Credibility Habits

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson. I was, I was the first one on the call. I, I, somebody told me a voice came on said, you are the first person on this call.

Dean: Wow. And look at, we're both slightly early. That's funny, isn't shows I was thinking about.

Dan: Yeah. To tell you why I bring this up that, you know, long time ago and we called it various things, but I called it the referability habits. And now I think it's more like credibility habits. And these are just five things, four things. And I've added a fifth. Four things that I think just facilitate cooperation and collaboration in the mainland. But I think it's even, they have even added value in the, in Podlandia and they, the four hour. Just show up on time, number one. Number one, just show up on time, Number two, you know, do what you

Dean: say you're going to do.

Dan: Do what you say you're going to do. Finish what you start. Say please and thank you. And I added a, I added a fifth one basically because I was noticing that some people were not understanding or comprehending how they were showing up when they were on Zoom. And I call it be appropriate. In other words, whatever the context is, be appropriate. If it's informal, be appropriately informal. It's formal. Be appropriately formal. And it was funny because we just went through and completed a long legal process and we had a mediation on one day to actually settle it, and it did. And about a day before, my two lawyers, my, you know, the main lawyer plus the litigation lawyer, said past a message for Babs, would Dan wear a suit and tie for the, for the session? And we did. And I said, of course I will. Of course I will. You know, you know, and the reason was that they are, they are veterans of this process and they were asking me to do that for a reason. And I just said that I'm not entirely sure what difference it makes, but it makes a difference to them. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And that's, that's good. I mean, it's always nice when you can add another layer to something that's been so timeless. And that one is, it seems like when even back testing it, it was appropriate to end the very beginning of it too, would have fit right in, you know. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And what, what I'm saying is if you want to be seen as uniquely different and uniquely valuable, don't make it be about things like wardrobe. Don't make it about things, in other words, that's kind of a petty rebellion or it's a petty, you know, sticking your thumb in people's eyes. I said, actually, actually just come up with a great new idea that everybody gets excited about. Differentiate yourself that way if you want the spotlight on you, don't do it because you, you don't want to go along with some, you know, basically etiquette rule or.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. So there's just an appropriateness. And I noticed a lot of people are rebels, but they're, they're small time rebels. They're, you know, they, that, you know, they're. They're not. They're low stakes rebel. They're. It's like, you know, being deliberately inappropriate to sort of show that you're different from other people. I said, it's got to be. You got to be different in this world. Make it about something really big.

Dean: Yeah, right. That's amazing. Yeah.

Dan: So anyway, I, I was just thinking that because even today I asked certain people on workshop, I said, excuse me, Jack. I'll just use. Not a real person, but I'll just use the name. I said, jack, are you. I want to just be clear. Are you in the witness protection?

Dean: Right, Exactly. Yeah, that is true.

Dan: Because he's in the dark. He's in the dark and even when you can see a little bit of light, he's not looking at the screen and he's a part far away from the camera as you can possibly be.

Dean: Right. Or. Yeah. Or outside walking around or driving in the car or putting camera upside down or. There's so many things.

Dan: I think you're right and I get a feeling of it. It's. It's kind of petulance. There's kind of a petulance about it, you know. Yeah, well, I'm going along with this, but I'm going to cooperate. Very minimal level, you know, and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Well, you know, why don't you just do it a hundred percent and actually learn something?

Dean: Yeah, that makes sense.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But it's all.

Dan: Any.

Dean: This whole. Your zoom environment, as that's your window to the world right now, you know, your zoom environment is a lot of it.

Dan: Well, it can be. I mean, it certainly can be. Yeah. I mean, it's clear to me that a lot of people, and I would say that you and I are probably in a cutting edge minority.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Just about our total embrace and enthusiasm for this new medium.

Dean: Yes, I get it. And you know the words. Now that I'm seeing more and more Dan, that are associated with our, With Cloudlandia, I'm seeing the rise in business publication like Forbes. I just saw another article about this words, the creator economy. That that's what's sort of emerging as the shift in power from the top down to, you know, these men in the ivory. The. Was it ivory towers? What would they. Or is that what the word was up in the.

Dan: Well, the ivory towers are usually associated with academia or, you know.

Dean: Oh, okay, yeah.

Dan: Philosophers, philosopher, you know, philosopher kings. But actually it's just big, big power.

Dean: Yeah, that's the thing, right? Like when you look at the creator.

Dan: Power pyramids. Power pyramids.

Dean: That's what they are.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Well, you look at the creator, the, the creator economy past was all dictated by the six guys that ran the big music labels and the guys that ran the TV that the outlets were the. The thing. And now that's completely shifted to in favor of the creator. Now where the reach, if we're overlaying our VCR formula vision capabilities, reach on top of the creator economy. That reach is really the. That's the prize jewel.

Dan: Yeah. An author that I've been following quite a bit over last year. His name, Tim Wu. Wu. And he's a professor at Columbia University. And first of all, very good writer and very good presenter. I've seen youtubes of him and he, he just talks about the information economy and he's actually a key person right now in the government. He's an advisor to the Council of Economic Advisors to the president. And he's a big thing that the big tech mediums, he said, you know, they only exist because the particular country that they're in gave them enormous amount of opportunity to experiment and expand. And after a while they kind of think that they did it on their own. But no, you know, it was basically there's just a great, you know, social environment, cultural environment and political environment that actually gives them, you know, enormous amount of encouragement and enormous amount of freedom to create new things. But when at a certain point they turn around and says, now that we've created this, we're going to make sure that nobody else can compete with us, he said, then they're kind of misusing, you know, they're kind of misusing freedom and opportunity that society provided for them. So there's a remedy for this is that you just dictate from now on they'll be called common carriers. You know, an example is the electric. We've talked about this before. The electric company or the.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, a transportation service of any kind where you start picking and choosing who can actually use your Services based on whether you like their, you know, you like their, their philosophy or you like their political choices. Okay, so an exact example would be one of the airlines here, you know, American Northwest North, Northwest Orient, or you know, United or more or less the big three in the United States. They check the voting records of would be passengers and they deny certain people passage to get an airline ticket and fly where they want to because that person voted for the wrong party in the last election. Or the electric company decides that you won't get power in your house because you voted wrong. Well, that's exactly what, you know, that's exactly what Facebook and Twitter and Google are doing. Google in a more subtle way, but Twitter and Twitter and Facebook not in a subtle way. Very, you know, a very straightforward way. And there's a feeling, a general feeling, okay, you've gone across the boundary here and it's no longer about making things good for people with your product. You're now using your, your market position to actually start dictating things that are way beyond your, you know, way beyond your. You're starting to dictate how the society is run because you don't like how people talk about things, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: So. And it's very, and it's very, very interesting. You know, it's like the Wild West. I mean, you always get a creator economy when you're in kind of a wild west state. Yes.

Dean: I mean that's, I mean, the border is open.

Dan: Yeah. And everybody can go out and claim new territory, you know, and if you can develop it, it's yours and everything. Like, so we're in a new, we're in a new state now with that greater. And I, I read the complete article that you sent and looked at the, you know, and it kind of corresponds to lots of indicators. In other words, the, it was a pretty good sum up, you know, with some great diagrams of summing up. Yeah, I kind of feel that that's happening.

Dean: Yes. Yeah, I agree. And you know, but the interesting thing when you look at this, like, compared to, I love the illustration that you did when you're kind of explaining the free zone frontier, the expansion from, you know, to the west across the United States, how quickly that that kind of happened. But it was fixed. And you look at right now, all of the people, you know, if you take the Southern California coast, that everybody migrated pretty quickly to realize this is some premium property here, we could get this. But the fact is that that is limited in that there's only so many miles of that coastline. Imagine if people saw the value of that coastline, but it was infinite. That there's no, you know what I mean, there's no limit to it. That's really where we are with stopping you.

Dan: Yeah. The geography is continually created. It's not discovered. You know, that's exactly it. In other words, there isn't a fixed territory there and you know, people are just finding out what the territory is and they're making territorial claims, you know, establishing ownership. It's a medium where in fact you can create entirely new geography.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And that's problematic to. Would be monopolist because how can you monopolize on something that's infinitely creatable?

Dean: There's no scarcity on that. Yeah, it's really that.

Dan: Yeah,

Dean: I think it does come back down again that the, the crown jewel, the thing that is the most valuable asset is attention. And that's why the creators are really, it's becoming this, you know, race for the very best creators that, that create the most, that gather the most attention.

Dan: Well, the other thing is that you can create your own geography and have a relationship with the, you know, the other players in that geography. And. But you have to understand that millions of other people are doing it in a different way. You know, they're doing it creatively in their own way. And yes, you shouldn't think about, oh, I, I've got to get all the territory under my command. In other words, I'm not, I don't feel safe with my own territory unless I have everybody else. Yeah, territory. And that's a scarcity. I mean, that's.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, that's 200,000 years of human history there where the dominant reality in life from the moment you're born to your dead, that everything scares.

Dean: What is the. Let's. If you don't mind. I wonder. I'm just thinking my mind's going to. Is there anything in our world right now, like in the migration to Cloudlandia or to this shift here, what is the true scarcity? Like, what is the thing that actually has a, a physical scarcity element to it? And I was thinking specifically about attention,

Dan: that I think it's individual intention, that it's just the nature of how the human brain works, that you can only focus on one thing at a time. You can't focus on multiple things. Right, I can't. I can't think about 10 things simultaneously.

Dean: Right, that's exactly right. I mean, that's why I'm thinking about the. That that's truly the linear thing. It's a Binary. You either have someone's attention in this moment right now, the. The laser tip of that attention, because there's peripheral attention that. You can't argue that that's probably true, that there are people who are. You know, there's maybe things going on around you which give people this illusion of multitasking, but there's always this. The laser tip of that attention is the thing that we're really looking for, and it's always engaged in something. And so you imagine it like a wheel, you know, circling around. If there's 10 things around, it may feel like they're doing 10 things at once, but it's really. That laser tip is focused on one of those 10 things right now, not all 10. And it's just switching quickly back and forth between them. But as soon as that attention leaves the primary thing, it goes on to the next. And that's maybe why this. You know, this. This thing of. Of why Facebook and these big platforms are so, you know, continuously focused on never getting people leave that. That environment. But even that is limited. Like, you know, the ad inventory of that, like, right now, approximately 20% of your. It's not 20. It's every five. Every five posts on Facebook is an ad. And so that's the limitation that if somebody's scrolling in one session, for every six posts they see is an ad. That's the. So they want to make sure that people are there to keep scrolling within Facebook.

Dan: Yeah. And one of the things I saw a. What that's worth to Facebook. I was talking to Mark Young, and Mark Young is in advertising, member of our free zone, and he's just written a book about kind of the neuropsychology of really effective advertising.

Dean: Oh, I didn't know you did that. That's great.

Dan: And he's a doctorate. He just got his doctor's degree in hypnosis, I think, from the University of Toronto. Actually, he got it from the university.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: Mark lives in Detroit. So he made the trip. He had to make the trip periodically. It was mostly online. But he was saying that they've actually identified when Facebook captures a new customer. In other words, the person, you know, signs up and everything of that. The value of that on a yearly basis is just automatically $75, $75. And they've got. Somebody signs up, they've got 2.8 billion times $75. So that kind of. That's where they're. Market cap, I guess. I think, you know, their market.

Dean: Oh, that's interesting.

Dan: The overall value is that it's worth $75 to them. And, and, and I think that they begrudge losing even one of those $75.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Guaranteed, guaranteed income. You know, they, they want that forever. They want that $75 for forever. And I wonder what that is. We were talking about Steve Kreine and I just did two great podcasts with Paul Abel, who's. Oh, yeah, the Free Free Zone. And Paul, yeah, provides compliance information to. Through to employers. So these are people who, you know, employ people, and compliance is what the government requires. That happens, you know, within your company in terms of your relationship with your employees. And in the United States, there's four levels. There's federal. That's one.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But the other one is the state that you're in, and number three is the county that you're in, and number four is the municipality that you're in. And then there may be some. Yeah, well, that would cover the poor because they're the regulating bodies. And these are shifting and changing all the time. And it becomes very, very problematic with remote workers because they may be in another state. So even though your company is in one location, they may be in other, and you have to satisfy the compliance issues of that individual. Where they are in addition to where you are, it becomes exponentially more difficult. And Paul, you know, technologically has patented platforms that can sort this out immediately. And then the correct packages of information go both to the employer and to the employee. You know, and the simplest is, you know, a poster on a wall in a common, you know, in a common room where people can see. So we have a what, what we call a copy room in the company that can go and use the copiers, big copiers all on the walls. There are, in Toronto are posters from the federal government, from the provincial government, from the, from the county of York, which is Toronto, and then the GTA Greater Toronto. And they have all these things. And if an inspector of any one of those municipalities came, they could say, can we see your compliance? How well that you're, you know, you're doing your compliance. Are you up to date with your compliance? Yeah, anyway, but it was really, really interesting talking to Paul because he's literally created this. Nobody could even understand what he's doing. He's been so good at creating free zone collaborations, Free zone collaborations in his space. And he said, I said, are there. Do you have competitors? He says, well, there's lots of people who create posters. You know, they make a lot of money on posters, but they're real not imaginative on how you can get it out to people. And he says most of them really haven't caught up with the suddenly remote learning. The remote learning situation or the remote working.

Dean: And how did he, what did he do to adapt to that?

Dan: Going strategic coach.

Dean: No. I mean, no, tactically, I mean.

Dan: No. He was just one of his competitors before he joined Coach. I think the whole notion that there's things like payroll companies who have customers who are 50,000 employers and they will gladly assist you in sending the right material on to their employers. So he just looked for everybody who is in the business.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Of creating value for the end user. And he just worked backwards. And he says there's all sorts of people there, but none of his competitors would ever think about doing that.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Because they're in the poster business. He said, I'm not in the. I'm not in the poster business. I'm in solving problem for employer business.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Keeping employers out of court. Keeping them from being sued. Keeping them. Yes. You know, being suspended. He says, I'm not in the poster business. Posters are just one of the media that we use to actually pass on information.

Dean: That's so smart. Yeah, he's a smart guy. I always enjoy having my conversations with him.

Dan: Well, he's similar to you because right at the end of our. Right at the end of our second episode, we did these, I think on Monday or Tuesday of the past week. I said, paul, you know, I've got a real feel what your unique ability as you're one of the absolutely laziest people I've ever met in my life. And I think I said your, your big picture of yourself in the future is you sitting in a white chair next to the pool and automatically brain signals are going out for your head to who's who are creating major transformations for yourself out in the marketplace.

Dean: I love it.

Dan: You're not even getting out of. You're not. You're not even getting out of your favorite chair.

Dean: That's a vision I could get behind. That's funny. And that's really. I mean, I'm just. I can't tell you how excited I am about Cloudlandia, Dan. It's just got new. Like, it's so exciting. Like a whole new. Whole new territory, you know?

Dan: Well, it's very interesting. I'm going to give you a chance to really tell the history on Tuesday. So you have your free. Your free zone meeting on Tuesday. And I've got an exercise called Starting Stage three right now. You're starting Stage three? Yeah. And then the question comes up immediately what are stage one and stage two? And I said, well, I guess you have the answers to that.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: So I said, if this was the beginning of your stage three, and you've got years before stage three, in my case, I have 77, I can go, what. How would you take the, you know, the time before stage three and divide it in your mind between two stages? You know, what was the first stage and what years were the first stage? And, you know, what, what. What were the capabilities that allowed you to jump to a second stage? And then what was the second stage? And I know. And now what are the capabilities that allow you to say, well, stage two is over. Now we're ready to jump? And for me, it's the sudden emergence of Cloudlandia as a new medium, new territory, actually. New territory.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That migration, like, I can clearly. I mean, for me, it was everything, you know, up to 1997, 98, when. So it was a shorter phase, but the beginning, you know, the transition from the Internet to, you know, from the analog world to the Internet, that was really a catalyst for me, you know, because I remember the, you know, the first, like, real thing to capitalize on the Internet that I did was my stop your divorce book. You know, and that little, you know, we've sold $5 million worth of that one book, $79 book. And that was 100% on the ability of being able to reach people through search engines on the Internet. And that was like a. That was a big thing. But even that phase, the heyday, probably 80% of all of that happened in the first 10 years, you know, and now it's been where the access to the search volume is. Has been regulated out of it. Let's say that that was in the beginning. There was only pioneers out, you can imagine, the Midwest. It's actually a really interesting thought to think about. If you were taking this, they open up the territory, right? And the early adopters, you could go all the way to California and claim whatever you want kind of thing, right? But then over that hundred years, the next hundred years, everything is so many. All the good things are populated. You know, you wouldn't be the wide open, wide open territory that you have. So there was a kind of curve downwards as more and more bigger companies started coming online and competing.

Dan: The actual year that they give is the end of the frontier is 1895. That's the United States. And what that means that in the. What are called the lower 48 states, they were in 1895, they were all surveyed and accounted for every acre of property from the Atlantic to the Pacific was surveyed and it was accounted for. It wasn't all states yet because in 1895 there was still a number of territories had not income states, but the territories were completely surveyed. And it's very interesting that the US Is probably. Well, first of all, I think America as a culture and as an economy is really good at franchising. Franchising is very. And I think the reason is that if you look at the Constitution, you have the federal government, which is a, you know, it's got a complete governmental model with president and the two houses of Congress and it's got the Supreme Court, but each of the states is a smaller version of that. Okay. And there's only one state that doesn't have the two houses at the legislative thing, and that's Nebraska. They just have a single. They just have a single. They just have a single legislature. This is at the state level. I'm just talking about the state level. And you know, and you know, Louisiana has some funny rules that come from their French and Spanish, you know, the way they started as French and Spanish possessions, but for the most part it's like 98% there. It's. What do they call that? It's fractal. It's fractal. The, you know, that the states are fractals of the. And, and the interesting thing about that is that's the way the country was developed. I mean, the rush to west only began when the country became a country which. Yeah, more or less The Constitution was 1787, 1788, and then the first government with Washington and the Senate and Congress and the Supreme Court that came into place in January, well, in the spring of 1791. So that's beginning. And the right to go into the new territories and actually have property doesn't start until the government actually says, okay, now we can move into, you know, we can move into Ohio, we can move into Kentucky, we can move into other areas.

Dan: And they would open up a territory and then there was a rush within the territory.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So you couldn't, you know, 1790, you couldn't go to what now Nebraska and say, say I'm just claiming the property of Nebraska. The, the rules didn't allow that. Wouldn't stand up. Wouldn't stand up in law.

Dean: I gotcha. I gotcha. Well, but so imagine people did. Imagine there were. There wasn't. There wasn't anybody. Imagine there were people in Nebraska just there. But now the. Yeah. Having the claim to it.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: This is really I mean, and this is pretty.

Dan: It actually followed the river system. So just, you know, if you get a picture, you know, it just abstracts everything and just shows you the river systems of the United States pretty well. All the development, you know, the land development and everything really followed the river system. And Great Lakes. Great Lakes, you know, the Gulf of Mexico.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So forward. Because water is such a. Easier way to travel, even if you're going upstream. It's easier traveling than carrying things over, you know, overland. And, you know, they used to have. They created barges where they'd have, you know, they'd have mules on the side that, you know, with ropes, and they'd pull. They go upstream and. Yes, and. And so my. My sense is that they, you know, shortcuts.

Dean: Everybody looks.

Dan: If there's one thing that the human species is good is creating shortcuts and then learning shortcuts from other people. If you want to sum up why we're better than all the other species, it's because we're a shortcut. They're the shortcut species.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah, that's something. And this is where, I mean, you know, the Cloudlandia is the home of the shortcut. I mean, that's what Cloudlandia is. Yeah.

Dan: I mean, it's. So if you. You have no need for short shortcuts, you have no right. Cloudlandia.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I think, you know, I was looking at. When I say if we take 1996 as kind of the beginning of the Internet, the very, very modern beginning, when people were getting. If you'd get an email address and get online kind of thing, and then the web browsers were there, and the protocol for having a page, a home page on the Internet where other people could go and see your thing that, you know, from 1996 till 2006 is everything was kind of migrating that online was a real. A real thing, but it was still a place that we go. And in 2007, when the iPhone came out, it was. That was the beginning. I look at that as the center point here of the tipping that now it became more and more crucial that you bring the Internet with you. And then by 20, you know, 20, we were all in on. On that. And then, yep, Corona took. That was the, like, final catalyst of. We were fully thrust into this Cloudlandia as the main world, the main thing now. And it's unusual to have analog stuff. You know, it's unusual. So that I look at this now. Now that we're in. We're in those beginning stages and. And that once I said to somebody, the words that I think are the most relevant right now, or once people realize those are those that, that you see that kind of statement happening now. Like once, once creators, once, excuse me, once creators realize that you don't have to go through a label and you can build your own, build your own audience and sell to them directly

Dan: that

Dean: whole thing, it's like everybody's starting to realize that you don't have to overlay the old models in Cloudlandia. They're completely new. It's like new, new. Everything is new. The grava, the gravitational pull, the time you're traveling between two points is all new. And here we are.

Dan: Well, the other thing is that the, the, you know, the, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, the standard model that, you know, prior to, let's say, I think prior to 1996, but it's probably later than that. It's probably prior to 2010, maybe like that. So the model was that you're in competition with everybody who's kind of related in your field, that you're, you're actually in competition with them. So the important thing for you to do is to really, really pay attention to what your competitors are doing. Okay? And your, your customers were almost like a statistic. They were like, you know, they were like an abstraction. Customers were an abstraction. And that all the customers more or less were looking for the same thing. It's just which, between you and your competitors, who was going to satisfy the needs of the customers? Okay? And therefore the best way to do it is on price. The best way to compete is on price, lower price. And it's kind of funny, we had a new 10 times client Thursday, I think it was, and he's originally from India, what's now called Mumbai. And he said, no, it's Bombay. I refuse to use the new name. I'm from Bombay. But he lives in Oakville, right outside Toronto. And he's got a company that produces a super insulation, insulation, clothing, outerwear, clothing for winter, you know, for cold climates. And socks. He started off with socks, and then he has gloves and he has hats. And now he's moving into undergarments, like your T shirts, and also tights, you know, tights you could wear. And they. He said, I've got some, you know, we've just got some techniques that we integrated from three different areas and that's giving us a super, super insulated wear, very lightweight, and it's moving into different colors and designs and everything like that. But he said when we came Here he said I'd never been in this business before, but when we came here, we did a quick price survey of what people are charging for these. And he said that the rule was don't go over ten dollars just starting with sex. Don't go over ten dollars with the sex. The price competition is in the eight, nine dollar range. And so he said, why don't we just start out at 15?

Dean: Right.

Dan: And he just swept up the market. But it was like completely differentiated himself in the market. And he said and, and what it did, he says just gave us all that extra capital to move quickly and then to, you know, start adding other.

Dean: You know, what's so great? That was that model. That's exactly the model I used with money making websites when I first started.

Dan: Oh, by the way, his. Just for those listening, his brand is called Heat Holders. So if you just go to Google. Heat Holders, great, great guy. And I'm gonna get some. And I'm even thinking about them for packages and presents for people because.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: Yeah. I mean unless you live.

Dean: That's part of the thing.

Dan: I mean even on, even on a cool day. Dean. And celebration. You might, you know, you might. That's right.

Dean: Yeah. But I love it. That whole. That's a category, you know, we take from Stella Artois their whole reassuringly expensive. That's their pricing model.

Dan: Yes. We use only the most expensive ingredients. Cost down to you.

Dean: That's exactly right. And in the, in the world of the difference between an $8 sock and a $15 sock, you know, it's got to be better.

Dan: I mean the $15, it's just got to be better just by the boldness of the maker.

Dean: But there's so much, there's so many examples of this approach that validate it. You know, like I look at Richard Mille, the watches they were in, in at the Hamilton Hotel in the lower.

Dan: They're over in the new.

Dean: Yeah, they moved above. Across the street. Yeah. So they've got their flagship. But for. They had a store, a retail store in the, on the ground floor at the Hazelton. And when you go in there, there's not a single watch in there under $120,000. And their average is 185,000. And the. I heard an interview with the, with the guy and he came into this kind of. He started it at 52, but he'd been in the watch business, in the fashion and watch business for his whole life. But he wanted to start something himself and he wanted to build the very best watch and his approach was he got the, he wanted to have the, both the intricacy and the complication of the finest Swiss movements. But he wanted them to also be durable and to the finest engineering standards. Right. So they could withhold. They're not delicate, fragile flowers like a lot of these complication watches are. Right. And he said our approach was to, I'm going to build the very best watch first and then figure out what that needs to cost after. Yes, we're going to do the very best thing first and then we'll price it appropriately. And what he found was that they ended up alone in the market. There's lots of, there's lots of 30, 50, $70,000 watches and there are million dollar watches, but there's not a lot of $185,000 watches. And when you think about it, the size of that market, they sold whatever $540 million worth of them would take 3,400 of them or something, $540 million worth a year annual sales. And it's. Because what else, you know, if a guy, what other watch is a guy on his 20 million dollar yacht going to be wearing? Of course he's got $185,000 watch, right?

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean in the car, you know, the car business, Lamborghini kind of operates that way. And McLaren in England. Yeah, it's a company. And so they will announce, you know, a year or two ahead how many they're going to be. Let's say it's, you know, where we are right now. And they're talking about year after next 2003. And they say in 2003 we are going to build 300 cars. And six months before that happens, they're all sold out at whatever price they want to charge for it. Yes. So there's ways of creating scarcity because my feeling is that price determines, I mean scarcity is the great price multiplier. And, and the, there's two logics to it. I'll be one of the peoples who has this. But at the same time, there's a lot of people who think they're a big deal who won't have one of these. And so I call it the Higher Club. I've got a concept called the Higher Club. And I remember in 0809, our sales team, because we were, you know, we were getting badly hit at the lower

Dean: level

Dan: in our selling during the 0809 downturn. People were just too close to the line. You know, they had to decide between whether their child went to a special School or they were in coach and they settled for the children, which I think was a good choice. And our sales people came and it was kind of like a committee.

Dean: They came and they said somebody needs to tell Dan.

Dan: Would, Would we disk? Would we disk? We. I know we've never discounted, but would we think about discounting? I said, nah, nah, I don't think, I don't think we'd go discounting. But I said, I think we could

Dean: double as a double.

Dan: Take the price.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Could take the price right now. And you should have seen looks on their face. It turns out it was a wide open market for Dublin. There was no market for discounting, but there was a buddy. So that's. It's, it's the same example that you just gave, just in a different realm.

Dean: I think I've had to been customer number single digit of the first ones in on.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: Because

Dan: started right at the time I gave the presentation at Evan Pagan's.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Green room. Is it called the green room? Yeah, I forget what he. What he called it. The fountain blue and fountain blue in Miami Beach.

Dean: Do you remember what I said to you when you walked right by me out the way out. I'm in.

Dan: That was. I'm in.

Dean: That was it. I'm in.

Dan: It's, it's a, it's a, it's a two word shortening of three words.

Dean: Yes. But that's the, you know, there's the thing. So I'll claim, you know, I was gonna certainly be if not with the logistics of filling out the paperwork emotionally and commitment wise, I was probably number one or two.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Dean: Which is great. I feel good about that.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That's funny.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But that, you know, there's, there's, that's another great example of it, Dan. That's something. And you, you have discovered then that that opened up a whole nother world of people who would now once they see who's coming into that group and more importantly, who's not coming into that group, that, that was a cue that it's okay to.

Dan: Well, here's another, another thing. So the word is out now and you know, there's a year and a half to go. Then after December 31st of 2022, I won't be coaching 10 times workshops anymore. Okay. And. And I'll be devoted entirely to expanding the free zone. And so this, this year so far we have over 100 bump ups from the signature program to the 10 times. Okay.

Dean: Just to get one to get a year in with you to get a

Dan: year and a half. To get a year and a half of something that's gonna not. It's not only going to become scarce, it's going to disappear.

Dean: Yeah. Yes.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of like it's not a game for everybody, you know, and you have to understand that, that any business model, you have to check if the person, you know, first of all has the nervous system for it. And the other thing is, do they have the ambition for it? You know, do they have an ambition that this is, this is not a, you know, this is just an intermediate strategy. It's not the big. It's not the end. You're not, you're not defining the end game this way. In fact, there is no end game there. There's just one level at a time and then there's a higher level, you know, and yeah, you gotta be, I mean that's gotta be permanent in your brain. It's not some marketplace trick that you're pulling off. It just kind of tells you that. Yeah, it's simply a logical, it's a logical next step just because of the endless game that you're kind of playing.

Dean: Yeah, boy, this is, this has been a great conversation because this, I like this. You know, when you were talking about the socks there, that, that just was another. No, but I mean that little vein of seeing. Now I started to tell you that that was my approach with, with money making websites. Like, I know I had the. At a time when real estate websites were, you know, three or $400 and you know, $29 a month kind of thing. What people. That was the market for real estate websites. And I came out with $2,500 and $99 a month. It was a departure from what was normal in the thing, but it was baked right in. You know, the name of the, the name of the company was money making websites. So it was like the promise was there that it was. This is why you pay more. Because it's right in there and because

Dan: it makes money to our website makes

Dean: money and thanks to our Cyrus McCormick. Oh yeah, that was the whole where Project Cyrus came in that, you know, you're only going to pay when it pays for itself. It literally pays for itself.

Dan: So. Well, the other thing with Cyrus McCormick, you know, you have to understand he was playing the. In addition to, you know, his own expertise in what he did, you know, mechanically and he was able to create a great solution, but he also had, he was plugged into the big picture of what was happening to the country that he was living in. You know, five years from now, they're going to open another territory and wheat is going to be, you know, wheat skin, and this is all flat wheat country. You know, I mean, he's, you know, this kind of country until you get to the Rocky Mountains. And so my sense is that he had long vision of the.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Bigger game. You know, the bigger game that he was playing.

Dean: Yes. It's amazing, right? I mean that really. Yeah,

Dan: yeah. I think the, the interesting thing that we're talking about here is I think that the, the connection between scarcity and price never goes away. But I think that when you move from the mainland to Cloudlandia takes on a different form.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Because it's not actual scarcity of a something.

Dean: It's.

Dan: It's actually a. A measure of scarcity in the actual mind of certain customers and clients. In other words, that you're now operating in the territory of the mindset of certain individuals that you're appealing to. You know, it's, it's gone to another level. And, you know, that, you know, the people in our, you know, in Strategic Coach, you have the same thing. And in Breakthrough Blueprint, who asked each year, he said, you know, are we going to get anything new next year? You know, and I said, well, how was this year? Oh, it was great year. I really loved what you got. And I said, how long have you been in the program? And they said, eight years. And I said, and every year at the end of the year, you asked me if there's going to be anything new. That's one. So that's one mindset. That's one mindset. And the other people, you know, you ask them, you know, what's been the total cost of your involvement? You've been in strategic coach for 20 years. What's the cost? He says, no cost. There's absolutely no cost. It's all been. Plus. Well, Right. In a certain sense, they're kind of involving themselves in the activity, but I can tell you they're having a totally different experience.

Dean: Yes, that's true. Yeah. So much of the. Yeah, it's.

Dan: I agree. Move much more into a psychological realm.

Dean: I agree. It's pretty. Yeah, it's pretty. It's amazing how you can shift the psychology with, even just with. With a price choice that. The price choice shift somebody into another psychology. Another. Yeah.

Dan: I'll give you a quick political insight. You know, not. I'm not saying, but I just think that what we, you Know, this is an act of genius. So everybody's wondering, you know, will Trump run again in 2024? And, and, and I, so over the last three or four days, I've been talking to people because I had workshops and they said, well, he announced it. And they said, yeah, did. When do you announce it? He said, on Tuesday. On Tuesday. I didn't see anything about him. Announcer I said, no, no. He launched a class action suit against Facebook and Twitter.

Dean: Ah, right. There you go. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: I said, he just announced that he's running for president in 2024.

Dean: Right.

Dan: It's like, and he did it in a pure worldwide wrestling.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Manner. But I'm taking on the biggest villains of the universe, you know, well,

Dean: this is going to be, this is like, this is the equivalent. It's a, you know, we're going to look back on, on, you know, Facebook versus the Trump. Like we're going to look at Roe v. Wade, you know, and the big moments in your creator, expression rights or whatever, how that's going to go. Because you're absolutely right. They really inadvertently, they put themselves in a position that if they're going to defend against that, they've put themselves in a position of being a publisher and not a platform. Not a platform. And no. Yeah, you gotta, so then they've gotta, they've gotta, they've gotta be fully accountable to everything that being a publisher means.

Dan: Platform.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Or being a platform. But you can't be both.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: Can't be both. Yeah. And yeah, but it's just really interesting because when the, you know, the, what, you know, a lot of people were horrified by was the, you know, the, you know, the sort of riot that they had in Washington on January 6th. And the moment it happened, I said, you know, it doesn't matter how this happens. He's just tied up the loyalty of the Republican Party for the foreseeable future. And, and it wasn't. He, he knew he wasn't going to win. You know, the, you know, you know, there's rules in the Constitution that kind of tell you and there's no way, you know, that there's going to be a misuse of the rules to, you know, we're clear, you know, I mean, the numbers were on the other side, you know, Biden. But what he wanted to do was to show that he, but he never gives up and he fights to the very last minute, even if that showers shame on him by the, you know, the, and what he's done. And then there was an impeachment and all the Republicans who hate Trump voted for the impeachment. So he just got rid of all the Republicans who aren't going to be part of the game. And he just has the ability. And I think it's, you know, he owned Worldwide Wrestling for five or six years. Part of it with Vince McMahon. Yeah, he was part of. Partner with Vince McMahon. And I think that he understands that Worldwide Wrestling is really, really interesting because it's not really a sport. It's not really a sport. You know, it's not an athletic contest. It's theater, you know, and it's good guys versus bad guys theater. And I think that what Trump has understood, that politics is not really a sport either. It's theater. Yes. And it's entertainment. It's an entertainment for. Politics is an entertainment for.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And it's very, very complicated. If you try to understand it as some sort of process, but if you understand it as theater, it gets really simple.

Dean: Yeah, amazing. We were just at the Four Seasons in Palm beach last week, which is right down the street from Mar a Lago, so we got to drive by there and. Funny.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was so funny because he bought Mar a Lago, you know, long before he became president. And what he noticed, he didn't realize that when he moved in that private planes could fly right over Mar A Lago. Oh, wow. So he went. So he went to the officials and he says, I'd like to get right up. No flyover on my property. And what are you talking about? You know, it's. It's private property. You don't. Nobody gets rights to. No, you know, no. No overflight as a private citizen. And he says. Nobody. He said, well, you can become the. If you're President of the United States. And Conrad Black, you know, Conrad Black, who really likes Trump, because when Conrad Block was in prison in the United States for whatever, you know, dodgy dealings or purported dodgy dealings, he only had one prominent visitor who came to see him, and it was Donald Trump. And Donald Trump came and visited him in prison. So kind of tied up Conrad Black's loyalty for life, you know, and he said. He said, I bet they, you know, the people in Palm beach who hate Trump and they have influence, you know, they're, you know, they're in the city council or whatever that they. They should just pass a separate rule where this one guy gets overflight if he promises not to become president.

Dean: Right, right, right. That's so funny. That's funny. Funny.

Dan: Yeah. So anyway, but I think that these sharp Differentiations that we've been talking about with Price with Richard Mill. And I think this is a. This is a major theme in Cloudlandia. I think you're right because it's kind of binary. You know, it's the binary code that powers this whole thing. Microchip. And there's nothing between one and zero.

Dean: That's right. It either is or is. Yeah, exactly. That's true.

Dan: Yeah. There's no middle ground. You can't make money on the middle ground here.

Dean: Yes, I think that's true. Yeah. I just look at. I mean, it's funny to put those socks. For me, it was the. That was the tipping point of just the cascading evidence all the way. Because I talk about often. There was a diet pill called leptoprin that was running ads on TV for years. And it was the. You know, when is a diet pill worth $153 a bottle? And that was, you know, in a time when diet pills were selling for 29, $39 in the impulse aisle in grocery stores and things. And these guys come up with TV ads with a pharmaceutical approach that looks like pharmaceutical packaging with a doctor looking

Dan: person

Dean: aimed at people who even. Everything they did was. If you're one of these casual dieters who needs to lose five or 10 vanity pounds, leptoprin is not for you. This is for the serious dieter. If you need to lose 30, 40, 50 pounds, you need leptoprin and that. I mean, it's just so everybody lining up, you know, well, I'll stop taking it if I get too skinny. You know, it's just so. And $153.

Dan: That's a good headline. Headline warning. You have to stop taking. You have to stop buying this if you get too skinny.

Dean: Exactly. You have to pledge. You have to sign our pledge that you'll stop making it.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, man.

Dan: Anyway, very enjoyable. And I'll.

Dean: I love it. Tomorrow.

Dan: See you tomorrow. And we have a party tomorrow night, virtual party. And then possibly. And you'll be there, but then on Tuesday and all great new stuff. I have five, six brand new thinking processes for the two days.

Dean: That's great. I got my package, so I need to go through today and take a look.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Awesome.

Dan: All right.

Dean: Always enjoyable, Dan. Have a great day.

Dan: Okay, thanks, Dean. Okay, bye.