Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Ep099: Unlocking Profit Activators for Business Success
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Ep099: Unlocking Profit Activators for Business Success
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we speak about the importance of making bets and guesses in today's shifting environment and how the eight profit activators form the foundation of any successful business.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
How are?
Dean Jackson
you. Welcome to Cloudland, thank you very much, i usually just hit on recent.
Dan Sullivan
I just hit. Usually hit on recent phone call and you're usually there. But I was in London all week and Babs and I were face face, face timing it all week.
Dean Jackson
So I was looking for your number that.
Dan Sullivan
I could share.
Dean Jackson
Well, how was your whirlwind adventure?
Dan Sullivan
Well, it was great Babs couldn't go. She had she developed a really bad, you know sore throat for a couple days before and she just thought that the overnight flight would not do her any good.
Dean Jackson
No.
Dan Sullivan
So, anyway, i kept the trip short. I arrived on Monday morning and I flew out on Friday, but we had an all day. we had an all day session. We had a morning workshop for anybody who would want to come you know which mostly signature. And then there were some 10 times people And then in the afternoon I did it just for 10 times and free zone And as a great treat, evan Ryan and Keegan Caldwell were both in London.
Dean Jackson
And they came over.
Dan Sullivan
they came over for the day, so I spotlighted them. Oh very nice. We're just. We're starting with Keegan, i was starting with Evan. Our whole company is going to go through a six to two hour Zoom program on. AI. Ai is your teammate, okay, and so that starts in the near future. Those who are above my security clearance will be handling the exact details. And then I had Keegan talk about the IP, and that was, that was a treat, and so it went really, really well.
You know we had about 80 in the morning. they had scheduled train strike in Britain on Thursday, so I suspect we probably lost about 40. And at least I scheduled it tonight. I hate when somebody strikes without any advance.
Dean Jackson
Let you know we're not. we're not coming in on Thursday. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
So and the UK's train country, because it's got very dense population. And of course they have they have a lot of well, they have the tube. The tube was fine but that's more or less inside London, But the outer, you know when they come from one of the outer towns or cities and they take one of the trains.
Dean Jackson
And and.
Dan Sullivan
But in the afternoon I did the whole thing for three hours on. Get your best guesses and bets, which is a. It's a real wake up call. It's a wake up call for a lot of people that. I said you know the people who are predicting this and predicting that. You know, in the world today they're guessing, actually they're. They're making a guess and they want to do it persuasively so that you'll bet on their guess. You know and that. that is my definition of marketing You try to get other people to bet on your bet on your guess.
Dean Jackson
I like this a lot. Yeah, i wanted to talk a little about that. That's a part of the new book.
Dan Sullivan
It's part of the new book. The three rules are everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. And if you put that, if you put that together, then there's a whole series of other things that flow out of the putting the three rules Everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. Nobody's stopping you from nobody's stopping you from making stuff up Right.
And every everybody, everybody who sees or experiences you're making up some new, might feel that that's not fair. And that's not fair, yeah, if you're doing that, but you're not responsible for how you feel, how they feel, right.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, yeah, so so amazing. So a very was your. How was that message kind of received in London? What's there? what's on their minds? What kind of guessing and betting are they doing?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, you know, we immediately take them into an exercise where they just look at their you know their, their life and their career, you know. so what are the best guesses? you didn't. it wasn't certain at all, you were just guessing that. I might want to go in this direction, so, but you're basing it on certain signals that you're picking up from the world in which you live. And you say you know, i think, i think if we did this, we would get a reward for our effort And and then there's certain other guesses, which are possibilities that you actually bet on.
You know, and you know and we've discussed this before of different things that you and I have been the past bet on, which has more or less brought us to where we are right now.
Dean Jackson
And I've been reflecting on, you know, going back again over the, i've been identifying them as chapters.
You know periods where I think that there's like distinct, like vector points in about every four years. For for me, if I go all the way back to 1980. And even drew before that, but from 1980, you know, from 80 to 84, my kind of high school years, and 84 to 88 was really well, those whole eight years were really all about tennis and the last four in Florida. Then, you know, coming back 88, to two chapters in a row really of real estate, my real estate career in that beginning, And I just look at how neatly it fits into the things. And there's been some wild card chapters too in there, like I looked at, i think, about my mom being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, you know as a wild card chapter that was really four years from diagnosis till she passed.
And then I look at we're in the middle now of 2023, which at the end of this year the COVID, you know chapter will have been four years. We've been in this chapter, which I think we're finally, you know, on the tail end of closing that chapter now, fingers crossed right. And so, looking back at those things, it's kind of an interesting, just looking at that rhythm, that there's a lot of those things that there's no way to have seen more than two chapters ahead. What's actually?
Dan Sullivan
going to come.
Dean Jackson
Like I looked at a lot of the things that we're doing right now. We're not even like conceivable back four chapters ago. It's not possible. But I think you can make pretty good guesses and bets in that four year timeframe. You know, with a you can see contextually where things are going to go. But I look at it that you know, we, in the context of the big change, all the things that were happening from 1900 and 1950, those were sort of you know, you could see them coming in a way right.
Because they were all just furthering advancements of things that were. The seed of them was already in place And you could. You could have predicted, once electricity was set in, that people are going to go. This is pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Let's get it everywhere you know and once people you know, once you crack the code on moving pictures, that's just and radio. what if we combined moving pictures and the radio and we could send them through the airwaves? you know all those things were, the seeds of them were were there, and I look at it now and I wonder, you know, looking at it right now, in the cup of where we are, what you know, it seems much foggier initially to kind of think out 25 years.
I mean nothing seems too outlandish now when you start to think like, will we be, will we be teleporting in 25 years? I mean, who knows, you know? I mean it's so, so crazy.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I came across a term and it was from a very, very early kind of commentator on the impact that technology has and it's just looking at it the other day, and it's by a French.
Call him a philosopher, and Jacques Loll that's the name, and he wrote a book in 1980, which was called The Technological System, and he said that there's some very identifiable characteristics that technology has, and the one that kind of got to me around the area of guesses and bets is one called causal, causal progression, and in you know, sort of simple terms, what it means is that when you have a capability, you tend to try to push that into a, you try to push that into a very impactful kind of resource that you have you have a capability, And then you're lining it up best guesses who will be eager to take advantage of this capability, okay, And then, and you know, and that's where bets come in, because the way they show their interest is actually by betting on you.
And that feeds. that's like that feeds the confidence that you have about this particular capability is of being useful. So if I take you back 1988, that's not 88, but maybe would 98 be a better, because that would be 25 years ago 25 years yeah. Yeah, so what capability did you already have at that time? that was your bias. You almost had a bias for what kind? of opportunities you're looking for, because you can match up that capability with an opportunity.
Dean Jackson
So I had the framework for what is the eight profit activators then, but already you know I had the framework, the underlying system of that, as I saw that as a universal kind of bedrock system that identified what are the things that are going to be absolutely true Like. If you look at each of the eight profit activators, you still no matter what this concept of a before unit, a during unit and an after unit, underlined with the, you know, accepting a single target market and compelling prospects to call you and educating and motivating and making offers, those things were. I saw those as the universal, you know, the contextual truth that is not going to change.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's kind of like a supply wheel and. I said each. You know the eight profit activators. One of them is necessary but, with just one of them, you might not get much action or result from it. So it's actually a stack. You know, there's a sort of people are calling things stack, but these are habit, these are capability and habit activators that you're talking about, but they're all integrated into a single system where, if you improve on one of them, the improvement is felt by the other seven.
Dean Jackson
And every element of a business fits within those in the marketing of a business fits in that framework.
Dan Sullivan
So that was the beginning of it And I really And this is the basis of the blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint.
Dean Jackson
Yes, applying these eight profit activators, overlaying it on top of your business to create a blueprint for breakthrough is you can have a breakthrough by dialing in the perfect target audience Or shifting your focus to It's perfectly dovetails with the largest check concept. If you think about if we were just to select a target market of your largest check clients, let's lock that in. Now we'll move on to profit activator too. Notice what would compel your largest check prospects, if they're invisible or visible prospects, to raise their hand and say I'm interested in this. And this is where a book comes into play, that I look at a book as the And.
I go to profit activator tool to get and identify in a conversation with your ideal prospect, and so overlaying this idea of visible prospects versus invisible prospects is The way I describe that is, if your prospect is chiropractors, those are, those are visible prospects and you can get a list of them and point to them. There's one, there's one, there's one, there's one. You can see who they are specifically. But if you're a chiropractor, your prospects are invisible because you can't get a list of people who just woke up with a twisted back this morning or pulled their backs in the garden yesterday or those things.
So you have to draw those people out towards you And that's where a book is like the ideal thing If you've got a book that says on the title, beyond cover, exactly what somebody wants. I work, you know Dr Milke, the podiatrist in Milwaukee I think he's in 10 times, so I've been working with him for some time now but we did a series of books and one of them is the planter fascitis solution, and so we advertise that book on Facebook in a radius around his practice, around his office there, and people raise their hand and say, oh, i want the planter fascitis solution. And now he's in conversation with someone who's his ideal prospect. So that level of I just look at applying those things, that, as we look back, and I think about the conversation that you and I had 10 years ago that led to the Breakthrough Blueprint live event was what is the thing that would be fascinating?
Dan Sullivan
and motivating, fascinated and motivate you for your whole life.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, for 25 years And here we are, you know, 10 years later, and I'm still fascinated and motivated by the idea of applying the eight profit activators to all kinds of businesses. It's fascinating.
Dan Sullivan
Well, here's an interesting thing about predictions. I mean, i just passed my 79th birthday, so 1944, i was born And I would say that in my entire conscious experience, which started around 1950, we are in the midst of the greatest amount of multidimensional shifting that I've seen in my entire life, and it's taking place on the economic level. It's the same thing on politics, social, cultural and geographically, demographically almost anything that any area by which things are organized to make things you know have sense and have direction and everything. All those things are shifting And I think they're shifting in fairly unpredictable ways.
In other words, we don't know what it's going to have. But just to go back to your process, it seems to me that it really doesn't matter what's happening. There will be individuals for whom they're looking for a system that identifies at any given time their profit activators.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly right, it doesn't matter It doesn't really matter.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't really matter who it is, what industry they're in, where they live now. Now that we have Zoom, and so my sense is that, but the thing about it is that you're not really, really. you're way past the question. I wonder what individuals in the future will be looking for, because they'll be looking for you, regardless of what they're doing and what their situation is.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, that's really, I think, the.
Dan Sullivan
Profit is not a brand new notion. Exactly.
Dean Jackson
I wonder what the history of profit I mean you mentioned. I have a recollection of you mentioning something about the history of profit making And Well. I mean As a concept.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i mean it's got to be, in a certain sense, not necessarily the word. They wouldn't necessarily have that word because that's peculiar to the language, but yeah. But I mean I just can't imagine, when you have a growth of a human community, that there's the thing that somebody knows how to provide something of value that returns them more than they spend to deliver what they're delivering, or I mean, that's not the core of entrepreneurship, right? Well, I think it's the core of humanity.
I think it's the core of humanity, And that I mean it took a long time to get to a point where you could have what we call a currency to have a currency, you know, i mean where you had that understanding of money and you actually had a vehicle, a money type vehicle, that you could do it.
I mean, that's fairly recent, so this you know, goes back from what I understand, goes back a couple of fourth, I'll say 4,000 years. It was called the Shekel, It was created in the Middle East and what's Mesopotamia? So which is in the Iranian kind of the Iranian, if you're going east Iran and you know, and Pakistan and everything, And but for a couple of thousand years the grain barley was used as a medium of exchange.
You know I think it was 2000 years and that would take us right up to, you know, maybe 3000 years ago, you know so, 1000 BC, and I think that that's when what's now called Mesopotamia created a coin that had a hundred It was. You could take bits. They would divide it into sections and you could snap off. It's made of silver and you could snap off one of the little pies you know so they'd have it pie, and then you know if you gave to him. That was called two bits. You know two bits for really.
Dean Jackson
Oh, really Okay.
Dan Sullivan
Six bits. Yeah, that's for our term, but yeah, and you know, and that was a capability then you know, people didn't have to take a wagon load of barley.
The reason why barley is barley is a main ingredient of beer And so it was a food, but it was also a grain which, even till this day, can grow on soil that has a high salt content. Okay, Wheat wouldn't do it, Rye wouldn't do it, Oats wouldn't do it, but barley did it. So it was a very durable food. You know you could pay things with the barley, But Peter Zion talks a lot about this in his latest book. You know the end of the world is just just beginning. Yeah, And but anyway. But in the background, regardless of what you're using as a medium of exchange, people are looking for profit.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting thing I've been loving. I've been calling the.
You know what we've been playing as the cooperation game, you know that we've, since we banded together to say you go do the hunting and I'll be the gathering, we'll meet back at camp. you know that, that that level of collaboration, is that the core of it. But interesting, I mean. I love those kind of thoughts. So, even though no matter where the we kind of all the excitement and all the sort of game changer feeling is when all the attention at the spotlight goes on one particular element of it, you know, like every all eyes right now, of course, are on chat And that's where all the attention, the whole you know the flock has, you know, descended on on this.
All the attention is on it And but I think it's really like that's one piece of the big thing I don't know where. You know it's hard to predict. Maybe I'm saying that maybe it's not hard to predict, but it feels uncertain how to, how to predict what the 25 year, you know path of AI and chat, and I think it's what that go, you know yeah, and you can.
Dan Sullivan
you can, you know, you can support your statement there by just going back to when the microchip was just being talked about in the early 70s, Maybe 75, there was a growing awareness of this thing which had been developing really since the Second World War. Yeah, you know that there was a invention where you could process information on the invention And then, if you go forward, from 75 to 2000, you know 98 was the cell phone you know and and you you already had the internet by them and you had apps.
You had apps by them. I think those would have been hard to predict in 1975.
Dean Jackson
Absolutely. Yeah, i mean, you know where you went from there. If you look at the evolution that was calculators and and digital watch, i'm not saying that there wasn't someone.
Dan Sullivan
I'm not saying there, but there wasn't someone or a number of people who weren't predicting. I'm just saying it was making no real impact.
Dean Jackson
Yeah right.
Dan Sullivan
Exactly General public's point of view, you know and now, you know, but even here with the chat, gpt and the other AI applications, because there's really hundreds of these out there that are very specific uses- of AI. And that people say well, the whole world knows about it. And I said I'll eat billion. I'll eat billion.
Dean Jackson
What about?
Dan Sullivan
the three. What about the three million who don't don't really have steady, reliable electricity, you know?
Dean Jackson
you think they're?
Dan Sullivan
chatting. You think they're chatting about it. You know you think they're talking about this. And I said and the other thing is that virtually all the news about this and the development and the investment, you know, the explosion of investment that's going into these It's, it's all in the English language.
You know, i don't think for example, i just came back from the UK and very little awareness is not being written up in London as a boatload of different kinds of newspapers. I'm seeing anything about AI, you know, and even our day with strategic coach clients last Thursday in London. They brought it up because Evan Ryan was there, so I had him talk about this And he said a whole bunch of people got, came up and said boy, you know, this is taking me kind of by surprise. These are speaking people. So my sense is.
You know that it's fairly, fairly specific. Let's say maybe 50 million, 50 million people who are probably English speaking Americans. English speaking Americans, you know, and they're. I don't see the Canadian government talking about it. You know, and you know I get the national every day than the national post And you know not much, talk about it, not much. You know few articles here, a few articles here. But if you go to the Wall Street Journal any day, you know which, you know there's probably 15 or 20 articles of one kind on it, yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
And you just see all the.
Dan Sullivan
So I think this is an interesting. I think this is profoundly unfair, mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
What do you think? Well, what's the summary of of Evan's take on this Like, where's he uniquely thinking?
Dan Sullivan
Well, he said that the technology is meaningless unless you examine the teamwork that you want to improve.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm.
Dan Sullivan
He says just learning how to do chat, g, p, t without applying that to teamwork probably isn't going to get you anywhere.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm, yeah to a, as he did from the start. some examples of how it could be an exponential in teamwork.
Dan Sullivan
Well, again what we're, the way I understand it, starting because you know these are very, very high on the hierarchy decisions, you know so you know, I'm informed that a decision has been made.
Dean Jackson
I'm talking about my company Yeah yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and I'm not joking. You know I'm not joking, because, no, i get it, but the you know the 12 hours have to be freed up because we want at least 80% of our team members to be on those calls. You know, so there's a schedule, there's a scheduling project that has to go. We have to find, you know, we have to find he's doing it on zoom.
So it's not a question of his availability. I mean, he's the one who offered, you know, this. offered in the sense that he said would you pay for it? And we said, would you pay me for this? And we said, yeah, we really would. And but one of the big things is we're just going after what people are actually working on. So we're going to have sort of a little research project. It's kind of like in the beginning of the program we asked you to take a quarter you know a normal quarter, 13 weeks And just write down every activity that you do, personal or business. Okay, so we have an inventory and then we put it through a filter. where is this an activity where you're incompetent, or their activities here, where you're actually incompetent but you're kind of forced to do them just out of necessity, and then so incompetent because these aren't doing you any good and they're wearing you out and you're not getting any projectivity from it, but you're still doing it, yeah, and then.
And then it'd be like Dean Jackson you know doing all the electrical and plumbing work in his house. You know, probably, probably, yeah, yeah. Or Dan Sullivan driving you know doing pickups and delivering. And then we get to competent where you're, you know your average. You know you're probably good as a lot of people, but it's a chore, you know. And energy you know it's an energy sucking chore. Then you get to excellence and that's where you have real skills. You're above. You know you're better than other people, but there's no spark for you. There's no spark for you, you know. And if you look to head five years and you were still doing just as much of this as you are now, even though you produce excellent. You produce excellent results that went, like you, up that and that. And then there's unique ability and this is the thing that just totally energized you. You can do it all day. At the end of the day.
Right, you go eight, 10 hours and you've got more energy than when you started to the day and you're totally. You're so good at this. You don't understand why other people aren't. You know, you just do this and this and this. See how this fits together. You know, like that. And now, they don't see it at all. They don't see it at all. Right. And then the other thing is it's the most valuable thing that people want to pay you for when you're doing this mysterious, easy, easy thing.
And so and so we're going to do the same thing with the AI project with Evan. We're going to get everybody to inventory. We're just going to mostly look at work, but we'll include, you know, outside of work and just say, and he's going to give us a series of categories, you know, where you just identify activities that are repetitious, they're always required and you always have to do them, but they're repetitious, and that if there was a machine teammate who could do this in a matter of seconds or minutes, where it takes you hours or days go after that and introduce the AI solution to this.
So that would be one where AI is a teammate and the goal would be over six weeks to get you know, probably identify. 80% of of can quite quickly be taken care of by the AI teammate.
Dean Jackson
Oh, this was great.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, that's a really good way to think about it. No, i think we'll take a big productivity jump because we have we have a goal that we're at a certain number right now, you know, and it's it's not the highest revenues we've had That was in 2019, but it's a less than a million away. You know it's less than a million away.
So and and so we're saying well, if we went 10 times with that, because we've gone 10 times in in 15 years, 15 years ago, when we were one tenth what we were last year one tenth of that So in 15 years we went 10 times And but do that without adding more than another 20 individuals to the payroll. Yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
That's exciting Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then you'll learn all sorts of things how work gets set up, how, you know, how does, how does this work come into existence? anyway, you know, and and you start developing standards that you know we really shouldn't be, even bringing work like this into the company.
Dean Jackson
You know it can be done outside Someone's talking about it way of of thinking. he attached their team, his whole team, with and gave them bonuses for figuring out how to replace themselves with AI and and the new tools, kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i think the the languaging is really important. You don't talk about replacing yourself. No, exactly, you're replacing an activity and making it automatic that you don't like doing and nobody really likes doing it. Yeah, and that wasn't.
Dean Jackson
I think I said it wrong. It's automate your, your, your role. Yeah, Because it's yeah, replacing yourself. So yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like maybe that's the thing, It's not a multiply yourself, that's a better framing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, right, yeah, i think that, i think that AI, yeah, yeah, i mean, that's what all the scary movies are about Yeah. And and you know, and a lot of the predictions you know are about that. you know there aren't going to be this or aren't going to be that. And I and I've had occasion to bring up Cyrus McCormick with mentioning you as the thinker here, and I said you know, those 16 other people who now didn't have to do backbreaking work were now freed up to do more specialized work in a growing society.
Dean Jackson
And they were able to get back to you. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so. so the delivery of the food which was required for the entire population from the you know the the harvesting wheat was simplified and made possible with just a farmer or a person on, you know, on the seat of the reaper, with the, you know, with the mule or with the work of 14 men.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
What was the actual number? was it 14? Yeah, 14 men.
Dean Jackson
One, yeah, one man with a reaper could do the work of 14 men.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, see, yeah That's, that's an enormous savings, but those people were freed up, i mean yeah, not like you know, they were clutching onto that job dearly You know they wanted to take a job.
They were taking our jobs, you know, and you know I was planning to do this every year for the next 30 years. You know, and and and you know is that that there's this you know the the thing, like humans aren't adaptable. You know there's a profound belief among people who think about these things from a theoretical standpoint, that, you know, if this happens, human beings won't be able to respond to it. You know, and I said, well history. History says you're not paying attention, people do. They immediately jump, you know, to some new.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting framework to really think about. You know, certainly 25 years, you know the runway or whatever, but certainly in the next four years that's. I think that's why they really refer to. I think what Peter Diamandis kind of talked about is the near-term force, the able future, which is, i think it's much easier to make five-year guesses than that kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but you know there's a surprising number of the predictions at A360 that were made at our first conference 2011,. that really aren't, you know, like you know VR for one thing is less. VR, you know, and you know it's almost like people are saying, no, i wasn't pushing that. You know I was not a member of the Communist Party.
You know I mean it's almost like they're saying no, no, no, you know, it's everything like that. But I remember people standing up there and said you know, the first one's going to be right under Los Angeles. It's going to go from the northern to the south, it's going to go right from, you know, the airport right to the San Fernando Valley right. And then they ran into something called property rights.
Right, right, Yeah, yeah and they thought, oh, the city will just override them. And I said well, you know, it's a constitutional issue. It wouldn't be decided in Los Angeles, it would be decided in Congress, you know or the Supreme Court. And you know. But people project a new thing and all is going to give way to it. It is so important And, but I said, wouldn't there be a big traffic jam right where you try to get on the tunnel and really being a traffic jam, you know.
I said you know. Just because you can visualize something and you can see yourself taking advantage of it, doesn't mean that you know that Newton's third law will move aside for you. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Yeah, but the two that seem to have really really gone even further than was predicted were AI, which I think. I think I was surprised by the chat GTT thing because I didn't know there was something that could be that easy for individuals.
I knew that you know large organizations were using it and everything else, but that kind of surprised me. And the other thing is regenerative medicine and you know, using our own stem cells to repair things and to cure things and turning skin cells into any other kind of cell. That to me That's like cracking. That's, like you know, being able to capture and channel and direct electricity.
Dean Jackson
That seems to me to be a major, really major major thing. But there's the AI combined with that.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, ai, that translated where you. They can literally take the cell signals, you know, the signals from the body. They can actually, because we have an electric impulse and they can read. They can duplicate this electronically and then test those electronic signals as if they were actually cells in the body. And they can do 10,000 tests in a time that a manual test takes.
Dean Jackson
And.
Dan Sullivan
I said no, that's, that's super.
Dean Jackson
And I think that's what's going to come like. I think we're going to end up in a sent power situation, like the chef masters, in that the biggest winners of the AI kind of advanced or not the one it's not going to be just AI on its own, it's going to be AI paired with a, you know, with an individual. It's a top flight individual powered with AI that's going to make the biggest impact Absolutely.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's like. my next quarterly book is called training, training technology like a good dog And I say, you know, a tough guy with a tough dog will beat another tough guy who doesn't have a dog, Exactly and rather than just, or just the dog alone, you know? yeah, that's true, and the dog will be the one who announces the fight.
Dean Jackson
That's so funny. Yeah, I realized we left last week on a bit of a cliffhanger with the working genius thing. I wondered if you had been able to do your working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's really good. It put me in a bind because I have other people sign me. I want to, and Patrick Lindsay only you know. I mean he's very well read around our office regarding teamwork and everything like that. So I know who it is now. Yeah, i was going to do it that night, but Becca, who does all this stuff for me, said that she would sign me on when we got back from London. She was busy with a lot of things, and so it's a project.
It's a project that will be done this week. But you know, I found the website. It seems like another filter that we can use for, along with Colby and the Strength Finder and Print.
Dean Jackson
Oh, i think it's fantastic in that. Yeah, i would put it in. I would put it right up there with Colby in terms like Colby is most what is very useful and I think that if I were to rank the four of them. I would put that working genius right up there at the top.
More useful than just Strength Finder and more useful than Print. Yeah, they're all a big. I don't think you can ever have too much self-awareness, but I think having the you know, i think usable team dynamic awareness is great. James Drage sent me over. I had my whole team do it and he sent me a. You know, they have charts that show where your team genius is in terms of which team members like. If you're looking to put together a project and you need a, i guess the ideal is that you have someone in each of the components the wonder, invention, the discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity that you've got someone who's a genius at that involved in that process. Yeah, you know the head of that division of it.
So it's really neat to see the dynamics of how people can work together, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, anyway, yeah, So anyway, work proceeds. you know, fly me. you know, 3,000 miles away, and my priority list for the day changes. I got it. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, yeah. London is the greatest walking city that I've ever.
Dean Jackson
Oh man, you know, one of my favorite memories is our that when we ended up in London at the same time and we spent hours wandering around, Yeah we took that long hike out to that bookstore.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then we, and then we made our way back to a favorite restaurant of ours one.
Dean Jackson
Greek street. Right And then yeah, that London's perfect for that. I mean, that was yeah it was. It was dry and sunny kind of the poolside but sunny but there was no rain during the walk. The walk reaches there.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway, i'm going to inquire about that And I've got a real project now with that, in advance of starting the AI Azure teammate program. We should have all the staff actually do this working genius exercise.
Dean Jackson
I think that would be a nice filter And I wonder that's a really interesting thing is that's a nice framework to think how can, how can AI help with?
Dan Sullivan
That's how we've pre-app your working genius. Yeah right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting that's a really interesting combinator. It's a triple play. Your unique ability Well, you can work at AI and working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's kind of funny. You could add the triple play to it. So we got three things. You got the AI as a teammate, working genius and the triple play. I think that would be a nice trifecta.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, wow, that's all thinking about your thinking. I came up with a new term, dan. I'll plant the seed because I know we're coming up at the top of the hour here. It went so fast this time It always does, but this one's particular, you know, we've been talking about and I've been thinking about the mainland and the land here, but what I've really discovered is I was rereading thinking about your thinking, the small book.
We recently had our flood and all the that required us moving things around, and I found a copy of my your small book, the thinking about your thinking. I thought that you know there's a third element of this that I've been calling Dean Blan dia, which is the inner world of thinking about my thinking and spending time there as a destination. And something you said, you know you said it kind of a couple of years ago, whenever you went on, you know, going off TV and stuff, the same thing stuck out at me. I don't know exactly how you said it, but you basically said I realized that what's going on in my own mind is far more interesting and valuable than anything going on in that, on that screen, in that box.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
And how did you articulate? What was the the thought behind that? Because that that it stuck with me for all these years when you said that, yeah, Well, i think you do that too.
Dan Sullivan
I mean that that both of us, fairly young and like I think, developed the ability to do that, amuse ourselves and entertain ourselves and educate ourselves without needing needing too much outside help and that, and you know, and We've stuck with that a lot. You know way, way beyond what Most people would say. Well, i used to have Interesting times when I when I had time you know where I would just think about things and everything else.
Yeah, of course you know I had to go to school and then I had to go out and get a job Right we started, started to pay him and of course I haven't done any kind of thinking like that and I said, yeah, you know, i got you know on a path when I was, you know, somewhere around eight years old, where this was way more interesting. Than anything that I was encountering. The other thing I noticed is that I was interacting with adults and They didn't see how to do this.
They didn't seem to do it because when I would bring up You know what was going on when they were eight years old and they were born 1910 or something, and I said wow, wow. And they said geez, i haven't thought about this, you know, it's I. He says here right me to think about think about things that I haven't thought about, and then afterwards They would comment to my mother When they matter her. You know, dan asked questions and they Makes me remember things that I haven't really remembered and I said well, you know, you know and I said hmm.
If that had happened to me, I would have been thinking about it. I mean, if that was happening in the world, happening in the world at that time, boy. I all over it, you know and everything like that, and it struck me that people weren't really reflecting On how they were thinking about their experiences. They were affecting on the experience, but they weren't reflecting on how they were thinking about the experience. And so, and that didn't bother me, and because I always like having Secret, unfair advantages- Mm-hmm, i Love that.
Dean Jackson
I've been thinking you do the? oh, i really do. I've been monitoring and thinking now about You know, my my constant you're. My present thought is less screen time, more dean time. But that's really the thing is, the more I think about just even putting the screen down and just going inside and playing around in in Dean land is a. There's a lot more beneficial stuff going on in the land.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, then The other you know, you know who we're really. The organization that was that we both had extensive experience with. That was really on to this way back, you know, 40-50 years ago and as the four seasons. So tell yeah, and they have a motto about their company that we Systematize the predictable, mm-hmm, and so that we can humanize the exceptional. Yeah, and That seems to describe a general principle that Would take advantage of any new technology which allowed you to systematize the predictable.
You know, to free up people so that they could be Exceptionally human in any situation and I think that's what we want to do. I mean, i think that's a, that isn't just a Organizational strategy. I think that's That could be. You know, in the 21st century that could be a general human aspiration. You know, i want to get freed up from Doing machine-like work.
Dean Jackson
I don't want to do machine-like work, you know right. I don't want to.
Dan Sullivan
I don't want. I don't want to be given tasks where I'm expected to be machine-like I. I'm just not going for that anymore.
Dean Jackson
Right, i Love it. Yeah, well, i noticed, so I noticed. Next week is Says no Dan podcats on my calendar.
Dan Sullivan
That's right.
Dean Jackson
That's right because traveling, we're flying.
Dan Sullivan
We're flying on Sunday to Chicago. So okay, yeah, so we have. You know, we have the first in person a free zone that week, you know on Thursday, okay and, but we're flying in and we, you know, we Have to see the team and there's all sorts of things, and I have all sorts of. I guess yeah, but the but. The big thing is that The one thing that's not predictable is How people are going to think about the next 25 years.
You know you know, predictable, because, right, you know each person's kind of responsible. or Using their own Brain to figure out things. Yeah, yeah and my sense is that Making predictions 25 years from now based on Present priorities and that, i think, doesn't give you much insight, mm-hmm.
Dean Jackson
I Think gives you directional, you know in some way. But but it's certain, i mean to know it gives you comfort when you start into look at well, what do we know that's going to be true 25 years from now. You know.
Dan Sullivan
That's really the thing, men are still going to be shaving that's exactly the warm Buffett model, right?
Dean Jackson
That's exactly yeah yeah, Yeah and yeah, and land things and.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, people are still going to be eating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think yeah, yeah, well, i mean, there's definitely entertaining. Yeah, what do all people do, you know, around the planet? Well, not everybody shapes, you know. But right, yeah, so But, given the market that you're after is there, you know, we know. I do know alcohol is gonna play a big part of it. Now, they're direct, you know They may buddy, one of the signs that an ancient Gathering of humans was actually human is pottery.
Dean Jackson
So they'll find shards, pottery shards and when they examine the shards.
Dan Sullivan
You know what they always find on the shards alcohol, alcohol, great, exactly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, why did humans Create pottery?
Dan Sullivan
well, yeah, you know, to have something they could make the alcohol and save the alcohol. They're their mushroom bruise, right Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, they just do this to have pottery they did it right they can.
Dan Sullivan
They could make drinking alcohol a little bit more predictable. All righty, okay, dan. Well, i will. I'll be here in two weeks, yeah, and we'll be back, yeah, in two weeks.
Dean Jackson
So we're going to see Jeff. Maddowff's play The end of men, the end of next week.
Dan Sullivan
So it opened with its first pre-order. So it's a pre-order. So it's a pre-order The end of men, the end of next week. So it opened with its first proof preview Last night.
Dean Jackson
So they have a week of previews.
Dan Sullivan
They have a week of previews where they're just, you know, making scene shifts and making adjustments to the script and you know, and everything else, and they have about five or six of these and People, they have audiences for them.
The other thing is that audiences can come in and see everything else, and then they, then they have two last ones Where they're locked down Okay, so that all the changes have been made, and then the last two of the previews is It's locked down. Now, this is the play, and then they have opening night, which is the 14th, and we're going down the 16th.
Dean Jackson
Oh, very nice, that's so great. Yeah, all right. okay, i will talk to you soon. You.
View all episodes
By Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan
4.3
99 ratings
In today’s episode of Welcome to Cloundlandia, we speak about the importance of making bets and guesses in today's shifting environment and how the eight profit activators form the foundation of any successful business.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
How are?
Dean Jackson
you. Welcome to Cloudland, thank you very much, i usually just hit on recent.
Dan Sullivan
I just hit. Usually hit on recent phone call and you're usually there. But I was in London all week and Babs and I were face face, face timing it all week.
Dean Jackson
So I was looking for your number that.
Dan Sullivan
I could share.
Dean Jackson
Well, how was your whirlwind adventure?
Dan Sullivan
Well, it was great Babs couldn't go. She had she developed a really bad, you know sore throat for a couple days before and she just thought that the overnight flight would not do her any good.
Dean Jackson
No.
Dan Sullivan
So, anyway, i kept the trip short. I arrived on Monday morning and I flew out on Friday, but we had an all day. we had an all day session. We had a morning workshop for anybody who would want to come you know which mostly signature. And then there were some 10 times people And then in the afternoon I did it just for 10 times and free zone And as a great treat, evan Ryan and Keegan Caldwell were both in London.
Dean Jackson
And they came over.
Dan Sullivan
they came over for the day, so I spotlighted them. Oh very nice. We're just. We're starting with Keegan, i was starting with Evan. Our whole company is going to go through a six to two hour Zoom program on. AI. Ai is your teammate, okay, and so that starts in the near future. Those who are above my security clearance will be handling the exact details. And then I had Keegan talk about the IP, and that was, that was a treat, and so it went really, really well.
You know we had about 80 in the morning. they had scheduled train strike in Britain on Thursday, so I suspect we probably lost about 40. And at least I scheduled it tonight. I hate when somebody strikes without any advance.
Dean Jackson
Let you know we're not. we're not coming in on Thursday. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
So and the UK's train country, because it's got very dense population. And of course they have they have a lot of well, they have the tube. The tube was fine but that's more or less inside London, But the outer, you know when they come from one of the outer towns or cities and they take one of the trains.
Dean Jackson
And and.
Dan Sullivan
But in the afternoon I did the whole thing for three hours on. Get your best guesses and bets, which is a. It's a real wake up call. It's a wake up call for a lot of people that. I said you know the people who are predicting this and predicting that. You know, in the world today they're guessing, actually they're. They're making a guess and they want to do it persuasively so that you'll bet on their guess. You know and that. that is my definition of marketing You try to get other people to bet on your bet on your guess.
Dean Jackson
I like this a lot. Yeah, i wanted to talk a little about that. That's a part of the new book.
Dan Sullivan
It's part of the new book. The three rules are everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. And if you put that, if you put that together, then there's a whole series of other things that flow out of the putting the three rules Everything's made up, nobody's in charge, life's not fair. Nobody's stopping you from nobody's stopping you from making stuff up Right.
And every everybody, everybody who sees or experiences you're making up some new, might feel that that's not fair. And that's not fair, yeah, if you're doing that, but you're not responsible for how you feel, how they feel, right.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, yeah, so so amazing. So a very was your. How was that message kind of received in London? What's there? what's on their minds? What kind of guessing and betting are they doing?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, you know, we immediately take them into an exercise where they just look at their you know their, their life and their career, you know. so what are the best guesses? you didn't. it wasn't certain at all, you were just guessing that. I might want to go in this direction, so, but you're basing it on certain signals that you're picking up from the world in which you live. And you say you know, i think, i think if we did this, we would get a reward for our effort And and then there's certain other guesses, which are possibilities that you actually bet on.
You know, and you know and we've discussed this before of different things that you and I have been the past bet on, which has more or less brought us to where we are right now.
Dean Jackson
And I've been reflecting on, you know, going back again over the, i've been identifying them as chapters.
You know periods where I think that there's like distinct, like vector points in about every four years. For for me, if I go all the way back to 1980. And even drew before that, but from 1980, you know, from 80 to 84, my kind of high school years, and 84 to 88 was really well, those whole eight years were really all about tennis and the last four in Florida. Then, you know, coming back 88, to two chapters in a row really of real estate, my real estate career in that beginning, And I just look at how neatly it fits into the things. And there's been some wild card chapters too in there, like I looked at, i think, about my mom being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, you know as a wild card chapter that was really four years from diagnosis till she passed.
And then I look at we're in the middle now of 2023, which at the end of this year the COVID, you know chapter will have been four years. We've been in this chapter, which I think we're finally, you know, on the tail end of closing that chapter now, fingers crossed right. And so, looking back at those things, it's kind of an interesting, just looking at that rhythm, that there's a lot of those things that there's no way to have seen more than two chapters ahead. What's actually?
Dan Sullivan
going to come.
Dean Jackson
Like I looked at a lot of the things that we're doing right now. We're not even like conceivable back four chapters ago. It's not possible. But I think you can make pretty good guesses and bets in that four year timeframe. You know, with a you can see contextually where things are going to go. But I look at it that you know, we, in the context of the big change, all the things that were happening from 1900 and 1950, those were sort of you know, you could see them coming in a way right.
Because they were all just furthering advancements of things that were. The seed of them was already in place And you could. You could have predicted, once electricity was set in, that people are going to go. This is pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Let's get it everywhere you know and once people you know, once you crack the code on moving pictures, that's just and radio. what if we combined moving pictures and the radio and we could send them through the airwaves? you know all those things were, the seeds of them were were there, and I look at it now and I wonder, you know, looking at it right now, in the cup of where we are, what you know, it seems much foggier initially to kind of think out 25 years.
I mean nothing seems too outlandish now when you start to think like, will we be, will we be teleporting in 25 years? I mean, who knows, you know? I mean it's so, so crazy.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I came across a term and it was from a very, very early kind of commentator on the impact that technology has and it's just looking at it the other day, and it's by a French.
Call him a philosopher, and Jacques Loll that's the name, and he wrote a book in 1980, which was called The Technological System, and he said that there's some very identifiable characteristics that technology has, and the one that kind of got to me around the area of guesses and bets is one called causal, causal progression, and in you know, sort of simple terms, what it means is that when you have a capability, you tend to try to push that into a, you try to push that into a very impactful kind of resource that you have you have a capability, And then you're lining it up best guesses who will be eager to take advantage of this capability, okay, And then, and you know, and that's where bets come in, because the way they show their interest is actually by betting on you.
And that feeds. that's like that feeds the confidence that you have about this particular capability is of being useful. So if I take you back 1988, that's not 88, but maybe would 98 be a better, because that would be 25 years ago 25 years yeah. Yeah, so what capability did you already have at that time? that was your bias. You almost had a bias for what kind? of opportunities you're looking for, because you can match up that capability with an opportunity.
Dean Jackson
So I had the framework for what is the eight profit activators then, but already you know I had the framework, the underlying system of that, as I saw that as a universal kind of bedrock system that identified what are the things that are going to be absolutely true Like. If you look at each of the eight profit activators, you still no matter what this concept of a before unit, a during unit and an after unit, underlined with the, you know, accepting a single target market and compelling prospects to call you and educating and motivating and making offers, those things were. I saw those as the universal, you know, the contextual truth that is not going to change.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's kind of like a supply wheel and. I said each. You know the eight profit activators. One of them is necessary but, with just one of them, you might not get much action or result from it. So it's actually a stack. You know, there's a sort of people are calling things stack, but these are habit, these are capability and habit activators that you're talking about, but they're all integrated into a single system where, if you improve on one of them, the improvement is felt by the other seven.
Dean Jackson
And every element of a business fits within those in the marketing of a business fits in that framework.
Dan Sullivan
So that was the beginning of it And I really And this is the basis of the blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint, the breakthrough blueprint.
Dean Jackson
Yes, applying these eight profit activators, overlaying it on top of your business to create a blueprint for breakthrough is you can have a breakthrough by dialing in the perfect target audience Or shifting your focus to It's perfectly dovetails with the largest check concept. If you think about if we were just to select a target market of your largest check clients, let's lock that in. Now we'll move on to profit activator too. Notice what would compel your largest check prospects, if they're invisible or visible prospects, to raise their hand and say I'm interested in this. And this is where a book comes into play, that I look at a book as the And.
I go to profit activator tool to get and identify in a conversation with your ideal prospect, and so overlaying this idea of visible prospects versus invisible prospects is The way I describe that is, if your prospect is chiropractors, those are, those are visible prospects and you can get a list of them and point to them. There's one, there's one, there's one, there's one. You can see who they are specifically. But if you're a chiropractor, your prospects are invisible because you can't get a list of people who just woke up with a twisted back this morning or pulled their backs in the garden yesterday or those things.
So you have to draw those people out towards you And that's where a book is like the ideal thing If you've got a book that says on the title, beyond cover, exactly what somebody wants. I work, you know Dr Milke, the podiatrist in Milwaukee I think he's in 10 times, so I've been working with him for some time now but we did a series of books and one of them is the planter fascitis solution, and so we advertise that book on Facebook in a radius around his practice, around his office there, and people raise their hand and say, oh, i want the planter fascitis solution. And now he's in conversation with someone who's his ideal prospect. So that level of I just look at applying those things, that, as we look back, and I think about the conversation that you and I had 10 years ago that led to the Breakthrough Blueprint live event was what is the thing that would be fascinating?
Dan Sullivan
and motivating, fascinated and motivate you for your whole life.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, for 25 years And here we are, you know, 10 years later, and I'm still fascinated and motivated by the idea of applying the eight profit activators to all kinds of businesses. It's fascinating.
Dan Sullivan
Well, here's an interesting thing about predictions. I mean, i just passed my 79th birthday, so 1944, i was born And I would say that in my entire conscious experience, which started around 1950, we are in the midst of the greatest amount of multidimensional shifting that I've seen in my entire life, and it's taking place on the economic level. It's the same thing on politics, social, cultural and geographically, demographically almost anything that any area by which things are organized to make things you know have sense and have direction and everything. All those things are shifting And I think they're shifting in fairly unpredictable ways.
In other words, we don't know what it's going to have. But just to go back to your process, it seems to me that it really doesn't matter what's happening. There will be individuals for whom they're looking for a system that identifies at any given time their profit activators.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly right, it doesn't matter It doesn't really matter.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't really matter who it is, what industry they're in, where they live now. Now that we have Zoom, and so my sense is that, but the thing about it is that you're not really, really. you're way past the question. I wonder what individuals in the future will be looking for, because they'll be looking for you, regardless of what they're doing and what their situation is.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, that's really, I think, the.
Dan Sullivan
Profit is not a brand new notion. Exactly.
Dean Jackson
I wonder what the history of profit I mean you mentioned. I have a recollection of you mentioning something about the history of profit making And Well. I mean As a concept.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i mean it's got to be, in a certain sense, not necessarily the word. They wouldn't necessarily have that word because that's peculiar to the language, but yeah. But I mean I just can't imagine, when you have a growth of a human community, that there's the thing that somebody knows how to provide something of value that returns them more than they spend to deliver what they're delivering, or I mean, that's not the core of entrepreneurship, right? Well, I think it's the core of humanity.
I think it's the core of humanity, And that I mean it took a long time to get to a point where you could have what we call a currency to have a currency, you know, i mean where you had that understanding of money and you actually had a vehicle, a money type vehicle, that you could do it.
I mean, that's fairly recent, so this you know, goes back from what I understand, goes back a couple of fourth, I'll say 4,000 years. It was called the Shekel, It was created in the Middle East and what's Mesopotamia? So which is in the Iranian kind of the Iranian, if you're going east Iran and you know, and Pakistan and everything, And but for a couple of thousand years the grain barley was used as a medium of exchange.
You know I think it was 2000 years and that would take us right up to, you know, maybe 3000 years ago, you know so, 1000 BC, and I think that that's when what's now called Mesopotamia created a coin that had a hundred It was. You could take bits. They would divide it into sections and you could snap off. It's made of silver and you could snap off one of the little pies you know so they'd have it pie, and then you know if you gave to him. That was called two bits. You know two bits for really.
Dean Jackson
Oh, really Okay.
Dan Sullivan
Six bits. Yeah, that's for our term, but yeah, and you know, and that was a capability then you know, people didn't have to take a wagon load of barley.
The reason why barley is barley is a main ingredient of beer And so it was a food, but it was also a grain which, even till this day, can grow on soil that has a high salt content. Okay, Wheat wouldn't do it, Rye wouldn't do it, Oats wouldn't do it, but barley did it. So it was a very durable food. You know you could pay things with the barley, But Peter Zion talks a lot about this in his latest book. You know the end of the world is just just beginning. Yeah, And but anyway. But in the background, regardless of what you're using as a medium of exchange, people are looking for profit.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting thing I've been loving. I've been calling the.
You know what we've been playing as the cooperation game, you know that we've, since we banded together to say you go do the hunting and I'll be the gathering, we'll meet back at camp. you know that, that that level of collaboration, is that the core of it. But interesting, I mean. I love those kind of thoughts. So, even though no matter where the we kind of all the excitement and all the sort of game changer feeling is when all the attention at the spotlight goes on one particular element of it, you know, like every all eyes right now, of course, are on chat And that's where all the attention, the whole you know the flock has, you know, descended on on this.
All the attention is on it And but I think it's really like that's one piece of the big thing I don't know where. You know it's hard to predict. Maybe I'm saying that maybe it's not hard to predict, but it feels uncertain how to, how to predict what the 25 year, you know path of AI and chat, and I think it's what that go, you know yeah, and you can.
Dan Sullivan
you can, you know, you can support your statement there by just going back to when the microchip was just being talked about in the early 70s, Maybe 75, there was a growing awareness of this thing which had been developing really since the Second World War. Yeah, you know that there was a invention where you could process information on the invention And then, if you go forward, from 75 to 2000, you know 98 was the cell phone you know and and you you already had the internet by them and you had apps.
You had apps by them. I think those would have been hard to predict in 1975.
Dean Jackson
Absolutely. Yeah, i mean, you know where you went from there. If you look at the evolution that was calculators and and digital watch, i'm not saying that there wasn't someone.
Dan Sullivan
I'm not saying there, but there wasn't someone or a number of people who weren't predicting. I'm just saying it was making no real impact.
Dean Jackson
Yeah right.
Dan Sullivan
Exactly General public's point of view, you know and now, you know, but even here with the chat, gpt and the other AI applications, because there's really hundreds of these out there that are very specific uses- of AI. And that people say well, the whole world knows about it. And I said I'll eat billion. I'll eat billion.
Dean Jackson
What about?
Dan Sullivan
the three. What about the three million who don't don't really have steady, reliable electricity, you know?
Dean Jackson
you think they're?
Dan Sullivan
chatting. You think they're chatting about it. You know you think they're talking about this. And I said and the other thing is that virtually all the news about this and the development and the investment, you know, the explosion of investment that's going into these It's, it's all in the English language.
You know, i don't think for example, i just came back from the UK and very little awareness is not being written up in London as a boatload of different kinds of newspapers. I'm seeing anything about AI, you know, and even our day with strategic coach clients last Thursday in London. They brought it up because Evan Ryan was there, so I had him talk about this And he said a whole bunch of people got, came up and said boy, you know, this is taking me kind of by surprise. These are speaking people. So my sense is.
You know that it's fairly, fairly specific. Let's say maybe 50 million, 50 million people who are probably English speaking Americans. English speaking Americans, you know, and they're. I don't see the Canadian government talking about it. You know, and you know I get the national every day than the national post And you know not much, talk about it, not much. You know few articles here, a few articles here. But if you go to the Wall Street Journal any day, you know which, you know there's probably 15 or 20 articles of one kind on it, yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
And you just see all the.
Dan Sullivan
So I think this is an interesting. I think this is profoundly unfair, mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
What do you think? Well, what's the summary of of Evan's take on this Like, where's he uniquely thinking?
Dan Sullivan
Well, he said that the technology is meaningless unless you examine the teamwork that you want to improve.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm.
Dan Sullivan
He says just learning how to do chat, g, p, t without applying that to teamwork probably isn't going to get you anywhere.
Dean Jackson
Mm, hmm, yeah to a, as he did from the start. some examples of how it could be an exponential in teamwork.
Dan Sullivan
Well, again what we're, the way I understand it, starting because you know these are very, very high on the hierarchy decisions, you know so you know, I'm informed that a decision has been made.
Dean Jackson
I'm talking about my company Yeah yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and I'm not joking. You know I'm not joking, because, no, i get it, but the you know the 12 hours have to be freed up because we want at least 80% of our team members to be on those calls. You know, so there's a schedule, there's a scheduling project that has to go. We have to find, you know, we have to find he's doing it on zoom.
So it's not a question of his availability. I mean, he's the one who offered, you know, this. offered in the sense that he said would you pay for it? And we said, would you pay me for this? And we said, yeah, we really would. And but one of the big things is we're just going after what people are actually working on. So we're going to have sort of a little research project. It's kind of like in the beginning of the program we asked you to take a quarter you know a normal quarter, 13 weeks And just write down every activity that you do, personal or business. Okay, so we have an inventory and then we put it through a filter. where is this an activity where you're incompetent, or their activities here, where you're actually incompetent but you're kind of forced to do them just out of necessity, and then so incompetent because these aren't doing you any good and they're wearing you out and you're not getting any projectivity from it, but you're still doing it, yeah, and then.
And then it'd be like Dean Jackson you know doing all the electrical and plumbing work in his house. You know, probably, probably, yeah, yeah. Or Dan Sullivan driving you know doing pickups and delivering. And then we get to competent where you're, you know your average. You know you're probably good as a lot of people, but it's a chore, you know. And energy you know it's an energy sucking chore. Then you get to excellence and that's where you have real skills. You're above. You know you're better than other people, but there's no spark for you. There's no spark for you, you know. And if you look to head five years and you were still doing just as much of this as you are now, even though you produce excellent. You produce excellent results that went, like you, up that and that. And then there's unique ability and this is the thing that just totally energized you. You can do it all day. At the end of the day.
Right, you go eight, 10 hours and you've got more energy than when you started to the day and you're totally. You're so good at this. You don't understand why other people aren't. You know, you just do this and this and this. See how this fits together. You know, like that. And now, they don't see it at all. They don't see it at all. Right. And then the other thing is it's the most valuable thing that people want to pay you for when you're doing this mysterious, easy, easy thing.
And so and so we're going to do the same thing with the AI project with Evan. We're going to get everybody to inventory. We're just going to mostly look at work, but we'll include, you know, outside of work and just say, and he's going to give us a series of categories, you know, where you just identify activities that are repetitious, they're always required and you always have to do them, but they're repetitious, and that if there was a machine teammate who could do this in a matter of seconds or minutes, where it takes you hours or days go after that and introduce the AI solution to this.
So that would be one where AI is a teammate and the goal would be over six weeks to get you know, probably identify. 80% of of can quite quickly be taken care of by the AI teammate.
Dean Jackson
Oh, this was great.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, that's a really good way to think about it. No, i think we'll take a big productivity jump because we have we have a goal that we're at a certain number right now, you know, and it's it's not the highest revenues we've had That was in 2019, but it's a less than a million away. You know it's less than a million away.
So and and so we're saying well, if we went 10 times with that, because we've gone 10 times in in 15 years, 15 years ago, when we were one tenth what we were last year one tenth of that So in 15 years we went 10 times And but do that without adding more than another 20 individuals to the payroll. Yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
That's exciting Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then you'll learn all sorts of things how work gets set up, how, you know, how does, how does this work come into existence? anyway, you know, and and you start developing standards that you know we really shouldn't be, even bringing work like this into the company.
Dean Jackson
You know it can be done outside Someone's talking about it way of of thinking. he attached their team, his whole team, with and gave them bonuses for figuring out how to replace themselves with AI and and the new tools, kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, i think the the languaging is really important. You don't talk about replacing yourself. No, exactly, you're replacing an activity and making it automatic that you don't like doing and nobody really likes doing it. Yeah, and that wasn't.
Dean Jackson
I think I said it wrong. It's automate your, your, your role. Yeah, Because it's yeah, replacing yourself. So yeah, that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like maybe that's the thing, It's not a multiply yourself, that's a better framing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, right, yeah, i think that, i think that AI, yeah, yeah, i mean, that's what all the scary movies are about Yeah. And and you know, and a lot of the predictions you know are about that. you know there aren't going to be this or aren't going to be that. And I and I've had occasion to bring up Cyrus McCormick with mentioning you as the thinker here, and I said you know, those 16 other people who now didn't have to do backbreaking work were now freed up to do more specialized work in a growing society.
Dean Jackson
And they were able to get back to you. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so. so the delivery of the food which was required for the entire population from the you know the the harvesting wheat was simplified and made possible with just a farmer or a person on, you know, on the seat of the reaper, with the, you know, with the mule or with the work of 14 men.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
What was the actual number? was it 14? Yeah, 14 men.
Dean Jackson
One, yeah, one man with a reaper could do the work of 14 men.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, see, yeah That's, that's an enormous savings, but those people were freed up, i mean yeah, not like you know, they were clutching onto that job dearly You know they wanted to take a job.
They were taking our jobs, you know, and you know I was planning to do this every year for the next 30 years. You know, and and and you know is that that there's this you know the the thing, like humans aren't adaptable. You know there's a profound belief among people who think about these things from a theoretical standpoint, that, you know, if this happens, human beings won't be able to respond to it. You know, and I said, well history. History says you're not paying attention, people do. They immediately jump, you know, to some new.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting framework to really think about. You know, certainly 25 years, you know the runway or whatever, but certainly in the next four years that's. I think that's why they really refer to. I think what Peter Diamandis kind of talked about is the near-term force, the able future, which is, i think it's much easier to make five-year guesses than that kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but you know there's a surprising number of the predictions at A360 that were made at our first conference 2011,. that really aren't, you know, like you know VR for one thing is less. VR, you know, and you know it's almost like people are saying, no, i wasn't pushing that. You know I was not a member of the Communist Party.
You know I mean it's almost like they're saying no, no, no, you know, it's everything like that. But I remember people standing up there and said you know, the first one's going to be right under Los Angeles. It's going to go from the northern to the south, it's going to go right from, you know, the airport right to the San Fernando Valley right. And then they ran into something called property rights.
Right, right, Yeah, yeah and they thought, oh, the city will just override them. And I said well, you know, it's a constitutional issue. It wouldn't be decided in Los Angeles, it would be decided in Congress, you know or the Supreme Court. And you know. But people project a new thing and all is going to give way to it. It is so important And, but I said, wouldn't there be a big traffic jam right where you try to get on the tunnel and really being a traffic jam, you know.
I said you know. Just because you can visualize something and you can see yourself taking advantage of it, doesn't mean that you know that Newton's third law will move aside for you. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Yeah, but the two that seem to have really really gone even further than was predicted were AI, which I think. I think I was surprised by the chat GTT thing because I didn't know there was something that could be that easy for individuals.
I knew that you know large organizations were using it and everything else, but that kind of surprised me. And the other thing is regenerative medicine and you know, using our own stem cells to repair things and to cure things and turning skin cells into any other kind of cell. That to me That's like cracking. That's, like you know, being able to capture and channel and direct electricity.
Dean Jackson
That seems to me to be a major, really major major thing. But there's the AI combined with that.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, ai, that translated where you. They can literally take the cell signals, you know, the signals from the body. They can actually, because we have an electric impulse and they can read. They can duplicate this electronically and then test those electronic signals as if they were actually cells in the body. And they can do 10,000 tests in a time that a manual test takes.
Dean Jackson
And.
Dan Sullivan
I said no, that's, that's super.
Dean Jackson
And I think that's what's going to come like. I think we're going to end up in a sent power situation, like the chef masters, in that the biggest winners of the AI kind of advanced or not the one it's not going to be just AI on its own, it's going to be AI paired with a, you know, with an individual. It's a top flight individual powered with AI that's going to make the biggest impact Absolutely.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's like. my next quarterly book is called training, training technology like a good dog And I say, you know, a tough guy with a tough dog will beat another tough guy who doesn't have a dog, Exactly and rather than just, or just the dog alone, you know? yeah, that's true, and the dog will be the one who announces the fight.
Dean Jackson
That's so funny. Yeah, I realized we left last week on a bit of a cliffhanger with the working genius thing. I wondered if you had been able to do your working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's really good. It put me in a bind because I have other people sign me. I want to, and Patrick Lindsay only you know. I mean he's very well read around our office regarding teamwork and everything like that. So I know who it is now. Yeah, i was going to do it that night, but Becca, who does all this stuff for me, said that she would sign me on when we got back from London. She was busy with a lot of things, and so it's a project.
It's a project that will be done this week. But you know, I found the website. It seems like another filter that we can use for, along with Colby and the Strength Finder and Print.
Dean Jackson
Oh, i think it's fantastic in that. Yeah, i would put it in. I would put it right up there with Colby in terms like Colby is most what is very useful and I think that if I were to rank the four of them. I would put that working genius right up there at the top.
More useful than just Strength Finder and more useful than Print. Yeah, they're all a big. I don't think you can ever have too much self-awareness, but I think having the you know, i think usable team dynamic awareness is great. James Drage sent me over. I had my whole team do it and he sent me a. You know, they have charts that show where your team genius is in terms of which team members like. If you're looking to put together a project and you need a, i guess the ideal is that you have someone in each of the components the wonder, invention, the discernment, galvanizing, enablement and tenacity that you've got someone who's a genius at that involved in that process. Yeah, you know the head of that division of it.
So it's really neat to see the dynamics of how people can work together, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, anyway, yeah, So anyway, work proceeds. you know, fly me. you know, 3,000 miles away, and my priority list for the day changes. I got it. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, yeah. London is the greatest walking city that I've ever.
Dean Jackson
Oh man, you know, one of my favorite memories is our that when we ended up in London at the same time and we spent hours wandering around, Yeah we took that long hike out to that bookstore.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, And then we, and then we made our way back to a favorite restaurant of ours one.
Dean Jackson
Greek street. Right And then yeah, that London's perfect for that. I mean, that was yeah it was. It was dry and sunny kind of the poolside but sunny but there was no rain during the walk. The walk reaches there.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway, i'm going to inquire about that And I've got a real project now with that, in advance of starting the AI Azure teammate program. We should have all the staff actually do this working genius exercise.
Dean Jackson
I think that would be a nice filter And I wonder that's a really interesting thing is that's a nice framework to think how can, how can AI help with?
Dan Sullivan
That's how we've pre-app your working genius. Yeah right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
That's an interesting that's a really interesting combinator. It's a triple play. Your unique ability Well, you can work at AI and working genius.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, it's kind of funny. You could add the triple play to it. So we got three things. You got the AI as a teammate, working genius and the triple play. I think that would be a nice trifecta.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, wow, that's all thinking about your thinking. I came up with a new term, dan. I'll plant the seed because I know we're coming up at the top of the hour here. It went so fast this time It always does, but this one's particular, you know, we've been talking about and I've been thinking about the mainland and the land here, but what I've really discovered is I was rereading thinking about your thinking, the small book.
We recently had our flood and all the that required us moving things around, and I found a copy of my your small book, the thinking about your thinking. I thought that you know there's a third element of this that I've been calling Dean Blan dia, which is the inner world of thinking about my thinking and spending time there as a destination. And something you said, you know you said it kind of a couple of years ago, whenever you went on, you know, going off TV and stuff, the same thing stuck out at me. I don't know exactly how you said it, but you basically said I realized that what's going on in my own mind is far more interesting and valuable than anything going on in that, on that screen, in that box.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
And how did you articulate? What was the the thought behind that? Because that that it stuck with me for all these years when you said that, yeah, Well, i think you do that too.
Dan Sullivan
I mean that that both of us, fairly young and like I think, developed the ability to do that, amuse ourselves and entertain ourselves and educate ourselves without needing needing too much outside help and that, and you know, and We've stuck with that a lot. You know way, way beyond what Most people would say. Well, i used to have Interesting times when I when I had time you know where I would just think about things and everything else.
Yeah, of course you know I had to go to school and then I had to go out and get a job Right we started, started to pay him and of course I haven't done any kind of thinking like that and I said, yeah, you know, i got you know on a path when I was, you know, somewhere around eight years old, where this was way more interesting. Than anything that I was encountering. The other thing I noticed is that I was interacting with adults and They didn't see how to do this.
They didn't seem to do it because when I would bring up You know what was going on when they were eight years old and they were born 1910 or something, and I said wow, wow. And they said geez, i haven't thought about this, you know, it's I. He says here right me to think about think about things that I haven't thought about, and then afterwards They would comment to my mother When they matter her. You know, dan asked questions and they Makes me remember things that I haven't really remembered and I said well, you know, you know and I said hmm.
If that had happened to me, I would have been thinking about it. I mean, if that was happening in the world, happening in the world at that time, boy. I all over it, you know and everything like that, and it struck me that people weren't really reflecting On how they were thinking about their experiences. They were affecting on the experience, but they weren't reflecting on how they were thinking about the experience. And so, and that didn't bother me, and because I always like having Secret, unfair advantages- Mm-hmm, i Love that.
Dean Jackson
I've been thinking you do the? oh, i really do. I've been monitoring and thinking now about You know, my my constant you're. My present thought is less screen time, more dean time. But that's really the thing is, the more I think about just even putting the screen down and just going inside and playing around in in Dean land is a. There's a lot more beneficial stuff going on in the land.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, then The other you know, you know who we're really. The organization that was that we both had extensive experience with. That was really on to this way back, you know, 40-50 years ago and as the four seasons. So tell yeah, and they have a motto about their company that we Systematize the predictable, mm-hmm, and so that we can humanize the exceptional. Yeah, and That seems to describe a general principle that Would take advantage of any new technology which allowed you to systematize the predictable.
You know, to free up people so that they could be Exceptionally human in any situation and I think that's what we want to do. I mean, i think that's a, that isn't just a Organizational strategy. I think that's That could be. You know, in the 21st century that could be a general human aspiration. You know, i want to get freed up from Doing machine-like work.
Dean Jackson
I don't want to do machine-like work, you know right. I don't want to.
Dan Sullivan
I don't want. I don't want to be given tasks where I'm expected to be machine-like I. I'm just not going for that anymore.
Dean Jackson
Right, i Love it. Yeah, well, i noticed, so I noticed. Next week is Says no Dan podcats on my calendar.
Dan Sullivan
That's right.
Dean Jackson
That's right because traveling, we're flying.
Dan Sullivan
We're flying on Sunday to Chicago. So okay, yeah, so we have. You know, we have the first in person a free zone that week, you know on Thursday, okay and, but we're flying in and we, you know, we Have to see the team and there's all sorts of things, and I have all sorts of. I guess yeah, but the but. The big thing is that The one thing that's not predictable is How people are going to think about the next 25 years.
You know you know, predictable, because, right, you know each person's kind of responsible. or Using their own Brain to figure out things. Yeah, yeah and my sense is that Making predictions 25 years from now based on Present priorities and that, i think, doesn't give you much insight, mm-hmm.
Dean Jackson
I Think gives you directional, you know in some way. But but it's certain, i mean to know it gives you comfort when you start into look at well, what do we know that's going to be true 25 years from now. You know.
Dan Sullivan
That's really the thing, men are still going to be shaving that's exactly the warm Buffett model, right?
Dean Jackson
That's exactly yeah yeah, Yeah and yeah, and land things and.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, people are still going to be eating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think yeah, yeah, well, i mean, there's definitely entertaining. Yeah, what do all people do, you know, around the planet? Well, not everybody shapes, you know. But right, yeah, so But, given the market that you're after is there, you know, we know. I do know alcohol is gonna play a big part of it. Now, they're direct, you know They may buddy, one of the signs that an ancient Gathering of humans was actually human is pottery.
Dean Jackson
So they'll find shards, pottery shards and when they examine the shards.
Dan Sullivan
You know what they always find on the shards alcohol, alcohol, great, exactly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, why did humans Create pottery?
Dan Sullivan
well, yeah, you know, to have something they could make the alcohol and save the alcohol. They're their mushroom bruise, right Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, i mean, they just do this to have pottery they did it right they can.
Dan Sullivan
They could make drinking alcohol a little bit more predictable. All righty, okay, dan. Well, i will. I'll be here in two weeks, yeah, and we'll be back, yeah, in two weeks.
Dean Jackson
So we're going to see Jeff. Maddowff's play The end of men, the end of next week.
Dan Sullivan
So it opened with its first pre-order. So it's a pre-order. So it's a pre-order The end of men, the end of next week. So it opened with its first proof preview Last night.
Dean Jackson
So they have a week of previews.
Dan Sullivan
They have a week of previews where they're just, you know, making scene shifts and making adjustments to the script and you know, and everything else, and they have about five or six of these and People, they have audiences for them.
The other thing is that audiences can come in and see everything else, and then they, then they have two last ones Where they're locked down Okay, so that all the changes have been made, and then the last two of the previews is It's locked down. Now, this is the play, and then they have opening night, which is the 14th, and we're going down the 16th.
Dean Jackson
Oh, very nice, that's so great. Yeah, all right. okay, i will talk to you soon. You.
More shows like Welcome to Cloudlandia
View all
10x Talk
147 Listeners
Shannon Waller's Team Success
46 Listeners
Multiplier Mindset® with Dan Sullivan
112 Listeners
Exponential Wisdom
218 Listeners
More Cheese Less Whiskers
47 Listeners
Founders
1,941 Listeners
Inside Strategic Coach: Connecting Entrepreneurs With What Really Matters
130 Listeners
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
33,957 Listeners
Masters of Scale
3,994 Listeners
Free Zone Frontier
15 Listeners
Capability Amplifier
72 Listeners
Naval
2,136 Listeners
Anything And Everything
11 Listeners
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis
515 Listeners
The Jefferson Fisher Podcast
8,223 Listeners