The In-between Times.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: General Jackson.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: I, I upgraded you, I promoted you because you did a live in person actually touching other human beings.

Dean: Real people. That's right.

Dan: Real, real people. You did that?

Dean: Yes, I did that. And we haven't spoken since, have we? That's right. So I've got a report from the field. It's, you know, it was like riding a bicycle, as they say. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't forget the move. No, I didn't forget the moves. I just knew exactly what to do. You, you know, put it back on like a comfortable shirt and it was lovely. And it was, you know, just like you remembered. It felt like no time had passed in the time between events and it was different. You know, it's like number one. The main difference of course was the, you know, to do a live breakthrough blueprint. I left my house at 4 o' clock on Sunday afternoon and I did not arrive back home till Wednesday at 7pm and so I was out of my Four Seasons bubble for the, for that amount of time. But you know, there's something to be said for the in between stuff, you know, like the lunches and the socializing after and the gathering, you know, on the white couches before breakfast or before the event, that kind of thing. So there's some definite, you know, positive elements of it. And overall I don't mind that it was in my environment, meaning I didn't have to fly somewhere to, to do it. So I didn't avoided the air travel. But it was, yeah, it was very, you know, I'm a fan of both now. You know, I mean.

Dan: Yeah, you're almost, you're almost like bilingual.

Dean: I'm bilingual. But to have. You just cannot, you cannot, you know, under. You can't. The value of the expanded opportunity that we have with in Cloudlandia. And I'll put these zoom events squarely in the Cloudlandia column. You know, it's almost like coming back home to the mainland to do the, the live events. And you know who was there was our friend Norman Dunnigan. Came down for the South Carolina. Yep. And so we had a great, you know, when he's, he's squarely in the likes the in person events and I think there's something to that. Norman's an in person kind of guy. We had another, there was another strategic coach gentleman there. John Slater was there for the event. He's from Mississippi and he has a. Yeah, benefits.

Dan: Company benefits. Yeah, we had him as a guest on One of our Free Zone. Our Free Zone two hour sessions about three weeks ago. So I'm ask, you know, what I'm doing is people who are really on the cusp of joining the Free Zone program. So for those of you who are listening for the first time, Strategic Coach, which is the program that I have, Breakthrough Blueprint is the program that Dean has. But the strategic coach has three levels signature 10 times ambition, and then the third level is called the Free Zone Frontier. And so one way for people who are very, very close to joining the Free Zone, they're in the 10 times ambition program. I said, this is what I want you to do. I want you to take your biggest possibility. And we have a thinking tool in the 10 times, which is called the Certainty Uncertainty Focus and write down what the, you know, write down what the possibility is as you see it. And then write down in the certainty column everything that's got going for it that's proven. In other words, this is already working. This is already, this is working. And therefore the possibility would just be a big expansion on what you're already doing. And then the Uncertainty column, you write down everything you don't know about the, you know, you don't have the capability, you don't have the information, you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the connections. And I want you to come in and we'll put that up on the screen and you walk it through and tell everybody what it is. And then we have the Free Zone participants say what they can connect this person to or how they think the person would go about it. And it's terrific. I mean, and, you know, and frequently the person is kind of on the wrong track, I would say. And what I mean by that, they're, they're doing too much, in other words, and they're, their notion of their future is that they're still going to be doing a lot of howling.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And our Free Zone people say, well, that's really. You're going about it the long way, you're doing it the hard way. Here's a Deborah and all the people I've talked to, we've had about three so far, I think three or four who've come and visited with the Free Zone. And it's shocking to them. Mm. They've never been in a group like this. They've never gotten feedback like this. And there isn't anybody in the Free Zone who is being unhelpful. You know, they're all saying, you know, I think that you need a Year of just going out to meeting and talking to people rather than trying to do the work.

Dean: Yes. It's a really. And it's fun to be able to look at these opportunities with 3D glasses of knowing, you know, are they, where are their assets? As far as the VCR formula goes of vision capabilities and reach, what are the assets that they have or need access to? If they've got the capabilities and an excess capacity, then it really is about some vision for that and some reach. Who's got. And reach, I've really learned, like, if you break down what reach is, is really access to attention. That's really the thing because when it comes to access, you know, when in order for somebody to make a decision, it just needs to be brought to their attention. And it's an interesting phrase. I'm looking at all the ways we use the word attention. Right. Like, so it's almost like. Because when you think about something he brought to your attention, it's like some. It's almost like getting an audience with this like, untamable beast that we have living within us. You know, it's like that's the thing that we're all really struggling or, or mastering is our ability to tame direct focus, harness our attention in the direction that we want it to go as opposed to where it wants to go. Yeah.

Dan: Dean, in going through the three days of Breakthrough Blueprint and having. Have you noticed the participants themselves making comments about the difference between doing it in person and their experience for the last year and a half or 15 months? How many months? Yeah, I guess about 15 months.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Did they comment on it at all?

Dean: Well, let me think whether that specifically came up because I don't believe that the people in the room. Oh, no, a couple of them had done the virtual ones as well. There's definitely a. There's definitely a richer, full sensory experience of it. More than a do you know? I don't. It's. It's an interesting way to describe it. It's. It's reality. There's something about the different energy of being in, in person than in. Than on the screen, intellectually and practically speaking, there's, you know, it's efficient and you're getting, you know, 80 plus percent of what you're getting. But there's a dimensionality to the, to the being in person and energy and it's a different energy that I think we get into this. You know, I think there's some, you know, different things that are going on in our bodies cellularly when we're In a. In a group energy kind of thing,

Dan: what'd you notice about your own attention? Comparing how your attention would be with the three days of Zoom and then the three days of essentially, you know, being, I guess, in kind of a circle of some sort.

Dean: Right. Yeah. Yeah. We're around a boardroom table. That's how it was. Right. So it's a beautiful boardroom, and so we're all sitting there. The reason I like having the, you know, 10 or 12 people is a manageable number. That is one conversation as opposed to when it gets beyond that, you've got sort of fractional conversations, three people down here talking. And, you know, and it's very like, if you're masterful at kind of controlling and keep everybody in tight, you can do it at 14 people. But literally, once you get beyond that, then you're. That's a struggle, is keeping everybody in one conversation and that. So in Zoom, I don't know that you get that same sort of attention that you get, because there's lots of room for other distraction, I guess, too, you know, in somebody else's environment. But overall, I think if you had to. If I had to. If you had to choose and say I can only do one, then I'd have to say that the future is in Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That there's more opportunity and more reach, more efficiency, more. All of the things, you know, 80%. Yeah. It's. It's. I think that's really the. The reality.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Only do one.

Dan: Here's what I've done for my own thinking, and because we're going back. Don't know the exact, you know, but it's in the fall, early fall.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: We'll be going back to. I don't know the dates yet because that's above my security clearance here.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, I would be told at a certain point, one in decision has been made where I'm supposed to show up, you know, and how to get there, things like that. And. But one of the things I've done, I've taken my original Strategy Circle thinking process, which goes back now 39 years. 39 years since I created the Strategy Circle. And for those who are listening that don't know it, this is a thinking tool. And it's a piece of paper that you start on the far right hand side of the paper, and you have a vision for a particular achievement. You know, it's actually, you know, it's something that has the quality of being both bigger and better. And you have five boxes and you put down what the date is. Okay, so my date would be the end of this year. So I would do the end of 2021. And this is a year that is going to be mostly Zoom based workshops for strategic coach. But near the end of the year, we'll be increasing the number of in person workshops, and that's for me. And we have 17 other coaches, so probably I would say will get in somewhere between 80 and 100 in person workshops in out of the more than 500 workshop days that we do in the air. So it'll be less than a quarter. And what I'm going to write down is on this right hand side what my Zoom standards are for. So what are the five things that Zoom has done for me over the last 15 months that I'm now going to establish as standards for performance? So in other words, I have Zoom workshops as a gold standard of how you do all workshops. Okay. This is my thesis here. Okay. And then I'm going to come back and so that's called vision. And there's a formula that I have called Voda. So the V of Vota, V O T A is vision. Then I come back and I look at the obstacles and I say, what are the obstacles that I'm noticing about this in person experimenting with this new approach of in person workshops. And I'm gonna write down everything that's an obstacle. You know what I noticed doesn't, it's harder to do in person than it was in boda.

Dan: And then I'm going to take the obstacle. And I said, okay, so how do we solve this now? And my solution is going to be who, not how. In other words, there's going to be a. I don't want Dan working any harder in an in person workshop than he works in a, in a Zoom workshop. So that's one of my standards there. I don't do anything more. But you know, it's not any more tiring. I'm just going to identify all the obstacles as I start back into the in person experience. And then I'm saying, okay, this has to be solved now. This obstacle has to be transformed. So vision, opposition, transformation. And then there's an action to take. And I'll use my Voda experience now to upgrade my in person, my in person performance.

Dean: I like that.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And so what. That's an interesting. Yeah, because now if you're setting it up as the virtual, as the standard, that's got to be. Yeah, that's an interesting approach. I like that.

Dan: Yeah. I mean it's Voda is just a formula that I use for the creation of all new concepts. And that became very, very clear because we've gone through a complete re evaluation of our intellectual property protection for a lot of different reasons. But one thing that's come out is that every single concept in the program, which has been going on now for maybe 32 years in November, that we've been starting the workshop program, that every new concept that I've gotten, like free focus and buffer days, unique ability, largest check lifetime extender, they're all motivated. There's a vision of something you'd like to see in the future. There's an obstacle to it in the present. And between the obstacle now and the vision, you have to transform the obstacle into action and achievement that will lead to the. Lead to the, you know, to the, to the vision. And so that's consistent about all of ours. And we've gone through and we've checked every single concept we're using and I can show where the vision, the opposition, the transformation and the action is in every single one of our concepts. So there's a, there's a family resemblance to all of our concepts. And I said, well, that's going to be true. That was true in the past and it's going to be true in the future. But this is the biggest experience that we've had since we started the program. That's really different, very different. This is the, this is the big departure. Fifteen months, let's say it's a year and a half by the time we get back. And, and I said, you know, this is a gift. This year and a half has been a real gift because it's kind of gotten us completely outside of our normal system so that we can see things from the outside. You know, we can see the in person workshop from Cloudlandia and our experience of Cloudlandia. And then we can say, you know, there's some things that are really great about this that are unique to in person, and we're going to enhance those and we're going to enhance those. And there's some which are now deemed deficient by our new votive standard. By our new Zoom standard. Yeah, that has to be either improved or eliminated.

Dean: So how do you think, like when you look at the. Because, you know, obviously the biggest thing about the in person things is the. It's not. There's no denying that the in person experience is richer. There's an added dimension that you can't. It's like being there live or watching anything on tv. It's like that whole experience is different, but it's all the stuff around it and in between it that is. That creates the hassle. Like the. Until we invent a teleporter. You know, the travel, the getting, the dragging your carcass there is the biggest thing. That's the biggest. But friction, you know, is having to get through the airport. And we had a situation. Somebody who was going to come to the event and their flights on Sunday were canceled like American was. This was Father's Day to the Sunday before the event. But American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights. It was a big thing all over the country because they were understaffed. They're. They're, you know, they were overbooking and understaffed, and they didn't have the capacity. And so that headlines today travel is back now bigger than pre Covid.

Dan: Yeah. So in any way that our hearts might have softened towards American Airlines during 15 months, our hearts again.

Dean: Yeah, they're right back at the. We're not happy till you're not happy.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one thing that they held on to.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, that worked for us for the last 50 years and. Right. You know, technology or no technology, we're sticking to our marketing strategy. We're not. That's right. You're not happy, and

Dean: we're not happy

Dan: until you're not happy. Yeah, that's right. That's really great. That's right.

Dean: Oh, man.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So you think of that. It's like until we can, you know, fire up the. The jet and make that friction free. Maybe that's just the thing, Dan. We just need to, you know, makes that a reality.

Dan: Yeah, well, the. The thing is, you know, a great human desire is for most people, there are other people who come at it the other direction. But for most people, I think that one of our great strivings, regardless of how we're experiencing life, is to have less friction tomorrow than we had today.

Dean: Yeah, I think you're right.

Dan: Yeah, I think you're right.

Dean: And that's why the field, like, that's

Dan: why whatever way that friction shows up in your life and that can show up in lots of different ways. It's. It's, you know, it's five steps instead of two steps. That's friction. You know, it's someone who just doesn't get it when you're talking to them. That's friction.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, it's poor service. That's friction. You know, you're expecting one thing and you got something Worse. That's friction.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So my sense is that both Zoom and in person have their friction issues. Okay. And so. And one of my clients sent me a book, very thick book that's probably about two or 300 pages on your new digital life. That's the essence of the book. So I'm going to be going through it. And he's. He's an architect here in Ontario, and he's just really profited enormously from Zoom over the past year.

Dean: Oh, yeah.

Dan: And, you know, I mean, he runs his whole business by Zoom. All his client meetings, all his, you know, his proposal meetings, all of his, you know, client. Everything is by Zoom and everything. So he sent it to me because he. He said she's. She's kind of described in, you know, 300 pages what your book just did in 44 pages. Yeah, yeah. Ye. I. I just go to the chase scene. I don't go around with all the preemption.

Dean: Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: If you're an entrepreneur, pictures, and you want to get someplace faster and easier and cheaper, these are good strategies. These are good minds.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, but anyway, I'm going to look through it, and you could tell she's writing for the whole world. You know, she's not writing for. She's not writing for the not normal people that are my client base.

Dean: Right, right, right. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I wonder how this is all gonna do for the. The jet travel business that. I think there's a lot of people who have maybe been on the cusp or in the. You know,

Dan: we have a client, Henry Laughlin. I think he's probably been in a workshop or two with him over the years, but he owns a business that markets new jets. New private jets.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But he's also in the business of managing private jet airports. General aviation. They're called general aviation. And he said that just in terms of purchasing, this is probably the greatest year for the sale of brand new jets and used jets in ever United States. And he said the other thing is that now that people who are business owners or CEOs, who have decided that they can live where they want to live because they will do most of their business by Zoom, but nevertheless, they. They have to make flights. They are now very, very interested in local, smaller community airports brought up to. That will be brought up to standards in terms of, you know, their ability to handle jets, private jets coming in, and, you know, they'll have, like, the air traffic control will be there and every. Everything else. So that they can do this. And he said there's going to be a real boom, especially in the middle of the United States, because it's pretty flat, you know, from, from the Allegheny. Allegheny Mountains on the east to the rockies. It's. It's 1500, you know, 15002000 miles of very, very flat land and there's a lot of communities in there. So he said what he's seen is that will be a big building now, small airports, lengthening the runways and they've got land and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and. And so the person.

Dean: I'm 11 minutes from the. The tarmac of the private airport here. You know, I've done the math on the, the timing. Like.

Dan: Yeah. Here, theoretically, you might get there 10 minutes before you, you know, you're would

Dean: have even taken off. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. You would just go. I mean, you check and they check. You know, they have your pat. They. I mean, they do, you know, personal check, passport and everything else, and you're on board and off you go.

Dean: Yeah, but I can't figure out how to make it worth $20,000.

Dan: Yeah. Well, my sense there's going to be Uberization of this.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And you'll. You'll just. You don't mind flying with someone else along the way, you know.

Dean: Yeah. Huh.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Well, there you have it.

Dan: I mean, somebody. Somebody's going to figure out something. Yeah, somebody's gonna figure out something. And I don't think there'd be an interest.

Dean: I mean, there's gotta be a shuttle from the island airport to Chicago. Really don't place you. Have you ever seen or.

Dan: Oh, yeah, I've taken. I've taken Porter. Porter Airlines goes to Chicago.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The only problem is they go to Midway. And so what we gain on this end, we lose.

Dean: I gotcha.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it takes us 20 minutes to get to the island airport from here. Let's say a half hour. We're ready to board in a half hour.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But the problem is Midway is an hour from our home in Chicago, so. So.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And O' Hare is 15 minutes from our home in Chicago, so. Yeah, so. Yeah, but there's world problems.

Dean: They are really. That's exactly right. Yeah. So that's an interesting comparison, though, Dan, to see the. You have to really practically compare because there it's. It's sort of qualitative differences, not functional difference, really. You know, like, not if you're looking at the conveyance of the information and the access to the ideas and the discussions and, you know, breakouts and all the Stuff that's all there. It's only a, it's only a qualitative layer, I think.

Dan: Yeah, well, I mean you're always balancing things anyway. I mean since you were born and you were conscious that you were alive.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You've always been. Yeah, you've been always. It's time, effort and energy calculation that we all do.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. How much effort do we want to put in to achieving a goal? And you know, and so my sense is that all of us were doing that before COVID We did it and we'll be doing that after Covid.

Dean: And it's an interesting thing that you could essentially there's some digital insurance on that in that nothing digitally going wrong is going to stop that experience. I was just reading the headlines today. There's a supermarket in Sweden that uses a U.S. you know, it, you know, cloud based kind of point of sale and you know, accounting or commerce system that was forced to close 800 of their stores because they couldn't get the, the bypass, the thing that opens the cash registers, the digital, you know, it's all access from the cloud. One System managing the 800 stores, it couldn't, that was taken down and so 800 stores couldn't, couldn't open up because of one digital hiccup in Austin, Texas. You know.

Dan: Well, it's kind of, you know, that's a two sided coin. The digital world. If it can multiply your solutions, it can multiply your problem.

Dean: Well, I think that's it because we, literally the biggest danger is we have one point of failure.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know, like for most people, the, the, the, you know, the cloud itself, access to the cloud is through our phone or whatever our. Yeah,

Dan: yeah. It's interesting because I, you know, I'm, I'm sort of ambivalent about the electric cars, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I'm not saying I'm against them, I'm not saying I'm for them. I'm kind of neutral because I was neutral about cars period before electric cars came along. So I've never had a well developed car. Emotional. I've not developed very, very much emotion about cars in general.

Dean: Right.

Dan: It's a vehicle that gets me from here to there. That's, you know, really all I care about.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But the one thing they said, people ask me about it because I don't drive. Babs has a Tesla. She's got the same model that you did with the X and she loves it, you know, and she likes to pass people. So there's. The Tesla is an excellent Passing car. If you, if you want to pass somebody, you can really pass them. And very definitely I can tell that Babs gets more meaning out of her car than I do. But, you know, we kind of have a situation. And I was noticing in California, they have energy problems. Why the state of California should have energy problems, I don't know. But they have energy problems. And they were recommending, I'm stressing the word recommending here, that owners of electric vehicles not charge their vehicles during the next 24 hours.

Dean: Oh, my goodness.

Dan: And I said, wow. I said, well, they're recommending that in the future. Can they just shut you down? I mean, in other words.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Do they have the master switch? Is one of the requirements for Tesla to operate as a entity or any of the other car companies?

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Dr. That state, the state of California has the master switch. And whether you, you know, whether you, you know, voluntarily shut down your use of your electrical car or they do it for you, they will have the power to do that. And I said, no, it's harder to do that with gas.

Dean: That's true.

Dan: That is true. I mean, this is a Cloudlandia we're exploring. So, yeah, one thing that a lot of people have told me, you know what I love about Landia? No politics. And I said, I said, it's only a matter of time.

Dean: Absolutely. Hold on.

Dan: It's only a matter. It's a matter of time. If there's criminals in the, In Codlandia, you can bet there's going to be government in Codlandia. Yeah,

Dean: yeah, that's. It's.

Dan: We'll demand it.

Dean: That's exactly right. Yeah. Funny to see the, you know, imagining. There's a series. I've talked about it, and I don't know whether you've seen or. But there was a series on

Dan: the

Dean: men who built America and then the.

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: Foods that made America and the cars that made America. They're basically their history lessons of, you know, I think it's one of the most brilliantly done series that I've ever seen. Just because that you, you can see everything happening at once. It always happens that somebody saw, Had a vision, somebody saw the opportunity and moved on it and that then became the platform. And there's a jumping off on all of the, all the levels. Like once the railroad was a thing, then all the people who used that capability to expand their opportunities, you know, really happened around that, you know. And so I'm imagining, coming into imagining 100 years from now, looking back at this time and seeing who, what were the major, you know, the platform things, the inflection points, the points where we made the, the big shift. And I think, you know, you hit it on the head with the microchip, you know, becoming the basis of so much stuff. And now the microchip, I think, you know, that led way to the personal computing, to the Internet, to the digitization of everything, to the iPhone, which led for the apps. Now we got all of this app life and now the. All the big companies are on that app platform, you know, and so you start to see now that, now that that's there, it's almost, it's kind of funny that the apps are becoming, it's that last stage of democratized, you know, that's really what coming to everybody.

Dan: One of the things I noticed because I'm following the legislative efforts in the United States, because America generally has to deal with big new things faster than the rest of the world does. Because America generally becomes the place where they become bigger and new things become bigger and faster. Not necessarily that they're invented in the United States, but wherever they're invented, Americans will take it and make it bigger than, faster than anywhere else in the world because they have the largest community of venturesome consumers, America. And they're connected. It's sort of connected. So yeah, if you. And the other thing is their capital markets, their capital markets, the venture capital and the funding, and that would include government, you know, subsidizing it, that there's vastly more money in the United States that you can get behind a new idea faster and easier than any place in the world. And one of the things that I see happening is that it's the big platforms. And there's five, probably that you would call the big platform countries. And these are the five biggest corporations in the world now. These are the five. And it would be Google and Apple and Microsoft and it would be Facebook and Amazon and Amazon. These are the, you know, these are the biggest. And they've been doing something tricky, the platforms. That's their downfall, and that is they've been allowing other people to use their platform to market things. And then they'll look at a particular someone who is marketing on their platform and is very successful. And they do one of two things. One of two things. One, they say, we'd like to buy into your. We'd like to buy into your company. We'd like to buy part of your company. Or they don't say that. They don't say anything. What they do is they can measure everything about that company and they create a rival. And so there they go into competition against their own customers. Okay. And this kind of greed, they don't have to do this. You know, the whole point is they don't have to do this. It's just greed. It's just double greed that they can do it because they can do it. And what's going to happen is I think this is going to be legislated out of existence.

Dan: That if you're a platform, you can't build a. Something to use on your platform. It goes into direct competition with the check writers who are writing. You can't be. You can't be both. You can be one or you can be the other, but you can't be both. And the other thing they're going to say is that you. They also have shown a great desire that certain messaging can't be used on their platform. And that's political messaging that they don't really agree with. They don't really agree.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And again, the legislation is going to say you're either a publisher or you're a platform. Which do you want to be? Yeah, you can't be. Can't be both. So you can't be. And the reason why they did that, you know, is that they push. They push to see if they can get away with it. And I think that what's interesting is that the opposition is just as big on the. If you use the two American parties, the opposition to the platforms is just as big on the one side as it is the other. In other words, it's trouble, unanimity on the political level to do something about the big platforms. And this is where serious legislation starts happening really quickly. I think you'll see it, you know, next decade.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah, it takes about 10 years, probably from the time something starts to, you know, when there's clarity on the issue. Yeah, this is. Yeah. And you know, and they do what they do and the other people do what they do, but it's one of those issues that they will not have unlimited power to do whatever they want to do.

Dean: And you look at it, what's really telling is there's only one of those companies that's even been around for more than two decades, Apple. Microsoft.

Dan: Well, Microsoft and Apple.

Dean: Microsoft and Apple, the hardware ones, that's, you know, starting out with that, but what they've become. But then, you know, Google and Amazon and Facebook, all.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Fifteen years. Really?

Dan: Yeah. I mean, the beginnings are the late 70s, mid 70s, late 70s.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I think there was Jobs and Jobs and Gates. Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. It's interesting to see the, you know, to read a book like Abundance now again, seeing how. Because that was sort of a Future Telling Book. 5 or. When did it come out? I wonder how old that.

Dan: Well, I tell you exactly. I can tell you exactly because I

Dean: read gotta be eight years or nine years old. Yeah.

Dan: No, no, no, it was the summer of 11, 2011. So it's 10 years.

Dean: 10 years, yeah. So it's an interesting. Because that was kind of the ten year playboy. It was future telling for ten years and we really hadn't seen what full like democratization really looked like, you know, at that level yet and seen the beneficiaries of that. And so it's interesting to see how it all has played out because certainly 10 years on it's a. We have a richer understanding of what all of that means.

Dan: Yeah. And for me things have gotten simpler and clearer. But I would say from reading the media, you know, I read, you know, the headlines on the Internet. So I'm approaching it's, you know, I'm within reaching distance now of my three years of not watching television. So that's the end of the month of the three years. But I do, you know, there are news, news platforms on the Internet and I just scan the headlines and I read it. But if anything, life has gotten more complex, more confusing, more complicated for most people.

Dean: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Dan: The growth of those five corporations and the capabilities that they dealt with has not made life easier and simpler and more enjoyable for most people.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Well, I look at certainly those 800 supermarkets, that's big. They must be the biggest in Sweden. 800?

Dean: Yeah. Do you imagine that would be like Loblaws or whatever getting shut down?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know, I mean, wild. But when you look at the, you know, overriding, you know, the more better and worse at the same time, that's really the bottom line of it. You know, you're saying like the, you know, all that stuff. We can literally have anything delivered to us within the very latest tomorrow morning. We get any food that we want in 30 minutes to our house. But all of those things all depend on our digital access. I had to go get cash the other day. Lupa and I just spent five days at the Four Seasons in Palm beach last week and I had to get some cash and it was so odd. It feels rare to even have cash now. Right. You realize how inefficient the whole cash system is.

Dan: But I have to laugh.

Dean: Yeah. What?

Dan: Well, it's inefficient. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's really efficient. You go to a machine, they go. And you were at. You were. It was in the same building where you were.

Dean: That's true. Isn't that funny that our standards are inefficient?

Dan: You had to take the elevator down and ask somebody where the machine was.

Dean: That's exactly what happened. That was exactly it, Dan.

Dan: God, I can't believe the inconvenience that you've been through since I talked to you last.

Dean: But the interesting thing was their ATM was actually down, and they. They gave me cash on my.

Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah, do that. Yeah. I mean, hey, Four Seasons is Four Seasons.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's just. It is. We're chuckling, you know, I mean, you just see the absurdity of what I decided. You're absolutely right. But so inconvenient. But even the next. When you go to the next level, it's like that level of convenience is ratcheted in, and nobody goes backwards now. Like, I had to actually, like, go somewhere and stand there and, you know, seek out the cash. It's like instead of everything I want coming to me.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, I've. I'm the cash man around our household.

Dean: Are you.

Dan: You got it?

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You got any money? Did you have any cash? I said, sure. How much do you need? And she says, you only have 400. I said, yeah, I'll have to go to a different jacket.

Dean: You got them stacked all through the. All through the house.

Dan: I got. I got winter coats and jackets.

Dean: Like a squirrel with his nut inside.

Dan: Inside pockets. Yeah, and. Yeah, you know. Yeah, there's the queen. Pictures of the queen on them. You know, they're all. Yeah, they're all 20s and 20s and. Yeah, sure, sure. I got four. I'll give you 400. Yeah. Anyway, but. And, you know, it's an old habit. It makes me feel good. I remember when I had less cash around.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: 40, 50 years ago. I want to tell you something that was a delight that I haven't talked to you about. Eleanora, who's my main Zoom, you know, facilitator, she got a invitation, a speech invitation at the end, which talked to a entrepreneurial program at a high school. Okay. It's the high school where I spent 12 years. 12 years in the building from first grade to 12th grade in Norwalk, Ohio, St. Paul's High School. And they have an entrepreneurial program. And they wondered if Dan Sullivan would talk to the. To the members of their entrepreneurial program. And I said, zoom. And they said, absolutely, Zoom. And so that's in the calendar. I think it's September. I'll do it. And I was just totally delighted because next year will be 60 years since I graduated. Wow. From that high school. And I said, I think They've got a 60 year rule that will invite them back after they've graduated. They're still alive. 60 years after they've graduated and they're doing something, we invite them back.

Dean: Ah, that's so funny.

Dan: Yeah. I was real pleased because this town that I graduated from is the birthplace of the Fisher brothers, who were the main body makers for all of General Motors from around the 1920s. I still think it's called Body by Fisher GM Cars. And they were all born there. And there were seven of them and five of them, I think five of them ended up with a company in Detroit. So that was that. And then there was a trucking company called Norwalk Truck Lines. When I was in the 50s, it was the largest independently owned truck line in the world. And it was about 800 trucks. And they basically went as far west as Chicago and St. Louis. And then they had the whole east coast to, I think probably D.C. they didn't go much further than South D.C. but then they had all of New England and, you know, a lot of the Midwest and that was there. And the other thing is that, I don't know if you knew this, but from the 1890s until the 1930s, there was inner city rail, electric rail, and there was a map of northern Ohio. And this was one of the most intense. Interurban. It was called interurban rail. And it kind of got started in Norwalk, the town of Norwalk. And they had cars coming by every half hour. You could get on, you went west, you could get to Cleveland, Toledo in about, you know, two and a half hours. If you went east, you could get to, you could get to Cleveland in about two and a half hours. And that ran from 6:30 in the morning till 11:00 clock at night every half hour.

Dean: Wow. So like a commuter. Yeah, that's something. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: So I'm, I'm going to tell the classes that they, you know, that this was a major. And they had two car companies there in the early 1900s that eventually got bought up, you know, in the general consolidation of the industry. But they had two automobile industries. And there was a man who started an electric company in Norwalk to make magnetos. And I had to look up what magnetos are. You know, they're sort of a early generator of electricity and his Partner was a young man from the next town by the name of Thomas Edison.

Dean: Oh my. Wow. I didn't realize.

Dan: So I'm going to. I'm going to start off and I say, I just want to tell you in case you don't know the history of your town when it comes to entrepreneurs, when it comes to entrepreneurialism and because I'm talking to 18 year olds, 17 and 18 year olds and I bet they don't know much history.

Dean: No, I bet you're right. I mean, that was funny that, you know, Philip, we were during quarantine when he was homeschooling. We were watching this series at lunch. We'd watch different episode. He went back to school and in his history class, one of the assignments or one of the things they were doing was watching this series or a few of the episodes of this series. So he had like a jump start on everything. It was kind of funny.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I want to. I. It's really interesting. The disappearance of historical knowledge is really, you know, it's a phenomenon that happened, you know, I mean, certainly happened completely in my lifetime because you were, you know, you were marinated in history and geography, politics. And now I just. It's just really interesting to me. Of course we're the, you know, we're the people who know the most history because up until, you know, schooling actually started in that.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Nobody hardly anybody really knew history. You know, nobody.

Dean: Oral stories.

Dan: Well. And you couldn't see videos and you couldn't, you know, so we probably generally know more history than they did. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: I mean, you know, you look at this, it's so amazing. It dawns on me, I was doing a lot of. One of my favorite things to do is just to think. Not with my journal, not in a direct thing, but observing and thinking. And I was realizing how much of. If you just really take where we are right now, like looking back in the grand scheme of the history of mankind, this where we. The last 200 years, let's say where all of the development has happened is really just like a blip micro, you know, moment in the grand scheme of how long we've been around. Right.

Dan: And you realize now like they're as distinct from, let's say humans, distinct from Neanderthals and Denisovans. You know, there are all these other. Yeah, basically human like creatures. It's. It's at least 200,000 years. It's at least 200,000 years since we've been distinct from them. And it's probably been about 1.5 million since there were human like. As opposed to ape like. Ape like creatures. Yeah.

Dean: Right. But Even you think 2000, you think back to, you know, the philosophers at the Agora, sitting in the. Talking and having conversations or whatever, great things. But when you realize how much of what we do, how much of our society is really like, just made up stuff that's not really any. I mean, look at what we do. And you've built an amazing company and empire. Let's call it on people paying you money to come and think about their thinking. Like, what an amazing. Yeah. Yes.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But I mean, really, you know, the

Dan: little ones are listening. The little. Dean, the little ones are listening.

Dean: I mean.

Dan: Yeah. Well. Well, what do you do? What do you do?

Dean: Yeah, I mean, that's really it, right? Like, that's. And then when they're thinking about that thinking, then we come and come see me and we'll talk about how to tell the other people about what you've thought in a way that makes them give you money to do what you do.

Dan: We're lucky souls, you and I.

Dean: We really are. And as a society, I mean, it's just so you realize you say these things, like you look back at you chuckling at me, saying how inconvenient it was to get cash. And when you think back in the. Compared to lugging around your chickens and donkeys to trade things for at all times, it's gotta be a. Oh, wow, life is amazing. What a life we live.

Dan: Going to a bank teller. I can't remember the last time I was in the bank.

Dean: Yeah, me neither.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, but you know, the thing is that there's my, you know, one of the things, it's kind of like the Jeff Bezos things that. What doesn't change, you know, because, yeah, you can build. You can build the future on what will be the same 10 years from now.

Dean: That's the truth.

Dan: You know, so. So I think that. I think that you gotta choose one or the other of two possibilities for being an entrepreneur. One, things that will never change, but they'll continue to grow. You know, in other words, they don't change, but there will be more people in the future who are willing to pay for this or be on completely on top of change and be the change master. Yeah, it would be the, you know, like you're almost, you know, you're changing by. You're a culture maker. You're, you know, you're an influencer and everything. And you have to be on top of everything and you have to be, you know, you have to be giving people new stuff every single day. Both of them are completely viable entrepreneurial models. I think anything in the middle is less good because it doesn't change all the time, but it's going to be disrupted by changes that it didn't notice.

Dean: Well, strategic thinking for entrepreneurs is never going to go out of style. We got that going for us.

Dan: Yeah, well, there's more of them. They're making more of them.

Dean: Yeah,

Dan: yeah, yeah. It's really. Yeah. I'm reading, I'm reading all the court cases that went on between roughly 1760 and 1776. So this would be a 15 year period. 1661, 1761, 1776. 15 years, yes. In the, in the colonies. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and everything. Of objecting to what the British government was doing. And for the most part, these would be court cases that the colonies, people like John Adams and Jefferson and Madison, they were bringing that they weren't being treated properly. The government. First of all, they, they suspected the government in London of being ignorant. They don't understand what life is like in the colonies. We're just as smart as you are. We read as much as you do, we talk about things same way you do, but you don't take us into account when you're making your laws. And we want you to know that this is not heading in a good direction as far as you're concerned.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. But it's really interesting, it's really interesting to read these.

Dean: How did you even think to like, what, what prompted that line of investigation?

Dan: I just came across a book. You know, that's okay. Somebody said really? And it's. And the title of the book is called the Words that Made Us Okay. Yeah, that's really good. I mean, it's really. Yeah. Incredibly articulate. These were incredibly articulate people. I mean.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And everybody read newspapers. Newspapers were the, they were the social media of the day.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and hundreds and hundreds of printers were pumping out pamphlets.

Dean: Newspapers. Yeah, that was, there's, that's a perfect example of the, the root of, you know, from Gutenberg, that when Gutenberg created all of the, the press that. Now that was the first sort of. The newspapers were the first sort of beneficiaries build on that platform.

Dan: Well, not only that, but it's the first right that people have in the United States that is protected. Protected by the Constitution. First. Yeah. First Amendment is freedom of speech in any form. And that's being, you know, it's being tampered with. Right now. People are. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's. That's why it's not heading in a good direction for the big platforms because they're not fundamentally understanding how important this is.

Dean: Right.

Dan: All right.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Well, another.

Dean: Are we done? Oh, my goodness. Dan. Over. Eight minutes over. Look at us. I lose all track. All right, well, there's gonna be back. Yeah, we had a. We had a week off, so.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But I'll be next week back.

Dan: You'll be in Chicago pretty soon.

Dean: Fingers crossed. That's right. Oh, yeah, I'll be in Chicago. Not this week. Next week. Right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Very excited about that. All right, K. Dan. Thank you.

Dan: Bye. Okay, bye.