Meeting in Cloudlandia

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: That was really fast. I was about 15 seconds ahead of you this morning.

Dean: Oh my goodness.

Dan: Yes. But what I notice in Cloudlandia, and welcome to everybody to Cloudlandia. Promptness is becoming an important capability.

Dean: It really is. And you hit on it very early on as one of the top four things show up on time.

Dan: Yes.

Dean: Yeah, that's been, I'm having fun with that. You know, as I've told you, our 12 year old is, you know, sharing this wisdom with him and seeing all the different areas that it's important in life, how much time, you know, dependability is, is something that, that indicates to people, you know.

Dan: Yes.

Dean: And then finishing start that you're not going to leave them.

Dan: Yeah. You know, one thing that occurs to me that on in the mainland before we, there were many, many plausible excuses for why you weren't on time. Traffic, you know, caught up in traffic. And you know, that would probably be, you know, a variation of caught up in traffic is probably, you know, flights were delayed.

Dean: Right.

Dan: All sorts of things. But in Cloudlandia, unless there's a general blackout, you know, of the electrical grid, there really aren't a lot of excuses. You know, network is down, you know, that could be plausible. But generally speaking, there's probably no plausible reason why if you say something's going to start at a certain point why someone should not be able to make that.

Dean: Yeah. Do you know what's funny is that I went to meet someone over at Celebration here in Orlando last week and I. We're so conditioned now to meeting in Cloudlandia that how efficient and clean and, and you know, just sharp. It is right. That it struck me as almost like, you see the, the, I don't know, the extra burden or extra, like all the extra baggage of, you know, it's 40 minutes away. So I always, I leave like an hour ahead of time to give me time to. I like to show up on time. So I want to. On time is being there early and leaving a margin for any traffic or anything like that. So you know, I was there, left an hour ahead of time and got there. We, we had a, you know, two and a half hour meeting, lunch and then it took, you know, 45 minutes to, to get home. So you think about that there's an hour, a couple of extra hours almost of time. That wasn't the, the meat of the issue kind of thing. It wasn't the main event. And that's where we were talking about the, you know, as I'm looking forward to our strategic coach workshops on Monday and Tuesday. We're right now having the luxury of doing this podcast today, but normally I would have to be. I'd be in the final things of packing to head to the airport right now to get on the plane to arrive in time for dinner this afternoon in Chicago with. With you. And then. Yeah, it's such a. Yeah.

Dan: You know, and the interesting. The interesting thing that I find more and more is that people who. What I notice is that people who don't like the Internet don't like, you know, virtual conferencing. If I had to pick the people who are late for showing up for a zoom call, they're in the company of people. You know, I haven't done actual research on it, but it also strikes me that they're the people who don't like the Internet. And maybe one of the reasons why they don't like the Internet is because it requires punctuality.

Dean: I wonder.

Dan: Well, it works in both directions. You know, things always, you know, everything's a chicken and egg situation in life, you know, and. But I've noticed. And they also. They show up late, but then their lighting isn't good, and oftentimes they're looking at a second computer and they're not looking at the, you know, they're not looking out at the audience. And, you know, and I think that, you know, it's kind of like, you know, 100 years ago, you know, I don't. I don't really know about this telephone stuff, you know?

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. You know, and it may be a general resistance to more than one thing, that life is changing abruptly, really. I mean, depending on what you thought the future was going to be in early 2020, the change was either, you know, something that you had accounted for in your mind, you had actually psychologically, emotionally prepared for yourself. But sometime in the future, we'll probably switch over to virtual conferencing, which will bypass a lot of travel. Or you thought that 10 years into the future, in 2030, there wasn't going to be any difference in how you conducted your daily life and your business life. It all depends upon what your mind and your spirit has really prepared yourself for.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think. And that's. That's an interesting. It's an interesting thing. People are either gonna, you know, embrace that or. Or not. I love it. I mean, it's just. And it's funny how now you start to see. I wonder if people, you know, once we've been. Because it's coming up On a year of success doing the all virtual workshop. I wonder how it's going to feel when the first time back you realize, oh, now I've got a, you know, all the schlepping and everything involved in doing it.

Dan: Yeah, well, we actually had a measurement that told us that we've been successful because our last sales quarter, this would be for October. We, you know, over the last four years the, you know, the, the US government has established the calendar year as the fiscal year. In other words that, you know that you're the year of 2020 is the fiscal year for everybody for taxation purposes. And, and so we have switched from March 31st for March most of our existence. March 31st was always the end of our fiscal year. In other words, it was the nine months of the year before plus three months of the new year. But you know, Price Waterhouse, who does our accounting actually for all three countries. So we have, you know, a company in the US a company in Canada and a company in London. And they said now we're, everybody's switching over now. Everything has to be on the calendar year which is neither here nor there. There might be some inconvenience because of the way that you planned things previously, but once you make the adjustment, it's just normal like it used to be. And so our last quarter was a normal in person. The results that we got from the sales was equal to a normal, normal quarter. You know.

Dean: That's great. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: But it's all virtual. They're all signing up virtual workshops and that, that's the big thing. Well, they sign up, you know, in the same numbers for virtual that they did for in person. And basically it took six months for us to return to the results that

Dean: we were used to before the. And so what you've, what, what's the, what time are the works? How long are you doing the days now? I've forgotten.

Dan: Six hours. Well, there's new, what we call classic workshops.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And a classic workshop is virtual now, but when people have freedom, it will become a in person workshop. But they're signing that now for a virtual version. And then there's the global work, the global workshops which are on a different schedule. The global workshops instead of four days a year, at six days a year, the. Instead of six hours on each of those days, it's four hours on each of those days.

Dean: I gotcha.

Dan: Yeah. So it's 24 hours.

Dean: What are our workshop? What is our.

Dan: So tomorrow six and six. Six. Six tomorrow and six on Tuesday.

Dean: Right? Yeah. Okay. There we go. So from 10, about a 45.

Dan: We take. Yeah. We take breaks and.

Dean: Yeah, I enjoy it. It's great.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Dean: That's awesome. Yeah. That I can't. Yeah, I'm excited. You know, it's interesting. I got your. I got the package with the. The $15 trillion free zone book, and so I haven't yet. It's been peeking at me. You know, I haven't had a chance to sit down and. And read it yet, but I'm. Today I've got my eye on it. Yeah, but it's really. I think, you know, that would be. It's a really interesting thing that. That is really something that it seems like would really fit into Cloudlandia here, that these are the. The things I've been observing. That whole. The Mr. Beast burger situation that we were talking about, and everything's going strong there and, you know, just instantly opening 300 restaurants in collaboration with excess capacity, it's such a. It can only happen in Cloudlandia. You know, that's not even. That would not be possible on the mainland.

Dan: Yeah. What's really interesting, Dean, when I think that we go back to. I call it complete choice. In other words, people choose their. Their ratio of in person to Cloudlandia. You know, the. Well, now we're going to say how much of your daily life is mainland and how much of your life is Cloudlandia, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, I think we're. We're making a strong push for this that people start thinking in those terms with your coming up with the name Quadlandia. You know, I think it's. It's interesting thing, but, for example, let's say, you know, I'm just projecting with Beast Burger, it proves to be a really hot thing that a hamburger restaurant in a locale much, much better because they have this Beast Burger dimension where none of the other hamburger restaurants in their area have. Then, then you begin to see the Starbucks effect. And I'm just wondering, you know, where he. I mean, he seems to do things for the fun of it. So.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: I mean, Mr. Beast seems to be a guy who's always looking for new toys and new play pens, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: New toy boxes. But, for example, you might get, you know, a chain. I remember, I think Marriott. Marriott was the first hotel chain that got Starbucks into all their hotels. And now Mr. Beast with his Beast Burger really, really becomes the. The buyer, not the seller. And, you know, and, you know, one. One large chain of hospitality places, you know, says we. We have to have Mr. You know, we have to have Beast Burger as part of our food offering in our.

Dean: Right, yeah.

Dan: You know, so that. Yeah. And that shows you the power, and that can happen instantaneously because he's shown that, you know, that whereas he was able to start 300 restaurants in a day, if a hotel chain had 1500 locations.

Dean: Exactly.

Dan: They could start in 15. Those 1500 locations could start on the same day, too.

Dean: So that is. There's the perfect example of a VCR formula collaboration in action that the vision. Mr. Beast Burger, the whole. The menu, the everything like that, all of that vision, the capability means you got to have the kitchen to prepare it, the ability to do it. And like you said, a hotel chain with the reach of 1500 locations could open 1500 locations at 1 time.

Dan: Yeah, just like that. Yeah.

Dean: Yes. Like vision plus capability multiplied by reach. That's the. The perfect thing.

Dan: I've just, you know, this is sort of like an intellectual shortcut package. You know, when you take it apart, you know, if you did reverse engineered what it took to think through how just one hamburger, existing hamburger business would, on a certain day, just go 100% fully active with. You would see that there's probably within the project, you know, on day one, you say, okay, we're going to do this, you know, and then there has to be all these, you know, things like, well, yeah, you have to have the qualified cooks, you have to have the qualified menu, you have to, you know, there's procedures, there's quality control and everything. And each of those is an intellectual shortcut. And the entire Beast Burger capability is probably, you know, could be dozens of different intellectual shortcuts. Mm. But the whole Beast Burger concept is an intellectual shortcut.

Dean: How to go live.

Dan: But, you know, a restaurant might say, you know, we're going to start a whole new way of approaching things. And it's like six or seven months work for them to do it on their own. They don't have to work at all with Beast Burger. They just have to agree to it happening and check off the boxes that they've got the capability to fulfill the process promise.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yes.

Dean: Yeah. And so you look at that. I'm starting to see all of these things I told you about the ice cream shop, which was the, you know, Unilever's idea of using excess cooler capacity to stock their ice cream all over town and put it up on grubhub. The latest that I just discovered yesterday on grubhub. There's a restaurant here in the States called Boston Market, and they do rotisserie chickens. And so you probably familiar with them

Dan: long time company that's.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Quarter century old.

Dean: Yep. And so now they've launched on grubhub, a restaurant called Rotisserie Roast. And they've got different, you know, it looks like they've got different branding, different things, but it's the same address as the Boston Market. So they're basically selling this other menu out the back door on. Just on grubhub and seamless using, you know, ingredients that they have packaged a little differently and combined a little differently for some healthier or lighter combos. But it's so brilliant. I mean.

Dan: Mm.

Dean: You just look at it. I'm tuning my, my vision for it to start to really recognize these, these opportunities everywhere. I mean, if you can recognize the assets that, that people have. The, the excess. You recognize the excess capacity and you recognize the reach. Combining those, I mean, putting people together with reach and capability that don't have the vision you can, you know, it's really like the way that you can find your way in Cloudlandia without your capability could be vision, you know.

Dan: Mm. Yeah. It's really interesting, the whole franchising concept of food.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And lot and lodging really started with the railroads. Not the railroads themselves, but a. I'm going to have to do a little research on this because I'm just bringing up the thought right now and you know, in the future I'll. I'll have the actual information on this.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: When. Especially when the first two transcontinental railroads went through. So that was the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific. One went from Chicago all the way to San Francisco and I think the other one, I don't know if it's. There was certainly a connector from Chicago, but I think the launching point of it was the Southern Pacific. I think it was probably from St. Louis and it went south, you know, to Los Angeles. Los Angeles. But you know, each of them about a 2,000 mile trip. And they had all these, you know, they had express trains and then they had, you know, gradually when they got multi tracks, you know, they could have express trains and then they had, you know, locals, you know, people would go, you know, and one of the real problems was that you couldn't guarantee at any particular town or city that you stopped in that the quality of the food and the quality of the, you know, the overnight stay, the hospitality stay would, you know, would it be an experience consistent with the quality that the railroads were promising for the trip? And so this guy. And it wasn't the railroads themselves. But he began creating hotels and restaurants at key points. And then he would staff them. He would staff them and he guaranteed the staffing, he would guarantee the training, who would guarantee the quality. So in another day, you know, I mean, if you take your Mr. Your Mr. Beast into Cloudlandia, this was the beginning of using, you know, creating a new capability on top of an existing capability.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so if you think about standardizing things like.

Dan: Yeah. If you use your vcr, your vision capability and reach. The vision is that we'll have, you know, 80 of these hotel restaurant complexes across the United States. What's the capability? It's the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads and. Well, that's the reach and then, you know, the reaches that you have the capability to do one of them. So you automatically have the capability to do 80 of them. And it guarantees standardization.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And. And

Dean: well, you think about that model really followed then Holiday Inn, like when we started doing on the roads, all the, the motels and stuff Holiday in

Dan: would have followed the railroad one because.

Dean: Yeah, that's what I mean. Right. Yeah.

Dan: Then Howard Johnson restaurants, White Castle. White Castle hamburgers, you know, Dairy. Dairy Queen, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: There were lots of them. And what it was is that you already had a preconditioned customer. Yeah. And you know, for example, when Babs and I traveling, you know, a distance, like we go four or 500 miles, we check where all the McDonald's are.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Not for the food.

Dean: Bathrooms.

Dan: Bathrooms.

Dean: That's right. Because you know, they're going to be clean.

Dan: Yeah. Or Tim Hortons. There's. Yeah, there's Tim. Tim Hortons. Halfway between our house and our cottage. Yeah. And. And so we go in. I don't think we've ever bought anything.

Dean: Wow. So the, you know, you think about the. Yeah, that model, you know, impossible with, you know, but now when you look at. With no physical locations or the ability. I was thinking about when you were talking about some of these restaurants, you think like just kind of. It was already kind of dying around my time. But I understand it used to be the drive up restaurants were a big thing where you could drive up and park your car and they would, you know, bring your food to your car and you'd sit there and we had, when I was young, we had an A and W. Yep. That was like that. So you'd pull in and they'd hook the tray up to your, to your car and bring your food and you'd eat there. But then once the drive through became more Popular. Those kind of disappeared. Right. We don't most of the.

Dan: I think, you know, it'd be interesting what the chicken and the egg was here because. Yeah, a lot of people had the experience of drive in theaters at that time. And they drive in and they'd have, you know, they'd have staff that would come around to the cars and they would deliver, you know, soft drinks, popcorn.

Dean: That really started in the 50s, didn't it? Was it the thing like.

Dan: Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. You know, it might start earlier, you know, I mean. Yeah, cars and you know, and so I think that anything you can do with a car, you know, I guess business would flow along with it. I certainly remember that. And yeah, you know, and I. It was a bit clunky though, you know, I mean, you always had a. I always found there was a clunkiness about the service. You know. Now if one staff member was off that night, you know, it probably interfered with, you know, people say drive in, you know, we'll serve you at your car. But then you're waiting 15 minutes, 20 minutes probably. Right, Probably. And there was some natural pitfalls to it because, you know, it really required, you know, it really required that you have super fast response.

Dean: Yeah. I wonder how restaurants will fare kind of, you know, going forward. Now what I was getting at was when we look at. It's almost like that model that they talked about in the tyranny of convenience that once we kind of all progress is sort of ratcheted. You know, you don't sort of go backwards on that. We lock in that level as the norm. And I think what this, you know, Covid time or quarantine time or our staying away time has done is normalize every restaurant food is available at your doorstep in 30 minutes. You know, and I wonder now if when that comes back when. When it's normal to go to all the restaurants again. I wonder how much like lost that will be. Because it used to be the only, you know, you would go to. If I look before grubhub, before seamless. So let's even go back, you know, two years ago, really. If I look at the landscape it just in. In Winter Haven, in my. In my outpost of the mainland,

Dan: there

Dean: were very few options for delivery. You know, like all the pizza places delivered and maybe some of the Chinese food places. But you had to call them all individually to arrange that and organize it right. You had to know the menu, know all of that stuff. And so whatever you. What you would often Go out if you didn't want to have that limited menu you resign yourself to, well, okay, we'll go, we'll go there and eat because you want their food. But there's nothing magical about the everyday dining experience in a regular restaurant. Not like you're going to, you know, a fine dining experience, which there is a place for that that I think is always going to stay. But the everyday, you know, routine dining, it just feels like we're not going backwards to that.

Dan: Yeah, maybe there's already a model for this, Dean, but it's in a completely other. Another sector, which is banking. There used to be a thing called bank. There used to be exactly. Banking hours.

Dean: I can't remember the last time I ever set foot in my bank.

Dan: Yeah. And you know, a bank, you know, you say, what's the nearest atm? Well, the ATM can be at a bank, but the ATM can be in a convenience store. You know, it could be in a shop, it could be in a super. The ATM could be in a supermarket. And so the big thing about banking hours was that generally that the hours coincided when a majority of people were nearby doing their working hours. Like you're doing that. But. But it really limited the reach of the banks. I mean, you basically couldn't do banking unless there was actually a bank building. And then with digitalization, the banking became a digital experience. And my sense is, I'm just thinking of a particular restaurant in our local neighborhood here that went to takeout pretty quick. You know, like if they were locked down, say in the second week of March, they went to takeout certainly before the end of the month. And it struck me that I always thought that, for example, this restaurant only does evening meals. It would be open from around 5 to 10 normal days. And then Friday and Saturday, maybe 5 to 11 o'.

Dean: Clock.

Dan: And they did a great business, they were always filled. But I was looking at the hours. So that's about five or six hours of each day. But there would be from, let's say 8 o' clock in the morning till 5 o', clock, so 9 hours when if they had food available during that time, you know, there would be customers to buy it. And that's what they discovered.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And the thing that shifted is they didn't have the restaurant open for breakfast and lunch because where they're located, people are at work during the day. People are working the day, so it wouldn't be available. But I bet half the people won't be at work during the day. Half the people will be.

Dean: Right, yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Just it's, everything is shifting like that. Right. The new norms.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That everybody's kind of staying in the suburbs or staying in the. Your. Yeah. The population is more mobile. I think this, this is like a big, big shift, you know.

Dan: You know, it's really interesting. One of the things we've noticed in delivery services that I would say since last March that UPS is infinitely superior to FedEx or to Amazon in terms of delivery service.

Dean: UPS is, they're the winners. Yeah.

Dan: In the sense that they always, well we have three houses and they always come to the right house and they always, always deliver it right to the door. And one of the things I've noticed about FedEx and Amazon one is I think they go through drivers really quickly. The delivery people, you don't know who the delivery. Ups. It's always the same person because for example, in our Chicago office we've had two different ups pick up people in 22 years and in our Toronto office we have the same UPS driver after 29 years.

Dean: Wow, that's something.

Dan: Yeah, well, they're shareholders. UPS. Yeah. The employees are shareholders of the company, you know, and they've got a build up of, you know, the pension pot as they do their years but they have complete familiarity with everything that's going on in their neighborhood. And the other thing is, you know, they only make right hand turns. You know that system that they have that they, they have a computer now that plans out the driver's trips based on the packages and they never make up the insurance.

Dean: I had no idea about that.

Dan: Is that true? Yeah. So their whole, their whole trip beforehand is planned out by computer and it just tells them the continual set of right hand turns to make because they found that left hand turns can, left hand turns can cross them up to a half hour on a trip, on a day.

Dean: Wow. And the block of getting stuck in traffic lights, all that stuff, only right hand turn. I like that a lot. Yeah, all that efficiency stuff you see.

Dan: Yeah. But that's the only thing you can do if you have Cloudlandia capabilities because it's all, you know, it's all, you know, it's. The package has a label and it has an address on it and it's all fed into the computer ahead of time and say Jack, here's your schedule for today, here's all the packages and what the packages tell us that this is your route when you're out there and we're not going to require you to make a left hand turn during this time.

Dean: Yes, that is Something.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And you know, it's really. That they, they are, they've really been great in the relationship. They've had an amazing collaboration with Amazon for a lot of years, which really goes a long way. Does Amazon ship exclusively with UPS or do they do FedEx and others too?

Dan: You know, I don't know the, I don't know the answer to that.

Dean: I know for sure it was with ups, but now they're of course they're about to get in that business themselves, which is, which is something.

Dan: Yeah. The real problem is a general problem that they're going to face and that is traffic congestion. But he's going to delivery services. It means that there's going to be a lot of cars and trucks on the road.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So, yeah. So it's the one problem that you can't solve because it's a mainland. It's, you know, it's mainland activity.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. I think the whole notion that you're going to have drones delivering things is a non starter.

Dean: I wonder about, you know, I was thinking about the collaborations like that. Right. Like if you think about the collaboration with Amazon and UPS that they, they've got, which would seem like the perfect collaborations. They've got the sales, they've got all the stuff. UPS has this existing network of being able to deliver packages to every address in the world, basically. So a natural collaboration there, but seemingly a little bit more. What's the right word? Less stable for UPS in a way. When you're saying that. Wonder about. I haven't read the $15 trillion free zone yet, but I know you always talk about this idea of always be the buyer and you wonder like UPS is kind of in a situation where they're not the buyer in the Amazon situation. Right.

Dan: Well, the problem, you know, and you know, I would say that Amazon has proven over the years that if you get in business with them, they'll try to reproduce your business.

Dean: Right. That's what I wonder. Right.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let's do a collaboration with UPS for two years and learn everything they do and how they do it and then we'll just reproduce their system and undercut them. They'll just, you know, you know, and you know, and the problem is that I think it's, it's so built into Amazon's business model to do that that the reputation would go before them for any potential collaboration.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And the other thing with UPS is that they're an employee. They have such an employee ownership of their entire company.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: That it's not like a Straight corporation that's, you know, a public equity based, you know, where you can just sell this or anything like. Like that. It's the very strength of UPS makes it hard for the CEOs of UPS just to make a decision like that. Yeah.

Dean: And you wonder. I look at the, you know, in a way, you look at these capabilities that are out there even from a platform standpoint. Like we look at what Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of these things. And if, you know, very timely, actually, to be talking about this right now in the wake of Trump being delisted from, from Twitter, as, you know, him and his. He was using them for his reach, using their capability to get to his 86 million followers, and then that was taken away immediately, like, instantly from him. And you wonder, like, I wonder that some. There's a really interesting dynamic there when we take these things for granted. Like if you're building a platform, building a YouTube community, and then all of a sudden YouTube says, okay, no more. Then you've.

Dan: Yeah, I think that, I think this is where the antitrust legislation kicks in. And the two networks. Well, Apple did it too. Apple, yeah.

Dean: You're starting to see everybody's flexing now, right?

Dan: Flex, Apple did it, Facebook did it, and Twitter. I don't know what the Google situation is at the end of the week. Same. Okay. So what this tells me now is that they declared themselves publishers in that platform. So they're not platforms anymore. They're. They're publishers. And they're now using full, what I would say, editorial power to say.

Dean: I think it opens up a big can of worms for them. Right?

Dan: Well, I think it opens up a huge competitive market because I'm sure the knowledge needed to create a social media network and to, you know, to, you know, to. I mean, the social media. Social media companies, as powerful as they are, they don't own the Internet. The Internet is a right, is a system. So my sense is that anyone who wants to create a new, you know, there's other search engines, there's other social media. So my sense is that Trump, whenever the mainstream media makes a statement, well, this is the end of him now. This is it. He's completely, completely gone. He's forgotten and everything like that. It's a bit like watching another episode of the Road, the Coyote and the Roadrunner.

Dean: Right, exactly.

Dan: And my sense is that you could look at it, yeah, this is the end of, you know, this individual's political career and it's finished. And very clearly he's, you know, he's, you know, shamed and humiliated forever. You could look at that way. Or you said, he just really consolidated his 90 million followers. And if he says, I'm going to create a new social network and I'd like all of you to switch over from Facebook to Twitter to my new social network and don't watch Fox News anymore, watch Mega News, you know, or whatever the name is. Right, I got it, I got it. Freedom Network. You know, it would be the Freedom Network. It would be social media, it would be, it would be cable, it would be, you know, all the other features and everything like that. And I was going to bring this up as a topic because it seems to me now that, you know that Apple and Facebook and Twitter and Google are doing at the corporate level what China and Russia have been trying to do at the national level, to have their entire, you know, their own Internet world. And. Yeah, yeah. So what, what it tells me is that politics is entering into Quadlandia.

Dean: Well, that's true. Even on a level like I saw even, you know, the response to that was Parler has been getting some traction, conservative side. But now Amazon stopped hosting parlor servers on their, on their cloud. So even.

Dan: Yeah, Apple did it yesterday.

Dean: Apple cut them out of the App Store and Amazon cut them off their, their, their Cloud server, which 80% of the Internet runs on, on AWS servers. So you realize, wow, you're getting back now to where these guys are starting to flex their personal views on things.

Dan: Yeah. But here, here's the thing. Rock Rocket, what's his name, you know, the Rockefeller did the same thing with oil and of the oil and gas at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. And what they did was they locked up all the railroad because all the shipments were done by railroad and they locked up contracts for the, the railroads would agree, they would only ship Rockefeller oil, would not ship oil from any other producer. And you know, what you start running into is the U.S. constitution.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And no matter how powerful, you know, Amazon is, they're puny compared to the U.S. constitution. I mean, it's like they're just a moment in time. Time in regard to the US Constitution. So my sense is that this is kind of a, you know, it's a kind of a Civil War moment of sorts. And you know, the actual Civil War in the United States was about slavery, but actually there was probably a deeper, there was probably a deeper cause than slavery. I think slavery was a hot emotional topic, but it was actually about the fact that part of the country was industrializing at a rate and the Other part of the country wasn't industrializing at all. And so, you know, if you go back, Dean. Dean and Dan are talking in 1860, and we're talking. We're talking about the difference between the, you know, the farm country and the factory country. You know, we have a. Welcome to the factory world.

Dean: Yeah, right, right, right, right. Welcome to industrial land. Right, Exactly. Yeah.

Dan: Right. Yeah, yeah. So my feeling is that when you get a big shift like this, which is economic, I mean, it's. It hits on all, you know, how people think about things, how they feel about things, how they relate to each other. When it starts becoming, you know, that there's a total shift of personal existence from one realm to the other. You get the type of issues that we're getting with the past week. With the past week. And the difference is there's not a great deal of bloodshed this time.

Dean: Yeah, this is going to be what a fun decade we're in for. You know, as you start to see.

Dan: Oh, no, I mean, I mean, and, you know, the history of the United States is pretty chock full of this for the first. You know, the country started in 1789, officially, you know, and then it went 100 years. It went through the entire 19th century and right up to 1916. So it was like 136 years where it kind of paid attention to just what was going on in America. And then starting with the First World War and, you know, for the next hundred years, we got involved with every other part of the planet, but Americans kind of like, you know, paying attention to America. And I think it may be a shift back to

Dean: that.

Dan: America is going to look at America first, and then if you want a deal, offer us something. The US Isn't going to consider itself the world policeman and the world regulator of how people run their countries. And I think it's part and parcel of that. I mean, there's no one explanation for anything. There's always about 20 explanations together. Was trying to tell you this, but, you know, I think power goes to the head of people who think that they are now unaccountable. They don't have to account. Like, my feeling is that at the top of these big digital companies, there's a certain sense of invincibility, and

Dean: we'll see. Yeah, I mean, that's when you look at that, the whole. I just read this morning that Biden's expected to announce $3 trillion in stimulus coming up here, all, you know, focused on making America great again, I guess. Yeah, yeah,

Dan: yeah. I think the, you know, I mean, first. First of all, it's. It's a very unpredictable country, you know, that we're citizens of. And, you know, and nobody gets to be on top for very long in the U.S. right? Politically, nobody gets to be on top for very long in terms of, you know, celebrity. Celebrity is fickle. And, you know. Yeah, for a little bit, and then you're.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And same thing. Economically. You can, you know, I mean, even Jeff Bezos says, I don't expect Amazon to exist 20 years from now. He says, I think we will have been replaced by something else.

Dean: Oh, really? That's interesting. I wonder what he sees as the end game, like how that. Where does that head. I've been very impressed with the way Elon Musk has called his shots all the way through the. The. From the beginning, you know, and he's now become the. He just took over as the richest guy now.

Dan: Right, Whatever that means.

Dean: Whatever that means.

Dan: But, yeah, I mean, it was like Warren Buffett, I remember, in the 1987 stock market crash, they said, you lost $10 billion today. He was interviewed in 1987.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: Yeah, he said it. Well, it was paper this morning and paper tonight. He said, yeah, but he predicted, you know, when the, you know, the Dow was in the 2000s, you know, like, I think it went from 2700 to 1800 in one day and, you know, lost a third of the value of the stock market.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And he says, well, what. How long is this, you know, the, you know, this blow to the world and everything going to happen? And he says, I think by a year 2000, so this 1980. So he said, I think about the year 2000, the Dow will be over 10,000, which would be. Which would be four times what it had ever been, you know.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: And he's. And he says, well, yeah, I mean, how can you possibly say that? And he says, well, you know, most of the working scientists, most of the working engineers, most of the working entrepreneurs that we've ever had on the planet are alive today, and they're all getting connected electronically. So I just gotta believe there's gonna be constant creation of new things to invest in. And. Yeah, I think money. Money available to invest in it. So.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And. Yeah. And he says the whole thing is just try. He says, the whole secret of this, just see if you can buy a dollar for less than a dollar.

Dean: Right. That's a great thing, the value investing. Yeah. I haven't paid attention. I've got to read his. I always enjoy Reading his letters. I'm a shareholder, a Berkshire shareholder, so I always get the annual reports and I'd love to see his take on things.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean, he has the sense of, you know, just what's a great brand? Yeah, what great or what great brand still has room to grow. What.

Dean: Yeah, with durable advantage.

Dan: That's what he calls it.

Dean: Yeah. Durable advantage.

Dan: Right. You know, Durable advantage. And, you know, and I, you know, I think he has some winners and losers, but generally speaking, he, he is. Batting average is good. And.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and do it. And I just think we're in a new phase, you know, I mean.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: I was just looking at. Because we're interested in legal matters these days, and I was just looking at the article one of the Constitution and it's the eighth. The eighth section of the first article. So the first article and the reason for intellectual property protection, and it was for the expansion of scientific and technical knowledge and capabilities throughout society. This is why. So there's always this border where we're going to give you a certain monopoly status under the law so that one so that you can be rewarded for creating something new. That's part of the intellectual property law. The other thing is that other people encourage to be innovators. But the third thing is that overall it's for the benefit of society that new capabilities, new vision, new capabilities and new reach is introduced into society. Okay. So if you have a sense that Facebook isn't doing that anymore, if you have a sense that Twitter isn't doing that anymore, if you have a sense that Apple isn't or Amazon or Google isn't doing this more, then their monopoly will be taken away from them.

Dean: Yeah. And so I wonder how that will be the better thing, though. Like, part of their monopoly is because you only have to, like, how do you. This is what I wonder is how do you take away a Google monopoly without disadvantaging everybody? You know, like, how do you. Like, part of the value of it is having everything in one place. Like, you go there because it's got everything.

Dan: Well, that, that's kind of, you know, I mean, there's two ways of looking at it. You know, they're so crucial that we can't possibly change it. Or you could say, what better things are being prevented by their monopoly? Maybe their model is getting old and, and, but they've positioned themselves so that new, better things can't come along. Well, I just look at when Standard Oil was broken up, which was around 1910, the oil industry in the next 30 years expanded by 10 times. Okay. Right. When AT&T was broken up in the 1950s, Bell, you know, Bell had the monopoly on telephones. The telephone industry went 10 times all sorts of. The Bell would never have invented the, you know, the digital phone, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And all these landlines, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, like the first person to invent an electronic camera was a Kodak employee, you know.

Dean: Right, yeah, the digital camera. Right, yeah.

Dan: And you can just see how persuasive he was when he told someone at the top, you know, in the future we won't have to sell film anymore. Right?

Dean: What now? Right, exactly.

Dan: You know, so, yeah, I mean, everybody thinks that the existing solution is. Is the ultimate.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Who knows what else. I mean, you were telling me about, you know, clubhouse last. On our last meeting, I looked into it. I said, well, this is, this is a bypass, you know, this is a bypass, you know, and, and if Facebook tried to create a clubhouse type thing, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot bowl, but I would, you know, I don't trust anything that Facebook does. I don't trust. Twitter does, you know, these are not trustable people. So anything new that they try to go over, I don't really trust them, you know.

Dean: Right, yeah.

Dan: So. And you know, and Jeff Bezos and Elon, they just want to walk on Mars.

Dean: That's it. That's exactly right. They just want to walk on Mars.

Dan: Oh, that's funny. What's the end game? The end game is both of them want to walk on Mars, you know. Right, yeah. And, you know, I was talking about goal setting the other day, you know, don't make the achievement of your future goal the criteria of when you start to like yourself. You know, I said, you know, if I walk on Mars, then will I like my. So, you know. Yeah, you know, you know, have different motivations. Don't have that. So anyway, well, this is just the first of three days when we'll be chatting. So.

Dean: Yes, I'm excited. I want to.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I'm gonna read the. I'm gonna read.

Dan: I would appreciate. I would appreciate if you could take, you know, take in the, you know, the 15 trillion and I will talk about it. You know, I may. I mean, people are, you know, they have a time phase when they read things, but we're noticing a big jump in interest in the free zone since we put the book out. I would say that that's number of 10. 10.

Dean: Now that people understand what it means that, that they get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Well, I think the other thing, it's my project, you know, it's my 24 year project and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. You know and this is what's going to keep me interested and motivated for the next.

Dean: I love it. I love it. I'm happy to have a front row seat.

Dan: Well, you're, you're more than front row seat.

Dean: That's it. Exactly. So I will, I will see you in the morning. I'm sorry we can't have dinner tonight but yeah, I'll see you bright eyed and bushy tail in the morning.

Dan: We put out the word we're going to have a cocktail party but you know, it's strictly optional because other people may have other things to do. So we finish at three and we have a cocktail party at five, you

Dean: know and okay, so we're finishing at three Chicago time and so four o'

Dan: clock, three, three Chicago. Three Chicago time.

Dean: So four Eastern. Right, right, right. Okay.

Dan: Four, four Eastern p.m. all right. All right.

Dean: I will see you in the morning. Yes.

Dan: Good, thanks.

Dean: Bye.