth isn't it. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what a collection to going all the way back to book number one and then to book, you know, whatever you're at now I'm working on 7 right now.
Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Well, I get a lot out of it and of course we've got great teamwork inside the company when we started with your team actually the first one.
Dean: I remember the first couple Thinking about your thinking that was the first book.
Dan: And then you know, some of our team members said well, we could do this, and we could do this, and we could do this. And I said that's great. Plus, the technology just keeps improving. I mean, if you think I started that in. Where's the technology today compared to where?
it was in 2014,.
Dan: You know.
Yeah, yes.
Dan: So my cartoonist Hamish McDonald. I estimate that every year I get the productivity capability of another Hamish just because of the upgrades to software and hardware.
Dean: To the tools he's able to use and deploy.
Dan: Oh.
Dean: Yeah, oh yeah.
Dan: I mean, like I'll, we're right at the end of the book I'm working on. So we're just working on the conclusion and the program where we describe strategic coach. Those are the last two sections. So on Tuesday I'll sit down and we'll sketch out what the cartoon is going to be for the conclusion. I've got the outline, with the outline copy all done, so we can read it.
Yeah.
Dan: And we'll sketch it out and we'll have another meeting on Thursday and he'll be 90% finished Full color.
Yeah.
Dan: And we do a little tweaks and then in the last 10 minutes we say well, let's look at the next section and he'll sketch it out, and on Monday of the following week he'll be finished with the cartoon. Book one that was a 10 day process for. That was a 10 day process for one sections cartoons.
Dean: Right, well, it's wild. And now I guess you know I mean book 36,. You've got all of the ear. You've evolved it into all of the ways to consume. Now you know that you've got the cartoons and the audio and the video.
Dan: Yeah, so we're going to do one new thing that Dean and we could talk about this. We're going to do one new thing, probably the first quarter. I'm going to take one of the books and we're just got it down to choice of three and we're going to create an AI chat on just that book. Okay, so the entire knowledge base will just be the words that are in that particular book. And then we'll use, and Leor Weinstein is helping us with this.
Dean: And then.
Dan: So in addition to the audio, the video, the cartoons, the text, you'll also get the AI and you can ask the book questions and it'll answer you.
Dean: Do you think, dan, this is? I've had this in this conversation. Maybe we could have a whole discussion around this, but because I you know this is a very real capability of AI right now, but I think that there's. I would rather have the AI ask me questions and guide me through the process than me having to ask the questions. Yeah because that requires me having included yeah it requires work.
Yes, that's exactly right. We're inquiring, you and I, how that's exactly right, and I would much rather I would love to have an AI coach me through applying this to me.
So it was hey that hey, hey, hey yeah.
Dan: Well, I think you should go get in the car and take a 15 minute, 15 minute drive to the car.
Dean: I think that's not you know, because somebody else. No, no, no that's brilliant.
Dan: That's brilliant. Let's talk about that. Yeah because somebody else that actually indicates some intelligence, doesn't it?
Dean: Yes, but the thing is that you know that application where, if I could go through a track, it's like a guided thing. If you could train the AI as a coach in this to guide somebody through where they're at and how this would apply to them, like somebody had, because somebody was training up a Napoleon Hill that you could chat with Napoleon Hill and you could ask him any questions. And I just realized that much better experience.
Dan: You could have one from Jerry Spence. Yes.
Dean: How great would that be right, Jerry Spence coaching.
Dan: Well, he would ask you all sorts of adverts questions before you know that's, that's his book is great, by the way, you put me on to him. Yes, you know more or less his autobiography. But nice person, I mean he comes across. I mean probably a prick if he was the opposing lawyer in a trial, but he seems like, if you had him on your side, you'd feel good about him.
Dean: That's exactly true. I need to reread that again. That how to argue and win every time is one of my top wisdom books.
Dan: Yeah, Anyway what did we cover today? What are two or three things that we covered today?
Dean: So follow the money, follow the money.
Dan: Yeah, we found out about what the Hamas is about. All the money was in Kedr, you know the country of. Kedr. The three top people were worth 6 billion, 5 billion and 4 billion. So that's what Hamas is all about is about money, you know, and their racket.
Dean: That's amazing.
Dan: Anyway, yeah, but okay, follow the money. What's in the other thing?
Dean: Yeah, I think your strategy. It's always amazed me this last five years of your disconnecting from programming.
Dan: Yeah other people's programming.
Dean: Other people's programming.
Yeah.
Dean: I think that's a big thing. One thing we did not get to talk about that I want to maybe present next time is I watched another Russell Barclay video and they're talking about executive function and the. It's really an interesting distinction but the difference between you know what and how, knowing what and how is not effective. That the ADHD brain is not. It's not inhibited in the knowing what and how to do. It's the when and the where. That is where executive function comes in and I found that that's absolutely the truth in a real. It sounds so simple and obvious, but it's the absolute truth. That's the thing about you know. Imagine if you applied yourself. Applying yourself is only evidence in the when and the where, both where, when and where. Future and when and where is this going to happen and when and where did it happen? You know what actually happened.
That's the an often those don't align. I find for me that's the biggest. That's the biggest disconnect is knowing what I want to do, knowing what you know, how it needs to happen, even projecting when and where, but the alignment of you know missing the exit kind of be interesting with the intention.
Dan: That'd be an interesting question, yeah because, the appropriateness of things is really not the what or the how the appropriateness is really the when and where it makes appropriate or inappropriate, you know yeah. Yeah, great topic.
Dean: Yeah, how about for you? What was your take away from today?
Dan: Yeah, I think that the big thing that I'm zeroing in is the bet that human nature is fairly constant and that changing times simply means humans using different capabilities that they've already developed for new purposes, but the basic human nature remains fairly constant, and the more I mean it was, you know, was Jeff Bezos was asked what do you think's going to change most in the next 10 years, and he said the thing I'm most interested in what are the 10 things that aren't going to change? Yeah next 10 years, because you can actually bet on those.
Yeah bet on those better than what is going to change Awesome.
Dean: Well.
Dan: I think we, I think we, each of us, says on our part today I think so Absolutely.
Dean: I can't believe it. Let this quickly Alas, it did so, yeah, and.
Dan: I'm we're in the schedule for Albie in Chicago next week. But we're in the schedule, so I'll talk to you from Chicago.
Dean: I love it. That sounds great. All right, happy New Year, dan, to you and Babs. Have a wonderful night. Okay, we'll talk to you soon.
Bye.

Jan 17, 2024 • 57min
Ep116: Creating Conversations That Drive Business Forward
Today on Welcome to Cloudlandia, we explore the effectiveness of small gatherings and the meaningful conversations that can be had through them. We talk about how small workshops help establish a richer exchange where each voice can fully engage.
We examine the nuanced difference between self-promotion and truly understanding clients, inspired by Walter Payton's philosophy of emphasizing outcomes over features. Entrepreneurs rethink their approach after test-driving innovative thinking tools highlighting benefits.
Later, we unpack exercises that optimize communication and outcomes. The 'who, not how' focus and 'self-milking cow' concept streamline processes.
 
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Dean explores the influence of group size on workshop conversation quality and how smaller groups encourage more unified discussions.
A new thinking tool inspired by Walter Payton is discussed, which prompts entrepreneurs to emphasize outcomes and benefits in their market presentation.
We touch on the importance of 'field reports' over 'book reports' for showcasing tangible, real-world business success stories.
Personal testimonials from entrepreneurs highlight the Strategic Coach program's transformative effects on both their personal lives and businesses.
Dean shares insights on achieving "dream come true" outcomes for clients, stressing the importance of being genuinely interested in clients' experiences.
A health practitioner's journey is spotlighted, from selling a low-cost ebook to offering a comprehensive service for reversing type 2 diabetes.
The concept of the 'self-milking cow' and the 'who, not how' approach is examined for improving efficiency in lead generation and client relationship management.
Initial success stories from the real estate division's accelerator program demonstrate the practical results of innovative business models.
Dan shares his personal health journey with stem cell therapy and neurofeedback, noting improvements in cognitive function and overall wellness.
We discuss the role of blockchain and smart contracts in protecting intellectual property, with a nod to Dean's experiences after returning from Argentina.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Mr Sullivan. Ah, mr Jackson, welcome back to.
Dan: Cloudlandia. The world is still going on as it was before.
Dean: It was the best times it was. Mr Times, welcome back. You've been expanding your footprint on the planet.
Dan: I have. I have yeah, I've got to do something about that. I'm maybe a new pair of shoes or something like that. Yeah, we were at Genius in Scottsdale and then we were in Chicago for a week and we did the smaller free zone workshop, which is different because you know, it was about 20. We had about 20 and it's very interesting. I've never really quite figured out what is the optimal size group where you get the best conversation but it's just different. You get different kinds of conversations. I agree, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: I find out with my breakthrough. Blueprint events same thing, Like.
what I find is 12 is the maximum size If you want to have one conversation. We're around one boardroom table, everybody could see the whites of everybody's eyes and keeping the conversation all front and center. When you get even to 14 people, you get into a situation where you end up having fractured conversations. You got a conversation over at this end of the table and it's less. Yeah, it's harder to have a breakout conversation in a small group of 10 or 12 than it is in 14 or 16 or 20.
Dan: Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, we push for the 40 to 50, and then we have individual breakout groups throughout the day and make sure it depends on what your objective is. I think with your case it's very important that they get a unified sort of understanding of the eight profit maximizers.
Dean: Activators.
Dan: Yeah, activators, yeah, I think you should make a maximum, since you're going for profit anyway, I think you that's right.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Dan: You're putting in the work. You're putting in the work anyway.
Dean: That's the advanced program.
Dan: We'll start out with the activators yeah, yeah, first they learn the activators where they're again. We just gave you 50 more years of future, just in a single conversation.
Yeah, I tried out two new tools and the thinking tools in the free zone workshop and one of them really had a big impact and it's from a quote from Walter Payton, who is a very famous, running back in the national football league Hall of Fame, chicago Bears and he had and I heard this about seven, eight months ago Reddit and it has just kept bouncing around in my head and usually when that happens over a period of months, I'm supposed to do something with the thought and the thought is when you're good, you tell everybody. When you're great, everybody tells you.
Dean: Right, that's very good, and so I like that yeah.
Dan: And I came up with a one page layout structure where they can put in certain experiences, and but you know, I had them do. One was when you're good, what do you tell them? And then the other column was when you're great, what do they tell you?
And then we had a brainstorm for two minutes each for each column and they wrote down about five things on one and five things down on the other and the statements were starkly different. They were for me. I did the sample copy and they were starkly different. Yeah, and I wonder what you think about that, because I haven't really put names to what's happening there.
But, it seems to me that, first of all, we're using our experience on the left hand side, which is the good side, as a contrast to the great side, and we're saying this is what we do and this is how we present it, and this is the steps that you'll go through, and this is this. These are the names of the tools that you're going to be using.
Dean: But on the other side.
Dan: They're completely different and they the comments they come back or how they've taken the tools and used them and what they've done to their life.
Dean: That's my initial thought, that I think that on the left side the good side I think that people would tend to focus on features of what they and on the right side would be reporting of benefit. I think that's a good. That's probably accurate, that they're talking in terms of results and the left side would be talking about the process and result, ideas and outcomes. I think you could have a whole vocabulary of left and right.
Dan: Very interesting, because what I did then is pick the three best from both sides, so there's a little lower column and they pick the three best. I says you can rewrite them based on your first draft, your first draft and now you do a second draft. And then I say I'd like you to go to the triple play sheet and see if you can combine left and right in three of the arrows. That starts the triple play.
And they did. And then they go through the pink boxes and then they go through the green boxes and then they go into breakout groups and they talk about. They came back and to a person when we got back they said I've got to completely rethink how we're presenting ourselves in the marketplace.
Dean: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? The whole when you start looking at it's a difficult thing for people to think about presenting outcomes or the benefits of promised land, the destination, and especially if you are at the hypothesis stage that you're projecting what the results, the intended results, are, compared to reporting on the documented, actual results. That's whether it's a theory or a real thing. I think that's probably part of when you're good, when you think you've got an idea that some outcome is going to be and you think that this process is what's going to get the outcome, and you have to, you know, hype that up a little bit to get people excited or in intellectually involved in the idea that this outcome is possible, which is very different than a field report. I call it often difference. We use the term of book reports versus field reports and yeah, but he's got, a field report is an actual, documented, here's what happened on the outcome kind of thing as opposed to. I think if we go this way, we'll get the results in theory. My calculations tell me.
Dan: Yeah, what was interesting was people zeroed in on your statement and it was mentioned two or three times that the left hand side, where you're telling your good story, it's a convincing argument. The right hand side, it's a compelling offer.
Dean: Yes, that's the. That's exactly it. That was my thought. Yeah, that's why I say that is that a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument, and that's when you're at the level when you're at the level where you can make a compelling offer is because you have certainty around it.
Right, that's what's compelling. I think I was thinking about that a lot like the guessing and betting is that when you're what you're trying to, if you're focused on the left side, the good side you're trying to present enough convincing arguments to get people to place a bet on there but they're the one you're trying to get them to place the bet, and that's the whole purchase order versus receiving doc.
analogy of that you're going to the purchasing department trying to get them to write and fund a purchase order to get a future delivery of a result or an outcome, whereas if you were able to go to the delivery, you're able to go to the receiving doc with the results that you're met with open arms. It's interesting, right? That's a yeah. Chris Rock, the comedian, once said about crack nobody sells crack, crack sells itself. You got some crack in your mouth. People will be knocking on your door at three in the morning.
Dan: You don't have to go out in the cell. Yeah, oh man yeah, the sample does the selling.
Dean: That's exactly right. That is exactly right yeah. Yeah, and I think that's really the thing when you look at the. What was the? What was some of the highlights of the great side?
Dan: What were some of the highlights that stood out, or even yeah, I was just thinking because I was a genius network last when in not this past Friday and Saturday, but the week before and. I didn't have any presentation during the during the two and a half days. Yeah, that was I was streaming, by the way, yeah and. But I was running in the hallway when we were out on breaks. I was running into strategic coach clients who've been in the program for 20, 25 years, but this is the first time I've met them because, they've had other coach.
They've had other coaches and at least three of them came up to me and they almost had tears in their eyes. I said I just want to tell you this has transformed every part of my life.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: Just being in the coach Wow. And I talked to them where they were before they came in the coach and what the difference was as a result of going to the workshops and and it was pretty, pretty steady throughout the two days when I was just out wandering, when there was, someone else would be with them and they'd say things like this saved my life and everything like that. And I was just noticing but I really didn't tell the other person what strategic coach was, except that it had a transformative effect.
And I think the there's another thing. We I talked about convincing argument and compelling offer, but I think the other thing is that on the left, you're aiming for a transaction. On the right, you're hearing about a transformation. Yes, agreed, yeah, yeah, that's. And I told people that if you don't, if you don't have anything that you can think of, that you would write down. On the right hand side, on the great side, I said marketing isn't your problem.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. You've got to be able to. You've got to, and once you're able to document the outcome, that's what. That's funny, because that's exercise number one that we do. I have a breakthrough blueprint starting tomorrow at celebration, and one of the way the first thing we start out is with the dream come true on both ends. We define the equation as what would be the dream come true for you. First off, what is it that you're looking to build? What do you really want from your business here?
Let's start with that, and what are you really good at? I get to get people to strip away the goggles that they've been looking through of their existing business. This is what typically they get caught in. That left side of this is what we do, but I say I was trying to get them to think we're talking about new.
Now. We're talking about business, new business that you haven't already done. So what are you capable of right now? That's why I say that people like what is it? What's the best thing that you could do for somebody? If they would just get out of the way and let you do it for them Without not what you can convince them to pay for or not what you can constrain through the current delivery system that you have in place, just what is what's the best outcome that you could create for somebody would be a dream come true for them and then who?
would that person have to be? And that's where we then segue that into profit activated number one, which is select a single target market.
Dan: It's really interesting that and that's another distinction. Taking what you just said and going back and looking at the when you're great, when are you great tool, if you died and people showed up at your funeral, which side would they talk about? Yeah, I went through Jesus. I went. He told me about all sorts of profit act. It was really great. I'm not sure it did him any good. We're at his funeral so.
I don't know if it did take any good, yeah, but I just think that one thing that it requires for you to fill in the right hand side, the great side is that you, first of all, you have to be interested in what people's outcomes are. You have to be interested in what their actual experience is there and you have to take them seriously. You're getting real market research?
Dean: Yes, yeah, that's why I say this is. It's amazing to see what people talk about when they imagine the best thing they could do for somebody. What they're capable of is far more than what they're currently offering to people, and it's so funny because that's the way that their business is set up is to. Their delivery pipes are calibrated for what they think they can convince people to pay for. It's not anything to do with what the outcome is. It's very interesting to me to see this play out again and again, because people light up when they get into describing the outcomes, because that question demands an outcome. It's not about what's your best, what's your process, it's about. That's why I say what's the best thing that you could deliver for somebody? The dream come true experience for them. That would be that you're capable of what's the best result you could deliver, and it's amazing to see that people are often there.
We went from had one conversation with a Health practitioner who was doing they had a real protocol for reversing type 2 diabetes and they were selling a $17 Eba about it right, like trying to get people, and I was saying how could you? What would be the best thing that you could do for somebody if you could Charge $17,000 for it, what would be? What it's not knowing the protocol, it's complying with the protocol, is the issue right? And if you could deliver the result, if you could reverse their diabetes in spite of them? That's where the real Thing would you know. And where I got that was I had read at that time, I had finished reading, I think it's Alan Dyke world had a great book called change or die. And Did you ever read that book?
Dan: doesn't rain. A bell no.
Dean: Oh, it was very interesting. I give you the short kind of summary version of it that the premise of the book is if your life depended on you changing, do you think that you could make a change? And and yeah, the evidence says no. The evidence says no where you can't and the evidence that they used. They took different scenarios, one of which was heart patients, cardiac patients, people who have just had bypassed surgeries, and you would think like that's a life or death situation, that People you've had it and I'm sure the doctor says you listen, you need to Straighten up here and fly right. You need to change your ways or you're gonna die and they go back and some crazy number like 80 plus percent of people who have had bypass surgeries One year later have made no significant changes in their lifestyle. And it's it was very interesting.
So Dean Ornish created a protocol where he convinced mutual of Omaha to Divert cohort of people who were eligible for bypass surgery that the insurance would pay for, which at the time was Over a hundred thousand dollars for per patient to have that. So he diverted them into an intervention program where they sequestered them for 30 days and controlled every ounce of food that went in there in their body. They had access to counseling and group work and Meditation and stress management and yoga and physical therapy all of these things. Starting stripping back to just really addressing the why, the issue of why are they doing? The behaviors that led to this, this issue and the average after the 30 days result was an average weight loss of 28 pounds, of reduction in the angina by 96%.
People who couldn't climb a flight of stairs were walking Two miles. This whole complete turnaround of Things in 30 days. And then at 30 days, they sent them home with access to a chef and a personal trainer and counseling and group you know, group counseling as well for a year and then they were on their own after the year and At the end of three years, 77% of the people had Maintained the changes that they made in the in the program because they built the change from the inside out and Also from the outside in. At the same time, it was they were removed from the environment that made their bad decisions and took their Took willpower out of the equation, took the other things, that just totally immersion for 30 days where they saw the benefit of the things without having the white knuckle the.
Willpower to comply with the protocols. I thought, man, that's very interesting, because that's the same thing that happens in any type of Change. Right, that was just a really good, that was just a really good example of it. Can you see the same thing?
Dan: my approach. Yeah yeah, my approach would be different. They won't make a change if they don't have a new future. That's bigger than what the life that they've been leading. So that must happen. That must happen in the test that they In the vision. They envision themselves almost acquiring a new capability by making the change that creates a bigger future.
It's really interesting in the political campaign. I'm just looking at it and it's driving the Striving. The journalist is driving the pollsters, is driving one side of the political spectrum. Absolutely crazy that With Trump you have at least four indictments which the Prosecutors are hoping him to put him in jail there by making them in there eligible for the election next year. But actually there's nothing in the Constitution that says that's true, doesn't say you can't be under indictment and get elected president of the United States.
But the other thing is that his numbers keep going up with each new indictment and they can't comprehend that and because on their side of the party and indictment would be the end of your career.
And they're trying to figure out why an indictment on his side the other thing is, as far as I can tell, the president Biden right now is Trying to get us to believe that things are really good. Things are really good and that Biden economics has Really been a breakthrough for the United States. It's just that when people don't go to the grocery store, they don't feel that way when they go to the gas station. They don't feel that way.
And and that their line seems to be. Who you gonna believe? Are you gonna believe us or you gonna believe your own line? I the nearest. Are you gonna believe here? And but what Trump says is mega, make America great again. Let's make a great again yeah, and it just seems to be to me a more compelling offer. Then, yeah, things are better than you've ever had them before. It just seems to be a better offer.
Yeah, one seems to be a tempt at a convincing argument and the other one is a compelling offer and part is a lot of American yeah, I think his whole thing that if you stack it up, it is all.
Dean: Let's talk it out. Think about that. Is that what's happening on the left side and the right side? No no correlation between left and right politically.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I just. Coincidentally, it turns out that Trump's Big things are all compelling offers. Make America great yeah. Build the wall America first him. Drain the swamp yeah. Those are all outcomes that are Compelling in themselves.
Dan: Let's prevent China from cheating us and soft the way we've been yeah let's stop the endless wars, the endless wars and Everything. And he's just picking up and I think he's operating on the right side of the First of all is he's operating on the great side because he's got to work great and there's as compelling offer make make America and just you.
Dean: I was gonna say you talk about great. I saw an interview where he was. They were pressure him into picking a side between Ukraine and Russia, like who's in the wrong? This was prior to Israel and I'm not same kind of thing and his answer was I want people to stop dying. That what a great like Car right it's. I want people to stop dying. They're killing themselves, they're killing each other. That's yeah.
Dan: Yeah yeah, and it just struck me that they are making up stories on the left-hand side About, about he's a dictator and he's appealing to the worst instincts of the American people and everything like that. But my real sense is he's speaking a completely different language that people on the left don't understand. They, they, they talk, and it's the difference between Talking about efficiency and talking about effective. You know they'll say, well, we're doing things more efficiently than we were before. Yeah, it's just that you're doing things more efficiently that we don't really want.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah that's. I'm glad you're making yourself feel good about what you're doing, but nothing that you're doing really makes us feel good. And anyway, I just find it find it interesting that one of them has a greater grasp of what people's experience.
Dean: Actually, is yes, yeah, that's, yeah. That's a pretty, it's a compelling exercise actually. Get a great have a great, a great outcome. So what, then, is the action from that? What? What's the? Yeah, when you presented that as an exercise, to what end? What's the next? What's the?
Dan: the I made it like got my results in the go-around when we were wrapping up the exercise because every person in the room said I've got some redesign To do in terms of our message and what we're actually doing to generate great site commenter. Are we doing the things that would generate that, the same thing as I think one side is doing and the other side is being on the one side, you're describing what you're going to be doing with them and on the other side.
You're going to describe how you're going to experience as Result of going through the protocol as we are going to know what would be an example of people having completed the Profit activator, so you're later. What would be some of the things that they would say a year later?
Dean: Yeah, so certainly my, I have. I have an engine that delivers leads for a. I've generated a thousand new prospects from a book that I wrote and as a download, and then on the lead conversion Process that they're they've, they're collaborating with people at a higher level in terms of the delivering the outcomes for people, opening up a whole new who now, I'm excuse me, who, not how opportunity up like a perfect example that we're going through right now in our real estate division is I have, excuse me, all of the things that that people can do to get certain outcomes. Everything that we talk about is tied to a, a key metric, a deliverable outcome for people, and so I went through and looked at each of the outcomes that we're delivering, meaning, let's say, for getting referrals and repeat business. Our key metric for that is that we manage their relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield.
So our thing is that they have a hundred and fifty people that know them, like them, trust them, and that they should be able to generate 30 transactions from that outcome now I went through and looked at all the things on the left side that you have to do to get that and I started looking at it from the self milking cow a the who, not how, way of what. If we were responsible for helping them, that kind of the Jordan Peterson model, right adapted for this Situation. What would we do if we were responsible for helping them? And I started realizing there's very little that requires them. I could do Under with our team. We could do do almost everything for them and the things that we can't do could be done in 130 minute phone call a week with a coach. And so we could, from that 30 minute milking session, get all the milk that we need to pasteurize and turn into the products.
We could Identify who their top 150 are.
We could get them set up in there in their go agent CRM. We could we have the world's most interesting postcard that we could print and mail To all of their people. We can create a Google map that drops a pin when all of their top 150 are and then each week we could have a conversation with them and say, dan, who are you showing houses to this week? Who are you going to see about selling their house this week and we could look on the map and See if you're showing houses in the beaches. You could look and see okay, I've got four people in my top 150 that live in the beaches in the certain neighborhoods where I'm going. If there's a townhouse complex, say Riverrun, we could send an Email or a text to those four people and say hey, dan, I'm showing houses in Riverrun this week and there's only a couple for sale right now. Have you heard anybody Talking about selling? Maybe we can match them up with this couple for a job bro or whatever it is, just do market making activities.
So, those things alone, we could do all of the work and I went through for all of the outcomes getting referrals, multiplying your listings, converting leads, finding buyers and getting listings.
Those are the, the bankable results that we, that we focus on and I identified that we can literally do every piece of it, and since I've started describing that to people, we just launched our accelerator program in November and I've been positioning it as a personal trainer. Like working with a personal trainer, where you will meet with you once a week, except, unlike working with a personal trainer, we're gonna do the sit-ups and you're gonna get the six pack. That's really, that's a compelling offer, right?
Yeah we'll do the sit-ups you get. The six pack is as compelling an offer as we can make. And so we're now six weeks. Six weeks into that proof Certainly proof that life's not fair, exactly. So we're six weeks in and it's very, but it's really. We're positioning it as a combination of Really super skilled virtual assistant who's actually gonna do the work, compared to a coach who just tells you what to do but it's not gonna do it for you. So it's really all that sweet spot. But even then, dan, it's still getting everything set up and going through things I said so much of it is just about Getting things into orbit.
Like once the systems are set up and once the things are in place, it's much easier. But you have to go through this, the van Allen belt, where you're getting pummeled with meteorites and space junk and Fear, and there's all these thoughts that that people have because it's new to them and they're good, everything they've got to make sure everything fits with their brand, and there there's a lot of questions and then what's gonna happen and all of that, that stuff. But very already people are getting Results. We'd send some may, sent out their first world's most interesting postcard, got a eight hundred thousand dollar listing and as a referral and then sold that person another house. I'll all and closed it all in this first six weeks. Somebody else did. Some of the listing multipliers had an open house.
Mm-hmm found a buyer for that house and so it all works. It's just the getting understanding what those the bankable results are, what the outcomes are.
Dan: Yeah, the interesting thing I did another tool in addition to the when are you great, and it's called crucial ABC questions and what you do as you have people brainstorm, growth problems. In other words, there they have a real opportunity for growth, but there's a problem and and you have them do that for a couple minutes and they can do it in their personal life, they can do it in their business life, whatever suits them. And Then you ask them take each of the growth problems and you ask them three questions, abc.
And a is there any way I can solve this problem by doing nothing? And the answer is usually no, they have to. They have to communicate something. They have to. They have to communicate. Maybe it's a decision they have to make and and, but that clarifies them that it's a lot simpler than them, because when you hear about problem, this is gonna is gonna require a lot of time.
There's gonna require a lot of effort and I'm already doing a lot of things and now I got a selfless problem. But if you ask the first question, is there any way that the problem can solve itself? All of a sudden, it clarifies your thinking down to a very simple level and then the question be, as what's the least that I will have to do to solve this problem?
Dean: Okay, and again.
Dan: It refines what you came up with. Question a and. I have to communicate, what's the fastest way I communicate and to whom? And in such a way, that's it for me, then I don't have to do anything, I just have to communicate. I just have to communicate one thing. And then the third question, which I think I'm gonna see what your response to it is who's the? Who can do my least?
Dean: I Agree with that a hundred percent. That fits now neatly with a tool. I've been working on that's. I've been calling three L's and Whenever we're not getting something done, it usually falls into three Categories.
It's either a logic problem, meaning we don't know what to do. That's so we got to figure out. Do you know what to do about this Situation? And then, if you do know what to do, the next thing is a logistics Problem. Do you know how to do this or what actually needs to be done, what are the sequential steps? And I like that idea of what's the least that you can do logistically to get this handle and if you know what to do, and and you know what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. The third is Olympic problem that there's some emotional block, something that you're not taking action because your thinking is off on this, and that is watered down From I heard somewhat Andrew Tate. Actually, I heard a thing he talked about. There's only three reasons that he was using Broke, the only. There's only three reasons you're broke it's either lazy, arrogant, or You're lazy, stupid or arrogant and I thought those are like down the emotional words all the way up to 11.
But I started looking at it that if you take stupid as the dialing the thing is Yours.
Dan: As much easier to take your three else as much easier to take and the reason is you can be a perfectly good person, intelligent person, a creative person, but you don't understand the logic of the situation.
That's perfectly acceptable and you don't know the logistics yeah you don't know what the logistics and the limbic one is. You hadn't thought about it, but now that you bring up the topic, yeah, there is an issue. Yeah, I'll give you a really great example of that. We had a Prezone client about three or four years ago and he came up with a great technological breakthrough in the medical industry that allowed, using virtual reality, allows students and medical colleges to experience every organ and his case it was the face and the head because he was.
He was a cosmetic surgeon and he and he and instead of seeing that as a two-dimensional illustration in Textbook, they put gone goggles and they actually walked into a room. That was the inside of the organ and then it had 17 different elements to it that spoke to you when you put a laser beam on. So he had laser beam, he was at his oculus you know oculus flies around and then he had a laser beam and when he talked to it would explain itself and then it would say how it was connected to another thing in the organ and he could just go in 360 degrees and the whole the organ would announce itself to us. It would describe itself to him and the. He showed it to medical schools and they went Gaga. He showed it to technological companies and they went Gaga and.
Anyways, that's where he was when he demonstrated it to us in free zone. And then, 90 days later, I came back and I said how's it going? You got, have you launched with anything? He says nah, there's, there's some, some issues. I haven't started out yet and Anyway, and I couldn't see how any of the issues would relate to being successful in the marketplace. All you have to do is walk somebody through it. It's crack, right, show them, show it to them right, have them just go through and it sells itself.
So then 90 day, another 90 days, so we're a half a year down the road and we're talking you still. I said I had to chat to you about this and he said I said yeah, I said let me take a, let me take a, you know, let me guess what I think your problem is here. And yeah, he says okay. I said it's okay for you to split half of what you've earned up until now, but it's not okay to split 50% of the future. And he said yeah, that's exactly it. And I said how long have you known that this day was coming? And he said 17 years. And I said okay, that's good, you're practiced at it.
And I said so if it's three years from now and nothing's changed, is that okay for you? And he says no, it's not. I said two years, no. I said one year, no. I said next 90 days and he said no. I got him down to two weeks and he started everything in motion the first week after the program. And that's a. That's a that might be all three. Three packed into one.
Dean: It's the progression right, like it's usually. It is the way you just described, that's it's Olympic thing and that clarity, once you really understand that, that's the big and it gets you. That's more like you can walk through then what the action is.
Dan: But you realize that yeah, yeah, but I don't like that notion of stupidity and lazy. There's lots of reasons people are broke. They're not Exactly.
Dean: And that's what I said in. The noble thing of the lazy is really that it could fall down into that they don't know the logistics of what to do or they're busy is a very noble thing that they would go into, that they're too busy, and then that's what I did is that's how I dialed them down to logic.
Dan: Yeah, I try making a. I find moral insults never work.
Dean: Absolutely. That's exactly right and that's where, when you break it down clinically like that, the logic, logistics and limbic, those are the.
Dan: Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I think you got a winner.
Dean: We'll put that up there with VCR formula. That's good.
Dan: You got a winner. Have you gotten a smart contract on the two of them yet?
Dean: No.
Dan: I have not. Yeah, you should give Kerry Oberbrunner a call. He can have them date stamped today. Call him. Call him and he'll, just within 24 hours, he'll give you a black chain smart contract, both of them.
Dean: I like it.
Dan: Yeah, I like it. That way nobody will be able to steal break into the season's Valhalla and steal your latest ideas.
Dean: It's all happening right here. Yeah, the idea lab at the four seasons, valhalla.
Dan: They'll probably just take off over the golf course and you wouldn't be able to track them down.
Dean: That's right, exactly so funny. Are you in Toronto for a while now, or what's your First a?
Dan: week, and then we're back to Buenos Aires next Saturday.
Dean: We go back to Buenos Aires another week. How's your new knees?
Dan: The knee, we were told takes six months for the missing cartilage to regrow. So they said you won't really feel a difference for three months after we did it, so we're a month away, but I will tell you the IV that we did for RAIN, where they put stem cells into our brain is noticeable progress.
I really will notice the difference and it shows up in another sort of therapy that I'm doing, which is neuro potential, and I think I've described this to you and I do it once a week when I'm here, and I've done it three times since I came back from Argentina, and what it is that they put sensors on my hip 19 sensors, and it's like a net. We're, we're, you have to go to do that again Right at Alan Expressway in Shepherd. It's just above and I had to check whether I needed a passport or I need right extra oxygen with me or shot, yeah, yeah.
Dean: And they told me.
Dan: No, yeah, they told me they probably advanced, and they. You can just Come from the beaches to that area now without any worry, you can actually do it without worry now. And but what it is? It's 40 minutes I've done. I had done 30 in the last year and showed noticeable progress.
And I'll tell you what the progress is that I've been diagnosed with a backward brain OK, and I've been doing a backward being that in the middle of the night I'm doing creative, productive work that I should be doing in the middle of the day, yeah, and in the middle of the day I am attempting to dose and and that would probably be one of the reasons why Adderall was a very attractive drug for me, because it woke me up Over a long period of time has negative effects on your nervous system.
So anyway, I came back and here's how it goes, dean, when you go through the 40 minutes, probably five, six times, the screen will go black and the sound goes out, even though the movie keeps going on. So you're watching a favorite movie. I chose Foils War really whopping good British production from 15 years ago, about a homicide detective who is solving murders during the Second World War. So that's called Foils War, and he's getting resistance from higher officials because there's dodgy dealing going on with higher officials in the British government that are wealthy people who are trying to protect themselves.
So anyway, it's very grossing, and usually five, six times during the 40 minute period the screen will go black and then what happens is you don't have to do anything, your brain just notices that things have gone dark, the sound's gone off, it was correct, it was the input back. So it's a constant feedback. And then you get better at it. And then the technician you have a technician sitting with you and she, they're all she's. She will increase the difficulty for next time and that's gone out now for about 30, 30 sessions. Before I went to Argentina and, and really noticeable results, when I do intelligence test, mental test, you can see the difference. That's actually done it and now mostly so. Anyway, I come back a week after we got back I went to my first session and I go 40 minutes and no blackouts and no, no loss of sound, and I get to the end of the session. Now these technicians are very rigorously connected that they give human feedback for what's going on.
They're just, they're just adjusting the sensors or whatever they're making notes, but they're making notes, but they're not telling you what the notes are.
Dean: No reinforcement or stimulus.
Dan: I get to the end of the first session and she looks at me with a big smile and she said that was fantastic. She said I've never seen that before. Yes, she said, I've never seen anyone go through all 40 minutes without this being going out. Now it did blur a little bit, but it never, went black and the sound didn't go up.
Okay, that was three weeks ago. And then two weeks ago I did it again and it just edged into the black once, even though she had increased the difficulty. She had increased the difficulty just a little bit, went in half a second and then it came back and that was it. And yesterday I went in 40 minutes and no black, no sundown, even though she had increased the difficulty again. She said this is quite exceptional. She said I have not seen this kind of progress being made. I think it's because of the stem cells to my brain, which I will get again the week after next month?
Dean: Wow, are you still going to osteosteostrong, or is that the place?
Dan: Yeah, I was in osteostrong yesterday. Yeah, Interesting. I haven't been doing much other work exercise so I've maintained basically where I am with osteostrong and really good. I mean they have a thing called double standard. When I do double standard, I'm strong enough my legs, my arms and everything else. So it means that I haven't lost any strength over the last 14 months. I haven't lost it, which is good, which is very good, and actually I've actually gained strength. I've showed plenty of progress.
Dean: But so far. I had a nice Zoom with our osteopath friend from London who was in the three years on Intra.
Dan: Tehira, tehira, tehira, yes.
Dean: He's very passionate about osteo.
Dan: Very passionate, yeah, very passionate, yeah. He just needs to do one little mindset change. Is mindset change? Do you want to know what it is? I do, of course. He wants to save the world.
Dean: Yes, I got that great tune. He wants to save them from something that doesn't present as an imminent danger. It's a chronic long. You don't have any evidence that there's anything wrong, until you fall and break your hip.
Dan: He's got a limbic obstacle, you hit it on the head.
Dean: You hit it exactly there. It's so funny that you said he wants to save the world. My advice to him I said we've got to prove evidence. It's so funny because I hadn't heard you go through that exercise. But all the things that he was talking about are left side things. That are the things I was showing. I said to him it's very interesting, but what could you do that would make let's call it that liver puddleans. How could we make headline news that liver puddleans have the strongest bones in the world or that there's eliminated? The downside of this that was something that, if you're going to save the world, you've certainly got to start. I heard that one time Bono from U2. There was a movie called Killing Bono, but for years they would be dubbed as the second best band in Dublin. If your goal is to be the biggest band in the world, you've certainly got to be the biggest band in Dublin.
If we're going to save all the world from the negative impact of osteo health. How could we start with liver pool and make liver puddleans that help with bones in the world.
Dan: My attitude is can you do it with one person?
Dean: First question can you do it with?
Dan: one person. I said, if you can do it with one person, I think you know 50% of what's needed to do it with 10 people.
Dean: Then you get to 10.
Dan: Now you know 50% of what it takes to get 100 people. Just work up your capability and confidence. That way it's a lot easier.
Dean: That's the scale-ready algorithm. Once you figure out how to do it, once you've got some evidence. But until you do it a second time or for 10, you're so right on. That's how we approach marketing problems.
Dan: I called the Singapore model. Singapore was a lawless Southeast Asia primed all the criminals within the 1,000 miles of Singapore. This is where they went. They had their warehouses there, they did their deals there, they recruited people. Singapore became independent of Great Britain in 1965.
It was mainly the work of one family, the Lee family. They're still in charge. It's 60 years down the road and they're still in charge. It's a big harbor, it's one of the better harbors in Southeast Asia. They said let's get together some muscle People who know how to give hard knocks to hard people. They went in and they said in the first six months we cleared the entire block that surrounds on land, the block of houses and buildings that surround the harbor. At the end of six months they're crime-free.
They did it Not without pushback but they overcame the pushback. Then they said over the next six months, let's clear two blocks in from what we've already achieved.
Dean: They did Now they had three blocks.
Dan: This was the most important real estate from a commercial standpoint in Singapore. Then they said now we're going to go four more blocks in. By the end of the next six months we'll have seven blocks. The criminals all got the message and left the city.
Dean: Wow, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's the wisdom right Is getting it into the thing of one.
Dan: Get a foothold that you can learn from.
Dean: Yes, I agree.
Dan: Yeah, I think that saving the world First of all, I don't even know what the world is. I don't know what saving. That means I wouldn't know where to start. I wouldn't know how to keep score. When do I actually get to be happy?
Dean: Yes, so amazing. I love it. I can't believe it's been an hour, but this was fantastic yeah.
Dan: I'll be just arriving Next week. I'll just be arriving and playing this series. It'll be the wheel. I'll just see Becca, because we're time difference, two hour time difference. Let's see if we can sneak one in during the week.
Dean: Okay, I'll never no no.
Dan: Dean and Dan, don't do sneaking. No, that's exactly right.
Dean: I'll leave it in tension.
Dan: Becca will be with us. We take Becca with us, so Becca will do it. I just do it right at the Four Seasons Hotel and playing this series. Okay, no, anyway great to chat.
Dean: Okay, dan, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Jan 17, 2024 • 1h 1min
Ep115: Creative Investing and the Search for Wellness
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Jan 7, 2024 • 51min
Ep114: The Art of Self-Management
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Jan 5, 2024 • 1h 1min
Ep113: Revolutionizing Health, Wealth, and Tech
In today's Welcome to Cloudlandia episode, Dan shares his experience with stem cell treatments, from his different injections to increased energy and improved brain function.
Next, we explore the fascinating realm of intelligent money exemplified by Indify and how it empowers creators by potentially disrupting the music industry through musicians' futures.
Lastly, we make a special announcement about our first Free Zone event in Toronto this June. Join us for insights on innovative concepts that can upgrade our lives.
 
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
We delve into the world of stem cell treatments, starting with my personal experience and how it has improved my energy levels and brain function.
We discuss the concept of intelligent money and how platforms like Indify are empowering creators and musicians, potentially disrupting the traditional music industry.
We explore the concept of investing in people and emerging technologies, citing examples like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs.
We reflect on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in content creation and the importance of discernment in information consumption.
We discuss the concept of media polarization and share our personal experiences with the shift from newspapers to online news aggregators.
We mention a play we saw about the Queen's relationship with various Prime Ministers, shedding light on an intriguing historical fact.
We explore the topic of neutrality and bias in AI and discuss how it might impact our thinking processes.
We announce our first Free Zone event happening in Toronto in June and share our past experiences in the city.
We discuss the idea of digital detox and share our strategies for reducing screen time and the benefits we've experienced.
We reflect on our experiments with AI in generating interesting facts and video scripts, emphasizing its potential as a multiplier for content creation.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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 biomegies?
Dan: here. Yeah, yeah, pretty good. So we're talking on a Sunday and just the past Thursday was two weeks, and you know I got a 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, and that was strategic coaches producing your own placebo's.
Dean: So 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, these stem cells are geared just to your vascular system, so just you know the veins, as I said 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 an 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 they're NDP, 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 lymphocytes 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 a bio feedback program, and I'm doing a neuro potential 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 morning to the hospital.
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's, 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 stencils or yeah, well, it's the only thing that's changed. It's gotta be right.
Dan: Yeah, it's gotta be, and she up the difficulty. 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 that's and this is the only thing where I have outside reference point. 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 this 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.
Dean: And.
Dan: I've been and I've been going on. I've been going on faith for the last 36 years in this regard that this would come.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at, I heard Joe Rogan had well, he always has all kinds of interesting people, but he had Gary Brecca on. I don't know him?
Dan: I don't know him.
Dean: Yeah Well, he's kind of an interesting story, I don't know. 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.
Dan: Oh yeah, I know Dana White, he's the. Yeah, you see ultra fighting, yeah, that's exactly right, yeah, yeah, the US.
Dean: 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 advanced what do they call that in insurance? Mortality rate, I'm guessing.
Dan: Yeah, it's the actuary, the actuary, yeah, yeah, so actuarial.
Dean: 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 blood work, and they couldn't predict. He says within months of somebody's life expectancy, and 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 now. 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, you know it's, yeah well, electron microscopes with the yeah well, I mean with you know, the the actual day breakthrough.
Dan: 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 land. Yeah, this is all these are cloud land media capabilities that have come into existence, because the I was talking to Peter de Amonus about this and I said it's clearly a Lot of things that were predicted by a lot of people 10 years ago haven't 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 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 yeah, I'm not other people that Used to take yours to put the facts together and now it takes minutes, yeah and he wasn't even possible years ago that I put those together.
Yeah, no, I mean, my first doctor encounters 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.
Dean: Well, three out of four doctors prefer Chesterfield's. A great Actually.
Dan: 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 camos. No this is a great. This is a great ad campaign. I mean, we shouldn't be frivolous about this. It's really sold a lot of camos. I'll tell you.
Dean: I wonder what those things like. If we look forward you know, fast forward, for the 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.
Dan: No, yeah, you know, I always say that a depressed utopian, utopian who's depressed. Our people get depressed by the absence of things that haven't been invented yet. Yeah, exactly, geez, 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, yeah.
Dean: 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 kind of group and it was pretty these things and somebody showed you know Georgetown the cable was. You know halting cable was becoming Available and they were offering, you know, service on on the nine channels for our listeners.
Dan: Today we're not talking about George town in Washington DC right, we're talking about.
Dean: We're talking about.
Dan: George town, a lovely veil Norris. And is it more west than north?
Dean: I'm trying to think it north and more what 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, 11 and 13, 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, 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 ten thousand tests, either on something that exists In the time that it would takes to do one manual test ten years ago. So ten thousand to one, that's that qualifies as exponential in my world.
Dean: I would say so. Yeah, I would say so.
Dan: 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.
Dean: Do you find?
Dan: that.
Dean: I do. 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 and let's get these three things.
Dan: But I but.
Dean: 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 AI language here that somewhere in the past you gave your brain a prompt, just like you do with a chat GPT you gave it a prompt that. If you ever come across something like this, alert me to this. So my sense is that you've been programming your brain to look for certain things since the beginning. You've been prompting your brain to look for certain things.
And all of a sudden it comes across something and you wake up and say, gee, that's neat, that's neat.
Dean: I didn't know that.
Dan: But somewhere in the past you gave some sort of prompts, I think, to tell your brain. If you ever see something like this, just let me know right away, because I'm interested in it.
Dean: One of the things that I came across this week was in relation to our conversation about melt, about money, energy, labor and transportation all going in, rising cost of those, and I've 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, and I've looked at, I found out about a company called Indify 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 all those things.
Dan: These are really but those are already existing. That was already existing. Yeah, yeah, here they're 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 they're, 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 they're not to be they're not talking about hits, but things that 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 the that, the diminishing supply of 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 capital, physical world.
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. They're the same, and my feeling is that the smartest investors invest on people. They don't invest 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.
Dean: And they always seem to be coming up.
Dan: 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.
Dean: And.
Dan: I'm betting I'm just going to 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. I mean, do you think you're kind of heading back to the patron days? Oh yeah. Yeah in a way, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Oh, totally, totally. I mean entrepreneurs are you and I and all the folks that we hang out with are we're self patrons?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: The difference between an entrepreneur and non entrepreneurs and 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 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've talked about a product or a tech.
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 going to. You know it's going to 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.
Dan: Yeah, and I think 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.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And, and I mean not a big thing since, not a really big thing since 2008.
Dean: Right, since the iPhone, right. I mean, that's really the iPhone yeah. Yeah, that decade of, you know, 90 2008,. That's really that's where everything happened. I think was. I think about it. Yeah, we talked about it in our analysis of the last 28 years. That none of it. You know Apple was close to bankruptcy, that they were in trouble 28 years ago he had to borrow from Bill Gates. Yeah, exactly, and that's you know, that's kind of.
Dan: That's pretty amazing right.
Dean: When you think about everything that's turned around since then, and thinking about even Jeff Bezos, who you know, who knew.
Dan: Yeah, 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 not do what they're doing. You know, one of my views is that I look at somebody who cannot do the thing that seems to be most valuable, and and so I don't have to worry what they're doing when I don't see them.
Dean: Right, what's he?
Dan: doing? What's? What's he doing today? I know exactly what he's doing today. 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.
Dean: And.
Dan: I would say that the microchip itself is one of the real breakthroughs. And then the ability for there to be such thing as a personal computer, which came up within the first 10 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.
Dean: We have three or four projects going that I'm involved in the company and so where are you?
Dan: I'm at the experiment when are you experimenting?
Dean: Yeah, I'm experimenting in the personal side, 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 to 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 repeated referral business you get from your top 150 relationships. And so I 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 writing the things. And then I asked it to you know, make it a little more interesting things. And it, you know, put it on. That said you can be 20 more. And it was like boom, all interesting.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely. I said 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 directing, you know, there's two. Ai's AI breakthroughs consist of two AI's. You know the first AI is artificial intelligence. The second one's called the 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? 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.
Dan: How many of you mastered it Right, exactly, and you know it's an interesting thing.
Dean: 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 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. Yeah, you know, and really the successful people have learned firsthand just what can get begin gotten done in an hour a day, 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 ten minute video of the highlights and that's my game.
Dean: You know 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 young people who are one-third of my age.
I did 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 Like saying you know, wait a second, what if anything? What if you? What?
Dan: if you break down.
Dean: What if you're 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 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 to. You know I'm going to spend three hours or four hours where I fast, you know yeah. Because your brain will find something to do if you're not right now yes autophagy Remember this is something interesting.
Dean: I was really going as far as, like, how far down can I go with this? Right, like what would I truly be missing? As 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 or maybe it was a movie about the Queen, but I remember this was struck me as very like a very interesting is that every day at a certain time 5 pm Maybe, or noon or sometime they would bring the Queen a red box.
Oh yeah, box was everything that she needed for the day, everything that needed her attention kind of thing, and I thought how neat would that be. What would be interesting if I could, at 5 pm 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've 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 Well they're.
Dan: I've gone beyond that because I used to get five papers a day. Yeah, you got two to Toronto papers. I got the, I got the Wall Street Journal, I got New York Times and. National Post well, national Post was globe in the post for the two.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Toronto papers, and then the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and the fifth one was business, business and best investors daily. Yeah, right, yeah, investors, business daily, and. But I began to realize that I all those papers. The only thing I was really interested in was the opinion section.
Dean: Okay, where the?
Dan: people wrote Oversight articles, in other words they were looking at a 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 percent 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 Still somewhat into the right. Into the right and the investors business daily only has opinions on Saturday.
You know they only have a real commentary section. So, yes, okay. So when 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 clerk, comes up 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, 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. It's lucky if they get one every day. 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, so right.
So, yeah and 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, the 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. Yeah, yeah, so anyway, but that's how I handle it. I handle it. That's my sort of my red box. Real clear, it's my red box.
Dean: Right, that's interesting.
Dan: You know what they do you know what they call that? The thing that the queen gets. I don't know what they call it. They call it the red box.
Dean: That's what I thought.
Dan: You know that red box she gets every day.
Dean: You know what they call it.
Dan: They call it the red box.
Dean: That is so funny, but I thought about experimenting with that and getting a red box and the government has to prepare them for.
Dan: The Prime Minister's office has to prepare that for her, exactly yeah. Yeah, because they're both in town. Once a week, the Prime Minister has to come to the palace and deliver in person some of the crucial issues. This is not recorded. No one ever knows.
Dean: Right A weekly audience with the queen Right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, and the king now.
Dan: I guess I guess the king. Should we send the red box to the king? It's kind of hard to say. It's kind of hard to say it's kind of hard to say king, I'd say king, you know because she was in for seven years or so. Yeah. There was a great play. Actually it 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 had 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 a very, just a really terrific, really terrific play.
Dean: I saw Napoleon on Thanksgiving Day. What did you think?
Dan: What did you think?
Dean: I 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 had no. It was my shortest movie review ever.
Dan: I just looked at the camera.
Dean: I shook my head and said nope, and then I hashtagged it nope, olean, yeah yeah 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 good 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 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, hitler was great. Hitler was a great admirer of Napoleon.
Dean: Yeah, and that right.
Dan: He made, and he made the same mistake.
Dean: He invaded.
Dan: Russia. Right right, right right.
Dean: That's yeah. So I'm going to save you from from that.
Dan: Yeah, well, it's not a it's not a topic that I'm really interested in Right, I've never just talked about Napoleon, no. I just you know, but he, he not only was a significant military person, he was very significant politician. Because so 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 a organic thing that's developed over time, feet, inches, feet, yards and everything, and it's the light and the lightfully accent and idiosyncratic. It's eccentric and eccentric. The British are eccentric, you know, and he wanted this 100. Everything is, you know, and it took all the fun out of it, took all the fun out of measurement.
Dean: Right, you imagine.
Dan: American, American baseball and metric, you know.
Dean: American football and metric.
Dan: Yeah. That's even the Canadian football league uses yards and feet and you know everything like that, you know all the buddy, yeah, track and field they don't, because that's a 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 of themes that we've developed over the last 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 grade movies that are not worth seeing a lot of the middle. Okay, yeah, so there was a lot. I don't remember if there was a beginning end or an ending end. It's just battles and battles. Battles and battles, that's right, and palace, yeah, but I think that really thing because I think that it's impossible for human beings not to have a bias.
Yeah, I think, that's absolutely I think as the smarter human beings know what their biases are and actually choose them, yeah, they actually choose them, yeah. And and you know, as it just strikes me that this whole notion of neutrality, that you can be unbiased is, I think it's just silly, how could you? Possibly be unbiased.
Dean: I mean, that's right.
Dan: In the world, you wouldn't survive.
Dean: Yeah, in the words of Milton Friedman. To fill down at you, where do you propose we find these angels to organize society without regards to 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 10 times. Yeah that's such a great because you can just see that Phil down to who just has this sort of fluffy, waffly form of logic. You know, 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 fights. When you finish here, go on Google and say Peter Polly of you know, you know how to spell it, don't you? Yes, okay, takes down reporter. Just, he just took down a reporter and it was one of the most masterful takedowns of reporter ever, and he did it while chewing on 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. Or 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.
Dean: Is that right?
Dan: No. And he says well, a lot of the experts. And he says experts, name one expert 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? And the guy. You could just see the guy. You know they didn't show him in full, but I bet you know there was a puddle under his feet when he was finished.
That's so funny, dan 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.
Dan: I don't even know what that word means. I mean, do you know what that word is?
Dean: You just used a word.
Dan: 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. Left first right. So I believe in common sense and I'm kind of bored the side that has common sense, so you know 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 that's not used to dealing with. 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 you know, he's been there since he was 25. Wow, yeah, so, but it's really interesting to watch it. You know, I mean, and I'm very biased towards his side of the political spectrum.
Dean: You have a cognitive bias around him. Is that what you said? I?
Dan: 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 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're off to Phoenix.
Dan: Yeah, we fly out on Tuesday and then we're there until Saturday. I were 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 I just have one workshop, I have the free zone on Thursday, 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. Great, 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.
Dean: Oh great.
Dan: Yeah, and now I'll just forward to Tammy, who is the wizard mastermind of scheduling here, tammy Colville.
Dean: And I'll just send.
Dan: I'll just forward her announcement that just came through two days ago, so I'll just yeah, and we're doing it in. June. I mean, isn't that nice starting it off in June.
Dean: I love that. I love that I do miss Toronto. Yeah, I love it.
Dan: I think, Toronto misses you, I think Toronto misses you. Oh, that's so funny, I love it. Yeah, there's no more table 10 anywhere. I haven't found a table 10 anywhere.
Dean: We're going to need a new. We'll need a new venue. Oh well, we'll go to the old bed We'll go.
Dan: I mean less selected still there and they're still good, so we'll go. Okay Good, okay Perfect.
Dean: Okay, dan, have a great trip Two weeks. We'll be back.
Dan: I'm sorry. Two weeks, two weeks, okay, yeah, okay, okay, I'll talk to you then. Thanks, okay, bye.

Dec 27, 2023 • 54min
Ep112: The Hidden Links Between AI and Media Evolution
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Dec 21, 2023 • 57min
Ep111: The Black Plague, Roman Empire, and COVID-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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.

Nov 16, 2023 • 56min
Ep110: Discovering True Value in an Age of Convenience
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.
Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(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.
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