Getting to Cloudlandia

Dean: Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: And that sounds a lot like Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: This.

Dean: It couldn't get here fast enough for me today, Dan. I had to. I come in early. I want to ring every minute of this out of the. Our time together today.

Dan: Oh, that's great. I've been.

Dean: I've had the most amazing weekend of discovery that I maybe can remember in, in a long, long, long, long time. And I've been going because I've been thinking about Cloudlandia and I've been thinking about the historical moves that got us here. Like where. You're looking at where we are right now. I wanted to kind of look back at what, what got us here. And I was thinking about, you know, essentially where we're talking about the sharing of knowledge or, you know, spreading ideas or spreading. Communicating really. And I look at the. If we just take the, you know, kind of four main things, which would be sound words, you know, talking and music and recorded stuff like this, pictures and print and video are all. That's the four big things that we have. Right. And I started going back, I started thinking like, the evolution of where they came from because you and I have talked before that the last, know, 30 years has really seen this sort of cascading asymptotic curves following, you know, the digitization of things. Text and then pictures and then video and, and all of that. Now when I really started thinking about going all the way back, like, how did we communicate and spread ideas? Like, imagine that our first things were, you know, kind of grunting and gesturing and pointing and things like that that evolved into. Into language. And then I thought about what's the first sort of portable asynchronous thing of communicating would have been a cave drawing that somebody put on a. On a cave to. To communicate something, to leave a legacy of that communication. Because otherwise, up until somebody did that first cave painting or drawing, that there would have been only immediate communication. Me to you, as far as you could see and hear. That was the reach that you had Right now with the cave painting, you're able to leave a mark that somebody else could view asynchronously while you're not there.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Then I start. So then the next thing up would have been paper, well, tablets or things like that. Being able to have a portable version of a cave, you know, where.

Dan: Yeah, they were actually, as far as we know, they were actually tiles, like pottery tiles. So they learned how to make pottery and then they were putting, you know, they would put marks on tiles and then the tiles could be carried. Yes, and they were durable and.

Dean: Yes, so you could share, you could share them and you could keep a legacy of it. And that could last forever for. For years, you know. And so now there was some sort of. I guess that's really where recorded history would. Would start because oral history would be how we would communicate. Otherwise people would tell stories or tell the stories of their ancestors and things would be kept alive that way.

Dan: Well, they estimate, they, they estimate the Bible, for example, you know, what's called the Torah and in Judaism is actually probably stories, roughly about a thousand years and the keeping and collecting and remembering and people would tell these stories. So stories became crucial communication vehicles because first of likes a story. The brain seems to be geared to a story and they have the great value of being beginning, middle and end. And a lesson, a lesson of some sort is. Or the lesson could be talked about and people could draw other lessons and everything else, but it became a communication vehicle. Stories became a communication vehicle and some of them were put to music and they, they became songs or they were poems. They were easier to remember because.

Dean: Poems, yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, yeah. And then you're on the right. Yeah, you're.

Dean: Then we got all the way. Then we got all the way. Yeah, then we got all the way to. Around 100 BC paper came into play where it was papyrus and parchment and things that were now portable that you could, you know, light portable, you know, doing with ink sort of thing that they would make from, you know, that was a durable sort of record and that then the first books were what they called the codex, which would be, you know, stacked pages that were bound kind of thing was the first things of the. Of books. But they were still handwritten and not, not duplicatable. And then, you know, the big advancement, of course, was Gutenberg. But what I found out. Yeah, what I found out in four. D. there was movable type in use in China and. But it was abandoned because it was impractical because they have such a vast, you know, number of. They don't have an Alphabet. It was all symbols and stuff, so it was impractical to, to do it. So it wasn't until 1450 when Gutenberg took that idea and turned the. I'm sure he didn't know about that idea from there because how would he. There would be no way to pass ideas from different geographies. Right? There's no, no way to know that. But anyway, he came up with the movable type and that created the whole. The whole thing and allowed, you know, printing to become a thing. And there was a whole industry built up around. Around that. But it wasn't until 1860 that sound was even possible to record. It was around the 18. The 1860s was a big period where we were able to record sound and to record pictures. And then on the heels of that, moving pictures, right? That. That became. All of that was available now by the end of the 1800s, like, completely viable in a format that we had it, you know, including the telephone, being able to, you know, communicate by voice to. To other people. But this is where it gets interesting is I started then thinking about, well, who were the people who sort of commercialized these kind of things. And I started thinking about the, you know, the music industry or the recorded audio.

Dean: This is the first kind of path that I've gone down here. But in 1900, there were three major record labels that sold collectively 4 million albums in 1900. They were the Edison Records, Victor Records and Columbia Records. So there were three. Three big companies selling all the music. And in 1999, the music industry peaked at the end of that century with $14 billion in sales collectively of the albums. Now, the thing is those. The three. There are three major record labels that basically own over half of all the music in the world. And that's a pretty interesting development. But in the 20s, Dan, there was. This is where we entered into now, a free zone collaboration where the Westrex system was invented, which was a better recording system for getting, you know, sound music, specifically recorded in stereo, where it sounded really good and, you know, you could print it on the, you know, on discs. You know, I don't know that they were vinyl yet, but the recordings that you could get were great. And they went to the three major labels to collaborate with them. And two out of the three decided to go with it, which essentially meant they'd be out of the hardware business because they were all developing their own independent vertical integrations. They were making the machines and then they were recording the things that. That they thought that people would want to consume, and then they were selling those things to them. So they had that vertical integration going all independently. And the Westtrek system kind of brought it to one better way that they could all adopt as a technology. And two out of three of them said, let's do it. And the one that didn't. Edison was out of business, out of business in 1949. So in less than 10 years, because he wasn't on board with the thing, it was like that winning format or technology took, took over. And then that had a 50 year run then of 50 years of that whole model that built the modern music business. Right. And now we come into when it went to digital. Amazing.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: I mean, this is, this is kind of like, you know, I was thinking about the evolution of things where they, you know, basically, if you look at the fundamentals of this back then, it was that the drivers, you know how Jeff Bezos always says, you know, there's three things I know that are not going to change is that people want as wide a selection of products as they can get. They want to get them as fast as they can, and they want to pay as little as they can. Well, those three things are what drive, I think everything, if you think about that, the, the, the things that drove the music industry and that's a parallel as I kind of look into the other things as we go, that, that's a parallel to it. The music industry for 50 years was driven by. Consumers want music, you know, new content. They need the studios or artists need somebody to record it. Because it was difficult. There was a barrier to recording. Only studios had access to, only record companies had access to studios to actually physically record your music, to make records. And that the people, consumers needed a physical copy of it to, to consume it. Right. So those three things were in place for those 50 years and here we are now 1999 and, you know, two out of those three disappear. We don't need physical copies of things because there's digital Napster proof that, that there's a market for free digital music. And yes, you don't need a studio to record it because Apple and Pro Tools and all the digital recording things made it possible that you could make an album in your basement, basically. And so what you're left with is consumers want new content. And now that anybody, you know, in the last 20 years, anybody can provide that content and have access to that bottomless pit of consumer desire. It's so, it's funny, it struck me as comical. Like I was thinking about the movie industry and you know, you imagine Thomas Edison, like showing somebody the moving picture thing and people, you look at it and go, wow, that picture's moving. Look at this. And then it struck me that, do you know who Ricky Gervais? Is?

Dan: Sure, comedian.

Dean: So you know, his voice. So I imagined Ricky Gervais being shown this and then saying to him, yeah, but I, I can't hear what he's saying, really, can I? And it's like this unending dissatisfaction so that. Well, I can't hear him. Okay, well, we'll add music to it.

Dan: Ta da.

Dean: And then we'll make movies, you know, and then it's like, well, I don't want to stand here and look in this box. So they made projectors to project the movies so you could sit down in theaters and watch it. And then it was, well, I'd rather stay home. So they created TV to distribute the stuff. And then it was, well, it's not in color, is it? And then color tv. And then that set off.

Dan: Not only that, but you had the problem with the antenna. Sometimes you got.

Dean: Right. Yeah, that picture. Picture's a bit garbage, isn't it?

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: And then the, Then the, You know, that then spurred the networks to create programming, and that whole thing was.

Dan: Was.

Dean: Had a monopoly for years and years and years. But then in the 70s, people started saying, well, kind of tired of these three channels. I want more. More. It'd be nice to have more. And then cable came in and there's all these things. And then, well, I don't want to be there. I can't watch all this. That I can't be there at. There's two shows I want to watch. So the VCR allowed people to record things, and then they want to watch the movies at home. And so the vcr, you know, Blockbuster starts producing or providing a way for you to watch, you know, first run movies at home. And then, well, I'm kind of tired of rewinding. So they created CD or DVDs so you don't have to rewind. And then it's. I'm kind of tired of going to the store. So Netflix says, well, we'll send them to you by mail. And then it's, I want to. I'd rather just stream it online. And we've evolved to. Now the ultimate level of this is. I'll tell you what, here's what I want. Access to every piece of recorded video ever produced in the history of man. I want it available instantly on any of my devices, for any of my family and anybody I give my password to. And I'll pay you 30 cents a day for that. And that's where we are right now. I mean, it's.

Dan: Of course, nobody needs. Nobody needs that, but collectively we do. You know, no individual needs that, but.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, I mean, you know, it's the lawn tail. Yes, Concept of the lawn tail. There are certain things that a lot of people want the same thing, but for the most part, people want their Thing.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and. And they don't. That they don't feel that they should pay any more for their thing than what everybody, you know, like there's, you know, a million people want this, and one person wants this over here. And the one person says, well, I don't want to. I don't want to actually pay any more than what the million people are on average paying for the thing that they're getting.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. And of course, the million people wanting the same thing are driving the progress.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: There's a lot of capital there. So the popular drives, the breakthroughs that the personal can take. I'll make a distinction between popular and personal. Yeah. Like I was reading today, I was reading an article from the London Review of Books, and it's about a 18th century wealthy guy by the name of Joseph Banks, who was born wealthy, married even wealthier, and made himself even wealthier through his business acumen. So it was wealth times wealth times wealth times wealth. And he decided that he wanted to go on a trip around the world. So he basically paid the British Admiralty and the British Navy to give him a boat. And he went on this year long trip around the world, went to, you know, the South Pacific because there was a particular moment, had been predicted accurately, that Venus would go across the face of the sun. And he wanted to, you know, he wanted to be there. It would be another century before that happened and could be seen, you know, so he had to go to the South Pacific to see that. And he collected 30,000 plants, you know, leaves and had them. He took artists with him and everything. Long story short, he basically created the foundation of gluttony in Britain with his one trick. And they found all sorts of islands that England planted their flag on them. And so, you know, it was a lot of things. And, you know, he came back and he brought all this knowledge with him, you know, and, you know, and the only reason this trip could happen is because this really wealthy guy got an idea and he had a lot of friends in the right places. And, you know, he knew a lot of very, very talented, what you would call early scientists who were subscribers to his, you know, his wealth of knowledge when it came back. And it kind of shows you how things happen. Somebody gets an idea, you know, and, you know, is in the right position at the right time to create something new. And it turns out there's a lot of people who have interest in and would pay for the right to take advantage of what that person had done.

Dean: Yeah, that's amazing, isn't It. I mean.

Dan: I mean I think you were mentioning Jeff Bezos, you know and you know, and you know there's, you know, there's two schools and thought about Bezos is that he's the best thing that ever happened to retail or he's the worst thing that ever happened to retail. And you have to look at the people who are profiting by what he's done. You have to look at the people who are being destroyed by what he's done. But there's no question that he's created a new type of shopping system in the world.

Dean: Yes, yes.

Dan: Yeah. An entirely new shot. I mean as much as you know as the impact of Edison or the impact of Ford or the impact of you know, name any century old or.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Or Gutenberg. I mean Gutenberg destroyed all the monasteries, right?

Dean: Well exactly.

Dan: There was no reason.

Dean: Well they had to turn to. And they're like they had to turn to beer. That's what happened for the monasteries.

Dan: I I would. I would say that the world is better off.

Dean: Exactly.

Dan: Out of every. Yeah. Every Belgian bear, you know can't probably came out of a monastery.

Dean: What are we gonna do now? Damn you, Gutenberg. They started drinking this cause there to soothe their pain. Yeah. One of them had the bright idea, you know what guys? We could probably make this beer ourselves.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That's how the industry was born. Soothing their sorrows from their.

Dan: Their mainstay of probably how it was commercialized. Probably every. Everybody just made their own beer. And then Monk said I bet we can. I bet we can make it better. And I wonder they had all the network of monasteries so they had to build in marketing system. Probably.

Dean: I wonder Dan of I would rather have.

Dan: I'd rather have monks competing for the making the best possible beer than putting their interests in other places. Yes.

Dean: But it's. There's some. Got to be some element of truth of that. Of that the you know, invention of the printing press really. You know, they had hundreds thousands of year run of. Of being the only way of duplicating printed. You know.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Duplicating things. And when they really went out of work. That's. I wonder. It's going to. That's interesting to see what started the beer making.

Dan: Well beer. Beer has been around for a long time as a fact the one constant when they find ancient pottery like you know and I'm talking Africa, I'm talking South America. When they find pottery they find residues of alcohol pottery. And this could be. You know, this could be 10,000 years old and they had figured out how to take something and turn it into an alcoholic beverage. So my feeling is that alcohol got discovered real early and probably a great need for it because life was kind of brutal. Yeah, it was kind of short. It was kind of short. And you wanted to imbibe something that made you think that everything was connected.

Dean: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: You know, it softened the pain, it extended the imagination. That probably made people friendlier, at least for short periods of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: I just can't, you know, I was looking as I'm, you know, I was watching just this endless. I've been, you know, searching history of all of these. History of publishing, history of books, history of music, history of video or motion pictures and all these things that, you know, you kind of started to see this behind it, this structure of vision capabilities and reach and kind of overlaying these things on. It was often the visionaries who invented the things were not really often the ones that capitalized on them, you know, and the whole. The industry kind of built around them.

Dan: Yeah, I've got. Since the time I saw you. Because I saw you on Wednesday. Was it Wednesday or Thursday? I'm not sure.

Dean: I think it was Thursday.

Dan: Yeah, there's Thursday. And that was at the Free Zone. Our Free Zone. Connector, connectors. The next day I did a. I did a 10 times connector, two hours and I had about 65. Pretty good for August. 65. You know, just checking in and I start with three questions. I always start. And the first question is, if you were starting your company over again, who's the first? Who you would hire? Okay. And then the second who and the third who. And then I had a fourth question. What's your biggest insight from this? And then I went into a breakout group with three other people and all three of them had had the same experience that when they thought about their future in terms of who's in that house, their vision got bigger immediately.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Okay.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And they were surprised by this. They were really, really surprised. And I said, I said, how big could this get? If you picked. You've got these three who's. And let's say each of those three who's chose three other who's. You're up to nine who's, but you've only chosen the first three. And I said, how big could the operation could be? And immediately they saw it wouldn't be local, it would be regional or national or global.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: So we went back to the main room and I put that out there. How many of you, when you think about the future, where the building blocks are, whose house. Your vision gets bigger. Every hand. Every hand went bigger.

Dean: That's funny. Go ahead. Sorry. I'll add in.

Dan: The vision gets bigger. The vision gets bigger. The capability gets bigger. The reach gets bigger. The moment they think in terms of who's not out.

Dean: Yes. So I'll add something to this because I've been having the same thoughts that. But the precursor to the who, the. The vision thinking is what. And there's a thing of what would you. What would you do? Or what would you would need to be done if it was all possible for you? Because the who, unless you know what needs to be done, the who is the. The end of it. You know, like, so when we say, well, what I. What I would do is have a podcast.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And then that leads people, they know they're exposed to this and say, yeah, I want this. I want to have a podcast. That's what I want to do. But then they traditionally do get caught in the. In the. How do I do that?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That's where the who comes in was, who can do that for me? Or I want to write a book, or I'd want to run. Run Facebook ads to. To get leads. What do I need to do? What. You know, when you get down to the. The core essence of what it is, people, if all you could do is wave a magic wand and your desires are.

Dan: Are done.

Dean: Yeah. That goes probably along the lines of your. What? Yeah, what do you want?

Dan: Well, it's the wanting. The wanting and. Wanting what? Wanting what you want, not wanting what you need.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And. Yeah. And that's why I feel that all the world's greatest problems will not be solved by trying to solve all the world's greatest problems. It's simply millions of people simply creating what they want.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And then somebody will say, hey, you know, if we put this and this and this together, you could. You could. You know, we've been taught, we've been hearing for ever in my lifetime, probably years, too, that we have to fix the school system. Yeah. We have to fit. We have to fix the health care system. We have to fix the health care system. And. And my feeling is that if you want to keep a problem, a problem, make it what you want to solve. In other words. In other words, problems love being tried to solve problems. Because the problem can get stronger that way if a lot of people give it its attention.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: That's how bureaucracies get created. They're trying to solve a problem. And, you know, the first Generation, second generation, third generation, by the fifth generation. They haven't solved the problem. But you've created a huge bureaucracy.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Around the problem. I think it was Deepak Chopra. I just saw a comment that he made once. He said the reason why we can't cure cancer is because more people are living off cancer than dying of it. Five times more people. Five times more people. I mean, if you think of all the research labs, foundations, all the hospitals, you know, and along with the charity balls and, you know, marathons and everything like that, it's the cancer has created. It's the cancer industry. You know, it's the cancer industry. And. Yeah. And probably it'll be solved by something somebody was just trying to. It'll be like post it notes. You know, the guy was trying to.

Dean: Yeah, accidentally.

Dan: Yeah, accidentally created post it Notes, which became a huge profit maker for 3M. But he wasn't trying to. He wasn't trying to create post it notes. It was a mistake.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And. And so my sense is that there's what we have to, you know, encourage on ourselves. I'm just saying, for myself as Dan and yourself as Dean, I'm not trying to solve any problems. I'm trying to get clearer about wanting what I want and then finding who's. Who can help me get what I want.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: I'm not trying to solve a problem here.

Dean: Right. That's exactly right.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. I'm not trying to solve hunger. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not trying to solve Covid. You know, I'm not trying to solve. I'm not trying to solve anything.

Dean: Right. Wow. And that's. I think that's really the vision part of the equation is really seeing all those. I think being exposed to capabilities is one of the keys for seeing what you want or getting spurred on by stuff.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. The second thing, I want to talk to you about what I did. And I'll send you both of these, and I think I'm going to repeat them. I've got another one of these, I think on the 21st of the month, 10 times might be worth your taking a look at what I did. And if you want to come in and do it, I'll send you the questions and then I'll send you the thinking exercise I did. And the thinking exercise, the title is called your three growth Levels.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And what I did is I created an ABC going down the left hand side. And. What I did is I simply put in that I've got three Growth levels. One of them, C is called Signature. B is called 10 times ambition, and the A is called. A is called Free Zone. Okay? Then I said. And then I came up with one of our clients about three weeks ago, came up with a neat phrase, and I just grabbed it. And his name is Will Duke, and he's a securities guy from Houston, Texas. And he just said, strategic Coach is the biggest intellectual shortcut of my life. Intellectual shortcut. Intellectual shortcut. I like. I like the sound of that.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. So I. I grabbed it, and I. In the second column. So you have ABC and then you have intellectual shortcuts. And I gave five intellectual shortcuts for each. Each of the three levels. And then I said, what is the growth, their growth that comes from going through these levels? And I described that. And then I said, what. What's our reward for them going through this growth stage? And I went through that, and I said, now I'm going to really stretch your brains here. So they just get a blank sheet that's got ABC on it and it's got the titles, but it has no writing on it. And I said, if you thought about your company right now and that you bring people in, okay, and you have a first level that you call C, maybe you put a name to that, and there's intellectual shortcuts that you teach them there. Okay? And then you have a B, and they're better because they've mastered the intellectual shortcuts at the first level, and now they've gone on to B, and then there's an A, and they've mastered two levels of intellectual shortcuts, and now they're the top level. And I can describe how they grow in each of the levels and what our reward is for each of those levels. Okay? Well, the whole place went crazy. The whole place went crazy. Well, first of all, they had gone crazy on the who thing. They'd gone crazy on the three questions where I asked him about their three who's. So I put the two of them together. People just said, oh, my God, this totally changes how I look at my company. And I said, yeah. I said, so where do you sense that there's competition in the marketplace? Okay. And all of them said, well, at the sea level. I said, okay, sea level. Okay. So if you're just operating according to your own sea level, you got all the competition in the world. Okay, what about B level? And they said, no, I'm seen as the industry leader in B. And I said, what about the A level? And they said, there Is no competition. I said no. You disappear at the A level. You disappear at the A level.

Dan: So what I've done, Dean, and why I was so pleased with it is I've actually given the Boy Scout handbook of how you get from tenderfoot to Eagle Scout and strategic coach. You know, like, like there's layers of mastering intellectual shortcuts. And once you accumulate these intellectual shortcuts, give you an example. First level of self managing company with unique ability, teamwork. And you have the lifetime extender. And you have free focus and buffer days. And you have the largest check. Okay, those are intellectual shortcuts. Okay, here's an intellectual shortcut. It'll add another 25 years to your life. Oh, yeah, that's. That's right.

Dean: Exactly. The intellectual shortcut. The lifetime extender. Right, Exactly. On day one, we've already given you 20 years.

Dan: Just adds 25. Well, if not to your. Well, add 25 years to your career. But would you be okay with 25 more years? Like when all of your competitors are retiring, you're just. You're just starting to feel frisky, you know. And then the second level, you know, is self multiplying. And then, you know, we, you know, deep dos, you know, there's about five of them. And then the top one, the free zone. I just talked about the five that we went over on Thursday. And I said, these are shortcuts that once you grasp these intellectually, you start doing things that are faster, easier, cheaper, and you get a bigger result, you know, and, and everything. And everybody said this just totally. Just totally. I mean, I'm just looking at my business totally differently. Yeah. Now, now, if you think, first of all, you already have these intellectual shortcuts, you haven't named them. The reason why you're operating at a half million dollars a year, or million dollars a year or whatever it is, because you got shortcuts that nobody has, but you haven't named them. So. And I said, so name your shortcuts. Name, you know, and put a name on them. You know, like 8 profit activated.

Dean: Right, Exactly.

Dan: Yeah. Well, you just named them. These are shortcuts.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: These are eight shortcuts towards profitability.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, you know, and I was just thinking of the little conversion lead that you workshop that you put together that our Paul and Rachel love so much. And I said, well, you could take any of your eight levels and create a Tuesday afternoon workshop. Three Tuesdays in a row. I mean, yes, everything you got is an intellectual shortcut.

Dean: Yes, you're right. I see.

Dan: That.

Dean: That's exactly where we're at. Yeah. Wow.

Dan: So the interesting thing is that this word intellectual shortcut, I think, plays a part of what you're, you know, for, you know, language is an intellectual shortcut. You know, the fact that in Europe they had an Alphabet of 26 letters and the Chinese had, you know, if you were really good, you. You knew 5,000 idiograms. Well, this is good. This is going nowhere, right. 5,000 ideograms is going nowhere. And, you know, 26 letters. Yep, 26. That's it.

Dean: We got it. That's exactly.

Dan: Shakespeare used them all. You know, Shakespeare used all 20.

Dean: Isn't it amazing that there's only. Yeah. There's only 26 letters. But how every piece of written content has come from some combination of those 26 letters, uniquely with a vision I just struck.

Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting because in whatever other language doesn't use those 26 letters, the greatest histories of that culture are done with the 26 letters, not with the language. Like the greatest histories of China are done with the 26 letters. They're not done with the.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Ideograms that the Chinese use. You know, Islam, all the greatest histories of Islam are done with the 26 letters. And almost all the vast majority of them in English. English language.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, the Alphabet is like digital. I mean, what it does for you is like digital.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, everybody can be literate. Hardly anybody can be literate in China.

Dean: Right. Yeah, that's really.

Dan: Literate means, you know, 2,000 ideograms. Well, good luck.

Dean: Yes. You know, it's an. It's interesting something that you said about the Boy Scout manual and the 1954.

Dan: I still have my copy.

Dean: That is something. Going to get one of those immediately on.

Dan: Yeah, just go. Just go to ebay and say, I'd like. Yeah, 54, 55. And they give you the exact growth structure you have to go through from the very first day. And you get this booklet when you. On the first day tells you the growth path that go. Takes you all the way to Eagle Scout.

Dean: Have you ever seen the. Any of the original, like, correspondence schools. Correspondence courses where it used to be a thing where you could take a correspondence course on something and by mail they would send you.

Dan: Yeah, I did. I did one of them.

Dean: Oh, you did? Okay.

Dan: The Famous Artists. It was called the Famous Artist course, and it was from Westport Connect, Connecticut. And I had, like, Norman Rockwell and all the really, really famous illustrators from the 1940s, 1950s, painters commercial. All commercial. And you got this big fat binder that had about 20 lessons in it, you know, and. Yeah, and it was very funny. I never finished it, but it gave me the whole concept of how I would structure strategic coach as, as did the Boy Scout handbook.

Dean: Yes. I. This is breakthroughs today.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So that, yeah, the correspondence course, I got some of the old, like ones from. I bought some, lots that were the, you know, the complete course of something. And it's, it's really, it was great to see, to see these. So, so much efficiency in the way these things are to send something laid out. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all print. I mean, they were all print, but, you know, and.

Dean: Yeah, these intellectual shortcuts. I'm looking at the things where I see what's happening now is the availability of capabilities from who's. The who's are always attached to a capability or that. That's the reason, I guess, you would have a who is to acquire a capability that you don't know how to do. Right. Because a capability would be a how, I guess. Right. A tool for a, for a how. Which could be a software program or it could be a mechanical tool, or it could be an algorithm or an intellectual shortcut that, that you're getting to get to what you, to what you want, which you've picked the four freedoms as a grand desire that people have. Right.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, Yeah, I think the, you know, I mean the free zone as a cumulative effect, increasing your four freedoms. Freedom of time, money, relationship and purpose. You know, and at a certain point you, you accumulate enough of the intellectual shortcuts for freeing up your time. You're, you know, you know, adding freedom to money, relationship and purpose. And all of a sudden you're, you're, you're in a different zone.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You're living in a zone that nobody else lives in because it's not one freedom. It's probably dozens and dozens of integrated freedoms.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, and. Yeah, and one of the biggest freedoms is the freedom from how.

Dean: Yes, that's exactly it. The freedom from how and the ability for us to connect. I mean, it just, I can't believe how, like when you really look at the, the history of everything, even taking what you and I do, even this, like our relationship, our ability to, to do this. We're not, we're, you know, we look back, what would you and I be doing a hundred years ago?

Dan: Well, first of all, it would have cost us a lot more.

Dean: Yeah. Can you imagine a long distance telephone

Dan: from Toronto To Orlando.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. First of all, it would cost a lot. And then what do we do with it after it, you know, could it be recorded? I guess it could be recorded. Then I'm sure I'd have to record. Recording phone calls back then.

Dean: We'd have to record. Yeah. To record our. Your end and record by.

Dan: We'd have to be. Each of us would probably have to be in a studio. You know, you'd have to be in a recording studio and yes. Each of us would have to have about five, six technicians to.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: To handle what we were doing. And then what would we do then?

Dean: What would we do? Exactly. I mean, wow, Dan. It's pretty amazing. Like we're to really think, you know, as I was saying, getting the whole history of really getting the magnitude of where we are right now and seeing like now turning and looking forward is what is the next. You know what. There's not many physical capabilities that we need in terms of communicating with the big four with text and audio and pictures and video that we've got the distribution model now with everybody we've got access. The reach that we have, you know, through the Internet, through the cloud is to everybody now it really is just, I think a period of, of vision is going to be the, the big thing. Vision coupled with who's, you know. Collaboration. Yeah.

Dan: Plus technology. Plus technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: The capabilities are endless.

Dan: Yeah. I told the group on Friday, I said, you know, this is the golden age of entrepreneurship.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But not, but not if you're focused on houzz.

Dean: Right. And that's the thing is that the, even the Houzz providing the, the house are really going to become commoditized too in a way. Right. Because once somebody knows how to do something, the, the solution for it is, you know, it's lesson.

Dan: Well, you can take your, you can take your Kylie Jenner.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know the Kylie Jenner example that we, you know, before you got on to, you know, Old Town, Old Town Road, you were talking about Kylie Jenner, you know, the first self made billionaire who's still a teenager when she did it. And, and the, the interesting thing about that she was combining the house are if you're a who, the hows are available. I mean, yes, she, she wanted to become who she was. And if her last name wasn't Jenner or she wasn't connected to that particular family.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: To that particular. She was, she was a celebrity simply by her birth name.

Dean: Yes. Okay.

Dan: And. And she took the birth name. She's a who She's a who. And to a properly focused who. Almost any number of house or pretty available.

Dean: Yes, she was a who in the reach department. Exactly. She had. She had.

Dan: Well, she knew everybody, too. I mean, she knew how to talk to.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: She, you know, she brought up in a, you know, in a family that was part of a society that had just incredible number of talented, you know, talented people and that she could call upon and put. Put them together. And yet think of all the. She's not the most famous member of that family and never would have been. Okay. And think of all the children of celebrities who end up dying of drug overdoses or end up worthless. Well, you still have to have some personal focus. You know, you can be born with all the advantages in the world, and they become burdens pretty quickly if you don't know who you are. Yeah, yeah. This is.

Dean: Boy. One of the things that was on my mind about that sort of thing about the who's, is, you know, Peter Diamandis talks about interfaces. Right. Like that. All of these apps and everything are like, Uber is an interface to connect people who want a ride to people who are willing to give you one, and Airbnb is an interface to people who are willing to let you stay in their house, connecting people who want to stay in somebody's house. All of these. These. The big ones there are. Are laid out, but it's almost like the next layer of this now is being human interfaces in a way. Right. Who's. Who's. That can be a human interface between all the technological capabilities that are available, because the technological capabilities are. Are there, but it requires the intellectual understanding of how to do them. I think it's really something. Who is really an intellectual.

Dan: Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And there, you know, I mean, there's been this communication, you know, in the tech world.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, sort of a narrative, these narratives that personal ownership doesn't mean anything anymore because all the capabilities are available without owning them. And I said, well, that's probably, you know, an interesting thought when you're in your 20s, you know, when you don't have any money.

Dean: Right.

Dan: If you're. But if you're in your 50s and you still don't have any money, you probably feel differently about it. You know, I mean, what got us through this whole area, you know, Sarah. Because Babs is a very, very good organizational manager, but she's an incredibly good financial manager. I mean, and, you know, and we've, you know, we've got this reserve that we build up, you know, through various Investments and everything over the years that in case anything really bad happens in the economy, it doesn't stop the game for this strategic coach.

Dean: Right.

Dan: We can, we can continue. And you know, and we immediately knew what we had available. And actually we weren't counting on the government, the two governments at all. And you know, I mean, it's turned out, you know, wow, the government's given us their own money to use the way we want to use it.

Dean: Right, right.

Dan: People said, well, you're using, you're using government money. And I said, well, depends on how you look at it. It's actually our money.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: They just decided that we would probably know how to use it better than they would. So they gave it back to us to work with and you know, it's been great and we're fine. And you know, you know, the terms for repayment are generous in the States. You know, actually we got it and you don't have to repay it if you use it for, you know, if you use it for jobs, for salary. And we have, and we've used it. And then Trump comes in today and he leaves all payroll tax up until January 1st. So there's no payroll tax. And just to make, he's still giving survival unemployment insurance, but he's dropped it to $400, you know, and see, at $600, $600 a week, you know, a lot of people said, why work at $600 a week?

Dean: Right.

Dan: At $400 a week, you start thinking, you know, I think I better go back to work. And so anyway, but anyway, the government has, in both countries has obviously learned some lessons from the pass and said, get the money down to the local level, you know, get it down to individuals, yes, at the local, local level, at the small business level. But anyway, but you know, our reserves are based that we believe in ownership, you know, and people, you know, people say, I was talking to Peter and I said, well, you, you talk about this, you know, that people can use your car, you know, but does anyone use your car except you? You?

Dean: Right?

Dan: No, no. He says no, because they might not know how to operate it. And I said, yeah, well, yeah. And I says no. I said, it's an interesting theory, but I haven't met anyone who actually does it. And a lot of people who were offering their proper property for a B and B aren't doing it anymore because they had too much trouble, trouble with renters, they had too much trouble with next door neighbors being unhappy with it and everything else. I said, yeah. I said, you Know it in theory, it's interesting, but I said in practice, it's. It's more complex.

Dean: The theory of the. You know, the whole music industry was built on ownership of the actual songs, the catalog, and that's where most of the money comes from. But now that's shifting, where artists aren't giving up ownership of their music. Moby said in one of the videos that I saw, he said the way the only thing comparable to the way the music industry traditionally has worked, it's as if you take a mortgage out on your house, you pay back the mortgage, and then the bank still owns your house. I mean, that's really what it's like, you know, and people are getting hip to that, that they don't need to give up ownership of the intellectual property.

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: That's really the thing, is the intellectual property at the vision level.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Here's the capability and reach.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And one thing that might be interesting because you've done this survey of the past over the last couple of days. Yeah. Is to use the word intellectual shortcut and go back and see if it's not the. What's constantly driving things forward are intellectual shortcut shortcuts. It'd be interesting to see what you come up with that.

Dean: Yeah. Well, I think that that's certainly true now that I think it reached the point. It's almost like things went from the C level to the B level to the A level in our capabilities. Right. Like, when you look at. First of all, in order. I don't know that the Gutenberg's press was an intellectual shortcut as much as it was a physical shortcut. Right. That was. I wonder how. How does that. Let's just do it for the printing press to guide our thinking here. If we said that.

Dan: Yeah. Well, first of all, just a little statistic on Gutenberg within, I think it was 30 years after Gutenberg. So that'd be 1480. There were 30,000 Gutenberg type presses across northern Europe.

Dean: Yeah. In what year?

Dan: Well, 30 years after Gutenberg's first.

Dean: 30 years after. Okay, 30.

Dan: Yeah. So there were 30,000 in 30 years. That sounds exponential to me.

Dean: Yes. Okay.

Dan: Yeah. So it's not the press itself. It's what the press can do, you know, and first of all, he was a goldsmith. I don't know if you know that.

Dean: Yeah, I did.

Dan: Yeah, he was a goldsmith. And so. And, you know, he was used to melting metal and pouring it into forms and casts and something connected with. I mean, you say, wow, it's obvious. Well, you Know, it's obvious what he did there. Well, it wasn't obvious to anyone before him.

Dean: So somebody maybe wanted to get a cast of their initials or something.

Dan: Yeah, it could have been. It could have been like that, you know, or stamp. They wanted a stamp or something like that. And he said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And you know, why. Why is the obvious not obvious before it happens?

Dean: Hey, I wonder when that. When did wax. When did wax stamps become a thing? Remember we used to seal letters with wax?

Dan: Long before. Long before that.

Dean: And then the ring, you would have. The ring would make the stamp of yours.

Dan: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They said, yeah. So obvious. It's so obvious, you know? Well, it's funny, like in the. I'll just finish off because we're past the witching hour.

Dean: That can't be true. That's ridiculous.

Dan: But in the Western hemisphere, you had some really, really advanced civilizations. The Aztecs, the Mayas, and, you know, the Incas. And what's interesting, they had toys. The children had toys that had wheels, but the adults had nothing with wheels on. So they actually had little wheels. They had little toys that kids would have. That had wheels on them. You know, two wheels. Two wheels. And none of the. None of the adults got the idea, hey, you know, we could actually create wagons. We could create.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Cart. Carts. And they said it was around for hundreds and hundreds of years, but nobody got the idea that you might. You might actually. So there were no wheeled. There was no wheeled transportation, even though they were very advanced. They had Alphabet, they had astronomy and everything like that, but nobody. And they said it was so obvious why they couldn't. The obvious thing is not obvious before it becomes obvious.

Dean: Right, right, right.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Wow, this is so great. There's a lot of juxtapositions here in terms of vision capabilities and reach simplifiers and multipliers, you know, intellectual shortcuts. There's a lot of great.

Dan: Well, there's probably no motivation to simplify until there's a possible multiplier.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and vice versa. And vice versa. Possible multiplier. Until there's a simple fire to multiply. Yeah. So anyway, very, very good.

Dean: Yeah, Dan, this was very exciting. I just can't tell you how intellectually stimulating it is.

Dan: Yeah, it is. But I think they're all intellectual shortcuts. There's a jump. There's a jump. You know, and so something. Something that is in 10 or 15 pieces suddenly becomes one single piece.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: It seems to me, anyways, I love it.

Dean: Okay, Dan, thanks. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.

Dan: Okay, by.