Creating Cloudlandia Experiences

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Good morning.

Dan: Good morning, Mr. Jackson.

Dean: That's right. Welcome to Cloudlandia. That's right. Yeah. Well, it's a beautiful day in the winter haven outpost of Cloudlandia, I can tell you that.

Dan: Yeah, it's a beautiful. And it's a beautiful day in the actual winter.

Dean: That's funny. Where, where are you today? Are you in, in, in Toronto?

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: Oh, you're in Toronto. Okay.

Dan: In my basement, sitting next to my blazing fireplace.

Dean: I like it. That's. That's awesome.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, is. Yeah. We've had. Actually it's been. I think I've noticed the seasons more since I'm here all the time I've been, you know, in the same place more or less going through the four season cycles. So we're right back to where we were just weeks before the COVID lockdown year started.

Dean: Oh wow. Now have you built a. Have you built a tunnel between your main house and the garden house?

Dan: We were told that the city, if it found out, would be very, very unhappy with that.

Dean: Oh, really?

Dan: Yeah. And where, where are you going to put the dirt?

Dean: Ah, I see.

Dan: You know, it's the prison break. We're in the prison.

Dean: Well, you have a cottage. You have a cottage.

Dan: Yes, indeed. But no, it's been great because we devoted the cottage house which we built. When was that? Probably about three years. Which was for parties, which, you know, a lot of parties for. Babs and I are party people.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: In terms of giving them. We like to put.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And for our strategic coach entrepreneurs when they come to town. And, and you know, but that's been out, you know, that's. You can't do that during social distancing. What will I call it? It's a form of rationing. Social. Social prohibition.

Dean: Let's call it social prohibition.

Dan: Yeah. It's kind of like rationing and prohibition. You know, we're going through two experiences here and so we just decided that we would, you know, we wouldn't split our personal life and work life in the same place. So we, we have, you know, a cottage with two floors and three floors actually. But Babs has, Bab has a stand up. She likes to stand up for her meetings. And I'm in the basement and you've been down there. It's very comfortable.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The one thing that makes a basement not a basement is if you build it with high ceilings. One of the things I've noticed is that most people create a space called the basement, but they make the height too low for my Liking. Yeah. But we have, we have 10 foot ceilings in all of our houses and that's, you know, it's very, very nice. It's very, very nice.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I have to tell you, there's nothing to dislike about our concentrated engagement with Codlandia over the last 12 months.

Dean: No. And it's been exactly now 12 months. Almost exactly 12 months. Right, yeah. Now.

Dan: Yeah. Our actual close date, close down date was the 13th of March. So a year ago, you and I were in Boulder, Colorado, because we had our three zone summit just about this time last year.

Dean: Well, we were in Scottsdale, Arizona, is what you meant to say.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not Boulder, not Boulder.

Dean: Not Boulder, Colorado.

Dan: We were at the Boulders. We were at the Boulders.

Dean: That's right. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. North Scottsdale. I think it's north.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Northern part of Scottsdale. And. Yeah. And Tuesday we'll be at another summit. And as we did last year, the kickoff was Dean Jackson.

Dean: Oh, am I the kickoff again? Oh, this will be.

Dan: You're the kickoff. Okay. Yeah. So the way we'll do it is I have three questions for everybody, and they're general questions. So not only the Free Zone entrepreneurs, but their team members and their guests can equally engage with these questions and answer them. And then we'll put everybody in. In breakout sessions, just for the first 15, 20 minutes, just to warm things up. And then I will introduce Mr. Jackson, who has another riveting tale from Cloudlandia.

Dean: I love it. This will be good. The Cloudlandia Files as it's growing. I mean, yeah, it's a whole different world even than it was last year.

Dan: And I sent you a bit of a framework this morning to consider.

Dean: I got that. Which I appreciate. Yeah, it's perfect. We were on the same. We were on the same page with that. So that's good.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I had a terrific YouTube workshop. You know, every quarter or so I'm putting on a Zoom. Not a YouTube, but a Zoom Zoom workshop to talk about Zoom. And then some of them, we talk. You know, people have all sorts of tips and techniques. They, they come on and they talk about their tips and techniques. But this time I had two stories. A woman who lives in Scottsdale named Michelle Bosch. And Michelle, she told in her story, is immigrant to the United States from Honduras and her husband from Germany. So they had met and married and settled down in Scottsdale and they went into purchasing land. Land, just raw land. And then, you know, letting it, Letting it appreciate in price and then flipping it for Projects and then they started to do building projects of their own with land and then sell the, you know, sell the projects or have them as, have them as revenue generated, generating. And then they started a coaching program to show other people how they could do that. And generally their people who are in their coaching program are people who are in jobs that they don't like or, you know, as is the case over the last year, had lost their jobs. And, and, and then she was telling just the sheer, you know, challenge that she was confronted with because everything she was doing was in person and in person was wiped off, you know, as it was for you, as it was for me. And then just talked about her Zoom transformation over the last year and it was just really, really great. And then the second speaker, so, you know, I would have thinking with that and I said, okay, now what insights did you get from Michelle's story? And then in the second hour, I had a very interesting man by the name of Juan Sanchez who actually lives in Guatemala. He's. Both Michelle and Juan are 10 times participants in Strategic Coach. And Juan has a big company, he's got about 2,000 employees and they do private label clothing manufacturer for big US and global WOW brands France.

Dan: And he was talking about all the work that he had done over the last five years or so of really involving his team with the teams of the, you know, the brand, the brand, you know, the brand retailers and how, you know, they, the companies, you know, in famous brands would bring their teams to Guatemala and they would design products together. And of course that was completely eliminated. So he created, you know, he used everything off the shelf that he could from Zoom and other technologies and he created what is called a, a design creativity playroom. And the long, the long story going right to the chase scene right here is that he's taken every expert in his company and created a design, design creativity team. And then he encourages the manufacturers to do the same thing with their company. So it would be every part of their packaging, every part of their retail and they would get together, you know, online Zoom 90 minute sessions and usually, you know, a number of them over a period of a month. And he's reduced his idea to market idea to market time from around six months down to about six weeks.

Dean: Wow. Yeah, that's something. I mean that, that speed of, you know, I like two things about what you're saying about him being a private label being able, that's a capability that he's got to be able to make clothes that's very similar to the company that supports Kylie Jenner within the cosmetics. And the thing that they have as the advantage is they can go from idea to shipping product in five days, a cosmetic line. And that's pretty, you know, that's pretty amazing. If they find, you know, someone who's got a vision for what they want to do to be able to execute that and get it out the. Out the door in five days.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: That speed.

Dan: Yeah. And it's pretty, you know, it's really interesting. I mean, I was just taking, you know, I mean, I was using that as notes of how idea. You and I are in the idea production. We're in the concept production business, and how quickly I can envision something and schedule an event and actually present a new idea at an event, because all the travel consideration of all those steps has been eliminated.

Dean: Yeah. And you've got the reach of, you know, that's part. That's an interesting thing of being able to conceive of something. And literally, you know, I think you could go, I'm confident I could wake up with an idea and execute it by the end of the day for a workshop if that was, you know, I mean, literally being able to. One thing I found in Cloudlandia, in that we're all kind of, you know, in one place now. One thing that I've found that's very interesting to me, and I just kind of stumbled on it maybe three breakthrough blueprints ago. I had. I had an open spot. We had somebody who had to shift to the next one. And so that I had an open spot in the workshop. And so the day before, I sent out a message to everybody who had inquired about the breakthrough blueprint in the last three months or whatever. I sent a quick message to them saying, hey, I've got an open spot for the breakthrough blueprint tomorrow and Tuesday. If you can organize your to make that work. Yeah, if you can organize you to make that work, I've got a spot available. Right. And I was surprised that we ended up. There were three people who, you know, were able to drop everything and come with for those two days. And I did that again and again. And what I'm finding is that there's always two or three people who. I find it almost that it's easier for some people because they don't have the logistics of traveling, that it's easier for them to see that they could rearrange and clear the deck from 10 to 5 on these two the next two days. It's easier for them to do that than to commit to clearing those things 30 days from now.

Dan: Well, the other aspect of that is the other side. So let's say they had, you know, they had something that was scheduled and they wanted to move it, but it also required travel considerations from the people whose schedule they were changing.

Dean: Right.

Dan: In other words, it was inconvenience.

Dean: Right.

Dan: It's less. It's really less inconvenient for you to cancel something than for the people you're canceling on the other side.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. That's pretty.

Dean: It's pretty interesting. Right. Like that because of no travel, that it's literally just the. The time. There's no margins on it. Like, there's no. Because if you're in your zoom environment, there's no margins of even needing to travel locally to get anywhere. You could literally. It's just those windows.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting. I was. The next quarterly book, which we have one coming out right now. You know, in other words, it's the beginning of a new workshop. And the one that's coming out right now is called Innovation Over Envy.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And, you know, it's one of my quarterly books, but the one that I'm writing right now for the June, July, August quarter is called Zooming Ahead. I've just, you know, sort of.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, put this. And so we're, you know, you know, I'm going through the process. We're. I'm just starting chapter four, and we've got three. You know, we've got the interviews which produce the text, three of them in place, and we've got the cartoons for three of them done. And that was being interviewed by Shannon Waller. So I do fast filter, which is, you know, a basic organizing tool for me.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and so that's how we do our chapters. I'll do a fast filter on the chapter. And then Shannon Waller, who's a superb interviewer, she's been with us. It'll be 30 years in July. July Shannon's been with 30 years. And so she's. She's just a terrific interviewer, you know, and she just takes me through the fast filter, and then the things I have written down, we cover. But then also, just like our conversation here, all sorts of things pop up in the. In the. You know, in. And, you know, as the conversation goes along, all sorts of things they hadn't thought about pop up. And I was thinking. I was saying, you know, travel in our mind, this. Before the last year, travel was almost like the law of gravity. It controlled your life. But you Never gave it any thought, you know, unless you're in danger. And I said, the. What I would call. There's the laws of travel, gravity, right? And that everything. When we would plan anything, prior to a year ago, when we would plan anything on our future, we had to take into account travel law of gravity, you know, which pulls you back, pulls you down, slows things down.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Increases complex, increases complexity. And I gave a little. I gave a little picture to Shannon, and I said, you know, I think everybody, maybe younger in their life, has had dreams of flying, that they could fly. Okay. You know, and it's a very, very prevalent human dream. They found that just about everybody has dreams where they would experience themselves. And it's. And there are always great dreams. Like, everybody, when they think about their flying dreams, they always think of, you know, that it's not a negative thing, it's positive, it's not a nightmare, it's a very pleasant dream. And I was saying, so, you know, every once in a while, we have a balcony on our main house that overlooks. Overlooks the whole property. And it's, you know, it's a very nice, very nice view. And I said, so one, one day, I'm up on the balcony. I said, you know, I'm just going to step up to see if that law of gravity is still an operation. And to my surprise, I can float. I can float and I love it. So let's say I float around for, you know, I float around for five minutes, and then I just decide, well, I'm going to go down to the ground. My. My sense is in the next 24 hours, almost every thought you had about reality would go through a transformation just because, yes, something that had been with you since birth wasn't there for five minutes. My sense is that that's the experience that we've had, if we've really engaged with quadlandia, is that every thought we had about the future, the past and everything was governed by the gravitational law of travel.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And then for a year, it's not been there. And to a certain extent, we've had a floating dream. You know, we've had a floating experience.

Dean: I think that's amazing because as you were saying that, you know, you think I've been in this kind of like, orbital path where, like, rotating around the Earth that I know in any calendar year, I'm going to be in Chicago four times, I'm going to be in Phoenix three or four times. I'm going to be in. In Toronto, in London, in Amsterdam, in Sydney and that gravitational rotation of. There's a lot of energy and in between stuff to pull that off. And so all of that freedom now that I can instantly be in even, even we've talked about the, the time impact of even doing a local breakthrough blueprint would be a Sunday afternoon till Wednesday evening bubble of being away from my home environment and being in a hotel and all the travel and things that go with that. And now it's a 10 o' clock to 5 o', clock, you know, discreet little window within my regular home environment with people like I mentioned on the last breakthrough blueprint we did had people from, from Hawaii all the way to Liechtenstein on the same, in the same thing, all at home in their environment.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting because, you know, probably the most persistent requests that we've had from people who live not in, you know, not in Canada, not in the United States or not in the UK because we do the, we've done the workshops locally, you know, in those countries. But the biggest, the most persistent request that we've had is when are you coming to Australia? You know. Yeah, when is coach coming to Australia? Yeah, and it's really interesting. And I said, well, you know, we don't have the marketing capability to do that from a time standpoint because all of our, our sales salespeople are, you know, within the time, time zone reach of London or Toronto or Chicago or Los Angeles. So yeah, you know, we're governed, they're governed by how much, how much we can, you know, travel. I mean, and you know, Australia is another day, right, that they're in tomorrow at any time.

Dean: Yeah, they're already living in the future.

Dan: They're already living in the future. And you know, and yet we've had clients who have been in the program continually for as long as 15 years from Sydney, at least Sydney or Melbourne, more in the eastern part of Australia. And they, they've done a five day turnaround to come for a single Strategic Coach workshop, you know, and they've done that four times a year. So 20 of their days, you know, at minimum, 17 hours in the air. And you know, the cost of that plus you know, the, you know, the jet lag and everything associated with that type of travel.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So last September, as result, out of necessity, we created a virtual global program of Strategic Coach which is six times a year. It's not four times a year, it's six times. And, and it's a workshop every two months and it's a four hour workshop and then you have in between connector calls like we do. So most people are in touch every month. So they have their workshop months and then they have two. Well, a couple more connectors in between. So probably three times. Three times, six. They're in contact 18 times during the year. And that's a very satisfying program for them. Yeah, you know, it's a very satisfying program. We have to date and this just started last September, so we're, you know, approaching six months in it. We have as many signups for Strategic Coach from Australia in the last six months than we had in our first 31 years.

Dean: That's great. Yeah, that's.

Dan: And they've been waiting. And they've been waiting. They've been. They've been waiting or they've started and stopped.

Dean: Probably some of them, you know. Yeah. And started coming to la.

Dan: These are entirely new. These are new.

Dean: Wow. Wow.

Dan: I mean, we have comebacks, we have people who have come back, you know, but we don't count those as new registrations there.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: What we call out back ends.

Dean: Yeah, out back ends. That's good.

Dan: They were out, but now they're back in. So we call them back in. Obi. Obi and everything like that. But I was thinking of. We have a client from Singapore by the name of Roy, and Roy's Royce probably made the trip 13 times from Singapore. It's 23 hours flight time from Singapore. And so he comes on. Now we do. He comes on for a Chicago central chime. So what I would ordinarily have done in Chicago, we start at 10 o' clock rather than 9 o'.

Dean: Clock.

Dan: Toronto, we start at 9 o'. Clock. And so he came in and it was 11 o'. Clock. It was 11 o' clock in Singapore in the evening. Yeah, right. An hour before midnight. And he said, so great. He said. And I said, so how are you handling this? He says, I take a nap from around 5 o' clock to 9 o'. Clock. Oh, wow. In the afternoon. And he said, I just get four hours. And he says that's great. And I don't schedule heavily tomorrow. You know, he says, I give myself, you know, time to get a good sleep and. But he'll, he, he'll go from 11 o', clock, 11 o' clock in the evening till 5 in the morning. And then he, Then he. And but he's a global entrepreneur. You know, he's a global entrepreneur. So he's used to dealing with really far flung time zones of people from around the planet. So he's. Yeah, he's already adjusted to that. But he said. He said, I can tell you, he said any negative thought I might have about doing a strategic coach workshop in the middle of the night. I just think of the 23 hours each way that I used to have to go.

Dean: Right. Yes. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, Ninad from India.

Dan: From Mumbai.

Dean: From Mumbai. I mean, look at how many. How much he was sharing with us at one of the workshops, how long the. The journey is for him. Yeah. So. No. Yeah. Instant, instant location. That's really one of these great things that's like you were talking about. There's no gravity.

Dan: No. You know, but. But it kind of unhinges your thinking about life.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Both your past life and your future life. Just like being able to float in space would unhinge every thought you had, because it's all conditioned by the requirements of gravitation.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and one of the things I was thinking about, Dean, was your notion of how long you can be creative and, you know, having bigger goals than that. How much that was conditioned by the fact that. That it was going to require as much or even more travel.

Dean: Mm. Yeah. I mean, you know, I was. When you were talking about that gravity idea, I was likening it also to the two capabilities that. When you realize what the marketplace for capabilities is right now, that basically anything that you could imagine is available at whatever scale of it you need that you don't have for a creative person. The thing that's always been the biggest obstacle is the gravity of. Of execution. And that's really kind of weighed. Weighed down, you know.

Dan: Well, your vision, your. The, you know, the confidence of your vision was very much controlled by the. By the capabilities.

Dean: Yeah. Capabilities.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. By the gravity of your capabilities. That's what I. That's the real thing.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That now there's zero gravity on capabilities for. I mean, I want to say for anything, but certainly for almost everything. That's absolutely true.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Especially when you take into consideration that so much of it is just. If you let go of the idea also that the not being able to afford it is a gravity in itself as well. Right. That having to have your own money for something is a. Is a gravity.

Dan: Yep, Yep. Yeah. Very, very, very much so. You know, our salespeople, it took us, you know, it took our sales team a bit of time to adjust to this fact. And I said, how many of your, you know, maybes, you know, like, they really love the program. They love the whole idea of the program, but they said, you know, you know, it just doesn't fit into my schedule right now. It actually wasn't about their schedule. It was the sacrifice they were going to have to go through to travel.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: But it is about your schedule. I mean, in the case of, you know, in case of Australia and Singapore, you're talking about five, five days rather than an event that takes place in four hours. And you're doing what you want to do up until it starts and you're doing what you want to do immediately. And there's no travel time.

Dean: Yeah. And there's no expense of that. I mean, there's, you know, an equal. It's quite a, you know, I would argue in most cases it's an equal monetary commitment to the travel as it is for the program.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, the other, the other thing that is removed. And I deal with this in the book. I said, you know, interpersonal politics is actually a spatial. It's actually a spatial reality when you think about personal politics. So think of the, you know, skyscrapers in the financial district of Toronto, TD Center, Scotia Centre, First Canadian Place, Scotia, you know, all the big bank buildings. And the person with the most politics, the most personal politics, political power. Where does that person and where does that person dwell in those buildings?

Dean: At the tippy top.

Dan: At the tippy top. And on the tippy top floor, where is this person's office?

Dean: Yeah, in the corner

Dan: with the

Dean: best view.

Dan: Right, Best view. And how much space does his or her office take up compared with everybody else's office?

Dean: Yeah, More.

Dan: Yeah. So these are all spatial considerations. These are all spatial. These are not time considerations, they're spatial considerations.

Dean: Yeah. I'd never thought about. What does that mean? What's going on there?

Dan: Well, for example, I was reading, you know, I'm a World War II history junkie. And where Hitler's office was, Hitler was. And you know, had his own huge edifice and an even bigger one was being planned for him. But they took over an existing building and retrofitted it. But when you were admitted into Hitler's presence, it was a hundred foot walk from the door until you got to his desk.

Dean: Oh, really?

Dan: Wow. And when you got to the desk, there were no chairs for you. And his desk was raised. And his desk was raised. These are spatial considerations.

Dean: So you're looking up and then going

Dan: to the floor enough. And he wasn't that tall, you know, he was five foot eight.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I looked it up yesterday. So, you know, Stalin or Hitler was 5 foot 8. Stalin was 5 foot 6, Mussolini was 5 foot 6, Churchill was 5 foot 5. Tojo really? Wow. Military. Tojo, the military leader of Japan was 5 foot 2. And Franklin Roosevelt was in. And Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair, so it didn't matter how tall he was. And so these are the six major leaders and the tallest is 5.8. But in every case with Stalin, with. I don't know about Churchill. I mean, I don't know. It doesn't really play that much part in democracies as it does in, you know, dictatorships. But they all had raised seats, raised desks, everything when they dealt with other people.

Dean: Wow, this is amazing. There's something.

Dan: These are spatial. It's entirely spatial. It's not, it's not time.

Dean: And that's all leveled in. In zoom is what you're saying.

Dan: A lot of it is removed.

Dean: Uh huh.

Dan: Yeah. So for example, on a zoom screen, which we're delighted, it's 25 or 49 right now. So we get 25 frames per page or we get 49 depending on how we want to have it. And. But where you are on that page is strictly a matter of where you want to be on that page.

Dean: Yeah, I like that because I found that out. That you can move people around to. You move the windows around. That's pretty exciting. Yeah.

Dan: Yep, yep. Yeah. And everybody's got the same size square and the other one is every one of their backgrounds is custom designed for them.

Dean: Mm. Yeah. Well, these are such, it's such interesting times. You know, we look a year into this now. It's just the most normal thing. We're talking about zoom. Like it's, it's not. It's really, it's the new normal for. Yeah, I mean it's a primary thing. I think I will.

Dan: Well, it is, it is for. It is for some people, but for other people it's completely absent. That's completely absolute. And I've been, you know, I've been keeping a steady daily check. You know, I check my, what I would call my commentary spots on, on the Internet. You know, so I go on the Internet every day and I've got about 12 areas that tend to produce really well written and popped articles. And those are the spots that I go to. I mean the breaking news and that doesn't really interest me. It's, it's the, you know, in depth, you know, usually about a couple thousand word blog article about a particular topic where somebody, you know, has really investigated those misses come up with. And I've checked it since last March and not one on what you and I are talking about on Cloudlandia There hasn't been one article that talks about the amazing breakthrough that's happened over the last five months. So my feeling is the only ones who see it are the ones who want to use it, and the ones who don't want. You want to use it, don't see it.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. I look at and it's almost like it's a secret advantage of the ones who like. I mean, some of the greatest breakthroughs that we're seeing are a result of like seeing this. You know, I remember there was a. There was a book. There was a book called you Squared by Price Pritchett, I think was the guy's name. And it was just a little book, but he was a change management, you know, consultant. And he started the book he was writing and he said, as I write this, there's a fly in the window above the desk where I'm looking out the window here, and it is beating its head trying to get through this glass. It sees where it wants to go and it can't do there. But literally three feet to the right, there's an open door with no obstacles for it to get to where it wants to go. And it doesn't. It won't give up on trying to break through that glass long enough to see that there's another option right over here that would give it easy access to what it is. And so that's what kind of reminded me of this, that there are people who are resistant to pining away for the loss of the physical gathering.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And waiting it out.

Dan: You use, you use your, your formula, you know, that you've used for this. And you know, and I've referred to that, you know, that it's good for you to, you know, to frame things in terms of CBR capabilities. The VCR vision. Yeah, VCR's vision capability and reach My mine. And it has to do with the who. Who are the who's you're looking for in your life. And it has to do with people who have ambition, people who have creativity and people have cooperation. The people that you will most want to be in collaboration with are people who have those three qualities, providing that you have those three qualities. And my sense is that on a personal level, if you are not ambitious, if you don't have a real nose for greater capabilities that will serve your ambition and if you aren't cooperative, in other words, that you can, you can utilize other people's ambition and other people's capability. Creativity, probably. This zoom medium is not going to be interesting to You. It may even be threatening to you. It may be threatening to you. You know, you're going to be confronted with all sorts of people that make you feel worse about yourself.

Dean: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, there's so.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So I. But my last chapter I finished, you know, I have the little subheads and my little books and it says, yeah, true, true and almost too good. In other words, true comma and almost too good because people say it's too good to be true. And I said, yeah, well, it's actually true and it may seem almost too good. Yeah, because that's, that's my experience, you know, I can float, right?

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And you may be pinching yourself, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You wouldn't have that. You want to have that capability and have it turned off in five minutes by somebody else, right?

Dean: Yeah. I can fly. Oh, man.

Dan: It's bit like the roadrunner and coyote.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But you know, it's really, it's been fascinating to me to see this anti gravity situation happening and the evolution of it. Like. Yeah, we talked probably. I'm pretty sure I was the first person to bring the word ghost kitchen into your world.

Dan: Yes, you are.

Dean: To the idea of.

Dan: Yeah. Five or six years ago and on the president's score bar. Scoreboard since you did that. And that's been a. Two years, I think two years since you brought this topic up. Maybe three other people have talked to me about it as part of their future plans.

Dean: That's interesting, isn't it? That now the, you know that when I first discovered that concept, it was new and rare and was just being discovered. It was almost like somebody figured it out and was keeping it a secret like that. And it felt like the reports of it. This is really an interesting thing now, Dan. If I look back on this, it had to have been. It's definitely more than two years, but probably not more than four years. Maybe that the, the. When I brought it to your attention, it was like somebody discovered this was going on and it was like they felt like the people were cheating because it was all about that, that article that I saw of the nine restaurants, one kitchen, no dining room. And that was. That was almost like somebody was cheating by running nine restaurants out of the same kitchen. That doesn't seem fair or that's like an unfair advantage that they could have nine restaurants but only have one kitchen. And then that became the thing that was. Became kind of the standard that ghost kitchens started being a way for traditional restaurant entrepreneurs to, you know, re Sidestep the traditional thing of having to have the total package of a restaurant with a dining room in a high traffic location with a whole front of house staff, that somebody could bypass all that, jettison the forward facing mainland part of it in favor of just focusing on the most profitable cloudland part of it. And then that became the next level of that became an infrastructure that allowed people to just have the facilities for ghost kitchens. And now it's evolved to the ghost kitchen as a service where you just, if you're a chef, you give us your recipes and will scale it out to the other. Yeah, and that was the. So there's a whole infrastructure that didn't exist four years ago. That's really the people who discover these things are creating big, big opportunities of it.

Dan: I'm going to talk about Tuesday. Yeah. I think one reason why you don't hear about it is because it's such a great idea that people are really busy.

Dean: Yeah, it's such a. Yeah.

Dan: And what I'm, what I'm talking to you about is you actually don't have time for status because success is too big.

Dean: Right.

Dan: What I mean is that, you know, would you or I go to some group who's not using Zoom and try to spend a couple hours converting them to Zoom?

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Would you?

Dean: Well, yeah.

Dan: I mean, no, no, you wouldn't, you wouldn't know. You'd rather do, you'd rather do your next cooperation and collaboration.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: On Zoom, that experience. So you only really want to talk to the people who are with it. You know, you only want to talk to the people who get it. You, you don't want to talk to the people who don't get it. And it was very funny because I, you know, over the years with the Facebook phenomenon and the Google phenomenon, there's been various people saying, you know, there's no such thing as personal privacy anymore. People don't have personal privacy anymore. And I said, sure they do. I said, there's probably billions of people that personal. They have personal. Probably everybody on the planet has personal privacy about something. And he says, well, who are they? And I says, well, it's private. You wouldn't know. They are.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, like somebody, I mean, I keep, you know, you know, I, there's just vast areas of my life that I don't talk about. You know, I don't talk about. And, and the reason, the reason I don't talk about it is that there's no useful reason to be talking about it. Right. So, you know, in other Words. If it isn't part of the common ground that I have with someone else, I'm really not going to talk about it. Right. I'm not trying to convert anybody over to my, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: The way I've left. The way I've left, led my life or everything else. It's for me to make use of my own experiences for my own reasons. Nobody else needs to know those. And. But it's very funny because you're starting to see now the first what I would say, pushback with Australia basically saying that Facebook can't use news headlines, news, news. And Facebook says, well, we're just going to cut Australia out. And I said, well, this can be interesting. Let's see. Yeah, let's see what a corporation can do against the nation state. Especially when Google totally did the deal with Australia. Google said, sure, we'll do a deal with you. Yeah. So he's out there hanging by himself, you know, and, you know, and then Tim Cook saying, you know, we're just going to install something on your iPhone that gives you the right to say yes or no with anything you're doing, doing. And so my sense is that, you know, really innovative people will take massive advantage of something that's free before anyone else even realizes that it's valuable.

Dean: Do you know, you know, chefs, people like restaurant. Do you know people who own restaurants? I know you're friendly with some of the ones in Toronto, but. Yeah, I'm just curious about what you observe as their motivation, because you think about what you were talking about, the spatial considerations. Like, is. I'm wondering if in a chef's mind, the. What is the. The success or the thing of. Of owning a restaurant? Is it the, you know, is it the preparing the food every day for this, love the act of preparing the food, or do they love the idea of figuring out and crafting their signature dishes as the algorithm kind of thing? It's an interesting thing to. For me to say.

Dan: I think. I think it's yes to every question. And, you know, you could ask about it. And that's why I think it's hard for people to focus on a new capability, because they have to take it into consideration. They have to balance it against the multitude of different reasons why they're doing what they're doing.

Dean: Mm. Yeah. Because I know. Yeah.

Dan: I mean, right. You know, I know. I know him. And, you know, and it goes back to 1993, so it's 27 years. And, you know, and, you know, he's the chef. I mean, he Designs. I don't think he's ever had a chef. You know, I mean, I think Suser is the, you know, the designer of the menu, but he's the Prince piece, the front stage presence too, because he comes out, he talks, talks to guests and everything else. And I would say it's, you know, it's the total package. You know, the experience of going there, the space, the design, how people are treated, who has long term customers are, you know, the, you know, his, you know, his relationship with the team, his reputation, the number of stars that he has. And you know, so, so my, and so my sense is that it's a 360 degree phenomenon and, and, but, you know, he's delivering big time. You know, I mean, me. Which is, you know, the current name of the restaurant on King Street. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Anything on the men. He's got a set menu of, you know, favorite over the years, favorite Lee Lee things and they're all available by, by delivery. Him. Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. It's very, it's interesting because I'm seeing the evolution of where that, you know, where that goes now, like with the evolution of the virtual dining. That's the newest, that's the evolution of it now is virtual dining. We've gone from ghost kitchen to cloud kitchen to virtual dining as the newest iteration of the word. And it opens up opportunities for celebrity chefs to have their, their menus distributed in other areas. So yeah, you.

Dan: Well, it's really interesting. Charlie, Charlie Trotter in Chicago was, you know, I think he's sort of broadly credited in American restaurant history as the one who really created the tasting menu. Tasting menu restaurant where you would go in and you would order a menu. You wouldn't order aisle a cart.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And he usually had three. He had, you know, I mean, he switched over pretty early to vegetarian. You know, not vegan, but vegetarian. And then he had, he had a, you know, kind of a standard. And then he'd have a super deluxe one and you would go in and, and each guest would have to choose from, you know, would choose one whole menu. You. Because it was, I think it was seven courses. It didn't matter which menu. So, you know, everybody get, everybody would get their first, second, third through seventh. Yeah. And but he started off, first of all, he is not a graduate of any cooking school, but he loved cooking and he started off as a caterer in the, you know, sort of trendy, fashionable part of Chicago. And you know, and he just developed this very, very passionate clientele of people that he would Cater for. And that became the base, you know, that would become the base for his. When he opened a restaurant, he immediately had craving fans and, you know, hard to get into. Very hard to get into. I was probably there a dozen times, you know, during, during the period. But he started, you know, I mean, if he had started with the possibility of a ghost kitchen, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Caterer, he might have gone in a completely different direction.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But. Yeah.

Dean: Amazing.

Dan: Yeah. But what I'm noticing, and the thing that I'm most fascinated with is the invisibility of the Cloudlandia economy to those who are against it, are lacking in confidence about it, or don't think it's very important that if, if those. Check those three boxes and you don't see what's happening.

Dean: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. And it's, that's. That's the funny thing. It's like having 3D glasses. When you see this, when you see it, it's immediate that you see all the. The whole complement of opportunities. And I think your chapter of that. It seems too good to be true is really accurate. Yeah. And I think that we end up kind of.

Dan: It's. Yeah.

Dean: The way I state voluntary gravity. That's a good. That's a good word.

Dan: It's true, but almost too good.

Dean: I think that's the thing that we, we have. We apply voluntary gravity to our situations that we will just like. I'll just. I think I just want to explode a little bit.

Dan: Yeah. I think, I think everybody's got a personal gravitational system.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, I mean, you know, I, I don't want to be thinking about everything all the time. I want to. I want to be thinking about particular things most of the time.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I've got some room for new topics, but I think all of us have sort of the main focus and that's what makes us great and makes us capable and makes us unique. Is. Yeah, it was like Einstein, you know, is known as the, you know, the, you know, the discoverer of relativity. And he said. Oh, no, no. He said there were many, many people, you know, at the turn of the 20th century. He says there are many people, physicists, thinking about relativity. And he says, but I'm the first person to think about it and not think about anything else for 10 years.

Dean: That's funny. That's you and I for Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: In 10 years. That's great.

Dan: Well, you're, You're. You're. You're. Yeah, you're. You're the. You're the. You're the go to person if you want to A guided tour of Podlandia.

Dean: The mayor of Cloudlandia.

Dan: Right.

Dean: The welcome committee.

Dan: Yes. Yes.

Dean: It's so funny. I love it.

Dan: You're the Cheshire cat. That's class I.

Dean: That's it. So I noticed I have. I'm excited about Tuesday. I noticed I have something on my calendar for tomorrow with strategic. Is there a workshop tomorrow or not that I know.

Dan: Just be a. It just may be a check in with with. Oh no, it's six o'.

Dean: Clock.

Dan: We're gonna have going to have a social hour in spatial web.

Dean: That's what it is. Okay.

Dan: You go in and you create a avatar of yourself and you're able to wander around. You're not confined to boxes. You go in through zoom and you and you can talk around but it's your dean and I'm Dan and we can go from group to group and talk to each other, socialize. I love it. Just experimenting.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. Why not?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Dean: I will. I'll see you there.

Dan: Yep, I'll be there at six Eastern time. Six Eastern. Okay.

Dean: Perfect.

Dan: All right.

Dean: All right, Dan, enjoy your day. Thanks.

Dan: Great to chat.

Dean: Yes, always.