Springtime in Cloudlandia

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Ah, Mr. Jackson. I would know the voice anyway.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Another beautiful day.

Dan: Yes. Well, for you, we're. Winter is very grudging in Toronto. It gives, it gives way very, very reluctantly to.

Dean: That sounded so poetic there. That's really great.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean we. We've been. Last couple nights we've been down to 30. 30 Fahrenheit. Temperature.

Dean: That's no good.

Dan: No, no, it's demoralizing.

Dean: Yeah. Especially when you've had a taste.

Dan: Yes, yes, indeed. But, you know, this is my 77th spring, so I should get.

Dean: Well, it's always springtime in Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yes, indeed.

Dean: Perfect temperatures.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoyed the two days that we spend at Genius. Genius. Yeah. I thought, I thought Howard Getson just did a fantastic job of moderating.

Dean: I agree. And you know, it's really kind of a glimpse that I got into the way he thinks, you know, in foundational kind of principles kind of. I see that like the way that's. I saw some new applications for AI for. I love his version. Amplified intelligence is really.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: What that is. Because it's not that creating, it's building on intelligence. That's. Yeah. And so, yeah, I was, I was very excited about it because I think it's going to lend itself. Well as that exercise that he had us go through of, you know, the progression from what you, what, you know, kind of thing to how you could use it as a tool internally to help you do what you do and then to think about how you could use that to create something that could be done in the market. And that was a nice progression because I thought, you know, I was thinking about certain things that I have within, you know, I've been working from my 8 profit activator model for a long time. And so there's a lot of diagnostics and a lot of, you know,

Dan: best

Dean: practices kind of things that I have within those that are transferable. And one of the things I have is a, you know, a seven. A seven step checklist for, you know, really gauging the success of an ad and that as I look through those, you know, it could recognize and diagnose maybe the awareness, the opportunity for this ad to be better or to be where it's kind of weak. And so I think about that as a tool is a pretty interesting thing.

Dan: Yeah, well, you know, the algorithms, that's really what, you know, our thinking processes really are. And they're really useful algorithms. If anybody can plug in the information and More or less get the same kind of beneficial result from it. I mean, that's one of the tests of an algorithm that not just the person who created it gets a result, but just showing someone else how to do this thinking process, they also get, you know, result that's similarly beneficial to them. And, you know, and I'm always looking for that. I mean, my, My sense is that anything can work for us. I mean, if you think about yourself, you've got your own methods inside of yourself in the think and it works. You know, you. You figured out how to work. The big challenge is can you get it work to work outside of you?

Dean: Well, that's the thing is that's. There's the. I look at the, you know, the two. The layers of the. Especially if I take my 8 profit activator model that the. The. I look at those as sort of. There was a difference between heuristic and algorithm in that the heuristic of understanding the eight the. What the eight profit activators are and how to kind of point yourself in the direction of guiding your thinking about them to then when you apply them to create an algorithm that you can use in your business, you know, and so there's two layers. A lot of what I've done, a lot of the value that I create is by figuring out the algorithm for a particular industry or for a particular situation that can then be licensed or, you know, deployed for multiple people. You know, like when. When I do the. For what I've done in real estate and with a lot of the financial advisors and things where we've figured out how to do something in a local business that then I can, you know, replicate. Do that same thing in other local. Other local areas. That really removes me. That's a way to remove me from the things as I look at. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. I look at being at the lab here in Winter Haven and cracking the codes, creating the, you know, being an algorithm factory in a way and then having it multiplied throughout, you know, in all the other situations that it. That it can go. And that's what I'm really. That's what I'm excited about really figuring out for me going forward. That's my. I think that's my sweet spot, you know.

Dan: Mm. Yeah. You know, one. One of the things, you know, I mean, you're. I know I'll. I will be successful when it's actually an algorithm for you. That's actually, you know, that's. And. And one of the things I find, you know, I have similar. I, I haven't put it into the form that you've done it, but I've got sor. You know, a set of rules. And I kind of, you know, in that little exercise where we put down, you know, the mindset, it was health and half. And I, to a certain, certain extent, I've got some conditions that have to be met if I'm going to be interested in something new, you know. And one, one of the things is that I'm more of an innovator than I am an entrepreneur. Okay. And what I mean by that, What I mean by that is, you know, the whole notion that I could get a cookie cutter for life, in other words, that I would create something and it would just, it would just be good for life. It would, it would constantly grow and there, you don't have to improve it. It's just right, you know, you don't have to improve it at all. I, I would get bored with that in about two or three.

Dean: Absolutely. Yeah, I would too. That's the thing. It's like the. We've used the example of my, my model of Max Martin, the song producer that, you know, if I write the song, it's like the last thing that I would want to do is spend the next two and a half years singing that same song all over the country every night. You know what I mean? That's not for me. That's really what you're saying. I got to keep, Keep innovating, right?

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And you have to take that into consideration that it will kind of make you unhappy, you know. And, you know, and so, you know, people say, you know, if you could. It's like the whole thing that you could create an automatic band, you know, you could get an AI program that's. It's a kind of ban. And then the AI program could just be answering questions and running. I said, oh, geez. I said, you know, I would subvert it, I would sabotage it. You know, I would find some way to destroy that, that AI. And I think it's, you know, it's a personal thing. It's sort of, you know, at the core of us. I mean, compared to other people, all of us are idiosyncratic. In other words, we got our, we got our odd things, but it's the odd things that give meaning to us.

Dean: Like your. I think the greatest thing is, you know, from an observer now, long time observer of your model is you.

Dan: You.

Dean: What I think is attractive about it is you've got a stable platform and Context in that there's quarterly workshops and you're working with entrepreneurs and there's some constants that are. Are there, but the variety of every quarter is a brand new workshop that is like adding the variety into it. And whenever you get, you know, when you've done a program for a few years and kind of adopted or figured out the, you know, the thinking tools and the progressions for it, you're leaving this wake behind you of you moving up to the next level here and having as soon as it gets to where other. Other coaches could, you know, facilitate what you've created there. You keep moving forward. And that's. That's exciting, right? That's kind of the.

Dan: Yeah, well, I think it's. It's sort of like a frontier, you know, frontier approach. And the thing is that you want to have some lasting value of what you've created before, but you don't want it to make demands on your future. In other words, I like creating foundations and, you know, having other people benefit from the foundations, but I don't want it to inhibit my desire to see what's over the next hill.

Dean: Yes, that's right. You don't want to set out. You don't want to set up. You don't want to set up camp in the valley kind of thing. Right. The train is moving. Yeah. You're leaving the caravan. It's moving. It's definitely moving. Yeah, that's kind of the. Yeah, that's kind of the cool thing.

Dan: Yeah. But I think. I think it's, you know, I think we're very similar. I think we're the two of us. I think why we enjoy our conversation because each is. Each of us is open to, you know, each of us is open to discussing something new that we haven't really figured out. And we can do it together and. But we do have the ability to almost institutionalize the good part that we've created before. Yes.

Dean: Yeah. I love that, like setting up the. Because I do love. You've really been influential for me on this is thinking about. I love enduring contexts. That's something that is. I love to get to the baseline of things that we're establishing. Things you can depend on going forward. But I also love novelty and I love the way that all the things. I love how seeing that intersection of the, you know, our fixed context that we figured out, applied to. Applied to the new information, you know.

Dan: Yeah, it's. And the. I just think that, you know, that desire of institutionalization on one side and novelty on the other. Are kind of in tension with each other because you can have a little bit too much of either and it makes the other side kind of uncomfortable. But you know, when I look at, you know, kind of how humanity, you know, if you look around the world, I mean, you know the population of the world is three and a half times now what it was when I was born. And you know, which is, I mean it's, it's. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. To have lived a lifetime where the population of the planet increased by three and a half times, it's a big deal. And, and it seems to me that things kind of work, you know. Like the news media doesn't think so. I mean the news media kind of makes it, its, makes its money off things that they can point out aren't working. But in fact I bet, you know, if you ignored, ignore all the nervous Nellies who were pointing out what wasn't working, you'd have to observe that probably for about 90% of the planet every day they get up and you know, things kind of work. Things kind of work, you know, have enough food, got shelter, you know, got friends, enjoyed their company, got some new things you're working on, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And everything like that. And you know the sun comes up every day. It's kind of predictable. It does what it's supposed to do. And I think most people kind of have a pattern to their life and they get up every day and things are to work and it's the vast majority of humans and that's what gives other people the luxury of complaining about things.

Dean: Yeah. And you've been. I don't know what it is Dan, but I've had this like just this, I don't know funny like just, just view on things that if we look at it hasn't been until the last hundred years say that it seems like there's so much more. I don't know what in, in our society in the way that people can exist and make money and our economy, the things that we have. There's a lot more like. I don't want to say silly but I mean there's a lot of like really you know, esoteric. There's a lot of things that are non essential say economies are ways that people are making money. You know, when you think about how it. All this cooperation game that we're all playing that there's a lot of the things that are happening that don't really have any. I don't know that they're Fundamentally contributing to what you were describing there. The base.

Dan: Neat.

Dean: You know, we're definitely as a society moving into the self actualization, as a planet kind of thing. You know, we've basically solved the basic things. The, for the most part, survival.

Dan: Survival. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coming up. I mean, if you take Maslow's maslow pyramid from, yeah. 70 years ago, whenever he created that, and you know, and all the statistics that come out of, you know, the international organizations that keep a track on those things, you know, the poverty level, the, you know, the really bad things that can happen to human beings level, things that really, really drop down and, and, and generally. And I think the reason is because left given the freedom to do so, people kind of cooperate more than compete or conflict with each other. You know, people find it easier to cooperate than to pick fights.

Dean: Yeah. And that's what's made us such a successful species, you know, but the, but the ability to do that and it supports so many, you know, alternative ways of making money and surviving in the world. You know, like we're thinking about there are people who make money as a Lincoln historian, for instance, or things that, you know, telling tales of other.

Dan: Of other past. Yeah, it was really interesting. Yeah, really interesting because I was sitting, listening to. This is for those who are listening to the podcast we had. Dean and I were at Genius Network and which was created by Joe palace. And Joe is taking a year off. He's taking a sabbatical year off. And he's got visiting moderators who are coming in and guest moderators who are putting together sessions. And we just came off two days where, you know, colleague of ours and you know, ingenious network and a colleague and strategic coach. And he put together really a beautiful program over two days, seven, eight different people. But one of them was a cousin of his who was a scholar on Lincoln. And it was really, I found it very, very stimulating. But I was sitting there and I was thinking, I said, you know, this is really great, but why, why are you teaching 19, 20, 21 year olds this sort of stuff? I said, why don't you put this into a program? I said, this is really good stuff. And there was a lot of originality to his treatment. Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, he was taking Lincoln's stuff and then he was creating new thoughts about it. Creating new thoughts about it. And I was sitting there and I was chunking out thinking processes and you know, you know, I mean, I could take any one of those letters that he showed at Lincoln's, which are Private. From Lincoln's personal journals. And I said, there's a really neat thinking process. There's a really neat thinking process there, you know? Yeah, I found it very impressive. First of all, I did say that.

Dean: I was saying that even. Yeah. For the first time, it made. It made. I've never thought of Lincoln as a real guy, you know, as a real person. Yeah, exactly. And I thought of him as this

Dan: character, you know, when they get a. When they chisel your face on a mountain face, it's a little harder for you to connect.

Dean: Right, right.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's so funny because, you know, my five heroes. You know, my five historical heroes.

Dean: Let me see if I can remember. So we've got Gutenberg. We've got the. Oh, no, no, not Gutenberg. Let's go all the way back. The Bach and Shakespeare and James Madison. And Are we. Is there anybody earlier?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You could put geometry.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then last one is. Last one. Number five.

Dean: Number five is. What century are we.

Dan: Are we in 19th? 19th.

Dean: Okay, in the 19th century.

Dan: 19th and 20th. Early 20th. Yeah. Edison.

Dean: Edison, that's it. So that was pretty good. That was pretty good. I got.

Dan: Yeah, no, you did really well. You did really well. But I was going back and looking at Euclid, and I was reading a whole series of essays on why Euclid's so important, you know, and his influence was really great. As a matter of fact, I could make a statement here that probably in terms of his thinking and also what his thinking was used for, he's probably made the biggest impact on the planet simply because everything that's built on the planet has to follow Euclidean geometry. And there's one thing, you know, one thing that is a fundamental rule that nature only respects 90 degree right angles.

Dean: Right. I remember we had that conversation about the. Yes. About the Rom. The. The Rom.

Dan: Waiting. Yeah. I'm just waiting, you know, this year, maybe five years from now, 10 years, but it's gonna crack and fall apart because every day nature says, well, we moved at a quarter of an inch. We moved it a quarter of an inch, I think, you know, and it's these modern architecture which, you know, they. They put them at odd angles. The moment you put that odd angle, you know, build something at an odd angle that's not 90 degree right angle. Nature is trying to pull it down. And you'll find after a while, whatever your original cost for creating this new structure, your maintenance costs at a certain point are greater than your original cost.

Dean: That'll be. So this is. We Got that to look forward to in our file.

Dan: Yeah. And I think there's lots of. Yeah, I think there's lots of structures, not just physical structures, but like thought structures that aren't solid enough to withstand, you know, the gravitational forces of, you know, human novelty and human experimentation and human. Yeah, you know, some things we like to do over and over and over again. And there's some things we like to do maybe once or twice and then we try to pull them down. Yeah. And I, and I share with you, I like things that kind of last, you know, that I can really bet on.

Dean: Yes. Like Euclidean geometry. That's right.

Dan: Yeah. And yeah, there's very interesting. There's actually a statement that you credited. You could. Everything is what it is. I have to get this right. Things are, I think this is how it goes. Things are exactly what they are and they're not something else.

Dean: Right. Things are exactly what they are and they're not something else.

Dan: And they're not. And they're not something else. I said, yeah, right. Yeah, that's really true. But think about the things today where people are trying to make something seem to be something else, you know, like.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: They're trying to make history be something. So there's always these fights over meaning that human beings have, you know, that this means this. No, it doesn't mean this. And then we get into, we get into fights, you know, over the meaning of a word or the meaning of a context. Yeah. And yeah, it's like one of the things I often notice the, you know, in the political realm where people are saying, you know, this is absolutely an anti democratic, you know, this, this is not, this is a violation of democracy. And, you know, and they're talking about, you know, the United States. And I said, well, actually, you know, if you go back and you look at the original, you know, the original discussions and the original blueprints where the country, it's not designed to be a democracy, it's designed to be a representative republic. They never used the word in the founding papers. The founding fathers never used the word democracy. They didn't like democracy. And democracy means, you know, everybody gets a say. And they said, no, we want some people to have a say. I mean, really fundamentally the, you know, where you have the electoral college. Yeah, we'll let you have, we'll let you have a say inside of your state, but your state role only count for one vote. Okay, so, so there's this tension. There's this tension built right into the country. But if it was a You know, if it was.

Dean: Well, it's kind of interesting when you think about it like that then. I mean, it really hadn't thought about it like that. But that's where you can then sort of, you know, gather where in states that are particularly the way you want to live kind of thing. That's. Yeah, that's. Yeah,

Dan: yeah. You're living in the most promising state in the country right now.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I mean, you know, you chose well. You chose wisely.

Dean: Chose wisely.

Dan: Yeah. You know, and you know, 20 years ago, California was state to be, you know, and so it shifts around, you know, it shifts around and you know, and you vote with your feet. I mean, a lot of people just vote with their feet.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And a lot of New Yorkers right now are moving to Florida. They're voting with their feet.

Dean: Yeah. I read, I saw something that broke down the personality types of. By geography like where, you know, when you think about why the Midwesterners are so sort of agreeable is, you know, that they are. They wanted to get away from the, the northeast kind of thing, where it was all the. They wanted to get away from the city kind of things. And they headed out away from that. But as soon as they hit any adversity, like before they got to the mountains kind of thing, they said, oh, this is good enough, this is good enough. This is fine right here. This will do right here. And the pioneers are the ones who headed out to California, which is why all the personality wise adventurers and innovators and, and freedom and, you know, I guess you could say the, you know, kind of fittest and adventurers kind of thing are out west. It's kind of, it's a really interesting.

Dan: Babs has got a family history that's interesting in that respect. So middle 1900s, she had ancestors from Michigan. Babs grew up in Michigan and there were two brothers who went west and they got into the California gold rush near Cedar's Creek, 1849. And unlike a lot of people, they, they had a strike and they got gold and they immediately packed up and went back to Michigan and built themselves a town.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: And the town is on Lake Michigan. So if you think of the lower part of Michigan, it's got a lower and upper part. If you're going up the west side of it, you're in Lake Michigan. And it's certainly a curve and right at the top of the west side of Michigan, this little fishing town called Leland. And the. They're on a kind of a, you know, a whole area that's called Lelandau, but it's Leland. And it was a fishing town and now it's a big resort town. It's a Cape Coddish type town. And they build it, you know, and they build it from scratch. And they, they've always, you know, for 100 years they had the central store in Leland and that's where Bab's mother's family comes from. You know, so funny because you think about people going out and having a gold rush and heading it rich. They wouldn't come back. These people came back, you know, they, they had gold and they had enough gold to start a town. And so they came back, started the town.

Dean: Amazing. Yeah, that's something you think about the people who went out west and just struggle, but kept reinvesting, trying to find more and more. Yeah, yeah, that's something.

Dan: Yeah. The frontier. You know, I've, I've read a lot about the frontier. The frontier in the US lasted 270 years from 1620, which is the first permanent settlement, Jamestown, Virginia. And then it took 270 years to go all the way to the West Coast. And what they use as the sign that the frontier was over is that all the land was surveyed. So the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington, there was nothing that was still territory. Territory was generally speaking something territory when it wasn't unknown.

Dean: Right, yeah.

Dan: It wasn't surveyed. They knew it was a big, it was a big piece of land, but they hadn't really given any internal thought to it. They hadn't actually put any lines, boundary lines and everything like that. But the moment it happened, 1890, there began to be this worry that the spirit, the DNA of America was involved in this pushing west. And now they were at the ocean and they couldn't push west anymore. So there's always been this sort of worry, now we won't be who we are supposed to be.

Dean: Oh, really? That's interesting.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: But it's kind of like, that's funny the accomplishment kind of mindset of if you take California, like just some of

Dan: the,

Dean: your most successful financially people who can really live anywhere. That's funny that they push as far, that's as far as you can go kind of thing. And they all accumulate there on the coast in California with the best weather in the country, the best, you know, best of everything. So it just keeps, they settle there and make things, they push. I think there's something to this frontier spirit kind of thing that that frontier is where they kept new things going, like built on, you know, now that we've conquered or I've got all the land, sort of frontier. Now the frontier is in entertainment and then later in technology and psychedelic.

Dan: Psychedelic drugs.

Dean: Well, that's true, too.

Dan: Yeah. No, no, I mean San Francisco, that whole West Coast. I mean, I was in the army in 1967 in Korea. And I was, you know, I came back in May of 67, and I had a brother who lived in San Francisco. So I. They pulled me back to Seattle and that's where I was discharged. I was just discharged from the army. And, you know, the air base where I was, I landed. And then I, you know, I had, you know, travel money home. That was part of the deal. So I went to San Francisco. And it was interesting because it was May of 1967, and the very famous summer of 67, there's kind of this. It's a bit like Woodstock, you know. Yeah, it's one of those.

Dean: Was that the dropout turn on, tune in?

Dan: Yeah. Well, this is the beginning of the hippie. The real hippie thing was the psychedelic and that. Yeah. And that was the summer of 67. So I was there about a month before it started. And we went to Haight Ashbury, which is a. You know, it's a section of San Francisco. And I mean, you could. You could get stoned just walking down the street there. The marijuana was so thick and everything. Of course, it was illegal, too. There was this attraction of the illegal aspect of it, you know, and it was kind of funny having just spent two years in the army and then coming face to face with this culture that was this radically different as you. As you could possibly imagine.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I just, you know, I just. I just found it interesting, you know, and my sense is that the. The makeup of. Of America and, you know, I've got this theory that it's actually created itself through the states, through the Constitution, into 50 R D labs.

Dean: Ah, right. Right. Yeah. Like, Vermont is a different vibe than. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the whole.

Dan: Yeah, and they all. There's a. There's actually quite a bit of freedom. There's actually quite a bit of freedom in each of the states to, you know, they. First of all, they can. They can control their own tax laws. They can control, you know, their. All sorts of laws. Some of them are, you know, have, you know, they're the, you know, sort of pro choice states, and then there's pro life states, and then there's.

Dean: Right.

Dan: There's marijuana states and then there's no marijuana states.

Dean: Right, right.

Dan: You know, for example, one thing, if you're a Canadian from Ontario and you go across the bridge into Detroit, one thing, they just stop you and they say, do you have any drugs? Do you have any marijuana? And people say, right, because, because we have national marijuana.

Dean: Yeah, right, exactly.

Dan: But Michigan, Michigan hasn't passed marijuana. So they'll, they'll turn you back. They'll, you know, they said, if you have marijuana and you don't tell us, we're going to seize your car and you're not going to get your, they're not going to get your car back. They'll tell you right there, you know, and.

Dean: Oh my goodness.

Dan: Wow. This will use up. This will use up the next five years of your life trying to get your car back.

Dean: Right, exactly.

Dan: Yeah. But it really shows you and it drives Canadians crazy because Canadians generally do things on national, you know, on a national basis, but the US doesn't, it does it on a state basis.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting.

Dan: Your governor took a totally different approach to Covid than some of the northern governors like the New York governor.

Dean: That's true. It was very freedom oriented here.

Dan: Yeah. And my feeling is he's got more of a feel for the pulse of who the citizens are than some of the other states, you know. You know, and Florida is very diversified. I mean, if you take all the different historical trends that have made up the present day Florida population, I wonder

Dean: how that's going to affect, like, I wonder what's happening where, you know, our growth. Florida is, is poised to grow by, to 29 million by 2030. And so we're growing 1500 people a day right now. And that pace is going to continue for the next 10 years, which means we're growing a city the size of Orlando every year, which is pretty amazing. But I wonder how the makeup going to change as a lot of that is migration from the Northeast, so from sort of blue states coming down into our red.

Dan: Yeah. The question is, do you know, the question is, are people social attitudes, cultural attitudes, political attitudes.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Internally based, and that's who they are. And they're going to simply take that or it's more a function of who they're hanging out with, where they are.

Dean: I wonder. It's interesting to see what's happening in Texas with the California migration. They're all saying the big T shirt is don't California Texas. Don't get your California in our Texas. You know, that kind of. That's interesting.

Dan: Yeah. But so my sense is that the makeup of the states and the way they put them together and, you know, with the states rights really makes it kind of a turbulent place. I mean, because they look at each other, the states look at each other, and they compete with each other. They'll compete. Part of the reason why a lot of people are coming to Florida is because Florida is directly competing with New York. You pay these kind of taxes. You don't pay these kind of taxes here?

Dean: Nope.

Dan: Oh, no, no, no, no. You don't pay those kind of taxes. You're not coming down. Down there. You can still keep, you know, if you want to keep your condo in New York City, that's fine, but as long as you're down here for a certain number of months, then you can be a resident here and you don't have to pay there, you know, and. Yeah, and it's cold up there.

Dean: That's no good. I don't like that at all. I'm not a fan.

Dan: Yeah, it's cold. It's cold.

Dean: Yeah. No, that's not for me.

Dan: See, I'm. I'm. This is. We're both 10 quick starts, but I really like cold weather, so I'm sort of a cold weather guy. I don't mind. I don't mind.

Dean: What's the appeal, Dan? What is it that you enjoy about the cold weather?

Dan: You know, it's kind of, you know, the images that you have in your mind. I just had a really great childhood on that farm in Northern Ohio. And I used to just love going out and walking through the fields, you know, in the dead of winter. And I kind of, you know, it just kind of made a imprint. Imprint on me and walking through the woods and everything. So I've got all these really fun childhood memories.

Dean: Yeah, I don't mind that. You're. You're right. There's so many. And there are the majority. Not, I don't know the majority, but a lot of winter days are. Are nice. And it is, it is. There is something there. But then there are. Then there's February and, you know, just like that whipping wind and the bitter cold. I don't. I don't enjoy that at all.

Dan: Yeah. Yep, yep. And the slush, you know, when it turns slushy.

Dean: Yeah, that's no good.

Dan: Yeah. But the thing is that, you know, you design your lifestyle for.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: There's a lot of different ingredients to you.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Design your lifestyle. And one thing that I feel very, very strongly, the type of company that we have created, you know, I'm talking about the team members that we have.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: I don't believe that I could have. We could have created this company in the United States.

Dean: No. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: There's a permanence, you know, I mean, people live in Toronto, they. They're not thinking about moving somewhere else, but if they live in Chicago, they think about living somewhere now. You know, I mean, Chicago's, you know, really big city and.

Dean: Yeah. Where are you going to go when you. When you're in Toronto? When you're in Toronto, you've. You've made it in. In Canada. That's like the.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Where are you gonna go from there? You're right. That's absolutely true. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And so I think. And the other thing, it's a vibrant, growing city. I mean, Toronto is.

Dean: What do you think about this, the great dispersion now that the, you know, that people are, because of Cloudlandia now able to live in Moncton or to live in. In Sudbury, you know, or campus casing and be an equal contributor to the team?

Dan: Well, you know, we're going to discover something here because, you know, because we're shooting for October now that, you know, we'll. This is our plan. You know, this is our plan. It's not necessarily the government of Canada's plan or the government of Ontario's plan, but this is our plan and anyway. And therefore we'll get the team back around August, you know, so the October would be. Workshops in August would be having our team back. And we're finding that they kind of liked it at home.

Dean: Yeah. And I think that what's going to happen, Dan, it's an interesting.

Dan: They said, you know, if I can quote them, they said, oh, I really miss being around people and everything. And I said, well, okay, while we're all coming back to work in August. And they said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I really like working.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So my feeling is the transition back is going to be more accomplished. The, you know, the quick transition from.

Dean: Yeah,

Dan: we did that. I mean, that took us about two weeks to get it right backstage. Right about. And how to get it right in terms of the workshops. I got to gain the movement back is going to be a lot more complicated.

Dean: But there's also going to be a. I mean, just that dynamic. There's an interesting. There are some synergies and serendipities and excitements that happen because of everybody being in proximity in the same room, in the same environment. You can't. In the culture of the team kind of environment and working remotely, it's hard to replicate that by zoom. But the people who are going to be resistant to coming back like that. I think the unintended consequence of that is companies are going to realize, okay, if you're choosing to be a remote worker, you're putting yourself in a category of global accessibility. Now, remote worker can mean anybody in the world who can do what it is that you do. And I don't think that for a lot of these positions, there are people in other parts of the world that could do the job that they're doing for less than what they're sort of, you know, going to be demanding to do that, the job remotely. And that's going to be, I think

Dan: I told, you know, I've been talking to Babs because I'm not really involved with the management of the company. You know, my whole focus is, you know, what's going to be on stage next quarter. You know, that's, yeah, what are we doing new and better next quarter. But the thing that really struck me and I told the, you know, we were announcing to the, the entrepreneurs, I said, you know, we're shooting for October. And they said, well, you know, it's going to be full in person workshop. And I said, you know, I think it's going to take us a year after we have our first in person workshop back. So let's say we have it in October. I said, I think I'll take until the following October to really figure out the way the entrepreneur wanted. We're going to have to get a full year under our belt and just look at who showed up where and, you know, what the requests were and everything. And I said, you know, I don't, I don't think you can know that ahead of time because I said, everybody's coming back having adjusted their life in a different way than was true before the shutdown. And I said, so it's, it's not like there's one way that people adjusted. I think there's, you know, there's 2,500 ways that people adjusted and we're going to see how that plays out in terms of, and I think it's the same for the team too. You know, I mean, I discovered that some people were spending two and a half hours a day commuting morning and night. Two and a half hours. So I got those two and a half hours back. Yeah, yeah. I mean that's like 12 and a half hours a week times.

Dean: Yeah, I know. What a world, right?

Dan: That's like 500, you know, it's like 5, $600. And they got that back over the last year. And I said, well, getting that amount of time back and still being able to work and still be able to pay die. So I bet it changes your brain cells somewhat.

Dean: Yeah, and I think that's so it's very. Yeah. This whole thing that's the great thing about the, you know, the Cloudlandia workforce kind of that, you know, having that tools that allow people to, to collaborate like that, it truly is a frontier. It's interesting. You're. I, you know, everything, every word you choose is not random and there's really a thought that goes into the free zone. Frontier. Yeah, that's a, it's a really interesting.

Dan: Well, you know, it's, you know, and my sense is that we associate it with physical frontiers, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But in fact, if you, if you don't, you know, limit it, that it's just about finding new mainland, you know, which has really been what is. Or going to another planet. But to a certain extent you're operating in the. With a physical sense of frontier. But you think of it from a standpoint of a psychological, intellectual, emotional frontier, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And I think entrepreneurs, for example, in terms of livelihood and occupation and lifestyle, radically different, have a radically different makeup than people who see the future as finding a job and keeping a job and growing in a job. I think it's radically different, psychologically structured and, you know, a lot of the bother in the world over the last year has really been about employment and non employment and everything else, you know. You know, you realize after you've been at this for about 50 years. 47 for me. 47 as an entrepreneur, I mean, you just don't think in those terms at all.

Dean: Yeah. And it's, it truly is, you know, what I discovered in the 80s that you know, playing tennis every shot makes somebody happy. And you talk about, even it's like you say other people's bad news is your good news, you know. But yeah, tennis, it's the same thing. Every shot makes somebody happy and the best position to be is the umpire. To just be able to view it as either in or out, neither good nor bad, you know.

Dan: And in chess, the best position is to be the chessboard.

Dean: Yes, right. Isn't that funny? Yeah, but that was from. Who knew those life lessons, you know, that came from Guy Galloway, wrote a book called the Inner Game of Tennis.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. And that's what that came for. What a, What a wonderful life lesson. That was very funny. Have you got any, have you been observing who's kind of adapting to The Free Zone frontier. You got some, your eye on some Free Zone collaborations that are happening.

Dan: Well, I think the one that suddenly emerged for me during the Genius network is with Howard, because Howard, that was all new thinking. He had never shown me any of that thinking before until I got the worksheet and I said, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to collaborate with you on this and, you know, you know, kind of provide. I've got a capability that I can add to your future with that. And actually two. One is who were, you know, every quarter we're adding about three or four new Free Zone people now. You know, it's starting to grow. And I said, and, you know, some of them have technology based things where they could really use this type of thinking. And I would, you know, just introduce them. You know, it'd be, it's like, you know, introducing to any outside, you know, I mean, any outside thing that would do good for them in terms of growing their, their business, growing their collaboration. So that's the other thing. And the other thing is I'm really, really good with tools. And you know what I noticed as I was going through Howard's thing, there's some big jumps required to get from one column to another, you know, and, you know, I was seeing some bridges, you know, bridge tools that you can get people with bridge tools. One, one thing he, he can make a lot of use of is that that backwards thing that he did is 10 times backward. You know, the sheet of paper that he just had the drawing on.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, he showed us the drawings and I always start there. I always go back and see what the history is, because there's a. You can impose trends on history.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: You can say, well, this was the most important thing. This was the most important thing. This was important thing. And I have disagreements with people about that. They say, well, yeah, but you just said that those things were important. Were they really important? I said, well, it's our say so that makes anything important or not important. I said, it's not, it's not like, you know, it's not like there's some rules someplace that you're going to go.

Dean: There's no official committee that appoints important.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's like you gotta submit to the province to get permission to arrange your thoughts in a different way, you know. Well, that's funny. The Chinese are trying, you know, this is their big, their big project to see if they can get you to, you know, can't change your thoughts without permission.

Dean: Right?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, I found a lot in it. You know, I went through that, you know, and I filled in the top, you know, the line straight across. And I filled in the. The first column top to bottom, like the top line wrote across. And I said, no, I got a lot out of this. Yeah. I mean, it was reaffirming what I already knew.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So it had that power to it and. Yeah. So I really liked it. No, I like. I'm a sucker for those sort of things.

Dean: Yeah. I was noticing when you're. The thing of how I've used. You have this too. But I seem to have a really good recall of experiences and facts and things that are useful in that I draw from at all times when I'm overlaying my eight profit activators on something. So I've got all of these other experience. I'm kind of scanning quickly the. The, you know, all of those experiences that would be. I was thinking about how a way of cataloging those experiences as, you know, their Saab, the consulting firm, McKinsey. That's one of the advantages that they have is they call it the. The work or whatever the. No, that. That's the cab people. But what. I forget what they call it the. The body of knowledge or the.

Dan: It's called the knowledge.

Dean: The knowledge. Is that what they call it? Okay.

Dan: Yeah. The London, the black cab, you know, the London. They are the ones. It's called the knowledge. Yeah. Okay. Knowledge. Yeah. And, you know, before we get. Before we give you a medallion that says you're a. You have to prove that you have this knowledge. Takes about three years for the average.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: African and everything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah. And we have that in coach. I mean, we have this massive.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Amount of thinking tools. And that's why I wanted to integrate it using who not how as the. I think who not how is kind of like the enzyme of strategic code shit. You can look at it in 100 different ways and we already have 100 different thinking processes. So we just make the connection. And that's another thing I love. I love having kind of a body of knowledge that's really been created through innovation and testing and proofs, you know, proof outside of yourself that these things work. We're doing this. I mean, we're writing the book the Gap in the Game for the second book in the series, which almost. Yeah. Probably three weeks. The final. You know, the final. This is for October, so they. And the cover's already. It's already selling. We've Already sold a thousand books. They got the COVID up. They put it right on Amazon and Amazon pre ordered, pre ordered a thousand books. And. But it was really interesting working with Ben because who not how was a new concept. I mean, you know, you know, you showed me the diagram three years ago, I think three years ago or something like that, you know, and you made mention of it. And then, you know, we started playing with it in the program. So bringing Ben in and you know, to be the writer and that we didn't have that much of a track record yet. You know, you could, you could say all sorts of things about it, but the gap in the gain is 28 years old. And it's not just 20,000, it's 20,000 times 10. People have gotten this idea. And so we had to approach the book very, very differently. And I said, you know, outside of not how you could go out to officer of other kind of theories and psychological principles, but I said, you know, Ben, there's some real experts on this that are members of Strategic Coach. And I said, and I said, you know, you're not going to find too many people in the world who kind of grasp with this stuff. So we've had to, you know, kind of look at the book differently, but it's really, it's really, really great shape now. I mean, moving forward. So. Yeah, but I'm, I'm very excited.

Dan: But how you measure really makes a difference. I mean, you measure against the ideal, you know.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And yeah, and I said I see a lot of people who are great achievers, but yeah, I can tell right up that they're not happy with their achievement.

Dean: Yes. And I think that's the, well, that's part of the thing of not, you know, setting off on the path that the. Without pushing the accelerator pedal and knowing where that's going, what it's going to look like at the end. That's really interesting.

Dan: You got to be happy with the activity.

Dean: Yes, I love it.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you need destinations. You need destinations. But I tell you, the more you can just enjoy the experience of being on the trip today, I think that you're going to be a lot happier.

Dean: And it's, you know, it feels like I saw somebody breaking down the wisdom of row, row, row your boat gently down the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream. That's what it comes down to.

Dan: That's it. That's a great wrap up.

Dean: It really is.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Perfect.

Dan: Yeah. I think, you know, we can go off on this, but there's a fundamental shift and I think there's been more of a fundamental shift from mainland conditions to quadlandia conditions over the last year then in the previous 10, 10, 10 years before that. I think we've made a sudden big shift. Not everybody, not everybody, but, you know, I think people with the greatest, what I would say, value creation ambitions made a shift over the last year.

Dean: We've got. I'm just doing the calculation next. Yes, we'll be here next. No, I wonder next Sunday. My birthday is on Monday and we're going away for some free days that. And then you've got a birthday coming up too.

Dan: But I'll be, I'll be here.

Dean: They never stop. Yeah, you'll be here. You'll be here. Okay, perfect.

Dan: All right, Two weeks. Two weeks.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Dan again. Okay, thanks.

Dean: Bye.