Thinking About Cloudlandia

Dean: Bing, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Right on the nose.

Dean: Wow. Well, welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yeah, welcome. Well, I. You were. You were the person who came up with the name. And so how long ago did you start pondering this thought of Cloudlandia?

Dean: Well, what. It really dawned on me, I think several years ago when I first

Dan: got

Dean: wind of the ghost restaurants, that was the beginning of it. And I think I was very early on in that. In discovering it kind of as a thing. And you think that has been, you know, maybe four or five years ago now, in the beginning. Right. And then you start to realize just been this kind of nonstop evolution there. And I started to realize how we really are. Everything is moving to the cloud. That was kind of the. The thing. And I realized at that point, we are 100% like our. Our life is the cloud. Cloudlandia is the main thing. That's what I was saying as I started envisioning the cloud as where we all are. Cloudlandia. This came as the. The, you know, natural kind of way of describing it. But that's really. You see it now, like, even how fast things are evolving. Like, you look at now, it's like the underpinning for the cloud kitchens, for the cloud. Cloud restaurants, how it started out. But then these cloud kitchens as a service now where anybody can. You can tap into. You can run a, you know, a cloud kitchen right from the, you know, from a rented booth kind of thing that these companies are setting up. And now the next level of it is that you can have a cloud kitchen completely as a service where they'll cook your recipes. You don't even have to do the cooking, Dan. It's like, totally. This is. I'm watching these waves just kind of cresting, and you start to see that who wins? Who ends up on the top of this? And I'm interested to get your take on this, because it may be a bias that I have as being a visionary, but it feels like the visionary is a. Is the. At the. Can ride the top of these waves here, you know, and literally not do anything. I think it's kind of come full circle where capital, traditional capital, Luba and I watched a documentary the other night about capital, the history of it. Like, back in the day, you know, all the capital was land and taxing, right? Like land and taxation was. Was where the capital that was inherited and there was no chance for anybody other than the. The.

Dean: The tippy top to advance capital, you know, and now we're coming to a point where it's almost like a complete Shift. If you took that, the high need for capital, which would allow your traditional capital, which would allow you access to capabilities, which would then give you. So the vision was almost less valuable or important back then or less, less opportunity for vision to come out. Right. Because you had to be paired with traditional capital. But now vision you can tap, and this is the word that I've come up with too is I think the next level of as a service is on tap. It's like all these things are going to. All you can access services. I think I mentioned about some of these design services where you can subscribe to a designer and you get unlimited requests just on app, like as you, you put it in and it's constantly pumping out whatever design you need. But the opportunity now for the vision and combining all these ready, ready to access capabilities is really an amazing. I mean it's just such a fundamental shift.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: All given. I think it's all driven by reach, you know.

Dan: Yeah, well, I think that the looking back, I'm just going to add dimension to this. The notion of controlling land really kind of ended with the second, the first and Second World War because it was actually one war where they had kind of a ceasefire. So the first war went from 1914 to 1918 and then you had essentially, as far as the big countries were concerned, you had like a 21 year ceasefire and then they went at it again for six more years from 39 to 1945. And you could tell what was happening, that the ability for countries to control other people's land started to disappear. And the. So in the First World War there were four empires. This is. These were big empires that collapsed. The British, well, not the British. The British went on, the British kept going, but the German Empire disappeared. Germans had all sorts of land in Africa, they had it in Southwest Pacific. So they had these German, you know, they, they were run by the Germans, they had German soldiers. If you have your troops there, you're an empire, you know, like if you're controlling it with your troops, you have it. The Russian Empire collapsed. They went back to being Russia for, for, for the time being. The Ottoman Empire, which had been in, you know, in force in the Middle east. One of the bigger ones actually land wise, collapsed. So just trying, trying to think, the British Empire lasted really till the 40s, 50s and 60s when India went in 47, 48. And then, you know, a lot of the Africans and they, they did a switcheroo. The British are kind of clever in the sense that they, they switch. What was the British Empire into the British Commonwealth. So these countries actually maintained a connection with Great. Great Britain and then Canada included, right? Yeah, yeah, Canada. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Australia.

Dan: Australia, New Zealand. Yeah, it was 50 or 60. Some of them, you know, small islands, but they're connected and they have. They have some semblance of connection with the British Crown. You know, like we do. We have a Governor General here in Canada, and this is the Queen's representative. If you look at our currency, you have the Queen's picture on Canadian currency. Some. Some of the Canadian currency. And. And then the Soviets made another. The Russians made another crack at it with the Cold War. You know, they took over Eastern Europe, and that was kind of the Soviet Empire, and that collapsed in 91. I would say 91 is the end of empires where, first of all, it doesn't make any money. It's very expensive. You don't make any money on it, and it's very costly. The Americans took a different approach because they had far. They had enormous reach at the end of the Second World War. So we'll connect that with your concept of reach. And they did an amazing thing. They basically said, what we'll do is we'll guarantee all the water between your place and our place. We'll guarantee all the shipping lanes between your place and our place. And what we're going to say is we're going to lend you money so that you can rebuild, build your economy, and then with minimum tariffs, you can ship what you make into the American market, which is the biggest consumer market in the world. And that went on, has gone on for more or less 75 years. So when people talk about the American empire, the Americans really didn't take over Japan. They really didn't take over Germany. They didn't really take over all these. All these countries, but they didn't still order. And then they said, build your economy. You know what we want you to do. Instead of making weapons, why don't you make consumer goods and you can ship them to our. You know, to our people. And, you know, we've got lots of consumer consumers here. So it was kind of a consumer empire. It was a production and consumer empire. And it's unique and you'll never see it again. You'll never see one country ever pull this off again. And it's because of the US Navy. The Nate. The US Is.

Dan: It's the greatest military force in the history of. The history of the world. S. navy. They have so much firepower with the ships and the planes and, you know, submarines. The Nuclear missiles. They. They have. And. And during this time in the last 75 years, all the capabilities that you're talking about are growing up based on the microchip, which, you know, really started 60s and 70s, the notion of a microchip and the microchip actually transforms everything. Your gross. Chickens go. Chickens. Yeah, that's his hats. This is what's behind it. It's the ghost chickens. Yeah, the ghost kitchens. They. They're the pushing the microchip capability combined with. Combined with the Internet and cell phones to. But what's happening in Cloudlandia is that individuals get empowered. Okay. Before, it used to be huge nations got empowered. Okay. And then companies got empowered. What you're seeing now, I think, is individuals being empowered, that individuals with intention can link their cape. Their intentions up with other people's capabilities.

Dean: Mm. And I, you know, I'm beginning to see, like, now you talked about empires and what I was thinking about, like, what that drew to my mind was, I wonder, in Cloudlandia are what's the equivalent land grabs? Is it like Facebook and Google and.

Dan: I think it's attention. Instagram, YouTube.

Dean: That's exactly it. And these. These environments are like the superpowers, right? Like Facebook with, you know, how many are they up to three billion combined, I think I read they have three and a half billion combined users with Instagram, WhatsApp and. And Facebook, because they own all three.

Dan: So that.

Dean: That helps them touch. Three and a half billion, which is basically everybody. I mean, it's just. It's really.

Dan: Well, it's a large. A large amount of everybody.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dan: yeah. So my feeling is that attention. It's individual attention that you're trying to. They're trying to expand the number of people who give them attention, and then they're trying to expand the amount of attention you give them.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. Now, see, here's the thing. But it's. You can. You can declare freedom from this anytime that you decide not to pay attention to them. So the thing that they fear most is what is it that individuals can do to avoid us? Okay. And. Yeah, and when they were talking about this, we. We have a discussion group that's been going for 19 years here in Toronto among about a dozen strategic coach clients and friends. And one. One of the persons is really following, you know, the. The worst stories about how people are watching you. You're being surveilled every day. And he's talking about that. And. And I said, you know, I don't have any evidence. I use the Internet every day for probably three or four hours for lots of different reasons. And I said, I don't, I don't have any sense that I'm touching the right buttons. That gets me followed. You know, I'm not saying, first of all, I don't pay attention to the ads and.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, and, and I'm just looking for certain thought pieces. I'm looking for essays, I'm looking for articles.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I'm, I'm looking for statistical information and you know, and so I'm, you know, I've got sort of a focus every day of things that I'm interested or I'll ask a question and I'll see what kind of answers come up from that, from, from the question. And yes, it's about 80% good. In other words, if you do a search for about 10 or 15 minutes, you know, more, you know, more at the end of it than you did when you started. So. But they're not dead on. They're not dead on. They're not giving me exactly what they want, but they're, they're, they're moving my thinking. Thinking along. So. But I've never used social media. I've never once actually anything on social media and I've never received anything on social media. Social media. Okay. So I've just avoided that altogether because it didn't really fall into. I said, why, why, why would I spend my time, you know, why would I spend my time doing that? I can't understand why I would do it. So it's interesting you can the all this thing that they're trying to control us. Well, they're only trying to control you. If your attention is up for grabs. Yes,

Dean: that's the crown jewel. The attention is the thing. I mean.

Dan: Yeah, but wasn't that true before, before all this started, in other words, that

Dean: I keep trying to think about that, Dan. That's what I try and keep thinking about that like what. What was happening with our attention. My attention before say, I know the day it changed is the day that I got my iPhone. That's the day that things completely changed because I do, I remember the difference. I mean, I had a Motorola RAZR phone, which was. No, you know, texting wasn't even a thing because you had. I never got into the BlackBerry, which was the kind of the first one of those email ones, you know, so I never got into the BlackBerry, but I had an experience with the BlackBerry where Joe Stump and a couple of other guys and I were on a golf trip in Alabama and we Were we rented one of these rock stars tour buses and we went down the Robert Trent Jones Trail in Alabama, which, which is a great golf course trip. And we were, you know, at dinner one night and this one of the guys had a BlackBerry and he's real cigar smoker and went online, you know, emailed his, you know, put the BlackBerry, his cigar contact in, in Hong Kong and got these pupan cigars mailed, you know, FedEx to the next golf course where we were the next day. So here we are at dinner in Hong Kong which was, I guess it was already starting morning in there. And when we got to the golf course the next day, the, there was the box of the cigars there. We all thought like how magical is that? You can, I mean that was 2002. And the reason I remember is because it was exactly when the shock and awe campaign happened in, you know, 2002, March of 2002. So that was like, you realize, wow, we're really like untethered from your desktop or your office environment. Right. You can be out in the wild and make things happen there. And then it was, you know, four or five more years before the iPhone came.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But I still, I remember looking up. This is a very funny thing because I am sitting in a chair right now in my house. You know, I have a reading room and I'm sitting here and I have the exact same chairs in my office. I was sitting in my office, got my iPhone and I remember looking up and it was, it was dark. And I remember I looked at the thing and I had been there for three hours. Right. Just like from looking at my phone, playing around with my new phone. And it went like that without any break, without any thing. And I thought to myself, oh my goodness, like that, where did that go? And it's, it's been non stop ever since. I mean just you look at that and everything. Remember I mentioned a while ago there was an article in the New York Times about the tyranny of convenience and that I just noticed, you know, we, we talked about the cloud kitchens and grubhub and stuff. Now we order from grubhub quite a bit. And I've noticed now that grubhub has an express order thing where you open up the grubhub app. It takes your, your last few orders that you've had and gives you an option to one click reorder what you already had without even logging in. Go straight to, straight to the checkout. Yeah, I'm thinking, man, oh man, oh man, this Is like, that's where we're going. I mean, and, you know, it's one step from there to, you know, hey, Alexa, order my lunch. Alexa, stop. Yeah, she's always listening, Dan.

Dan: Yeah, well, I've, I just. So we're probably doing two experiments here, you, you and I. I'm taking an experiment. How little can I be involved and still what I want done?

Dean: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Tell me how you're experiencing that. Like, what's your.

Dan: Well, first of all, you know, I have, you know, I have. Who's between me and my achievement. Achievement. So I've always been very, very comfortable with, you know, having humans actually do things, do things for me. And what I've done is that I've simply created an interface and there are two tools. Basically. One tool is called a fast Transformer where I talk about an experience we've had and I, you know, I identify first of all what worked about the experience, what didn't work about the experience, and ways of improving it the next time. And then we have a chat about that. So I've got an improvement tool, you know, that kind of transforms the interactions that I have with my team. And then I've got a new project tool, which is the fast filter. And for example, we're starting a Zooming Ahead discussion group and it's with Gord Vickman, who runs my podcast. It's a natural for him because he really is very, very good with technology and he's very good at expanding, you know, expanding participation, you know, with, with zoomcasts, with podcasts. And so I brought this up about six weeks ago. We had a discussion. I and I simply used the VCR that you created, the vision, you know, vision capability and reach. And I said, you know, I think this, you know, I was about three or four months into the zoom thing. I said, I think this Zoom thing is not just another technology. I think we're going through a fundamental shift with this. But I'm looking at it only from a business standpoint. I'm not looking what else people use Zoom for because they already have things that they don't need Zoom for. They've got social media and they can do all sorts of things. I said, I think this one is fundamentally a business, and I think it's more entrepreneurial than it is corporate. I think this favors very fast moving, you know, innovative project based entrepreneurial activities. And so I told him about it and then I tested it out. So this quarter, in the 10 times workshop, the last exercise of the day is called zooming ahead. And I said now just, you know, I've got four columns. First column is where you've zoomed, you know, how have you increased your zooming?

Dan: You know, and people have other platforms but I'm using zoom as the, as the general capability here. And then I say what have you heard about that you haven't done? In other words, where other people are talking about zooming and what they're doing with it, but you haven't done it. And over the next quarter what two or three new things will you extend your zooming capability? And then the fourth column is simply what's your insights from doing this? And it's a nice little, you know, it takes about six or seven minutes for them to fill it in and then they do breakout group and then we talk about it and everybody liked it. Everybody liked it. First of all, everybody discovered generally that they've been making progress that they hadn't really measured and this was important. And then they're hearing things, even in the breakout groups they're hearing things that they haven't heard before. And I said, you know, I just think this is a big deal. I think it'll be a bigger deal every quarter, quarter going forward and you don't have to break the bank here. You don't have to be number one in the world. All you have to do is improve your zoomability every quarter. And I think it'll have compound interest. I think you'll find an investment next quarter will compound over the next year every capability that you add to this. And, and then so I said I got appeal, I did six workshops with it and I said it's a good deal. So we'll just call this discussion group Zooming Ahead and we're going to make it open to the entire strategic coach program. Doesn't matter which level you're at. And so we're in the week when this is start going to be communicated and we're going to do one session month to start off with. It'll be like a two hour session, right? It'll be on zoom and, but that's, I'm telling you this because that's my way of getting projects started. It's through a manager, a project manager who will make it so. Will make it so. So all the organization for it is contained, you know, and if he asks questions and I'll do another, I'll do another fast filter to clarify the intentions a little bit more. But it's just an interaction.

Dan: My involvement never takes more than About a half hour to half hour to do the fast filter to fast filter and then have a discussion about it, you know, clarification discussion. So that's kind of how I've done that. And I, and I've been doing this more or less one way or another for the, you know, for, for the full history of strategic coach. I've always been setting things up as doable, achievable, measurable projects with someone else in charge of it. So that's, that's kind of my. That's my. And you know, we've got compared with a lot of entrepreneurs that I meet, like Genius X. We've got an army compared to their team. I mean, we've got, we've got 100, you know, it's about 110. We're hiring right now. We're. We're expanding our sales. Sales team. We're expanding our program advisors who their front stakes.

Dean: This is. I mean, talk about zoom forward. Your. Have you started now? The, the zoom?

Dan: Yeah, we've got two. We've got two. We've got 2 up and running. One, we started Los Angeles time about three weeks ago. Yeah, 29 people from five countries. But the, the British one, we started one Greenwich. Meantime, this was a week and a half ago. And we started and we have 26. But from. Really, this is a cap or 17 different countries. Only one person from the UK. Only one person from the UK right. And 17 different countries. I mean, from all over, but mostly going east. I mean.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, all the way to India and some of the, some of the Stan countries and. Yeah, yeah, you know, Middle east and everything else. Very, very interesting. You know, all. All English speaking, all pretty. Pretty adept at using technology. And a lot of them kind of had strategic coach in mind for the last three or four years because of the podcasts. Yeah. So, you know, their entry into our world of, you know, being interested in what we do came through the podcast. Including this, including ours, the one that we.

Dean: Boy, this is exciting. I mean, when you look at that, it's like from one central hub. You're like from Toronto or Chicago. You could.

Dan: I sit in the same chair too, But I sit in the same. You know, I've got my chair. I got my. Yeah, I got this chair. It's 20, you know, it's 28 years old. Yeah, I'm sitting there.

Dean: Are you doing Dan? Are you doing. Are these your. They're Dan workshops or with.

Dan: No, no, they're. There's their associate coaches. Yeah.

Dean: Okay, so you look at with the associate coaches of. Even from one one central location in Toronto, for instance you could go from. If you take, if you were to fully like extend out the hours. Imagine the reach that if the, if there was, you know, between 8am and midnight kind of thing, if somebody you know in that range how far you could fit. You know, if you look at six hour bands there of where that could. These are four hour started

Dan: change to the format. So they have a four hour workshop every two months. So they get six, six sessions. And we've thrown in that they have the right to come to one live session if they choose to. And that's just a freebie for them. That's just a golden ticket. Yeah, yeah. We call it, we call it the virtual ticket. They get a ticket and Lee Richter, who's in our free zone program was at Stanford University in the late 90s when they started actually exploring virtual how what was the virtual experience compared to. With the in person experience, you know, from an educational standpoint and what they discovered it was a 4 to 1 ratio that people are completely happy with four virtual experiences if it's combined with one in person experience. And. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, that was a little bit of wisdom that we picked up from Lee and I said, you know, well, first of all, why do we care? We've got the, you know, I mean if they show up, they show up. They give us a couple of days notice. We've got room and, and fit them in so we have excess capacity. And I think that's one thing that I've always been a big pusher on is have more capacity than you actually need because then you don't have to scramble too much if business picks up. We've got the capacity right now with the team we have. Our big goal is to get back where we were at the end of last year because taking a big hit in the lower levels this year. The lower level for us you have to be making more than 200,000. That's the entry level, but it's still competing with, you know, their home. It's competing with their family life, it's competing with their children's education. You know, it's competing with a lot of things. But at the upper levels, our renewal rates really good. Interesting. The upper levels are much more comfortable with zoom. So if you take the 10 times, say half of the 10 times people and all the free zone people, this is, this, this is a wonderful thing. They don't find it as an adjustment at all. It's a Wonderful. It was like they got a gift.

Dan: During 2020, the whole marketplace developed a capability that they already had.

Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, this is exciting. I can't. We're just calculating up seven months now. Seven.

Dan: Yeah, seven. Yep. Yeah. Seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: I think the real. Yeah. I think every.

Dan: I think one thing about your. The. We're not used to. We're not used to dealing with a realm that's unlimited and endless. In other words, Cloudlandia, it's unlimited and it says yes. If you have an idea. If you have an idea, there's a Cloudlandia capability to propel that idea.

Dean: Right. And I think that when you really look at, you know, this is how. When you're talking about the workshops now, traditionally it's for full day workshops on site. And you said the new ones are six, they're four hour, but you get six of them. Right?

Dan: Yeah. And they don't take a lunch break. They don't take a lunch break.

Dean: Right, Exactly.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Dean: So it's really even. It feels like more, but it's actually

Dan: a little bit less.

Dean: Yeah, it's actually, it's less. Less burden to deliver. What feels like more? Because it's really a total of 24 hours with no facility. You know, burden or anything like that. No, like having to be there, you know, the hour early and the hour late and the whole thing. It's perfectly on, off. That's what I discovered in doing the. The email. The lead conversion workshops is doing, you know, spaced out, three hour sessions.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Is I more allows you to do more things. You'd be more creative with that and have the same.

Dan: Yeah. One of the things really interest. Interesting people ask us, well, how much should you discount for the. You know, for sure. And I said, not, not nothing. It's the same.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And they said, wow, wow. And I said, we're saving them time and money.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, that's. You're exactly right. When you look at what the actual. Yeah. When you look at what you know,

Dan: I mean, it's the difference between now with the new ghost kitchen capability of, you know, of actually reproducing your menu in their kitchen and bringing it to it. People said, well, why would I do that? I can do it at home and save the cost of the kitchen there. And I said, yeah, think that through for about 10 minutes.

Dean: Right, exactly. Yeah. That's funny, right? I mean.

Dan: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. If you're thinking that way, you should start thinking, find someplace in the wilderness and start digging your bunker. Right now.

Dean: So it really is, this is the thing. It's like, you know, you think about attention now. You know what we're saying. It's so. It's, it's infinite and non stop. I mean it's the, the Cloudlandia universe is expanding constantly more and more and more and more and more content, more options, more things for us to explore. You're never going to as you say, swim the whole ocean. It's really. But the limited constraint which not going to change is the is attention, is the 16 hours of waking attention that is what 100% engaged. I've been having this conversation with Philip. The you know, from a 12 year old perspective talking to him about no you know, no online is. It's like his generation is the first fish that have no concept of what water is. You know, they've been completely. Was born into this fully immersed, digital, you know, bubble that we live in and it doesn't even have no frame of reference for a life outside of water, you know.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's very really interesting how on top of this the President is. Because I was watching his, you know, his little. Is about 10 minutes from Walter Reed Hospital. He gave a report from the front lines, you know, and yeah, and he's the first one who's that I can remember who's in the, in the midst, in a hospital in the midst of COVID who's turning to a. Yeah, he was wearing a suit with no tie, you know.

Dean: Exactly.

Dan: He didn't have a, he didn't have a tie on. But it kind of looked presidential. You know, they had, they had sort of everything. And he's got all these doctors coming out and saying oh he's, he's doing great and everything like that. And he's turned the whole thing into another, another, you know, it's another communication vehicle, you know, like having Covid and going through Covid treatment and then you know, featuring the doctors as is like his campaign staff and saying, you know, I really appreciate that we've had a lot of wonderful loving messages that have come in from all over the world and bipartisan were feeling bipartisan, bipartisan. And you know, and Babs was following that on her cell phone and she said, she says I got a whole series of, you know, things about Trump and trumping at the hospital. And I said yeah, yeah, yeah. I said yeah, yeah, it's different, but it's the same. And she said, well, it's different. Well, I said he's in the hospital and he's got Covid that's different. I says, what's the same? Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Who are they talking about now? You know, they're interviewing Hollywood actors which ones want him to die and which ones, you know, are wishing him good life. But in every case, it's Trump. Trump. I haven't heard Biden. I haven't heard the word Biden for now about. Since the news was announced on. I think it was Thursday that he had it and everything else is. I mean, he just sucks. Yeah. So if it's attention is capital, you know, you're asking at the beginning, he's got attention.

Dean: That's. I think you're absolutely right. And it's such a cynical world now where everything is going from the thing of, like, there's no possible way. Well, I mean, I'm not gonna say no possible way, but there's always a way for somebody to turn this into a negative thing for him or yapping it into a positive thing. Like, the best case scenario, you would hope that best case would. If you'd be asymptomatic or very quickly light symptoms and get some therapeutics and get over it and. And move on, that would be a great thing. But if that were to happen, then it's. While he was faking it. He's faking it so he could have to do the debate.

Dan: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Who was faking it?

Dean: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the whole. Yeah, exactly. Donald Trump was faking. Yeah, exactly. You're right. But then on the other side, if he gets really sick, that's a bad thing, too. Then it's the. The arrogance of it that now he's, you know, the super spreader, the researcher. They've started calling that super spreader event. The Rose Garden massacre.

Dan: Yeah. I don't hear the word Biden in here anywhere. No, the vice president, you know, she was. Camila Harris. She was. God, you can go weeks and not hear anything about her. I mean, what.

Dean: Oh, man.

Dan: They said, oh, she's the difference maker, boy. And I said, no, no, no. Presidential elections are about one on one. The number two doesn't really matter. And. Yeah, yeah, number two doesn't really matter. Number two is just a fire extinguisher, you know? I mean, number two is. Yeah. Do you know where your fire extinguisher is? In your house, Right? Yeah.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know how to operate it? Do you know how to operate it? I think so.

Dean: Check the, Check the tag on it if it's.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it up to date? And Everything. But here's the thing. I, I was so struck last week when we were talking and you were talking about these tick tock influencers who have 80 million. 80 million. You know what they're like? They're like, they're like land rush pioneers. Like there's new land and they claimed that. And but the thing is, it's, it's, it's not dead capital, it's live capital in the sense that land was kind of dead capital. Yeah. You own, you know, it's like what's his name who started cnn? What's. I forget his name right now. That was your Ted Turner. Yeah, Ted Turner. He's the biggest landowner in the United States. I mean he owns more land today, but it's dead land, you know. I mean. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean it's, you know, what's he doing with the land? He owns it, but the land. Doing it. Land. The land is doing nothing, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And it was only if he sold it and then somebody else made use of it that it would have any life to it. But the being a Tic Tac, you know, or a medium like that. But let's just use the Tic Tac. That's live capital. And that person only keeps the capital based on if tomorrow's as good as today.

Dean: Yeah. Like I'm saying, Dan, this, these girls, Charlie and Addison, you know, the two top TikTokers on a normal. Like just any, anything they tweet four or five times or not tweet any, any tiktoks they put up any day are getting 30 to 40 million views every day. Right. And that's. So that's how they're making, you know, $5 million or more a year just for.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Promoting other brands. But now they're getting smart. And this Addison Ray, as I mentioned, is doing her own line because of this capability factory that is, you know, allowing her to. Or helping her.

Dan: Yeah. Now here's the. Is it a measure of them or is it a measure of the capability they're using? And what I'm going to ask you a question here, and it's something that I think is not understood and that is that capability requires use. In other words, if you have a capability, you know, and it's a new capability and it's better than any capability before and it takes advantage of all the other capabilities but goes further with them, there's going to be some human that is number one in its use.

Dean: Yes. And here's the thing. This required, this is why These girls got swept, but with a wave, you know, this wave of everybody, all eyes on TikTok talk coming in. These girls were already here and established. And if you imagine a tsunami coming in behind, right. And now these girls are already just innocently playing in the water there, swimming and doing fun TikTok videos that, that they love to do. And then all of a sudden this wave comes and these girls are lifted early to the top of this. And given all this explicit, the tsunami is coming. There's these two girls on top of it all now. And everybody now trying to get on to TikTok and trying to duplicate what they've done is almost impossible. And here's what, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk to his credit is, has been saying four years. TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. Right. Musically was what it was before, you know, that's where everything is going. Right. And so in order to be that if you want to capitalize on it, you have to be willing to be there early and start paddling even though you don't see any wave on the horizon like such a. You have to be willing to know that this is coming. And most people have not the patience to, to do that. They want to come in and get this instant gratification. They don't want to come in and post up all these videos and do all of this work with seemingly very little to show for it. Very little short term. ROI yeah. But knowing that I'm just going to keep going, keep going, keep going. And it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, coming. And then when it does come, bam, you're there and you're able to, to take advantage of it. Most people don't have that level of patience, you know.

Dan: Yeah. And it's really, I'll give you a couple mainland sort of corresponding examples. I went to New York, Jeff Madoff, who, you know, you know, is. And Jeff was the, you know, kind of the video, backstage video for Victoria's Secret and for Ralph Lauren for 30 years. Every time there was a new season, he would do a lot of the video work. And then Victoria's Secret went down because their politically, you know, politically they didn't make the cut with me too. And that because it's too close, things that people are getting sent to prison for. And, and, and then Ralph Lauren. And Ralph Lauren, you know, is in his 80s now. And so, you know, so. But that's been a, you know, huge men's brand forever. And, and I was talking to him, you know, about. We talk about every four or five weeks because we're invested in a play, a musical which was supposed to come out in April. And first play called Personality. And it's the musical play about the history of Lloyd Price, who was the first crossover black musician who attracted a white teenage audience. So this is the crossover. This is 1950, 1951, 52, 53. So almost, you know, 70 years ago. Still alive. Still alive. He's about 88, 89 from New Orleans. And first record. He. First record he cut, he had to put together a local band and he got a piano player, and the piano player was Fats Domino.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: Wow. Just a guy. Just a guy who hunt around the neighborhood. I mean, he wasn't. So Lloyd Price brought a lot of Little Richard. He brought a lot of people across the bridge with it. Bridge with him, you know, and the big thing was that it was the first time that teenage audiences became major consumers of records. And not only that, but concerts. Rock and roll concerts. The word rock and roll was now on, you know, in the marquee. It was the first time that black and white teenagers were together in the same audiences. And this had huge ramifications for civil rights and, you know, everything as we go forward. And so. So anyway, I was thinking, you know, I'm thinking about this, that there's a star, like Elvis was a star and the Beatles were stars. Yeah. You know, you go forward, and the reason they're stars is because the medium is an explosive medium and it's really growing, and it's guaranteed that there's going to be someone who's number one. It's guaranteed that some human. Human or some group of human, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, somebody is going to be number one. You know, as you go here, Jeff Bezos, somebody's going to be number number one. So anything that those people will tell you about how it's getting to number one, they're making it up. Mm. It was the medium that demanded a number one, and it sorted them all out and they just ended up to be number one. And quite frankly, they probably. They probably don't know how they did it.

Dean: Yeah, right, I agree. I mean, I think there's something to this wave analogy, actually, Dan, because that.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I mean, the more I think about it like that now that there's. There's plenty of opportunities to, like, once everything gets established, then the players come in behind and set up the establishment to, you know, assist people in these. In these things. So you've got the opportunity to rise.

Dan: Yeah. When you get to the point that all the key decision makers and gatekeepers or lawyers and accountants, you know, it's time to start looking for another wave.

Dean: Right? Yeah, this is. It's very.

Dan: That's what happened to the record. That's what happened to the record industry. You know, I mean, but it played out over decades. I mean, who were you competing with? You were competing with lawyers and accountants who were running the big record companies. I mean. I mean. Yeah. I mean, this is the absence of creativity.

Dean: Do you know what's funny? I had. And everybody's coming now. Like the record labels are this their struggle? I mean, you know, only because they have the back catalogs. Nobody's interested in signing away their rights the way that they did pre independent opportunities, you know. But Moby is a artist. Had a great say. Reminded me of your. We're not happy till you're not happy for the airline industry. He said the music industry like it is. Like if a bank were to lend you money to buy a house and then you pay them back the money and they still own the house.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: That's really. I mean, it's. Your masters are the thing. They're paying you. They're lending you money to make your album and you pay them back the money and then they still own the album.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That really comes through in the Lloyd Price story. You know, how badly the. You know, the musicians who were part of the early days of rock and roll, they just. Yeah, if they got 3 cents on the dollar, they were lucky.

Dean: I just look, did you ever see that standing in the shadows of Motown or Shoulders of Giants? I think Shoulders Motown, something like that was, you know, that Motown. What Gary Gordy, you know, we even called it Hitsville or whatever. The thing was, Detroit was. I think about it now is that Barry Gordy was really creating a. A capability farm where factory.

Dan: Well, he worked at one of the big three automakers before. That's where he got his idea for the. Yeah, that's in the play Motown. I've seen it twice. And. And that was his notion is that Detroit had a lot of talent. There was a lot of street talent in Detroit at that time. And it was mainly the black churches that produced the talent. All the kids went to black churches and, you know, they developed their voices and their musicality. So the black church movement was just pumping out enormous amounts of really great Aretha Franklin. I mean, everybody. You name, trace them back. And they went to church and sang, you know, gospel music for. And I gave him music. But Also gave him a sense of soul because it was religious. And he said, you know, we gotta run, we gotta run this the way GM runs their factories. You know, we take them through stages and they learn how to, they learn how to dress, they learn how to talk, they learn how to be in front of a camera, they learn how to, you know, tune together and you know, I mean, probably developed, you know, 50, 60 groups, but probably went through 5,000 to get there.

Dean: So I, since I mentioned the capability farm and capability factory, as I've rectified what both of those are, so the capabilities are the core of it. And the difference between the capability factory is using those capabilities for hire that you can tap into, you can offer those services for hire out one door and then out the other door, the core capabilities and a capability farm would be you finding the vision, you finding the people developing your own use for the capabilities. So you could have a capability factory and a capability farm as models for capitalizing on the same capabilities. Yeah, one, there's a vision, opportunity. There is that if you find a capability that is primarily acting as a, a farm, making their own, trying to market their own product, you can with, as a visionary, start bringing in the, you know, offering their capabilities on a factory model with their excess capacity.

Dan: Yeah, there's actually an interesting, there's actually an interesting example from the agricultural world that you can add to your thinking here. I grew up in northern Ohio. Northern Ohio is really big greenhouse country. You know, they, you know, I mean, some of them, you know, the size of some of the greenhouses, I mean, they, you know, they're more than a city block. You know, take a city block in Toronto and they might be two city blocks, the number of greenhouses, and

Dean: there

Dan: was one, and it's about, probably 30, 40 miles from where I grew up. It's called Mother Jones. And what they got the idea was of, instead of shipping their products to the public, they shipped their products only to top notch restaurants, okay. And they drew a line and they could do it from, they could do it practically from where they were to Chicago going west and, and you know, lot of, you know, as the gourmet restaurant, the American restaurant took over and each restaurant had part of the greenhouse, okay? So they, in other words, there was an example, I don't know if he ever used it, but Charlie Trotter in Chicago, a very famous national restaurant, well, he would have his own part of their greenhouse and they would work with him just to get the plants and, you know, various things that he needed and Then they had, you know, it's about five hours shipping. It's about maybe five, six hours for a truck to deliver the goods. And they could do that every day, you know, and then they might have a Chicago. They might have six or seven restaurants in Chicago. So, yeah, every day a truck was picking up freshly picked vegetables in this greenhouse, and it was shipping it just to these particular restaurants. Now that all got killed earlier this year because they could grow the plants, but the restaurants weren't serving food. But anyway. But back. When things do return, they'll be back in business again. But there's a capability farm. But there's a capability. The part of the farm is that they. It can grow whatever you want. The factory is. They can deliver it to hundreds of restaurants.

Dean: That's exactly right. Yeah. That's a good.

Dan: That fits.

Dean: That's a nice model.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And think about the vision that went into it. You know, think about the vision that went into it. I mean, the other greenhouses, they're hoping the market's good in Cleveland where they would sell their, you know, they would sell their products or just opening. But, you know, people are. And I'm sure the other, you know, I'm sure this greenhouse did this fine because people, you know, people needed the food. And yes, they. They could unload the. They could unload the food anywhere they wanted. There was no lack of market for the food. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, it's a. It's a fascinating thing, but I agree with you that, you know, that we've switched in our understanding of capital. If it's not live and it's not dynamic, it's pretty boring. It's pretty.

Dean: Yeah. And totally accessible. I mean, otherwise, you know, I mean, physical capital, like money capital and stuff is really plentiful right now.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, in fact, money is looking for things to invest in right now.

Dean: That's what I mean. Yeah. A. Yeah. There's an excess capacity.

Dan: Yes. Yeah. Money's looking for a capability that will multiply money.

Dean: That's exactly right. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, it's a. It's a fascinating shift, but the whole point is being aware of what the big system is automatically guides your thinking and my thinking about how we plan out the, you know, the next year's future for our. Our particular company.

Dean: Yeah, absolutely.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Exciting times to be alive.

Dan: Yes, indeed.

Dean: Well, I will.

Dan: Next week.

Dean: Are you at the cottage?

Dan: Next week? Next week is. Next week is Canadian Thanksgiving. So I'm taking the weekend off, but I'll be in complete. I'll be in well fed form the

Dean: week after, two weeks from now. Okay, Perfect.

Dan: Yeah. Okay, thanks.

Dean: I'll see you on Tuesday. By the way, I'm going to join in on the three zone workshop. Good. Okay. Yes.

Dan: Okay, bye.