Eating Out, Staying In

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson, was your breakfast delivered to you personally this morning?

Dean: I have. I am in the no breakfast mode right now.

Dan: Wow.

Dean: But my, my lunch will be delivered to me as was my dinner and my lunch yesterday and almost every meal. Dan. I mean, we are great, enthusiastic contributor or participators in the, you know, the Cloudlandia meal. Yeah. Delivery system ecosystem.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's something, it's very, very interesting. I think it was two years ago that the. In the United States just using one country that more people ate out than ate in. In other words, that happened just before COVID So it'd be interesting to see those whose normal policy was to eat out whether they continued on with that, except that they combined the two that they. The food was prepared out but delivered in.

Dean: Yeah, I think that's. We're a high.

Dan: I mean, would that be true? Would that be true for you?

Dean: So we're a hybrid because we have Courtney who prepares dinner every night for us. So during the week. So I typically will, you know, she brings lunch. So she goes and gets lunch and brings it. Then she'll prepare dinner. But on other meals, whenever we need a big like, you know, Uber eats doordash. Dan, I'll tell you something like, so you know how I say you've been, you've been using self driving cars, really autonomous driving for 20 years because you just have a limo service who actually does it. You've been using AI, actual intelligence to drive you around.

Dan: Right.

Dean: And so, yeah, I mean, it's true.

Dan: I started this, I think, I think

Dean: it'd be like as long as 96.

Dan: 97. Yeah, 1996. 1997. And so, you know, the. We have a, you know, of course we have, we have a Tesla like yours. We have, yeah, Babs has a Tesla, but I've never driven it. We've had it for a little over three years now. Yeah, I've noticed. I've not actually driven. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: I mean, you have the, you have the identity of the same one that I have.

Dan: The X.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. So when I first hired Courtney, this is, you know, almost 20 years ago now, there was no food. The only thing you get delivered was Chinese food and pizza. That was your option for food delivery. Right. So we had lots of great restaurants. And so I had Courtney go to all of the restaurants and get their menus. And we set up a binder in the kitchen and one at the office that had the menus of all of our restaurants that we would ever eat at. And so through Courtney, every. Every restaurant was available to us as delivery. And we've. We've used that for years. Right? And so now with. With GrubHub and UberEats and DoorDash, all of these now, as on the app, that you can get them wherever you are. It's really kind of funny that the. I think about that as a good metaphor, actually, for the adopting the outcome of what would be sort of primitively available. Like, I would say the food delivery was kind of, like I said, Chinese food and pizza, but the concept was there. Nobody was doing what. Because we weren't in Cloudlandia yet, right? We weren't in Cloudlandia at the. This is pre 2007. And I think I was thinking about that where that was really the beginning of that was the big bang. If we're saying Cloudlandia is created in a big bang, that was the catalyst for it, that they. The iPhone in 2007 was marked the time, the place in time where the Internet was not a place that you go to. It was a place that was with you always. Right? And then as the app sort of culture built on top of that, the phone evolved to be the remote control or your passport, you know.

Dan: Well, one thing I've been reading a number of articles, and one thing that strikes me is that it's the beginning of the automation of the service economy. We had automation going way, way back, you know, I mean, way back to the 1920s. You had automation in the manufacturing, you know, the industrial economy. There was automation in the industrial economy, but the Internet and the. Of course, the cell phone combined. When you put the Internet and the cell phone together, then you could automate the service economy. And that's what you've done. That's what I've done. We've automated, so we do breakfast because I basically just have a protein shake in the morning. I get up real early. So there's a real. Babs and I are very, very similar to each other, except in one respect. When the alarm goes off in the morning, it's guaranteed that Bab's feet will hit the ground 45 minutes after the. 45 minutes after the first alarm goes off.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And I'm guaranteed that my feet will hit the ground five seconds after the alarm goes off.

Dean: Huh.

Dan: Have you, like, the alarm goes off

Dean: or did the military. Yeah, from childhood, okay?

Dan: From childhood, the alarm goes off, I'm awake. And if I'm awake, I'm walking around. So 1001-1002-1003-1004 1000. Yeah. Five seconds. Five seconds. And then I do a walk around routine at the house. I turn all the lights on, and during the cold weather, I turn fireplaces on. So. And I turn the temperature up to, you know, from nighttime temperature. We keep it around 60, 64, 65 at nighttime. And then I turn it up to 72. I turn it up to 72.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And make the rounds. And then I come up and then begins the process of gradually influencing and encouraging Babs that at a certain point, she too can get up.

Dean: It's fine. The water's fine. Does she need coffee coaxing to get up?

Dan: Oh, yes.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: No, no, no, no. She's okay that way, but.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: She kind of unwinds. You can feel sort of an unwinding process for the nighttime. And. But that's really the only radical, I would say, radical difference between our. Our daily performance is really the fact that.

Dean: So it's interesting that you set an alarm that that's. But you get up at the same time every day. Mm,

Dan: no, I'd say there's an. Could be an hour and a half difference on the weekends.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah, later.

Dean: Later.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah, that's interesting.

Dan: Friday, Friday night, and Saturday night, we tend to go to sleep about an hour and a half later than we do during the week, but.

Dean: I gotcha.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And it's been especially regular during the past year because we're not getting to go anywhere.

Dean: Well, this is what's great is that the.

Dan: And I'm not sure I want to get back. I'm not sure I want to get back into any kind of routine of getting up and going somewhere. You know, I kind of like getting up and not going.

Dean: I love. This is what I love about this year. I may have mentioned there's where I do my live events here in Florida at Celebration Hotel. There's the white couches outside of the hotel under the, you know, under the roof, but outdoors. And I just find that such a great, you know, relaxing environment. And I have a courtyard at my house here. And so I got a. I got a white couch just like it to put outside. And so I love waking up and going and sitting out on the white couch with my journal. And it's such a great environment. But I do love having 100%, you know, opportunity to get your. The schedule down. Like, I look. I look back in my journals. Like, Even in the 90s, you know, this aspiration or the schedule that I seem to really enjoy is to compact every time obligation that I have or appointment or synchronously scheduled thing between 1pm and 6pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and every other thing completely open, you know, and the only exception being our standing Sunday morning appointment, which is great, but I love, I know that it's there, it's ingrained and it's just a natural part of my, you know, delightful Sunday is looking forward to this conversation.

Dan: Probably it's the most habitually regular teamwork that you've ever had in your life.

Dean: That's absolutely the truth. That is absolutely the truth. Yeah. And that's so, you know, and. But it's also the least amount of, you know, ever thinking about it in between these times. I know I don't have to ever think, oh, I gotta get with Dan and see when he's available this week or we gotta book some podcasts or, you know, never. Never crosses my mind. I know with certainty that this is

Dan: why I think it's a given that Dan will never be more prepared than you are.

Dean: That's. Oh man, this is great though. But this is.

Dan: He's always just as surprised by the first five minutes as you are.

Dean: Yeah, I love it. And that's the great. Yeah, that's part of the, that's part of the thing is we've set it up so that it's exactly in our go zone. And I pay attention during the week. I pay attention because we've got this contextual sort of through line of Cloudlandia and how things are, you know, when you really think about where we're at right now, you know, in, in history, it's just, you know, you mentioned something about the service, you know, economy being.

Dan: Automation of service.

Dean: Automation of service is really, it's a big piece and I think that the, what's really going along with that is our collaboration economy is really what it is like. I can't tell you how much the, how much sense the Free Zone Frontier makes, you know, in that the seamless service integration in collaboration with people is really magical. You know, like I look at income, I've got a client that got started with the Mr. Beast burger operation in their kitchens and

Dan: they

Dean: worked with the virtual dining solutions here in Orlando to get them set up. It was super easy to get on board and you know, no setup fee. No, you just. The way it works is you just go through the sign up process. The. You show that you've got all the supplies, you have a list of skus that you have to get to be ready to do the menu. You watch all of the trainings of how to make the menu. And then you have to send pictures of you, of your finished things to show that you are. That you can do it. And then they turn it on and they give you a tablet and all you do is. Is fulfill the orders. You don't have to do any of the marketing. You don't do any of the things. All the reach is 100% handled on the Mr. Beast or the virtual dining side. And you there with your capability, are sitting there and being dispatched the execution. That's what. What I've been saying, Dan, about the whole. When we talk about the VCR formula, the. The capabilities. Yeah.

Dan: Vision capabilities and reality and reach, that

Dean: the capabilities are all commoditized now. There's not a single. There's not a single capability that somebody is not realizing that they could sell and package that capability as a service.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I'll just say this very similar to

Dan: interesting, that this type of idea, this commoditizing of service, commoditizing of experience, commoditizing of teamwork is actually built into the US Constitution. And I think that the reason why franchising went so big with the US before it went anywhere else was really because the structure of the country is essentially a franchise structure, if you think of the US Constitution, that every state is essentially a mini me of the country itself. So Florida right now, which is really on the upswing, I think that your governor will be remembered as the one state leader who really got a handle on what Covid was all about psychologically and emotionally, and got ahead, really got ahead of, you know, the country, as opposed to many of the governors who will be forever remembered badly because of the way he handled this. He will be remembered as probably the star among governors. And the reason was, is he just kind of left it up to people, common sense, which is really what the US Is about. We're going to give you some structures, we're going to give you some processes. But, you know, you kind of. Kind of have to show up and be responsible for yourself. And we're not going to, you know, we're not going to be supervising you. We're not going to be your government nanny, you know, who watches you remove everything.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And consequently, I mean, they're right in the middle. I looked at Florida's, you know, number of COVID cases, number of people dying. That's, you know, like 25th in the country. But he did less enforcement than almost any other state.

Dean: Yeah, but that is true.

Dan: It's in the structure of the country. I mean, if you grow up as an American, you kind of got a sense of what the structure. So structure is. And each of the states is like a franchise, you know, and there's a couple of them that have odd rules. Louisiana has some odd rules, and I think Nebraska has some odd rules. But every other, every other state there's a. There's kind of like a vision, there's like a capability and there's kind of like a reach. And part of the strength of every state is that they have other 49 other states to cooperate.

Dean: Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, you talk about. Because in, in the past, like even in the, up until the 90s and early 2000s, your, your state and local was much more relevant. It felt like like much more. You know, you could really go like in the 90s, let's say pre, pre Internet, you would have very little information about Nebraska or Arkansas available to you. Right. Or anything. Like you don't really have any sense of that or need for it or relevance to you and all of that. When we had the ease of communicating further, that's really what it is. The reach that we have, the communication ability that we have to instantly survey what's going on everywhere that everybody can report back. You know, it was all coming the other way. It had to come down and then make its way through the input spouts that we had available to us. The TV and the radio and the newspapers. That was, that was really our windows on, on everything. But now that everybody, you know, has access to everybody and, and a broadcast ability, it's like the geographic relevance. It doesn't really matter as much now, only really for the things that are 100% mainland type of things. It's that. I haven't done this actually yet, but I would love to do a thinking about the. What are expressly mainland businesses? What are mainland thing. Not, not even just businesses, but what are things that can literally only be done on the mainland and locally. Like you're typically going to get delivery of food from right there in your local area. You can't. And I guess it comes down to that it'd be all the things that can't be digitized really

Dan: well. I think the other, the other thing is that the mainland is finite, you know.

Dean: Yes. Yeah.

Dan: You know, I mean, it's, it's measured in, you know, and it's measured by the square meter. And one square meter can't be another square meter there.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Square yard. So I think the big thing is that for all practical purposes, Cloudlandia is infinite. I Don't mean that goes forever. It's just that you'll never get to the end of it.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You'll never get to the end of it. To me, infinite means I'll never get to the end of it. It's not how far actually goes, but.

Dean: Right.

Dan: The mainland is finite.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And that's what makes it valuable. Actually, it's the finiteness of the mainland that gives it value.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The value of the Cloudlandia is that it's infinite.

Dean: So where I was going with that,

Dan: you can always come up with a new idea and if you can, you know, have a vision for it and you have capabilities for it and you have reach for it, you got yourself, you know, you got yourself a new reality.

Dean: But that's what, that's where Cloudlandia really lends itself, that all the ideas and the communication and the interaction all happens in, in the cloud. It all happens in Cloudlandia. And it's really about. The mainland is largely about logistics and supply and the things that have to be there. And I think that it's fundamentally changing. Franchising. You mentioned franchising as a great way of. If you think about what a great distribution model it was for McDonald's to figure out, this is the business model that works in this 10 mile radius here. And let's just blanket the country with these 10 mile radiuses so that people can have their own. But each of them required 100% of the operation to be duplicated in each location. That's typically what franchising has been. But now you start to see that so much of the, of franchising, so much of the business can be centralized where you can run all of the marketing, all of the call center, all of the, everything that happens in the cloud, all the cloud elements of it in a, in a, you know, I want to say centralized, but I mean in a cloudlandian way, which is ultimately decentralized, were all over the world kind of thing, but then have just the vital core things that need to be on the mainland handled there. So the franchise units are very different. I'm having been working with some franchise organizations and that's really a realization that I'm having is this opportunity perhaps, you know, to, for scale much, much faster without having to duplicate the whole operation every time.

Dan: Well, it's, it's really interesting. It's really interesting. The, the people who are really successful are actually successful in both realms. You know, in other words, they're, they've made great use of the mainland and they are Making increasing use of the Cloudlandia. And.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, I was. I was just thinking about cottage country in Ontario, you know, and it's hard for Americans, I think, to really get a handle. I mean, don't you find that. Because you. You spend quite a bit of time.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: In the Toronto area.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Especially Ontario. That Ontarians, from a cottage standpoint, never look south unless it's in the United States, and they never look south in their own country. I was looking at Lake Erie. So I grew up on the south shore of Lake Erie. My childhood was in Ohio, northern Ohio, and we were about eight miles from Lake Erie. And it's just developed every. There. There isn't any available real estate.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Sure. Of Lake Erie. It's cottage after cottage after cottage. You know, it's home after home after home. But on the north shore of Lake Erie, which is in southern Ontario, farms. You've got farms that go. Right.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: To the lake. There's. There's almost no. No cottages. There's no.

Dean: I've seen that, too, you know.

Dan: Yeah. And the reason is ontarians go north. We go north.

Dean: Yeah. That's interesting. I had a developer client that had this amazing house on Lake Erie that he built. Very modern house, but just like you were saying. And there's amazing. If I remember correctly, there's, like bluffs and, you know, beautiful shoreline on there. That's it. Yeah, it is. It is kind of funny, like, that's finding these little hidden gems. You know, I wonder if the getting away, like, I think that's what, you know, thinking about. Does every city have that same thing? Like, you know, when you look at, you know, in New York, people go to the Hamptons or the Poconos. In Chicago, they go to. They go to Wisconsin and.

Dan: Or they wouldn't go to. They even go to Michigan, you know, the Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan cottages and everything like that. Yeah.

Dean: But I wonder if it's always north. I wonder if it's. That you always.

Dan: That's a really interesting, interesting thing that the Muskoka area, which is, you know, I don't know what compares to it in Canada. You know, that would be of equal importance. There's probably some areas in British Columbia that, you know, have equal important. Banff. You know, Banff or something like that. But the Muskoka area, which is, you know, two and a half hours north of where we're sitting, that's where the movie stars have their mansions.

Dean: Yes. Yeah.

Dan: The billionaires have their mansions in Muskoka. And it's Kind of like magical. There's sort of this magical quality. And then the last year, I was Talking to Glenn McQuenney, who's a Keller Williams broker here in Toronto.

Dean: He's got about 3, 350, 400.

Dan: 350, 400. He's a member of your mastermind group. He's.

Dean: That's right.

Dan: One of your.

Dean: That's right.

Dan: Key people. And he said the average price of cottages in Muskoka has gone up by 40% in the last 15 months.

Dean: Huh.

Dan: And they were all right. I mean, they were already sky high, and they're. But now what's happening is that a lot of towns, small, abandoned. I would call them almost abandoned towns. You know, they're. They were something maybe a hundred years ago, but then they're nothing. They're blooming into life. People are these little, you know, where two highways cross each other and they're. All of a sudden, you know, their people are investing in the real estate there because they can. They can do their work on Cloud Landing.

Dean: Yeah. It's so great. You know, that's what. That's.

Dan: I think it's one of the most fun. I think it's what we'll see. This is one of the most fundamental shifts sociologically, demographically, emotionally, psychologically, technologically. This shift. We're right at the beginning of a great, great shift in history. 25, 50 years from now, we'll call the period that was triggered by the COVID pandemic. We'll call it the beginning of the great shift.

Dean: Mm. Yeah, I agree. We were watching, you know, and it's just. It's come so quickly, you know, like this whole.

Dan: And I think the reason is it wasn't directed by anybody.

Dean: Right.

Dan: It was every individual kind of making up their mind about how they were going to do things different.

Dean: Yeah. It would be interesting to look at it through this lens of the. Remember, years ago, I saw that article about the tyranny of convenience and interesting to track from then what that's really come, you know, because it really is about. It's driven by convenience and our desire to do less. You know, that the least. The most convenient way to do something. But we want.

Dan: In the United States. In the United States. I think it's the biggest shift since the completion of the Interstate Highway System.

Dean: And people could move around. Yeah.

Dan: No, I mean, Florida was put on the map because of the Interstate Highway System.

Dean: Yeah. Or. Well, the train was really the first thing. The train. It's an interesting.

Dan: Mr. Flager.

Dean: Flagler down the Flagler. Yeah, Flagler down.

Dan: Went all the way to Key West. I think Flagler put.

Dean: That's right.

Dan: All the way through to Key West.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then there's a big Flagler Hotel in St. Augustine.

Dean: St. Augustine. Right, right. And then there's. Yeah. And there's a. There was another gentleman plant.

Dan: Well, he was. He was partners with Rockefeller.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So member of Standard Oil.

Dean: Okay. He got the route to Tampa. So he took from Atlanta to Tampa, and that opened up the. The Gulf Coast. And that's interesting. Yeah. But the. We watched the friend.

Dan: He's from Bellevue, Ohio, by the way, which is 25 miles from where I grew up.

Dean: I did not know that he's from Bellevue, Ohio. Imagine these guys, what their Sundays, what they would have been doing, you know, back then, the Sunday correspondence, like writing the letters were the things then that you had your callers, the social hour. People would pop by. But we watched the Friends reunion this last night because I used to watch the show and we were talking about how you realize that whole show and Seinfeld, you know, the two biggest. There's never been anything like them since that. That made it that big. Right. That captured the attention of everybody. Like that. That was the. Those are the last of them. How much of the. You know, it was like a capsule of life before the Internet. Almost. Almost every Seinfeld episode. The key thing that happened in the episode. The. The key, like, you know, the. The trouble or the. The instigation thing could have been. Would have been completely avoided with the. Today because they have one whole episode where they're waiting in a Chinese food restaurant for a table to arrive, but they can't. They. They can't get in touch with who they're trying to meet. Right. To say that the plans have changed. Like, so much of that is just the. Because you have to share your last coordinates thing to. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. It's like watching the old crime, like movies, the old crime TV series where.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Part of every episode is them pulling up next to a pay phone so that the cops.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Go to a paper, you know, I mean. Yeah. I mean, you think there. You think that Dirty Harry would shoot a payphone, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's so insulting to. I mean, if you got dirty hairy skills, why do you have to use a payphone, you know? Almost makes you. Yeah. You see Clint Eastwood talking to a payphone? Well, I gotta ask you. Is this your lucky day, punk?

Dean: Right. Exactly. I mean, isn't that amazing?

Dan: Like so, no, but I remember Dragnet. Dragnet was the great. From the 1950s. Dragnet. And it was at Los Angeles. Jack Webb was the actor. Jack Webb. And. But I always was so struck by the fact that they always had to go to a payphone when they wanted to report something.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. And that's just so. So it's. It's really, you know, it's amazing times now to think that. That, you know, we've solved so much of those things that we would never have otherwise. You know, it's just like I'm in awe.

Dan: Dean, when's the last time you used a pay phone?

Dean: I was just thinking about that. I can't even recall the last time I saw a payphone. The funny thing about the. The funny thing that's going around the Internet now or on TikTok and Facebook is showing kids a rotary phone and telling them, asking them to dial your number and then trying to figure out, like, what to do. They don't. They're so foreign to even think about. What is a dial? Do you have a dial tone? What's that? Well, you got to pick up the phone and do you hear the dial tone? Yeah. And then they can't figure out what the numbers are. They try and like

Dan: ask a 6 year old to look at a clock and tell what time it is.

Dean: Yes, exactly. That's what it's like, you know?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So funny.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean. Yeah, but that means that we're actually more capable that. Left to your own in a place that didn't have cell phones. Dean, you would probably be able to operate.

Dean: Yeah, I mean, I remember having. I mean, this was. The good thing is that I was really kind of the last generation to make it all the way to adulthood before the Internet even really made its presence, you know, like, that was.

Dan: Yeah,

Dean: I really think that that was a good thing, that it came along at just the right time for me.

Dan: Yeah. Well, I'm two months away from. I'm two months away from my third year of watching television. Watch television? No TV. 34 months up now. 34 months. But I have to remember I was nine years old before I watched TV for the first time.

Dean: Yeah. So that's interesting. You got to see the whole. The rise.

Dan: Well, I had a whole. Well developed. I had a whole well developed childhood long before TV became, you know, started to tempt me to give up part of my daily time to watch television. And I don't have. I don't have a powerful memory of that. So I Can't. I can't really say when. When. And what caught my attention, you know, when it did and what it was that got my attention by television, but I think it was the Honeymooners. I think it was Jackie Gleason.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Saturday Night Honeymooners. I think that was the first program that really shows up on my memory radar. And we would have sloppy joes. I remember Saturday Night was the Honeymooners with sloppy joes.

Dean: Isn't that funny? That was that whole industry. Like, you think about how it's kind of fascinating to look at when a new technology comes out, that something's a game changer, that TV is there. That this whole thing that created all these other industries of the recliner chair and TV dinners. TV dinners, you know, like that whole thing. Because that's what people did. Right. They gathered around and they ate dinner and watched television.

Dan: Well, and not only that, but you had an opinion about people who actually bought frozen dinners.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, you knew this wasn't heading in a good direction.

Dean: That's so funny.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, you know, they must have been Protestants. They must have been Protestants. They weren't Catholics. I mean, that's the sort of social divide I grew up with as a kid. And I grew up in a town in northern Ohio. There's about 14,000 people. And the popular. The Catholic population was bigger than the non Catholic population. We had very developed attitudes about people who were Protestants. And when you hit teenage years, you didn't date. You didn't go out on dates with Protestant girls. You know, they had.

Dean: My mother.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: My mother would always, you know, she ran into that situation, you know, that as a Protestant, that's it. You can't date a Catholic. That's. That's funny. She had a very. I think my mom had.

Dan: So I went the other. It went the other way too. Right?

Dean: Yeah, that's. It's funny, right? Like, that's just.

Dan: That's what the way.

Dean: That's what I'm saying is my mom had the other side of that. And I think my mom, you know, I think the. The one that got away from my mom was a Jewish boy. So you think like that couldn't do that either. It's very funny, right, that you're, you know, that, that's.

Dan: But, you know, you know what it is? I've been thinking a lot. Why, you know, well, over the past, you know, years, you know, you know, pride, going back to the 2016 election in the United States, that all sorts of new organizing structures have emerged, like antifa, Black Lives matter. And I think the reason is because the previous organizing structures no longer had any strengths. I mean, you were talking about before the Internet, states had more meaning than states have right now in a member of the state. I think what humans need is an organizing structure. And if one of them loses its strength, they'll find a new one. They'll create some idea, some cause will become the organizing structure. Because we have to have meaning in our lives. And I think meaning comes from having an organizing structure. Like you were talking about the free Zone frontier. We've kind of created a new organizing structure. And you've created who, not how, you created the who, not how idea and you created the VCR idea. And these are organizing structures. They give meaning and they give common language that you can talk to like minded people with. You were talking about Friends. See, I never saw Friends, you know, I mean, I take your word for it, but I never, never once ever saw an episode of Friends. So it's not, doesn't have any meaning, meaning to me, but it, but, but probably Friends and Seinfeld have much more meaning to a greater number of people than any show that's on right now. Than any show that's on right now.

Dean: Yeah. So when you look at that, when you look at the, you know that collective thing that Even in the 90s though, that was the end of it. But you saw the beginning of it. Like in the 50s there were only three shows on television. Right. I mean that was the thing everybody,

Dan: Ed Sullivan, you know, when the Beatles, I think when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show, you got 60, 67% of the American television audience.

Dean: Yeah, isn't that something?

Dan: You know what advertisers, you know what advertisers would pay to get 67% of the American.

Dean: Nobody gets that now. I mean, only Mr. Beast gets that size of an audience now. I mean that's really, you know, that's true.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, so, so that's part of your meaning. I was reading our discussion book. So I have a, it's almost 20 years now. I have a discussion group here in Toronto. Yeah. And we have a book every quarter. So I think we're in year 19. And the book this quarter is the Master Switch by Tim Wu. Tim Wu is a professor lawyer from Columbia University in New York. And he's a great expert on the history of big technology companies. And the book we're reading is called the Master Switch. It's history of kind of these big information based companies that become almost complete monopolies like Western Union and AT&T. And now they're looking at Facebook and Facebook and Apple and Google. These are the current biggies. But he's just talking about how they start as widely dispersed technologies. Like, you know that in the early 1900s, if you wanted to create a radio station, you could create a radio station. Just in your local area.

Dean: You could, if you wanted to, you

Dan: could create a radio station or you could create a telephone company. You know, you could wire 10 houses together, and those 10 houses could have their own telephone network and everything else. And then. But what happened was that people wanted. Well, here's. Here's a really interesting thing. Apply VCR to any technology. People want a vision. So, yeah, they can phone 10 people, but the vision is they could phone anybody. Okay.

Dean: Yes. Okay.

Dan: So I'm just telling you what happening here. Yeah, we've got the capability to phone 10 people, but I'd like the capability to phone anybody. I've got the reach to phone nine other people, but I'd like to have the reach to phone. To phone everybody. So you can see that your VCR model kind of caters to a natural need that people have. When they develop a new capability, they can see beyond what they have. They want an ability greater than what they have, and that implies that they have a reach more than they want. So I think you're tapping into something that's very natural. And then there's people who come along like Zuckerberg and, you know, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and, you know, Paige and Barany at Google, and they're the ones who give kind of everybody what they want.

Dean: Yeah. Isn't that, I mean. Yeah. Man, oh, man. When you really just think about what. What an amazing time it is. And this is really where, you know, coming back to the circle of service, now that, you know, these things, being able to. Being able to seamlessly bolt on, you know, a supply chain of services and collaboration that appear seamless to the two customers. Like, this is that whole ghost kitchen ideas that appears from the front end in the cloud. It's all the same person. It's like Kylie Jenner appears to have a, you know, a big cosmetics company, but it's all through, you know, collaboration with capabilities. I think this is where, Dan, the big opportunity for people with capabilities is. I don't know whether I've shared this distinction with you that I'm observing. People are either running their capabilities as a factory or a farm. And it's an interesting thing that if you're using your capabilities to sell them to other people as a cog or a, you know, a part of their supply chain or their sequence. You're just participating as a factory where you're getting paid for the commoditization of what it is that you've got. And if you start thinking about the ways that you could use your capability as a farm and bring in other, you know, opportunities, other people that could benefit from your. Your capabilities. Yeah, it makes a big.

Dan: That's where.

Dean: That's really what, the free zone.

Dan: Well, I think the big thing, if you. Yeah. I mean, if you look at it and I'm reading this book, it's really an interesting book, and it's called the Myth of Artificial Intelligence by man by the name of Eric Larson. And he said that. That all the predictions about artificial intelligence are going to end up nowhere. And he said that we actually aren't any closer to artificial intelligence now than when Stephen, or what's his name, Alan Turing, Who. Alan Turing was. Really. Yeah, well, he created the test. Yeah. And he, you know, you know, was one of a team that really used computers during the Second World War to crack codes. The Enigma code, the German Enigma code, and not the only person. Not the only person, but the one who became most famous out of it, Bletchley park and everything. So the. The challenge is, can you have a conversation between a computer and a human where from the outside, people can't tell which is the human being and which is the computer? That's basically the desk. And there's been all sorts of attempts to say it's happening, but what you find when you look behind, behind the scenes, it's a setup. It's kind of like the computer winning Jeopardy. They gave the computer all the questions before. It turns out now, as they investigate, the computer knew all the questions beforehand and the human didn't know any questions. So it turns out that every attempt to show that computers are actually smarter than humans, the programmers jig the game in favor of the computers before the human being was allowed to compete. Okay. So, yeah, so, and the other thing, they only pick things where there's activities where they're contained in a set of rules. So chess is contained in a set of rules. And what they found out about Jeopardy is that all the answers are in Wikipedia. So they don't go anyplace except Wikipedia for the answers. So the questions and answers are totally contained. So they basically gave the computer the questions beforehand, and then they set it loose in Wikipedia. And it just. I just had all the answers right off the bat. Right off the bat. And the reason is that human intelligence. Human intelligence is based on a capability that can't be programmed.

Dan: And it's the ability to go from here to something completely different with no in between explanations why you did that.

Dean: Vision. Yeah, that's really what it is. That's true.

Dan: Yeah. They have capability and reach, but they don't have vision.

Dean: That's right.

Dan: Vision and vision is created. There's no explaining why somebody has a vision.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You can analyze. You can analyze it afterwards, but you can't predict it beforehand.

Dean: Yep, that's exactly right.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So my feeling is that artificial intelligence, at its best, can sometimes predict what happened yesterday.

Dean: Sometimes. That's funny. Yeah, that's great. But that's really the barrier.

Dan: That's the barrier. And the. The free zone is actually where we're relying on each individual be a visionary and then gradually develop a language to talk about what it means to be a visionary and what it means to actually collaborate with putting two visions together into a third thing. And I think that's why the free zone, because my vision is that in 2044, we'll be a network of 10,000 visionary entrepreneurs who are each operating independently. But they're actually sharing their knowledge. They're actually sharing their knowledge. They're actually sharing their experience.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And that in itself creates new vision.

Dean: But I really think this is going to be. Yeah, this is really great. Like, we've been talking about the idea of everybody getting aware of their vision assets and their capability assets and their reach assets for the purpose of combining them in collaboration. I think that's where it becomes an amazing opportunity. So exciting, Dan. You know, you think about, like. And it's happening more and more. You start to see more and more of this, you know, unfolding.

Dan: Well, it's like AI couldn't have predicted what you and I talked about over the last hour.

Dean: No, that's true. And I bet they can't even remember accurately. I have to listen just to remember what we talked about. But it's always. I always. I come into it excited to be here, and I always leave wanting more. I can't wait till the next one.

Dan: Yeah. One thing I wanted to thank you for, and that's allowing Ben Hardy to use your. I will be successful. I know I'll be successful when. As part of our next book.

Dean: I'm excited about that. That's good. Got to get these.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Ideas out there. I'm gonna be like the alpha for you.

Dan: Yeah. It's the first thing. It's a really good thing to have recorded now that you're. You've changed the definition of what yourself means.

Dean: Mm. Yes, that's true. I love that. Right? This is. This is great. I just realized I'm going to try and be a. I'm going to try and be the Alfred Hitchcock in all of your major market books. I'm going to try and have some appearance. Some appearance in the book somehow.

Dan: Well, the next one is. 10 times is easier than 2 times.

Dean: I like that. Okay, that's good. I'm sure I can contribute to that,

Dan: just to let you know. Yeah, well, your VCR is really exactly.

Dean: I think it will be. Yeah.

Dan: All right.

Dean: Okay. That was great. I guess it's already over the top of the hour.

Dan: Next week? I'm good. Next week.

Dean: Okay, me too. Me too. Okay, I'll talk to you then. Thanks. Bye.

Dan: Bye.