Just in Time

Dean: Hello.

Dan: Hello, Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Well, what a pleasure.

Dean: I missed you. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, I. I had two really great weeks at the cottage and came back and now I'm in full gear because our next quarter's workshop starts next Thursday, so I had to.

Dean: Very nice.

Dan: I'm hustling, I'm hustling. You do things at the last moment.

Dean: You know, there's a nice podcast I heard about that ran for quite a while called the Joy of Procrastination. That was actually my superpower was working doing things at the last minute.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I formed. I formed things in my mind, but I kind of. There's starting things really early, I find, doesn't really excite me that much. And I have a memory that anytime I've done that, I've gone back and changed it at the last moment anyway.

Dean: Right. That's the thing. When you realize the time to do things like the cadence or when it's needed just in time, delivery is the right thing. If you can do it without. If you embrace it and you're able to do it without stress.

Dan: That's the.

Dean: That's the thing. So I'll tell you what helps me is to wake up every day and then to ask yourself, okay, procrastination, what have you got for me today? Yeah, that's a good.

Dan: Where. Where are you getting all these tips? You. Some secret. Do you have some secret source that you haven't. You haven't shared with me or. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Here we are talking to each other about this stuff.

Dean: Isn't it funny?

Dan: Yeah, yeah. But it's really, you know, it really all clicks into place. I notice. And you know, and I don't. When I come back and I know it's time, look, you got to get this done and other people are depending on you to get it done. I don't feel any particular pressure. It's like I'm engaged 100% at this point and I don't have that. And I'll tell you something else Babs and I received by post. When we got back, we received the Happy Apple from Scott Donaldson. You know, the.

Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah. Have you experimented or tried it?

Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah. I've used it every day and I've done all six of the. They have signals. They have different signals. So for those who are listening, this is a device and it can either. It's got a adjustable band, so if you want to wear it on your head, you can just adjust it and adjust your head. Or if you just Leave it loose. You can wear it around your neck sort of like a necklace. And it's got a connection, this is a Internet connection. And you go on, you sign in and so you have to order this. It's H A P B E E hap B. And the bee is that it kind of buzzes when the signal is actually on. So they, it's a happy bee. So they call that the happy. And so they've got six signals and I think they're very smart about the way they did them. One of them is for focus. One of them is for calm. One of them is for relax. One of them is for alert. One of them is for sleepy. And I'd have to go, I don't have the, I don't have the menu here. And you put it on. And I've tried all six of them and the one, the two that really, I notice a profound difference within just a matter of a minute or so is calm. The other one is focus. Those really.

Dean: Have you tried them in a, in a double blind study where you have babs turn it on and be open to whatever feeling you get, but not know what the feeling is. I wonder if that if part of it.

Dan: I'm sorry, but at our household we don't do double blinding testing. That's, You know, you're just setting yourself up for trouble.

Dean: Oh, gotcha.

Dan: Allow double double blind into your household. I'm not sure. No, we haven't. And unfortunately Bab dropped hers and it didn't work. So she called them and they're sending her another one. She's sending this one back, so, so she's actually been using mine. So. But I can, I can have her, you know, I can, I can certainly, you know, we can go out in the lawn because that's not in the house and we can sit on the chair and she, we can do our double blind testing out in the lawn.

Dean: That would be fun to see. I wonder how much of it is the, you know, how much of it is the expectation of the outcome.

Dan: Oh, I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is, yes. As a matter of fact, we were talking about that this morning and we were just talking about polling because there's lots of polling going on with the presidential election right now. And the one that's been the most accurate, if I go back to the previous election, is one called Rasmussen Ras M U S S E N And it's strictly a phone only response. So you, you will get the phone call and it's a message and then they direct you to hit different keys to. In response to different choices.

Dean: Okay, so it's telephony and not. Not human.

Dan: Yeah, it's not human at all. And there's been the most accurate. And I said, well, that's probably because of the Heisenberg effect. Do you know what the Heisenberg effect is?

Dean: I've heard those words.

Dan: This is Werner. Werner Heisenberg was a very famous German physicist who got his name blackened a little bit because he was in charge of the Nazi atomic bomb project. So a lot of the physicists went to England or they went to the United States because. But he stayed in Germany and he was very prominent and he was a Nobel Prize winner. Everything else. But he's got an observation, it's called the Heisenberg effect, that when you're doing an experiment, the experiment is actually influenced by the experimenter. Yes. Okay. And that's especially true when the experiment is with human beings because the attitude, the approach, the communication of the person doing the, you know, the experiment with humans poll, you know, asking for polling, polling preference, the tone of the voice, how the person talks and everything else actually influences how the person is going to respond. Okay. And so if you. And what they're finding now is very few of the polling companies are impartial. A lot of them are owned by political interests that would favor a good polling result for the person that they want to win. And they find therefore the person asking the question, even if they pause a little when you give an answer that would not be in alignment with what the polling company wanted, that little pause on the part of the polling person would. Would affect how you answered the question or whether you answered the question at all.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Or whether you did it at all. And so it's what. There's no. But the Rasmussen and there's others, they simply have a standard question. So there's no voice change in the message. The message is a recorded message. So it's always constant. So in experiments you want things to be constant from one test to the other. A human voice is the least. Human voice is probably the least. What I would say, constant factor in any kind of testing because.

Dean: Right.

Dan: The person might, you know that. Yeah. If they're beginning their poll, they're fresh. If they're exactly right. Yeah. We're incredibly good at picking up the mood and the mood and the mindset and the attitude of people who are talking to us. So we're very, very, you know, for example, you know, with. They find that computer based medical diagnosis are about 25 to 30% more accurate than when you're dealing with an actual medical practitioner or a doctor or anything. Same thing with legal. Legal interfaces. And so for example, the doctor asks you something and you say something and the doctor says oh wow. Oh wow. Oh, that oh wow. Just. Just changed all your, just changed all your answers from that point forward. Are he.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Are they kind of squint? They kind of squinted when you said really, really, you know. Well, really just change the. Just change. Wow. But they find that people are much more.

Dean: Yeah. I can see in polls one of that would be a real, you know, what they would call a cause of variation. And imagine you think about. You multiply it by the. If you can have the exact question, the questions that you want to ask, but delivered by a thousand different pollsters and they're going to have a thousand different inflections and emotions and cadences and connection with the person. Whereas if it was automated or recorded, it's. There's no variation in the process. Yeah, everybody's.

Dan: And the interesting thing is that the compilation when all the polls come back in the telephone only in other words, it's entirely technological. All the compilation and all the results are issued before humans actually see the. See the results. Okay. So there's, you know, it's constant going in and it's constant coming out.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: They have a complete thing and it's been, I mean Rasmussen, their technology has been around for about 20 years, but over the last 20 years, if you took all the polls for the, you know, in elections and usually it's at the.

Dean: Well, this is really, this is a Cloudlandia multiplier in that.

Dan: Oh yeah.

Dean: In the old days you would have to individually dial, you know, a thousand people to get a poll result. I think minimum 1000. Is the statistical acceptable or whatever. They get a thousand results, but they'd have to manually and individually dial a thousand people and have that conversation where in Cloudlandia. Right now, even with. That's one of the benefits of 5G probably now is the ability to push out. You can connect with a thousand people instantly. And because you don't have to sequentially dial them one at a time, even if it's an automated telephony system, it's linear. But this being you could push that out and get the results instantly. I think if you had a three minute telephone survey, you could, you could get the answers in 10 minutes. Yeah, I think total. You could get the idea. That's a, that's an amazing multiplier of Cloudlandia. If you think about that, that imagine being able to think of a question and, or think of a, you know, a series of questions or whatever, record them one time and push a button and have it instantly connect with a thousand people and give you the answer in, in 10 minutes. That's.

Dan: Well, well, the other thing is you could do it. The other thing is you could do it with a hundred thousand just as easy as you could do it.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You had your. Yeah. If you had your list all set up, then a hundred thousand is mark. No more difficult than a thousand.

Dean: There was a while years ago, I don't know, I haven't heard much about it recently. But this reminds me of, I think there's a service that Google offers called Google Surveys where you can do a survey, you can do survey questions or whatever. You know, two random people, people who I guess have, have, you know, agreed to take part in surveys or whatever. But.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Do you remember hearing anything about that? I remember somebody was thinking about that as market research.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Brought it up at a breakthrough blueprint maybe five years ago or more.

Dan: No, no, no. I mean, it's not an activity that I would, you know, I mean, you know, I can bring it up with my marketing team, you know, your who's. I don't know my who's. Yeah. And talk to them about it. Yeah, it's very, very interesting. You know, another example of the Heisenberg effect as they find in drugs, especially mood altering drugs like anxiety reducing drugs and you know that they have them that historically they've gotten their best results in the first six months. In the first six months. When the new drug is introduced in the first six months, they get really, really good results and then it drops off after about six months. And the using the Heisenberg effect as the explanation for this is that the doctor was excited and the patient was excited when the new drug came out.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: So yes, there's a placebo. There's a placebo effect that the drug, a new drug has a placebo effect and a drug on the market for a while doesn't.

Dean: Yeah. New and new and exciting.

Dan: Yeah, new and exciting. I really heard about this. It's great research on it and everything like that. And you know, and so human expectation, human aspiration and human expectation plays very large part in the effectiveness of something new because you've aspired to have this new capabilities. Like I'm still within my high placebo effect as far as zoom goes now. I don't know. Yeah, I've I've wondered because I'm six months solid in zooming, and if anything, people say, well, do you get the, you know, sort of zoom fatigue? And they said it's kind of just the opposite. I think I have zoom addiction.

Dean: Yes, exactly. Well, you know, now the interfaces of these things are really for broadcast purposes and things. Anyway, I'm noticing right now, just last night we were watching TV and there was a show that was. There's a show called Impractical Jokers, and it's these four guys from New York that grew up together, and they have this fun show that they do. But of course, with COVID they haven't been able to go out. And, you know, they. They challenge each other to do. To do crazy things. But they've been having a series called, you know, Dinner at Home, and they. There's four of them, and so they have. They'll each prepare their dinner, and then they get together and have just a conversation, or they look back on clips and share inside stories from making the show kind of thing. But the way that the images and stuff are presented on the screen are really nicely done. Like, there's a nice display of it, and things move around nicely. And you realize now that's the way all these, you know, nighttime talk shows, like, all the late night talk shows are doing the same thing. And you realize in that moment that anybody could do that.

Dan: You could use this.

Dean: Because these guys are at home with zoom, essentially. I don't know what technology they're using, but it's the same. Essentially the same thing. Skype or Zoom or whatever, virtual, you know, gathering and that, you know, I just feel like, man, that's such a.

Dan: It's such a great democratization. Isn't really.

Dean: Is. That's exactly what it is.

Dan: Yeah. Peter Diamantis's 60s, you know, one of the. But democratization, first of all, you have demonetization, which. It becomes really cheap to do it. And then it's. The materialization is that you don't require to travel anywhere. You don't require, you know, you have to. You don't have to have an actual recording studio or anything. So you. Yeah, the cost of it. Yeah. And. And then you have democratization is that, you know, it becomes available to everybody as just a standard, normal, everyday activity. And that is just your imagination applied to that. That makes the difference. And.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And there's no curator of imagination besides an actual audience.

Dean: Right. Yeah, Beautiful. Right? I mean, it's.

Dan: So.

Dean: It's fun now to see the. The possibilities here is Everything is, is lining up. I've been going, keeping this collection, this running collection of people who are really benefiting from this Cloudlandia migration and our ability to connect with everybody. There's a recording artist, a rapper called Russ who, you know, has built up his streaming income now on Spotify and itunes and all the, all the digital platforms to $15 million a year. He's making now unsigned as, you know, independent artist through making. He put out for a lot of weeks, a song a week. That was his method, was putting out a song a week. And he's been doing it now for nine years or something. But over for the last, you know, four or five years, he's really kind of hit and is making all this money from his back catalog here, you know, that every stream is out there. And you start to realize now I'm seeing the big companies that are organizing around allowing independent artists to do this without having to figure out how to do it. Like he hooked into a company called TuneCore which allows independent artists to place their music on TuneCore who then distribute it to all the streaming services. So they charge a fee of, you know, whatever it is, minimal fee to just distribute it to all the streaming services. And there's a company now, I think called United Masters and they just formed a partnership with TikTok, a distribution partnership, because TikTok has really been responsible for breaking music, right? Like virally getting music out there quickly. But. But I read they've got 400,000 artists signed to them and have cumulatively had 5 billion streams, 5 billion streams of songs from their, you know, 400,000 artists and half a million distributed tracks. But you start to see now that inter. It's kind of like what Peter's talking about, interfaces where somebody is creating that, you know, an easy who being an easy who to get music out, distributed to all of these monetized.

Dan: This is very, this is very interesting because two things I'd say about this. I have a. Almost a 30 year veteran of strategic coach. So he's been in strategic coach since I think 91. He came in same as Greg Gishon. And Greg is a. Has a hedge fund and you know, prominent downtown, you know, right down Bay street in Toronto type of thing, financial district. And you know, but about two and a half years ago, two young, younger associates joined his firm and both of them had come out of the recording industry and they had investment, you know, they had investment experience and they had recording and what they brought with some research data with them. And they showed that if you think of the long tail, you know, the long tail model that you have a straight line on the left hand side and you have superstars, you know, you have Katie.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, you have all the top people. Yeah, they're along the line that goes right up straight to the top. And then you have this curve that goes down. And they said about if you go about 20% down the curve, you go from 20. Actually, I think it's. I'm not sure it's that near the superstars, but it's at a point, maybe 20, 25% down the curve.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So. And then you go from about 25% to 50%. There's a zone there from 25 to 50. And the data showed that these are people who are not famous, but these are people who are very, very talented and they have a following. And what they found is that the third year of putting out a new song, they're getting the same number of hits as the first day. They are the first, let's say the first six months. They put out a new hat.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: They have a constant loyal audience. And so what they've done is that they've created a fund where they go to these artists and they said, well, you know, we'd like to invest in you. And they say, so we'd like to give you this amount of money up front for what you're doing. And then there's trailers, you know, the trailers as they go on. But we get 20% of all your, you know, as the income comes in from streaming companies like United Masters or whoever it is.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: Then, then they, that, that would go into the fund. And then he sells the fund to, you know, to investors that they actually invest in this. And he says it's, it's getting bigger. He says the thing that he's been so struck with is that 25 to 50% is getting much, much bigger. The number of people who are in the 25. His criteria for being from 25 to 50% is much larger than it was two years ago. And so he says it's growing. It's growing because he said we're adding more and more artists and blocks of artists and it's kind of lifetime. They bought that property. They bought not 100%, they just buy 20% of the person's property. So the person has 80% or, you know, they don't own that. So that's one factoid I'd like to give you about Cloudland and how it's operating. But the other one is that I find the job numbers in the United States. So at the worst of the job losses, it was 20 million. And that was in probably the end of April. April, 20 million. End of April it was about 20 million. And since then about 11 and a half million. There's been 11 and a half million job number recovery. So it was 20 million and now it's about 8 and a half million. That are that 20 million, 11.5 million. There's jobs. But the interesting thing, and I'm relating it to what you're talking about with the huge number of artists who are making income, that I wonder how many of those jobs are brand new jobs that never existed before, you know?

Dean: Well, and I don't even know if you can call them jobs.

Dan: Everybody thinks that they've gone back, that they've gone to back to work. And I said, well, I, I just wonder if that's true. Maybe those jobs are gone forever. Maybe 11.5 million, three and a half million of them are brand new jobs. They didn't exist pre Covid, but they've been created during.

Dean: During COVID Do these, I'm wondering, does, does driving for Uber or, or grubhub or Instacart or any of those kind of things, does that count as jobs?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Or I mean, would that be.

Dan: Well, in the States. Job in the States, it states. It does. Yeah, they.

Dean: It does.

Dan: This is, this is Department of Labor, you know, and you know, they're pretty far ranging in what they consider to be a job, but they're working with constants. So whatever was constant when 20 million were lost, they're using the same constant for the 11F. So that is a really good question. Or whether someone who's doing streaming and making $15 million is considered having a job, maybe.

Dean: Right.

Dan: So that's what I, the fact is, and the reason I think that there's a lot of employment, paid employment that's taking place or paid transactions. I'll say maybe it's unemployment. It's transactions is the stock market. The stock market has been pretty informally good throughout Covid US Stock market, you know, and it's, it's as high as it ever was right now. You know, I mean, that's whatever it lost, it regained. And I'm wondering is because there's all sorts of bets on future economic activity. But the vast majority of this things that are being bet on as far as future, you know, I mean, that's what a stock is. It's a bet on a future value value of something. Whether there's just millions of new things to bet on that is actually propelling the stock market.

Dean: Well, I wonder where it's this. What I'm seeing is this. It is this. I don't know what's interface or the connection or the nexus of where Cloudlandia meets the mainland, where digital meets linear. That like the capability to create and distribute music is infinitely, you know, scalable in that somebody. There's more and more people. You know, it's getting easier and easier for us as a society to produce more and more music and that music

Dan: and to consume and to consume alive.

Dean: Yes, and to consume. But our ability to produce as a society is much greater than our ability to consume because we have to consume

Dan: it linearly in mainland mainland time.

Dean: Mainland time, yeah.

Dan: You can produce it in Cloudlandia time, but you can distribute it in Cloudlandia time, but you can't consume it any differently than you've ever been able to do.

Dean: That's exactly it. But now this is where I'm seeing this model. So this would be interesting to help me think through this because what I'm seeing now is, you know, we've landed on this point where we get access to every song ever recorded in human history that's digitized, available at any time, wherever we want for a flat fee that we've subscribed to that we could. But the maximum that we could listen to, we could stream music a maximum of 24 hours a day. Yeah, that's the maximum.

Dan: Per person. Per person, yes, that's what I mean.

Dean: Consumption per person is 24 hours per,

Dan: like food to a certain extent. It's kind of like food, you know, all the food you want. But yeah, basically there's a. There's an individual consumption limit.

Dean: Yes, exactly. But that. But the food is prepared linearly too. That's a mainland thing. So there's limited supply and demand of that. But when you go with video, you go with those things. Now what I'm seeing. So that's kind of where we've landed. Subscribing to all the music and you get to choose whatever you want. So it's truly creates a meritocracy for the music producers because if you produce good music that people want, then you get rewarded. Just like somebody could listen to Beyonce in one minute and then listen to you in the next minute, and you're getting paid just like Beyonce getting paid for that stream. Right now where I'm seeing this happening now is it's evolving into all of these linear mainland services are becoming subscribable And I've noticed this because as I was building out my. I'm constantly looking and building out my, my hula decks, my, my Rolodex of who's my hula decks. And as I was looking at that there are. I'm noticing a trend of any kind of who's that you need for specific services are offering subscription models now. So you can get all the graphic design that you need for a fixed fee by companies like Kimp and Design Pickle and unlimited Creatives and all of these services. So for, you know, 400 bucks a month, you can get all the graphic design that you need one request at a time. You can get all the video editing and preparation that you need. You can get writing. All the writing, researching and article writing and stuff that you want are getting down to these collectives where you can subscribe tap into this capabilities on tap for very. Just where it is now is you're only paying for what you're actually using. There's, there's all the inefficiency of a. You know, all the inefficiency of a linear relationship with one designer, for instance, is, you know, is taken away. So for $389, here's how it works. You can have unlimited design requests, but they're queued up and they work on them one at a time. You basically get one design per day. Basically. Right. So 20 day, 20 days you get 20, 20 design items for $389. And you think about that, you can add subscriptions as you need.

Dean: So if you want to have 10 things going at one time, 10 requests at a time, you could have 10 subscriptions. And so you start to think that 10 $389 descriptions or subscriptions, if you've got your design queue and if you've got enough requests, enough what's for the who's to do that? You would imagine that 10 of those subscriptions is going to be more efficient than one $3,800 salary for a designer.

Dan: Yeah. 38,000 or whatever.

Dean: Well, 3,800 times 3,800amonth. I mean.

Dan: Yeah. Right.

Dean: $389 a month. So $4,000 a month, you know, a $50,000 a year designer.

Dan: Sure.

Dean: That that output, the actual output is going to be more. So our, our ability to tap into just in time. Just in time output really kind of is delightful for a just in time kind of creative.

Dan: Yeah. You and I. Yeah, yeah. The one of the things that I think really is not looked at here. Is, you know, is different. So, for example, our team is 110 people, and we're. We're now hiring salespeople. We're hiring more salespeople. So as far as staff goes, there have been enormous efficiencies that have been created through zoom. I would say our productivity from internal standpoint has probably gone up 25 or 30% in the last six months. You know, the preciseness of projects, the preciseness of meetings, the preciseness of getting together and doing that, and the. There's kind of. And people are really. Are learning new, entirely new things. So we're redistributing different tasks to different people, and we're eliminating some tasks altogether. They just disappear. And the teams are actually creating better, you know, better projects. They're creating better, you know, better solutions and everything. And, you know, people say, well, you know, why do you have all those people? And I said, well, because I've learned from 30 years and going through various, you know, boom periods and, you know, market periods that there's a power, institutional power that you get because you have people who are working on a whole system, and they're working continually on the whole system.

Dean: And.

Dan: Yeah, and so. And I'm. I'm reading this Patrick o' Brien series of novels, and you may be familiar, one of them. Not one of them. Several of the novels were merged together, and they were turned into a movie called Master and Commander with Russell Crowe. I don't know if you remember that movie. Yeah, it's probably 2003, something like that, you know. Yeah. And it's about. It's about an 1800 warship captain by the name of Jack Aubrey, and they're fighting against the French. Mostly against the French. Some of it's against the Americans. So it's a British navy, and they were just talking about. As part of the power of this character, Jack Aubrey, is that the British navy was set up on an entrepreneurial basis that you would have a ship captain, you'd have a crew, and their main job was to go out and destroy the warships of other countries. But another part of it was to capture merchant ships from the other country. And so you might sink the warships, but you didn't want to sink the merchant ships because you would capture them, and you had. Part of your crew was a prize crew, and they would go aboard and they could sail the ship back to England, where the captured merchant ship and its merchandise would be auctioned off and all. There was a 10% that the British government got, but the other 90% went to the captain and the crew. So it was an entrepreneurial. The British Navy set it up as an entrepreneurial business. And so Jack Aubrey was called Lucky Jack Aubrey, because he. In a really good season, he'd bring back 10, 15 merchant ships that would be captured, and the ship would be, you know, the ship would be added to the merchant marine of the Great Britain. And then the merchandise had a value and it would be. It would be offered up. And so his. If you were on the crew with Jack Robert, you got really well paid. You got a basic salary minimum, and then you got this bonus on top. And so it really was very interesting. But the other thing was that the British Navy would only provide the ships with a certain amount of powder, gunpowder, for shooting the cannons.

Dan: But if you were a really wealthy captain, you were a big prize winner. You would buy extra. Extra. You would buy extra power.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: You would practice. Yeah, and you would practice every day. So you'd use the extra. So the. The crews of the prize ships were better shots. They. They were better with cannon. They were. They were better. They were faster and everything else. So it was like the best getting better. You know, that there was this. And. And very, very interesting. I mean, and he explains novel by novel, kind of the economics. And then when a ship's tour, they were out for a year, they were out for a year and a half, they come back, and then they were disbanded because you had to be given a commission from the government that, you know, you would be the captain of this boat. But then Jack Aubrey had this lineup of seamen. You know, he never had a problem getting really great seamen to join us, you know, and midshipmen and lieutenants and all the other people that it takes to run a ship. And. But it was the neatest insight into their thing, that they made it entrepreneurial. They made the whole exercise entrepreneurial.

Dean: Yeah, and very interesting.

Dan: But then he'd have these. They. He would have. These crews been with him, like the, the bulk of the crew, like 60% of the crew had been with him for 10 years. And they just understood everything about running the ship. You know, they. Yeah, and we have. You know, I have 110. And of those 110, 65 of them have been with Coach for more than 10 years. So we have. And they have what I call institutional wisdom. They just have. They just kind of know how things get done. They know how to put projects together. You know, they know how to work together. And a lot of it can't be written down in a job. None of this can really be written down. It's just right. This is kind of how things gonna work. So it's going to be interesting. And I think your organization becomes more productive. And what they're finding right now, after six months, productivity figures for the first time since probably the early 90s, 1993, 1944, the productivity in the American economy had not gone up at all. But now it's shot up in the last six months. And I think it's two things that good companies have stayed together and have gotten better and new companies have been created using much better methods. And all of them have been assisted by technology. Both the good companies and the new companies have been multiplied by technology. And I think that's where you're seeing the productivity. And it's that productivity that's being invested in the stock market. I think

Dean: this is really, you know, when you said that, like I look at our 90 minute book team as an example of a collected organization that are specialists in something that together create a really expedited process for something like somebody, any one of the skills or tasks that need to be done to publish a book. You could find someone to help you outline and interview you for the book. You could find someone to edit that or transcribe it and edit it. You could find someone to design a cover for you. You could find someone to lay it out and prepare the files and everything for create space and set it up on. On to get them printed and set up your landing page. Do all those things individually. You could find people to do all of those things. But the, the combination of, I think we're closing in on six years now, this is, I think, sixth or seventh year for 90 minute books. But it was funny. The inspiration that I used for helping our team expedite this improve the process was a video from the, the Melbourne Formula one race that showed a comparison of pit stops from the 1950s to the Melbourne, you know, Formula One race where the pit stop went from 57 seconds in the 50s where they would come in and change the tire and do the fill it up with gas. Yeah, polish the window, whatever it was, it was 57 seconds, off it goes. And then now, through teamwork and efficiency of process, it's under three seconds to change four tires, fill the car with gas and get it back out on the road under three seconds.

Dan: And so, yeah, probably the whole technology of the wheels and yeah, I think, you know, the infusion of gas now

Dean: is like, it's, you know, it's. Yeah, it's actually hydraulic where it sucks the gas into the car. Right.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: The whole thing is crazy. Right. Gravity. But all of that innovation to get something to what are literally the, you know, minimum of physical requirement or constraint that that's. It couldn't be done any faster.

Dan: Yeah. And you got some sense of how that worked behind the scenes from the movie Ford versus Ferrari, you know. Yeah. You know, that they weren't anything. And then they beat, you know, the number one team, Ferrari not only beat them, but there, I think the three of their drivers finished first, you know, the first time they beat them. And there was, you know, the Ford Motor Company politics was behind the scene. But if you set your mind to it and you've got really, you know, great teams. Yeah. In the book. These books, the. They're called the Jack Aubrey stories because it's about a man who is actually based on a historical Captain Bridge Navy captain by the name of Thomas Cochran, who was, you know, I mean, there's nothing that's depicted in the book that this actual character apparently didn't do. You know, that anyway. But it's very, very interesting because he's created this. And actually, Russell Crowe was a good actor. Whenever I'm reading the book, I'm thinking of Russell Crowe. I'm picturing Russell Crowe anyway. But the. The interesting thing is that in the British Navy, what was considered excellent was three broadsides in five minutes. So broadside is where all the guns on one side fire, and then you are able to accomplish this three times in five minutes. And it's really quite extraordinary because the gun comes back. They, you know, they. They put another. They put more gunpowder in it. They put a ball down, and then they damper it down, and then it has to go back out and it has to be sighted, fired. But Jack Aubrey, with this crew of this one ship, he was doing three broadsides in just a little over three minutes. Oh, wow. And that was devastating. He had a smaller boat, but the fact that he could deliver so much firepower so fast and his crew was so good and was part of the trick, you know, I mean, had all these tricks of the trade, and that was his tricks, and he. But he had all this prize money to buy extra power. So every night for an hour, they practice gunmanship. You know, they're out in the middle of the ocean and they'd put out empty barrels. They take empty barrels, you know, like barrels that.

Dan: Now whiskey would come in, but they were sealed, and they'd stick them out there, and then they would shoot for the barrels, you know, and everything like that, you know, but it was really interesting and everything was timed. They had, you know, timing and, you know, I mean, it's really fascinating because you read history and you say they were so good, but then you understand. Yeah, but it was all entrepreneurial. It was all entrepreneurial. The whole navy ran on entrepreneurial principles. And then it became more bureaucratic. It was already. You were seeing the build up. Bureaucrats who could interfere. Yeah, and bureaucrats and regulations and everything like that. Yeah. But my sense is that this Covid thing has unloosen things and really things of no value have failed and things of new value have found new space to, you know, get into production and get into marketing and get into having customers.

Dean: Yeah, this, I mean, such exciting times we've had. I just realized this morning, we've Sherlock, our 12 year old going into seventh grade this year. Luba's boy is homeschooling. And the. One of the things I've been helping him with is setting up a business to learn how to make money. And one of the things, the easiest thing we've been doing is selling stuff on ebay. Like showed up, you know, had him go through the process of researching, finding out how to set up the ebay account and got him all set up, learning how to post things on ebay. And we're selling just things around the house that we have that, you know, extra boxes and electronics and stuff like that. And so he posted them up and he had him do the research on the pricing. And, you know, so he put it up at the, what, the top price that the things were going for. And we didn't get any bites. And I said, what do you think we need to do? And he said, well, I guess we should lower the price. I said, well, we do that. Let's lower everything by 20%. So he went and lowered it, you know, by 20% across the board. Five items were allowed to have initially. And so now in the last two days, he's made three sales of the five items are sold. And I just, I was sitting this morning just contemplating on what that is that he as a 12 year old right now is literally free from.

Dan: Yeah, he just saved you an enormous amount of money down the road.

Dean: Oh, no, I mean, I didn't mean free for us. I mean he's free.

Dan: Free forever. Free forever.

Dean: Yeah, he's free.

Dan: He's free forever. Yeah, yeah. He understood. He understood. He now understands one of the most important truths of the world and that's the pricing mechanism of the marketplace that Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.

Dean: And he can tap in to get the money, but where you still have to drive the bureaucracy out of him because the sales came in overnight on Friday and Saturday is video game day. Like that's the weekend. Right. And he just was like, couldn't believe that. What do you mean I've got to pack and ship these today. It's the weekend. It's like taking that bureaucracy thinking like this is, this is my time. This isn't like, what are you saying? I've got to do that.

Dan: Yeah. That's really interesting. These are all. I mean, yeah, you've got yourself a little school there. An infinitely expandable, personally designed school. You know, I mean, yeah, he can be in the school for the rest of his life. Now he understands, you know, what an advanced degree looks like.

Dean: It's.

Dan: It's not trying to him.

Dean: I'm trying to convey to him that he's got now the path to anything his heart could desire. We're actually this going to read wanting what you want.

Dan: Because that's great.

Dean: Yeah, I think I'm gonna set him on that ass that the secret to life is wanting. Wanting is gonna drive everything for him, you know.

Dan: Yeah. He's leaving the world of needing.

Dean: That's what I mean is that he's free of depending on anybody to, you know, give him. He's in the results Economy at 12.

Dan: Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's delightful. You know, it's very interesting. A number of the. Because I'm. This last two or three weeks has been unique in the last six months because I really haven't had any, I haven't any zoom activity because I was for two weeks and I had prep days but. But we're continuing on with the two hours. So in every three month period there are six two hour, you know, check in sessions, little, little mini workshops for. That's for the 10 times and then I have seven for the free zone. So I have 13, 13 little sessions and I'm using them as well in our R and D labs. Testing out new ideas. Testing out. But anyway, the thing that has come up is entrepreneurs starting their own schools with other entrepreneurial families and then hiring great teachers from the teacher from the school system. One in Dallas, 20. The one. Our one client, he got together with 19 other families and they created a school. And then there was Waldorf school. I don't know if you know the Waldorf school system.

Dean: I do, yeah. My Stuart is. His wife is a teacher at a

Dan: Waldorf Yeah, yeah, it's about a hundred year old. It's about 100 year old. Things started in Germany in the 1920s and you know, it's. Yeah, it's a particular philosophy and won't go into that. But his kids were out the Waldorf school and all these other parents, their kids were at the Waldorf school and they just approached three of the best teachers by consensus, you know, among the parents who were the best teachers. And Waldorf is not getting a handle on this at all. They're not, you know, in Dallas just haven't gotten a handle on what to do with the COVID and everything else. So they just asked the three teachers and they're actually not young teachers, they're in their 40s and 50s with tons of experience, but really a field and they, they just named a price and the three teachers said yeah, and they said, you designed the curriculum. And one of the families had a ranch. Has a ranch and they have spare buildings. So they've turned all the spare buildings into educational sections and they have a five day week. Four of them are classroom and one of them is learning ranch skills.

Dean: Oh, nice. That's great. Because. Yeah, I mean that the Waldorf is counter to zoom learning and you know.

Dan: Oh no, It's. It's about 100. It's like Montessori to a certain extent. Like Montessori. Yeah. It's all in person and it's all totally. It's the best of the mainland that the mainland can do as far as education. But it doesn't, it doesn't translate well.

Dean: Yeah. Wow.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: This is all very exciting, Dan.

Dan: Yeah. It's an infinite ocean and we don't need all the body.

Dean: That's right. That's right.

Dan: Jesus, I gotta keep up, I gotta stay up. I said don't worry, just do something new every quarter, you know, make an improvement. Yeah, every quarter, you know, get, get more efficient, get more effective every quarter. You don't have to worry. Things I said, you're. You're in an infinite world now. And yes, I think this wave of

Dean: progress, this wave of moving forward, we talk about how it reminds me of. There's a line in Hamilton where it's look around, look around how lucky we are to be alive right now. Talking about the 1700s in New York was the place to be. The city was abuzz. But Here we are 2020 in Cloudlandia and look around, look around how lucky we are to be alive right now. I mean.

Dan: Yep, yep. Anyway, it's very, very interesting and I Think if you get a year or two years away from this, like it's 20, 23 and you're looking back at this and this will not have turned out the way that your grats wanted to turn out.

Dean: Right. I think you're right.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That's really all you can see is that I like that idea of the. The knowable future. The seeable future is really about three to five years, but other than that, you can't really. Who knows what's going to happen?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And I've made a statement several times and people have, you know, it's been a provocative statement. And I said, I don't think that all government bureaucrats are worthless. I think it's just very, very difficult for any of them to prove how they're valuable.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And I think in this world it's very hard to. Where you just have a process job and there's no beginning to it and there's no end to it. It's just a continual thing that you're doing. I think it's very hard to prove your value. Value right now if you've got that type of job. And that's.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: How do you measure it? You know, how do you measure value if it's a process? It's not. And the other thing is, I think this is good for project based work. Absolutely.

Dean: Well, that's what it all is. It's all project based health work. Everything. That's the key to everything. Love it.

Dan: Yeah. All right.

Dean: Welcome back, Dan. It's been great. I'm so happy that we got to.

Dan: Yeah, I'm ready now. I'm. I'm steady, I think. Except for Canadian Thanksgiving. I'm good to American Thanksgiving.

Dean: Perfect. Me too.

Dan: Yeah. All right.

Dean: All right. Back on track. I'll talk to you soon.

Dan: Okay. Okay. Bye. Bye.