Packaging the Message

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson.

Dean: There we are.

Dan: You've triggered me. I'm now looking for hits on Cloudlandia, so I just sent you one.

Dean: Oh, really? Okay, cool, cool. What's happened?

Dan: Well, look at. Look at it. I mean, it arrived as a Cloudlandia message.

Dean: Okay. All the way through Cloudlandia. Another hero story. Okay.

Dan: Yeah. Oh, I like it. He's a rapper. He's a rapper. And in the last 30 days, he's gone to number one on all music genres on itunes. Itunes. Music. He's a. Oh, yes. Edmonton. He's Tom McDonald. Yeah.

Dean: Yes, yes, I know about him. So I didn't know the story. So what? What's the story? This was very interesting.

Dan: Well, you know, he's. He's been rapping, writing and rapping for probably about. I think he's in his seventh year now. He's from Edmonton, Alberta. And. And. And he was a wrestler, too. He's a wrestler. So he's got all the right credentials, you know, because rapping is kind of a form of wrestling, actually. You know, it's wrestling with the English language, I guess. And anyway. But he's just goes after all the political correctness stuff that's coming out, and he turns all the political correctness into stuff to show his notion.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, his notion of what's at daycare. But one of the things that. It illustrates to me that it's a free medium for anyone who can write something that's interesting to other people and develop an audience in appalling. And so far, he's had 10 mil. 10 million in just a month. With the video that goes with, he's had 10 million downloads. And I was just. Every time. Every time that he gets panned by some, you know, someone who doesn't like his thoughts, doesn't like his words, doesn't like his music, he gets about. He gets about 50,000 more followers every time somebody gets.

Dean: Oh, this is great. Yeah, you know, I remember.

Dan: And he controls the whole thing. He has no agents, he has no production, you know, and everything else, he's just taking advantage of Landia.

Dean: This is great. I'm reading this article and you know what stood out to me like this? I'm just scanning through the article that you sent me because I think the song that I saw was called no Lives Matter, and it was a thing, but this. There was one line in the song that really stood out to me, and it's the one they think they mentioned in the article. He says. They say bacteria is Proof of life on Mars, but a heartbeat isn't proof of life on Earth, which is kind of, I mean, really interesting. Right. Bacteria is proof of life on Mars, but a heartbeat isn't proof of life on Earth. Weird. That's an interesting perspective. Right?

Dan: Well, what's really. Yeah, yeah, but what's really interesting. He's like a really good speechwriter. You like, you know, John Kennedy, JFK and.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Ronald Reagan. They had great, great lines. They had great lines, but what they had was great speechwriters. And he's like a great speechwriter because he can take. Thoughts. Do contrast with thoughts.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, like, so all the, you know, the top of the political conversation and the cultural conversation in the US Is just pulling out the terms and then he's putting them to rap music, which is kind of hard for his enemies to go after him because rap, I mean, rap is kind of like, can you cancel a rap artist?

Dean: Right. That's the thing. It's kind of a brilliant package in that if he was just on. If he was a blogger or a vlogger doing videos and just saying the things that he's saying on, you know, just in normal voice, just talking them, sharing the ideas, it would be a different, you know, then he's a pundit kind of thing compared to a. Wrapping them. He's an artist. And it's an. It's a really interesting.

Dan: Well, the, the other comparison is that they're sort of. They're sort of the, you know, basketball players and rappers. White. White guys can't do it. You know, they can't jump and they can't do rap. But, you know, and we've had only one, you know, who really made it over. The Eminem is the only one who became famous.

Dean: Come on now, don't sell Vanilla Ice.

Dan: Yeah, well, you know, it's not my. It's not my genre, but.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. I can tell that you're. You're not a hip hop historian.

Dan: Okay. You just expanded my knowledge by 100%. So. So. But. But this guy's got creds, you know, I mean. Yeah, you can kind of follow what he's saying, you know, like. I mean. Yeah, it's got a. The other thing. It's got kind of a point, you know, I mean, every one of his. You use the word blog. These are kind of rap blogs.

Dean: Yeah, that's right. That's. It's an interesting expression. It's a different. So funny how what package you put something in shapes the reception of it. It's almost like, he's in that bubble of a rap song that it's received differently than it is if it was an op ed on the New York Times.

Dan: Yep.

Dean: You know, that's a really.

Dan: So everybody is listening. So everybody is listening. You know, just go to. Just go to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia hasn't taken him down yet. You know, they haven't found a way to take him down yet.

Dean: He hasn't been canceled.

Dan: Tom McDonald from Edmonton, Alberta. And, you know, and I just find that. I mean, we're developing the uniqueness of opportunity and the. Well, the uniqueness of vision, capability, and reach. That's your formula. And he's got a vision. He's got capability, and he's got reach.

Dean: Mm. This is interesting, because they're saying, yeah, he does. He owns the masters. He writes and performs the music. His lovely and talented girlfriend directs and produces all his videos. They don't need anybody else. They have one other employee who also contributes the overall effort. But with three people, Tom McDonald, doing better financially with total artistic freedom than artists creating music under a record label, and he's delivering the highest quality content in his industry. It's a really. That's amazing. You know, like, this is. I'm so excited, Dan, that we. I think we've got a really great thing here, what you and I are doing as cartographers of Cloudlandia. You know, I mean. Yeah. Naming it and then observing the. The migration and the things that are happening. And this is.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's almost. It's almost like we're bringing. We're bringing tribal superstars back to London to introduce them to the king and queen of England.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I mean, really. That's something, isn't it? Right? It's gonna get.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Hey, look at this one.

Dan: You thought. You thought the last one was good. You know, it's like the old Bob Newhart. You know, he would do his conversations with historical characters. Bob Newhart, 1950. 1960. And one was with Sir Walter Raleigh. And he's sort of the PR man or the advertising man for pr I think he's sort of the PR age agent for Sir Walter Raleigh. And, you know, and he takes a phone call, and it's his secretary, and she says, maddie Wall this year again.

Dean: Oh, geez. Maddie.

Dan: Walt. Okay. Hi, Adrian. Hey, Walt. How you doing?

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: What do you got for you? What you're back. What do you got for us this time to back CO Tobacco? All right, well, what's to back? Oh, yeah, yeah. And they're really funny, but but we're bringing funny things back from a new world. And we're not only that we're. We're not only bringing maps back, but we're telling people what the key skills are of exploring the new land.

Dean: So this is, this is great. I heard a new word to this week. I mean and it really sort of this week is the first time I've kind of looked into it because it feels like it's heating up a new term that is nft. Have you heard, do you know about that what an NFT is? So neither did I and they'd heard the word just kind of heard the term bandied about. But it stands for non fungible token. And what it is is it's a new thing that's showing up on the blockchain that allows someone to own a digital asset. Like to own. Somebody bought a. There's some art that's happening where somebody bought a piece of digital art that they paid, you know, million dollars or more for to have the ownership of this. Even though it's digitally available. They own this unique. This one certified one of it. And the proven you know, thinking ahead now that the. The provenance of digital art will be documented in the blockchain going forward that the authenticity of it is something. So people are selling like what's buying. There's a, you know there's a pixelated art picture called a crypto. I forget was a crypto monkey or something like that that was this guy paid for. And it's just a simple digital image. Somebody's buying some Pokemon things like this that have value. Somebody paid. I wish I remember the numbers but a significant amount of Money for an eight second video clip of LeBron James, you know make doing some. Some dunk that it's as a sports collectible kind of thing. You own this digital thing. So imagine for instance if you know like. Imagine it'd be like owning the rights to an image kind of thing. Pre Internet you would have tangible assets where somebody would like if you. The Zapruder films or something. Right. Like or some. You know, when you got the physical film of something or a physical picture of something that you would buy the rights to it or an own the master the negatives of the thing because there were physicals. A physical asset. Well in the digital world there's not that. So this is what these non fungible tokens are about that they're something that can mark Internet ownership. Digital ownership of something.

Dan: Yeah. And I thought it's really. Yeah, yeah. I've got Several takes on that. Now that I do too.

Dean: Like I was just thinking about how what struck me was because they're thinking about all the number of uses that you could have for some people are selling songs like. And I remember a few. Do you remember?

Dan: I've got one of my clients who I've got one of my clients has a hedge fund and just buying parts of artists.

Dean: You know what would be fascinating? Yeah. They're.

Dan: And what they are if you think of the long tail that developed in relationship to Internet marketing that you have a straight line at the left hand side that goes right up to the top and all the great stars are on a straight line. In other words, if they bring out something, they immediately have 2 million, 3 million people and then there's this curve that goes down to nothing. So they're the stars. And what my this is 30 year client and strategic coach named Greg Gichon and what he discovered through some people who really knew the recording industry that if you come about halfway down the curve, the long tail and you take about a 20% cut out of it and say it's like at the 40% to 60% mark they discovered that there's artists and you know, music musicians who write things that in the first year they'll, let's say they'll sell 10,000. They'll, they'll sell 10,000 sons. Okay. Which is not, doesn't make them a star. Stars of millions. Millions.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But in the, in their fifth year and every other year they still sell 10,000 sons. So they're like yes, they're like yeah, they're, they're a self milting cow. And you know, and every year they get 10, you know, they get 10,000 gallons out of this. So they don't purchase all of this, they just purchase part of it. He's got a mutual fund that he's put together and, and about 30 or 40 of these 20 to 40% artists. And it gives them instant. First of all they get cash flow right off the bat. There's a purchase price and then because it's in this fund, it's propelling their sales going forward. And then they get their, they get whatever royalties they were getting before. But it, so it's not total ownership, it's just part of ownership.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And, and so what it means is that things in the digital world are value valuable. But you've got two problems. How do you trust that it's real? And the second thing is how do you protect it against getting stolen by someone else? And what you're talking with fungible.

Dean: Yeah, non fungible token.

Dan: And what's fungible? Means it's not a. It's not a currency of exchange. Okay.

Dean: Right.

Dan: So the US Dollar is the number one currency in the world. And everybody has strange notions about this. And they said, well, you know, it's not going to be forever. And I said, well, it will be forever if everybody uses it. Okay. And, you know, so if you say, well, the Chinese will have a currency that's more powerful than the Americans. And I said, well, just do a test, you know, go around the world to 10,000 different people and say, we'll give you $10,000 in American currency or $10,000 worth of Chinese currency. Which one would you take? And I don't know anyone who would take the Chinese currency. And that's why the US Currency is more fungible.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: Okay, so what you're saying is that digital things now can become as secure and knowing that they're real and who the owner is as physical things, because, you know, they have blockchain on diamonds now, the provenance of diamonds, you know, when a diamond was mined, where it was mined, under what conditions it was mined, when it was developed, and who has owned the diamond right up until now. Painting on the wall. You can do that with a painting on the wall. So you're. You're applying this to digital property, digital creations.

Dean: Yeah. And I wonder, you know, like, so I saw in the article that Jack Dorsey from Twitter is selling the first tweet, which. So a digital. An image of the first tweet on Twitter that he sent. And you think, well, that's interesting. Like, that's a bit of Internet history right there. And yeah, I started thinking about, like, imagine if Taylor Swift, as she came to my mind because I'd seen another article about her. But imagine if Taylor Swift sold the digital NFT of the image of the lyrics that she wrote in her journal for the first time. Like the first words that she had about this song that everything. It's like documenting everything now. And I don't know how you create or activate an NFT for something because I'm very, again, very new into it. I'm seeing all this buzz around it. I'm in a group that's been, you know, everybody's talking about it in a group text thing. Never had a chance to really look through all the things, but I wanted to see if you had heard about it.

Dan: Well, well, I'll give you an example of this that goes back almost 100 years. And this is the first. This is actually the first ad that was ever on radio. And this happened at 5:15 on Monday, August 28th, 1922. Okay. And it's really New York, New York radio station weaf, and someone came on and said this. Let me enjoin upon you as you value your health and your hopes and your home happiness, get away from the solid masses of the meager opening. Admitting a slant of sunlight is mockingly called a light shaft. And where children grow up starved for a run over a patch of grass and the site of a tree. Okay, so that was the first recorded radio advertisement. And what it was, it was selling a new housing development in the suburbs of New York called Hawthorne Cricket.

Dean: That's interesting.

Dan: So, Jack Twitter's first tweet. Well, this is the first ad. So if they actually have this recorded, they can. They can make it into an nfp.

Dean: That's an interesting. Yeah, it's funny, you know, like, I look at those things, like, you're looking great moments in Cloudlandia you don't like. I mean, documenting. Documenting the things that. Yeah, I mean, so lots of. I mean, I think this is really going to go.

Dan: I mean, if we had recorded. If we recorded our first discussion at Low Select Bistro at lunchtime, then I brought up the idea of procrastination being valuable, and then you saying, well, let's create a podcast and we'll call it the Joy of Procrastination. And I said, how can we do that? I said, we can do it tomorrow. And I said, okay, let's do it tomorrow.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And that was recorded. And there you go.

Dean: I mean, that. Could you imagine if that was the thing? I mean, it's a really interesting way of thinking about documenting. Like, imagine artists who are creating songs or out there the first time they demo a song. Imagine, you know, if. I mean, I don't know how that I've got to get the rest of what the thing is, because I wonder how. I wonder if you could take these. This digital asset. But imagine if Taylor Swift played the song into her iPhone or whatever like she normally does, to get a demo of it or to just record the idea of it. Imagine, without knowing that that's going to be a hit song, and then after it becomes a hit song and she, you know, it becomes number one, then what would be the value of that genesis moment, that recording that you could own the. The raw translation? The first time the thought goes from analog to digital. The first time it. That's the birth date of something, right? Like when you first digitize it.

Dan: Well, one of the things that you're suggesting in this discussion is the blockchain provenance.

Dean: Yeah, that's what I wonder is how do you activate.

Dan: There's got to be. There's got to be some sort of like, almost like barcoding scanner. You know, that. That when you say this is Taylor Swift's first. You know, these are first thoughts about her first head. You. You have to. You say, okay, let's find Taylor, and she has to have it recorded somewhere. In other words, that has to be recorded. And you run the provenance. You run the provenance, the blockchain Providence scanner, over it and say, yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, this is actually. This is actually true.

Dean: You know, like, I wonder if this is going to be the digital equivalent of.

Dan: Yeah, go ahead.

Dean: I wonder if this is going to be the digital equivalent of. You remember the old thing. If you have an idea or something to send a. Send it in a field envelope certified to yourself, you know, with the date stamp and all of that stuff, the poor man's patent kind of thing, or proof of.

Dan: Well, it's.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: It's accounts in the law. Because I'm going through this right now in the first really big litigation that we've ever done with that, and we have dates, times, and witnesses for every one of our, you know, every one of our concepts and every one of our. We can say exactly when this was first made public and who the witnesses were for this. We've got the date and everything for each of our new ideas. And that constitutes copyright protection. You know, it's copyright protection. Yeah. That's.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. So interesting then, that whole. So, you know, as a vision. As a visionary in the vision column, that these things are going to be potentially very valuable as learning the ways of documenting ideas and thinking that way. I've been thinking particularly about it as the algorithms, you know.

Dan: Well, you know, what makes something valuable?

Dean: Copy.

Dan: Somebody's willing to write a check for it.

Dean: That's true. That is absolutely true. The exchange.

Dan: Yeah. Well, it's the price and mechanism. There's a concept called the pricing mechanism of the marketplace, and it says things are worth what someone. Someone, somewhere is willing to pay you for this.

Dean: You know, Is that what the invisible hand of the market is?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like Mike Trout, baseball player, Los Angeles Angels.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Signed the biggest ever contract in the history of baseball. And it was for. I think it's 13 years for 450.

Dean: 50 million.

Dan: Yeah. And so. And that's guaranteed? Yeah, I think half of it is guaranteed because they have an injury cause in it. Yeah. But for signing, he gets like 45 million. He gets like a tenth of it right up front just for signing the contract. And we were having a discussion in the workshop with some entrepreneurs days after this happened, and they said, the one guy said, you know, I think this is obscene. I have to tell you that America is going to hell. America, you know, you can just tell America is going down black hole. And I said, why? He says, a baseball player getting $450 million. And I said, yeah, I read that.

Dean: And

Dan: he said, there's no baseball player was worth $450 million. And I said, oh, boy. All right, I've got the proof that what you.

Dean: I got the proof. Exactly.

Dan: I got the proof that what you just said is not correct because somebody just signed a contract. Just guarantee the contract for $450 million. So a baseball player, Mike Trout, is worth $450 million? Yeah. You know, it really upset me. He says, well, we. You got people like school teachers and firemen. Yeah, well, nobody signed them, no. But there's no firemen in the world that somebody signed a contract for $450 million. So that.

Dean: Right.

Dan: There's no fireman who is worth a baseball player.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And it's really hard. It's really hard for people to accept that value is strictly in the eyes of a potential check writer.

Dean: Yeah, that's a really interesting thing that you look at. You know, there's only one. You know, that's. That's an interesting thing that, you know, he's probably the greatest baseball player of this generation and. But he's also pretty anonymous in a lot of ways, like in. Compared to the great baseball players when we were.

Dan: Yeah, he's been on subpar teams, you know, I mean, he hasn't been. They haven't been playoff teams. They haven't been World Series teams, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But here, here's the thing, and this is really interesting. I went back and looked at some statistics and I said, you know, baseball owners generally are rich people, and they got rich because they. They knew what they were signing their signature to over a period of 30 or 40 years. And they tend to be really successful at investing in different things and generally more successful than non successful. But here's a statistic that is absolutely constant, that if you take a ratio between the salary that they're paying their ball players and compare it against the value of their baseball team in the marketplace, the ratio in 1950 is the same as the ratio in 2020. There's been no change in the ratio between salaries and value of baseball club in 70 years.

Dean: I didn't know that. That's great.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is how they can write a check like that. What it means is that the multiplier of the value of their ball club, if they invest in Mike Trout for 450 million, probably makes their club worth a couple billion dollars.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Because he's an asset in their company. And it's hard for people, you know, who want value and worth to be determined by something other than check writing. Mm.

Dean: Yeah. By some. Yeah. Intangible value or moral value.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But the thing is, there's only, you know, there's. You think about teachers and firemen collectively, there's an incredible value on, you know, all the teachers and firemen, but they're only impacting a small number of people in their local community. And there's only one and only.

Dan: And. And only in certain situations.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Not constantly. Not day after day, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Not day after day. I mean, and I'm talking about people's awareness. Maybe firemen are doing something every day that's valuable, but it's not something that's known to the people who are writing tax checks.

Dean: Edward, it's interesting. If you think about the category of education, and you take the. Who would be the equivalent at the top of the game in education, then I bet there are education entrepreneurs that are. Lot of money.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And that's really almost like comparing the value of Mike Trump to one, you know, to a little league player in a local league, you know.

Dan: Well, there, I mean, they have to be. It would be sort of the lowest minor league club where you were actually getting paid.

Dean: There you go. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And they'd be making. They'd be making that most, you know, like, at the lowest baseball, minor leagues, they might be making 20,000 a year. 20.

Dean: Yeah, exactly right.

Dan: They'd have to have. They'd have to have another job during the off season to.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, to stay ahead. Okay.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And, yeah, so the. It would be Mike Trotter making, you know, somewhere around 13, 13 times, you know, $30,000 or $35,000 a year. $35 million a year as opposed to $20,000 a year.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. So I wonder if you think.

Dan: Well, you know, because I. And I engage with people who say, that's absolutely obscene. That's terrible. That's.

Dean: That's.

Dan: That just shows a Perversion of values in society. And I said, well, well, value. I said, that's an interesting. That's an interesting. That's an interesting concept. Let's talk about value. Valuable to who? You know, valuable to who? So you take Kylie Jenner, first teenager, 20 year old billionaire in history. Why is she, why is she valuable? One thing is reach.

Dean: That's exactly right. You can't hide that capability, vision.

Dan: So you've introduced a whole new accounting system or measurement system into human affairs. For Codlandia. The, the value of somebody in Codlandia is a combination of V plus C. Or is it. What is it?

Dean: V plus c times V plus C multiplied by reach. Yeah, yeah, that's.

Dan: That's the new algorithm for if you're. So we started this episode of welcome to Crowdlandia with report on a rap singer who is now rated number one of all music genres on iTunes. Number one music. 10 million downloads of a video in the last 30 days. He's got vision. He's got C times. Times reach.

Dean: Yes. That's amazing. Right? That's the thing he tapped into the app Apple, the Reach. And you look at those Apple, you look at those Reach platforms like anybody can. This is what, what's so amazing about it is that there's never. Cloudlandia welcomes visionaries. That's really the place. That's the message. If we could send the message out to all visionaries that Cloudlandia is a welcoming place. Free land. Free land. I'm going to rewatch. I'm going to re. Watch the Coming to America or whatever. The Tom Cruise. Well, what was it called?

Dan: First of all, it's. Yeah, what was America?

Dean: I think it was Coming to America, I think. Or.

Dan: Yeah, it could have been coming to America. Yeah.

Dean: But it was about Nicole Kidman and

Dan: Tom Cruise, the gangs in New York

Dean: City and them coming to. And they were getting out to where they were giving away land. And that was something, you know, like that. Just imagine that the. Because I loved how it started in Ireland, I guess. Or it was either Ireland or England. Yeah, that they were. Yeah, I think it was Ireland. And he's saying to her there, he's got a flyer right there that's telling them that they're giving away free land. And he was like a new start in America, you know, like that getting excited about that and then getting on the boat and getting over there and then getting on up, you know, horse and getting out to Oklahoma where they're giving away. And at the certain day the gun goes off and you can run and stake your claim.

Dan: The land rush. The Oklahoma.

Dean: The land rush. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, here. Here's the thing about that. Yeah, here's the thing about it. The. You know, there's lots of different thoughts about whether, you know, when they gifted people come from someplace on the planet and they have skills and they have knowledge and everything else, and they suddenly take over, what you people say, well, that's somebody else's property. But nowhere in any records of, you know, the people who were in North America. I'll just use North America, not South or Central America. Is there any. Is there any indication that they had any idea of a concept called property? Yeah, well, people coming, but the people who came up at thousands of years of developing the concept of property. So they had a capability.

Dean: They had a capability.

Dan: And. And. And so if you lack an idea, are you a victim? Let's just use our conversation, Dean. You and I are developing a new idea called Claudlandia, and you have determined. You have determined that there's an algorithm that determines your success in Cloudlandia, and it's VCR vision plus capability times reach equals Cloudlandia success. Now, if you don't know there's a thing called Cloudlandia and you don't know the algorithm called vcr, you feel yourself being left out and left behind. Are you a victim?

Dean: Yeah, that's. Are you a victim?

Dan: Yeah, because say, this isn't fair. These people are using something that's not even real. Like, it's not even real. Where is it? I can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't feel it. New kind of. New kind of reality.

Dean: It's interesting because a lot of these do, you know, if you use this analogy, it's kind of like they're especially the younger generation who's never known anything. Imagine if we were, you know, land based. Mainland, which we are. We're mainland based most of our lives. And then circa the turn of the century, the millennium, In 2000, you know, we slowly started making our way into this digital world that, you know, kids that were born after 2006, when the iPad and the I, you know, all of those. The digital app world was built in there. They have no frame of reference for an analog life. Their surroundings would be like asking a fish about, how do you like the water? And there'll be. What's water? And there. That's like, these are surrounded. They're surrounded in Cloudlandia. They live in Cloudlandia.

Dan: Well, there's the immigrant What I call the immigrant, you know, the. The immigrant structure, that immigrants from another place, when they come to a new place, have an incredibly greater appreciation of the new place than people who are born there. Yes. I mean, you and I have a greater appreciation. Appreciation of Cloudslandia than. Than kids who were born in Codlandia. And the reason is we know the difference between another world and this world.

Dean: Mm. That's. That's exactly my point. That there's. They don't have any frame of reference, and that's. Yeah, that's where it's. Yeah. So they're figuring it out. They realize there's nothing new to them, that, hey, I don't have to get a warehouse and make stuff. I can drop ship things. And kids are making, you know, making hundreds of thousands of dollars drop shipping. They're finding. They're looking online, they're reading the charts and seeing that, hey, this is a popular product. Then they go over to Alibaba and they find, hey, I can buy those for. I can buy a. A boatload of those and bring them over and ship them through Amazon and make a margin on those.

Dan: Yeah, it's very interesting. One of our pre Zone clients, Stephen Poulter, he's got a son who I think is now about 13 or 14, and for at least four years, he's been doing exactly what you just said he's been. See, he's been looking at where you can buy something for pennies on a dollar and sell the something for a dollar.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: In other words, you find it somewhere else in the world for pennies on the dollar, have it shipped over here and get it and then fulfill an order where it's a dollar. It costs you 7 cents, but it costs. And somebody will pay you a dollar for something that cost you 7 cents. That's good business. And the other thing, he's figured out that any topic that his teachers teach him in school, that if he goes home and looks it up on YouTube and watches five hours of YouTube films, he knows more than his teacher.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. One Wikipedia. One Wikipedia page. And. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And he said, dad, why should I ever have a job and why should I ever go to a school? I figured out the whole system.

Dean: Yes. Smart. I knew he was.

Dan: And. Yeah. And Stephen says, you know, I have a hard time asking. I have a hard time answering his question. I said, he says, I can't. I can't. I haven't yet come up with a satisfactory answer to his question.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, that's it. I said the same thing. To Philip, when he was doing the homeschooling and we got his ebay business up and running and he made the first sales and I just, I explained to him he doesn't get it right now. It's still about games and going to real school. But I said, dude, you have the secret to life right now. You've figured it out. You've got, you are literally self sustaining right now. You could be. I said most people go through their entire lives with their umbilical cord in their hand looking for somewhere to plug it in. And the whole reason that they go to school is so that they're able to convince somebody to let them plug in their umbilical cord so they can spend money in a job.

Dan: Well, that is a piece of paper that gives you your capability. It's not, it's not that you have a capability, it's that you have a piece of paper.

Dean: Yes. And I said, you know, you've got this thing now. You literally from right here you have the ability to make money. It's like literally without depending on anybody. It's really, I mean it's a, it's a. Yeah, it's crazy.

Dan: Well, it's very, very interesting. Something happened in December which I think is a historic moment. Google our Alphabet. Alphabet, you know, the holding company announced that it would no longer be necessary for job applicants to Google to have a college degree. And I said, oh, that's really, really interesting. That's at the end of a long, long era. Just came to an end with one announcement because since about the mid-60s, that was the only way you could get a really good job and move upwards in the world is with the college diploma. So 1965, 2020. Oh wow, gee, that's 55 years. And a 55 year era just ended.

Dean: I've long said that Dan, Any, any kid that's disciplined enough to get into a top university, meaning they've got the high SAT scores, they've got the grades, the gpa, they've proven that they're disciplined executors and can do that. That it would be, it would make sense for a company to hire instead of those kids paying $100,000 to go to college for the next four years. It would be so much better for the companies to hire and train them over that three or four year period. You could, I mean the way it changes, it's signing, they could have sign bonuses or vesting that come out and do go this four years with us. And at the end of four years you get this Almost like the military bonuses, you know, or whatever you get, you got to commit for four years.

Dan: Yeah. Bill.

Dean: Yeah. Well, imagine if you could do that. Imagine the company, like as the workforce is getting more and more competitive and none of the. It's not like they're yearning in university the actual things that they're going to be applying on the job anyway. It's interesting.

Dan: Well, here's, here's an interesting story. Cameron Johnson. Remember Cameron Johnson?

Dean: I just saw Cameron a year ago. Just saw.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: When I was in Phoenix, he was in Joe, and I went and had had brunch with him and. Yeah. And a few other people.

Dan: Yeah. So anyway, he's 14 years old. I don't know. Cameron might be 30 now, but he's 14 years old and he's the number one seller of beanie Babies on the Internet. This goes back. This is the 19, you know, 1990s, 14 years old, and he's the number one seller of beanie Babies on the Internet. Okay. And then about two years later, maybe three years later, he is hired by Toshiba up Japan to come to Japan and give a series of lectures to parents of why they should allow or children to have a computer and a Japanese home. Okay. For a whole summer. So he's 16, 17 years old. And when he's 20, he's the youngest, youngest entrepreneur that we've ever had in the strategic Coach program because he, he created a way for secondhand sales of Fords for his father's Ford dealership. He's from Roanoke in Virginia, and he came up with a way of getting customers in for secondhand sales. And he set the record for Ford in the history of Ford Motor Company going back almost a century. They sold in one year the most secondhand Fords of all time. And he did it strict through the Internet. Okay, so Richard Rossi, great friend of ours.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: We were in Washington, D.C. and we were invited to Richard and Lisa's home and we were having dinner and Cameron, Cameron was there. And so Cameron, we were talking at dinner and he said, you know, he says, I did a year of university, but he said, I dropped out. I was too busy with my online businesses. And he says, you think, do you think, you know, do you think I should go and get a college degree? And I said, why would you, why would you be thinking that? And he said, well, I don't know if I could get a job at a, as a, you know, a really good corporation without a college degree. And I said, well, there's two considerations. Here is two Considering no, you cannot get a job at a major corporation without a college degree. And number two, given your capabilities in entrepreneurial success. Success, why would you even be thinking of getting a job at a major corporation?

Dean: And what was his reply?

Dan: He says, I don't know. He says, you know, there's the whole social thing and everybody. And I says, everybody that you'll want to meet in your future, Cameron will first of all be wanting to meet you.

Dean: Right. Yeah, I think that's. It's funny, though, but I think about, like, in my.

Dan: But it sort of shows you the emotional and psychological hold to the past that lots of things in our society. I've never heard you talk. I have the foggiest idea, Dean, where you went to college, if you went to college. And I would not know that. Well, I would not know that about any. I would not know that about any entrepreneur in the strategic coach program. I haven't the foggiest idea. They went to college.

Dean: I was just thinking about that, that in my, like, circle of entrepreneurial friends, it's very rare that somebody actually went to college or finished college. Like. And so I think about.

Dan: Or even. Or even brings it up. Or even brings it up as a topic.

Dean: Right, right, right. I wonder if we were to look at the free zone, you know, members and to see how many of. How many of us were college dropouts. I bet there's a lot. It's.

Dan: It's funny, but they grab or they graduated, but it's meaningless. You know, it's.

Dean: Yeah. I mean, that's really. Yeah. Like, you think about all of the. Well, I guess the doctors and probably the.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: A lot of the financial advisors.

Dan: Lawyers. The lawyers. The account.

Dean: The lawyers. Yeah, yeah. The professional.

Dan: Yeah. And. Yeah. Yeah. But they're not in free zone because of their credentials.

Dean: Yeah. It's not because we graduated magna cum laude. Yeah. As they say. Right.

Dan: Yeah. And so what we can say, you know, you know, here we are, we're, you know, in 2021, and we're in March of 2021, about a year's worth of the COVID The great Covid occurrence on the planet Earth. And Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan have just said, well, you know, we can safely say that the era of the importance of the college degree has probably reached its peak somewhere before we're talking today. In other words, some. Maybe it's the last year, maybe it's the last five years, but the importance of having a college degree for your future success were beyond the age of the importance of the college degree.

Dean: And I think all of those.

Dan: The rules of Cloudlandia, of B +C times R is the new success formula.

Dean: Yeah. And I think we're long, you know, I think we're seeing everything crumble. The, you know, I think this year has proven the, you know, geography is less. Mainland geography is less important in Cloudlandia. It really doesn't have any play. Because I think about that. I really, you know, it dawned on me, I think I shared with you last week that I realized now it's been. I have not been more than 90 minutes by car away from my home in over a year now. I mean, I've been to Orlando, I've been to Sarasota.

Dan: That's it. Well, I've been three hours. I've been three hours.

Dean: Yeah. You've been to your cottage, right? Yeah, yeah. But isn't that. I mean, we've basically. We have been alive and thriving in Cloudlandia without.

Dan: Yeah, actually, we've been thriving because of that restriction. We've actually been thriving because of the restriction, not in spite of the restriction.

Dean: Yes, I agree that. I think that's absolutely true.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, that appraised Peter Diamante said, you know, everybody thinks that creativity as thinking outside of the box. He says it's actually probably a factor of thinking in a smaller box.

Dean: Mm, yes. Yeah. And on fewer things, it's progress. Ben Hardy had a. I'll just end on this, Dan. Ben Hardy this week sent out a. One of his emails was a gaping void image that had this cartoon was one thing is. Is what changes your life, is what will change your life. And it was, you know, he was talking about progress is. And I've seen this with essentialism, but he said it in his video that progress is 20 steps in one direction versus one step in 20 directions. Yeah, that's an interesting. That's part of that.

Dan: Do you remember the movies City Slickers with Billy Crystal?

Dean: I do, yeah. The Secret to Life.

Dan: Yeah. And in it, Billy Crystal, who's very, you know, very nervous, anxious, paranoid, city slicker, goes to a dude ranch. And the guy who runs the trip into the wild for the City Slickers is an old Hollywood western by the name of Jack Palance. Jack Palance. And at a certain point he says to the Billy Crystal character, he says, I'm going to tell you what the secret of the universe is. And he sticks up his finger and Billy Crystal says, your finger is the secret of the universe. Yeah, it's one. You know, it's one. I mean, I mentioned the guy that we both know from Israel, you know, who could teach people with no musical training how to make their living out of playing piano in three years if they just go through his training. And he says. He says, I can apply this to anything. And I said, yeah, but your. Your challenge is to apply it to one thing. And I said, you know, being good at everything is not the secret. Being really great at one thing is really the secret. Sick.

Dean: Well, anyway. All right.

Dan: Do I get a cloud. Cloudlandia reward for bringing an example of vcr?

Dean: Yes. This is going to go on your permanent record.

Dan: Oh, good.

Dean: Keep permanent records in non fungible format here.

Dan: And this is

Dean: going to be a gold star on your non fungible record here.

Dan: Yep. Yeah, I feel so good, because I'll

Dean: forward it to the administrators. I'll forward it to the administrators. Let. Let the authorities know.

Dan: Yeah, and. And make sure that my achievement is protected by blockchain.

Dean: That's right. Exactly. I love it.

Dan: I wanted to encrypt it that this actually happened and I was approved by someone who's in a position to give approval.

Dean: I like it. All right, Dan, I will talk to you next week, same time.

Dan: Yes, indeed. Thank you, Dean. Bye.

Dean: Okay, bye. Thanks.