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By Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan
4.8
88 ratings
The podcast currently has 130 episodes available.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dan and I have a thought-provoking discussion on balancing political views with interpersonal dynamics.
Dean shares delightful tales from mingling with influencers in Toronto, like Joe Polish and Evan Carmichael.
The intersection of politics and entertainment is examined using Taylor Swift as an example to explore the idea of keeping various domains of life separate.
Dan emphasizes the growing importance for political figures to focus on their designated roles.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: There we go, mr Sullivan. Ah, much better. Okay, great that was my AirPods for some reason. Or, staticky, you're not the first one to say it, so I'll just put it on. We'll go old-fashioned here, just on speaker.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, sometimes old fashioned here just on speaker.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, sometimes old fashioned works, you know, sometimes yeah, I can give you an example.
Dan: I can give you an example Oxygen you know, been around for a while. Most people don't give it a thought. Most people don't give a thought, and yet, and yet, it's.
Dean: I find I appreciate it, you know of a thought and yet, and yeah, that's yeah, I find I appreciate it. You know well, I have, you know, as you know, I have a new appreciation for oxygen, whereas a couple of years ago my lack of oxygen was a problem.
But yes, yeah I fully appreciate oxygen. We were saying how we just so everybody knows we had a little false start on the cast. We had static, so the first minute or so was we decided to switch over to this mode here. But we're saying I'm in Toronto right now, as is Dan. We had a nice brunch yesterday and I was sharing with Dan that. I had dinner with Joe Polish last night and Evan Carmichael and Chad Jenkins and Krista and I can't remember her last name, dan, but she lives in Vancouver and South Africa. Yeah, she's in 10 times.
Dan: Well, anyway, I was noticing, I was just looking. They've been doing the polls on Taylor Swift coming down on the side and it's made absolutely no difference. It's made absolutely no difference. One way or the other, it hasn't made any difference, and what it tells me is that the vote is sort of locked in for the presidential.
Dean: Yeah, it was locked in.
Dan: Yeah, it's made a difference for her in that there's a lot of people who are getting rid of their Taylor.
Swift tickets and get off. When you get off the trail you're in the weeds, get back down as much as you can. You know, and it's not particularly anything to do with this particular election, but my sense is there's a there's a growing desire on the part of people that if you're in one area of life, stay in that area of life. Don't come and, you know, don't make all of life a political stew you know, like you know everything else.
Dean: And you know I wonder if there's any examples where that has worked out for people in anyone I was mentioning yesterday at the brunch that you know reminds me of the dixie chicks debacle in 2001. Yeah, and the documentary you know that came out afterwards. Shut up and sing but what, uh?
Dan: and that was before.
Dean: You know that was really, that was before the internet and cancel culture. So that was mainstream media driving that.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just say, you know, I like my categories distinct and separate. I don't want the you know, I don't want them all mixing up with each other and you know, and I by the same token, in the political realm, I would prefer that the politicos, you know, the people who run for office and run office. They don't attach themselves to other areas of life. You know, just do your politicking and, you know, be good at it and when the time comes, get out. And, you know, work on your handicap. You know.
And yeah, it's interesting, you know, and yeah it's interesting, and I think what it is? It's the technological, the easy technological means to mix things together. You know, I mean you see a series of five second flashes or two second flashes and it's like everything that's important is everything else and nothing means anything more than anything else, and that's not really true, you know. I mean, that's not true for any person. There's definitely things that are more important than other things, and I just don't like being told that you should mix everything together.
Dean: I agree, I mean the whole yeah, it is. Yeah, I think you're right, Stay in their lanes. We don't want everything, yeah all, becoming moral issues or anything you know.
Dan: Well, they all become political issues. The problem is, everything is reduced to a common denominator, that everything has a political meaning, and you know there are those who you know who do that. But I don't do that, you know I have great friends who I know I have great friends that don't vote the way that I do and the way they vote has no bearing whatsoever on my friendship with them.
Dean: Yes yes, I agree A hundred percent.
Dan: As long as they don't bring up the subject.
Dean: They don't try and convert you Exactly.
Dan: No.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I find that same thing. That's really. I mean remember it used to be more you know. It used to be like a private matter kind of thing. Right, like people would. You'd never really discuss it, but now it's like everything. Everybody's got a megaphone and everybody's very especially on the polls. I think we're definitely more polarized than I remember us being.
I just remember the debate the other night. Watching the debate was just such a series of you're a liar, no, you're a liar. No, you lied about this, you're a liar and the whole. I mean, that's all it was. My favorite ever debate moment was Obama-Romney in 2008. Obama was responding to Romney suggesting that under his you know, maybe it was 2012.
Dan: Yeah, probably it was McCain in 2008.
Dean: Yeah, because under he was proposing that under Obama the Navy had less ships than they did in 1910. And Obama, just without skipping a beat, said yeah, that's right, and there's also less horses and bayonets. I don't know if you noticed, but they have this new thing called aircraft carriers where we can actually fly the planes right off of the ships. I mean it was just so funny that bring, there's less horses and bayonets. I mean that's pretty funny.
That was probably prepared for. You know you like to think that's off the cuff, but I think that had to have been what could possibly mitt accuse us of, or maybe he said no what?
Dan: what I suspect is what I suspect is that uh mitt had tried to line out previously in some other situation yeah, and you know, you know which goes to show. You only try your lines out for the first time, right?
Dean: Don't do it for the second time.
Dan: Right, yeah, yeah, so anyway. But I think what happens is that I was noticing that there's a real distinction between Trump, on the one hand, and Obama. Is that everybody feels they know Trump? And very few people feel they know her and even after 90 minutes of a debate, you still don't have a handle on who this person is. You know who is she is, you know and, and yeah, and I think that in the end they're going to, they're going to vote for the known quantity Risky.
Dean: It's going to be various things that I'm seeing. That's my take.
Dan: I mean, you know, that's my take anyway.
Dean: The things I'm seeing now on my algorithm. What they're presenting to me is the I saw, you know, side by side or above and below video of her saying one thing, you know in 2020 or 2022 or whatever it was in the past, saying taking a hard stance on something, and then, in 2024, saying exactly the opposite of what she said in the you know in that time, and so very well done of letting her, in her own words, show how she's flip-flopping.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, I'm a straight ticket voter. My first election was 68, and that was. They changed the voting age when I was 24, the in 64, so I was 20 years old and the voting age at that time was 21. And then they changed it in the next four years, so I the first time I voted was 68 and I've been straight ticket ever since then you know, why tell you know, why Tell me, you know why I'm straight ticking. It's simpler.
Dean: It's simpler.
Dan: This is who I am. Yeah, it's like we're wearing the same clothes every day Having the same uniform. But the whole point of it is that I vote on the basis of entrepreneurism. Which party seems to be more supportive of entrepreneurism? And it's definitely one and not the other, and it's been that way for 32, 56 years. It's been that way for 56 years. So that's my criteria for voting. It's the same thing here in Canada. You know, because I voted both countries, because I'm a citizen of both countries.
Dean: Oh, very nice, and you are too, and you are too, and you are too, I am too.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, if you care to exercise your vote. My franchise, they call it.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Your franchise. Yeah, but it's Peter Zion who I'm a great fan of and he said you know, the United States as a country, as a landmass, you know, given their position in the world geographically and looking at their demographics, have so much going for them that Americans are the only people in the world who can treat domestic politics strictly as a form of popular entertainment. Domestic politics strictly as a form of popular entertainment. And you know, and that's what I get, is that there's, you know, and I wrote a book about two quarters ago called the Great Meltdown, and what I said is that probably politics is secondary to the cost of four things the cost of money how much does it cost to have money? Interest rates, you know, what kind of return on money do you have? The second thing is energy cost of labor. So that's m e, l, and then t is transportation, and in every case the united states has the lowest cost on the planet and that means that that's going to determine things.
Those four costs money, energy, labor and transportation are going to be the dominant factor and I think that politics is a dog that's being pulled together, pulled forward by those four, you know, by those four factors in society. People don't really, they don't experience them necessarily that way, but they experience that things were better four years ago than they are today.
You, know, somehow they have a feeling about that, and so you know. So it's like the ocean. Everybody talks about the waves and the wind, but really it's the current that makes the difference. And I think economic factors are not winds and waves, they're the current. Oh, that's interesting. The news is about waves and wind and storms and everything else, but that's not what determines things.
Dean: That makes a lot of sense. Yes, yeah, the currents are what goes underneath, as always moving in a direction for sure. I remember when Oliver Stone did the movie on Putin, where it was like an interview type of series. I don't know whether we've talked about that or whether you saw it, but his whole he was saying, you know, because Putin has seen so many presidents come and go all the way since the first Bush, right, he's just been the constant.
And his analysis was that he sees all these men come and they have, you know, the desire for change and they have ideas for change, and the people, you know, they present those ideas and the people vote for them. But as soon as they get into office, what he called the men in the suits come and tell them how it really is, and then there is no change, and that's the current I think that you're talking about is, and then there is no change, and that's the current I think that you're talking about. Everybody would talk about the deep state or the you know the thing, the behind the scenes, the big picture stuff that you know it's mostly the whoever's at the helm is really winds and waves, you know yeah.
Dan: Do you think that this was truly an understanding of the united states or he was just reflecting what was true?
Dean: in the Kremlin, maybe I mean, but it seems so Because my theory is that there's bureaucratic families in Russia today.
Dan: You know they're the result of intermarriage over a century. They were the behind the scenes people when the czar was there. They were the behind the scenes people when the czar was there they were the behind the scenes people, and they don't have political views, they just have a way of getting things done, you know, like and, and the survival of their family is the most important thing.
Remember I'll switch countries here remember that guy who went on a murder streak in Norway and he walked into the parliament and he shot up the Norwegian parliament and then ran out and then he took a boat over to an island where he really did some damage and I think he killed a large number of sort of teenage children, and these were all the children of the people who were the bureaucrats. They were. You know they were upper echelon people, but they were government bureaucrats. They were sort of faceless people.
Dean: You didn't know them.
Dan: And he says you don't make any change unless you kill the bureaucrats. He says you don't kill the politicians, you kill the bureaucrats, they're the. You don't kill the politicians, you kill the bureaucrats, they're the ones you want to kill. Yeah, and kill the next generation. And the Norwegians, of course, don't have death penalties. So he's up, you know, working on his rubric cube or something. But it's really interesting. A lot of people don't think of that. I bet in Washington there's families who were upper echelon people in 1900, and they're still upper echelon and they intermarry like aristocracy.
There's bureaucratic aristocracy and they intermarry and everything else, but they're never seen. They're never seen. You never know who these people are, but they do have power really in any way.
Dean: And you know, I just look at how little, and I don't know. This may be ignorant, but how little it seems to have an impact on my life in a way that I can do anything about it. You know, and that's where I think entrepreneur, capitalism like as long as capitalism's allowed and we're allowed to pursue our self-interest, that's really the biggest driver of everything.
Dan: Yeah, we're making money on election day, right Personal agency right of our own outcomes. Yeah, you know, and I've been talking. You know there are people who are just the opposite of you and they're intensely involved in it and they said you know what happens if all the people we don't like get elected? And I said you'll have a good, you'll have a good entrepreneurial year.
Dean: It's being adaptable. Right, You've got to deal with what the situation is, what the current is.
Dan: Yeah, but my take is that if you spend some time reading the Constitution, and there's a lot of neat videos, educational videos Probably the best source of this is Hillsdale College. It's a college in Michigan and their whole thing is that America is a unique country because of the Constitution, and so they put a lot of effort, they put a lot of money, they put a lot of time into making sure that the students really comprehend what the Constitution really does.
Dean: And.
Dan: I've not been there but I've. You know I became interested in it because it's not much bigger now than it was when it was enacted in the 17th, and you know it's not. It's changed very little. It's changed very little. I heard the phrase that, if you typed up the Constitution in 1789, I think is when it was enacted a single space so a single space typed, it would be 23 pages in 1789.
Dean: And if you were to do it?
Dan: today it would be 27 pages. They've added four pages in 230 years, almost 250 years, and in the very first paragraph of the Constitution it says this is the supreme law of the land. Okay, so the Constitution, that document, is the supreme law of the land.
Nothing else can be higher than the Constitution. And then they put in a whole set of rules where it becomes very difficult to change the Constitution. So if you have an amendment to the Constitution, you got to get two-thirds of the House of Representatives to vote for it, two-thirds of the Senate and then three-quarters of all the state legislatures, so roughly, you know 37 states. The legislature would have to vote for it. And it better be a persuasive amendment.
Dean: Better be compelling.
Dan: Yeah, exactly, yeah, that's you know, and everybody tears their, you know, and everybody rips their clothing and tears the thing and they said, yeah, but it's a bunch of white guys in the 1700s and I said yeah but they did a good job. You know there was about. There's maybe about 3 million of them you know, total population 3 million and they were just the Atlantic seaboard and look where it is now. I think they did a good job.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you're absolutely right. That's kind of the thing. At the underpinning of it is the individual pursuit of it's all about the individual.
Dan: It's all about the individual. Yeah, the whole thing is geared to give individuals unique freedom to develop themselves. Yeah, so I'm kind of for that and that helps.
Dean: That's kind of like you know, that's appealing to entrepreneurs yeah, I'm I the direction that's going in.
Dan: I'm inclined toward that direction. I kind of like that direction yeah. And so my sense is there isn't much that will happen in any election that's going to alter a 250-year momentum in a particular direction. I just don't think there's much. I mean it might be useful for entertainment purposes and everything else, and I vote. I always make sure I vote, but I go to bed at 9 o'clock. On Election Day and I just check the results in the morning Three weeks later to see who won.
No, I get up the next morning and I check in.
Dean: In any case, the last few times it's been. You know the real. No matter who won air quotes, it's always some question and contested and you know it'll be weeks before the final decision is made, kind of thing.
Dan: Well, I just think it's a poor career choice where you get paid for being outraged.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: Yeah, I think you know I really haven't developed this thought very much, but I think so much of the complexity of society today is that there's just so many of us and we're electronically empowered.
Dean: Well, you hit it on the head right there that there's so many of us with a megaphone, that everybody has the megaphone, everybody has reach to all the others and you can collectively get on a you know, collectively gather momentum with you know what everybody is saying. You and I were talking at brunch yesterday. I've been reading the Same as Ever book by Morgan Housel that she recommended and it's fascinating. It really is interesting and yeah, that kind of you know. All of this is the same as ever.
Everybody's been the winds and the waves have always gone in one direction, but the current is everything. Have always gone in one direction, but the current is everything.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, I mean he makes a really great case for evolution. He says you know, evolution. He says it's roughly about 3.8 billion years that we can from the early, I guess the earliest cell life.
He's using that as the starting point and he says you know, a lot of things have gotten worked out over 3.8 billion that you probably can't reverse. You know 3.8 billion. So it would behoove you to pay attention in what direction evolution is going and basically how it operates. Basically how it operates and it's you know, and it doesn't have to make big changes at any point along the way. It just makes, you know, thousands of little changes, little alterations, but they're not reversible, unnoticeable, yeah yeah, yeah.
And you know and I can appreciate that, being in my ninth decade, I can appreciate that that I made decisions when I was 12 years old that were good decisions, and I'm profiting from these decisions 75, 80 years later.
Dean: Yeah, that is so funny. Yeah, it's amazing if you think all the way back like that. You know the decisions when you were 12 years old were in the heart of the 50s Right, the golden.
Dan: Yeah, yeah it was. That was a golden era Boy that was a TV's in every car and every drive, yeah, tv dinners, yeah, yeah, especially, especially the TV dinners. Yeah, especially the TV dinners. You know, that was a big deal. And you know Mickey Mouse Club you know Right. I mean and that.
Dean: What more do you?
Dan: want. Right, mine was what's her name? Last name was Tracy, oh, doreen, tracy, doreen.
Dean: Tracy, okay, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Apparently, she was the most popular and she's the only one I met. I spent about three days of her traveling as a USO show in Korea in 1966, 1910. It was neat, you know, just having her. She was you know, she was 10. She was, you know, 20 and everything else. She was 10, she was 20 and everything else. But a nice person, very talkative and really self-reflective. I sense that this is a person who thinks about things very deeply. And she said you know, this is my last entertainment event, what we're doing here in South Korea with the USO show, which is the nonprofit organization that provides hospitality and entertainment for US military. And she said you know, I'm not.
I was as talented at 12 as I am today and said I haven't gotten any more talented but, I was more talented at that time than other 12 year olds. So she said I got to be a mom. But she says I, you know. She says I've hit my head on the ceiling of being talented, and now I have to.
Now I have to go back and I have to start a new career and she went back and she became a talent manager for Warner Brothers and she was from that period, you know, when she went back, when she started doing that, right straight through until she was 65 and she was well regarded as a, you know, a really first class talent manager. She had Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa was one of her. You know assignments? Okay, yeah, because he was with Warner Brothers. He was with Warner Brothers recording.
Dean: Oh wow, very interesting.
Dan: Yeah, but I found her a very, you know, very upbeat, very positive person, very engaging sort of person. You know, just three days about five shows and that was it. I never thought about it again until the Internet came along and I you know, just you know, I just looked her up and yeah, she had done that. And then when she retired from Warner Brothers she started a jazz and blues club in Hollywood and then she died about eight years later, she died of cancer.
Dean: Oh yeah.
Dan: But it was for someone I was. You know, I was right in there with Mickey Mouse Club when I was 12 years old.
Dean: Yeah, you were. That's who the show was for. Yeah.
Dan: Right, yeah, yeah, I mean you had Pepsi, you had chips and you had Hostess Twinkie. I mean you had Pepsi, you had chips and you had Hostess Twinkie.
Dean: I mean it's a balanced meal. Yeah, a balanced meal. Wow, twinkie's been around that long, yeah, yeah.
Dan: I'll tell you something. I talked to a nutritionist at Canyon Ranch about the Twinkie. And he said if you had a Twinkie from 1956, you had never opened the package. And he said you went down to the supermarket right now and you bought yourself a this year's Twinkie. And you opened them up. There's no difference. They taste the same the one from 1956 is just as fresh as the one that you bought this afternoon.
Dean: Like Pop-Tarts. That's what Jerry Seinfeld said they never go stale.
Dan: they can't go stale because they were never fresh they were yeah, okay, the prize is find an organic part of a twinkie.
Dean: There's nothing organic about this treat joe was just telling me about this research that's all coming out now about seed oils and things that he's talking about. I think there's a book called Dark Calories I think is what it is but some crazy amount of our calories in the normal American diet like over 30% of our calories come from these oils?
Dan: Yes, exactly, yeah, you know like corn oil canola oil. Yeah, and all the. You know the difference. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing. That Babs got on about a year ago Only butter. Either olive oil or butter? Yeah, butter. And that steak yesterday was good with the butter, wasn't it it?
Dean: really was. Yeah, so we should tell we found a new. For years we have been going to the same two places Jacques here in Yorkville, or Le Select Bistro for our Saturday, and we tried for the first time in frenchie, frenchie in, which is essentially in the lobby of the hilton hotel in the business district, in the business yeah, so we had some interesting experiences, but that steak was really well was the steak was really good yeah, yeah, and it was medium rare, it was perfectly medium rare, and I particularly, and they knife selection ceremony steak knife selection yeah, and he brought a box of this.
Dan: This is kevin brought the steak knives and he opened it up and and I said there were six of them, and I said do you, kevin, do you recommend one of these which?
Dean: one do you recommend?
Dan: he said I think this year, I think this was a good year, so I think I picked up one of them, you know I over tipped him because he was responsive.
Dean:
Dan: Yeah, because they had a rule that breakfast ended at 11, but lunch didn't start until 1130. And I said so do we have to wait? And he says no. He says do whatever you want Order whatever you want and I'll take care of it, but anyway, it was really good. And I'm really hooked on steak. You're the. You're the fault of this.
Dean: You know you're the cause because you convinced that it's my inch, I got you on blue t-shirts and now steaks. This is all, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah I'm working on fountain. I change your direction.
Dan: I change in your direction slow enough that you don't get a big head about it.
Dean: Right, oh, that's great. I love that. Slow enough that I don't get a big head about it.
Dan: That's right yeah.
Dean: That's funny.
Dan: No, but I'm not seeing a huge difference. I mean I never got in trouble. I mean, like I'm not someone who huge difference. I never got in trouble. I'm not someone who is in big trouble physically and everything else, but the weight goes up over time. Right now, I'm about 15 pounds heavier than when I graduated from high school and I was in good shape because I played three sports you know all four years. I was always in a sports team and during the summers I caddied at the golf course.
Dean: So that kept me in good shape.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, and but the thing about it was I eat very well at meals. It's between meals that get me into trouble. And that's because of that's because of cravings. And I noticed that if you eat a lot of beef, you don't have cravings. That's the truth.
Dean: That is absolutely true. The satiety is high.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yes, yeah, I find that too. But I also find, dan, like I've been, you, doing, uh, carnivore for the last little while here, and I noticed a difference, like in terms of that. But there have been times. It's not a, it's not a straight path to the moon here. There's some veering of things and I noticed that even the slightest little. You introduce something into a thing and it gets a foothold. You're right that the cravings and the easy to veer off path for a little while Low enough that you don't notice it.
Dan: There's a part of us that has to be a watchdog. There's part of us that has to be vigilant. You know, and and you know and I think they're good habits. Basically, the watchdogs are good habits and and you know that it's an interesting thing about people who have good habits and they're, you know, using other descriptions about them they're ethical, they're moral you know they're law abiding, and what they found is that those people have the best sense of a long future.
They find that morality and legality and everything that we admire in people is actually a function of how long their future is, how far they can see, and they can see that something they do today either supports their positive long future or it would undermine it. And one of the tests they've done is inner city children who are members of gangs Okay, robbery of some sort and what they find is that their sense of the future is never more than 24 hours. Is that their sense of the future is never more than 24 hours? And so they say, if I do this now, can I be in trouble in 24 hours?
And you know, you stop some kid on the street, you force him to take off his sneakers or his jacket.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Are you going to get in trouble in 24 hours? Probably not, wow.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so you're being moral and being ethical and being law abiding is a function of how clear you are about a longer future, where today's actions really matter.
Dean: Yes, well, that brings you know. That's funny. That kind of ties in with what you. We were talking in Palm Beach six months ago about this behaviors right. Bringing bringing their here, meaning just identifying what are the. It was just kind of funny that the timing of it because I was sharing with you that I had looked at the. You know, if you look at here and look backwards and say what are the behaviors and habits that got me to here, I heard somebody say one time if you look around, just take it all in, look around you and everything that is a reality in your life right now. This is what all of your past decisions created, right. All your past decisions and behaviors led to this moment, everything you have right. And I thought, yeah, when you shared with me the bringing there here is looking forward and identifying if this, if I could describe the here I want, the now that I want, what does that look like in the here, what are the behaviors that support that future?
Dan: Yeah, yeah. And I think the big thing is what are your habits today? That would be the habits you would want 20 years from now. Which habits do you have already formed? And then that picture of you 20 years from now. If you look at a day in the life of you say, well, I want this habit. And then you have to say, well, if I'm going to have the habits, then I might as well start those habits today.
You know, you know yeah, and and that what I mean habits is that you do the right thing without thinking about it yeah, and the cape, I mean the things, it's.
Dean: So I was had, uh, breakfast with joe this morning. We were talking about, you know, six, six months ago I really had no idea how to cook, or it's hard to say. I see you that you got you know 57 or eight years into my life and never really learned to cook or anything. And now, you know, between my instant pot and my air fryer, you know I'm cooking up a storm here, making delicious steaks and chicken and salmon, everything. What a life changing like skill and it's just a natural thing.
Now I know I've got the whole process. It's a habit. I know I've got the whole process. It's a habit, you know. Once you know the habit, it's the. You know the process. I do it all kind of in to preheat for three minutes and while that three minutes is happening, I'm seasoning the steak with salt pepper and just a little bit of Montreal steaks rub and then by the time I get that done, the air fryer is preheated. I just put it in for, depending on how thick it is, three or four minutes per side and then it's done. So the whole ordeal is, you know, 13 minutes from the idea of having a steak to your first bite.
Dan: And so you know, and now you're becoming an internet influencer yeah, that's exactly right, that's right, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, rabbi jackson. Oh, there's rabbi jackson again. Yeah, but you know, this is how we learn from each other you know yeah, I mean he doesn't mention it. Morgan Housel, in the book you're reading, same as ever, but I've seen it many times that the two main habits that humans have that move things forward are one imitation see something that somebody else is doing, and then repetition you get a good thing going and then you just repeat and repeat.
And it's so interesting. I saw a little. I was going through the news programs this morning and there was a commercial and it was Bill Gates was a commercial, and it was bill gates, and and you know, and here's bill gates, you know, and he really is truly boring, he was born boring. He's a very boring, he's a very boring thing. But you know he's boring with 50, 50 billion or 100 billion, whatever the amount of money he has.
Dean: But now he's saying sorry, go ahead. I said sorry, go ahead.
Dan: Yeah, I think that. And he's saying there's no question now, we just have to get rid of fossil fuels. Yeah, he says we've come to the point now and it's just. And then he brings in all sorts of people who are talking about the breakthroughs that will be possible, and Anthony Fauci is one of them on the program and everything like that.
But the question is, Bill, you were using fossil fuels to go to Jeffrey Epstein's island. What was that all about, oh boy? What was that all about, oh man? What was that all about, oh man? I don't know if he ever went to the island, but he hung out with him in New. York City.
And you know, and yeah so, so anyway, but you know, I think we're coming back. I just have a sense. Maybe it's just me that I'm becoming aware of something, but I have a sense because the things that are being talked about, like the Morgan Household book you know there are some things that you can bet on are always going to operate in a certain direction. You know, and I get a sense, we're getting there, I mean. But I'm, you know, I'm into new things. You know I'm creating more new things at 80 than I was at 50, and I'm involved in more new things at 80 than I was at 50.
And I'm involved in more new things at 80 than I was at 50. So I don't think it's just my sense of what's happening to me. I get a sense from reading the news and everything like that that it's not so easy to change human nature.
Dean: Yeah, I think you're right, but it's also yeah, that's why it's when you make these gradual changes, natural selection of better habits kind of thing, make a big impact. You know like I think, yeah, yeah, the natural selection, yeah, I mean I never got.
Dan: You know, I've been influenced basically because I get full medicals, you know, with David. Hasse, I mean top to bottom medicals and you know, he says, you know you're carrying too much weight, you've got too much fat. And I said, and he says, you know, think about this, think about that. And I said I'm not going to do anything where my weight loss is more than a pound a week and so I started the steak.
Steak diet you know, yesterday I had steak for breakfast, steak for lunch, steak for dinner. Other things too, you know, had some small potatoes. I had broccoli and French fries with you.
Dean: And anyway.
Dan: and but I mean, if you look ahead 20 weeks and you're 20 pounds down, that's a big deal. I don't want to take on an unnatural diet for a period of time and then go back to my old diet. I want my entire habits of eating to change permanently of eating to change permanently.
Dean: What I've learned from JJ Virgin is that it really is about the protein first, of getting the amount of protein for your target weight, kind of. That's the thing. That number one priority is getting 180 grams of protein, you know, and then and then adding on whatever, while staying in that your caloric thing. But I find that, man, if you're eating that amount of protein, the protein is the satiety thing that it just is the gift that keeps on giving. You know, you don't get those. It's the most.
Dan: Even burning, yeah and it's where the, where the muscle comes from yes, exactly, yeah, yeah, so well, that's interesting.
Dean: That that's a really good. Do you measure? Do you wait? How often do you weigh yourself?
Dan: every day, every morning yeah okay, I've got a little journal and I log in.
Dean: I've got a little journal and I, yeah, yeah that's been a big thing. I have the the. You know my JJ has really been my accountability buddy in all of this. I chart everything that I eat and chart my weight every day and my sleep score and my steps.
And I, you know, send a little photo, photo story to her every day and that, yeah, it's good to chart and see the the progress you know I had an interesting and a friend who has maintained his weight at a in a you know five pound band for band for as long as I've known him and he shared that at one point. He stays between 178 and 182 or three as the band that he's in constantly. And he told me he got up to 230 pounds at one point, wow yeah, and then he lost all the weight. He got up to 230 pounds at one point, wow yeah, and then he lost all the weight, got down to 180 as his ideal.
But he weighs himself every day and he uses a green light, yellow light, red light system that if he's 178 or 179, it's green light, he can eat whatever he wants. If he wants to have dessert, fine. If he wants this, whatever, fine. And if he's 180 or 181, he's yellow light and it's like, just, you know, caution kind of, for taking it easy. But if he gets to 182 it's red light and he has to go, stay on the path until he gets back to 178. So he's never had to lose more than five pounds, you know. So it's a really interesting thing. If he knows he's going on a vacation or something, he'll get to 178 and then do what he wants on vacation and maybe he gains five pounds on vacation, but comes back and immediately on the straight and narrow. Slow and steady wins the race.
Dan: Yeah, this is Dean and Dan having a deep philosophy hour. This was the Sunday philosophy hour with Dean and Dan, that's right.
Dean: The double D philosophy hour. That's right.
Dan: Yeah, the Calry philosophy hour. Anyway but that's great. Then we'll be able to chat again this evening Over some meat, Over some meat. Yeah you you're gonna have to do with burgers tonight that's right, familiar.
Dean: But anyway. So all you guys are more or less coming together, I guess right probably well, joe, yep, joe and me and chad, I think we'll all be over together. All righty, it's all very exciting, dan, I will see you in a few hours.
Dan: Thank you okay. Thanks, dean.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, We contrasted northern summers' climate and lifestyle possibilities with those of Florida. The conversation shifted to exploring humanity’s relationship with money through storytelling and belief.
Practical lessons included effective pricing, leveraging qualified leads, and attracting high-quality clients using books. Finally, the discussion provided entrepreneurial growth strategies like setting a quarterly cadence, applying profit activators, and valuing long-term relationships.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Right, I just got out of the lake. I was in the lake 15 minutes oh my goodness, wow I'll be, very deep, like a week.
Dean: Oh yeah, is it.
Dan: Uh, that's very yes, that's quite cold. I mean, this is our one, two, three, four, fourth day and so I'm used to it now, but uh bracing yeah, yeah, because the nights have been very cold oh, I think the nights have been.
Dean: The nights have been very cold, yeah well we got enough heat or we got enough heat to go around here.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, you've had some. You've had some variable weather, should I call it that?
Dean: yeah, exactly, I was just telling. I was just telling I need to. Uh, I'm ready to have snowboarding back in my life. That just makes more sense to me.
Dan: Yeah, this is perfect. I mean, there's a lot of your. Our listeners may not know this, but there's this great romance to the cottage country in Canada.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: First of all, there's a lot of lakes. I mean there's literally in the thousands. I'm not talking about the big lakes, I'm not talking about the great lakes. I'm talking about, like ours, for example, is two miles by two miles. It's almost a circle. It's two miles by two miles, but there's a circle. It's two miles by two miles. But there's a legend that there's a hole in the middle, a very deep hole, and in the logging days they hooked chains to each other and put a weight at the end of one of the chains and then they kept putting the chains down and it went down a thousand feet and it was still not hitting bottom oh my goodness, it's a portal to the center of the earth you know it invites all sorts of adventures, loch Ness.
Well, we haven't seen that, we haven't seen that it's fresh. Yeah, well, loch Ness is a freshwater lake, but no, but there's a romance. There's a whole school of art called the Group of Seven and these were seven artists who did these amazing, amazing paintings. Not really natural. They have a real interesting quality to them and they were done from the teens till probably the 40s or 50s probably a 40-year period, seven artists.
They're very famous and in Toronto at the Art Gallery, the Ontario Gallery of Art, they have a whole wing that's just the paintings of these men. And then there's a town north of Toronto called Kleinberg and they have a whole museum. There's a whole McMichael gallery. And I never get tired. I've been here for 53 years and I can go in there and just sit for an hour and look at the magnificent art that these people created.
Dean: It is beautiful, yeah, yeah you're right, yeah, canada in the summertime. I can't imagine anywhere nicer, you know any of those temperate things. London or England is very nice in the summer. All of Europe, I'm sure. But yeah, it's just, I'm realizing Florida's a little hot yeah, you're late to the realization.
Dan: No, I mean I've realized it all along.
Dean: It's just that you know. Yeah, I'm starting to re-realize it.
Dan: Well, you had some comparison. You had a wonderful week in Toronto in July.
Dean: Yeah, three weeks I was there.
Dan: Marvelous there.
Dean: That's what I mean, you're realizing that Florida's hot.
Dan: You know, just between us, Florida's really hot during the summertime, you know, just between us. Florida is really hot during the summertime.
Dean: It was just. It was that contrast. I mean spending three weeks in Toronto June and July is it doesn't get much better. It's the perfect time.
Dan: So well, there's June and July, and then there's winter.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: Actually, I think we're in for a long fall this year.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And I'm doing this on 80 years of experience that when you have a very green summer, which means there was a lot of rain. We had more rain this year than I can remember since I've been here, and what it does is that the leaves don't turn as quickly, and so we can expect still green trees at Halloween this year.
Dean: Oh, wow, Okay, Looking forward to coming back up in a few weeks. I can't believe it's been 90 days already. I'm super excited about having you know a quarter, a coach quarter.
Dan: You've had a coach quarter. You've had a coach. You've had a coach quarter.
Dean: That's what I mean. I'm very excited about having these coach quarterly Toronto visits in my future. This is yeah, yeah, it's very good. So there I have had.
Dan: You've been thinking about things? Tell me you've been thinking about things.
Dean: I have been thinking about my thinking and thinking about things all the while. This is, I think I'm coming up another, I think I'm coming up on a month of carnivore. Now, yeah, what it's very interesting to me, the findings. You know it really it suits. It seems like it's a very ADD compliant diet.
Dan: Yeah, in that it's really only one decision. Because it's just one decision.
Dean: Yeah, is it meat? That's the whole thing. It's like the Is it? Meat or is it fasting? Yeah, it's the dietary equivalent of wearing a black shirt every day.
Dan: Well, I wear a navy blue shirt every day. I took that strategy from you. It struck me as a very useful lifetime strategy.
Dean: And I got into it during COVID. Yeah.
Dan: Because that was my COVID uniform I had. Basically I had jeans and a long sleeve shirt long sleeve t-shirt navy blue by Uniqlo, a Japanese company, and they're the best, they're the best, they're the best. I bet I've worn the one I'm wearing today. I bet I've worn it a hundred times. So it looks pretty much out of the package.
Dean: Yeah, it makes a big difference. So there's lots of these arguments for these kind of mono decisions.
Dan: So I'm kind of thinking that through, you know, and seeing other places where that kind of thinking applies you know, yeah, what I notice more and more is that my life is really a function of habits, yes, and you got to make sure they're good habits.
Dean: Yeah, I'm thinking and seeing that more and more. Like I was looking in some of my past journals over the last week or so, I was looking back, like back to, you know, 2004, and just kind of randomly, you know, selecting the things. And you know, I do see that you're only ever in the moment, right, because every entry that I'm making in the journal is made in real time, so I'm only ever there, you know, and that habit I often I wonder how many miles of ink lines I've written if you were to, if you were how many times I've circled the globe with my journals.
It'd be a really interesting calculation, you know. But you realize that everything you've been saying about the bringing there here is really that's absolutely true, like the only thing I'm doing. The common thing of that is I'm sitting in a comfy chair writing in my journal, but you're never, you know, it's all. But it's funny to look back at it as capturing the moment, you know.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I see a lot more articles these days on journaling and just in the context of Cloudlandia and the mainland, it seems to me that it's a way of staying in touch with your preferred mainland by journaling, because every day you're conscious, you're thinking about your thinking and I think, as Jeff Madoff and I have had a number of conversations about this, that as the world becomes more digital and I see no end to the possibilities that you can apply digital technology to something there's a counter movement taking place where people are deliberately reconnecting with the mainland in a conscious way.
Dean: Yeah, I'm aware of that.
Dan: I mean, carnivore is about as mainland as you can get.
Dean: That's the truth, especially when there's something primal about cooking.
Dan: The only thing further than that would be if you were eating yourself, which, in a sense, you are.
Dean: It's so funny, but there is something magical about that. Can I tell?
Dan: you not as full bore as yours, but this is my 33rd day of having steak for breakfast.
Dean: Yes, Okay, did you open up the air fryer? Have you had an air fryer?
Dan: steak yet. Oh yeah, it's downstairs. We have one at the cottage and we're going to get a new one at the house.
Dean: And what's your experience? You brought it with us.
Dan: It's not my experience, it's Babs' experience.
Dean: I mean your experience of the eating. Yeah, oh no, it's great.
Dan: Yeah, oh no, it's great, it's great, it's delicious. Yeah, it's super fast, I mean it's super fast and it's great and, yeah, I'm thinning out a bit, losing my COVID collection. I'm starting to get rid of my COVID collection. Yeah, belly, fat and fat otherwise, and that's great and I do a lot of exercise when I'm at the cottage we have. There's a stairway, a stone stairway that goes down to the dock 40 steps, and so I do it today. I'll do it six times up and down.
Dean: Oh my goodness, wow.
Dan: And then we have about a I would say, three quarters of a mile loop up the hill, through the woods and back down, and I'll do that once today and I'll do two swims. I'll be in the lake for two swimming sessions and I noticed I really do a lot more exercise here and the whole point is to have it carry over when you get back to the city. Jump start yeah, I've got a great book for you, and the whole point is to have it carry over when you get back to the city Jumpstarting.
Dean: I've got a great book for you.
Dan: Do you read on Kindle or do you buy actual books?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Yeah, that's two questions.
Dean: Yes to both. You do both Often. I'll do three Often. I will do the Kindle and the book and the audio.
Dan: Yes, well, there's a great book that you'll like, and it's called Same as Ever.
Dean: Okay, I like it already, but tell me about it.
Dan: And the author's name is Hosel H-O-E-S-E-L First name, I think, is Morgan Hussle. And what he shows? He's got 23 little chapters about things that are always the same and it's thought-provoking and he's an investor. You know he's an investor, but he talks about that. Humans, for the most part humans get smart at everything they do except one. What's that Money? That's probably true. And he says people are more fanciful when it comes to money than almost any other part of their life. Okay.
Dean: Well, that's interesting. It's giving me an option to buy his follow-up book which is the Psychology of Money.
Dan: I should get that too, too why not?
Dean: yeah, all right, he's got some great line.
Dan: I mean he quotes other people. He's got the greatest definition of a stock you know, like stock market stock he's got the greatest definition of a stock. I I don't think I think he's quoting somebody, but that a stock is a present number multiplied by a future story.
Dean: Ooh, that is true, isn't it? A present number multiplied by a future story that is so good yes.
Dan: Isn't that great.
Dean: It's so good and true, it's got the added benefit of being true. Yeah, I mean, it's really. If not, what else it's guessing and betting, right? It's like we gauge our guessing and betting on we guess and bet on the strength of our belief in the story.
Dan: A present number multiplied by a future story.
Dean: Yes, that's wild. It's funny that you say that's a very interesting. I was thinking about a pricing strategy for a client and he was saying I'm sure this has been. There's probably somebody who's said this before, I don't know who, but I was looking at it as that it's a combination of the promise and the price and the proof. And proof is really a story right, a belief that if you have him, you're, if there's something going wrong.
Yes, proof is yeah, I mean it's either that, yeah, it's either. You know the promise is the articulated outcome of what you're going to get, that you want that promise, but then the price is a factor of how much that promise is worth and your someone else yeah and the confidence that it's going to happen.
You know, it's a very interesting thing I was thinking about it in the context of our real estate that the realtors are will happily pay 40 of a transaction, up to 35 or 40% of a transaction. That's a guaranteed transaction, like a referral. If I say, you know, if you send somebody a referral they'll pay 40% because the promise and the proof is that you already got it. So you're willing to pay 40% for the certainty of it. But when you say to buy a lead, you know to buy leads for $5 or $10, there's not as much. You don't have the proof that those leads are going to turn into into transactions. So there's a risk. There's a risk involved in that. It's really, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. I've been because you know I do a lot of real estate, lead generation and all kinds in all kinds of businesses. Lead generation and I've really been one of the distinctions I've been sharing with people is the, because a lot of times people ask well, are they good leads? You know, and it speaks to the, yeah, you know objective, yeah, you.
Dan: And joe you, you and Joe Polish have a great definition of what a good lead is. I don't remember the exact formula, but it's pre-qualified, pre-motivated.
Dean: Yes, predisposed you know predisposed. Yeah.
Dan: And one of the things that when we were doing the book deal with Ben Hardy and Tucker Max, before we approached Hay House, Tucker asked me a question. He said well, you're not taking any money, you're not taking any advances, you're not taking any royalties for the book, which was true. So that was a real straight deal. You know why? Because it's a mono decision.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I'm sorry. The book is a capability for me and that's worth all the upfront money.
Dean: Yes, yeah, you know, and that was the advances.
Dan: You know, the advances were really good advances. I mean, they were six-figure advances.
Dean: And.
Dan: I said, the reason is I don't want to think about that. I just want to think about the capability that I have 24 hours a day, all around the world of someone picking up the book and reading it, and it's a pre-qualified person.
It's a pre-qualified person, in other words, the person who's picking up the book and reading it would have the money and the qualifications to be in the strategic coach. The other thing is that it would pre-motivate them. They're predisposed because they picked up the book. They're pre-qualified because it's meaningful to them. And then the next thing is they'll give us a phone call.
You know they'll read the book'll give us a phone call. You know they'll give us a phone call. Or just go on. You know, go on to the website and read all about coach and everything like that. And so Tucker said so we sell a thousand books. What would make you happy in terms of actual someone signing up for the program? And I said one.
Dean: Right and probably, probably.
Dan: I would want a hundred people Just trying to take care.
This is why I'm going to come and do the eight profit Activators. Yeah, and the reason is that those books were right at. About the three books that we wrote were right around the 800,000. Wow, wow, and I could easily say we've had 800 clients pick it up, either picked it up and called us, or called us and we sent them the books. Yes, but it's a marvelous system because it's who, not how, in spades is that I have salespeople out there every 24 hours and they're finding, finding new interested leads, they're developing the leads and we don't have to spend any time until they give us a call.
Dean: I think that's fantastic and it's doing. You know, part of the thing is I. This is why I always look at books as a profit activator three activity, which is educate and motivate. That people get educated about the concepts of who, not how, or the gap in the game or the idea that 10 times is easier than two times, and they see examples and see that this really fits, and then they're motivated to call and get some help with that. I'm such a fan of books and podcasts as the perfect Profit Activator 3 activity.
Dan: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about our previous podcast where you took it through the what's the value of your leads. I'm actually a really fan of that yeah.
Dean: I love metrics. I'm a big metric. Well, metrics to me are when they are objective and measurable. They are a proof.
Dan: Well and predictable. They're predictable too. They're a proof. Do a certain amount of activity, you can get a predictable metric.
Dean: I've discovered a metric very much like Pareto in lead distribution. It just got, you know, hot off the press with Chris McAllister, who you know as well. Yeah, chris, so we've been doing a collaboration on, I've been helping them with lead generation and I asked him to do a I've been calling it a forensic census of what's happened with the leads right and leads who've been in for more than a hundred days. So we just looked at the. That's roughly three and a half months basically, and you know, of all of the leads that we had generated, 15% of them had sold their house with someone else, and so you look at that we did the math on the thing, that is the opportunity cost.
That is the exact thing that worked out, that the amount of that worked out to be over half a million dollars in lost opportunity.
Dan: Well, and that's where. Yeah, no, it wasn't lost, it was just a cost.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Dan: The money went into the wrong bank account. The money went into the wrong bank account. That's exactly right. The money went into the wrong bank account. The money went into the wrong bank account.
Dean: That's exactly right. So now that's encouraging right, because I've got now three different forensic census analysis from three different parts of the country with three different realtors that all point to exactly the same thing 15 of people who've gone through a hundred days will do something, and so that is. That's encouraging. You know, I think if I, if you look at that and start to say OK, there's a pulse. That it means that the market.
Dan: The marketplace has a pulse.
Dean: Yeah. The lie rating and that we're generating objectively good leads, meaning people who want to do. What the promise of the of the book is, you know, yeah. So, that's very exciting.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting changing the subject slightly. So this author that writes the book Same as Ever that I just mentioned, he said that basically, when you look at the last hundred years, the decade of the 1930s was absolutely the most productive decade in US history. Wow, Based on what. And he said just how much got produced during the 1930s.
Dean: Are you talking about the New Deal? No, he's not talking about the New Deal at all.
Dan: He's actually talking that the reason was it was the worst decade economically in the United States history because of the Great Depression, but he said it was also the most creative and most productive. And he said that creativity and productivity don't happen during good times, they only happen during bad times, the reason being the things that you thought. Let's put it this way you're going into the 1930s it was one of the hottest stock markets in the history of the United States the 1920s per capita, if you do it in relationship to the population and then suddenly it just stopped and everything that people believed was true, everything that they knew was predictably true, didn't happen. And everybody woke up and said, oh my God. Well, everything we've been going on doesn't work. And he said that's the spur to creativity and productivity.
It's not profitability, because the profitability happened in the 1940s and 1950s, but the productivity, the creativity, creating new things that were productive, happened during the 1930s. He said there's no decade like it in US history in the last 100 years and I found that very striking.
Dean: I can't wait to read it.
Dan: I found that. It's a thin book.
Dean: Okay, I was going to say I like that's my favorite. That's my favorite and accessible words.
Dan: I like that too. It's a win. And it's a good title yeah, he doesn't use more words than he needs.
Dean: I like that.
Dan: It goes back to your. I'm coming awake to Dean Jackson's 8 Profit Activators.
Dean: Oh good, after 12 years, this is good news.
Dan: I'm a tourist, I'm a late bloomer.
Dean: I'm a late developer.
Dan: You know, but it wasn't that it was stored away, but it wasn't brought right in front of me. But I think there's a lot of very interesting insights that you have here.
Dean: Yeah, that's true, and I just find more and more it's. You know it's the same, just feel like it's. So when you look at this one thing you know, if I think about my one thing is this you know, working on the all the applications of this one model and seeing deeper and deeper layers of how it actually how it fits, you know, it is like you asked me 12 years ago what would be fascinating and motivating because I had come out of you know, 15 years I think we I think we were both sitting in our kitchen when this happened, yeah, yeah our kitchen.
Yeah, and I remember I was.
Dan: I remember I was using that I was I. I remember it distinctly because I think it's the last time I used the landline. Isn't that funny?
Dean: that's amazing.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, because I had to sit up next to the counter because we've only got one landline.
Dean: And.
Dan: I said I've got this. So I had to sit on a stool next to you know a counter and I remember the conversation.
Dean: I do too, and it was because I was coming out of 15 years of applying these eight profit activators to the growth of one specific business and Joe Polish had just taken that framework and started the I love marketing cast and I realized that's my. I was realizing how applicable that kind of operating system that I had developed for, you know, growing our own business was applicable to all kinds of businesses and that was my fascinating thing and doing it in small groups as opposed to 500, 700 people at a time, and to this day, it's still now 12 years later, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, can I ask you a question about that? If you did it differently. Could you do it with a group of 100?
Dean: Yes, absolutely, and we've done it with you know, I've done it with 40 or 50.
Dan: Yeah Well, if you can do it with 40 or 50, you could do it with 100.
Dean: Yeah, once you get past like 14 or so, the way the dynamics change. At about 14, more people, you end up having fractured conversations, and so that's why, the way you do the workshops, you have the opportunity to have people have those conversations, but in groups of three or four, yeah, so rather than having breakouts.
Dan: Well, and then there's a tool that everybody's doing the same. Yes, yes. Yes.
Dean: You're exactly right. Yeah, and that's an. All of them are all the eight profit activators are there, are tools, you know, there are thinking ways for it and yeah, but it's just such a you know I want to ask you another question to what degree if you think about I think you said you've done about 600 from last conversation of your small groups, that'd be 50 groups, basically 50, 50 sessions.
Dan: To what degree do they need to know their numbers to go through the process?
Dean: well they. The challenge or the thing is that they don't even know that these metrics exist.
So I work from the standpoint of they really, if I can give them the experience of it by. They know the top line and they know you know what they're doing. But it doesn't require the granularity to get the impact of it. You know, to understand. That's where they can get their best intuitive sense of what that is and every single person has a realization that.
Let's just say, even the just understanding how to divide the revenue into before unit, during unit and after unit is a big revelation for people and then they realize, you know, a lot of times I was just doing a consultation with a home services company and in home services it's pretty standard to spend, you know standard to spend you know 12 to 15% of their revenue on advertising. But they do a lot of things and they don't know often exactly what's working. But when I pointed out to them that if we take you know, 30% of their business is coming from repeat people who've already done business with them, yet they're measuring the 15 percent on that gross revenue, so their actual before unit cost is is way more because they're spending all the money in the before unit and not really spending much if anything on the after unit, even though it's bringing in 30% of the business. You know and it's so funny because I was sharing with them too I was like to take this attitude of so they do HVAC and air conditioning and so I like for them to think of all the households that have one of their air conditioning units in it to be climates under management, you know, is to get that kind of asset that they've got 20 000 climates under management, and to take that and really just kind of look at what they could do even just with the after unit of their business.
You know, it's so. It's always eye-opening for people like to see when you start looking at those numbers and say, wow, I had never, I never thought of it like that.
Dan: You know one of the things John Bowen and Kerry Oberbrenner and I are doing a collaboration on establishing the real numbers for entrepreneurism.
Dean: Right.
Dan: In relationship to wealth and in relationship to happiness, relationship to wealth and in relationship to happiness. So John is arguably the top coach in the world for financial advisors at a very affluent level.
So all the clientele are very, so that would be for, and they'd be looking for, families. It would be sort of families and they'd be entrepreneurial families, okay, and I think that the sort of the preferred look is where the net worth of the family is in the 20 million and above level. Okay, and these are the advisors. So John's clients are the advisors who do this, okay. And two years ago we did a survey where we compared the entrepreneurial clients or the entrepreneurial clients. What we surveyed was John's clients as entrepreneurs.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Okay, they're entrepreneurs, and there were about 1 of them, 1300. And they were compared to 800 strategic coach clients and we saw all sorts of differences. One of them was the who, not how, factor, that generally our clients made more money per person and worked fewer hours than John's 1,300. Yes, okay, and fairly significant. I mean like percent, different percent. And the other thing was that our clients expected to be busy. They expected to be active entrepreneurs for a much longer period than his clients.
Dean: Well, that's the greatest gift right there when you look at it. So you, as the lead by example of this the lead dog.
Dan: Yeah, you know what they say about dog sleds you know the dogs in a dog sled. Yeah, if you're not
Dean: Yeah, right, exactly.
Dan: Anyway, but the big, thing, if you say we don't have real proof and it would take 50 or 60 years to take a long study to see that we're actually extending people's actual lifetime. But I would say right now we could probably establish really good, really good research that were extending their careers by probably an average of 15 years at their peak earning.
Dean: Yeah exactly. Yeah, think about that like in the traditional world. So at that you know I'm 58 now and so in the traditional world it'd be like you got seven years left, kind of thing. Right, it's a traditional retirement age, or what.
Dan: And then coach, you'd have 22 years.
Dean: I got 22 more years, even just to get to 80. Yeah, you know like that's the thing, and I just proved that it's possible.
Dan: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Dean: Yes, that's what I'm saying, yes, that's what I mean. And to be you like, look at, you know one of the. You know the elements when we do the lifetime extender, when you ask people so how do you want to be on your 80th birthday? And you're saying you know, well, how do you want to be health physically? And you're saying, well, how do you want to be health physically? Well, I want to be climbing 40 states of stairs six times a day, swimming twice and hiking around my property. I want to be, recording podcasts.
I want to be writing books, I want to be holding workshops, I mean developing thinking tools, all those things. I've been thinking a lot about cadences, you know, and you've really kind of tapped into this cadence of of the quarter. Quarterly cadence is because your days are really largely the same with an intention of moving towards quarterly outputs. You, you're creating quarterly books, you're creating new quarterly workshops and tools. And am I missing anything Like do you have annual goals or objectives?
Dan: Or is everything in terms of Well, the only, there's only one. The only one thing that we have, that's annual, would be the Free Zone Summit. That's once a year.
So, for example, every week I'm working on the summit which is in February next year, and so I'm always listening in the. So I have a series of speaking sets that people can, and I'm looking, yes, to a large group of people, half of whom aren't actually in the free zone. You know half of them next year, half of them won't even be, you know, in strategic coach. They're team members, free zone members, they're clients of the free zone members and everything like that.
So it's a challenge to me because you know coach people, know the routine, you know they come in, they understand what a whole day looks like thinking about your thinking. But for some people this is the first time in their life and the trick is, after the first hour they all feel as part of the same group and they're thinking you know. So anyway, it's a. It's an interesting, but that's only my annual thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: So I've you know I give a lot of thought to it. I work on it right now, six months, before I'm working on it every week.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But that's the only one that is, and I wouldn't want to, no, exactly.
Dean: Do you? It's interesting that you say you're working on it every week. Do you have? Do you account for that in your calendar or do you just consciously like? Or do you say?
Dan: Some of it is just, some of it's just my time and it's, it's a certainty. Uncertainty worksheet. So I'm always working within the certainty. Uncertainty, this much is certain already. This is uncertain.
So then that's the next week. You have to have certain things move from uncertainty to certainty. Yes, we got the pat. We just got the patent on that, by the way, so that's a good tool. That's good. Yeah, yeah so, but I'm constantly my ears are constantly open. In all the workshops, people are dropping topics. You know. I said, yeah, think there's a, we got a role for you and you know, we got a role for you, because I want to get to people ahead of time, because some people don't come to the summit.
So if you spot them as a speaker, you want to make sure that something else isn't scheduled during the time when they come. So, yeah, it's going to be in Arizona this time.
Dean: That's what I hear.
Dan: It's all very exciting.
Dean: Anyway it's very exciting.
Dan: You mentioned the quarter. I really take quarters seriously. Other people have quarters, but they don't spend much time thinking about the quarter.
Dean: I said it's available.
Dan: It's sitting around there. You know, quarters are just sitting around. How much productivity, creativity, profitability can you get out of a quarter?
Dean: Yeah, I like that. That's my observation. Right Is that you're the tools of applying three days focus days, buffer days, in a quarterly cadence for the rest of your till 156.
Dan: 304. I have 304 left. 304 quarters left. Yeah, 304 quarters. You know David Hasse, whose clinic I can't, you know I can't recommend enough to people, but so we started two years ago with him. So it's August of 2022. We started working with him and we've had eight quarters and when we first came to the very first meeting in Nashville Maxwell Clinic, he said so what are we going to do with?
your health over the next 312 quarters right, he had me at hello he had me at hello oh yeah and we've done a lot in the last eight quarters we've done yeah, you know there's a lot of work and but yeah, he's got a deep dive program. It's really terrific. I mean it it's testing, testing, constant testing, and he's very alert to new stuff in the marketplace you know new breakthroughs.
Dean: What's your noticing now of your new needs in all these stairs that you're doing?
Dan: Yeah, the big thing is I have no problem going up. It's tender going down, and the problem is it's a 50-year-old injury and about 49-year-old injury and so the cartilage is completely restored. Okay, and that's a breakthrough. Stem cells can get things working. Stem cells, can you know they can? What stem cells essentially do is wake up the cells that are supposed to be doing the work or repairing them.
Dean: Hey, buddy, get back to work.
Dan: Yeah, and the, and this is detectable, this is measurable where?
Dean: they are.
Dan: So I always thought I'm missing a cartilage. And I went down there, so they and when I say down there it's Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and I've done five, four, four sessions, four sessions in five month period. And now my cartilage is the same thickness going from almost no cartilage in my left knee. It's the same width. You know, the thickness of the cartilage is the same as it was before the injury in 1975. So that's great, but it's still painful. So now he says what's happened is that there's been damage to the ligaments on both sides.
And so now I go first week of November to Buenos Aires and they do stem cells on my ligaments, ok, ok, and then we'll see. We'll see what happens there. So wow.
Yeah, it's a matter of subtraction. You know you subtract the cartilage as the problem and then you submit and we'll see where it is. But I would say that the drop in pain in a day, in other words from morning till night, it's probably down 90%. Wow, that's amazing. But what's missing is the confidence to start running, because I want to run again and so I've been 15 years without running and my brain says don't run.
So I have to relearn how to run. And how about Babs? It's completely fixed. That's amazing, isn't it? Yeah? And the cartilage that was cartilage too, yeah, fixed. That's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, the cartilage that was cartilage too. She, yeah, she had influence, she had actually. She had bone inflammation and she had missing cartilage. So the cartilage is back and I think hers would be equal to mine. The pain is down by 90 wild, wild, that's.
Dean: It's amazing, isn't? It yeah we're living in. We're living in amazing times. Well, I'm counting on it. Yeah exactly.
Dan: You know it's a present number times a future story.
Dean: What a great thing. By the way, that book is going to arrive today, according to Amazon. For me, the money book. The other one will be here tomorrow morning. That's just so, like that's the best thing.
Dan: Why can't the I mean after you order it? Why aren't they knocking on the door right now? What's wrong with this world?
Dean: That's what I'm thinking. Is that why people call senators? Is that what I need to do is alert my senator?
Dan: about this. Yeah, I actually had a great conversation with Ted Budbutt.
Dean: Oh yeah. Well, that's great, great US senator from North Carolina, yeah and I just saw that Robert Kennedy just endorsed Donald Trump. He dropped out of the race and joined MAGA.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's probably. I was figuring it's worth 3%, do you think? Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, he brings a lot to Trump obviously brings a lot to it, but he brings a whole issue that the Republicans haven't been focused on at all and his whole thing is really about what the food industry is putting into food. Yeah, that that is very dangerous, very negative, very harmful. That's been his big thing, and Trump just came out and said I think we're going to really take a major look at this.
Dean: You know, it's very interesting to note that Joe Polish was sort of a catalyst in this regard. Oh yeah, that's pretty amazing. I just sent him a note.
Dan: I just sent him an email. I sent him an email. I said RFK Trump always said you were the greatest connector that I've ever met in my life.
Dean: Yeah, that's the truth, isn't it? And now you think about the historical impact. You know of this. I think that's you know. It's amazing. He's in his unique ability, for sure.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, just born unique ability to connect people, positively connect people. Yes yes, yeah, there's all sorts of industries where it's negative, but this is positive, so good. Anyway, back to our metrics, back to our metrics yes. Yeah, well, I think you're working out a whole economic system based on this. I think this has got the making of a complete economic system.
Dean: Yes, it really does, the more that I see that each of them have and I'm very aware of naming the metrics right, of naming the metrics right like so out, because each of the before, during and after units all have their own, you know, their own metrics that are universally present in every business but they're differently calculated, you know, and once people have that awareness it kind of builds momentum, like they really see these things. They've never thought about a multiplier index in the during unit, or they've never thought about a return on relationship in the after unit or revenue From where you are right now?
Dan: which one is where you are right now? Which one is most important for your own?
Dean: you know your own money making for me, I think, one of the most.
Dan: I mean you got eight, I know yeah, yeah, the eight are all engaged, but right now August of 2024, which is the one that you're really focused on right now rev pop revenue per unconverted prospect.
Dean: Yeah, that's a multiplier If you've already got. You've got a lot of times when we take the VCR formula and kind of overlay on top of it. The excess capacity that people have is often a big asset, you know, and so it's very yeah, it's fun to to see all these at work. You know, as I start to you know, overlay them on so many different types of businesses.
Dan: Yeah, no, I'm just really taking I was. Shannon Waller's husband was reading this, same as every book His cottage is. Their cottage is about 10 minutes walk from our cottage and I just picked it up and I've converted almost completely over to Kindle. So you know, so I had it within minutes.
Dean: I picked it up.
Dan: I read a chapter and I said I'm going to download this. So I downloaded it and I've been reading it for the past four days. But I asked Bruce. We were out to dinner last night and I said Bruce and Bruce is an investor he had a career with Bell Canada.
He was 35 years, 35 years with Bell Canada Got a good pension and then he went into investing and I said this is about long range thinking, this is a very long range thinking book and it's almost like these are 23 things that are always going to be the same how you factor that into your investment philosophy, okay, yeah.
And then he has a lot of references to Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett because, they're the long range, they're the most famous long range investors and Charlie's dead this year. But Warren Buffett said he said this year. But Warren Buffett said he said you know it's, the biggest problem with investing is the combination of greed and speed. You know, people want a huge payoff and they want it as fast as possible. Yes, and he said you know. And Warren Buffett, he says you know, you can't produce a child in a month by getting nine women pregnant.
Dean: It's profound and true.
Dan: It's a formula for complication in your future life.
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, if each child has claims on half of your net worth, you probably have diminished your future. You probably have diminished your future. But anyway, and he says, the proper question is what's the investment I can make that has the highest return for the longest period of time?
Dean: Yes, I love that. That's great.
Dan: Well, if you take your eight profit activators and see them as separate investments.
Dean: Which I do.
Dan: And each of them is growing in return. That's really the only stock market you actually need.
Dean: Yes, that's what dawned on me with this revenue per unconverted prospect is I try and get people to think about their before unit as making a capital investment.
Dan: Well, you are in time attention, probably money, probably money too.
Dean: Yeah.
But most people think of it as an expense because they're running ads competing for the immediate ROI. And it's such a different game when you realize that the asset that you're creating of a pool of people who know you and like you and are marinating, you know that it makes a big difference Because the gestation period is, if you looked at the people that come into coach for the first time, if you were to look at their ad date in the CRM of when they first showed up on your radar, whether they opted in for something, that it's going to be a much bigger number than seven days. You know that they came in, they got, they talked to somebody and signed up. It's going to be a you know, a much longer period of time and the yield. This is the only way that having that revenue per unconverted prospect really gives you a way of seeing how valuable the people who've been in your pond for three years, five years, seven years I'm sure you have people who have been swimming around Strategic Coach for several years before they become.
Dan: One of the big changes that we're making is to switch the attention to those people away from the sales team to the marketing team. That's smart. Because, I have a framework for the salespeople and every time I meet with them, we have 14 full-time salespeople and every time I meet with we have 14, 14 sales full-time salespeople and I say yeses, reward you, noes, teach you and maybes, punish you.
So, I said, every week you're looking at your call list, you have to grade them yes, no. Or maybe at your call list, you have to grade them yes, no. Or maybe and I say, go for the yeses first, Get the no's as fast as possible, Okay and make them earn their way back into your prospect list.
Dean: In other words just say no.
Dan: You know it sounds like you're not going to do it. You know about us. We've had a conversation. We've got great materials we can send you constantly. But you know I'm not going to bother you anymore. And then there's maybes that are just trying to have an affair.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: No, she isn't with us anymore. But we had a woman who is a salesperson and she had 60 calls over a six-year period with this person. I said I don't know what's on your mind, but he's having an affair. That's funny. It's a nice female voice. He gets to talk to her every month or so. It's an affair. That's exactly right. It's so funny. Anyway, we've shot way past the hour.
Dean: Oh my goodness, Dan Well, it was worth it. It was worth it.
Dan: I don't know for the listeners, but I found this a fascinating conversation.
Dean: Well, I find that too, so that's all that matters. If we had good, come along the ride.
Dan: I agree with if we were having a good time. I think they were having a good time I think, I'll talk to you next I'll talk to you next week. Thanks dan, bye-bye. Great, okay, bye.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, We glean valuable insights into writing methods by contrasting Stephen King's solo approach with James Patterson's collaborations.
We explored the benefits of a second-person narrative and tailoring content for specific readers. We talked about an entrepreneur who built a candy empire by recognizing an opportunity and exemplifying the power of vision, focus, and innovative thinking.
His story highlighted how early experiences shape goals and the importance of collaboration. Additionally, this discussion examined how US elections impact businesses and underscored innovation and marketing's crucial roles.
Lastly, we covered strategic concepts like revenue per unconverted prospect and discussed books' significance in education.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah don't know what stephen king, the author that's his habit of he writes for. You know he writes every day a certain amount of time and as soon as he finishes one of the end on one if it's halfway through a session he gets a new sheet of paper and starts the next one. He doesn't like sit on his laurels, he just gets right into the next one. It's very interesting.
Dean: Yeah, I'm wondering because I don't really know much about him. Is he right strictly alone?
Dan: and then, yes, you know, yeah, like, so it's a very interesting thing that he's like a rugged individualist, whereas you know, james patterson is definitely a who, not how, collaborator, you know, and prolific at it. He's got a really, really interesting process in that he does extensive outlines for his books and then he collaborates with someone to fill it in, to do the actual right, and then he gets with them and gives notes and so the book is a hundred percent. He's the author. I guess you can say, and then, but gives the, but gives the co-author the latitude to take it, exercise their creativity or whatever and how it goes. But he's got the basic. You know, he's created the outline and the story art Pretty extensive outlining process he has I took a I don't know whether you've ever seen and the story arc Pretty extensive outlining process he has I took a I don't know whether you've ever seen.
There's a website called Master Class and they have, like the best in fields, doing a master class on their thing, and so James Patterson was one of the first. He did a thing on writing and yeah, it's very, it's very well done. Do you think they actually reveal what they actually do? Yeah, I think so. I mean it's from seeing the things. Yeah, he actually shows actual outlines, outlines, and you know, I imagine there's nothing you know. Sharing the process is very empowering for other authors, just like I think you don't keep one and has observed you, observed you doing it. I've got one right in my backpack right here, right now. I've got the everything is created backward book right here and I just think this format, it's so you know, it's, you're so consistent in the output of it, it's amazing.
Dean: Yeah, I just wonder. There was a story of a martial arts master in. Asia, china, and he was known throughout the land as the greatest martial arts master. And then he had a student who was just prodigious he was a prodigy. And so he had a student who was just prodigious he was a prodigy.
And so he taught him. And then the student went off and made a name for himself and then came back one day and he says as far as I can see, there's just you and me, he said to the master, and he said so why don't we settle it right now to see who's actually the master? Okay, and so they did it and the student had his master at a great disadvantage. And then the master pulled out a trick he had never seen before and defeated the student.
And the student said I thought you taught me everything he says, except for one thing.
Dan: Great, I love that, except for one thing.
Dean: I love it, and I'm not saying that I have one thing, but I'm saying that there's something that happens in a creative process that involves a lot of other people. So I have Shannon Well, I do my outlines to be my version of James Patterson our fast filters, and so I do the fast filter, which is basically the structure of each section of the book the introduction, there's eight chapters and there's a conclusion, so 10 sections and each of them has a fast filter with a best and worst. And I do everything in the second person, personal, so I'm always talking to you you know, whoever the reader is, I'm always talking to.
the reader allows me to do is to bypass, research being a too quick start. I'm not heavy on the research side, right, and what you're depending upon is the research that the reader has already done in his or her life. That this makes sense, and that's you know, that's the second.
Dan: That's. That's a. That's a real secret. You know that. Like it, it's really. It's the best to read as well, because it feels like a conversation, feels like you're just talking to me and explaining something that is that you wouldn't have, as if you were just writing a letter to me about it.
Dean: Well, you do that when you're talking. I mean you know, I mean, I think you you use the second yeah everything I do it's the same.
Dan: I do the same every email that I write. All of that is that because that's the I think that's the most engaging right.
Dean: Like people, it's easy to get engaged with that when it feels like it's just you and me, and so I'm just trying to think here of the, because I'm only talking to a certain kind of person, you know.
Dan: I'm not writing for the world.
Dean: I'm only talking to one, someone who's an entrepreneur with experience and with success, and so I'm simply reflecting in my talk what I already know about this person's life.
Dan: I think that goes a long way, that one of the great, like you know, models of that is thinking about one person as if you're writing a letter to one person, or even a small workshop filled with whoever you're, you know, whoever filled with the right people and only speaking to those Something to that you know where you're not. You don't try and I think people often in marketing writing especially, they are trying to accommodate or change so that, just in case these people aren't this or that, they don't know about this. And I'm like you know what you gotta like avoid. You gotta let go of the bottom 20% and write as if you're only writing for the top 20%. You're writing to the people who want to do what it is that you're doing, not, you know, leaning on your back foot kind of thing. You're leaning into helping the people, the tippy top group.
That really want what you have, and don't hold back on that, you know.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. I made it. I think I mentioned this on a previous podcast, but I made a decision as I was approaching you know my current age.
I said you know I've been Well, that's something everybody can do, you know approaching your current age. Anyway, I just made a decision I wasn't going to do any speeches anymore to big rooms. The only public presentations I would do would be to entrepreneurial audiences, but I would only do it in the form of a thinking tool. I wouldn't try to tell them how the world is or where I see the world going. I simply say I have a thinking tool for you.
And what it relates to is you know something that happens to entrepreneurs and I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about it and then I'm going to have you think through your answers and everything like that, and then I'll have you talk to each other, and then we'll come back and we'll just share insights. And that relieved me. I didn't like public speaking and the reason was that I knew I was only talking to about a small percentage of the room.
Dan: And.
Dean: I didn't know who they were. You don't know which ones, right? Yeah, I didn't know who in the audience, and then you're trying to make it appeal.
Dan: Just even subconsciously, you're trying to make it appealing to everybody. Yeah, yeah, just uses a lot of energy and this is, you know what, this way, doing these, I would argue, you know, doing these 90-day books, quarterly books that you're doing is way more impactful than doing speeches to big crowds.
Dean: This is really the big thing and I've sort of refined it about my decision about not giving talks to large groups. Talks to large groups when I'm in the office either the Toronto office or the Chicago office the coach will frequently say can you come in and talk to the group? And I'm always a bit puzzled. I don't know what to talk to them about. What I've done recently is that I have a big table in the cafes Toronto or Chicago and I say I'm going to have lunch and anybody who wants to come in and talk to me, you can come in and have lunch with me.
So usually about eight people, and that works out really great because the only people who show up are the people who actually want to talk to me.
Dan: Yeah, exactly that's great. Great, I like that. Yeah, that's my favorite. My preferred style, too, is just that is the here I am. Ask me anything, you know, that's the way I can show up the best for things you know.
Dean: That's yeah, that's always been. Have you been that way all the time, or is it developed?
Dan: I think it's always been my preference. I have the capability to do a prepared presentation. It's not my preference, but I just like being able to customize the message to whatever somebody wants to hear. You know, so a lot of time I don't do really I don't do prepared like keynote talks anymore. I much prefer like fireside chats kind of thing, where we'll do an interview and I can take it where. What I'd much rather do Q&A, because it can be directed in whatever they're specifically interested in and I can think quickly and articulate an answer. So they're not going to stump me. I know that much.
So I prefer that and I think it feels to people there's a more, there's a different energy to it's an improv theater element to it right where it's flying without a net and you know you, there's always that danger that somebody is going to stump you or ruffle you or whatever, but they're not so that that confidence to be able to do it. And I've done enough thinking about my core ideas that I can adapt them with, you know, simplifying stories or examples that work, Of course, I think one of the things that's true about both of us.
Dean: we've been out there long enough that people who really want to get in touch with us know how to do it.
Dan: All right, exactly, yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I was thinking that on the way over, I'm in Orlando right now, I'm in the Tesla mobile podcast recording studio parked under an h80 tree today, and but I was on the drive over. I was thinking about that different. Just doing some assessment things on the different types of like if you're doing a wealth matrix or whatever, in terms of one of the things we do with our listing agent lifestyle things is this balance between daily joy, abundant time and financial peace, and I was thinking about the different kinds of advantages that people can have. I have complete time freedom. Basically, I have very little demands on my time in a recurring way, so I have self-direction on what you know you would call freedom of time.
Dean: You know I would call that freedom of time. Exactly. I think the term that you're looking for, dean, is freedom of time, that's so funny.
Dan: But the other thing is along with that time I was joking with somebody the other day. You know I'm in the middle of a project for myself here but I was saying to them that just jokingly, you know I've got access to Dean Jackson for free. And I look at that as one of my greatest assets access to me for free?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Anytime, anytime, that's exactly right.
Dean: If he's in a good mood.
Dan: If I can only wrangle him, you know, wrestle him down.
Dean: If I can get his attention, if I can get his attention. Attention I can only get him to apply himself.
Dan: That would be the thing right yeah we'd be on to something.
But I think that the other thing is you know, you know, as far as vcr, you know, assets go, this, I've got so much, so many vision capabilities. You know like I, I know a lot of things that can be applied to a lot of things, and it's really the. You know the job. The struggle, let's say, is to direct that to one thing. You know, it's like the, it's like you. I remember we talked about offer briar one time that he you know, I was just.
Dean: I was just as you said, that I was just thinking of him you know, exactly at that moment that you said his name. I was thinking about him, isn't that?
Dan: funny that you, you know, I remember you telling the story of being with him and I've had the same conversations with him that his model, his technology, just for people listening. He's a brilliant guy. He's able to simplify learning and teaching models so he can really teach somebody how to learn anything and become a master at it in a very compressed amount of time and become a master at it in a very compressed amount of time, and his, you know, assertion is that he could do this for anything. It can be any skill that somebody wants to learn, and I think you were one of my favorite stories. You were at a dinner with him.
Dean: I believe you were in Israel, right, tel Aviv, yeah.
Dan: And said well, I'll let you tell the way you described it no, I just.
Dean: it was a, you know, a very short comment.
Dan: And I said.
Dean: I said, you know, I think you really want to be known for this, for being able to teach anybody anything. But the problem is you can't focus on one thing. And you only become really well known if you can't focus on one thing, and you only become really well known if you can do one thing, really great. And you know, and he just laughed and he smiled, and you know he, he nodded and agreed, that was true and you know, and that's where I think it's very important to have guidance from outside of.
You know what's the best thing for you to apply your talents to, your one talent, your greatest talent, what's? The best thing to do for that. And you know and what would you think with VCR? What would be the?
Dan: Well, that's where I'd go. You know, is that this is? You know, even the marketing, you know is certainly the one. It's one thing, but there's so many applications of that you know, that's where I struggle, but what?
Dean: would be? I guess I'm asking the question again what would be the best? I mean the, you know. I mean even in the strategic coach. I'm for entrepreneurs, you know the strategic coach is for entrepreneurs talented, successful, ambitious entrepreneurs. I say yeah, but not all of them. Not all of them. You can check off those three boxes. I'm for the ones who are really driven to collaborate with other entrepreneurs to create a new thing, that hasn't existed before. So, you know, and I think this gets more refined, Wouldn't you find?
of who you would spend your time with 10 years ago that you wouldn't spend time with them today? Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.
Dan: I think there's, yeah, there is that. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. I think there's, yeah, there is that. I was it's so. I was, just as a sidebar, was listening to a podcast the how I built this podcast with Guy Raz and the the thing that one of the most recent guests was this young, the young lady. She's 26 or seven now. When she was 21, she started a company to make low sugar gummy bears and evolved that product line to other low sugar gelatinous treats and the company is called Smart Sweets and four years after building it, she sold 80% of it for $360 million, you know, as a 25 year old or 26 year old, in a four year period. And it's just, I mean, it's amazing, right, that one thing focus of doing that it unfortunately feels like it's the way is one thing. If your goal is building wealth, it feels like, I guess.
Dean: Was that her intention to do that, or was that a stroke of I?
Dan: think she wanted to. You know she wanted to create. She saw a gap in the market for low sugar candy right, that people like candy, but they're, you know it's so high in sugar and corn syrup and all the bad things, right. So she was looking for healthy alternatives and and there were really none. And so she figured, boy, if I could get, if I could figure this out, there'd be a, I think, a big market for it.
Dean: And she was right.
Dan: I mean she was definitely right and yeah, but went through. You know that whole process and you know, immediately kind of hit a third stride with it. But you look at, you know, the simplest businesses, you know, like that, imagine at some point beyond the idea and the execution of launching it that it's a different. It's a different game than the, it's a different game than the idea and the, the blueprints kind of thing, you know. And there's something that's I'm sort of resistant to or I find it hard to. You know, focus on just taking one thing all the way, kind of thing you know, that's been like.
I look at. You know you look at, I see it among my. It's one of my most successful clients. You know that they're focused on one thing we crack the code on the marketing and create a multiplier for it that drives for the next three or four years and then they sell.
Dean: You know it's a big yeah but single-minded focus for that period of time it's an interesting thing because that's a particular payoff for doing one thing. In other words, you know 300 million or whatever at 26, but you can also have a method that you constantly want to be growing and you know, the success is sort of a byproduct of the method. I would say that I have sort of a one thing, but it isn't a payoff or an event, it's actually it's a process you know, and but it's.
I think part of it is just always be creating new things and then, to give evidence that they're actually new things, have it in the form that other people can use them, like thinking this is one you know or workshops you know, or quarterly books and and everything else. But but I I like yeah that's true.
Dan: Yeah, like I look at that, that you're in a lot of ways, you know, I look at this as your Jiro dreams of sushi kind of you know experience of pursuing mastery of collaborative thinking tools for ambitious entrepreneurs at the highest level. You know, with a trillion dollar free zone, you know economy as the, you know, at 100 years old, that's a very, you know, that's a very ambitious north star right that that's the direction that everything is heading and it gives you enough, there's enough, uh, variety in the constant creation of new things. And I think there's something elegant about this quarterly book cadence supported by quarterly workshops and that model with new tools and a organizational support for, in the wake of what you're creating, that you're always on the lead.
You're always on the lead ship in the armada, car-charging the course and heading to the $15 trillion future right and bringing on the free zone people on the lead ship and everything behind an armada of other coaches and the signature program, the 10 times program, all kind of headed in that same direction.
Dean: Yeah, I would say that it really stems from an experience I had.
I think it was about 10 years old and I've mentioned this that I was out walking in the fields of the farm that I grew up on. It was in February, you know, very clear, bright day, cold but very bright and sunny. I think it was still 54. The airliners were still mostly propeller. I think this was a DC-6. It struck me that it had four engines. It was either flying from Cleveland to Chicago or flying from New York to.
We were in the flight path of those type of destinations and I was watching and all of a sudden I just got this feeling. It was a question that came to me and it's saying I wonder how far I can go, and that's kind of framed it for the last 70 years. I wonder how far I can go, and that's kind of framed it for the last 70 years. I wonder how far I can go. I've done this Now I wonder, and whenever I hit one level of measurable achievement, measurable success, then the question always comes to me Now I wonder how far I can go. So I think that's my one thing, I think that's my.
One thing is just that it's a question, it's not an answer, it's actually a question now I wonder how far I can go and that requires, you know, being in good health, being, you know, having energy and that requires having, as you say.
I've got a lot of organization that gets formed out of the creativity because it becomes doable by other people, like having coaches do the workshops. And you know, I meet clients now who have been in coach for 25 years and it's the first time I've ever met them, but they've been working with the other coaches for 25 years and that's kind of proof that you're doing something useful. You know, it sort of indicates to me that this stuff is real. Somebody who would maybe be attracted to coach because of a book they read, or they saw a podcast or something, but they do it through another coach.
They're never actually in my workshops, they're in somebody else's workshops. And when I meet them, I'm always very pleased that there's enough substance and enough impact to the stuff that's being created that they don't have to be with me.
Dan: I think that's right, that you've got enough like yeah, I mean you, a strategy circle and an impact filter are going to work, no matter who explains them. Right, when they explain them and they go through the process, it's like it doesn't require any. You know, there's not any creativity required in the telling of that, it's really self, it's built into the tool and any anybody can share that. Yeah, that's the. But you know you've got kind of that framework. I look at that as the. You know, in my world, that framework of the eight profit activators, the breaks and blueprint, is a is one thing. I look at that as one thing. Right, the but the application of it. You know there's this different, I guess, in teaching the application of it, helping people apply it to their own businesses.
Dean: How many would you, how many would you say, have taken at least the it's first three days right, it's a three-day introduction.
Dan: Yeah, the three-day.
Dean: Three-day. How many, would you say, have taken it now. So I would say that probably.
Dan: well, let's say 10 times, maybe 600, I'd say Do people do it again? I'd say Do people do it?
Dean: again yeah.
Dan: I've had people who've come many times Because it's one of those things where you never step in the same river twice or you never play the same golf course twice. It's the same round of golf even if you play the same course. The eight profit activators are the thing and it's just literally layering on. There's always constant improvement and new nuances within each of the eight profit actors. So if people are working on their before unit or their during unit or their after unit, there's all these layers of you know building on top of it, and once they've had an experience of it, you know now that you've actually applied something and something's going that unlocks, kind of the next thing you know, you get to see, okay, now, what could we do? Kind of thing. You know, and it's really, it's very interesting.
Like my, one of the things that I've been really leaning into is one of the biggest frustrations I have. I'll explain something that's a real thing going on here. Real thing going on here is that in the before unit, which is the first four profit activators, and they're all about identifying your ideal client, compelling them to raise their hand, to start a conversation, educating and motivating them so that they know that working with you or doing whatever it is that you do, would be the right thing. And then making a compelling offer that makes it easy for people to get started and we get people to think about that before unit as a separate entity from their during unit, which is the unit of the business that does the thing that you do. So let's say the strategic coach workshop process, like once somebody is in strategic coach, that would be the during unit of it, right?
So the before to act as a supplier to the during, and what they're supplying is new registrations for strategic coach workshops, new workshop enrollees, and the way that we try and do it is set up like a prospect vending machine as opposed to a slot machine. Most people do slot machine marketing where they put money in and they pull the lever and come on seven hoping that something will happen. And a vending machine is very predictable. Right, you're doing a vending machine. You have to select, even though there might be a dozen things in a vending machine. You have to select even though there might be, you know, a dozen things in the vending machine. You have to select what's in a1 and press a1 and it tells you what the price is and you put that money in.
But you push the button and out comes your whatever it is that you asked for and so we try and line that up for people and the most predictable, the way to really do that as a vending machine is to think about the investment in the before unit as a capital investment versus an expense-based approach. Where most people are running expense-based approach, they want to run the ads, get somebody to come online and then buy right away, before the credit card is due at the end of the month to pay for the ads. Right, that's what everybody's looking for. But I look at it that if you take a capital investment approach of generating your ideal prospects and taking a bundle of 100 of those and then not measuring your ROI until 100 weeks from now, your ROI until a hundred weeks from now is the what's the ROI on marching that bundle of 100 leads that you made a capital investment of 500, a thousand $2,000 in. What's the ROI over 100 weeks versus the next hundred hours?
You know which is what most people are focused on, and so I, where I run into challenges with people, is getting through what I call the Van Allen belt, where it's you load up your a hundred, or you know however many you load up a hundred leads that you've generated, however many you load up a hundred leads that you've generated and then the Van Allen belt is getting them through that period where you haven't done a transaction yet and it feels like you're spending money and you're, you know, keep loading passengers on the rocket kind of thing, and but nobody has, nobody has bought yet, and that getting people to stick with that through the Van Allen belt and then get the ROI is a big obstacle and I see it happen again and again. It's one of those things, literally people stopping three feet from gold.
Dean: I really grasp what you're saying. I was just thinking how do you conceptualize that for the people who are actually involved in the activity?
Dan: Well, that's the way I'm describing it now.
Dean: I mean, if we put together marketing and strategic coach with sales and Strategic Coach, I would say we have it's a quarter of the country, a quarter of the company you know, easily 30, easily 30, 30 individuals and and and what they create is really educated, enthusiastic, first workshop participants. Basically that's what they create and it's interesting. This year we'll do 1,000. Like, we'll have 1,000.
Dan: New registrations.
Dean: You mean, yeah, new registrations, and then the price went up this year, so there's more. I mean, we were about 980 last year and we'll be slightly over a thousand. And one thing I've noticed is there's a fall off in sales in presidential years. Oh, yeah. When the US is having a presidential election and the toughest period is about the three months before the election.
Dan: The reason is that yeah, right the election.
Dean: The reason is that, yeah, right now. The reason is it makes a difference. It's not necessarily who wins the election, but you kind of know how to adjust your you know, you kind of adjust your journey once you know, who's going to be the president. You know, and this year there's very definitely a difference. You know, I would say it's the greatest philosophical difference. I've probably seen in my entire lifetime.
Dan: I have a perfect example. I have a client who is an immigration attorney and they're, you know, right now talk about. There couldn't be a greater polarity of possibility in. November that they're. You know they're right on the thing of ready to pivot that if one side gets in it's all about immigration and getting legal. If the other side gets in it's all about staying here, deportation defense. You know it's a different. It's amazing how that kind of thing can have a polar difference.
Dean: Yeah, and I just noticed that. I mean, I've been through, we're in our 35th years, so there's been eight presidential elections over that, and I just noticed there's a holding back. That happens usually summer to the, unless it's pretty well clear that an incumbent president is going to get reelected. You know, and that's happened a number of times.
Anyway but that. But the interesting thing about it is that I think it was Peter Drucker said there's only two things, there's only two areas of profit in a company. One of them is innovation and the other one is marketing.
Dan: Right.
Dean: Everything else is an expense. Yes, but I don't think that's true. I think everything should be looked at as a capital investment, right, like I?
Dan: look at one of the things that we help people look at.
I don't know that I've ever shared this with you, but I think it would be a very interesting metric for you to have just an awareness of, for, even for strategic coach, that one of the greatest comforts for people is knowing what their I call it their revenue per unconverted prospect. A rev pup we refer to it as, and that's a number that, if you take of all of the new people that came into strategic coach in the last 12 months, you're saying that's going to be a thousand for this year and the amount of revenue that generates divided by the number of unconverted prospects that you've identified through your market. So imagine that there are. Everybody kind of comes through a process of somehow getting in your world. They've opted in for something or they've asked for something or signed up to come to a workshop or the Zoom workshop or an intro, or they were referred, all of that thing. I'm sure there's a pool of people who you have communication with that have not yet decided to join the program.
But all of the people that did join the program came from that group and most people don't have a sense of the gestation period of people being in your world, right, because sometimes people come into your world, they have one conversation, they learn all about it and say I'm in. That's a great outcome, but the majority of people will have a exploration period, you know, where they're kind of learning about and observing and getting immersed in the environment. And so that number you know, let's say that the a thousand people and let's say would you say that a blended average of fees would be 15,000. Would that be there between signature yeah and yeah I mean new people coming can only join signature, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, so what was how much is the signature program? Now it's, I think it's 15. Ok, so 15,000. So you know, 15 million dollars in new revenue from the before you, which would be.
Dean: Well, it's more than that, because the uh, that's 15,000. No, it would be. Yeah, it would be, let's just say 15,000. Yeah, cause new people coming in have to start at signature level, right, so yeah, I mean, it's more than that for us, because 80% of that is in the U? S and everything gets translated back, so so just for around numbers. Yeah, but let's say 17.
Dan: So 17,000, that's $17 million on 1,000 new people. And so we take that 17 million and divide it by the number of prospects in your email database that you're emailing your newsletter to, emailing your things to. So let's say that's 100,000 people.
Dean: It wouldn't be that high 50,000? 50,000, yeah.
Dan: So you take that 17 million and divide it by 50,000. Yeah, take that 17 million and divide it by 50,000. And whatever that number is, you're rev-pup. And so let me just do the math real quick on that.
So, 17 million divided by 40,000, that's $340 per prospect per year is where you get a little more granular. And looking at this is looking back and seeing what was the ad date of them. When did they first come in? Because some of them may have been in for 30 days and some of them may have been in for 30 months or you know whatever, or three years or more.
And that gives you a good sense of what your annual. So you look at that and, on terms of capital investment, if you can add people into, you know if you make a capital investment that generates new leads for let's even say $34, you've got an immediate 10, you know return on that. Very interesting when you start looking at it like that. You know.
Dean: Yeah, I mean the, the, and first of all it's it's an accurate number because all the money's up front with us, so you know that we have that money before they do their first workshop, do their first workshop and the interesting thing about it is the difference that the three books have made.
Dan: You know, the big books the Hay House books and you know, I was very interested in.
Dean: Ben Hardy's offer. You know that he would write the books because I just don't have the stamina to spend. It's basically at minimum it's a 12 month process with the publisher. I mean Hay House moves a bit more quickly than other publishers do. I mean you can start there. They're looking basically like 12 months. They'd like to turn a book around in 12 months and the books have done wonders for us in creating qualified leads. It's not the case that people read a book and they sign up for the program, it's that they make a phone call and the other thing is people may not have read the book and read the books, because usually they read all three and they come through a referral and they phone and then we send them the books and they read the books.
Ok, so the books are useful either way. And one of the things that I wasn't sure of it because we never had this capability before. But you know, I would say, since the three books have come up one way or another, you know it's a large number of people who signed up for the program because of the books. In other words, that it was, that it was sort of, um, it was the biggest sense of proof that this was the right thing for them.
Dan: Yeah, I mean the book itself. In that way, when you're putting out like a book, that's being, you have the reach of amazon and other bookstores and people kind of. There's an interesting environment for people to discover a book organically right and people talk about it and all of that stuff. So you're not really. It's not that you're having to push the book out to people. There's a they're kind of drawn to it, right, and amazon has a great engine of you know if you like that.
Dean: You probably like this yeah, they're a great capability, yeah yeah, anyway like there was a new workshop, not this past week but the week before, and they had about 35, there were about 35 new people and I just laid the word out for them that if anybody wanted to come in and talk to me at lunchtime they could. Okay, and immediately the table was filled, you know the table was filled as soon as lunch break.
And the thing that I was struck this was their very first workshop. How much they knew about the program. I was very struck by this. And they were asking me questions about the concepts and the tools that in many cases they won't get to for three years. They were asking me because they were mentioned in the three books, the tools mentioned in three books, and so that's been a big. So that's been a big, that's been a big gem, very exciting, right.
Dan: Like I mean, it's kind of I love to hear when things like that happen, you know. But that a book is a very is a really great profit activator three tool educate and motivate. And that's really it that you're getting mind minutes of attention. And that's the crown jewel if you can get somebody's mind and attention focused on taking in a new thought that resonates with them, that they say, oh, that makes, that makes sense. That's the thing. So then when you make an offer to join the program, it makes all the sense in the world, right.
Dean: Yeah, we're just starting consultation with Hay House right now on the book that we wrote with Jeff Madoff Casting, not Hiring. Yeah, we think that may be the number four. The number four book. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we think that may be the number four. The number four book.
Dan: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, that's very exciting. I haven't seen Jeff in a while.
Dean: Well, he's been busy with his play. He came back yesterday from London because he's been auditioning this whole week and they're going to go for an early 2025 start of his play in London. Oh, very nice.
Dan: Wow In the West End.
Dean: In the West. End, is equal to Broadway.
Dan: Right From a theater standpoint.
Dean: I said it's taking off. Oh yeah. Well, you knowago was a big deal chicago's. You know. They had a 10-week run in chicago and they got great reviews. It's just that chicago is a bit in a funk as a city that there's so much negative things happening and people don't want to be downtown after dark right that puts a crimp into theater.
Yeah, yeah so we'll see next week, because the democrats are having their convention and, uh, the pro-palestinian people have said they're going to tear the city apart if they have to oh my goodness, oh my goodness, yeah, wow, they need good jobs. They need good jobs yeah.
Dan: Well, it's less than a quarter and it'll be over. I can't believe. It's almost. You know we're more than halfway through August right now. It's almost here.
Dean: It'll be here, and then the next campaign starts.
Dan: Yeah, that's exactly the impeachment campaign That'll start whenever, whoever. No, it's not the impeachment.
Dean: But even the presidential cycle is never about.
Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Like I mean, the moment they the one ends, they start the next one, you know anyway. But yeah, but yeah. I think I think the what happened to the Democrats I think they're not going to have the ground troops to support this because they were there was so much uncertainty with Biden that I think and I mean she's only attractive right now because she's not doing press conferences and she hasn't had, she hasn't had a debate. I don't think she she'll stand up to full public.
You know, full public right, I'm sure I don't think I don't think she has the experience and I don't think she's the type of person who stands up well to that sort of thing. So anyway, that's my guess. That's my guess, and if I'm ron, I'll still have a really good entrepreneurial day the next day. Even the day of that's right and I go to bed at 8 o'clock, so it doesn't matter.
Dan: Oh, my goodness, Is that true now 8 o'clock yeah?
Dean: No by 9.
Dan: No.
Dean: Certainly I'm in bed by 9. I'm certainly in bed by 9. Wow, and I get up early, I'm a morning person.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, well, it's working, it's all working.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, it's very good. I got a lot out of your description of that and there's a lot of protein in what you're talking about there. Right, that's the thing. Not carbs, no carbs. All meat, all protein. Yeah, that's the thing. Not carbs, no carbs, all meat All protein, keto marketing.
Dan: That's exactly right. So you are on your way up to the cottage for the last hurrah for the season. Yeah.
Dean: Wednesday, so it'll probably be two weeks, very nice.
Dan: And then I'll see you. I'll be back pretty soon, in September, less than a month. We'll lock in Table 10. Maybe we can do Cafe Balloud as a new place, as a new Our new French establishment for lunch. It'll be awesome, okay, all right, dan, I'll talk to you soon.
Dean: You too, okay, bye.
In this episode of Cloudlandia, Our stories highlighted agricultural aspects of central Florida and comparisons of population densities in the U.S. and Canada.
We also reminisced on television’s evolution from shows like Romper Room to the first color programs. We reflected on limited past options versus today’s unlimited streaming and the importance of managing screen time given continual new choices.
Additionally, the discussion explored social dynamics considering Dunbar’s number theory contrasted against digital reach on platforms.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Not quite Hurricane Week, Tropical Storm Week, but we did oh.
Dean: Tropical Storm A notch down in the hierarchy.
Dan: That's one of the good things about living in Winter Haven. It is actually a haven from winter. We are in the center. We are perched on high dry, sandy land, so there's no storm surges, nothing like that yeah, so you're a long way from the coast, aren't you?
Well, I'm actually an hour and 15 minutes from either coast. We can get to either side and we can get to virtually almost every beach in two hours. Like it's such a centrally located, we're almost in the exact geographic center of peninsular Florida, so I can get to Jacksonville in three hours and Miami in three hours and pretty much everywhere you want to be within an hour. So it's good.
Dean: So I have a question because I've been there. Where is the big cattle ranching country? Is that south of you or north?
Dan: It's surrounding us, but sort of north and south in the central. If you think about the middle of Florida, basically aside from the Orlando-Tampa corridor which is like this swath that goes all the way across the state from Tampa to Cocoa Beach, that area is very developed but above and below that the center is much like the Australian outback in terms of the density of population.
And north of I-4. In that area there is equestrian and rolling hills and there's a lot of equestrian properties there and ranches. South of that is where you'd find a lot of the cattle ranches, sod ranches, orange groves. All of that is in the center and then you get all the way down to the Everglades and then the Everglades is one of the big national parks, it's the Everglades.
Dean: Yeah, alligators I was actually on something that was described as the biggest cattle ranch, not only in Florida, but one of the bigger ones in the United States. Yes, and we drove at least 20 miles on the ranch before we got to buildings.
Dan: And it was interesting.
Dean: It was interesting. They had a lot of pigs wandering around and I asked them were they in the pig business? And they said no. It's just that every week or so the trail hands would like something besides beef.
Dan: Right, go out and wrestle them up a hog Right.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, have a barbecue, have a.
Dan: Yeah, well, you can actually not too far from here you can do hog hunting, where you can go and hunt hogs in the forest, yeah, all natural.
Dean: It's not. So. It's not silicon valley that we're talking about here no, we're really not.
Dan: We're talking about, you know, rural florida. This is why I know, yeah, you know you look at Florida and you know people talk about population density and stuff, but there's a lot of land in Florida that is undeveloped. I mean there's a whole south of I-4, there's another highway that goes all the way across the state, called Highway 60, and through Lake Wales, and it's very undeveloped. I mean there's really nothing. All the way from Tampa to Vero Beach is where it goes and it's virtually. It's the only place I've been in Florida where you can, on certain parts of it, look as far as you can see in any direction and see nothing. I mean it's that.
And somebody has bought up like 80,000 acres around what's called Yeehaw Junction, which is where the Florida Turnpike intersects with Highway 60. Where the turnpike, the Florida turnpike, intersects with Highway 60. And you could see easily that you could duplicate the entire I-4 corridor, like Tampa and Orlando, along Highway 60 with plenty of room to spare. So I'm not worried about the you know population increase in Florida.
Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting. Peter Zion and one of his frequent you know he has his. You know he has videos every three days. Yeah, and you. But he was talking about all the developed countries, which would be mostly European countries, and you know Australia, new, zealand. You know he said that the US is by far the country with the least population density. I agree with that.
Dan: Most any state, even Ontario you look at as densely populated as the GTA is. Once you get beyond the GTA it's pretty sparse in Ontario.
Dean: Oh yeah, oh yeah I mean, yeah, there's an interesting thing. Just to give you a sense of how big Ontario is. First of all, ontario is a province in Canada, for those listening, and it's roughly about from north to south it's about 1200 miles, and from east to west it's 1400 miles. It's actually it's as big as mainland. It's almost as big as mainland Europe Isn't that amazing Without Russia when I found out. Not counting Russia.
Dan: I heard when I found out you could drive north from Toronto the entire distance from Toronto to Florida and still be in Ontario. That's pretty amazing.
Dean: Yeah, that gives you a context for it and most people don't realize that Toronto itself is further south than almost 20% of the United States.
Dan: People don't realize that Ontario dips down no below that.
Dean: No, it wouldn't be that much, but it is south of Minneapolis, south of Seattle, I think, it's south of Portland, you know, and then it's quite a bit south. I think it's south of Boston, it's south of you know everything like that. Yeah, maine all of it. It's about as south as you can get actually, yeah, but I think it's the most populated large city in the world, furthest north large city in the world oh, wow I think it's further south. I think it's further north than moscow oh, wow interesting.
Yeah, yeah and yeah, and it's getting bigger, it's getting bigger. Well, there you go.
Dan: Well, everyone. I'm waiting with bated breath to hear the great air fryer experiment from the Four Seasons beaches.
Dean: Has your air fryer arrived.
Dan: Oh, it's on the counter.
Dean: Okay, it's on the counter. It's on the counter, it's been plugged in, but it hasn't been used yet. Okay, okay, we sort of inch our way into these new technologies.
Dan: I got it, just unpack it and set it there for a little bit and just kind of let it live with it.
Dean: Well, it's been a week now and we haven't used it. Why don't we use it? So anyway, but it is sitting on the counter. It's a ninja. Is that the kind you have?
Dan: I think I have a breville is the name of uh mine. But did you get the one then? Did you get the one that steven palter posted? I have no idea. Oh okay, that's uh.
Dean: So, oh yeah, that's fab you have to appreciate how little I take into this sort of thing, exactly right.
Dan: I love that.
Dean: There will be a who who's between me and the air.
Dan: That's right?
Dean: Oh, dan, that's the best Any technology in the world. I can guarantee you there will be a who between me and the technology. And I said what do you think? And I look for people who really love interacting with technology. I want that person between me and the technology and I'll ask them what's it do? What's it do?
Dan: I'll tell you what I'm working on.
Dean: What will it do for the thing I'm working on? Yeah, yeah, I love that and I've been pretty constant on that. I mean, you know, I was constant on this when I was six years old. I just always let some other human investigate the new technology.
Dan: Yeah, and yeah.
Dean: So I've lived a disconnected life when it comes to technology. What explains that?
Dan: Well, I was thinking, you know about you, and I was thinking how you have the gift of being kind of brought into an era where television wasn't even a thing Like your earliest childhood was electronic free, I thought. But were you like? So you were born in 1944. And so it was six years. Probably Do you remember when you got exposed to your first television.
Dean: Yeah, I think I was maybe. Yeah, I think it was around 52. I mean I had seen it, I'd been in other people's houses right they had television, but actually having our own television, I think it's maybe eight years. I was eight, so you got all the way to you.
Dan: Think about this. You got all the way to eight years without being exposed to anybody else's visual bombardment of electronic propaganda or otherwise. Right, your visual input into your mind was largely formed through your own imagination. Yeah, you. You had to work, you had to create these visual pictures in your mind. Yeah, did you guys, did you?
Dean: listen to radio, and I was assisted by radio.
Dan: I remember radio had a big impact on me.
Dean: And yeah, oh yeah, sorry, sergeant King of the Yukon. And yeah, there was Amos and Andy. We listened to Amos and Andy, andy, we listened to Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and then there was one that my siblings, my older siblings, listened to at night, which was called the dark museum, which scared the daylights out of me and the shadow.
Dan: We listened to the shadow so was that the family activity no, no.
Dean: Here you have to get the full impact okay, sorry sorry. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The shadow knows. And then you had a 30 minute. 30 minute example of human evil. You know it was great but you had to do all the visuals. You know I, you were the visual director of all these radio programs.
Dan: So was this? Everybody in the family gathered in the living room sitting on the couch listening to the radio like this. Is that what was going on?
Dean: Yeah, there was sort of a. Yeah, there was sort of a dining room actually where you could listen. There were a number of radios. There was a radio in the kitchen, there was a radio, I think, someplace else, and it was a big house, a farmhouse, yeah, and I remember listening, imagining, you know, imagining. There was another series called Sky King, sky King, which became a TV station you know, and the Lone Ranger. We had the Lone Ranger.
Dan: So there was a lot of variety, uh-huh and so, and then, in 1952, eight years old, you get your first television set.
Dean: I think, so I think that would have been about then, yeah. Yeah, because I remember the first presidential election was 52. And I can remember that being on television. Who was the?
Dan: president, was that Ike Eisenhower?
Dean: Yeah, I like Ike, that was Eisenhower's first term. I like Ike.
Dan: Now you know that's a really interesting thing. Do you remember, like your new routine when the television came? Were you watching TV every day from that period on? Or were your parents limiting the TV, or was everybody gathered around and limiting the TV, or was everybody around?
Dean: and watch the TV. Yeah, I mean it was a frequent. It was a frequent activity once came in, that's all I can say I don't know, I don't know if I watched every day, but there you know, there were favorite shows. I think Arthur Godfrey was one of the early shows, the variety hour, and yeah, no, children's. I think there wasfrey was one of the early shows, the Variety Hour, and yeah, no, so Children's. I think there was Howdy Doody. Howdy Doody was.
Dan: I think one of them Doody time.
Dean: Yeah, and I think Soupy Sales was on and yeah.
Dan: Yeah, I'm just thinking how. Yeah, I remember Romper Room. I just saw a video of Joe and I at the I Love Marketing event and I was saying we had all the people streaming from all over the world and I was doing a little Romper Room and about half the people in the audience knew about Romper Room and half didn't.
Dean: That was kind of interesting.
Dan: I remember I see Bobby and Johnny in their magic mirror. I used to hide behind the sofa so she wouldn't see me miss joan miss joan, miss joan. Yeah, so I was thinking about it was good, I mean I mean it was good, but it wasn't.
Dean: It wasn't the major part, you know, of your you know it was only during weekdays, it was only at night and uh yeah, and on weekends I don't really there was.
I don't know what the years were, but you know you got. You know, somewhere along the line you had jackie gleason and you had ed sullivan and you had other things like that, you know. But I wasn't. I can't say I was captivated because I was usually out. You know, I was outside, we lived in the country and I was out and I had really gotten hooked on reading. So I was doing a lot of reading back then. Yeah, interesting, but it is kind of what about yourself?
Dan: I mean, you were born in the television age. I was born in the television age, you're right. And so every day, you know, I mean, yeah, tv was part of every day. And I was just the reason. The context for me thinking about this was thinking about how recent, you know, as each layering availability of content became unlocked kind of thing, our, you know, screen time has dramatically increased. And I was thinking all the way back to you. That's why I was thinking about you is, you know, literally your first six or eight years there were no screens, there were the only, you know, the cinema of the mind. That was your, that was your entertainment, your imagination. But I remember, so when I remember when we got our first color television right Around 19 or some early like that, and I remember the first show that I saw in color was the Price is Right with Bob Barker, and then All in the Family with Archie Bunker. That was, so you know, in the 70s. It was the Jefferson and Sanford and Sand and then all these.
You know, the 70s, I think, was the golden era of television, you know, with all these shows becoming. You know, I remember Star Trek and you know all these, the Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch, all the Love Boat, all these shows, these iconic shows in the seventies. But you only had, you know, basically the three networks was Canada, we had the CBC and TV Ontario. So those were the things and I remember as a kid, when the TV guide would arrive, we subscribed to the Saturday Star, the Toronto Star, that would arrive on Saturdays and that would have the TV guide in there, and I remember they would have it laid out like a you know a.
Gantt chart, or whatever the time, the grid of times, to show you what was on.
Dean: It was like a matrix.
Dan: It was like a matrix you could see yeah, so it would list there were, you know.
Dean: Every day had a matrix from yes till night 13 but you only had the three. You only had the three.
Dan: There were 13 13 channels, yeah, to choose from three networks. And I remember the you know organizing my saturdays in the winter around the cartoons. You know like okay, so I would have a highlighter which was recently invented in that winter around the cartoons. You know like okay, so I would have a highlighter which was recently invented in that or newly introduced or whatever to our household, but I would have the highlighter and I would like highlight my. I would do my programming. You know I'm going to watch.
I'm going to watch the Justice League at you know eight o'clock and then I'm going to watch the Justice League at you know eight o'clock, and then I'm going to watch Batman at nine, and then I'm going to watch Shazam and then Scooby-Doo, and then it was the we're all about why CBS or ABC's wide world of sports. That was like a big thing. And I remember now how much of my childhood was around synchronous and scheduled programming Because there was no other option. If you wanted to see that show, if you wanted to watch the Waltons that was on my mom's favorite show you had to watch that on Thursday nights or whenever the Waltons were on, you know, and Little House on the Prairie, and it was like your selection, your decisions were made.
It wasn't like what should we watch tonight? Of the like now, infinite choices available to us, but we actually spend probably more as a percentage of our time not you, but collectively watching, consuming screen content. It's just been an observation. I've had some of these conversations. I'm getting really conscious of really being aware of my screen time and trying to be more discerning.
Dean: I was just thinking now that you've got me thinking about it. I left home in 62 when I was 18. And I can't remember until I was 40 actually having a television during that 20 years or 22 years. I went 22 years and you know I don't remember.
I remember people having televisions that I would go and watch things, sports things like that but, I went 22 years so, and then, of course, I haven't watched it in the last six years, so I've got pretty close to 40 years of my life when I didn't watch television Half, almost half my life. So I think it's never been a big deal for me.
Dan: Right, think now like I look at kids now, like you think about the technological sophistication and facile nature of technology to eight-year-olds today, compared to Dan Sullivan at eight, you know is pretty amazing. But your experience in the outdoors to the average eight-year-old you know?
Dean: it's so funny. I never see very rare.
Dan: It's very rare, even in the 70s. Like growing up, you know the whole period of my childhood like from you know, six to 12. Six to 12. You don't see the same sort of pack of kids roaming around on the street that we saw when we were, when I was growing up anyway. I mean, you know, I grew up in the suburbs so we had like a very active, you know social ecosystem. We were outside all day, every day. You know social ecosystem.
We were outside all day, every day you know, playing and making things up and riding our bikes and exploring the ravines and the sewers, and our parents never really knew where we were either. I mean we were. The idea was you got up and you had breakfast and you got out and you came home when you got hungry or when the streetlights came on at night. That's the deadline, you know I heard a comedian talking about that that it was so laissez-faire when we were growing up that they had to run ads on TV at night that said it's 1030. Do you know where your children are?
Had to remind our parents that they had kids. Oh, so funny and true, you know.
Dean: Yeah, it was really interesting, Really interesting. We in London we have our favorite hotel where we stay in London.
Dan: And across.
Dean: They've taken a whole old industrial area and they've completely transformed it. So they have a hotel and then they have condos and then they have shops and there's a courtyard in the middle and you cross one of the courtyards and there's a Japanese restaurant there. I remember being in there one night and there were six teenage girls, Japanese girls 16, 16, 17. And there were six of them at the table and each of them was on their phone during the entire meal.
Dan: Yeah they're all talking in direct with other people. Yeah, so funny, right?
Dean: They're not even there even when they're in the presence. It struck me that their world is actually inside the phone. Well, that's my point.
Dan: That's the whole point of Cloudlandia. Cloudlandia is the real world. That's where we all live in. Cloudlandia.
Dean: Not me.
Dan: No, when I say we all, I mean society, everything. I have to have a permanent disclaimer.
Dean: You're saying a large number, a large percentage, a large percentage, a large percentage, and Sullivan excluded A large percentage of people. Yeah, yeah. And it's honestly a different world. I mean, yeah, I can't make too many comments on it because I've never really experienced that you know.
Dan: So we've got a young guy in our, in our go-go agent platform. He's a young realtor in Guelph, ontario. He's in his mid twenties, just getting started on his career and stuff. He's lived in Guelph his whole life and one of the strategies that we teach people.
Dean: Nice city.
Dan: Yeah, guelph is a is beautiful, yeah, so he's grown up there. You know, really, you know good looking young guy, very personable. I think he's got a big future. But one of the strategies that we encourage people is to gather their top 150 relationships, the people that if they saw them at the grocery store they'd recognize them by name and stop and have a conversation with them. Right, and the hardest thing, the funniest thing is he, after racking his brain, could only come up with 88 people on his list of 150 people.
And I thought to myself like the population of Guelph must be 150,000 people right In the Guelph area I mean, it's pretty good size city. I thought you know you look at this right that there's a kid who has grown up largely in the internet world, right, like largely on in Cloudlandia, and that's the real thing. The reality is that if you go outside of his bedroom and walk around on the street, he only knows 88 mainland people and he's surrounded. I was teasing him that I said are you telling me that you've lived your entire 26 years in Guelph and all you know is 88 people and you're walking around surrounded by 149,920?
Npc is a gaming term, dan for non-playing characters, because all of these online video games GTA or Grand Theft Auto and all these things that are kind of photorealistic things. All the people that walk around in the background are called non-playing characters or NPCs. Ground are called non-playing characters or NPCs. And I said that's really what you're telling me is, you've spent your whole life in Guelph and you only when you step outside your bedroom, know 88 people. That's a problem If you're in a business that is a mainland business.
Mainland business right.
Dean: All houses are 100% firmly planted on the mainland, as are the people that inhabit those homes.
Dan: So it only makes sense that you need to get an outpost on the mainland, not in Cloudlandia, you know.
Dean: Yeah, I was just thinking, I was just caring of my company company, my team members. There may be some new ones that I don't know, but I certainly know 100. And then my free zone program. I've got 105 in there and you know, some of them. I have to check the list to get their name, but you know I'd be over. I'd be over 150 with those two groups.
Dan: Yeah, but there's.
Dean: And then there'd easily be another 100 with the 10 times group, and then there would be 20 with Genius Network. Yeah, I'd probably be 300 or 400 anyway.
Dan: And it's a really interesting thing. There's a lot of thing around that. Like Robin Dunbar, the evolutionary psychology anthropologist from Oxford, he is the one that coined that or discovered that information that the 150 is the magic number. You know, that's the number of relationships that we can manage where we recognize people and have, you know, a current status in their life kind of thing, in their life kind of thing. And that goes back to our first kind of days of playing the cooperation game where we would be tribal and have 150 people and that was a security thing. If you didn't know the people around you, that was a threat. Right, you had to know everybody.
So, that's part of it. If it got to 150 150 what would happen is they would split up and go off and, you know, form other tribes. But that was. There's so many naturally occurring ways that that happens, but I just noticed you know how so much of it is for me personally.
Like my Cloudlandia reach is a hundred times or more my mainland reach. Like if you just think about the number of people that I know or know me from in Cloudlandia it's way bigger than the number of people that know me in Winter Haven, florida, in my own backyard, you know.
Dean: Yeah, well, it's very interesting. You know good FreeZone partner Peter or Stephen Poulter. You know, with TikTok he's got he's probably got 100,000 people who believe that he's their friend, he's their guide, he's their friend, yeah, yeah, but he wouldn't know any of them.
Dan: Right, that's exactly right.
Dean: So it's very. Taylor Swift probably has 100 million easy, probably more who know her?
Dan: Mr Beast has 350 subscribers. You think about that. That's a measurable percentage of every person on the planet. When you think about that, almost that's, yeah, more than.
Dean: It'll be interesting to see what he's like at 40. I wonder he's pushing 30. He's pushing 30, now right.
Dan: Yeah, I think 26 or 7.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to see what that does, because we only have really interactive relationships with a very small. I mean you talk about Dunbar's 150, but actually if you see who it is you hang out with, you know in the course of a year. I bet it's less than 15. Yeah, that's less, yeah, but yeah, yeah that's less, yeah, but yeah, I think, these numbers, you know, these huge numbers that come with quadlandia, do they mean anything? Do they actually mean anything, though, you know?
Dan: um, well, I think that what I mean to that?
Dean: do they have any? If you have that large of a reach, does it actually mean anything to you?
Dan: It certainly from a monetary standpoint it does. From a relationship standpoint it's sort of a one-way thing, yeah, I was talking to one of our social media.
Dean: We have a social media team here and I said can you bring me up to date? We have a social media team here and I says can you bring me up to date? I'm out there a lot every day, aren't I On Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and everything I said? I'm out there. And LinkedIn I'm out there a lot.
And she says oh, yeah, every day there's probably about you know, five to ten new messages are going out from you and I said, that's interesting Because every once in a while I run into someone and someone says boy, I really liked your Instagram the other day and I said yeah, well, I aim to please. That's your whole thing, yeah, but I have no idea what's going out.
Dan: And that's, you know, that's only going to be amplified when you take, when AI starts creating or, you know, repackaging a lot of the let's face it, you've got a lot of content out there. You've spoken a lot of words, You've been, you know, if we capture, everything you say basically is captured digitally right.
Dean: Yep, Danny's got a lot to say. You do. Yeah that's right and you've got your.
Dan: You've got the whole organization. You're the happiest. He's very expressive.
Dean: Yeah, he's very expressive. You got a lot of milk, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway we're. I think we're going to start our next big book. We did the three with Ben Hardy, which have been a huge success. And I sent Ben a note. I said it was your idea to do these things, so without your initiative none of this would have happened. And of course you wrote the three books, so without your writing none of this would have happened and we've had really good results from hot leads coming in to coach from the books.
It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't done that. But you know the publisher is giving us a call every month Say do you have a new book, do you need a new writer and everything. But we're ready to go.
Dan: We're ready.
Dean: And I think so it's going to be. I think it's going to be the one that we're doing with Jeff Madoff casting, not hiring. Yeah, it's a nice punchy, you know, it's another one of the punchy titles and so that will come out in coach form in the first week of September.
Dan: So that'll be all printed.
Dean: I think it went. I think it goes tomorrow to the printer and it'll be printed up. And you know, I don't know what it is, but I think a lot of people are fooling themselves about reach because they're lacking vision and capability. They think if you have reach, you've got something. But I think, if you don't have all three, you don't have. If you don't have all three, you don't have anything.
Dan: Well, I think it's, if you have capability if you have capability.
Dean: If you have capability but no vision, no reach, you have nothing. If you have vision but you have no capability and reach, you have nothing. You got to have all three.
Dan: Yeah, you know it's very interesting. Chad Jenkins and I were talking, you know he's one of the bigger advocates for the VCR formula vision, capability, reach, about the you know the secret of that for people that you know whether we were to express them in capital V or lowercase v and capital C, lowercase c, capital R, lowercase r to see that where somebody self I see a lot of situations where people have a capital C capability that gets discovered and all of a sudden they're thrust into reach that they have no idea, no vision of what to do with. And it's very interesting. So someone that comes to mind.
There's a woman, safali Shabari, who I met in Toronto through Giovanni. She was a guest or speaker at one of his Archangel events capital C capability for parenting and that kind of advice and she got discovered by, you know, Oprah and all the mainstream. So she was kind of thrust into the spotlight that was now shining a light on her capability, which brought her tremendous, acute onset reach that she really doesn't have, in my observation, a vision for how to navigate, you know, or what to do with that. They're an abundant reach asset with no vision. You know, to connect the two and I think that happens a lot. I think that happens a lot, that people get thrust into a spotlight and they, you know, have. And often you can have reach without capability too, and that's a problem too, and that's a problem. But if your reach is a result of somebody discovering your capability, that is a big. That's the formula I was.
you know I've often talked about Max Martin as a role model you know the guy who's written all the number one songs on the radio that when I really started looking a little bit deeper into it, what I found out was that it was really through the reach of of Clive Davis that Max Martin's capability became. You know that he became Max Martin capability became. You know that he became Max Martin and because he was just a guy in Sweden producing great music, with a capital C capability of making pop songs, you know, and Clive Davis, when he discovered that he, as the president of Columbia Records and the founder of Arista and Jive Records, all of these subsidiaries, he had tremendous reach to both artists and their audiences. Visionary, to pair his artists with this Max Martin capability to create this capital VCR outcome of you know, all the success that Max Martin has had. And it was only through that pairing of a capital C capability with a capital R reach and a capital V vision then it all really became a big thing.
Dean: This is my observation.
Dan: This is all like live, you know developing, you know thoughts here around it, because I constantly. I run that filter constantly in background, filter constantly in background. But that VCR formula is, I think, a very relevant collaboration tool, that if people were really aware of their capabilities and had transparency to other people's vision, capabilities and reach, that's where the big connections happen, you know.
Dean: Yeah, I think it requires a fair amount of conceptual capability that you can. You can sort of depersonalize your situation enough to understand what your capability would mean to somebody else.
And you have to have a conceptual ability to see what reach would mean. For example, I was on a podcast on Friday. I was a guest of someone who is a key player in the land development industry across the United States and he's in COACH. So he asked me a lot of questions about coach and I went through and I explained. He's got 10 years in coach and he talked about what each of those concepts meant to him and everything else. And then his podcast is going to go out to 5,000 key players in the land development land development business in you know probably 25 or 30 states and everything else. And so at the end he says you know, I'm going to send this out and I'll send all the coach information, everything else. And I got off the call and I said that was easy.
Dan: That was easy. Yes, that all you had to do was stay in your C lane of your capability.
Dean: I just stayed in my lane and said what we had done. And then I talked about where I thought we would be with Coach when I was 100. I'm 80 and Coach was 100. And that's kind of a significant statement. It's not the sort of thing you would hear every day from an 80-year-old of what things were going to be like when they were 100 and much bigger at 100 than at 80.
And it was really interesting, but that was like an hour middle house and you know I'm just talking, you know really good conversation, a lot of back and forth and you know, both of us asking the other questions and everything else and I said that's pretty cool that goes out immediately to five thousand. That's immediately goes out to five thousand people.
Dan: Uh, yeah, yeah I mean that's pretty mean, you know, when you think about this, so of staying in your, in your lane of that's. Part of the great thing is that these things are largely plug and play, you know, like, and it happens. That's why I say a multiplier. You know, with the formula vision plus capability multiplied by reach, that reach is a multiplier.
Dean: Well, they're actually. Yeah, I think what it is that two of them are addition, but the third one's a multiplier.
Dan: Yes, that's exactly right.
Dean: In other words, you can have vision plus reach multiplied by capability. You can have vision plus capability multiplied by capability. You can have vision and capability, vision plus capability multiplied by reach. You can have vision plus reach multiplied by yeah, yeah, yeah but, I, think it's like two of them are inside of our parentheses. You have, you know yeah, then the other that's multiplied by the third one.
Dan: Yeah so it's very.
Dean: I'm convinced it's three yes From the triple play. So I'm thinking about a tool right now where I said who's got the big idea, who's got the big idea, who's got the ready-to-use capability, who's got the ready-to-use capability?
Dan: And who's?
Dean: got the ready-to-use reach?
Dan: Yes, you know that's fantastic. That would be a very useful tool. I think that's a really useful framework for collaboration. Yeah, it fits so well with our whole free zone operating system, you know?
Dean: yeah, because we're surrounded by those those capabilities.
Dan: Everybody's got a capability in the form of, uh, their self-multiplying company that they've already kind of established. To get to that point right, most people undervalue. They mostly undervalue their own capabilities and reach. They don't see them as assets in most cases.
Dean: Well, even when they have vision, the vision isn't really useful to anyone else. It's only useful to them Right.
Dan: Vision isn't really useful to anyone else. It's only useful to them, right yeah?
Dean: I mean your vision has to have a lot of room for other people.
Dan: That's what. So, chad and I've been talking about this there's the horizontal vision is within your own capability channel. You know they see vision, maybe within how to improve their capability, or internally. All their vision is within the walls of their own company. But where the real benefit comes is with horizontal vision.
I said vertical vision is within your own company vision. I said vertical vision is within your own company. Horizontal vision is being able to see what your capabilities paired up with, recognizing someone else's vision that your capabilities could help or how someone else's reach could enhance your capabilities.
You know all of those that vertical or the horizontal vision is where the collaborative creativity comes yeah, yeah, there's so much yeah I think you're right that there's, you know, articulating, the thinking tool that helps you recognize and assess what your unique probably unique ability fits within a capability right. That's a thing in your organizational unique ability and your unique teamwork all fit within that capability channel.
Dean: Yeah, it was really funny. I was when was it Thursday? I think I was. When was it Thursday? I think I was invited into a workshop here in Toronto and it was the lead master's group. Okay, so the lead master's group is the lead group of all the people who are still at the signature level after 20, 25 years. Okay, and they haven't jumped to the 10 times. They haven't, you know. Their next group would be 10 times.
Dan: And they're a long way.
Dean: They're a long way off from free zone Anyway, but we're introducing the triple play straight across the program. This quarter. So everybody's getting the triple play. And there was a group, probably about 40, maybe 40 in the room and I would say, three got it, three got the triple play Understood, yeah. And they said, yeah, well, why would I do this? And I said well to differentiate yourself from everybody else.
Yeah well, I'm not sure why I would do that and everything else, and so this is why I put the emphasis you have to have a conceptual ability that's apart from you. You're just seeing something that exists, that's big and it's powerful, but it exists outside of you. It's not you. Somebody else's capability exists outside of you. Somebody's vision exists outside of you. And somebody's reach exists outside of you.
And you've got to be able to see this as a reality that exists in the world, whether you want to use it or not. These abilities, these capabilities, vision and reach is outside of yourself. Vision and reach is outside of yourself. And then you have to say if I'm going to use what other people have, how do I have to be useful to them, that they would be agreeable to that, and I think that takes a lot of conceptual ability to see how you could be useful to other people.
Dan: Yeah, I agree with that, that's true.
Dean: Yeah, I think there's. I mean, if you can only see within your own framework, you're not going to be VCRing anything.
Dan: Right, exactly, you're only going to be trying to increase, you know, or improve your own limited vision within your own situation and working on your own capabilities, and only with your own reach. It's real. That's where it's like linear. That's linear, yeah, and you know exponential is plugging in to ready to implement reach, vision and technology or capability.
Dean: It's really funny because huh, well, yeah, it's who, not how. But you have to see the who's as existing, completely independent of you. They just exist. They're out there, they're doing their thing and they're not going to be interested in you unless there's a big payoff. In other words, they have to see and it was very interesting because when I talked to like first year and strategic coach, you know first or let's say, signature level first or second and people will say well, you have such great people here at coach, how do you find great people?
Dan: And I said you know where I live, you know I live in such and such place.
Dean: We don't have great people like you find great people. And I I said you know where I live, you know I live in such and such place. We don't have great people like you have great people. And I said I suspect you do have great people, they're just not looking for you. Yeah right, how? How do you have to be such that other great people would be interested in you as an opportunity?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, amazing you have to have something compelling you do you?
Dean: have to have something compelling. Yeah, not convincing, but compelling.
Dan: That's right, you know, shaped with a what's in it for them. Yeah, viewpoint, you know that's. I think Joe's book is amazing to set. I can't. It's one of those things that I can't believe nobody has written that book until now, you know. But just that whole idea of thinking about your vision, capabilities and reach from a what's in it for them perspective, with other people, what you can do for other people, it's almost one of those things that it's so powerful.
Dean: That's true. That's true of all new things, though.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I can't believe somebody hasn't thought about this before. Uh-huh. Right right, right yeah.
Dan: Oh man, that was. So there was George Carlin. He had a thing, a little you know comment where he was saying how the English language is so incredible that you'd think everything that's possible to say has already been said, you know. But he said I'm going to say things tonight here that have never been spoken in the history of the world. For instance, he said hey, marge, after I finish sticking this red hot poker in my eye, I'm going to go out and barbecue some steaks.
Nobody's ever said those words in the history of the world. So it's not. Everything hasn't been said. I thought that was pretty funny actually. So there, yeah, Well we've spent an hour.
Dean: We did a good hour, I think so.
Dan: I always enjoy these conversations.
Dean: Yeah, and. I'm going to, I think yeah you ought to zero in on the tools. You know that, yeah, and I'm going to.
Dan: I think, yeah, you ought to zero in on the tool.
Dean: You know that I'll give some thought to it, but this is your tool, not my tool. I'll give some thought to it. I love it, All right.
Dan: Okay, talk to you next week. Bye.
Dean: Okay, bye.
In this episode of Cloudlandia, we explore how weather predictions and media sensationalism influence public views, especially regarding storms like impending Tropical Storm Debbie. Drawing on past hurricanes and climate patterns, we examine the normalized perceptions of living with these events.
Additionally, we delve into the evolution of creativity through technology and mind-altering substances. From early stone tools to therapeutic uses of psychotropics today, innovation is traced alongside historical cultural explosions. Comparisons are drawn between eras like the 1960s and perceptions of creativity now.
These chapters emerge from a common thread of challenging assumptions, spanning climate activism, human creative drives, and digital changes.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: And I hope you're enjoying all the extraordinary benefits of your own four seasons.
Dean: I really am. We're battening down the hatches. We're just getting ready for Tropical Storm Debbie, which is making its way through the Gulf of Mexico, beating towards the coast of Florida.
Dan: And it's so funny, yeah, yeah.
Dean: So it won't be. It's apparently it's going to be a lot of rain and wind and stuff for us. You know I'm so I'm very close to the highest point in peninsular Florida, so we're not going to get flooding, we're on high dry.
Dan: That puts you at about 60 feet above sea level. Right, you know it's so funny. It is funny I think I can see.
Dean: Let's see sea level reading. There's, yeah, the highest point in.
Florida is three feet above sea level, which is Bock Tower, which you've been to, and so, yeah, so we're sitting here ready to go. But you would never know, dan, what's coming, because right now it's still. It's slightly overcast, but it's still. Yesterday was beautiful, today slightly overcast. You'd never know what was coming if it wasn't for the big. You know buzzsaw visuals in the news right now, but seeing it marking its way and with a huge, wide swath of the path of the potential storm, you know.
Dan: When you first moved there, did it take you a while to get to normalize the fact that, yes, we get tropical storms, we get hurricanes.
Dean: Yeah, Exactly Did it take you?
Dan: two or three times before you said oh well, I guess it's just normal.
Dean: It is normal, that's exactly right, and every year you know what I would say. It's so funny that there's never a year in memory that I can remember somebody saying, or the news media saying should be a light year for hurricanes, this year Doesn't sell newspaper or drink advertising.
Dan: I remember, after Katrina, but Katrina didn't really hit it for it. It hit Louisiana.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: But I remember the alarmist saying well, every year it's going to get worse. Now and then there was almost a year, maybe two years, when they didn't have any hurricanes at all.
Dean: Yeah, exactly that's what's so funny, right? It's like the things like you know, and it is funny how the whole, how it all has cycles you know, because California, you know, had the. You know everybody's talking about the water levels in California. Now you just it's all reported right now that you know Lake Tahoe is at the highest maximum allowable level for Ever, ever, yes, exactly, it's at its peak, it could be poor flooding.
Yeah, exactly, it's like 15 feet off of the highest level allowed and because of all of the snow cap melting and all the stuff. But anyway, it's just so. You know, I definitely see those. It's all part of the balance for our minds, you know yeah, it was really interesting.
Dan: Did you ever read bjorn lawnberg? He's, uh, danish. He started off as a you know you know a card carrying climate. You know, I don't know what you call them. I guess they're called climate activists.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
Dan: I feel that I'm very activated by the climate, so I don't know, what the distinction is there. Are you activated by the climate? I am, you know. When the climate is this way, I'm activated this way, and when the climate's a different way, I'm activated a different way. He wrote an amazing article in the Wall Street Journal.
I think it was Wednesday and this past Wednesday, and he just points out that, first of all, the whole climate activism movement is an industry. There's a lot of jobs that are financed by the climate. It might be in the millions the number of people who make money off of doomsday predictions about the climate. So whenever a movement, someone once said everything starts off as a cause and it's just the people emotionally involved. In other words, they said we're not paying attention to this, we have to pay more attention to this. But then when government gets involved, it becomes a movement because large amounts of government money start flowing in a particular direction and then it becomes an industry.
The fourth stage is it becomes a racket. I think we're in the climate racket period right now. Yeah, but Bjorn Lomborg was going back to 20, 25 years ago when he had a revelation that the climate does change. But he says that's the nature of the climate. The very nature of the climate is that the climate changes. But he said the first, if you'll remember this, with Al Gore, this was right around when he lost.
Dean: Yeah, it was right around 2001.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, he was right after the 2000 election Right 2000 election and I suspect he needed some money. So he started the movement and he used the polar bear as an example. There was this one polar bear who was just floating on a very small ice sheet, you know.
And they said, you know the bears will be gone within 20 years because of the warming. It turns out the population in the last 20 years has doubled. The number of polar bears has doubled, even though it's gotten warmer. According to the climate racket people, it's gotten warmer, but the polar bears, you know, have been around forever. I guess they know how to adapt to changing conditions.
Dean: They were all grizzly bears.
Dan: They were all grizzly bears at one time. I don't know if you know that.
Dean: I did not. That's where they started.
Dan: Yeah.
They found the white yeah, they rebranded it as polar bears, I guess extended their territory and that was it, so they've doubled since Al Gore's warning. And then the other thing was that the let's see, there's two more. Well, I'll mention number three. Number three is that all the low islands in the Indian Ocean were going to sink below sea level. The sea level was going to flood the Maldives and some of the other things, and for the most part, all of them have expanded their landmass in the last 20 years. They've actually gotten bigger. They've increased their height above sea level by possibly six inches.
Dean: Oh man.
Dan: You'd appreciate that. Living in Florida, so it hasn't happened. The other one was the deaths from warming. Last year in the United States I don't know if it was last year or the year before, I don't know if it was last year or the year before 25 times more people died of extreme cold than died of extreme heat. So if you're a betting man, I call it the Gore factor, that if Al Gore says something, bet the other way.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, this is you know.
Dean: The man is impossibly rich because of his creating a movement, creating an industry, and now it's a racket. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how invisible he is now. I mean he really is like I haven't seen or heard anything from Al Gore. I can't remember the last time.
Dan: Well, it's passive income now.
Dean: Right, just stay quiet, stay low.
Dan: Just stay quiet, just stay quiet. The dollars just keep rolling in yeah, yeah. But it's interesting. My suspicion is I've been thinking about this because I'm writing my next quarterly book. We just wrapped up Casting Not Hiring, which will come out in September this one with Jeff Madoff, this one with Jeff and it really really worked. This book really worked the Casting Not Hiring but the next one is going to be called Timeless.
Technology, and the idea here is that technology is a way of thinking. It's not so much particular technology, but it's a way, and my been that it's actually one of the crucial factors. Technological thinking is one of the crucial factors that differentiates humans from the other species, and what I mean by that it's the intentional and yet unpredictable utilizing stuff from our environment to enhance our capabilities.
Dean: And.
Dan: I did a search on perplexity what would be reckoned from perplexity doing a search of what would be sort of the 10 early breakthroughs, the technological breakthroughs, and one of them was just stones that you could throw. You could pick up a stone and throw it and it actually changed how the human body evolved. Is that the ability of using our hand and our arm and getting that tremendous arm strength that you can throw a stone and, you know, kill something. Right Kill an animal or kill it. Kill another human yeah, and everything.
Dean: I wonder even about that, the evolution of technology, like that, like thinking a rock and then realize that, hey, if I just chisel this away now I make this sharp on this end.
Dan: And now all of a sudden we got an axe, you know yeah, and then actually they think that glue was an early adaption, that you could take sticks and stones and put them together. You could glue things together and you could actually. So they looked for probably really sticky saps or something from trees you know that they would use. Then pottery, of course, and it's interesting with pottery that the very earliest samples that we have.
clearly they took clay and made it into some sort of cup or yeah, a bowl of some sort, but whenever they find it and it goes back hundreds of thousands of years they can detect alcohol. They can detect that there was alcohol, which kind of shows you how early that must have been. Consciousness transformer that's what I call alcohol. It's a consciousness transformer, would you not say?
Dean: Yeah, I mean I was listening to Joe Rogan. I had Jordan Peterson on his podcast just recently.
Dan: That's a good podcast partnership.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, and he was talking about the, you know psychotropics and the things that are. You know that psilocybin and all the all of those things, marijuana was all what was sort of responsible for the revolutionary change that happened. You know the difference from the fifties to the sixties and his thing was, you know, in the mid to late 60s. You know that's what started the whole. Every single one of those things was made schedule one, narcotic and illegal and completely controlled right, and that his thing is that we haven't seen anything revolutionary, like any kind of change happening from since then, since the 60s, into now.
Dan: Which kind of indicates that it's good enough?
Dean: Well, it's just kind of funny. You know, like that, you wonder what the you know where he was kind of going with that, but he was using as an example like the creativity in the 60s, like he talked about the difference of the car.
Even the cars and the things, the designs of things that were being made in the 60s are iconic and desirable and different than, like you compared to, you know, a camaro or the muscle car, this, the corvette, and the things in the 60s compared to like nobody wants your 19 camaro. That's not desirable at all, not in the the way that the 60s, Except maybe NASCAR.
Dan: Except NASCAR, I think Camaros have a very niche use because they're really souped up. Mark Young, his team has won. At the latest count, his team had won three races this year so far. Discount this team had won three races this year so far and he was talking about it at the podcast dinner that we had after doing the podcast, the four-person podcast.
But Camaros always play a very active role. They establish themselves as this amazing niche, you know, souped up, NASCAR type of car. But I really take what you're saying there that there's been no blockbuster new designs of cars that have really you know that you think that they'll still be around. In other words, these are real breakthrough cars. Yeah, Just going a little deeper into the Joe Rogan, Peterson, the Jordan.
Dean: Peterson conversation.
Dan: Did they go any deeper into why the creativity was then? But the creativity hasn't gone any further.
Dean: Well, I think it was Joe's sort of. You know, I'm halfway through the podcast right now, but his basic assertion was that those access to those drugs or those not I will call I use the word drugs those, those we could say technologies are new. Access to those things opened up the part of the brain that is creative linkers, like that that's really they're saying all the way back, like going, if you take it all the way back evolutionarily, that they believe, like what you just said, back in, as far back as they go, there's access. You know they're seeing alcohol in, yeah, as mind-altering things. They would revere mushrooms, mushrooms were abundant and things that were mind-altering. And you think through all of these things, even in Indian or Native lore, that the peyote and the things that were, that part of a trip out of reality is a rite of passage or a thing that activates another part of your brain. You know, makes the connections that aren't otherwise accessible.
Dan: Yeah, I'm totally, you know, I'm convinced that's probably true.
Dean: And I think that we're starting to see now that these hallucinogenic what do we call it? Not hallucinogenics, but psychotropics. What's the right word for?
Dan: it Psychotropic, I think.
Dean: Yeah, so whatever now in treatment of PTSD and addiction and all of these beneficial things that are coming as part of using it therapeutically and but because it's just now starting to become more accessible or more active, it used to be like you've always heard we you and I both know a lot of people that have gone down the Iowa or the you know version and have had, you know, all sort of mind altering experiences doing that. I've never done it, yeah.
Dan: I mean, I mean, it was very interesting. I was at Richard Rossi's Da Vinci 50. This was the last one I was I think it was february and scottsdale and two or three there. We had two or three coach clients there who were just doing a look.
See, you know if they wanted to join the previewing and they were having a conversation about psychotropic drugs and they asked me if I had experimented and I said you mean, right beyond dealing with my own brain every day? You mean I said I have to tell you I don't have time for that stuff. Just dealing with my own brain every day is sure, you know, it's a full-time job. You know, because it's switching, it's switching channels continually and it takes a full-time job. You know, because it's switching channels continually and it takes a lot of work to get it focused on something useful. Yeah, I just wonder about that because it's when one of the political parties went really strange. I noticed the Democrats, since, well, kamala seems to me to be a sympathetic candidate for the president.
Dean: Unbelievable, this is all craziness.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, but they're using the word weird to describe the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: If there was ever a weird party. I mean, this is sheer projection, this is psychological projection. You know of weird, you know.
Dean: Yeah, but it's amazing.
Dan: That's when the Democratic Party changed, and it changed quite radically. I remember speaking about you know, psychedelics. I was in the army in Korea for two years. Us Army.
Dean: And.
Dan: I came back to the West Coast. When we flew back, we went into Seattle. I had a brother who was a professor at University of San Francisco, so I took a jump down to San Francisco before I flew back to my home in Ohio and he said I'm going to show you something really interesting. And he took me to Haight-Ashbury. This is the summer that Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, became really famous and it was the beginning of the whole hippie movement. And he walked me around and I could tell by interacting with him that he wasn't just an observer, you know that, he was actually a participant.
And he didn't do him any good, because he eventually dropped out of, you know, being a professor and became more or less a vagrant.
Dean: Tune in turn on drop out.
Dan: Yeah well, he dropped out. He dropped out and then, about I would say, 12 years later, he committed suicide. Oh, no, and yeah, I mean, he's the one real casualty in my family. But I remember him how unreal his conversations were starting to become when I talked to him about this. You know this, and he was never and he was very smart. He was very smart I mean before that he was very bright and he was sort of practical and he became a professor, a university professor.
Dean: That says something right there. Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah and anyway. But that was my first awareness, that was my first introduction to it. I mean, I mean I didn't drink alcohol until I was 27 years old. I never drank until I was 27. Wow, I'll have a glass of wine, that I'll do anything, but I've never I've never actually enjoyed. I had pot a couple of times back in the early 60s, 70s and I found it disconnected me from other people. Alcohol does just the opposite. Alcohol kind of connects you. It does just the opposite. It kind of disconnects you and so it's very definitely.
it's a reality since that period of time. But the one thing I want to say is that there's a really interesting thing the Democratic Party, up until the late 60s, was the party of the working class you know, working class, blue collar workers, and they had a real disaster in 1968 because they had huge riots in Chicago.
So it's interesting In two weeks they'll be in Chicago and I think they've done one previous convention in Chicago. I think one of Obama's conventions was in Chicago. But anyway, they made a decision that they were no longer the working class and I think it was the result of all the tremendous growth of the student population as a result of the baby boomer generation. So between between, I think, 1940s, when the baby boomer generation starts to 64. Ok, and that would be 18 years there were I think it was, I don't know the exact number, but there was like 75 million babies who were born during that period and the front end of them were going to university in the 60s boomer generation. And so they saw the party start looking.
Well, these are our future voters. They're not blue collar workers, they're college students and graduates and professors, and then the entire new working cadre. They're all going to be professionals. They're going to be professionals. And they changed their entire focus in 1960. I think it was in 1969 or 70. George McGovern, who was a senator at that time, did a commission and said we're no longer the party of the working class.
And and so they're not, you know, 65 years later. And it's funny because the Republicans were always considered sort of the Pluto class, they were the class of the rich people, and now they've just shipped positions. So 60 years later, it's the billionaires and it's the college professors and media people and the bureaucratic class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats. And the working class class the government bureaucrats they're the Democrats and the working class is the Republicans.
Dean: Yeah, the Midwestern. Yeah, that's true, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Dan: And Trump is the working class billionaire.
Dean: Yes, that's true.
I wanted to say it is kind of I'll use the word weird. What is kind of weird about this increased use of the word weird to describe the Republicans now is that it's so widespread. It's like the it's the Democratic talking point now. Like I love the videos now that kind of expose, the, you know, the Democrat party line sort of thing, and it happens on both sides actually. But I mean this idea of that, you know, with the media, all the soundbites are, you know, planting that thought that Republicans are weird, that this is weird.
Dan: They're testing it. It's just that it's. I think it's hard for them to say it plausibly. There's no traditional values that the Democrats represent. Yeah, but it's interesting. And now I'm especially interested in your Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson podcast.
Dean: And I'm going to watch that after.
Dan: Watch that and Jordan Peterson I think I mean the two people together is a very interesting partnership for a podcast, because I think Jordan Peterson is, you know, came out of the university class. He was a professor here in Toronto and where he became. He became very famous for his book, which was basically very popular Rules for life you know, like before you leave your bedroom in the morning, make your bed and, yeah, stand up straight.
You know, stand up straight and when you visit with your, your friends and meet their parents, be the sort of person that their parents would like to have come back as a guest. Pretty basic, fundamental rules of life. But then he really became infamous, if you want to call it that here in Toronto, because he had a real objection to the whole university class saying that people could be whatever gender they wanted to be, and they could self-identify, and they were opposed to the he and her or he and she thing, and he said no, he said I'm not going to do that.
He said if it's a female, I'm going to call her she. And they said oh, this is an attack. This is an attack on equality. This is an attack on diversity. This is an attack on inclusion. So he became very famous and it actually ultimately had forced him his hand to leave the university. He was called up and they said we're going to take away your professional degree and everything like that. Right, right, okay, which you know. I think there's something weird about that.
Dean: I mean just my own opinion here, but yeah and I think Joe knows him.
Dan: I think he's had Joe's had conversations. Joe Polish has had conversations with Jordan Peele. But all his videos where he's being interviewed by people who obviously don't like him, he comes off really well. He comes off as the sort of sane, rational person in all the you know, in all his interviews. I enjoy watching him. He strikes me as being kind of on the depressed side. You know he seems not to. I think he's a psychologist. I think that by training.
And anyway, but I think it's interesting because this all started with the conversation of alcohol on the ancient pottery.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: You know our thing here, but I think that probably throughout history, generation by generation, place after place, they found substances which can alter their consciousness, and I think it's probably been with human beings forever.
Dean: Yeah, these whole. You're absolutely right, that whole yeah.
Dan: It's not as good as steak for breakfast.
Dean: No, I'll tell you what Dan.
Dan: I have Steak for breakfast. Steak for breakfast. I just started it 12 days ago and it makes a big difference.
Dean: You've started Carnivore.
Dan: Well, not Carnivore, but I just don't have Cheerios for breakfast.
Dean: Ah, right, right, Protein for breakfast. Yeah, I've been this week has been because I've been leaning more and more, as you know, working with jj on prioritizing pro no, babs was telling me about your call, abs was telling me about your call yesterday yeah and your air dryer.
Dan: Your air, my air fryer.
Dean: Yeah, and I'll tell you your air fryer and I made yesterday, yesterday for the first time, the most amazing ribeye in the air fryer. That was so juicy and delicious it was and so easy. I mean literally. I took the ribeye, I put salt and pepper and just a little bit.
Dan: Yes, came out just like so your adventures get around you. Now I know, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Dean: But I mean that's just, it's so good, who knew?
Dan: Yeah, I mean yeah, it was I texted that.
Dean: Well, we've got the whole. I'm very fortunate that you see second hand through, babs, but you know there's been a real support network, a gathering of what we're lovingly calling Team Dean on a text thread, and so I texted a picture of that last night to the group.
Dan: Let's keep Dean in the mainland for a while, right?
Dean: We don't want him drifting off into Glanlandia for eternity At least until we can get my mind melded up there somehow, right, but this week has been a breakthrough. Like this week I've been, this is the first week of full carnivore, like only meat. Oh so I started on Monday and it's been, you know, an interesting thing. But I had my highest weight loss week since we've been doing this by by this and I actually feel great. It took a couple of days to kind of get through the Van Allen belt of carbohydrate craving, you know. But now that I'm in, I'm through, I'm out of the atmosphere, I'm kind of floating that I think I can do this, you know, perpetually here for a while, and one of the reasons yeah, yeah Well.
Dan: yeah well, I mean you talk about the air fryer, but there's a direct connection between the management of fire and your air fryer.
you know, I mean hundreds of thousands of years and the human, the first humans who got a handle on fire. You know, it happened, probably accidentally, it was a lightning strike or something. But then they began to realize once we have fire, let's find a way of keeping it going. So we have access and that was a huge jump, because eating raw meat almost uses as many calories as you're getting from the meat, In other words you really have to work to digest.
Let's call it steak. You know the steak. It takes a lot of calories to digest it. You really have to work to digest it but once they added fire to the mix and you could cook the food it made it much easier to digest and you got your calories much easier, yeah, but the other thing is that it's filling it's very filling, I mean the more carnivore you are, the less you're attracted to the sugar. That's the truth, easy caps. I mean, I don't feel particularly hungry.
I had breakfast around 8 o'clock this morning Steak. I have steak and avocado. Okay, it's ribeye, but we're going to get. As a result of your yesterday information, babs is going to get an air fryer. We're going to get an air fryer, and then Stephen Poulter had even more.
Dean: I saw that. He put up a fancy thing, exotic thing you would know that Stephen tracked it down, because that's what Stephen does.
Dan: Yeah, but it's very interesting this getting enough calories to do interesting mind work. It's about if you're going to. I read a report that one of the great advantages of North America is right from the beginning. Right from when the first people came to the East Coast, they had a lot of protein right from the beginning.
There was lots of game. There was lots of fish, you know. They had a lot of game and Americans have. Except for two periods of history, during the Revolutionary War and, I think, great Depression, americans have always had as many calories as they wanted. But there's a reading that high-level mental work requires roughly, you know, in the neighborhood of above 2,000 calories a day. You have to have 2,000 calories to be doing mental work.
Dean: That's interesting.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. And North America, the US and Canada have always had enormous amount of calories, protein calories, you know. So you can do hard labor, you can do high level of mental work. Makes for an industrious, you know, makes for an industrious population.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's really you know. Jordan Peterson has been carnivore for five years.
Dan: He's been carnivore for five years, yeah to save his life really.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And he mentioned that.
Dean: you know he looks at when the that everything got shifted when they came out with the food pyramid in the 70s, that was not by any nutritionist but by the agriculture department to get people getting grains and breads and stuff as the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, healthy nutrition plan.
Dan: That sounds like a four-stage cause movement, industry, racket. Racket yeah, I think it's now at the racket stage yeah, you know I mean halfway when we go. We were at the cottage for the last two weeks and halfway to the cottage is tim hortons. Tim hortons, okay, and I will tell you, based on your present heading in life, dean, you've probably been to your last Tim Hortons, because there's nothing in there that's actually good for you.
Dean: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's true, isn't it?
Dan: I mean that's something I call it Tim Hortons, where white people go to get whiter.
Dean: Oh man, Do you go up 400 when you go to the cottage, Like do you go past? No, we go 404.
Dan: We go 404.
Dean: Okay, so you don't go by Weber's.
Dan: No, weber's is good, weber's is a high-protein, but that's what I mean. You don't pass that on your way to your cottage.
Dean: You're one freeway over on your way to york, got it, you're one. We go one freeway over right, right, right. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that's interesting, but that you know there's a great example what a canadian institution you know tim horton's corner, really it's, uh, it's funny, yeah, but I had a thought about, you know, jordan Peterson being. You know like I think that where the revolution has really discussion of is this the best of times or the worst of times? My thought was that the battle for our minds is the thing.
Yes, you're absolutely right, but just like cancel culture, I think we're in a period where our access to more information that's not being just packaged and filtered for us.
We have access to unfilled information, and I think that you're seeing a resurgence, that we're moving towards in big swaths of categories, that the consensus, things that actually make a difference, and that we have access to more and more people who can do that, plus the diagnostic tools that we have support and show which methodologies are the most. And we're starting to see that in. You know, just like cancel culture was able to, the reason that we brought on cancel culture is that the consensus we were able to, everything was being exposed. You know that more people had a voice to say to, to the checks and balances kind of thing of being observed, and that when people find out things, you know you've got access to that. So I see things like nutrition, like it's like I'm noticing a trending, you know, more examination of christ, of Christianity as a thing that's becoming more mainstream as well, and that's just an observation of you know, seeing all these things. You know.
Dan: yeah, One of the things that's really interesting is the variety of choices that you can make that actually cancel out a whole other part of where the information or news is coming out.
You know, for example, I haven't as I mentioned, I haven't watched television at all for now more than six years, and so what ABC thinks, what CBS thinks, what NBC thinks, what NPR, public television, msnbc, cnn think about anything I'm not the target here anymore because I don't know what they're saying about anything but I found all sorts of sites on the internet that I find really interesting. Real Clear Politics is my go-to. First thing in the morning I always look at Real Clear Politics, and what they do is they just aggregate headlines for the entire spectrum. So if you want to go to all the other sites, you can go there. But what they find, you know. I find that they're making pretty widespread choices of what goes on there. In other words, if you're left wing politically, you'll find articles on RealClearPolitics. If you're right wing, you'll find real clear. But one of the things I find really interesting is when they mentioned the most popular articles for the last seven days, for the last 24 hours. They're all right wing, they're not left wing. So interesting.
Although, yeah, I've never seen a left wing article be most watched or most read during the last seven days or the last 24 hours. They're all using the definitions of what would be left-wing or right-wing in today's setting. So it means that the people who are going to RealClearPolitics are mainly right-wing and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, wayne, and they're interested in knowing what the left is saying, but they're not really. They're not really reinforcing themselves with the articles.
I mean a and you can tell just by the nature of the headline, which where the bias is whether it's left or right and in any way. And but the interesting thing is how much I'm using perplexity now.
Dean: Me too.
Dan: Yeah, and I just got this format Tell me the 10 most important aspects of this particular topic. Five seconds later, I got the 10. And what I find is it's having an effect on my mind that there's never one reason for anything. There's always. I mean, I use 10 reasons, but if I did 20, they could probably do 20, you know but what it does? It gives you a more balanced sense of what's true, okay, but I've discovered this on myself.
I mean, if you talk to 100 people, maybe three of them are using perplexity and perplexity. You know I may. I know there's other sites but it does for me what I want it to do. It gives me a background to think about things, and is that? What you're talking about is non-controlled?
Dean: Because it's my question. Yeah, like that's what I think is that we've got access.
Dan: It's my probes my probes that are revealing the information.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: No one is packaging this for me. It's that I'm asking clarify me on this particular subject and bang you know within a matter of seconds I have clarification.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Is that what you're saying here?
Dean: and I, but I think that the onus is on us to do our own interpretation and, you know, measuring whether this fits with what we think. Whereas, you know, we were sort of when we were exposed to information like all of our whole adult lives, up until the last say, you know, 10 years has really been filtered through the lenses of the mainstream media, like I think about curators, often curators, curators.
Yeah, they were the curators. Yeah, or the guardians, local minority. You remember, I mean, even in the closest thing was I remember when City TV came out with Speaker's Corner.
Dan: You remember that they would have a little booth set up and you could go in and speak your mind.
Dean: Yeah you could go in and speak your mind and that's how you got to think, see what other people were thinking. Otherwise, you had to go to Young and Dundas and you know, on the corner there and hear everybody up on their soapbox or whatever it was. That's always been. You know, that's kind of where everybody's megaphone now is. You don't have to go out to the corner where all the people are. You can sit in your basement and you've got a megaphone to the whole world.
Dan: Yeah, you know, this probably helps explain something. I read an article Friday, I downloaded it and I read it about three or four times, and that is that none of the big corporations are making any money on AI. Right, they're investing enormously in it, but they're not making any money on it, and I think the reason is that it wasn't designed for them.
Dean: Ah right.
Dan: It was designed for individuals to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. And if anything, it works against the corporations, because if people are using AI to pursue their own interests, that means it's time and attention that they're not giving to the corporations. Yeah, yes.
Dean: And I would say there's a real panic.
Dan: I would say there's a real panic setting in, because it's when ChatGPT came out. Everybody said, oh, now this is going to enhance our ability to get our message across. Well, that's only true if people are paying attention. But what if the impact of AI is actually to take people's attention away from you?
Dean: Yeah, it is changing so much. So I mean yeah, it is changing so much, you know.
Dan: I mean. Dean if you're going carnivore, Tim Hortons' messaging isn't getting to you.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I mean All that money they're spending on Tim Hortons' advertising is wasted money on you. Wasted on me.
Dean: That's exactly it. Yeah, it's so amazing how to waste your money on Dean Jack.
Dan: How to waste your money on Dean Jack. How to waste your money on Dean Jack Uh-huh.
Dean: Man so funny. Well, yeah, I should. This would be great, though, to get a. You know, start spreading the word about the air fryer. Get an air fryer deal. I mean, the salmon and the steak are amazing.
Dan: And apparently JJ thinks pork chops are good. That's right. So you got the whole good. That's right, exactly.
Dean: So you got the whole scoop.
Dan: I love it that you've got a buffer between you and the technology. Well, she controls the checkbook, so she might as well get the information, because she controls the checks. Yes, and Babs has been my authority on eating since I've met her. I mean that's one of the great benefits of being in relation she's always been good about that. You know, my life is two parts, before Babs and after Babs.
Dean: Yeah, I know Absolutely. I'm much healthier since I've met her.
Dan: I'm much healthier since I met her. Yeah, Anyway, yeah, but it's really interesting. You know that what you're introducing here to the Cloudlandia conversation is that we now have the opportunity to be much more discerning than we were before.
Dean: Yeah, we have not only the opportunity but the responsibility, and that's what I think we wrestle with is that we can't just take all of the information and take it at face value to realize that that there's a level of building your own internal filters. Timeless Technology is that we're looking for advantage.
Dan: That's what.
I established right at the beginning is that you're looking for an advantage that, for a while, other people don't have, because that improves your status. That improves your status that you have an advantage, and it creates inequality. One of the things that people don't realize is that every time you create a new advantage, it creates inequality in your surrounding area, okay, and then other people have to respond to that, either by using your advantage, like imitating your advantage, or they canitating your advantage, or they can create their own advantage, or they can try to stop you from having your advantage, and I think that depends on your framework. So I think a lot of cancel culture is people not wanting you to have that advantage, so they won't let you talk about it, they won't let you do certain things and I think the cancel culture has probably been there right from the beginning, it just takes different forms.
She's a witch, yeah, yeah, there's a witch, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you something about? That the salem, and also the ones that happened in Europe the witch thing, was. It was moldy grain, so usually the witch seasons happen to do happen when there was a lot of rain. Okay, and the grains got moldy and my sense is they created, they created, and so that a lot of the Fermenting. Yeah, there was a fermentation, but also it drove people a little bit crazy and there's a lot of investigation now of the which periods.
Dean: Okay, salem is the most famous US.
Dan: But it didn't happen. It didn't except for Salem Massachusetts. But they had several really wet seasons where the grain got moldy and my sense is that people were getting fermented grain on a daily basis and it drove me kind of crazy, yeah that made him weird.
Dean: Weird it made him weird. I saw james carville. James carville said that the democrats should stop saying they're weird and start calling them creeps. Weird Weird is creeps as a label. They're creeps, you know yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: I think it's funny to see. I would love to hear.
Dean: I'd love to hear a podcast or a panel interview between you. Know, luntz the. I forget what his first name is Jeffrey Luntz? Is it the Republican wordsmith guy? I think it's Jeffrey.
Dan: Luntz, I don't know him oh.
Dean: Luntz yeah.
Dan: Jeffrey Luntz. He's the one who does the panel discussions, that's right.
Dean: And he gets the messaging, for he's the Republican wordsmith and James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dan: Yeah, I think James Carville is essentially that for the Democrats. I'd love to hear that.
Dean: Yeah, I think James Carville is now. He's like the crazy ant upstairs. Yeah, I think so. Right, right, right.
Dan: Because the last couple of weeks he said you know you better get over this mania real fast that you're having with Kamala Harris and he says, because he said you have no idea what's coming back against you. It'll take the Republicans three or four weeks to figure out what the target is here, and he says you better get over this real fast. He says it's going to be incredibly hard work over the next three months to get to the election, make sure your grains are dry here, don't get that fermented grain brain.
Make sure your powder is dry too. Yeah, yeah, but it's an interesting thesis. This is where we've added a new dimension to Cloudlandia the psychotropic part of Cloudlandia yeah, I agree.
Dean: There was a.
Dan: Greek player, one of the Greek writers, playwrights. He talked about a place called Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Dean: Okay, that's funny.
Dan: Yeah, and he was talking about people who would just go off and make up new stuff and everything like that had no basis in current reality and he called it cloud cuckoo land. You know well, you know we've had a lot of that over the last 50 or 60 years yeah, I think what we're really introducing.
Dean: Dan is the intersection you know the venn diagram of the mainland cloudlandia and Danlandia or Deanlandia. That's the one that we can actually control. Is Danlandia, yeah.
Dan: Well, the big thing is, if you truly want to be a uniquely creative individual today, the resources are available for you to do it.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But you got to be really discerning about what gets allowed in across the borders into your thinking that's it exactly.
Dean: Yeah, All right Dan.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have to jump too. One thing about it is I'm going to watch that Joe Rogan church because I think that's interesting.
Dean: I have to watch that Joe Rogan George because I think that's interesting.
Dan: I have to laugh when Joe Rogan had.
Dean: Peter Zion for a loop.
Dan: I've never seen Joe Rogan thrown so much for a loop, because Peter Zion is nothing if not confident about his point of view. I mean, he's a very confident guy about his point of view and Joe wasn't ready for it and about every you know, every 90 seconds he said holy cow, oh wow. Oh yeah.
Dean: Oh, I got to watch that one too, jesus Christ yeah.
Dan: And you can see Joe sitting there. He said yeah he said next time I have this guy on no pot for 24 hours beforehand. This is moving, this is moving. I'm too slow here. I can't keep up with this you know, Peter Zion is like a jackhammer when he starts going you know he does a whack, whack, whack. Yeah, that would be Actually Jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one. Two brains, yeah, yeah, for sure. Maybe Elon Musk as a third person, jordan Peterson and Peter Zion would be an interesting one.
Mm-hmm, Two brains yeah yeah for sure, Maybe Elon Musk as a third person.
Dean: Imagine a panel. Yeah, exactly, there was a great. There was a show called Dinner for Five and it was a. It was an entertainment like movie one, where they'd have different directors and actors at dinner, just a mix of people and having just recording their conversation. No real thing. Jon Favreau did that show it was really great.
Dan: No curating really. Yeah, anyway.
Dean: Okay Dan.
Dan: Very entertaining. We'll be here next week, yes, I always enjoy these.
Dean: They go so fast. Yeah, thanks a lot. Okay, thanks, dan, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we have a thought-provoking discussion around AI and its future implications. We introduce Juniper, an advanced voice-based AI capable of tasks from writing to coding, giving insight into emerging technologies.
We explore impacts like the attention economy, where value emerges without physical costs. Success stories like Mr. Beast showcase uniqueness and AI's potential to tackle real issues.
The episode delivers a well-rounded look at AI capacities and societal changes. References to early smartphone adoption phases parallel today's AI capabilities.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Well, I'm not sure the one that says this podcast this call may be.
Dean: You are the first one on this conference phone call, oh my goodness, who is she?
Dan: Who is she? She's a bot. She's not real. She's a bot. She's not real. She's not real. She's not real, she doesn't sound.
Dean: I've heard worse sounding bots.
Dan: Dan, I have been experimenting, playing around with chat GPT-4.0. And I use it primarily in voice mode, meaning, you know, I just say things to it and it has an amazing Scarlett Johansson-like voice that has zero, not at all like Siri or Alexa. You know where those voices definitely sound like. They are bots. This, my GPT-4O I think her name's Juniper is the voice that I chose. She sounds like a real person, I mean, and has like real tone, real inflection, real like conversational feeling to it and I realized that I don't think we really understand what we have here. I mean, I look at it and I think, imagine if that was a real person.
Dean: Now, when you say we, who are you talking about?
Dan: I mean the collective royal we I I'm sorry I've never been around yeah, I just think we as a when I say we, we as a society or we as the people collectively using this, it reminds me of this Seinfeld episode where Kramer got this or Jerry got his dad, this wizard organizer, and they always use it as a tip calculator, like the least of all the functions that it has. They're just excited that it's a tip calculator, and I feel like that's the current level of my adoption of Juniper.
Dean: Yeah, I think the big thing is what you let's say, a year from now, level of my adoption of Juniper, you know, yeah, I think the big thing is what you let's say a year from now. You're using Juniper for a year. What do you think will be different as a result of having this capability, new capability?
Dan: Well, I think it's operator, you know, I think it's operator dependent, you know, I think it's up to me what I think if you said to me. You know, I think it's up to me what I think if you said to me listen, I'd like to introduce you to Juniper. She's going to come here and she'll be within. She's going to follow you around. She's going to be here within three feet of you or discreetly out of sight, whatever you, but whenever you call she'll be right there. She is a graduate level.
She is a graduate level student. She could pass the bar. She knows everything that's ever been recorded, she speaks every language. She never sleeps, she can write, she can draw, she can do graphics, she can do coding Whatever you like, and she's yours 20 to a month. Have fun, yeah, do you think you'd use it Well?
that's my question is that it feels like I'm not using it and I have it. That's essentially what I have. I've got it in my pocket. You know how they said. You know the iPod was launched with the promise of a thousand songs in your pocket. Well, I think this is really like. You know, an MBA or a PhD or whatever you want in your pocket is essentially what we have, and I find it very interesting.
Dean: No, I think it's unique, you know, and it's brand new. But what problem did you have that this solves?
Dan: Well, I think that it's not per se a problem, but I think that we're I really have been observing and thinking, and I've said it you know in lots of our conversations, that I think that 2020, you know, if we take the 50-year period from 1975 to 2025, that we've pretty much set the stage now for a new plateau launch pad kind of at the same time. I don't. I think that once we understand and people you know, I think it's almost like the iPhone had the app store, that became what Peter Diamandis called the interface moment.
Right, that was the you know, that allowed, once people realized that the capabilities of the iPhone to both measure geographically where you are at any precisely at any moment, the gyro thing that can detect movement, the sound, the camera capabilities, the touch screen, all of those things, Well, people realized what the baseline capabilities of the phone were.
They were able to architect very specific, you know, starting with games very specific ways to use the capabilities that are very specific ways to use the capabilities that are built into the phone and I think that right now it's almost like it can do anything, and I think that we need to figure out the very specific use cases and I think we'll see people.
Dean: You keep saying we, but I don't think we is going to do it. I think you know, who we are. Do we have a cell phone number? Do we have a street address?
You know, I think you're having a very interesting personal experience with the new technology. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if anybody else is going to be in on this, but the big thing is, how are you going to set it up so that you can prove that this is valuable? I mean, let's say, three months from now the time you come back to.
Toronto for your next strategic coach pre-zone workshop things you're going to test out and see if the inclusion of this spot with a very sexy Scarlett Johansson voice. This isn't the issue that she sued somebody for.
Dan: I think it's, I don't know actually this voice is. It's not exactly her, but it's, you know, it's that tone and things.
Dean: So yeah, so.
Dan: I don't know that. It's a pleasing voice, much more pleasing and personal than Siri or Alexa, for instance. Yeah, but yeah, I think you're absolutely right it does come down to and I think that's where the paralysis of you know the it can do anything, but you know what would be you know where my mind goes.
Dean: It's which, how that I already have, but am I going to assign this capability to so that I don't have to spend any time whatsoever interacting with this bot? But my who's a you know who's a live human being working for a strategic coach would that person actually work? Do this, you know, and actually and I tested out for three months what are you getting done faster?
So, for example, we have an AI newsletter that rewrites itself every two weeks and chooses new content, designs it and goes out and it uses up one hour of my Linda Spencer, who's one of my team members on the marketing team, and it's very interesting, I mean we have about 2000 people who read it and they grade it and everything like that.
But the only thing I have to do every two weeks she said here's the news, here's the results from the last newsletter, here's the design and contents of the next newsletter, yes or no? And I'll go through. I say, yeah, looks good, send it out, right. Yeah, now, that's not freeing me up, because we never had this capability before. It's a new capability, right, and it's been going for about nine months now and people will talk to me about it and you know everything like that and everything like that.
But I haven't seen that it's made a huge difference in the crucial numbers of strategic coach, which are marketing calls. Are we generating great leads that people are talking to us about? Are they signing up for the program? Are they whatever? So the normal measurements.
So I think, with any technology, the first thing I would establish before I got interested in the technology is what are the crucial numbers that we have that tell me that our business and myself are moving forward? And then, whatever I'm going to use the new technology for, it has to have an impact on those numbers. Yeah, I think that's yeah, because you know the amount of productivity. I'll use the United States as an example. You mentioned 1975 to 2025, 50 years of individual productivity in the United States was much higher in the 50 years before 1975, since it has been for the last 50 years since 1975. Even though there are these amazing books and that about how productivity is going through the world with the microchip. But the actual numbers which are gathered by the US government, the US Treasury Department, us Department of Labor, indicates that the level of individual productivity has actually gone down in the last 50 years even though the excitement level of productivity has gone through the roof.
Dean: By what measurement? What are they deciding? Is product?
Dan: Dollars of economic activity per hour per worker. Okay, that's how productivity is measured.
Dean: The number of workers.
Dan: You have the number of hours they work and the amount of economic dollars that their hour of activity produces. The productivity was much higher total for the entire all workers.
Dean: But is it all productivity or personal productivity? Like are you saying no all?
Dan: productivity? No, the entire GDP of the economy, measured by the number of workers. Yeah, okay by the number of workers it's going down, it's down. No, yeah, since 1975, it's not as great as it was from 1925 to 1975. So that 50-year period the productivity levels in the United States were bigger than the last 50 years.
Dean: Wow, that seems. That's surprising. What do you think that means?
Dan: Well, a lot of people are really excited and involving themselves in technological activity that produces absolutely no productivity. Yeah, they're very excited, they're very excited and they're getting very emotionally connected to this activity. But you know, I'm not saying that's not a great thing, I'm not. Maybe they're having more fun, Maybe they're you know, maybe they have.
Dean: What actually counts as GDP.
Dan: Well, GDP is amount of sales amount of sales.
Dean: Okay, so would the advertising sales that Mark Zuckerberg makes for Facebook count as GDP, or is it only in physical, like you know, shippable goods, or whatever?
Dan: Well, whatever, uh, you have a dollar spent on something that constitutes a sale to sale.
Dean: Okay, so advertising, so Google and Facebook and Netflix and all of those things count as GDP? Sure, okay, all right, then that seems impossible.
Dan: It seems impossible, but it's true.
Dean: That's pretty wild.
Dan: Yeah yeah. I'm not saying that Mark Zuckerberg isn't making a lot of money. I'm not saying Mark. Zuckerberg isn't productive. My feeling is that the technology is created, makes a lot of other people non-productive.
Dean: Yeah, and I wonder I mean that's a do you think you know if you measured that in terms of the total population versus the workforce? Is that what? In terms of the total population versus the workforce, is that what you know? I'm just looking for some explanation of this right.
Dan: Somewhere along the line, there has to be an economic transaction for it to constitute and everything else. See, this is the difference. Yeah and everything else See this is the difference? China talks about its GDP, but they don't use the same term that everybody else in the world uses. They use the economic value of what they've produced. So they can produce a million machines and they're sitting in a warehouse and they count that as GDP gross domestic product. But there was no sale, it's, you know, they spend it, it was an economic activity.
There was a transaction there, but there was no sale. So I think that's the big thing. It doesn't count unless there's a sale.
Dean: GDP, doesn't it?
Dan: doesn't count as GDP unless there's a sale. Somebody makes money, yeah.
Dean: Okay, money Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's pretty.
Dan: No, I'm not saying it's not exciting. And here's the.
Dean: Thing.
Dan: Maybe it's an A&I, it's what I would R&D stage. The last 50 years have been R&D stage. For the next 50 years, which are going to be 100 times bigger of GDP. Okay, that may happen, but it's not happening yet.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty wild. I mean you can definitely see, like the capabilities of you know, you can definitely see this replacing many customer service interactions, for sure. For instance, it's like a you can definitely see that going away, that there's not going to be a need for humans manning a customer service telephone center, for instance you know, yeah, I mean if it's good, I mean if it's good you know, and it depends upon the service that's being talked about, but if it's good, you know, maybe it does See, efficiency is not effectiveness.
Dan: You know, and effectiveness is that you made a sale. Efficiency is we took all the activities leading up to a sale and we made them more, faster and easier. Yeah, the question is did you get a sale out of it?
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Dan: Mm-hmm, yeah, so. I don't know, but I think there's a bit of a magician show going with a lot of different kinds of technology, you know. I mean, it was like somebody was saying, you know, they were talking about EVs and specifically they were talking about a Tesla, and specifically they were talking about a Tesla. And he says do you know how much faster zero to 60 is in a Tesla than any gas-powered? Or you know, and I said, to tell you the truth, I don't know.
Dean: To tell you the truth. You know.
Dan: Geez, you know All the things I've been thinking about since last Monday. I'm sorry, I just didn't get to that one Anyway. And he says well, it's easily a second faster. I said good. I said now, where do you do this? There isn't any way. We're in greater Toronto, the area of greater. Toronto 6 million people, where you can go from 0 to 60 on a city street in two seconds. You know and everything like that.
He said, yeah, but boy, you know, I mean, just think of that, how much faster you can go. And I said, yeah, but Teslas don't go any faster in Toronto than any other car, that's true, and usually they're stopped.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right yeah.
Dan: So I think the Tech Magic Show, I think it multiplies people's imagination, but it doesn't multiply their results. You know, I think there's something about it. And I think this is great. I mean what you're telling me. I've had some really boring people on the other end of a phone call and Scarlett Johansson would really liven it up a little bit.
Dean: Absolutely yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, I was noticing that Cleveland hired Jack Nicholson and they still use it. It must have been 20 years ago. All the announcements, the regular announcements like don't leave your bags unattended, and things like that, oh right. There's a whole bunch of just what I would call airport announcements, and they have Jack Nicholson doing it and you stop and listen every time it starts. You know it's very effective and I'm sure and I'm sure Scarlett, I'm sure Scarlett Johansson would do a good job too.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's so, it's so funny. I mean, that seems. I'm just dumbfounded by the fact that productivity has decreased in the 50 years that we're talking about here.
Dan: Yeah Well, think of the 50 years, though, and you gave me that great book.
Dean: Yeah, you gave me the book that was 1900 to 1950, 1925.
Dan: But 1925 to 1975, the entire country was being electrified. They're laying in lines and everybody was the farm that I was on. I was born in 1944. That farm was electrified in 1928. So it was only 16 years that they had electricity. Right, and you know they were putting in the entire water systems. The Tennessee Valley Authority was putting in all these dams and the electric plants. You know Lake Mead as a result of the Hoover Dam.
They were putting in all those dams and that just produced enormous jumps and the cars were going in, the gas systems, all the infrastructure for gasoline was going in. It was just a monstrously productive period of time. And then all the production that went into the second world war, which they then had as productive capability after the war stopped and so they had all the manufacturing capabilities you know and you know and so. But there's to see the thing is, the real jump that's happened is the jump in computing. There's no question.
Dean: There's been a monstrous jump.
Dan: It's a billion times since 1970. It's a billion times. That doesn't translate into money, and money is what productivity is based on. How much more money are you making per hour of human labor? How much more money are you making for our human labor? Now maybe somebody will say well, we got to start counting the robots in our GDP. Something is doing work. Yeah, Just I mean wow, wow, wow, the only problem with you know the only thing about robots, though they're shitty consumers.
Dean: Yes, exactly that's so funny. Yeah, they don't buy anything you know.
Dan: Yeah, A computer is a good worker, you know. It doesn't take breaks, doesn't get sick you know doesn't form unions anything. You know it doesn't go home, it doesn't have a house, doesn't have furnishings doesn't need furniture doesn't go out to eat.
Dean: Right, right. We're definitely in a stage right now where there's opportunities more than ever for economic alchemy, creating money out of nothing, seemingly compared to 1975.
I'm not sure how that happened, I think, since in the digital world we're essentially creating money out of ether, you know, out of attention, even in a way that if we just take the attention economy or the portion of the money that is derived from the advertising world in, where it was print ads, television ads, radio ads those were things that were kind of happening in 19, right and, but they were selling sort of physical goods, whereas now I remember having a conversation with Eben Pagan about this, when I did a book Stop your Divorce in 1998, when it was when PDFs were just coming to be a thing where you could create a digital document that didn't require printing a physical book and you could email that or somebody could download it.
And I just realized that you know, in that we've literally sold $5 million of a picture of a book not physically printing. These thousands and thousands of books, it's literally no zero physical good. That's why I wondered about whether the GDP is only measuring you, because we're definitely in a time where you can create money from nothing and the way that was driven was from Google AdWords.
Dan: You can't create anything from nothing. No, I mean nothing physical, any. You can't create any. I don't think you can create anything from nothing there. No, I mean okay, nothing physical. Okay, that's what I mean.
Dean: Yeah, like you look at it, that the book, you know we created the book and turned it into a pdf that was put on a website that there's no physical manifestation of it's, only digital. You can only see it online. People would search on Google for save my marriage or how to stop a divorce, or any of the keywords we could magically get in front of those people on their screen. They could click oh, stop your divorce, how do I do that? They click on that. They read this digital.
It didn't cost anything other than what was paid for was that we paid google for the, you know, for sending that, you know the ability to display that person, that opportunity to somebody. We paid google every time somebody clicked on that ad and then they would buy the book and it would automatically take them to a page to download the book. There was no inter, no human interaction and no physical exchange. It was all 100 digital and that was where, you know, I started referring to that as alchemy, really like creating money out of of bits. You know, yeah, yeah, that's so that.
Dan: Yeah, I think there's no I think there's uh no question that we've moved into a what I call a non-tangible realm of creating value, creating property and everything else, but at the end of the day it all adds up somewhere where this constitutes an economic transaction and as far as the accountants care, they don't care whether it was something physical or sold or everything. There's taxes that are taken out of that. I don't see the remarkable difference. You're using a different medium, but there is work that goes into that.
And you had a big payoff with one, but there were another thousand people right at the same time you were doing that and their results? They put in a lot of work, they put in a lot of effort and it didn't produce any money whatsoever. Efforts go into GDP, your efforts go into GDP and there's way more of them than there is of you. So it brings you the overall results down and you know so and we kind of know. We kind of know that. You know productivity numbers. You know, like, on a year I know people talk about well, that productivity is going to go up by 20% as a result of that.
Well, that may be true for a single company, but that's not true for the industry they're in, because their new thing going up by 20% may actually make obsolete 5 or 6 or 20 other companies who have had productivity that a year before, but now they have no productivity at all. So their loss of productivity is balanced against the gain of productivity.
Dean: Yeah, that's interesting. I guess you think about that. That could be true in all the casualties of the digital transition here, right Like, what do you look at?
Dan: Well, certainly the advertising world, certainly the advertising world, I mean before Mark Zuckerberg and before Google, newspapers like the New York Times.
Dean: Daily.
Dan: Edition was very thick.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And half of it was advertising. Now it's very thin okay because, they don't have the same. Yeah, but there's winners and losers, you know, in this, and you have a technological breakthrough, you have far more losers than you do winners.
Dean: Yeah, I'm looking at like I was just listening to an interview with that Tucker Carlson did with someone I forget who, some former CBS correspondent you know, and they were talking about the new. You know what's really changed now is the reach capabilities you know, like Tucker really primarily being on his own platform but using the reach of x has, you know it's the audience is accessible to everybody, as opposed to him in the beginning of their careers, the only way to get reach was to be signed to a, a digital, or assigned to a traditional network where the eyeballs were.
But, now the eyeballs are accessible to everybody and it really becomes these are my words, but it's more of a meritocracy in a way that you're you know that it's available for everybody. The cream definitely can rise to the top if you've got a voice that people resonate with.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, and Tucker's a star, tucker's a star. He's got his following, he's got probably a couple million followers. Whatever he was big when he was on Fox and he had the top numbers on Fox and everything like that, but there aren't two of them.
Dean: Right, and you can't replace him with an AI either.
Dean: No, but what I mean is we pick out the winners. It takes a lot of losers to get to a winner, you know and I think this is more extreme in the Cloudlandia world than it is in the physical world- you know. I mean, I think there's a thing called network effect and the network effect is you can only have one Amazon. Basically, you can only have one Amazon. Because, the nature of Amazon is to suck everybody's customers up into one destination.
There aren't five Amazons competing with each other, and that's what digital does. A person like Taylor Swift couldn't have existed 20 years ago. They wouldn't have had the reach. Yeah, that's true, and she's got the reach today.
I mean she's coming along and she's got a lot of things going for her. She's very attractive, she's very productive, she pumps out songs all the time and the songs seem to resonate with a mood in the public right now. And everybody's got their cell phones and everybody's got that. And what I'm saying is, if you have one Taylor Swift, you can't have two. Well, yeah, that's.
Dean: I mean it's, I wonder you start to see that she's just a, she's one voice, right Like I look at, I've been following rabbit holes like up the chain. You know and I start so Taylor Swift is a good example that many of her biggest hits and biggest success have been in collaboration with Max Martin, who is a producer who I often talk about and refer. Second, he's got the second biggest number of number one songs to his credit, right behind. He just passed Paul McCartney or John Lennon, and only Paul McCartney is ahead of him. Now he's about five songs behind Paul McCartney.
What I realized is, you know, there's a way that it's kind of like you get max martin's voice is really what is, you know, behind most of the the most popular music, or much of the most popular music, and yet not many people could pick him out of a lineup. And then then I went another layer up. It just dawned on me, like in the last couple of weeks here, that the real catalyst to Max Martin's success was Clive Davis. Who is? Do you know who? Clive Davis is the former, or still, record executive.
Dean: He was the head of so far, your records so far. So far, you're introducing me to a lot of new people.
Dan: Okay, great well, I, I just love this that. You know, max martin, I've been saying, as that's the thing, like you think about one thing Max Martin's one thing has been making hit records. Right, that's all he's done. Making pop songs since 1996, or what is first number one. But if you trace it all the way back, the catalyst to it because he was in Sweden, there was a group years ago called Ace of Bass and they had a number one song.
But when you go all the way back to how that happened, it was because Clive Davis, who was the head of Columbia Records and all its subsidiaries, arista and Jay Records, and all its subsidiaries, arista and J Records and all of these things, he found that song. He's like a guesser and better. He was guessing that song is going to be a hit and he signed Ace of Base to bring them to America. So he plucked this obscure Swedish band out of and brought them to America and on the wave of that, created the opportunity for Max Martin to work with all these great artists that happened to be under the direction of Clive Davis. And if you go even one layer beyond that, the guy that owns Bertelsmann, you know G Music Group in Germany. They own almost all the record labels, kind of thing. It's him seeing Clive Davis and putting up a million dollars for Clive Davis to start this record label. It's amazing that it all, kind of you know, goes back to capital allocation.
Dean: But the big thing is none of that has to do with any productivity.
Dan: Yeah, that's the thing I wonder, you know, I mean that really.
Dean: No, well, what you're talking about is. You mentioned a name. Yes, and he does this and he's very successful and he's famous for being successful. But at the same time that he was doing what he was doing, there were 9,999 who were waiting on tables and doing this on weekends and nights, yeah, okay, and they weren't making any money at all. So what.
I'm saying is when you pick a winner out and you see, see how productive they are using new technology you also have to account for the people who are using the new technology and not making any money at all, and therefore it's not more productive. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I mean, you know we haven't talked about him for a while, Mr Beast. Yeah, and people say, see what you can do when you're 18? You won't see anything because he's so unique. And he has such a set of circumstances that there's nothing that he does that is repeatable by another person.
Dan: I mean, yeah, he just became just in the last, I haven't heard anything about him.
Dean: Is he still doing stuff? I don't know. Is he still doing stuff? I don't know. Is he still doing stuff? Yeah, yeah, he just became. Or is he retired at 28?
Dan: No full steam ahead.
Dean: He's got a 300-foot.
Dan: He just became the number one subscribed channel in the world. He was the number one individual but there was this T-Series channel in India, which wasn't a person a different thing. Now he's the number one thing. He's now working on an Amazon show. He's taking his stuff to to amazon still full steam ahead with his, with his videos, but he's doing a big game show series in uh with under the amazon banner yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: it's really interesting because you know again I go back that it seems to me that a lot you know and I've made this statement before is that a new technology comes out, or a new form of a new technology comes out. A whole series of people say I'm going to create a new company based on this technology and I want you know, I need some early investors.
I need investors to get there, and so there's a whole industry for doing that in Silicon Valley and other places, and so billions are raised, not just for the one you know, not one investment, but for let's say 50 investments. And none of them go anywhere, none of them go anywhere.
Dan: You know, nothing happens, okay, but people did make money because it's based on a Ponzi scheme kind of thing that the early investors get paid out by the late investors who end up pulling nothing and everything else.
Dean: None of that represents productivity. Right A lot of action, a lot of excitement, a lot of money, but no productivity. And we're seeing that with AI. Goldman Sachs, the big investment bank, came out that, going on two years since open AI, we just don't see that there's any money to be made with this, except if you're like the chip maker, NVIDIA.
They make a lot of money and they're very productive, and I think the reason is that I think that AI, if I look at the next 10 years, I think it's going to be very effective, it's going to be very useful and it's going to be very important for solving complexity problems that we already have on the planet. Okay, and you know, a great example is just large city congestion complexity, like Toronto, I think, may have the worst traffic congestion in North America.
Dan:
Dean: Yeah. And the main reason is that they're making new cars, but they're not making new roads.
Dan: Yeah, and I noticed that they've actually added a lot of bike lanes too, which have taken out some of the actual lanes.
Dean: Yeah, Actual lanes, yeah, yeah, so without some new kind of solution to congestion and I think AI is the perfect tool for this and that all the traffic lights, all the traffic lights in the city are a single system and you're just changing the frequency of the lights changing and everything around the car changing the frequency of the lights changing and everything around the country, and there's a sort of a master view, how you know you can reduce the amount of people just stuck in the city by 40% if we just get all the lights. That's a complexity problem.
Dan: You know and for example.
Dean: The other thing is they haven't. You know, for all. The study of weather is probably the most complex system that we have on the planet and to this day they have no notion what effect clouds have on climate. You know they don't. They really. Clouds are just very complex. So if you had the ability to, I mean, they know different types of clouds and different things that happen when you have different types of clouds. They know that, but there's no unification of their understanding of the cloud system.
And so you'd have to apply it to that. Now, you're not creating anything new with this. You're solving an existing problem. With this, you're solving an existing problem. My sense is that the best use of technology is always to solve some problem that you already have not create a new opportunity that's interesting.
Dan: So maybe that's how I mean yeah, go ahead. I was just saying maybe that's how I should be thinking about my relationship with juniper yeah, what?
Dean:what complexity problems do you have?
Dan: Exactly what complexity problems do I already have that Juniper could solve for me?
Dean: Yeah, like getting out of bed in the morning. That's a complexity problem. When does my first coffee arrive? Exactly yeah, why am I still thinking about this? Why at this late date.
Dan: Oh man, that is so funny.
Dean: It is funny.
Dan: The funny thing is I posted up on Facebook right before we got on our podcast today. I took a picture of my. I have these. I have these Four Seasons Valhalla coffee cups and I took a. I made a coffee before our here and I posted up a picture of it right Pre-podcast caffeination, prior to the prior to our podcast here. So I'm fully caffeinated. I'm on the, I'm on the juice.
Dean: Yeah, I will tell you this. Chris Johnson, great thinker in the FreeZone program he's got it's not his system, he's licensed his system from someone else but he had 32 callers to set up meetings with their primary salespeople for his company and he's in the placement business. He finds really good high-level people to go into construction companies and engineering companies. And he was telling us that his 32 human callers could make 5,500 phone calls and produce a certain result in a day of phoning.
And since he's brought in his AI system, they can do 5,500 in an hour and produce a better result of people agreeing to phone calls. Well, that's productivity.
Dan: Yeah, I guess. So yeah, pretty amazing huh.
Dean: And he let go his 32 humans. Oh, my goodness. Wow, so this is AI making outbound phone calls? These are all AI and they've got complete voice capability of responding to responses and everything else. And then they get better every day. They have sort of upgrades every day for it. And that's productivity, that's productivity.
Dan: Yeah, there's, yeah, that's a. That's an amazing story. An amazing story, I mean, you start to see, I just look at the things, even when we had the AI panel at FreeZone in Palm Beach. You're just seeing the things, even what Mike Kamix is able to create and the things that Lior is doing. You just think, man.
Dean: I think we're early.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely, we're early.
Dean: Yeah, I mean I think we're in the first or second year of the internet with us, right?
Dan: Exactly, I agree. That's why I say, that's why, in my summation here, I'm kind of thinking you know 2025, give it another 18 months. It's only 18 months old now when you really think about it. Right, this is it's 18 months, and give it another 18 months and we'll see that people you're already starting to see that people are taking the AI capabilities and they're honing it into an interface. That is, a logo maker, for instance, or AI. You know that it's already honed into the ability to specialize in making logos based on your prompts, or and I think that's where that's what I meant by the interface moment is people are going to start carving out, packaging very specific outcomes from the capabilities. Like, if we have these capabilities, what can we do and just deliver that specific outcome, rather than the capability to create that outcome that's why it's funny that that's kind of parallel to what I've been saying.
I've seen people that are taking and training large language models based on your you know, all of the you know let's call it all the Dan Sullivan content that's been out there and then touting it as you know, having Dan Sullivan in your pocket, that you can ask Dan anything of it in your pocket, that you can ask Dan anything. But I think the ability to ask you anything isn't as useful as the ability to have Dan ask you things. Yes, I think that's the question.
Dean: So in the last quarterly book, and the one we're finishing right now. So it was everything is created backward, where the tool we featured was the triple play, and then the next one is called casting, not hiring, where the tool is the four by four casting tool. We call it the four by four casting tool, and this is where I'm asking them questions.
Dan: Right, okay.
Dean: I don't see any value whatsoever of them asking me questions.
Dan: Right.
Dean: Because I'm not getting the benefit of the question. Some software program is handling it, so I'm not learning anything and I've got a rule that I don't involve myself in any activity where I don't learn something new.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: So there's getting the benefits, but plus we'd be competing with ourselves.
Dan: I love it All, right Well off, we go.
Dean: I will phone you next week I'll be at the cottage. I'll be looking out at a mystic blue lake while I'm talking.
Dan: Oh, wow.
Dean: It's really good yeah.
Dan: Awesome. Well, have a great week, okay, and I'll talk to you next week. Thanks, thanks, dan. Bye.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, I reflect on the successful launch of our inaugural CoachCon conference, which brought together 350 members of the Strategic Coach community in Nashville.
The vibrant energy of Music City and the exceptional facilities of the Music City Center made for an experience surpassing expectations.
Our discussion centers on cultivating the mental fortitude needed to remain anchored amid future-focused hustle. We connect this to aspects like political endurance while acknowledging the enrichment that unfolding daily actions alone confer on tomorrow's potential.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: I am back from Nashville.
Dean: That's what I hear. I am excited to hear all about it. It looked like a real party it was a total party. Two parties.
Dan: Yeah, so providing some context for the listening audience. We had our very first community conference and I say that because you did not get invited unless you were connected to someone in the strategic coach community and it's our first conference of this kind called CoachCon. And as a result of it. I already committed at my birthday party, which was on the second night, two-day conference, second night and I said we're going to have one in 26. So we're thinking we'll do this every two years Okay, that's amazing.
Yeah, and we had 350, which was good for, you know, our first experience.
Dean: And.
Dan: I will say that we're really committed to Nashville. Nashville is just such a great city to have a conference. It's just. The city itself has an enormous amount of energy and the Music City Center is just a marvelous venue. It is so big it staggers your imagination. It's two blocks long by almost two blocks wide, and if you look at it from the air, from above, it looks like a guitar.
Dean: Right, right right.
Dan: Yeah, which you wouldn't do in Toronto.
Dean: It would have no meaning, it would have no meaning.
Dan: It would have no meaning in Toronto. Okay, it would.
Dean: And anyway I was working with go ahead. I was just going to say not to say that Toronto has a pretty wonderful convention center facility too, downtown, yeah, but Nashville has a great.
Dan: Nashville has a great Nashville has a great convention center. That's the truth. Yes, yeah, as a matter of fact, one of the smart moves we made as a company is that we immediately hired a convention conference company called Agile.
I think they're from Kansas City and Minneapolis. They have two branches to their company and so, right from the very beginning, our team members were working with their team members to create the event, and this was a year and a half in planning, and they just are the perfect interface between yourself and then the venue itself, who have their own team. So it's really it's really a triple play of three teams working together to create the event.
Dean: And I mean it's such a, it's such an engine. I had such flashbacks, you know, seeing the footage that was coming out of there of the room and the setup and the way everything was. Or you know that we did an event roughly twice that size every month for 14 years. You imagine, like the engine that it takes to put that, to put that on the logistics of it. That was what the main event was. We'd have, you know, 600 or 800 people every month. It was something.
Dan: Yeah, are you speaking about one of your?
Dean: events. This was with Joe Stumpf when we did the buy referral for the real estate agents. That was what we did.
Dan: Oh, that was where you did it, that's where you did it that's where you did it yeah, that's right well, here I'm trying to impress you and you're just tolerating me no, I mean there's some.
Dean: There's an exciting energy around a uh, a big event like that. I mean there's, but it's a very different energy.
Dan: Yeah, wasn't it in Nashville 14 times.
Dean: No, we did. We were all over the country. We did one a month. We did one every month for 14 years. Wow. Yeah exactly so Nashville was in the rotation that's like 168.
Dan: That's like 168 conferences.
Dean: Yeah, we did over 200, actually is what it was, but that was like a circus coming to town every month, every month, yeah.
Dan: Anyway, I was talking to one of the black backstage crew. I was talking to one of the black backstage crew. You know who'd do the get you ready for going on to the front stage and I said we have 350 people.
If you had other conferences going on at the same time. Our size, how many could you have? And he says I think around two dozen dozen we could be doing in the same building at the same time. But then when you get outside of the music center it's just filled with all the sorts of clubs yes and broadway, which is their big party street, is about two block, two blocks away, and there's lots of hotels.
Dean: There's lots of hotels around, so's lots of hotels around, so you can feed into it.
Dan: I was at the Four Seasons in Nashville.
Dean: Of course you were. Yeah, did you get a hat and some boots to celebrate your 80th birthday? The Nashville way?
Dan: I did not, and I'll tell you, my approach to cowboy hats and cowboy boots is about the same as my approach to backyard barbecues, and that is, I will celebrate my 80th birthday without ever having participated, actually organized one of those, and so it's on the list that I'm going to try to get through my whole life without doing I love it.
Dean: That's the greatest thing.
Dan: Dan.
Dean: I can't tell you how many times I've used the. You know people are going through their whole life hoping to never have to meet you.
Dan: I was having.
Dean: I had lunch with an attorney friend who's a personal injury attorney and you know he works primarily with people in accidents and I said you know the challenge with his marketing is that it's acute onset and you know nobody is preparing for or anticipating the need to meet you.
Dan: And I said in fact most people are hoping to go their entire life without ever having to meet you and if they get to, good for them, you know, yeah, funny, yeah, yeah, some people's marketing challenges are more severe than others yeah that's exactly right, well, yeah you know, as you know to be being that we're right at the beginning, when I started my coaching life, which was 50 years ago, in 1970, the people which was called Top of the Table and the table is a previous organization which started, I think maybe 50 or 60 years before, which was called the Million Dollar Roundtable, and it was a certain amount of sales qualified you and you got to go to the acronym mdrt. That was the thing, and.
But in the early 70s they had gotten together and said let's take a top 500 in the world and and establish ourselves as the top of the table. Okay, and so right off the bat, in 74 and 75, I had one who was just a great friend and promoter of what I was doing at that time, because it was just being out there testing out this thing called coaching for entrepreneurs. And then very quickly I got others because they talked to each other a lot without seeing each other as competitors. And one of the things that I really remember is just getting really, really deep into how life insurance agents operate. And it's a tough marketing proposition because you have to engage people in a conversation about what's going to happen after they die. I mean, that's the premise of life insurance and the other thing is you're doing it for other people.
And really you're doing it, and I had one of the great ones. These were, in the first instance, they were all Toronto-based, that's where we were, and I remember this one he would deal with, very wealthy. One of the things that attracted to me to these top life insurance agents is that their entire clientele were entrepreneurial. Okay, they didn't have corporate people, they had people who created their own businesses. And I remember this one agent here in Toronto. He said the first thing you have to zero in on again, it's a difficult sale is what the individual, who's a wealthy individual? What do they love that they want to be remembered for having been a great person after their life? What is it that they love that they would ensure and he said so. He had this line of questioning with. That went something like this he said first of all, as we talk about this, do you love your wife? And the person would say no, not really, not really.
He says do you love your children? That would be a flat no. And he says no, I don't love my children. He said do you love your employees?
And he says no, I don't love my children. He said, do you love your employees? And he says no. Finally gets to number four is do you love your reputation such that after you die, people will say you know he really loved his wife, his children and his employees? He says yes, I do love my reputation, and he says, ok, let's ensure your reputation. He says until you find out what someone loves, you might as well not talk about your legacy, and everybody has a different one. So the big thing everybody has a something that they want to be remembered for. So he says that's the thing that we have to ensure.
Dean: And it's amazing. Amazing, isn't it, that there's always the reason behind the reason.
Dan: It's funny yeah well, well, there's ultimately. There's the reason, the others aren't a reason you know, and actually that's true, yeah, and you have to find out what makes the person tick. You know, know, I mean everybody who lives for a long time and is very active in doing it has something that's right at the center you know, and I think it's idiosyncratic.
Dean: What do you mean by that? Do you mean, that it's?
Dan: I don't think it's predictable.
Dean: Okay, right.
Dan: Yeah, there's a deeper. I don't think everybody is Well. If you have the money to be different, then you're different in the way you want to be different. I mean we're talking about people who can write a check and they can write a big check. And what do they write the check for is the big question. And they're not doing it out of need, they're doing it out of want.
Dean: Right.
Dan: My contention is don't do things out of need. Do them out of what you actually want, because that represents much more of who you actually are than doing things because you need to do them that's an interesting because that's why or is that why you spent so much time 25 years.
Dean: I remember you saying you made a commitment to every day writing what do I want. I journal for 25 years. Yeah.
Dan: And because I was coming off a divorce and bankruptcy which coincided on the same day, that was, August, August 15th 1978.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And you know, divorce and bankruptcy qualify as two bad report cards.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Right right right, yes, I mean any way you interpret it, it's a bad report card and so you know I was kind of in a state and one of the neat things when you go through a divorce and bankruptcy, people don't throw parties for you to have you come and explain it you know they give you a lot of peace and quiet of your own, you know, yeah.
So I had about four or five months after August to think this through and I said you know, the reason why these things are happening is I'm not telling myself what I actually want. You know I'm assuming certain things about other people. I'm expecting other people expectations, assumptions about other people and other things. And I said, you know, I think the key here is that I'm not actually telling myself what I want.
Dean: And so.
Dan: I said myself what I want and so I said so. Nobody cares if I was divorced and bankruptcy, and nobody really cares whether I amount to anything you know you know, and I was 30, 30, 34 years old at that time.
And once you hit 30, nobody cares you know, it just, we invest a lot in younger people until age 30 and then they kick you out of the nest and anything that's going to happen in the future, you're going to do it on your own. You're not going to get a government grant to do it. And so I said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to have one goal here. So I said, well, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to have one goal here. For the next 25 years, every day, I'm going to keep a journal and I'm going to write in it something that I want, With one constraint I'm not going to use the word, because I'm not going to use the word.
I just want it, I just want it. And I did that, I did it for 25 years I missed want it, I just want it, and I did that. I did it for 25 years. I missed 12 days. There are 9,131 days in 25 years including the six leap year days, and so it's 9,131. And I did them on 9,119 days and my relationship with Babs came out of that. The whole strategic coach came out of that.
You know and all sorts of things, like the lifestyle I'm living and you know why today I don't have to think about money at all because the money's there and you know, and the type of people I'm spending my time with. So it feels good, but that that the other thing is I. What it proved is I have the ability to stick with something for 25 years, right on a daily basis on a daily conscious basis.
Dean: So still journal. Do you, uh, do you still journal?
Dan: well, Dean, that's a really great question. I do journal, but it's in the form of using my tools on a daily basis.
Dean: I got you Okay, so you're thinking about your thinking every day, like my fast filter, my fast filters.
Dan: Yeah, you know fast filters. I'm saying what I want. It's just mutated into different forms. I want it's just mutated into different forms, but there isn't a day that I go through where I'm not stating something that I'm planning to achieve sometime in the future.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really. That's something I'm coming up. Next April will be 30 years of, you know, daily journaling. Yeah, I mean of sequential, and I actually have all of the journals. It was April 1995. I would journal. I was always someone to write down my thinking, but not in an organized, archival kind of way. But April of 1995 is my journal number one the official like keeping that.
Dan: So next year is the 30 years. Yeah, and it's so funny that you know, like you said, I think more than half your life.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. I just turned 58 on Friday and that was a you know, you mentioned you know at 30, I noticed that you did it at 29. Yeah, that there's a different you know different experience level at 58 than there is at you know 29.
Dan: Oh yeah.
Dean: Yeah, I remember when I first started with Strategic Coach in 1997, year one that was, I remember the three-year kind of vision thing was it was difficult for me to even like see three years into the future because everything up to that point had been constantly evolving. You know, and I just remember, as in real estate, you know, when I was young, starting in real estate, I remember there was talk of the, you know, halton hills the town where I was, had just released their 20 year plan and I thought to myself, man, that's like that's forever, that's a lot. I don't never get here. You know, 20 years, I can't imagine that they're thinking that far ahead. And I had a couple of experiences like that. One of the largest sale that I ever made was to an italian family that was land banking. They bought land on the corner of ninth line and steels in halton hills that wasn't going to be developed.
Dan: we we're talking about Toronto. Yes, right, exactly Greater, Toronto area.
Dean: Yeah, in Halton Hills that was like the outer edge of the greater Toronto area and their expectation was that this was going to be land that would be developed in 40 years and that was almost exactly true as to when it, you know, came about. It's just kind of that was their model. They would, you know, go, they were a development family and they would go out to the edge and buy the land that was inevitably going to be the development. So, you know, they owned a lot of land in Brampton and Mississauga that were, you know, at the time, rural areas that they bought, you know, 20 years previous, in the 60s, at that time, knowing that was going to be developed later on and what an interesting like long term vision, like that.
But that tell that story, because I always like to have you know kind of I look at my birthdays, I like to have like a day of reflection and looking forward and you know real and yes, uh, two days ago was your birthday, that's right, yep, and so you know, looking, I have a completely different understanding and experience of what 25 years is, yeah, than I did when I was 29, right, and so it's like, not you know, because I can still remember cracking the you know seal on journal number one, april 1995, virginia Beach. That was the you know day one journal one, and I still I can transport there, you know know, right now. It's just amazing how your mind I'm just like I'm sure you can immediately remember your lunch that you had on the day you got bankrupt and divorced. You know, you probably recall that right there, but you couldn't imagine it was actually a good lunch yeah, that right yeah because it was on the credit card you were about to turn in.
Dan: Yeah, the interesting thing about it is I've been working on a concept and I was reminded of it because for our top guest speaker at the conference we had Kathy Ireland, the very famous model.
Dean: Oh, wait, it wasn't Joe Polish.
Dan: As I said, we had our top speaker. It was Kathy Ireland. Joe was good. He was one of the three main speakers. Right yeah he should be delighted with that. Yeah, he should be delighted with that.
Dean: Anyway.
Dan: Kathy Erland talked about how her intent was not to become a model. Not that she was against becoming a model, but that was never her intention to be a model. And she was just approached when she was on the beach in Santa Barbara California when she was 17. On the beach in Santa Barbara California when she was 17. And an agent came up to her and said you know, I think there's a niche that if you wanted to become a model, you would really, you know, sort of a tomboy she's.
You know, she was very athletic, she was very muscular and she, you know, she sort of had freckles and you know, and she did wonderfully for 15 years from age 17 to 32. And she was on many covers of magazines, especially Sports Illustrated, and but then when she was 32, she just decided to stop and while she was a model, she had taken a crack at creating different kinds of businesses, so it wasn't something new, she said. I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur and that the modeling gave me a bridge from where I was born, where I grew up, to the outside world. And then she stopped at 32. And for the last almost 30 years's created a three and a half billion dollar global company. And it was really great. We have jeff madoff interviewers, so jeff, is how I know I had.
Jeff is how I know kathy, because he had her as a guest at a marketing class that he teaches at one of the New York universities. But one of the things I found in common with her she said I like getting older because you just know so much more, and one of the things I'm really appreciating at 80 is that I can really I can think of my life in terms of at least seven decades. You know, the first one's a bit sketchy, you know, because you hadn't really become conscious.
Dean: But you've recalled being out in the woods. Oh, no, no.
Dan: I have very good memories below 10. And I think I've enhanced them some, but you have what's possible over long periods of time, you know and what you will stay with over long. I think one of the principal pieces of knowledge that you get as a benefit of getting older is you have a very clear idea of what exactly what you will stick with over a long period of time and we're just, and we're just trading reports here of something you stuck with and what I stuck with over a long period of time, and young people don't have the advantage of doing that that's exactly right.
Dean: Yeah, you can't imagine and it's very interesting to see how I spoke things into existence in that journal, leading up to them, like describing what I want, and to see how they started out as a seed in the journal and then became reality. You know, something it's interesting to see and you wonder, you know, part of it is to keep that, you know, keep that rolling, keep it now looking forward in the next five. It's as you say, it's, you know, your I love about you at 80 is that your, you know future is still bigger than your past and that's kind of an exciting thing.
Dan: Yeah, I will say. This doesn't naturally occur just by living years.
Dean: No, no you have to be.
Dan: I mean the. To make the future bigger than your past at 80 takes a lot of.
Dean: Yeah, especially when. But maybe that goes to what your print too. Right, just achievement is a thing, that's a motivator for you. For the sake of parties, for the sake of parties. That's all the bigger parties. That's all the bigger parties. That's great, yeah, yeah.
Dan: Someone was asking me that. You know, when I looked at the conference that we just had in Nashville, wednesday and Thursday, people said, well, how would you plan a conference? I said, well, I didn't plan the conference. It was my team members to plan the conference. So it was my team members to play in the conference. But I said my attitude toward the conference is what the party is going to be like on the final night. Yes, I work backwards from the party. What has to happen for it to be a great party?
Dean: Right.
Dan: Well, this is very exciting, that now it's just coincidentally, two years from now, we do it at the same time.
Dean: That be, yeah, first week of may is a good day.
Dan: It's a good time, it's good and we would do it at nashville and we would do it at the music city. I mean, we're far enough ahead on the schedule that we know it would be your 60th birthday.
Dean: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that'll be right in time for peak Dean on my health journey here. You know that'll be Back to my.
Dan: That was the year of the peak Dean. That's exactly right, it's almost, like you know, a periodic visit of the northern lights. Yeah, yeah.
Dean: No, I think that's very exciting. Yeah, and I've already said even more.
Dan: I've already yeah, you put it in the calendar. It'll be the week of your birthday, probably okay, I mean I don't know what the week looks like, but let's find out now.
Dean: I'm yeah, but yeah, nashville, early early 2026, may 10th is a Sunday. Yeah, it won't be that, it won't be on a.
Dan: Sunday no, but it'll be the week. It'll be the week before, it'll be the week before. But the thing is now that they've done it once and we've got a date in the calendar. First of all, they can put the date in the calendar and they can get the event company plugged in. And they can get the event company plugged in, they can get the reservation at the Music City. They can get the hotel bookings I think the hotel bookings most hotels you can't get in for about six until six months before.
Dean: But as early as you can.
Dan: And yeah, we had a lot of bookings at the Four Seasons and you know, and we came in from the airport on Tuesday or on Tuesday? No, on Monday we came in, am I right?
Dean: here. You came in on the Monday, yeah, because we spoke last Sunday yeah, I think I came.
Dan: We came in on the Monday, yeah, and and we. But when we arrived, there was this whole meeting party of Four Seasons personnel. They came up to us and treated us like they liked us oh right, imagine that yeah, which I take regardless of what their motive is it doesn't matter, it still feels just as nice.
Dean: Yeah, I think that's great. Mr.
Dan: Sullivan is the general manager of the hotel.
Oh, we're so happy to have you, Thank you. Thank you very much and a very friendly guy, yeah. So anyway, I'm going to work on this. The value of age. You know, there's a lot of people and I'm noticing them, because I'm starting to notice how people who are getting up in years I won't say they're my age, but they're getting up in years are falling into the general narrative of how people act when they get older and I'm just so convinced that they feel diminished because they haven't constantly worked on having their future bigger than their past.
Yes, there's a point where they stop creating their future whenever that was there, was you know, well, and I think that you really have.
Dean: It's a discipline that I constantly have to get myself to turn and have my gaze future focused, because as you do get older, you start that there's more to look back on. You know, and you spend a lot of time revisiting the past, but all the action is in the future.
Dan: There's nothing, nothing you can do about the about the past, but yeah, but what I do is that I the past, if I remember. It can only be raw material for creating something new for the future.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Like when I go back and I remember a situation, I'll say now what did I learn from that situation that I can use in the future? You know, I don't accept the past's interpretation of itself.
Dean: Yeah, say more about itself, yeah.
Dan: Say more about that. Yeah, and I had a friend for a number of years who I'd gone to college with and we've, you know, we have been in touch for 20 years and he said you don't have any nostalgia, do you? You don't look back and have an emotional. And I said no, I mean, first of all, I was given a chance, you know, when I was having the experience, to appreciate what it was Okay. So it had a momentary opportunity to really imprint me with its importance. But if I'm looking back from 20 years ago, it's my interpretation of what it means to me going forward, not the interpretation. And I'm noticing, with the boomers, you know, there's nothing more disgusting than a nostalgic boomer.
Dean: Yeah, like thinking about back in the day. Is that what you mean? 60s?
Dan: well, 60s, you know, that's the usual. The 60s and 70s, you know, and they were going to turn the world on its head. And then they became civil servants, they got jobs as government employees or they became teachers and everything else. And then you get with them and they go back and they say, oh, those were the days, and everything like that.
And it's kind of, but I have this notion that up until 30, society really supports you. Society invests in you, the government invests in you, the community invests in you, your parents invest in you, the teachers, everybody invests in you. And at 30, they cut it off and they set you free. And it's like I say about people say well, e know they have very high purchase. When the chicks are born, you know they're hundreds of feet up the eagles, and then on one day the mother eagle, just there's little eagles, they have wings. You know they have feathers, they have wings. She just pushes them all out of the nest. They have wings, she just pushes them all out of the nest. And the ones that don't hit the ground know how to fly. The ones who hit the ground, you don't have to worry about them.
Wow yeah, and I think society at a certain point they just push all the 30-year-olds out of the nest and they want to see if you can make anything. Is there anything different or unique, and if there isn't, you just, more or less metaphorically, you hit the ground and you're nothing more than what things were before.
Dean: There's nothing new.
Dan: There's nothing new, but I pushed myself out of the nest when I was 18 years old, so the time until I was 30 didn't really mean anything.
Dean: Right.
Dan: But I don't comprehend nostalgia, because my emotions are in the present, they're not in the past.
Dean: Yes, yeah, and that's what you realize, even in the future. I think when we were talking in Palm Beach earlier this year about the, you know the main thing is the future is really only shaped by the behaviors and habits and happens Really.
Dan: The future is shaped by your present capabilities. Yeah, so I don't want to be looking backwards, as I'm living the present. I want to be fully alive because it's my up-to-dateness with the present that determines the quality of the future.
Dean: Yes, yeah, bringing there here.
Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting. We had a whole raft of speakers.
Dean: Yeah, tell me about some of the highlights. What were some of the highlights?
Dan: Well, I didn't get to all of them, because I went to every hour. You had a breakout session. I went to it, but there were different streams and tracks. I mean they're all going to be videoed. I mean they were all videoed so everybody's going to be able to see them. But I went to one and they had a couple of futurists there and I wasn't impressed. I wasn't impressed, and more and more over the last 10 years, since we did the collaboration with Peter Diamandis to create Abundance360, I always knew that people could be trapped in the past, in other words, that they were doing every day trying to hold on to the past. Okay, but I'm just as convinced now that people can get trapped into the future.
They can get trapped, that they can't really be aware of what's going on right now because their mind is in a realm that hasn't happened yet and one of the things I know it makes them very nervous, makes them very anxious, anxious. And the thing that I found really interesting about these two speakers, the husband and wife team, was that they were making up all sorts of crazy words to describe what's happening, and you should be aware of this. And they had a word called templosion, which you know temp is, I guess, a Latin word for time, something and implosion, which I guess adds on a notion of explosion and that we're in a period of templosion, where there's hundreds of different ways that you're going to have to choose your life.
Dean: And.
Dan: I was sitting there and I said no, well, I know, 20 years, or I know 20 years from now, exactly what my life is going to look like. I don't know the details but, I, know it's going to be a direct extension of what I'm doing today.
Dean: And.
Dan: I know 80 percent of it. It will be expanding. I'll meet all sorts of new people. There's all going to be, but what's happening in the rest of the world and what other people are doing really don't, it doesn't really matter to me that much.
Dean: I like that. I mean, that's what I realized in the journaling. I have two things. You something you said about. You know that spending time, you know, in the future is there's a lot of temptation or opportunity to just stay constantly planning and thinking about the future without actually you know, I've been using the word applying yourself. You know, I found that it's in our minds the things that motivate us to actually do something. We only do things in the present. So our own, you know our, you know our behaviors extended over time are what we define as habits, but it's really the behavior that's to be done today. You know, and I realized that writing in your journal and thinking about or planning for, or architecting or doing all these things that are future gazing is not actually applying yourself, it's not actually putting anything on the record. It's the equivalent of to the committee in our brain that actually controls what we do. It's the equivalent of quietly sitting in the corner coloring.
Because no matter what anything that you do in your journal. The great deception is that it feels like that's actually making a difference. Right, that you're actually accomplishing something, but it's not. Until you break that barrier of getting it out of your head into and on the permanent record in the form of an action or a behavior. It's not going to do anything.
Dan: Well, I think the big thing and I think it's a hard realization. I think it's maybe one of the harder realizations that nobody has ever lived in the future and nobody has ever lived in the past.
Yeah, you only live in the moment. You know, and it and a lot of people just aren't capable of being conscious of the moment because their attention is being either dragged back backwards or pushed forwards and they're thinking about next, they're not thinking about next year. They're not thinking about, they can't think about next year because everything's happening right now. They can't think about 10 years ago, because everything's happening right now, and I think being present-minded is hard.
Yes, I think it takes really an enormous amount of mental muscle to actually just be aware that things are happening right now and the way you handle things right now basically makes the future.
Dean: Yes, that's the only thing that makes the future. It's the brick by brick layer.
Dan: You know what I mean it's really the truth.
Dean: It's that in the tapestry or whatever, that we can only see the accomplishment of it. But you realize that you can.
Dan: I bet in the world of brick layers it's what a person can do in a day that really puts them at the top of their craft.
Dean: I think you're absolutely right. Yes, and it's only on the reflection. You know, great walls are only built on the you know, compilation of daily accomplishment.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: You know the thing is you can change any of it at any time. You know the thing is you can change any of it at any time. That's what I realized is in reflection, you know, when I was thinking about those, the elements of a perfect life, and really getting down to the, you know how DNA has, you know, the five elements of it, that if you look at the DNA of a perfect life, it's, you know, the elements are me, like everything. If I were to strip me naked and drop me on a deserted island, everything I have there, that's me, the portable things. Then time is life's moving at the speed of reality.
60 minutes per hour in perpetuity and you're always doing something in there, then environments are the things that are. You know. You basically put yourself in or you've been put in to an environment. That is your version of what's happening here, where, geographically, where you are, that where you live, what you have, what you do, all of those things are environments and you could, in theory, all of those things are environments and you could, in theory, move your, so I mean, you could completely change your environment.
That's what you're thinking of the immigrant, right of you could leave everything behind and go change the environment and decide everything that you're going to do. Then the element of people meaning all the people that are around you, and money. So the combination of all of those five things are what create what we would call a life, you know, and I love like I find that infinitely entertaining too, you know in terms of yeah, the other thing is that, uh, one of the things that was predicted for me by other people is that as you get get older, time speeds up.
Dan: Okay, and since I 70, I've experienced just the opposite. Time slowed down during the 70s and the years just took their time, and I think the reason is, I think it has to do with consciousness. You know, and I think that you know when you're, you know when you're a child, you're learning everything. So you're, you know, you're, everything is kind of new and you're exploring it and everything else, and then, as you get on, a lot of your experience you already knew that. So it's not significant, okay, but I think what happens with a lot of people, they are never actually creating their experience. There he is. I got a phone call that interrupted our phone call oh man, how rude somebody named Stephanie ok and.
I immediately hit just to say you have no right. You're trespassing, that's right. Yeah, be gone. Where did I leave the thought that I was on?
Dean: Well, you were talking about consciousness. That's what you were saying.
Dan: Well, I think consciousness is the number of times during any time period that you're actually conscious of what's happening to you Okay.
And I think it's massive when you're a child, because everything's new, right, but as we, let's say, we're now 20, we've actually mastered a lot of things that were new and now they're known, actually mastered a lot of things that were new and now they're known. I think, therefore, the number of situations when you're 20, that you're suddenly struck by something new is less than when you were, you know, four or five or six years old, okay, and so you're moving quickly from one moment of consciousness to another. And when you're six, it might be 20 things a day. That's a long day, but if it's 20 times a week when you're 20, that's a faster week, and if it's 20 times in a quarter, when you're 50 that's a really fast quarter and when it's 20 times, when you're 20 times in a year, when you're 70.
I think that whether time is going fast or slow depends upon the number of consciousness things about something new that's happening in your life. And I found over the period of the last 10 years. I was back to having suddenly new conscious things that were happening. You know many times. You know many times a week or a day and time slowed back down, so it's actually being conscious.
Dean: That's really, you know, that's almost like Euclidean, that's like euclidean geometry, you know yeah, that that harmonizes with something that I heard about. Why it the perception is that it moves faster is that when we're looking back, the routine reads as one experience, right? So you're looking back at the thing, if you've been, if your life becomes waking up in the same place, driving to the same job, sitting at the same desk, interacting with the same people and you look back over time at that, that all reads as one experience and it's only the new and novel consciousness moments that you were just talking about that get registered and recorded that single experience for some people may have.
Dan: Another year just went by.
Dean: That's exactly right and that's what oh well, that was fast where that was fast.
Dan: Where's the time go? Where's the?
Dean: time go.
Dan: It's not a function of time, it's a function of consciousness. Right, that's exactly right, and we've had at least five conscious things in the last hour. I love that, Dan. We've done each other a favor over the last 60 minutes.
Dean: I'm very excited about the culmination, the 60th. I'm reframing CoachCon as a peak theme celebration. I'm just I'm taking it for me, that's what it's.
Dan: Not that you didn't have something to live for before, but we just put some kind of put a cherry at the top of your whipped cream. Yeah.
Dean: I've had something that I was already on the path of you know, and that's kind of that's kind of great. Yeah, I just celebrated nine nine weeks of the peak Dean path here, so that's all it's very exciting.
Dan: That's been a good nine weeks, hasn't it? It really has.
Dean: Yes, it shows the whole you know thing of accountability and the plan and Somebody else's executive function, that's exactly right.
Dan: Now I'm looking honestly.
Dean: That's the thing Now. I'm looking for that in my you know, in deciding in my productivity now, in all the times that I'm, because I realized what an abundance of time I have you know, and very. I have what you would call very little environmental drag on my life in terms of time, commitments or obligations or people or other things, so it's a huge palette to play on Attempts on the part of other people to use up your life. Yeah, exactly, there's no claims to it, that's exactly right.
So I've got no excuse. So now it's just like I get to architect this amazing adventure here.
Dan: You know the thing that's going to be the highlight in the election campaign. It might happen in the next week or two where Trump finally sends the judge in the current trial in New York over the edge. He says I'm sending you to jail, and then the United States is just fixated on. Trump. He won't be in a normal cell. Of course He'll have a phone.
Of course he'll have a phone and he'll be messages from Rikers Island, which is the main jail and he'll have lineups of everybody wanting to get his autograph and his picture taken in Rikers. And you know he'll be giving campaign speeches to all the prison guards and everything else. And meanwhile President Joe will have to be reminded who he is again and what his job is.
Dean: Oh, my goodness. Well, we got six months. That's the exciting thing here.
Dan: This is very exciting. This is very exciting. This is very, this is a and. And people say, isn't it a tragedy? I says what's a tragedy? And they said just the preposterousness presidential campaign. And I says, well, it depends on how you look at it. Because a lot of people say, well, this is crucial. You know the future, the world depends upon this. And I said, well, america has so much going for it, the United States has so much for it, it's got so much leadership at every level of activity that Americans are the only people on the planet in the history of humanity that can just treat domestic politics as a form of popular entertainment. Oh man, so I don't think you're approaching this correctly. You think that this is actually important, but it's entertainment. And then the question is who is the most entertaining candidate? And that I can predict yes.
Dean: It would be amazing to see it all unfold, how it plays out. I still see Las Vegas still has all the odds makers still have Donald Trump as the winner.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's in the 60s. Well, it depends on whether they're doing it with all the candidates or just the main two. But I think the betting markets I check every couple. I think the betting markets I check every couple weeks, the betting market.
Yeah, it's been generally 60, 65 and you know and you know, which is surprising, because a lot of the big, wealthy democratic donors could be gaming the market, you know, just throwing a lot of money into the market. But but these are the las ve. I mean Las Vegas puts a bet on everything, so it's probably some legitimacy to what their bets are. Yeah, yeah, and it goes deeper than a particular issue. You know, it's just like. You know, it's almost like which one of them could actually be there at the end of another four years, and I think that's part of it.
Holy cow yeah yeah, that's exactly true yeah, it's like a horse race, where you're betting to see if any of them could actually get to the finish line right oh my goodness, we know they could be at the starting gate. We just don't know which one's going to actually finish you know, yeah, that's so that's amazing, yeah all righty are we uh on next week?
yes, nope, I'm on a plane trip to london on sunday of next week. So and the week after I, yeah, the week after I can do it from a hotel room in cleveland okay, perfect, but I'll have to give you the. I'll have to give you the date of the time.
Dean: Okay, no problem.
Dan: And I might have to get you up early.
Dean: That's okay. It's my only thing on these Sundays. Yeah it's my only thing, so it's the highlight of my day Okay thank you, thanks, bye, bye.
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, I reminisce about our wonderful experience at the recent Cloudlandia conference at Canyon Ranch in Tucson facilitated by the legendary Joe Polish.
We discuss the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle through routines like DEXA scans. Our conversation explores cultivating daily habits that balance productivity and creativity without overcommitting.
Wrapping up, we tackle the nuances of time management as entrepreneurs and commitment levels' impact on execution. Discover how dependability and prudent social media actions shape future opportunities, drawing from Kevin O'Leary's wisdom.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Oh, that's funny I like it.
Dan: I was going through the archives and I said you know, I don't think I've listened to any song as much as I have this song. That's so funny. Yeah, I love it Good music though. It's good music.
Dean: And good message.
Dan: And it, I love it, it's good music, though.
Dean: It's good music, yes, and good message.
Dan: And it's good message.
Dean: It's always a reminder. So welcome back. You've been on the road, arizona.
Dan: Yes, how was that? Oh, it was great. We were in Tucson for about five days at Canyon Ranch, and the weather was absolutely superb. In Fahrenheit terms it was roughly about 75.
Dean: Yeah, perfect right.
Dan: Clear, cool nights, blue skies, no rain and the genius was great. Joe is really in the sweet spot.
Joe Polish is really in the sweet spot because he's controlling it now with his interviews and I think that's terrific, because he had six different guests and if they're just giving a presentation, it can be from bad to really great. But what Joe provides, he just does a framework and of course he directs them with questions and he knows the audience, he knows the speakers, so he's doing a great job of moderating and I think that's a terrific move.
Dean: I like the new setup too that he's got there, the stage with the kind of environment that's good, nice, the kind of environment that's good, Nice.
Dan: Well, let's Proves that, if you just stick with some things long enough, you know it turns really superb after a while if you keep making improvements.
Dean: Wow, I can't say enough about that being true. I was really. I've been thinking that about the. I've been going back looking at the eight profit activators as the example of how long you know I would say I've been working on this for 30 years, unconsciously, and the last 20 of it consciously and the distinctions, the reliable, that I've generated from all the ways that we've applied, all the number of data sets and iterations and different applications that are still like, it's just kind of great. It's a shortcut to really identifying what needs to be done, and every new iteration of a durable playbook is adding new distinctions. So much certainty in the things. I just can't wait to see, you know, the next 20 years of that real like dedicated application, because it's not going anywhere, you know.
Dan: Yeah, I think you know I'm sort of a stick with things for a long time.
Dean: Yes, yes.
Dan: And I mean, if people are telling you they're getting value out of it, their checks indicate yes, yes, things going in a workshop and I'm, you know, I'm always seeing new things and and everything like that. But you know, we were. I was just reflecting that this is 35 years for the program, the workshop program, and it's pretty much not too different in 2024 than it was in 1989.
I mean 2024 than it was in 1989. I mean it's basically you're doing thinking processes, you're chatting with each other individually, you're having general discussions, there's visuals to represent what's going to happen and all the money's up front.
Dean: Yeah, I mean, listen, I call those things durable contexts and what you've got there, like the strategic coach program and the workshops, it's not unsimilar to what 60 Minutes has going for it, the. It's been the same context in sunday night 7 pm tick, tick, tick three long form stories on the most fascinating things in the zeitgeist right now. That's never going to get old. That's really. You know, it's like the same thing. You look at quarterly meetings gathered with your peers thinking about your thinking in a group of people who are thinking the same way. So I think that's the cheat code is understanding what those durable contexts are and allowing the content to fit within that.
You know.
Dan: Yeah, there was a great old parody, I don't know 20 years ago, and it's the new marketing manager for Coors Beer and he's saying yeah, and he's in a meeting with Mr Coors the current Mr. Coors and he says yeah.
He said yeah, we've done a lot of research and you know we feel that the color that we've been using for the labels of Coors beer are not up to speed with what people really like and therefore we're suggesting that we switch the color of the labels. And Mr Coors says I like the color we've got. He says yes sir, yes sir, Mr Coors.
Dean: Yes, sir, we're going to go with the color.
Dan: And he says we feel that you know the typeface that we're using, the Coors typeface, is from the. It's really from the 19th century. And he said so we're suggesting this new typeface. And Mr Gores says I like the typeface the way it is.
Dean: He says yes, mr Gores.
Dan: And then he says we're thinking that the bottle is very in old shape, you know, and it's not really up to date with modern design and therefore we're recommending this new shape of the bottle and we want to change the color of the bottle too. And he says to Mr Kors says I like the old bottle and I like the color we've got. Yes, mr Kors, okay, we're all set to go on our new campaign right, that sounds like your conversation when they wanted to change the fonts right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like Helvetica.
We're going to stick with.
Dean: Helvetica Awesome, I love it. Well, Dan, what was your? What's a day in the life in Canyon Ranch? You've been going there now for as long as I've known you.
Dan: Yeah, 1990 was our first trip, so this is our 55th visit and many years. We've gone twice, twice. Well, it's a nice place, it's very congenial, it's very comfortable and it's well kept up. And, you know, the food is good. They have terrific massage therapists. I mean, they have dozens and dozens of massage therapists, some of them, one of them we have we've been seeing her for 25 years, you know, and there's just a nice quality. It's very predictable, there's no tension, it's very laid back, and so I get up in the morning and, you know, once we're set to go, I'll go out for a walk, and they have a two mile loop around the property oh wow and one of them is quite a challenging hill, okay.
So what I could do is I go out and I start working the hill from top to bottom and I do that. I do that for about a half hour. You know.
Dean: Up and down, you know gets the heart rate up yeah and now with my repaired knee I was gonna ask do you feel?
Dan: the difference. Yeah, yeah, it's. Uh, there's a bit tenderness about especially coming down it's going up is fine, it's coming down. That puts more stress on your knee right and then then we go for breakfast and there's two choices they have sort of a very informal cafe and then they have a restaurant with full menu. And then I do a lot of reading. I read the Wall Street Journal on six days of the week and Babs and I just agree when we're going to rendezvous for lunch.
Dean: She does a lot more.
Dan: She does a lot more consultations. She does more investigating new things, which eventually I introduced to some of them. But she's much more active. She gets more tests than I do and I do one test probably every year for 20 years since the body composition. Oh, yeah, like a DEXA scan, right, right, dexa scan, yeah, and it's the gold standard as far as I can tell. You know, and then you compare and I got 20 years of records and you know, need some more care.
Things are okay here and you know you go there and then the afternoon I'll have at least one massage a day and I do that. But I do a lot of reading. I've got my detective stories, my thrillers, my international geopolitical thrillers, and you know I'll wander around around and I get my steps in, I get my three rings on my apple watch bin and we meet for dinner. We usually do it pretty early and we you know and come home and I'll check the news, internet news and read some articles and then I'm off to bed and multiply that by five days.
Dean: Do it again.
Dan: Yeah, and you feel revived.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But I, you know, I mean at after 35, 50 years of coaching and 35 years of the company and the program. I don't really get that stressed out for my work. Right, I mean you know I'm in my unique ability. I have certain things to do every day.
Dean: There's deadlines.
Dan: There's always lots of projects going, and so it's not like to go on to free days, which Canyon Ranch always. Isn't that much of a change for me from? The way I operate on my workday. I'm never doing more than three projects for the day. I have lots of time between projects. I only hold myself accountable for getting three things done a day. My scheduler, Becca, always makes sure I have at least a half hour between anything that involves a meeting with someone else.
And yeah, so that's pretty well that I mean. But I get a lot done. I mean I'm more productive at 80 than I was at 60.
Dean: So yeah, that's my thing. How much of your time during the week like when you're on a typical home week, work week is scheduled like synchronous and scheduled with other people, versus you saying these are the three things I'm going to work on, or are they always involving other people?
Dan: No, I have days when it's just me getting my part of a project done that has to be then sent off to somebody else. But I have days when there's no meetings. The vast majority of them are Zoom meetings, not in-person meetings.
Dean: And I have a regular schedule the workshops are in the schedule.
Dan: The two-hour catch-up calls that we've introduced for Zoom they're in the schedule. I have podcasts they're scheduled. The only thing that's left up to me is creating new tools.
Dean: Right.
Dan: You know, and the other thing is new chapters of the current book and that goes off, and then we have recording sessions and so on. But I would say that if I look ahead at a year, 85% of that year is going to be totally known on the first day of the year.
Dean: Really, yeah, yeah, like with scheduled slots for when it's happening, yeah.
Dan: Very interesting. Yeah, and I've introduced a new rule in 79, that I will never travel for marketing purposes.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: Yeah, and I will never give a speech. I'll do an interview, but I won't do a speech.
Dean: Right or.
Dan: I'll put an audience through a thinking tool, but I won't give a speech, so my days of speechifying are in the past, right, right, right. And I won't give any speech for publicity purposes, I only give a speech for marketing purpose. I mean, I'll only do a public, you know, presentation and a movie tool only for marketing purpose. I'll only speak to audiences that are qualified clients, qualified prospects. Yeah, yeah, and that's basically an easygoing tourist's life.
Dean: Yeah, exactly, I forgot, that's another thing.
Dan: You have a birthday in about three days, right?
Dean: That's right. May 10th that's exactly right may 10th.
Dan: It's yes, right yeah, so that's what is that friday?
Dean: that is friday, yeah, yeah. So that's that one little thing, that one week of time where I'm only 21 years younger than you. I catch up on you for a little bit and then you take over again.
Dan: Yeah, I have to give you a teaser before I frustrate you.
Dean: Okay, let's hear it.
Dan: Yeah, no, it's 20.
Dean: You get to be 21 years younger. I got you Right, right, right.
Dan: Then it gets taken away from you. Yes, exactly, just when.
Dean: I think I'm catching up. Yeah, yeah, a little boost. That's so funny. Yeah, I've forgotten that we're both Taurus. That's something we are very similar. I think that's why we have such an easy friendship. I think because we're essentially a lot alike, I mean our whole being.
Dan: I think we're essentially lazy luxury-loving innovators.
Dean: Lazy luxury-loving innovators, I like it.
Dan: That's pretty true.
Dean: It's the truth. You're absolutely right. Yes, yes, yes, in the best sense of all of those words.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think both of us exhibit sort of a lifestyle that's different from what we learned when we were growing up.
Dean: That's true, yeah, I don't know what instilled it in us, but it was self-discovered. Really, Nobody taught us this.
Dan: And we both like shortcuts.
Dean: We both have a passion.
Dan: It's very interesting I haven't actually driven a car in the city of Toronto in easily 25 years.
Dean: I think that's amazing yeah.
Dan: And you know I have a limousine company that handles all my scheduled stuff. And then Babs. You know we're very much in sync in terms of what we like to do for entertainment and for socializing we're very much in sync, and what it's allowed me to do is to really notice shortcuts in the city because I'll see. You know, I'm a real map addict. I like maps.
And I'll see something I said. I wonder, if you go through this alleyway here and you come out here, whether it's a shortcut when there's busy times and I got about 20, 25 of them in the city that Google doesn't know about.
Dean: Oh boy, okay, yeah, you've got the knowledge.
Dan: Yeah, I got. I've got the knowledge. Google stays within the framework of what are considered official streets. You know they it doesn't, and probably they have to do that.
I mean, that's not, it's not their job to be doing it and and so one of the limousine drivers said, you know, he went to the president of the company, the owner, and he says, you know, we should have mr sullivan up here, he knows more shortcuts than anyone I've ever seen and and the owner of the company. Why would we want the trip to be any shorter?
Dean: Unbelievable, huh.
Dan: Isn't that?
Dean: funny, that's the best. Why would we want it to be any shorter?
Dan: No, and I can see his point of view, I guess.
Dean: but wow, I can't tell you, dan, how much I'm looking forward to being in Toronto.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Really am.
Dan: Now you're coming in. When are you coming in?
Dean: On a.
Dan: Monday.
Dean: The workshop's on a Monday the workshop is on Monday, right the 20th, so I think I'm going to come in probably the week before. I'll probably come in. I may come in at the very latest the 17th, and so I would be available for a table 10 or whatever table they assign us on the 18th, if that works in your schedule, and then I'm going to do a breakthrough blueprint on the 27th, 28th, 29th. So I'm going to stay for at least two weeks.
Dan: Are you staying at the Hazleton I?
Dean: believe so. Yes, there are the four seasons.
Dan: one of the two yeah, because our wonderful French restaurant in Yorkville is gone.
Dean: I know exactly.
Dan: Jacques Bistro.
You know, they basically packed it in at the end of the previous year, so the COVID year started in March 2020. So right at the end of 2019, they packed it in and their son you know, their son and daughter were. I was leaving this was right at the end of the 2019, I was there and I was going down the steps and he said Mr Sullivan, do you mind if I have your picture taken and we're putting together sort of, you know, a panorama of all the longtime guests? And I said sure, and then they they always closed down for the month of January, july too, yeah, yeah, in January, and they never came back. After January it was closed, and so I don't think they were sensing anything, but I think they had just more or less packed it in without telling anybody Because it's all gone. Now it's some other business. It was a very small restaurant, I know because it's all gone now and it's some other business.
Dean: You know it's. It was a very small restaurant.
Dan: You know I mean they may do, for they may do for almost 40 years with about at most they might've had 40 seats in the restaurant. That wasn't a very big restaurant Right. But let's Select is good, let's Select they sold. The two partners sold. They had been with it for 40 years and they sold and it's. You know the menu is smaller. There's some things not on the menu that I liked, but you know it's great.
Dean: Have you been to? There's the new French restaurant in Yorkville, off of you know where, if you go Bel Air basically that where Bel Air meets Yorkville if you continue across Yorkville in that little alleyway, there's a new French restaurant. I think. Yeah, they didn't last. No, they didn't Okay. No, cause they came in just before.
Dan: COVID right, yeah, they didn't last. Oh, they didn't Okay. No, because they came in just before COVID right? No, they didn't last at all. Okay, yeah, and I'm just trying to think.
Dean: Sophia Is there another? Sophia is another one. I think it's new, but I haven't experienced it.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, you know, there were a lot of casualties from the, you know.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Actually, Yorkville has gotten a lot less interesting because restaurants have gone out and retail stores have come in oh interesting. It doesn't have the same entertainment value that it did.
Dean: Interesting, I may have to rethink Where's the new? Where would be a suitable place for a guy?
Dan: like me, the Hazleton is really good. I mean, they're one restaurant there is really good, but you know I would go for Le Select, just for old time's sake.
Dean: Of course, yeah, yeah.
Dan: And we'll put it in the menu. I have a whole bunch of medical things. Usually on Saturday I go to my biofeedback program.
Dean: I go to osteo-stron and I get my hair cut. Okay.
Dan: But I can leave off the two medical things that day and just get my haircut.
Dean: Okay, fair enough.
Dan: And we'll, yeah, put it in for 1130. Would that be good? That's fantastic.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's not table 10 anymore, but we can get the same table, yeah, and that's where we.
Dean: That's where we, that's where we launched the podcast series the joy of procrastination was launched right there.
Dan: Yeah, what are you thinking about procrastination now, after all these?
Dean: years. I think it's amazing. I mean, I think this whole idea of the you know as a superpower, I think it's absolutely true. What I still I'll tell you what I'm personally working on right now is my ability to do what I say I'm going to do. At the time, I say I'm going to do it without any external scaffolding, and I'm realizing that. You know, I'm just now eight weeks into the health program that I'm doing with Jay and Team Dean all together there, and what I've found is that's working really well because it's created the external scaffolding and support and exoskeleton that allows me to stay on track, or create that bobsled run, as Ned Halliwell would say.
And so now my attention in May here now is turning to myself. I have, Dan, an abundance of time. I have, all of you know, a consulting client that I talk to on Tuesdays at one. I have a my real estate accelerator group on Wednesdays at three, and then on alternate Thursdays, I have my co-agent call and my email mastery call, and so, all told, it's four to six hours a week of synchronous and scheduled requirement. Right, Then I basically have 100% of all of my time available, and I do. I've always sort of you know having free time leads to having the ability to be creative and do things, but what I find is I often end up in a paralysis of opportunity.
you know of that I could do this I could do this, I could do this, I could all of those intentions. You know that I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, I could all of those intentions you know. But I very rarely get anything done. Fits and spurts right, and so that's what I'm really kind of. I'm really trying to figure out the formula for me on that.
Dan: That's why I was curious about you know, you know, I would say this that I, if I didn't have obligations, or commitments. Let's say commitments, yeah, like I have, I have commitments. I wouldn't be very productive just on my own Right. I mean, I won't do something just because I want to do something. To see it, it has to involve my team and it has to involve my clients, otherwise I won't do it Right. And so I always have deadlines related to those two parties, and I really like deadlines.
I really like deadlines because, you know, and usually I get it done just before it's needed. And the reason I like that is if I just have enough time to actually and I don't have any more time, I just have enough time to get something done, then I'm totally focused. If I've got more than enough time to get something done, then I'm totally focused. If I've got more than enough time to get something done, then I can be distracted by something else Me too.
Dean: I realized I started thinking about a progression of the way things are going to get done. Most certainly is synchronous and scheduled is 100% certainty that it's going to get done. Then kernis and unscheduled is also getting done, like that's what other my consulting clients or the people that I work with we don't have necessarily every tuesday at one o'clock or whatever it may hey, are you available to talk? You know, on this day and we put it in the calendar and but it's not like recurring, that, it's not locked in obligation. I usually keep my calendar. You know I schedule those things about two weeks out.
And then the next level up then. So that's synchronous and sort of unscheduled, but we'll do it. Then the next thing is asynchronous with a deadline, is likely to get done, but the thing where I want to be is asynchronous at my discretion and that's the most joyful thing, but nothing ever gets done.
Dan: That's the reality, right? Yeah, it's really funny. I was having a conversation about it was with someone at Genius Network. You don't know them and they were talking about how they're really into Zen. Know them, and they were talking about how they're really into zen okay, and and you know the oriental, you know that you detach from, you know physical reality, more or less yes, and, and I said, you know I've read things about them. You know I've read things, but reading things about zen isn't them right you know, it's not them.
You know, and and said the one thing I've noticed about people who are really deeply into Zen they're not real go-getters.
Dean: Interesting yeah.
Dan: Yeah, because for them, the things of the world, they're not really real.
Dean: You know they're sort of delusional.
Dan: And anyway, and I said, I have a really enjoyable engagement with the world. Yes, and it's entrepreneurial, so that makes it more enjoyable. I have nothing in my life that involves dealing with people who are in bureaucratic, private sector, bureaucratic or public sector. I have no nothing to do with anyone like that, and so everyone I mean my entire environment. I'm hearing an enormous amount of sound.
Dean: Sorry about that.
Dan: What I notice is that I live in almost like a complete entrepreneurial universe. I mean both business-wise and also socially you know, so I don't really know much about what's happening outside of the entrepreneurial world. I mean, I read it. I mean I read it on the internet, but it doesn't really impact on me. You know, I mean taxes do, inflation does and everything like that, but not in a serious way. And the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar is very comfortable right now.
Dean: It's about $1.37.
Dan: Okay, yeah, I always enjoy that.
Dean: It's a nice offset.
Dan: Yeah, people say, why do you live in Toronto with the taxes so high? And I says, well, it all depends on where your money is coming from.
Dean: Right right, right right, and you know the patents are.
Dan: We're up to 19 now. We have 19 patents so far. And that has its own asset value. And yeah, so it's really nice right now At 80, it's really at age 80. So it's really nice right now at 80, it's really at age 80. It's really nice.
Dean: Yeah, is that so? I am curious, though, if so, the deadlines. If we think about that progression right Of synchronous and scheduled, synchronous unscheduled with a deadline and asynchronous at your discretion, where's your power zone? Are you able to spend time productively in asynchronous at your discretion, or does what drives your thing be the deadline?
Dan: No, I let other people schedule my life. I let other people schedule my life. Okay, yeah so all the dates in the calendar are someone else's schedule and then they have their schedule for me to get the material in, because it always involves some sort of teamwork.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Before a workshop, you have to get the new artwork in according to the production team's schedule, not my schedule. Right and I have some really good rules with that. If it's 80%, good we're going to go with it, even though. I got a better idea at the last moment. I never load them up with last minute requests because from the audience's standpoint it's 100%. It's only our judgment that is 80%, right, exactly.
Dean: They don't know. It's 100% of what they got. That's exactly right.
Dan: Yeah, I don't know that there was something better that could have been done. They don't know that, so I'm pretty easy with them. Every once in a while there's a last-minute thing and because I never bother them very much, they're up to it. But if it was a steady diet that they had of the last minute, then you'd lose their ability to respond at the last moment. So I never take advantage of that, except there is some situations where you know it's a good idea to do it.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. How much of your time is spent brainstorming and sketching and thinking, like, working out an idea for a thinking tool or the content for a book? Because I imagine that's kind of where it all begins. Right, you're coming to the table, yeah, with the idea this is the book I'm to write, and how much of it is you, uh, I'm really curious about, like because I've discovered you know, my power verbs as part of our discussion through the joy of procrastination.
But what would be? Do you have time like that where you're? Do you have a notebook that you use, or do you sketch, or do you know?
Dan: I'm pretty much um. I'm pretty much a fast filter person, so yes, uh I get the idea and then I go through and I say this is the best result, worst result, and here's the five success criteria.
Dean: And by the time I finish.
Dan: By the time I finish, the first fast filter I'm launched and then it's right into the introduction, the chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, you know.
So yeah but I was talking to a new member of genius network. A great family actually, a father and two sons all joined and it's called the pompa method and it's, you know, getting rid of all the metals in your body and everything. You're living with mold and everything else and so much of sickness comes from heavy metals in your bloodstream and it comes from very, very serious negative impacts of having mold in your house and I think you would be more in danger of that than we would here in toronto.
I think florida's can be sort of damp, you know things. I would say that uncared for physical things in Florida deteriorate pretty fast, don't they?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: And anyway, and he didn't really know me at all, like there was no prior knowledge, when we met and I started talking and he says you know, I'm doing everything well, but not writing books. And he says I have some sort of block to the book. And I said do you have a book in mind? And he says, yeah, I've got notes and notes. And I said you know, the easiest solution to writing your one big book is not do that. What you want to do is write 100 books.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yes, right, yes, book. And he says, well, how do I think about that? And I says, well, do you have a good chapter already? If you were going, to write a good chapter in your you know. You know it's a good idea, it's one chapter, it's one idea. Could you write a book on one idea. And he said yeah, but I've got so much more to say. I said I know you got we all do.
I said we all got a lot more to say, but we don't have to say everything right now. We can say one thing right now and I showed him one of my books and he said, oh my God, oh my God, but it's so short. And I said yeah, and you can read it in an hour.
Dean: I said it's big type too.
Dan: It's 14 point type and it's Helvetica, very easy to read. And it's got lots of subheads. You could get the meaning of the book if you just read the subheads. If you didn't read all the text. Just read the subheads and the titles. You could get the meaning of the book, or you could read the cartoons or you could listen to the audible or you could watch the videos, know everything else.
And it was like he, it was like a religious conversion. And he says, oh my god, I've got so much things that could become small books. And I said, yeah, the ebook. Research indicates that if your book is less than 60 pages, you'll'll get 85% complete readership out of it.
Dean: Mine are 44.
Dan: I only have 44 pages in a book and so, going back to your question, I don't have to do much brainstorming because I've done the same format over now. We're just completing number 38.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I totally know One of the big problems of writing a book for the first time. Well, how long is it going to be?
Dean: and what are the?
Dan: chapters going to be. I know it's got an introduction, it's got eight chapters and it's got a conclusion, and then it's got a little section on the program in Strategic Coach. And then it's got a little section on the program in Strategic.
Dean: Coach.
Dan: So that's why I like repeating good formats, because you're not doing all this guessing. What's it going to look like? I know, I mean, I know what it's going to look like, I know how long it's going to be, I know what the pages are going to look like I know that. So that forces people to procrastinate and stop and everything else, and I've removed all that execution complexity right up front. And then I've got nine other people who are responsible for the finished product Right right yeah, and. I've got deadlines for them.
Dean: The deadlines.
Dan: You know they're already in the schedule. Basically it's a two-month project to get the book finished and all my deadline dates are in the schedule. They're just presented to me. These are the deadlines I said okay. I'm cool. So see, I'm being managed by other people's schedules and that takes a lot of the uncertainty on my part out of the way.
Dean: Yeah, you know, what's funny is I've been thinking about my, because I'm very reliable in synchronous and scheduled things Meeting deadlines and meeting deadlines. Yeah, I'm never, you're never late, you're never unprepared.
That's exactly right. That's why synchronous and scheduled for sure I would say you're never unprepared chat at somebody's event or as a guest on somebody's podcast, where I don't have to prepare what I'm going to talk about. I do it in the thing and that's why having the format that I've chosen for my More Cheese, less Whiskers podcast is the guest, is the focus, and I've been preparing for this conversation with them for 30 years and I bring all of that with it. I don't have to think about it ahead of time. So synchronous and scheduled, 100% gets done and it's right in my go zone.
What I have been thinking about is if there were a way to think about signing myself to. Have you ever heard the term an FSO contract? It's in the entertainment business. People will contract with a entertainer's company for services of Dan Sullivan. So it'd be entering into a contract with strategic coach FSO Dan Sullivan and that would be a really interesting thing. If I had a way of thinking about myself, detached from myself, as a thing that I could tap into for services of Dean Jackson, it would be an interesting you know, I'm just applying it to myself.
Dan: I don't trust the guy to show up Right, exactly, that's the thing He'll be on the way and he'll see something interesting. And then, yeah, you know you have to track him down. It's too much work, you know but I'm like you I'm very reliable as it comes to you know, you know commitments to other people. I'm very reliable. So I said and it's not work for me to do that. So you know, I just never, ever want to disappoint you know, I just never ever.
Yeah, and but when I'm just dealing with myself, well it's, it's really loosey goosey, you know.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Yeah, He'll find some excuse, you know, you know he's very slippery.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, the neighbor's dog ate the homework. You know, you know, he's very slippery. Yeah, yeah, the neighbor's dog ate the homework you know, everything like that. Yeah, and I I put myself in the gap when I'm doing that, but what I've done is, over the years I've made things I'm really intensely interested in public offerings, in other words, I'm presenting it to an audience and I just things that I'm really intensely interested in. I've connected now with making money.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And you know, the making of money really makes things official.
Dean: Yes, yeah, so yeah, very, I mean it's taken a long time.
Dan: I mean, I'm not saying this, was you know, but more and more as I've gotten lazier.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Anything that I'm actually interested in doing better make money. Right right right, isn't that funny.
Dean: That's still the motivator, even though as time goes on 1600s, early 1700s.
Dan: He said the making of money is probably the most innocent thing that humans can engage themselves, involve themselves with. He said making money it's really clean, you know it's sort of a really clean activity and there's an exchange and you feel a real sense of accomplishment and achievement. You know, there's just something about something where it has to be good for both sides. It's got a much higher energy impact to it.
Dean: It's good for me, it's good for them, and it's not just double the pleasure, it's 10 times the pleasure yeah, and I mean, you know the nice thing about it is that to do it sustainably, there has to be a durable exchange of value. You know it has to be. Yeah, that's what's so? That's what I mean. That's what's so clean about it. Right Is everybody wins yeah.
I love that. That's what I love about marketing, you know, is that it's just such a great. I feel really great about being a connector in businesses who can really add value to people and getting the message out to the people who can need that value as much as possible.
Dan: And you know the thing is, it's actually the creation of something new, that didn't exist and then, once the exchange has been happened, it exists something new has been created and you know, and it's a, it's kind of proof that you're real.
Yes, right, right it's a, it's kind of proof that you're real. Yes, right, right, you know, I mean you have people involved in various you know involvement of psychiatric treatment and you know they said, well, I don't know if the world is real, I don't know if I'm real, and I said well, if you're only asking your opinion, it's going to be hard to pin down.
Dean: Yeah, right on.
Dan: You have to get some proof from someone who's not you that you know that what you do is valuable.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's what the that's the true, that's the great thing about capitalism, you know is that it's? Voluntary. It's voluntary, right yeah?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was watching. You know the Shark Tank guy. He's Canadian, kevin O'Leary. Yeah, yeah, I was seeing him and he was saying he was just telling the protesters on the campus that it's being noted in the job market who these people are and they don't realize the price that they're paying and they have masks. And he said, doesn't matter, we're picking up your eyeballs. He said that every single person who was involved in the january 6th you know the- yes they.
Within about two months, they knew who every individual was and where he was, because the technology is now so good.
And he said. They're being used at the university campuses by the police and everybody else and every one of you who's upsetting campus life and is doing that, it's noted that you were doing this and if your resume tries to present you're a different person from who you are in the student protest, doors just will be closed to you. You will never get any direct message that you were in the protest, but you'll notice over the 10 years after you go to college and go out in the marketplace that you don't have much opportunity and it's a really good talk.
Because he says you think there's no cost to this. There's a big cost to this talk. Because he says you think there's no cost to this, there's a big cost to this. And he says you think you're inflicting the cost on someone else. I have to tell you, over 10 years the cost will be inflicted on you. And I just thought it was a neat little talk.
Dean: Yeah, he's a pretty smart guy, I mean just like as a philosopher, you know.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah and anyway, but I found it interesting that you know this rears up every once in a while. It's a bit like a fever, you know that. But this is very well planned. All these students have been in training for the before they actually show up as a protest. They've been in training by, you know, by activists. You know trainers and the activists who train them are never there. They train them and then you know they're off camera and you know they're tracking down the money sources. These people are being paid, you know. I mean they're actually being paid to do this and everything like that you know and everything like that.
But it's an interesting thing how it's harder and harder to do things in secret these days.
Dean: I was just thinking that, like back in, you know the fifties and sixties, seventies, eighties, even. You know everything now is is on, everything is on camera. You have to assume that you're every move.
Dan: Yeah, they're probably you know, communicating with other people on social media. You know they're yeah they're not just doing this in quiet, for right five, six, five, six days in a row, I mean they what got them out, you know, into the movement was probably social media.
Hey, we're going to do this and nothing else. And you should come to a meeting and we're going to do this. And you know, I think late teens and early 20s people don't think too much about that, you know, they don't really think that it shows up. But we're, you know, in our company, we really do extensive social media searches when we have a job, you know, a job applicant.
Dean: Oh, you do, oh yeah, deep dive.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, deep dive. We had one woman and she came in and you know where our cafe is in the. Toronto office. And she came in and she was sitting out in the, you know, in the reception area and something about her just caught my attention. And then she came in and she was just perfectly done up, you know, I mean her clothes were great.
Dean: And.
Dan: I watched her as she went through the cafe back to Babs' office and I said she's just too perfect. I said there's something wrong here.
And afterwards she left and they were saying, boy, what a resume. She has a resume and everything else. I said there's something too perfect about her. I said I get the sense that something's off about her. So they went searching and they found out that she had a whole separate life as a burlesque dancer. Oh really, wow, that didn't show up. That didn't show up. And she even had a you know like a brand name for who she was in her other work.
She had a completely you know and she was in clubs and they're sort of not public clubs and everything like that and not that there's anything wrong with being a burlesque dancer If that's your, you know. I mean, I mean it's not really my, you know my favorite form of entertainment. But you know, but the fact is that she hid the other part of her life, and that's the sense that I got. There's something too perfect about her. There's another side of her that's not being seen, so it will be discovered.
If you have another life besides the one that you're presenting, it will be, discovered. Yeah, there's no hiding now, right yeah, and the simple way is just be who you are.
Dean: Ah, that's exactly right, that digital split. Yeah, and the simple way is just be who you are. Ah, that's exactly right, that digital split.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, and the people that we really have long-term relationships with invariably are people who just do they. There's not another them. Right, yes exactly Right, right, right yeah. So anyway, did you learn anything about the way I approach things?
Dean: I did. I mean, I think that's you know your organizing context. Like you know, I've been thinking about it in this terms of imagine, if you applied yourself, you know, and this is the applied portion of things and it sounds like your, the fast filter is the gateway into the applied world, right it's?
yeah that's that starts. That makes it real because you're making it up and then you're making it real with a fast filter, yeah. And then that, when presented to your project manager or one of your project managers, you know you use the term, you know I mean executive function.
Dan: You know you're lacking in executive function. I don't think that's true. I think, from a creative standpoint, you retain a lot of total executive function. I think what I've completely delegated to other people is management function.
Dean: Yeah right.
Dan: It's not executive function, it's executive execution function. I've got the starting execution, but then there's got to be a handoff. Starting execution. But then there's got to be a handoff and after the making it up stage then I have to hand it off to other people.
Dean: I used to try to do the management function and I'm just no good at it. Yeah, and you know you're. The thing about the quarterly book is a. You know that's a viable construct. You know that's a durable context, that you're 38 quarters into a hundred quarter adventure, you know yeah, yeah, and that you know. So there's that sort of rhythm, contextual rhythm, that sticks with it.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, that sticks with it.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: It's kind of a future time commitment. You know, like I'm not, I'm 40% through a 25-year project, so that means I've got, you know, I've got 2039, that I hit At the end of 2039, I hit quarter number 100, you know yeah right, and you know, and that gives me an incentive to make sure you're there. Yeah, right, exactly. Oh, that's so funny. Whatever it's going to take, make sure you're there, because you know it won't do if it's just 95.
Dean: Right, yeah, no, that's exactly right. I love it. Well, I found this very it sounded very interesting. I appreciate it and I'm very excited about table 10 reunion. Yes, so I'll set that up on the 15th or whatever.
Dan: Yeah, you know what I'll do is. I'll say to the Maitre D just for today, can this be table 10?
Dean: Yes exactly.
Dan: It's only table 10 when Dean and Dan are there, that's exactly right.
Dean: I know exactly where the table is, no matter what we call it, it's still there. I mean it's still there, I'm going to put it in Dan at 1130 on the 15th Perfect Table 10. Table 10. Dan at 11.30 on the 15th Perfect Table 10. Table 10. I like that.
Dan: All right.
Dean: Okay, thank you, so much Are we on next week Yep. We'll be back from Nashville Perfect.
Dan: Yeah, we get back on Saturday, so this is great.
Dean: Perfect.
Dan: Well.
Dean: I'm sorry I'm going to miss the big birthday bash, but I'm sure it'll be wonderful and we'll have exciting things to talk about next week. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, good.
Dean: Thanks Dan.
Dan: Okay, bye.
In today's episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dan and I discuss the paradox of achieving more through minimal effort. Exploring concepts like the 'Crucial ABC Questions' and the 80/20 rule, we uncover how sometimes the best approach is to simply stand still—how inaction itself can be a powerful strategy.
We share insights into the transformative nature of strategic scheduling and how it can liberate our lives from daily logistical burdens. By entrusting details to others and focusing only on meaningful tasks, forward-thinking time management elevates our experience and enables richer collaborations.
Touching on varied successes, we reflect on the diverse challenges public figures face and the support networks shaping their approaches.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan: Mr Jackson.
Dean: There we are Back again.
Dan: I have a question for you.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Are there any problems you're solving today by doing nothing?
Dean: Yeah, I love it. It's like a paradox. You know, I had a great time at our workshop this week going through that, the exercise. I've been thinking a lot about it, actually, like I really have over the last several days. I've been writing a lot of things and so I could share some of the things, but yeah, I'd like to hear one. Okay, so let's preface it. I love, by the way, how our podcast is really just one continuous conversation that we jump right into everywhere.
Dan: Last one, so for anybody listening.
Dean: Let me try and take my shot at explaining your. What do you call the tool? What do you call the thinking tool?
Dan: The crucial ABC questions.
Dean: The crucial ABC questions. So my understanding of it, having you explain it to me and having gone through the exercise, is that there are some number of goals or obstacles or things that you want to do.
Dan: And I call them growth, I call them growth problems. Growth, In other words you have plans for growing something in your business life? For your personal life. But there is a problem. And I like the way, if you solve the problem, then the growth happens.
Dean: Yeah, I like the way of thinking about a problem not as an emotional negative thing but as a math proposition. You know something that there is a solution, and that's really what we're looking for here. The problem, finding the problem is really the biggest, the biggest path to getting the solution.
Dan: Yeah, you know you mentioned a math problem. That's like multiplication five times X equals 20. Right, okay. If you figure out what X is, then you have the. If you figure out what's relationship is between five and 20, then you've got a solution to the problem and you grow.
Dean: I like that. So I think that the preface of identifying the problem you got to have a problem, so identifying the problem and isolating it to one particular thing can be a multi variable problem, you know. But one of the one of the variables of the problem is then to ask yourself is there any way I could accomplish this? By doing nothing, yeah? I think, that's really a great thing. Is there any way I could accomplish this by doing nothing?
Dan: And.
Dean: I think that alone, you know, is a really good way of doing, of thinking, because it lets you think about, you know, just as a solution. Is there a way to do this with doing nothing? Then, once you acknowledge that in 99 times out of 100, the answer is going to be no, yeah, that you then move on to be, which is what's the least that I could do to accomplish this or to solve this. Yeah, really, I'm a big fan of the. I'm a big fan of, you know, everything fits into the stand. The 80% approach is a great way of thinking about this.
Could I get most of what I'm looking for with 80% of this. And you know the corollary to that 80, 20 and what's the 20? 20% of this to get 80% of the result. I think that's a really good. I think thinking paths that opens up for you and then see the magic is is there a? Who could do my minimum? I think that is the ultimate. That's the. You know we identified it as the. That's the way to. That's the way to pray while you're smoking versus smoking while you're praying.
Dan: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: I'll tell that again because I you told it on our last podcast but I've been thinking of all sorts of different applications of the smoking and praying yeah, the way I heard it was gentlemen goes to see the priest and asks him you know, is it, can I smoke? Well, I'm praying, and the pastor or the priest says well, you know, prayer is supposed to be a reverential thing and you should come with reverence.
And so, no, I would say you shouldn't smoke while you're, while you're praying and anyway, and it came back several weeks later and within conversation, was asked go father, when should I pray? And the father says well, the Bible says you should pray without ceasing, should be in constant prayer and communion. And he says, so, should I pray while I'm gardening? Because, yes, being in nature and being with being present, you should definitely pray. Should I pray while I'm walking? Well, yes, you should pray while you're walking. Can I pray while I'm smoking?
It's so funny simple syntax change that gets you to the outcome completely different than when you presented.
Dan: It's a totally contextual yeah it's a totally contextual change, and so, going back to the three questions, so the first one is the way I can solve this, by doing nothing. If there's something you have to do, then what's the least you have to do. And if there's a least that you have to do. Is there someone who can do your least for you, with the result that you're solving the problem by doing nothing?
Yeah but it's an interesting thing. Well, what's changed in your mind? I mean, when you put the three questions together, because this really starts with a conversation that created the entire podcast series that we've been doing for quite a long time? We've done quite a number of years We've done I think this is. The total is about 215. So this is episode 215 of our never-ending conversations, but it originally came back from my appealing. I just dropped a line when we were at a restaurant, los Select in Toronto and I said you know, I've been thinking about procrastination, and procrastination is an avoidance of something that really you're exhibiting. You're actually exhibiting wisdom because you know from your entire history of what works and doesn't seem to be working. The goal you have here, when you say this needs to be done, and you say, well, how am I going to do that? Well, the goal is an appropriate thing, it's exciting, it motivates you know it motivates some kind of action.
It's just that you're not the one who's supposed to actually be doing the thing that you want. So it relates directly back to procrastination.
Dean: I think, I think that it's in the same family, same root, yeah.
Dan: It's a sense of family resemblance Exactly.
Dean: Well, so I'll tell you the evolution of my thinking around. It is, you know, lillian is coming by today, lillian my assistant, and so I mentioned to you that one of the ways that I've been kind of applying this thinking is in my eating, in my meals. And you know I went to the process of with Jay Virgin, you know, we kind of outlined some great meal choices, 10 kind of power meals for me that are available here in Winterhaven through Grubhub and Uber Eats to be delivered. And I discovered the pre-arranged delivery you can arrange, you know, up to four days ahead that they will deliver at certain times. And so I've taken that was cut to the point of if I take that, if I want to eat great meals, is there any way I could do nothing about this?
Well, there's not really any way because you have to arrange and eat the meals right. So what's the least that I could do and that led me to the pre-arranged things in combination of those meals, and factor my factor 75, that I've got some meals that arrive at my house once a week and they're very easy. They just, you know, require a couple of minutes to eat up, but they're perfectly portioned, already done, and delicious and nutritious and ready to go. And so my next level, thinking of this now from spurred from our conversation this week at in our FreeZone workshop, was to think okay, can I, is there a way I could have my portion of this done by someone? And so Lillian and I are going to experiment this week with her pre-arranging the meals to be to arrive at 12 o'clock and six o'clock, so mainly the 12 o'clock one that I that needs to arrive, because typically I use, I do, the factor meal for dinner. But that's going to be the experiment this week is here's the 10 meals.
Dan: I don't really care.
Dean: I don't really care which one it is, but let's rotate through them and at 12 o'clock something delicious will arrive at my doorstep without me having to do anything but eat the meal and I think that's, I think that's going to be my workaround for not having to, you know, really not having to do anything but eat.
Dan: So does the? You have the 12 o'clock meal and the six o'clock meal. Are they different every day? Well, you got a map. If you just are talking about different combinations of two, and you basically have 20 things to work with, the combinations are in the thousands.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. I think that's true.
And it doesn't really it doesn't. There's no duds. You know I order, like the. I order six meals from Factor. So there's six days of the. You know six of those meal options I order from Factor and there's usually 30 plus meals to choose from. So I do have some favorite ones that and sometimes they're different and each week there are 30, but there's probably they probably rotate in you know several different ones Like yeah, so I'll see which ones I really which ones I like, and I may even be able to with a little bit of coaching. Thank you for reminding me of that. Then I'm going to look at that and see there's only so many variations. I'll just tell Lillian which factor ones I don't like.
Dan: Yeah, but it's enormous the number of combinations because you're and there's actually, if you go on the internet, there's things that'll give you the different combinations. Like it'll give the different numbers you know, and it's a lot, it's really. It's really. I'm not sure it's over a thousand, but it's certainly in the hundreds. You know which.
Dean: I'm very excited about the. So I'm very excited about that possibility, you know, because that's going to free up and I think there's something you know it's a great analog for everything. The next thing I've been doing is taking that and applying it to my content creation.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I was just this morning going through the process of, you know, really getting to the point of what my, what is my core thing that I really like to do. So I'll say I'll talk a little bit more about that, but let's explore what you were saying.
Dan: Yeah, let's go you know the interesting thing about bringing Lillian into the, you know, into the process we have a caterer who caters the meals for our workshops. So then, they could say 18 or 19 years. You know, and yeah, and my rule is any meal for the catering can be you can. You know, you can make the meals for the clients anything you want to think, but there has to be chicken, turkey chili, chicken chili.
Right, right Then there has to be some kind of coleslaw and there should be some parmesan cheese, right? So my variation from day to day is which do I put in the bowl? First the parmesan cheese, the chili or the coleslaw, regardless of what else is on the food line? But then he makes our meals for Babzame at home, and this is lunches and dinners the same setup that you have, and it's really interesting because there's about it probably rotates. The salads have a variation, maybe three or four different kinds of salads, like. What's really interesting is the entrees, and they could vary. Let's say, there's 12 variations, 12 variations, and I never know what's coming for today, tomorrow or the next day. So something familiar, something we like, something we've had before, and then every once in a while he throws in a new one, right? So my sense, with Lillian doing the ordering it adds a little bit of surprise.
Yeah, a little surprise, because you're saying, yeah, I wonder what's going to show up today. Yeah, you know, and it won't be the same as yesterday and it won't be the same as tomorrow. Right, and so I think it adds a little variety to certainty.
Dean: What it removes is discretion. It removes variation and room for you know if it's all within this band. You get variety, but it's all from an approved playlist.
Dan: You know, yeah, On a completely different, on a completely different, a completely different dimension. The way my year works. I don't like scheduling.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Okay, I don't like being responsible for scheduling. I don't want to be responsible for other people scheduling, so I work, and I've worked with a series of managers who do the various activities and my, you know really great EA Echamiller.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: And so, if you look at my entire year, I have 210 work days. Okay, so let's just talk about the work days 200. I have 100 and I have let me just think this 100, 250. 250, 250, 250. And 210 work days, which include both focus days and buffer days. Yeah, and 155 free days 155 free days, which adds up to 365. This year I've got a sort of an anxious decision to make because there's one extra day. I'm feeling the I'm feeling the pressure. I'm feeling the pressure that extra day in February.
I'm oh geez. You know what will I do with it. You know it's eating me. It's eating me, dean.
Dean: Well, you're going to be, is that? Are you going to be in Palm Beach then?
Dan: Geez, I don't know. You know because I'm told where to show up. What is? The date of Palm Beach. You know, you know you're defeating me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Dean: Oh yeah, but I will be told when to go. You will be in Palm Beach, dan, of course. So, no for the summit. That's what I mean. I mean I will be in Palm Beach for that extra day. Well, 29th is when the extra day is I mean the extra.
Dan: There's an extra day in February but the truth is 366 days in the year.
Dean: So you know, I understand. That's the symmetry, the elegance of it being that February.
Dan: Well, that's taken care of them.
Dean: We can have a super happy fun day.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a day when I'm responsible for nothing.
Dean: I think we should see if we can work to do that together that day. That would be a very nice day.
Dan: Yeah Well see, just by expressing the problem life, I've solved it.
Dean: Yeah. I think, that's probably a great idea.
Dan: Is there any who can do my least effort here? You did it for me. So thank you very much, yeah, anyway, but the whole point is, my whole year looks like this it's all scheduled by other people, and so I have a right of refusal on this, and I have a right of free arrangement. My whole schedule from January 1st to the end of December is scheduled, and then there's free spaces. Every focus day has some free space in it. Every buffer day has free space in it.
And then as far as the free days go, it doesn't specify too much of the activities, except things that have to be scheduled ahead of time things that have to be chosen ahead of time, like dinner engagements, but that's all done. I mean that's all done. So what would happen in Toronto? I'd be in the cottage. I wouldn't be in Chicago, because Chicago is strictly a work trip and everything We'll be down in Palm Beach.
It won't be just for the conference. We'll have a day before and a day after, and going to Phoenix next week, I'm going to Argentina the next week and everything but everything that needs to be scheduled ahead of time is scheduled by someone else, arranged by someone else, so it allows me just to show up, but all these scheduled things are what I've said, that I want to do, or together, babs and I want to do.
And then somebody else works out the scheduling and the arrangements and everything that's needed, putting transportation together, and it just allows me to move from day to day without the pressure of indecision. Have I scheduled that? And I can't believe the number of people who are incredibly successful who are still scheduling their own things. I just can't believe. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this at this point? And they say, well, I don't like someone else telling me what to do.
Dean: And.
Dan: I says they're not telling you what to do. They're saying this is what you wanted to do and we made the arrangement for you.
Dean: Yeah, exactly Great. I mean that's really. I'm laughing, dan, but for years that's been me. I mean I've been resistant to scheduling my take on.
I mean it was right in my declaration of independence, kind of thing my freedom charter is my number one way of defining success has been I wake up every day and say what would I like to do today. I realize now that I've missed out on a lot, because it could be so much better if I were to just change one word is I wake up every day and say what would I like to do tomorrow. The future.
Dan: I mean, that's really, that's the better, that's the real freedom. Yeah, you just changed smoking and praying.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly what.
I did, dan is because you're limited by what you can arrange. When your choice is today, when you're waking up and saying what would I like to do today, you're limited by what's available for the day, whereas if I say what would I like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow being an operative word for not today but in the future, what could I arrange today? That's really you know what it's the difference, dan. It's the difference between having conversation like this six weeks before February 29 and coming to the conclusion that, hey, it's a possibility that we can have a super happy, fun day and maybe we can make that happen for us. But if I were to wait until February 29 and wake up and say, what would I like to do? That I'd like to spend the day with Dan, I were to call you on any one of those days and say, hey, what are you doing today?
The odds of us being able to spend that day together are slim to none.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned your declaration of independence. But I said, if you're severely constrained by the lateness of your, you know, identifying something and getting ready for it, it's really not a great life. It certainly doesn't sound like liberty and it doesn't sound to me like you can pursue happiness.
Dean: That's the truth. Yeah, it's really. I mean.
Dan: Yeah, it's an interesting thing and, as you know from previous conversations and that I was bound in my late teenagers that I was going to go into theater, okay, and I'll say I dabbled with it for about five years.
You know I actually was involved in the theater at, you know, an amateur level. I was involved with it but you know, I was in maybe 10 productions and one role or another. And the big thing that you begin to realize by the entertainment world is that people become stars. And I'm going to say two factors are here. They become stars because they are increasingly freed up from doing anything except entertain you know they're completely afraid of.
And I'll say the other factor the reason they want to be a star is because they don't have to do anything except entertain.
So there's both an effect and a cause there, but they're exactly the same. They're motivated not to have to do that. And I was reading once about, you know, moving in baseball from the minor leagues to the major leagues the top minor league is a huge jump to the major leagues and I consider sports a form of entertainment, so I'm relating it back to the same conversation. Okay, and the. I remember the shortstop, you know, and there was a year when about 12, 12 shorts in the major leagues came from the same town in the Dominican Republic and it's apparently short. It's the world center of major league shortstops.
Dean: Okay, world head club, uh-huh.
Dan: And you know, through a translator, because he doesn't speak English through a you know an interviewer asked him what do you notice, the biggest difference, biggest difference of being in the major leagues? And he said I don't have to wash my own laundry. He said I don't have to carry my own bags.
Dean: Yes, I love that you know it was something, something a very similar conversation with someone this week who was I talking to about this I think I was talking more, I was having a conversation with Taki about that this week that thinking about, you know, pro sports like thinking about the athletes and the you know, thinking about the structure of the NFL, for instance, if I were an NFL quarterback, that there's very little that an NFL quarterback has to do other than bring themselves to be to perform on the day, right, that there's all of the everything else. Talk about, you know not having to do the carry your own bag or wash your laundry or anything like that. There's a very, very structured way of the of an NFL week. It's broken up into, you know, 16 weeks kind of thing, right as the main thing, and each week starts with a very organized structure and flow to the week where there are free days and focus days and buffer days. Of course Sunday is the big focus day that everybody you're ready for that.
But you know Monday they I saw a you know week in the life of a NFL player and so Monday they watch film and get treatment for you know, their injuries or whatever you know body recovery kind of things. Tuesday is an off day, a free day. Wednesday is right back to practice, and Wednesday, thursday, friday, same Saturday is a travel day if they're going to you know a new city or whatever. And then Sunday is game day and everything is all 100% organized around them. There's lots of exoskeleton and lots of scaffolding to keep that.
And a lot of hoos, a lot of hoos and mentioning Tataki, like the difference between that and professional tennis or golf even. You know there's some structure around the tournaments, but the individuals you know you're responsible for everything. You know it's all self directed and it's completely meritocracy. There's no signing a 10 year max contract in tennis. You have to win every week in order to win. You know, and I thought that's really. You know, it's really. I could probably do some therapy about my life choices, of why you know choosing tennis and golf as sports as opposed to continuing with team sports. You know.
Dan: Yeah, I think the big thing I had a phrase because I actually went to see Frank Sinatra back in, you know back in the 70s.
Dean: And.
Dan: I came up with this line. One of the things you notice about Frank Sinatra right off the bat is Frank Sinatra does not move pianos. Right, Exactly oh that's so funny, you know he's got a whole team that comes in the day before sets up everything you know. I mean there's with a performance like Frank Sinatra there's literally dozens of people who are specialized, people that handle his whole trip, his whole lodging you know, and everything Great stars, taylor Swift to bring it up to the present moment.
Dean: I mean she's probably got an army.
Dan: She's probably got an army of people. You know, and uh 55 trucks to you know to bring the entire you know the entire physical set, the entire physical set, including the technology, and yes, and, and everything else, yeah, and. But you can see the difference to me. I remember Keith Richard Richard's of the. Is it Richard or Richard, keith?
Dean: Richards.
Dan: Yeah, richard. Keith Richards made a documentary film on Chuck Berry who so many of the 60s you have to remember that the stones started in the 1960s and he made a documentary film on Chuck Berry and it was a bit of. Keith Richards described it.
He says it was a bit of total, almost admiration and worship for the musical skills of Chuck Berry but at the same time almost a sense of disappointment and kind of resentment towards Chuck Berry because he never built any kind of structure around him. Okay, thank you. And so he did this documentary for him that sort of traced him from his very poor, poor beginnings in the St Louis area and you know, and then. But he never. He went big simply because of his talent and the you know, the media for spreading his talent through the airwaves. And he became famous, but he never really took advantage of it. He really took it.
You know he was playing that county fairs and everything throughout his career. Okay, but he inspired maybe hundreds or thousands of people who became successful in music just because of the sheer wizardry of his. You know his songs, his voice, you know his ability to play a guitar and everything else.
So they did it and there was Bruce Springsteen was saying that he was like an 18 year old or 19 year old and was a, you know, got a really lucky gig at a fair in Pennsylvania county fair or something like that and as backup to Chuck Berry and he was just amazed.
So they all got there about five, six hours. All the musicians got there five or six hours. And you know, four, five, four hours, chuck Berry's not there. Three hours Chuck Berry's not there. One hour Chuck Berry's not there. 20 minutes before the presentation, chuck Berry comes in, ignores the musicians, goes in to see the manager and comes out with a bag that's got his money in it in cash and then he just starts tuning those instruments. And finally Bruce Springsteen goes up to Chuck Berry and says Mr Berry. He says yes, boy. He says what are we going to play? He says what do we going to play, boy? We're going to play Chuck Berry music. That was his prep.
Dean: That was his prep yeah.
Dan: The name of that movie.
Dean: I need to watch that because.
Dan: No, just plug in. Keith Richards, yes, Just his you know documentary on Chuck Berry. He'll come up with it.
But there's a great scene near the end of the movie where they go back to a theater in St Louis where, when he was growing up, chuck Berry had to sit in the balcony because he was black. It was, you know, wasn't segregated, that they couldn't go to the theater, but they had to sit in a certain section where they didn't have drinking fountains and didn't really have bathrooms, you know. And then they put on an actual performance in that theater as part of the documentary and it just shows the complete circle of him, starting when he couldn't be in the main part of the auditorium, certainly couldn't be on stage, and then being the star, and, but one of the things, they went and visited his home, which he had and this had, you know, his entire life. I think it may have been his parents home, but he had the home and it was pristine.
You know it was beautifully kept up, not a, not a, you know, a rundown part of town, but not in a rich part of town either. It was you know sort of a modest house and everything you know, everything was kept up. It was you know, it was nothing rundown about it. And he was just taken through the house and they went to a door and he opened the door and their shelf on both sides were paint cans and paint brushes.
And Keith Richards said what's this? He says well, you know, sometimes I didn't have gigs all the time, so I was a house painter. He says I paint houses. Wow, he says yeah, but yeah, but you know, that's in the past. That's in the past. He says why do you still keep? You know the brushes were fresh, the cans were cans. He says why are you keeping that round and check where? He says well, you never know.
Dean: Oh, you never know. Wow, I would have to watch this. That sounds fascinating.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I love things like that, so that's really I think that'll be a good find. Good Now, I know what I'm in.
Dan: Yeah, it's just a really, but he didn't believe in who's you know he just didn't believe in who's you know? Is there a way I can solve this problem with doing nothing. No, well, yeah, is there a? Way of solving the problem of too much fame and success without doing. Without doing anything?
Dean: Yes, yeah, right, right, right. I mean wow, I mean yeah, I'm fascinated that I haven't heard about this before. So I almost like I just love that.
Dan: Yeah, it's a long time ago. I mean, it's a long time ago.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Maybe something I saw 25 years ago.
Dean: I remember it very distinctly.
Dan: I remember it very distinctly yeah.
Dean: So what has your insight been? In now, you know taking this out to the check writers as we say. What has been your experience? The reception of the ABC, thinking.
Dan: Well, I think it's a very simple, what could very much be a daily tool, because things are always coming up which are things to be solved you? Know, and I mean so. For example, if you handle three of them today, the amount of time you thought you're going to have to spend on them has been severely reduced by simply asking the three questions Is there any way I can solve this by doing nothing. What's the least I have to do, and who could do my least?
Well probably you were thinking that might take five or six hours and it probably takes 30 minutes. Okay, right. You know, it sort of takes 30 minutes, and I find usually the thing that the entrepreneur has to do is they have to communicate clear results for the right person, in other words, clear results to be achieved by the right person, with a clear understanding of why the projects were important and what are the measurable success factors of the project, which we call an impact filter.
Dean: I was just going to say. If only there was an easy tool to convey that.
Dan: There is one. It's called the impact filter, but if you handle that, then you've watched yourself probably four or five hours today which gives you time now to prepare for tomorrow. Okay. So you want to get yourself that you're not looking at today's growth problems. You're looking at tomorrow's growth problems, yes, okay.
And you know, and what I've noticed with me is then that day I can put the. You know, this is a newly created tool, but before what I do is I can say okay, all clear and communicated about tomorrow, then I can move it another day in the future. And I keep buying myself days in the future by using this tool. I mean this has just occurred to me, you know, since I have one, as I created the tool for myself. And if it worked for myself, then there's a chance it'll work for the entrepreneurs.
But then I have a full quarter now behind me of it working with the entrepreneurs and then I just move it more and more into the future. But I think it's you know, it'll already be in the client website for their tool inventory so that they'll be able to do it. But if you just had a habit of always the day before you're solving tomorrow's problems. I like that, that's when that really works over 25 years.
Dean: Yeah, that's the consistency thing. Right is spending some time. What would I like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow being the operative for in the future? Yeah, I've been. I've been constantly evolving and experimenting on myself with different ways of organizing things like that, and you know, the gotten down to the plank, the pixel, the minimum unit of time being the 10 minute, the 10 minute unit where we have 110 minute units in a day, basically to up, deploy.
And I've been following those hundreds all the way up right like so. 100 minutes is basically to 50 minute focus finders, which is the thing I have the most, that's, the most immediate control over right what am I doing in the next minutes about about this.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And then the 100, 100 hours is basically 8am Monday morning till noon on Friday, is basically 100 hours of time linearly. And that, you know, if I take that NFL type of structure of week, if you're looking at them that way, that's a big, that's a nice Focus. You know that that feels like that. And then a hundred days is Essentially a quarter, you know, looking at the things, with some little buffer in between them, you know, like giving room for some free days and things Aside, but, and a hundred weeks is really you can do almost anything in a hundred weeks, yeah.
Dan: And so, yeah, I think that's the thing is I. I don't use my Apple watch for a lot of things, but the one thing I do is the timer and you know they have a timer app and my my favorite is 30 minutes you know, 30 minutes and and in other words, something may happen that requires a couple hours. I simply say what's going to get done over the next 30 minutes.
Yeah, okay, and the thing that I find is true that if I didn't have that 30 minutes, when I look at what did get done over 30 minutes because I had the 30 minute framework, I Always get much more done in the 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Then I thought or I get 30 minutes worth of work done in 20 minutes. But if I didn't have the framework and it would always take me much, much more time, right because, I would take score, a score of commercial breaks.
Dean: I know, and that's exactly true, right, like I do exactly the same thing. I've been thinking about what I really do, like my thing is running things through. I've been calling it the Deenatron 3000 that I've got the brain. There that I can operate right and yeah, if I treat it like a wood chipper, that I've got to feed stuff into it. They have it working.
But I've got a. But the thing is to pile up. You know, like when I look at the things is to have the hopper loaded up with sequential. What is the? What are the next things that I'm going to do on that Stuff? You know, the 10 hours thing, what are the next 10 hours about? Because I noticed that the Deenatron 3000 doesn't really care what it's working on. It is very open to Suggestion, right, and that's why I would say that jumps yeah.
Dan: I would just say that's true about the human brain and yeah.
Dean: Generally as long as the brain really doesn't get.
Dan: The brain wants to work on something and it does really care what it is. Yeah, it could be good or it could be bad. It does not care. It makes no moral distinctions. It makes you know. You know it Work on bad things just as with as much enthusiasm as working on good things.
Dean: Yeah, it'll work on one thing the same way. It'll work on everything you know and if you're putting on the, you know, putting on some direction of it, feeding in, setting up a context for what it is that's Happening this hour, yeah, really, or this 30 minutes, that's, yeah. I think it's just adding, you know, a contextual Management layer in a way.
Dan: Yeah, you know, it's like having not and then checking out if you're actually a manager.
Dean: Yeah, right exactly.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I'm not a manager. I'm not either.
Dan: I'm not a man manager, and you're not either you know I have to delegate Management, I mean. And the other thing is memory you know I delegate memory and I have.
I always have someone with me. I remember there was a famous platform speaker, I think in the 90s, okay, and we were at Genius. We remain platform at genius. I'm pretty sure it was genius. It couldn't been the 90s, because genius didn't exist, it was some other. No, I think it was a big you know industry Conference and I was and I was on. I had been on before lunch and this guy joined me at lunch and and he was talking.
You know, we should really work together and and so I was interested, you know, interested in the conversation, anything you know. Usually when somebody says we should work Together, usually means that he'd like me to work for him, you know.
In any way, and so I just given my talk and I had my team of I didn't have team members, but there were clients Strategic coach clients at lunch with me and he was talking away and we were chatting everything and then all at once he looks at his watch and he says, oh my god, I'm on in three minutes I'm. And he says, here, I just will hand us a bill. He don't have to rake on a rush dog. And this guy was more famous than I was, I mean, as a platform speaker. He was times more famous than I was, but I had spoken in the morning at like 11 o'clock.
I had had an hour and Someone came and got me at 9 o'clock and took me backstage and set there, you know. And we sat there and and I had three team members. I never traveled without three team members. Yeah, and the team members take care of arrangements and this person does that, you know, but I would never ever be. You know, just arriving. You know, just arriving, checkberry style.
I would never just be arriving, I would already be there, I would already matter of fact, what I'd like to do with speeches is go out and talk to the members of the audience, because I Pick up. Q I pick up.
Dean: Q's.
Dan: You know, it's like Jay Leno who, if you got there. He was already there two hours ahead of time and he was chatting with you know, and he was just picking up material. Do you know what?
Dean: Sorry but go ahead. I was gonna say, just on a similar thing, tony Robbins, who we were playing golf this is maybe ten years ago now, almost playing golf one day we're talking about I know I'm being successful when my declaration of it, we're talking about those things that you know, the number one thing, when I, you know, wake up every day and say what would I like to do the day, and Tony, when we were talking about it, he looked at me and he said dude, I don't have one of those days till March, and this was January, right, and his whole thing was a very different. He had that. He definitely had a what would I like to do tomorrow Approach to his life, because even in playing golf we were gonna. We were filming some video things for a program he was doing. So he arrived at my country club you know, two SUVs deep to six people and that you know assistants with assistants and the camera guys in the sound guy in the body, body guards.
Yeah, the whole thing, and that is true, like I played golf with him in in In Fort Lauderdale he was done in Palm Beach, but I played golf with him and literally they arranged the, they arranged the tee time ahead of and behind and have a, you know, to Security ahead and behind that are following the, just following, you know, a hundred yards behind us at all times. Very funny, right by not just keeping these buffers around around whatever, a very different approach yeah it's whatever system he's required.
Dan: But you know, I don't know. My feeling is timing and scheduling is idiotic and cratic. It's completely All in individual how an individual, what story they tell about their past and what story they're telling about their future. And that determines what the structure of today looks like that. So it's a structure and my, my sense is I don't, I never like being rushed.
Dean: Okay, I always want to be.
Dan: I always want to be prepared. Yeah and I don't like sudden surprises.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I really don't like sudden surprises and therefore, in order to Get that Structure around me, I give this, that same right, to all the people who work with me.
They don't have to rush. There'll be lots of preparation before him. Then there'll be no surprises. It's very smooth, it's very calm. Everybody gets just to, gets to focus and you know, focus on what they're doing and then this just floats through time. This little system, you know, flows through time. Now, yeah, I deliberately played such a low key person throughout my career that I don't need security. Yeah yeah, yeah, and my, my sense of the sense of success Be as successful and well known as you can without requiring a security person.
Dean: Right, yes, yeah. Warren versus Mark Zuckerberg.
Dan: Well, Warren Buffett, you know he flies by himself. He flies by himself. You know he's just got his briefcase because he comes in and goes out the same day. And you know he's got a private jet and he gets picked up my limousine company is actually his limousine company when he comes into Toronto and he wants to sit in the front seat with the driver and he just gets to the driver all day and when he arrives at a place or someone's standing, you know they're standing on the curb, you know, yeah, on the sidewalk, and they take him in and he comes out, and you know pretty.
You know, pretty much on time, and then he goes home. You know, you know he has his lunch with whoever and then goes home. Mark Zuckerberg has 24-hour security and the number of people involved.
For him, his family and his chief officers is like 70. He's got like 70. He's got secret escape rooms, he's got tunnels and you know, and you know, I think, what your structure around you reflects, whether you think it's a safe world or a dangerous world. I think that's great. I think it's a safe world as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know it's dangerous for others, but I don't feel, I don't feel, or I stay away from places that are dangerous.
Right yeah, it's like somebody gets Arrested in Russia and then you know America's got this thing is. You know that the country will come to your rescue one way or another. And I said why are you in Russia? What? Why are you even visiting there?
Dean: I went right.
Dan: Yeah or China. I wouldn't go to China, you know, I would even go there you know it's like the joke about that.
Dean: You know what my yeah, I heard about these guys that were, you know, died in a base jumping Accident. Right, and I said that's this one thing. I know with certainty that my tombstone will never say Died in a terrible base jumping accident.
Dan: Yeah, what are those flying suits that people right?
Dean: exactly yes, is that base jump? That's what I was talking about and I think it is called. You know, I don't know what it is, but the human flying suits, but that's what they do. They jump off they jump off a cliff and, basically, just like those, they float, they've got a parachute. They've got a parachute yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and you know, I've seen videos of the ones where it worked. Yeah, yes exactly. They don't show you. They don't show you the other ones. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, why are you doing this? Yeah?
Dean: I'm never gonna die in a park accident.
Dan: Yeah, but I think it's, you know, different nervous system. You know, I think every nervous system is unique, you know, yeah, yeah, who's the guy who did in Yosemite Park there was a. It won the Academy Award and he did it with no ropes, you know, he just had his hands and feet.
Dean: Oh.
Dan: I don't know.
Dean: Yeah, well, Linda Well.
Dan: Linda, now that's a whole family.
Dean: Yeah right rope workers.
Dan: Now, this is the guy. He's a free climber. Oh, okay, right, right, and they all capitan is just a sheer cliff from top to bottom. You know, yeah, I think it's a couple thousand feet and anyway, and it usually takes climbers where they're using, you know, they're using the things that they drive into the rock and then they put the, you know, and they usually takes them A day and a half to do it, not you know, which requires that they stay overnight.
They have to sleep right and that's you know and everything else. I think he did it top to bottom in about two and a half hours yeah. I just thought wow and he had a film crew at the bottom and at the top and that they were filming the film that became the you know the free solo.
Dean: Was that what that was?
Dan: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what, anyway, but he just went to top to bottom, okay, and her bottom to top and in a Insanely short period of time. But he told the film crew that they wouldn't get any money. He said I am, you're only getting half the money and you won't get the other half, that if I fall and kill myself you don't catch it on film.
Wow you know, and they're kind of leaning out at the top. You know they have, you know they have wires in that that keep them safe, which requires a certain you know a certain amount of courage itself to do that the people at the top but thinking that the guy bait might fall. And yeah, everything you know and everything but different nervous system. I don't have that nervous system.
Dean: Me neither, me neither.
Dan: Well, we covered a lot of territory today.
Dean: We really did yeah. There's a lot of nervous.
Dan: There's a lot of nervous systems that couldn't do what we're doing.
Dean: Where we go, exactly yeah.
Dan: Yeah, well, what's the script here Script it's listening to. It's listening to what he says next. That's so funny. Well, what are you gonna say next? I don't know until he says it right, we know we're gonna start with.
Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Yeah yeah, anyway very enjoyable.
Dan: Always next week. I'm in just arriving in Argentina, so to be the weekend after yeah, I saw that we got a email from.
Dean: I love that, you know. Becca and Lillian, just keep us on Triad ever.
Dan: I just see it on.
Dean: I don't even have to put the Podcasts with Dan on the calendar. What we put on the calendar is no podcast with Dan.
Dan: That's the yeah, there's more uncertainty to that, isn't?
Dean: there, that's exactly right.
Dan: Yeah well.
Dean: I'm excited about the possibility of the 29th. And oh, okay that present, but I think that would be fantastic. Okay, okay, thank you, Bye, thanks Bye.
Links:
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(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean: Hello there, mr Sullivan, mr Jackson. You know, your Loudland announcer, who welcomes us to the call, always promises there's going to be others, but there never is. There's just one, just us.
Dan: We're waiting for others to join. I am other.
Dean: We're waiting for others to catch up.
Dan: That's exactly right.
Dean: Well, how?
Dan: did you? How do you feel you're an hour short? Yeah, I don't like this.
Dean: I've been confused about five times so far today.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: Part of the reason is my watch and my cell phone are in another time zone and that's reflected.
Dan: My computer is still in Toronto. Oh, my goodness, that's so funny. Are you in Chicago right now? Oh, got it Okay.
Dean: Yeah, it's a little F you from winter, you know you get this little kick.
Dan: Okay, I'll leave, but I'm taking an hour with me.
Dean: I mean, I mean it's go ahead.
Dan: I was gonna say we can't complain because we got an extra day this year. We got 24 extra hours, so I guess we deducted it from that surplus.
Dean: But that's in the past and that is, in the past, yeah, that's right, you know, I haven't really studied where that came from, but I think it has to do with farming Daylight savings.
Dan: Yeah, I think it was to absolutely to extend harvest times in the summer. You know, work more. Yeah, I thought we were trying to get rid of it. We, as a you know that's the inclusive version of they thought they were trying, we try to try to get rid of it.
Dean: Yeah, no, I haven't. I haven't really devoted an hour and a minute of time to that particular project.
Dan: I know, Florida is. I know Florida is like Arizona is considering staying on daylight savings time at all times and not yeah, and I think there were a lot of states that were looking to do that and I thought, oh boy, what a, what a mess that would be. It's already enough of a nuisance that Arizona doesn't participate.
Dean: You know I would vote for keeping it. Yeah you know why?
Dan: Because it's quirky, it is a little bit quirky, and you know what for me in?
Dean: Florida and I like quirkiness and other people, so why wouldn't I like quirky in the time system?
Dan: Well, you know, it's the only way that I mark the season changes. That for me is like the transition into, you know, spring, summer, and then I know, when we get to to light savings, we get fall and winter. That's the only thing. It gets darker earlier.
Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting because when this is, I'm changing the context here, but it has to do with weights and measurements. You know the metric system is a French creation. It was created, I think, during Napoleon's reign and you know he tried to standardize in uniform, make Europe uniform, because he wanted to be emperor of Europe, you know, then emperor of the world. You know folks like him sort of have those type of ambitions and so up until then, you know you had what is commonly called the imperial system of measurements in in the UK, great Britain.
You know pounds and inches and miles, you know and you know, and Fahrenheit, you know, was the measure measured. And then you know, europe adapted the metric system. And but once Brexit happened. This is in 2016, the merchants who were permitted to go back to the imperial system for weights in stores oh wow, growth grocery stores. But the bureaucrats who run the you know who run the system in Britain.
Dan: So you have sort of.
Dean: I think it's a bit of an entrepreneurial versus bureaucratic standoff. And so it's a real mishmash in Great Britain now, and I kind of like that, because almost everything else about Great Britain is a mishmash.
Dan: I think that's so funny. You know, it's like the.
Dean: I like mishmashes. My favorite kind of food is a mishmash.
Dan: There was a Saturday Night Live skit where the they were, you know, they were founding settlers, founding the United States and deciding, you know, the guy was saying how we would adopt a system of measurements. That would be, you know, there'd be one foot, is the thing, and they'll be three feet in a yard and the whole, you know, just made no sense because the metric system is such an easier system. You know how many feet in a mile. And they were saying nobody knows you know why it'll?
Dean: you know why it'll never happen in the United States? Because of sports. Oh yeah, 100 yards for football 100 yards, a 350 foot home run, seven foot center. Yeah, exactly Right.
Dan: Right, Right yeah but in Toronto.
Dean: Well, they try to impose it on the sports reporting in Toronto, but nobody pays any attention to it. No, you know.
Dan: I mean.
Dean: I've never switched over.
Dan: I've been in Toronto for 53 years, 1973, I think, is when the system international started. So you know, my first grade was Imperial, second grade was Si, so we started learning, you know, metrics and second grade, but I still think in Imperial I mean, it's so funny, we're always doing the conversion you know, yeah, and it's especially scary when it comes to temperature, because zero really means something in Fahrenheit, but it's, you know, it's sort of wishy washy and metric.
Dean: Zero is like 32, 32 degrees. Yeah right, Exactly yeah, 32 degrees. The only place where it meets is 40 degrees minus 40 degrees.
Dan: So it's exactly the same.
Dean: Yeah, but who wants to have that experience?
Dan: Oh man, that's so funny. So when is your next Buenos Aires?
Dean: trip. It'll be Saturday, two weeks, so two weeks from yesterday. From yesterday and this is our fourth, and this may be then the last quick trip. And it'll probably be six months. Six months Now, we'll do six months and then probably, depending on how it shows up, six months from now. I'm talking about stem cell here stem cell treatments. And how are you feeling?
Dan: Are you starting to notice the difference?
Dean: I'm feeling great. Yeah, the biggest thing is there's still soreness in my knee. And but I feel very confident about it. You know, I mean before there was soreness in my knee and I wasn't feeling confident because, barring any kind of therapy, it was going to get more sore in the future and I have definite confidence that'll be less and less until the soreness disappears, you know because, the cartilage is definitely regrowing.
Dan: I was going to say is there evidence Like do they quantitatively measure the? Yeah, you do it with an.
Dean: MRI. The MRI can show what it was, and what I learned is that it doesn't layer from bottom to top like the new cartilage. This is, you know, exactly my cartilage that I lost in through an operation, through an accident, in an operation in 1975, so long time ago. And so in those days they just, you know, it was broken, it was torn, so they cut it out, you know don't need anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they would glue it back together now they have a surgical clue now that they could glue it back together, but the but what it does, it comes in vertically.
So it's this constant extension, like it's you know, it's a half of an inch, and then it's an inch. Yeah and it's very interesting how it comes in. It comes in sideways so it doesn't come in. You know it doesn't come. That you establish a base and then it builds on the base.
Dan: Right.
Dean: So it's anyway, but I can feel the difference going up and down stairs. That's where my you know my daily measurement is really that more and more I'm walking up and down stairs. Normally.
Yeah oh, that's great. But the biggest thing is the brain stuff. Because they have an IV, you can't inject things into the brain, you have to. You know a thing called lymph which create a pathway into your brain. So you have the lymph sites one day and then two days later they put an IV and the cells are actually custom designed for the brain so they, once they get into your blood system, they go automatically through the new passage way that the lymph sites have created and then they go into your brain. But I really noticed in my EEG tests and then neurofeedback program that I'm in that my concentration, my focus, you know, not being distracted is improving enormously.
Oh, that's amazing, yeah.
Dan: That's awesome. So you've got, for example, we're.
Dean: You know we're 13 minutes into the podcast and not once have I forgotten that I'm talking to you.
Dan: Hey, there we go. I like that, that's good news.
Dean: Yeah, you know, you count your progress where you find it.
Dan: Yeah, that's so funny. So I have something for us to look at next for next time. I was talking with someone and they were sharing with me this guy, yanis Verifakis. Do you know him? Have you heard of?
Dean: him? Yeah, I think I have heard the name, but I'm trying to think where.
Dan: So he's just sent me a video called capitalism has mutated into something worse and he's talking about this. You know cloud. You know cloud migration or whatever, and how those things are, you know, really owning our. Well, I don't know enough to say. I just wanted to ask. I'm wondering if you had heard about him.
But essentially saying, companies like Amazon, like these big companies, are fiefdoms that control our. You know the way we see things like. You know your Amazon store, for instance, when you go to Amazon, is very different than my Amazon store. You know, based on everything that I all my, all the data that they have about me, kind of thing. You know when it used to be in on the mainland, when you would go to downtown or you'd go to the shop area, you'd have all the stores. Everybody sees the same. Everybody sees the same thing. It's more of an equal landscape sort of thing. But now you know there's advantage in knowing. You know, in having this established. You know data that everybody that's what they really have is access to. You know amazing amounts of data. So this cloud, the cloud, is really changing. Who's winning in the? You know, even in a global sense, but borders and everything don't really matter anymore. It's not about that. I wonder if that kind of resonates with what you know Peter Zion is saying.
Dean: But yeah, I think Peter Zion saying exactly the opposite.
Dan: Okay, that's why I'm very curious, right Like that's you know yeah, he's saying borders matter more than ever. Okay.
Dean: Because of transportation. Okay, so Amazon, you can do anything with Amazon, but it's got to be transported.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: And transportation is the great constraint you know, and so, for example, one of the problems that Amazon has with crime is traffic congestion in cities. You know so that they're promised that we can deliver it in. You know, if you order this morning, you'll have it by noon.
Dan: Yeah, I've had that happen.
Dean: If traffic permits. And then there's the labor costs of actually finding drivers that'll do this. You know, for more than just a short period of time. So you always have to be thinking of the labor costs. And yeah so so my sense is yeah, he's of a school. Whoever this man is, I'm suspecting that it's a man.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Does he identify? Does he identify as a man, I mean?
Dan: yes, I think so.
Dean: Okay, anyway, and yeah, it's the same thing. Capitalism doesn't really change. It simply changes the environment in which capitalism is being used, because it's really a methodology for growth. You know capitalism is? You know, first of all, it's about pricing, and Amazon are the great price competitors in the world. I mean that's. They introduced a whole new way that you know, whatever it was, the total cost of getting it to you and the price you had to pay, they could pretty well out compete anyone else. That's capital.
Dan: That's capitalism you know, and they're moving property.
Dean: You know they're moving property from. You know, actually the Amazon never owns any property.
Dan: You know they they're just really, unless they do create or white label or do things themselves, they're pretty robust at that that. That that's been one of the things. That that's been one of the things that they have as an advantage is that they Create their own brand of stuff, that they see things that are, you know, new products or new things that are Selling, and then they create their own version of it or white label their own version of it you know, and it's very interesting yeah.
Dean: Yeah, we've had not like a product per se but we've had a continual Conversation with the Amazon because with the three best-selling books that we did with them Hardy, the book comes out on a Monday and by Friday there's another book called who, not how, and it's the summary of who not how and you know you can kind of create a summary of any book now with artificial intelligence in about 10 seconds, you know 10 seconds, and then there.
So our book will be listed on Kindle and you know. And and then immediately, within a month, you'll have a first one in five days, but in a month, if it's really selling, you might have seven versions of summary of who, not how, and we said, you know this is kind of Toddry, you know we talked to them and we've had about five of them, five or six of them taken down Because it's too close to our stuff, it's almost, you know yeah, but that, and did you register the trademark on who, not how?
Yeah, that's and that's where we get them. That's what we get them with, because you can't, you can't, you don't have Exclusive control over a book title. You can have 10 books with with you know. With you know, by the same name, there could be 10 books out there called who. That's how. Right but you can't have been hardy, and what they were doing they had you know. Summary you know who, not how, by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy.
Well, that that you're crossing the line there, you know, right, you know, and it's like flies and mosquitoes. You know, you just make sure you have good screens. You know and you make sure you close the door and everything but it's a constant. It's a constant thing but you know, and maybe it does as good. I don't know if it does as good. Somebody buys the summary and then they say hey. I better read the book, you know so.
Dan: I don't know but.
Dean: But it's no different from knockoff Rolexes in Hong Kong.
Dan: Yeah, I see what I'm looking at. The thing now, the one right after it is it's not the how or the what, but the who succeed by surrounding yourself with.
Dean: Yeah, I mean that's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know it's Babs gets angry at it. I just considered it, as you know, it's like it's mosquito season, you know. Yeah, but I would say capitalism is no different now than it was in In the marketplace of Rome, and but it changes its methods. I mean it changes its presentation. That changes, but this thing about capitalism is changing. Let's create conscious capitalism, let's create humane. There's just capitalism and there's somebody's emotional response to it.
Dan: Right, yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
Dean: I mean Peter Zion. I mean, I've read so much, peter Zion. I could Sort of tell, you know, one thing we know is that the United States is better at it than any other country. Yeah, it's not universal.
Dan: I think it's that like. It's very, it's really interesting. I watched some of his. I watched some of his videos, which I was fine and insightful, and I'm always surprised that you know he gets three or four hundred thousand people a day watching his dispatches. You know they're always it's really well done. He's good at articulating things and it's fascinating to me.
Dean: It almost makes you want to go to Colorado too right.
Dan: Yeah, it's beautiful, right. I mean it's almost yeah yeah.
Dean: He says yeah, I, I'm Very easily communicating to you from thirteen thousand feet Everything which is kind of said you must be really in good shape you know, yeah, so yeah, but he's fairly. He's faster responding than anyone else in the world. An event happens on Tuesday.
Dan: And by.
Dean: Thursday. He's got an explanation for why it's happening. Yeah he's really remarkable. He's in my lifetime I've never come across anyone like him.
Dan: Yeah, it's really like I'm. It's it seems like such a macro level view of things that I'm always. You know I'm kind of fascinated why you're so fascinated with this. Like I mean, when you've read the, the book, you said like seven times or something.
Dean: I mean well, his latest book, yeah, seven times complete, yeah, seven times complete. Yeah, and you know, and what I'm looking for is there.
You know, with anything, when I read them, yeah, is there sort of a deeper level that he doesn't go into, or and so what I did is I just came out with my latest book, which is the great meltdown you know, and then I Explained that wherever you are on the planet, you're constrained by the cost of money, the cost of energy, the cost of labor and cost of transportation and no two places are equal in risk and Relationship to those four constraints and the US is just that keeping those four costs the lowest of Historically. I mean right back to the beginning. They've just been better for all sorts of lucky reasons, mainly because their geography.
Dan: The geography is so good.
Dean: I mean we talked about Florida, that Florida is proof that God loves. Real estate agents in the state of Florida. Yeah, because you have on the East Coast. You have three, three waterfront.
Dan: That's right exactly the ocean side and two intercoastals, and same all the way yeah the same all the way up the Gulf too.
Dean: Yeah, the Gulf that goes all the way to Texas. But thank, you and the north of Florida goes all the way to Virginia. I think Virginia or Maryland is still you know, the inner. And what it does is it prevents large storm shroom actually hitting the mainland, because that buffer zone of the inner coastal, you know, just stops big waves, it stops everything. So, yeah, so any anyway.
I mean you don't really have to go into the Atlantic Ocean very much once you start if you're taking a boat trip Private boat trip down the East Coast, if you start at Virginia.
Dan: Really go down the intercoastal all the way yeah. Yeah, yeah, started an apple receiver proves that God favors.
Dean: Yeah so funny. Yeah but you know, people are always trying to create a standardized global version of reality. That's been happening forever. But those four costs means there can be no standardization because it's I mean, it's different in or it's different where you live than it is in Tampa.
Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting. I guess there's regional, like when you think about it's transferable on every level, right, like the whole, because the cost of transportation you know has, you know, the further away, the more remote you are, the more costs to get something to you. And so even if I think now I see kind of the thing that you're talking about, like if you go to a place where the labor costs are lower, perhaps you've got a balance with the cost of transporting the reduced goods that you've done back to where they're going to sell.
So it all has to balance out.
Dean: Yeah, well, I mean you can take the huge migration from New York, you know, from New York state, to Florida right now.
And you know people explain it politically and everything. But just compare the four melt costs between you know the cost of money is lower in Florida, the cost of energy is lower in Florida, labor and transportation the costs are lower. And I mean there's a lot of political issues that make things expensive or inexpensive. But you know, I mean that. For example, the court case where Trump was found guilty, you know, two, three weeks ago for something that's an antiquated law from 150 years ago that's never been inflicted on anybody. That in a business negotiation he said his company was worth 1.2 billion and it turned out it was only 800 million and that's called negotiation.
Dan: Right right right. I mean, I mean, I mean right, that's the whole thing. Is something is only worth what someone's willing to pay.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. And they said well, this is fraud, but nobody was harmed, you know nobody was like any negotiation, nobody was harmed. You agree on a price and you know the banks made money. The other side made money, he made money. And well, the word is going out now don't invest in New York, don't do business in New York.
Dan: I mean the moment that hits and.
Dean: but the governor said, well, that's not what we meant by it. I'm sorry. Oh boy the horse is out of the barn, you know yeah right.
Dan: I mean that's pretty crazy. I saw Kevin O'Leary was talking about just that, that he was saying he's having some good weeks right now. Yeah, that's the death knell for a New York investment. It's nobody's gonna do anything there, that's easy.
Dean: So your melt cost just went through the roof just as a result of that court grilling.
Dan: Yeah, this is. That's pretty wild, and so in big news we saw that Super Tuesday last week and Haley's out, but not endorsing Trump. That's not throwing, not, you know not.
Dean: Yeah, well, she's likely the warrior in. Yeah, I don't have legs and arms left, but these are mirror flesh wounds.
Dan: That's right, I can still bite you. I can bite your kneecap, yeah.
Dean: And for the life of me I don't know what her game plan was, because I mean, she didn't do him any harm, but I just don't know. You know what her game was and doing what she did, do it.
Dan: Right, did you have to think she?
Dean: was bad. She was betting that the court system is going to stop him from being the nominee and that she would Right.
Dan: And I was just going to say that was. I thought that that's her game plan is hang in there. As to just the last one standing at the end, yeah. If Trump does get you know taken off the or disqualified or whatever which by the way what do you think the likelihood of that is? Zero Zero likelihood Okay, so and I felt especially after the Supreme Court case last week where it came up, because of the Colorado.
Dean: Yeah they sort of the states can't take them off, right. Yeah, and the nine Supreme Court, just as it was nine, did not.
Dan: It's not an enormous.
Dean: I mean you can't run a rick, you can't run a country this way, and I you can't have 50 states having different rules about who can run for.
Dan: Right, exactly.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: That's what the Supreme Court's for. You know, that's in the Constitution. Yeah and yeah, but I don't really know. I mean maybe she'll get a talk show on, you know, but you know I can't figure out where what her future is based on this performance, you know right. So yeah, but I mean, yeah, politics is, you know, politics is not entrepreneurial, it's an entrepreneurial business, you know you know there's clear cut winners and losers, and she's a loser right now, right.
Dan: And it's very interesting to see what the you know the RFK effect here. What's that's gonna who that's going to affect more? Do you know what the projection is or who is that?
Dean: going to hurt more. Yeah it's hard to say you know really. No, I mean, I saw him because Joe Polish had a man yeah, genius, and you know. I mean a lot of it. They were talking. They weren't talking about politics.
Dan: No.
Dean: And then we went to dinner. We went to dinner at somebody's house in Scottsdale and I was kind of say he's really sort of an ideal candidate for the president of the country that no longer exists, like if he had run in the 70s or 80s he would have led the Democratic Party. I mean he would have made it, but I don't think the country exists anymore. That would elect him president. But if he got 3 or 4 percent more of one party's voters, then he makes a big difference.
Dan: That's what I meant. He's like the green box on the roulette wheel, but he's the little edge that's going to the wild card in this. That could make it's not just black and red, it's not 50-50. He's a viable third party. I mean it's funny because we're definitely a three-party country in a two-party system. Really, that's the thing.
Dean: Yeah, I mean it's made a difference in some elections like 2000. Well, yeah, Ross Perot got Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton would not have gotten elected. But the other one is Gore lost because there were 50,000 Ralph Nader votes in Florida.
Dan: That's big.
Dean: I mean he lost by 500. He lost by 500. Yeah, that was never brought up. Well, it was the Haining Chats.
Dan: Haining Chats. That's right, that is so funny. Those words are fun. I've got some friends named Chad. I've got a couple.
Dean: I don't want to hate any of my friends who are named Chad.
Dan: Which one do you want, willardson or Jenkins?
Dean: Yeah, chad Johnson is one of our coaches. Oh there you go yeah, I've never had so many Chad's in my life, that's funny, it's not a common name either. No, but it must be contagious.
Dan: Yeah, I was like go through. I'm realizing Dean's not as common as you might think either.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Nobody gets called Bob or Tom or anything like that anymore. You know they're all the same. Yeah, exactly Exotic names, anyway, but yeah. And so the other problem was that with Gore nobody brought this up, but he lost Tennessee as home state I mean even as home state didn't vote for him. So there was a, you know but it's been more recently, although in 1948, I think, there were four people who got significant votes. Truman, sitting president, won, but he didn't win with 50%. He won, you know, 40, 46.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: So yeah Well, I don't think a third party can ever win unless it's replacing one of the, unless it's replacing the one of the existing parties you know, yes, and that hasn't happened since the 1800s.
Dan: Right yeah, did you watch the state of the union? No, I don't watch television. No, okay, but I meant the. You saw the highlights, or the summary or any highlights of it. I haven't had a chance yet to even see.
Dean: I mean. What I saw is I've seen angry old people talking to themselves on the street.
Dan: Right, exactly, and that's a video that very cleverly showed that he's given the same speech four times in a row. You know he's got the same exact talking points and it was so funny they'd show it from, you know, from 2000, and then they'd show 2000, this year, you know saying exactly the same, the same lines, and it's just. It was pretty funny, actually I was amazed.
Dean: There was. I love that Well, did you ever? When Disneyland California Disneyland opened up, they had recreations. You know they were in plastic or rubber form of Abraham Lincoln and you know, George Washington and that. Yeah, the hall of presidents, right, right, but they're, you know, their arms moved and their lips moved because they had they had little tubes that had fluid in them and you know it would.
They would manipulate the tubes, you know, and their hands would move. And they didn't show this at the state of the union. But were there a lot of those little hoses coming up behind him? I don't know.
Dan: Watch Joe move. Watch Joe move.
Dean: He's like so lifelike.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It's really. It's really the closest I've seen in. You know, a high stakes election president of the United States is as high as it gets when. It's like the emperor's new clothes, you know.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Nobody wants to mention that he's really. You know, this is the leader of the free world and say, geez, you know.
Dan: Oh man.
Dean: Yeah, you know. But you know you root for the home team whoever is the captain, you know regardless of who the captain is, you know so.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Anyway, but yeah it's interesting. But you know, somebody was saying I have a longtime Canadian member of the strategic coach goes back to the 80s actually, and I had breakfast with him last and he says you know, I just you know you know, he says I know Biden's bad, but I just can't, you know, I just can't stomach the fact that we would have Trump again.
There's something about it, and you know he was going on for about five, 10 minutes. And I've had other situations in Toronto where Canadians are voicing their displeasure and I said you know, I read the US Constitution once a year. It doesn't take long to read, it's only typewritten. It's about 27 pages, you know.
Dan: And most of it's just.
Dean: You know, it's a set of rules, you know, and I said nowhere in the US Constitution does it say that American politics have to be pleasing to Canadians.
Dan: Any more than the Guinea. Politics have to be pleasing right.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can be on the happiest convenience matters? Not at all.
Dan: That's so funny. Yeah, I can't wait to see how it all unfolds. I mean, certainly it's going to be an amazing six months or whatever we've talked about.
Dean: Yeah, no, I just if you just say it's not politics, it's entertainment.
Dan: Yeah, that's exactly right, pretty good entertainment, you know. Yeah, yeah, switching topics. Here I was. I've mentioned, I've been playing around with the, with the Adams.
Dean: Yeah, did you get the connector for the? I did.
Dan: I got that and on Monday I need to Connect with the gentlemen that sent it to me because, yeah, because, yeah, I need to figure out how to yeah the problem I explained.
Dean: Yeah, I explained in my email that. Yeah, it's done in FileMaker which no longer exists, so it's hard to Transport it.
Dan: It's hard to. He offered to, he offered to transport something that no longer exists. Right, exactly but he offered to help me, walk me through it, so I'm gonna yeah them up on that, yeah cuz.
I do want it, I do want to try it, but it's been very interesting to watch this just the way. This is Claire, yeah, yeah, it's just. It's so satisfying to see I've had, you know, it shows I've got ten reps down of my habit of waking up and drinking 500 milliliters of water, first thing that you can stack. I'm looking, you know, to stack all these things. It's been. This was a great week.
Dean: I have been working with JJ verge you know, I got your, we got your phone message, you know yes, yeah, where you yeah, yeah, together. A little Dean, you have witnesses now.
Dan: Well, that's exactly it, right it's. I said to Joe like, well, behind the scenes, while we were in Palm Beach, there was so much kind of rallying and you know, going around in the most supportive way possible for, you know, to help me get on track. You know, weight-wise, health-wise and, and you know Joe Polish has been just above and beyond you know, in orchestrating and you know organizing all of this I mentioned last week. You know he came and spent a few days with me and really helped me get things on track. And I've been working with JJ. So you know this was my first week, you know, full. Joe left last Saturday, so this was my first week with JJ. But having the daily accountability and systems around, you know what I'm doing. It's certainly a who, not how type of thing is really you know the importance of having a who that's kind of Onboard and guiding things.
But I get into this nice I'm accountable for in the more I send JJ, then you know the daily Story of yesterday, kind of thing with. She's got me hooked up on a Coronameter app which basically tracks my macros the protein, carbs, fat and calories of everything that I eat. She's helping with my you know menu selection and all this. So in the morning, after I drink my 500 milliliters of water, I Way every day and take a picture of the of the screen scale. Scale, yes, exactly. And then I send her my aura results for my sleep and readiness and yesterday's activity and Yep our goal.
You know I was on average when we were looking at it before. I would average, you know, 2500 to 4,000 steps a day would probably be the average, with you know probably 3,000 plus 3200, the kind of median of what, how many steps I would get in a day. So we've set now 4,000 is the baseline, the minimum steps that I get every day, mm-hmm, and so I send her that activity to show what that is. And then my Chronometer and she's got me focused on Protein. First, eating, my, you know, getting, you know, almost 150 grams of protein per day, which is really it's a lot. I mean, that's it's.
I never hunger. I'm never hungry and it's almost like getting into the routine of trying to lead, lead with that and stay well, I mean your body knows when it's had the necessary nutrition, and protein is the champ for giving nutrition.
Dean: Absolutely complex, complex carbs and you know, and yeah, I mean yeah, you can. You know you can eat 5000 calories of Simple carbs and you feel hungry.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. So this, you know this target.
Dean: So I'm plus water make. Water makes a big difference, absolutely.
Dan: Yeah, yeah, so it's been great. So the we you know tomorrow will be the you know the kind of Week on week weigh-in. But I'm already down like three and a half pounds from. So you know most 1%, 1% of that's the target I guess is 1% of body weight per week is a good to keep on and You're just getting in the habit and the routine and you know that every week she'll be in the cloud, that's exactly right, that's the goal 57 right now, you'll be 80, I'll be 58 in May.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so yeah, so yeah. Certainly taking this long-term view of by my Well, it's habits, I mean yes, that's all it is, you know.
Dean: What I was thinking, because I knew we probably Talk about this topic today, but I was thinking about just looking at habits as reality and they're either working for you or they're working against you, and that's yes, you know that's not an opinion, you know it's. It's just that you can tell whether the habits are supportive. Or that's supportive and the other thing I was thinking about, the gap in the game.
And I think that if you just think in terms of replacing bad habits with good habits. Yeah, you stay in the game. Yes, and I think the gap is that you need to be penalized for your bad habits. You know I think there's a internal thing. You know that you should feel guilty, you should feel shame about your bad habits. I said they're just habits, right exactly. I said they're just habits, right, exactly, I said they're just habits, right, exactly, and that's.
Dan: And so this, really this thing like looking at this week here, and I think that I had lunch with Leo or Weinstein yesterday. I went over to the Four Seasons in Orlando and we had a nice three and a half hour lunch and this was a lot of what we you mean Mr Good at everything.
Mr. It's so. It's almost unfair, isn't it? Yeah, the guy's just so smart and everything Right. We had some great. We had some great conversations and yeah, this was. You know the fact that there's nothing else you can do but what I'm doing habitually on a daily basis. That's the only path. It's not. That's the thing is there's no, it's not like this monumental effort because it's a big mountain to climb, you know. To get to the top of, you know, mount 100 pounds or whatever, you know, the ultimate benchmark is. But to climb to the top of that mountain just requires that you've got to take steps every day. There's no possible way to get to the top in one day, and that's where it.
Dean: And nobody gets more than one day every 24 hours.
Dan: That's exactly right. So having that benchmark of 1% a week as what you can safely and consistently lose is just that, it's just stacking those things, and a day a week is the perfect, I think, amount unit of measurement, because it's you can't really that's the most important, more than the daily even you know like the variation in one day.
It's more important over a week that you take that. So that's all I'm focused on is the week, and we're already at the routine I've already got. I'm very comfortable with consistency and habit, so I don't need a lot of variety in things. If I find certain things we've got now some meal combinations that really work for me, and if I can just, you know, stay on that track and continue to have the accountability, I think it's an inevitability, you know, is just the watching it happen. Well, it's like you're a profit activator, I mean just moving that to another thing.
Dean: I mean, if you're doing all late and they're all contributing to a profit, it strikes me there's no, there's nothing to fix.
Dan: Right, exactly. Oh, it's so funny, right. So, yeah, it's so funny. I mean just identifying that the key thing for me is just to continue raising the benchmark, right, like I'm raising my from 4,000 to 5,000 steps it's the minimum on my way to 10,000, you know, yeah, Do you measure steps or does that matter to you?
Dean: I mean, it's not my main focus, but if I get the right number of steps, I get the high number of attendees on my activity. You know, and every, you know, every quarter or so I raise the number. You know the stuff. So I do right now probably average around 6 or 7,000. And yeah, and I've done 10,. You know, on some days, you know, when it's kind of walk in nature day, I'll get more than that.
But you know but I'm doing a lot of things like my big thing that I've been working on for four months is I never get in trouble with my meals. I get in trouble with snacking between meals, and so I've eliminated that and I'm down, you know, five or six pounds just by doing that. Wow, yeah, yeah. So you know. Anyway, first of all, kudos to just you know. It really strikes me that Dean Jackson doesn't do anything and stick with it unless it makes intellectual sense. That's true, probably, yeah, no, I mean. Yeah, I mean unless I mean you know your habits and you know your. Yeah, we all have a measurement system on what constitutes progress. Yes, and my sense is until you get the way of something you can do every day, yeah, it's an intellectual satisfying, you don't do it.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And a lot of people try to make it emotional, emotional, you know that you know and everything that, but you can't sustain it.
Dan: And even if it is, even if you get to the point, I agree with you 100%. By the way, I don't perceive it as emotional, but you know that often that's. You know well what's the cause of this kind of thing you know. But the reality is that even if you were to uncover an emotional issue, that still requires them that intellectually you have to figure out what's the mechanics of what needs to actually happen.
You know it's like getting to the bottom of an emotional issue isn't, on its own, going to solve the problem, the same way that you know, figuring out the mechanics of what actually needs to happen. Yeah, happen, yeah. That's really the bottom line, but I'm very encouraged. This feels like a very different level of, you know, systemic change.
Dean: That's happened here, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it's a process you know. The process consists of you know and you keep. Every time I talk to you, you're adding some new habit to it. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And my sense is that once you get the momentum of 10 good habits, you're motivated to have 20 good habits. I agree 100%.
Dan: Yeah, I agree, because that then becomes a great game. You know, that's the I love to game-a-five things. That keeps us interested, you know.
Dean: Okay, I have a meeting in. Five Minutes with Daniel White.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: And who's staying with us in Chicago?
Dan: Chicago.
Dean: Awesome. So, but I'll be, I'll. I have you in my calendar for next Sunday.
Dan: Awesome. I'm not so we're going to be in Toronto next Sunday. You are going to be because on my calendar it says no Dan podcast.
Dean: Yeah, but we have, but I will be there, okay, perfect.
Dan: Fantastic.
Dean: And in the same time. So Okay, Perfect Okay.
Dan: Bye, bye, bye.
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