The Desire for Progress

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Recovered? You've recovered from our two, our two day genius network?

Dean: I have recovered, yes.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: How about you?

Dan: Yeah, well, I was really, really interested in how, especially with the, the scare about the fast chips, you know, the shortage of fast chips in the world, and I'm just.

Dean: Shortage of microchips?

Dan: Yes, yeah, microchips. That the, my experience, I mean, looking back at history, when there's a shortage of something in the world, it actually just causes a breakthrough in some area. Suddenly some other solution comes to the forefront very, very quickly. And so I was just pondering while all the, all of it was being talked about. I said, I wonder where the breakthrough is going to come from as a result of this.

Dean: What did you, what was on the short list?

Dan: Well, my feeling is that there's kind of a, you know, what a sine curve is. It goes up and down. So you, let's say you have a straight line and straight line is the desire for progress. Okay. And you have a technological breakthrough and it loops up where there's rapid expansion and then it sort of slows down and then it goes down below the line. So my sense is the slowing down of microchip availability, fast chip availability, simply means that an expansion in one area, progress is slowing down and now it's shifting to another, another area. And when the, the curve goes below the line, then you have development. And one way of looking at that is that the upward curve is efficient efficiency, but the downward curve is effectiveness.

Dean: Mm hmm. So that it'll be able to do more with.

Dan: Yeah, with what you already have. With what you.

Dean: The current capabilities. Right.

Dan: Yeah. With what you already have. My feeling is that the push for chip speed has probably created a situation where probably 10% of the gain is actually being utilized. So because so much emphasis is on making sure you're up to date with the fastest chips and, but that being up to date with the fastest chip doesn't have anything to do with, you know, productivity or profitability or creativity or anything. It's just being up to date with the fastest chip. It's kind of like, you know, you don't want to get left behind, you know, and my, my sense is that maybe we're into a stretch now where, you know, where all of a sudden something else can happen. And I'll give you just the recent example. Everybody says what happens if, you know, air travel is curtailed in some way and, you know, we can't have air travel, you can't Fly anywhere. Well, that happened, you know, that happened during 2020. 2020. And what all of a sudden popped out of the woodwork was zoom. That people just started transporting themselves. Transporting themselves. But it wouldn't have happened if the airline travel had not been curtailed. You wouldn't have gotten that rapid jump in. Virtual teamwork, virtual communication. So my sense is, I suspect there's things that have been not looked at during this Moore's Law race. You know, we're going to double our speed every two years and everything like that. So I always find my attitude as well, if you can't do this, then let's look at the other. Start looking at some of the other possibilities.

Dean: Yeah, you know, the, the interesting thing is right before we got on the call here, I was visualizing, and I didn't think about it at the sign curve, I was visualizing the shift of our migration into Cloudlandia here. What you just said was that the being out and about in other areas of the mainland has been curtailed through travel, just like you were saying. But our ability to be everywhere has been increased and it allows for a more local centric based home base kind of thing. Like, I find myself that I have much more stability and predictability in my life because I'm not on this cadence of constantly getting ready for the next trip or going to the next place, coming back. There's so much more stability in that. And where that was going was I was thinking back to when I am thinking of our limited capacity to give things attention over our unlimited availability of things demanding our attention. Right. And I was thinking about, how do you. What are effective ways to kind of do that? And it struck me that magazines are actually a good way of condense of curating important things. Like, I was thinking about how we're, you know, flooded with things that are constantly on. But if I look at some trusted. I used to read a lot more magazines than I have in the last three years, you know, and I find that is a really nice way of, you know, curating, guiding my, my direction rather than me just discovering things. So I have an infinite appetite and curiosity for, you know, digging deeper into things. But I'm. I'm gonna consciously let that be guided by. By magazines. Like, I made my. I'm sitting out here on my white couch right now and I look at, like, if I look at the landscape of things that I'm interested in. If I look at, like I was just reading an issue of the Harvard Business Review, which I find very, very, like, thoughtful and very, you know, well prepared and in depth. Like the, the value of what you get for an investment of Time in, in this magazine is great, but I'm going to use it as a jumping off point to then go deeper in the. My pursuit of things. Right.

Dean: Because it gives you a good foundation. I look at hbr, I look at Inc Magazine, Fast Company, Wired, you know, the main magazines that are shaping the things.

Dan: of put a little. Are you actually reading the magazines or you're looking at them on the under.

Dean: No, I'm trying. Dan, I've been following your lead here and looking that I've been experimenting this past week just having an awareness of how much of my day is dopamine. Digital dopamine that is, you know, gets you sucked into things. I've been starting out my mornings, which I don't even look at the phone or the Internet and I've got what I don't even have started wearing my analog watch to, to gauge the time because otherwise I would think I would just look at my. Look at my phone to see what time it was. But that would then I would notice a notification and that notification would then bring me into the phone and it would break that and it was, you know, minutes at a time. But collectively over the day, those minutes turn into hours, you know. Mm. And so I've been really. I loved the things that, you know, you were saying about the. What's going on in my mind in those 10 minutes or a few minutes is going to be infinitely more important than what's going on in that phone in that 10 minutes.

Dan: Yeah. And that really, you know, I think one of the, you know, one of the things that I think, you know, are, I'll say the frontal assault we've had by digital platforms over the last 10, 15 years. And you know, and what they're mostly trying to do is justify the price they're charging for ads. They, you know, well then when you

Dean: 100%, that is 100% of the game. The only thing, the only reason they're doing things is to get your attention because attached to your attention is your periphery. Where if they have your attention, they can tease your periphery with messages that are, you know, ad related. You know, that's the.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And that's the business. I mean Google is the advertising business, Facebook's in the advertising business and I was in the advertising business. So I've got a bit of a inside view. I've got a Bit of an inside insight into what they're about. And. But I'm not interested in any of their ads. I'm not, I'm not looking to buy anything. So there I'm. I'm not their target audience. But.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Since I'm not their target audience, I decide not to even use their medium. So.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg and I are living in separate worlds because, yeah, I've never, I've never once been on Facebook except to use Facebook Live, which I find useful because I had a social. So I get interviewed about every two months or three months on Facebook Live, which I find, you know, I'm told that I, we reach a lot of people with it. And that's the.

Dean: What we're.

Dan: What we're sending is strategic coach information. And yeah, you know, we're offering books and we're offering video.

Dean: Everybody's. Everybody's in a different situation. Like your, your primary business, you're in the, you know, with your attention and your output is creating intellectual shortcuts for people think about their thinking. My business, my primary thing is helping create, you know, marketing breakthroughs. And so that, that's a little. I'm more interested in seeing what's happening in the marketing world to see the. How things are being applied so that I'm using that as, you know, fodder to. To fuel my, my engine of creating marketing breakthroughs. So it's really. We've got the interesting thing to do what. For anybody listening, doing their deciding what. What is the most important thing with their attention, you know, and I just think like these. I've made a list of 20 magazines that have always been, you know, I look back at, you know, in the 90s, I think that my magazine reading has definitely, you know, matched the. As the increase in digital stuff. The decline in actual magazine reading for me has been that dramatic. Right. And very occasionally do I read magazines now. And I really think that that's going to be a good baseline for limiting my, my digital because it's endless. You said one of the funniest things, Dan, at Genius Network that I have been laughing about for the whole time. And I say it to other people that you were. We were talking about Elon Musk walking on Mars. He's gonna be the first guy to walk on Mars. And you said that in the newspaper, Elon Musk walked on Mars. And in other news, that's about how much attention it will get that nobody will care. Yeah, that's the thing. On we go.

Dan: Yeah. Four car pile up on Highway 5.

Dean: Exactly. And I mean, it's so amazing that that is absolutely true. You know, I started as a funny little project. I started looking up like the headlines the day after, the biggest headlines that we all can imagine, you know, like the man walks on moon. And then what was the next day, you know, what was the headline

Dan: or

Dean: the next week, a week later, we're

Dan: back to, you know, yeah, heavy rains in the morning,

Dean: headless body.

Dan: You know, I think the whole world is adjusting, you know, like, you know, the new world has been created suddenly. You know, if you think in major shifts of how people go about things. The digital, Sudden emergence of digital with, you know, first the Internet and then mobile and social media, you know, it's emerging really quickly. You know, I mean, it's like a 20 years. If we look back, it's 20 years, you know, and it's. But the thing is that it's, it's more pervasive than previous shifts because so many people got involved so quickly. I mean, we can probably safely say half the world's population, you know, humans got involved in digital in some way over the last 20 years. And I think we're, we're just kind of feeling our way through it. You know, what's it good for? What's it not good for? You know, how you have to think about it, how to resist doing no wasteful things with it. So this is why I think I was struck by, I was struck by the chip slowdown. Well, first of all, they're getting incredibly expensive. You know, one thing is the price of these fast, fast chips is getting really expensive. And part of it, the facilities that

Dean: it takes to make them.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And you know, just the sheer, the sheer energy that is required, you know, to one to create the facility and have the facility being running, but then just the production energy that's required to actually create these things. And then if you're actually using these chips that, you know, nearly demands the energy that created them to actually use them. And my sense is that they're not there, There comes a point where the, they're not getting quite the returns that they're looking for. You know, the complexity of the installation, the complexity of the, what I would say the retraining and everything else to actually use these things, they're pushing the payback period out further into the future. You know, you got to have this now or you're lost in the future.

Dean: Well, you know, yeah, but yes, amazing, actually, the development window, if it's all

Dan: cost right now and I'm not getting any return. How, how far into the future do I have to go before I can expect some sort of profit?

Dean: Well, it probably takes, it probably takes three years of development of, to get one of these facilities. Right. To be able to produce a product that's only going to have a life of 18 months.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know. Really?

Dan: Yeah. And what, what I feel about that is that some people are making money on this. I mean, the people who are doing this, you know, who are building the facility are being paid and. But as far as an impact in the actual world on the marketplace, I say, yeah, well, maybe it's getting confusing, you know, maybe it's getting, maybe it's getting so confusing and so complex, it's hard to even think about why this is a good thing.

Dean: Yeah, something pretty amazing.

Dan: It's like. What's that thing called in Europe? You know, like it's a tunnel that, you know, it's, it's like, it's like a 50 mile tunnel and it's, you know, it's, it's a. Oh, the hydrant collider. Yeah, yeah, the hydrogen collider. And it's been worked on now for about a quarter century, I think. Right. Something like that.

Dean: Isn't that amazing?

Dan: And they said, this is, you know, this is going to be the greatest scientific breakthrough. And I says, yeah, what's it done so far? You know, I mean, what's right any. Has there, has there been anything? And they're saying, yeah, we discovered that at the very inner essence of an atom, we've discovered that there's two things where we only thought was one. I said, well, that's good, that's good. I mean, you know, that was probably worth a party.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: And you know, and every. And my senses that there are careers that are attached to this. There's, you know, there's government funding that's attached to this. There's. But it seems to me that the payoff for it is pushed so out into the future that it's actually an abstraction.

Dean: Yeah, that is true. When you look at like I think about how I've been looking. One of my first things when I started thinking about something now is to look at the history of it. So I was like, I did a fun search the other day called I was searching for the history of futurism, which is funny, but that, you know, it all kind of goes back to, to Europe in the 1910s kind of thing. It was actually started out as an art movement where they were sort of realizing that art had become very static and boring. And it was about, you know, they saw some move, they were moving towards getting rid of this constant attention on the past and start moving ahead. Movement was the thing. And it's pretty interesting to think like all these things that we're talking about, this, we're really talking about the last hundred years has really been where it's all about. If you go all the way back 200 years, for certain, it's everything, you know, but the rate of this, now that we, you think about abstractions, I mean the whole thing, when you just really look at what we do as a society, like what, what do people do all day and how really like in the big scheme of things. Crazy. It is funny.

Dan: Mm. Well, well here, here's, here's something. I mean, let's bring it back to the advertising model. When you're predicting things is. It's actually, it's kind of related to advertising because advertising is creating the image of an experience in your brain, but you're not actually having the experience yet. You got to purchase the experience. And my feeling is that it's pretty understandable when it comes to products that you might want to buy or, you know, or, you know, if you're a individual consumer that, you know, this might be very much a product that I'm looking for. It's a service I'm looking for, it's an experience I want to achieve. But the frame of reference probably for the person time wise is probably, you know, tomorrow, next week, or let's say in the next 30 days.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And, and you know, if they spend money on advertising, then the consumer doesn't act within a short term time period. That's probably wasted advertising hours, you know, and you know, they've got, they've got a sense. But it seems to me that this advertising principle has now gone into the realm of technology. It's gone into the realm of science, it's gotten into the realm of government where they're advertising the future, you know, advertising the future. And, but there isn't any reality to it yet. You know, there's. And they have to, they have to use sort of scarier. Well, either more fantastical images. Positive, positive, fantastical images. But I think lately they've been using scary images. Okay. And I was thinking about,

Dean: yeah, we definitely value, we definitely lean towards negative. Gets our attention more.

Dan: Yeah, well, I mean the current confusion and you know, and conflict over masking is a really good example. You know, like, I mean, terrible things are going to happen. Right. If Everybody doesn't comply, you know, and we thought,

Dean: yeah, I'm sitting right now. Luba and I were just talking about that last night because I'm sitting here in Florida. I'm in basically the center of state, which is the center of the hotbed of COVID right now. Florida numbers are, as we're talking right now at the tippy top. Peak levels for the entire. This fourth wave is a. Setting new records. Right. And the curve is still going up. We're not even at the peak yet. And. But Ron DeSantis has painted himself in a corner with conviction and statements that he made as the data seemed to indicate that we were trailing out of it. Like in the spring and early summer, things started feeling like, okay, we got around it, everybody's getting vaccinated. So it's easy for him to predict where he thinks it's going and to come out very strongly against. You know, we don't need mandate. We don't need mask mandates. We don't need all this. But then as it started to curve back upwards now, and I mean to ridiculous levels now he's painted himself in a Robert Cialdini commitment and consistency finger cuff, you know, that he can't. Yeah, he can't change his mind because he came out so strongly and was so publicly lauded for it. He's, he's, you know, he's the leading candidate for presidency in 2024 on the Republican side. Now he.

Dan: People's minds.

Dean: No, no, no,

Dan: no, no. I mean, Trump is. I mean, if you discount Donald Trump.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: DeSantis is the number one person.

Dean: That's it. And that.

Dan: Yeah. Well, the thing is that there is further insight into cases in themselves not seen as serious as they were a year ago. Okay. And. But what they've discovered is that the one number that really matters is hospitalizations. Are they being hospitalized? Because a lot of people are catching it and they're at home. And, you know, so what they discovered is the number one issue is hospitals. Are they being hospitalized with it? So I don't know what those numbers are right now. Packed.

Dean: Florida is out of hospitals.

Dan: Out of. Yeah. The next one. Are they. Next one is, are they dying?

Dean: Yeah. So Natalie daughter is a nurse and she's here right now. She's a traveling nurse. So she's got an assignment in Plant City. So she's staying with us for a little while and going there and she comes home every day with people who have died because they didn't get vaccinated. They're going on ventilators. But they're coming in and there's anything you can do. And it's so frustrating for her to see this. And I think I told you at Genus Network, but I lost a really good friend this week to Covid, who was, I won't say anti Vax, but Vax resistant, you know, out of prudence, like thinking. Because you're screwed either way on this in terms of the loop of negativity that you could go into. Like if you look at it that all the, there's no shortage of negative news that the vaccine will kill you or cause all these, these unforeseen problems and that the COVID numbers are going up, you can imagine somebody in a frustration loop on that. Right. You don't, you wouldn't want to get the vaccine otherwise, but you feel like you need to and you resist it. And then he got Covid and died. And it's just so. This is an amazing psycho. It's become psychological warfare.

Dan: Yeah. I just wonder why I'm not experiencing any of that, you know, like, maybe I'm going.

Dean: Everybody is.

Dan: Well, I'm going, I'm going to, I'm going to Boston, you know, for five. Boston and New York for five days on the longevity trip, you know, and yeah, there's things we've had to do. We had to get double vaccinated, which we were going to do anyway. So that was done, you know, six weeks ago. We had the two vaccinations and then now we have to go through procedure. We went to Shoppers Drug Mart locally yesterday and they take a pre flight testing, they take swabs and they send them off and they let you know within 24 hours what the deal is. And then you're issued a document from them. And when you go to the airport, you have to have that, you know, you have to have that document plus proof of vaccination and everything like that. And so, you know, but I've never given it a thought since the moment that Covid started in March of last year. I've never, I can't say I've spent five minutes thinking about any issue that I would get it, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And I have been concerned that at certain crucial times I wouldn't be able to travel, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: But then, then we made the switch. And if it went on for the next five years, where it would have to be totally zoom, I would see that as an advantage.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm, I'm really. That's the way I'm. I'm leaning is. I'm really leaning that you've got a. I got this opportunity to really hone in on the command center, you know, being really fortifying my home base here from which to operate in Cloudlandia, because there's no need or in the past, you really had to, like, hop around all over the mainland to pursue and create and fulfill opportunities. Right. But now all the opportunities or any of the opportunities that I'm most interested in are in Cloudlandia, and there's no need to do as much.

Dan: Yeah. And I think the other thing is that I have very powerful reasons for living for a long time too. You know, in other words. In other words, my. My sense is that I've had 34 years of having higher protection, particular target. Target of longevity. And then I filled in, you know, the time ahead with all sorts of projects that mean what lies ahead is more interesting, it's more rewarding, it's more productive than. It's more creative than anything I've done up until now. So I think from a mindset standpoint, it's hard for negative messages to get into my frame of thinking.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: Consequently, I don't have any interest in looking at negative stories. I don't have any interest in looking at, you know, negative.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, and I was telling. Somebody was saying, you know, you know, you're. He said, you're kind of a libertarian kind of guy. And I said, well, I'm an entrepreneurial kind of guy. I don't know if I'm a libertarian. I said that.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I said, I'm for things that support and expand entrepreneurism. So how I look at politics or how I would look at social. Social issues, I says, does this support entrepreneurism? And that's yes or no, you know, and so they said, so, you know, I mean, you're going along with the COVID restrictions. You seem to be very compliant. I say to him, I say, there's local rules. You know, I treat them like traff. Yeah. Traffic lights. You know, I treat them like green and red lights and stop here and. And go up the escalator on the right and don't throw your trash on the street, you know. Yeah. You know, these are local rules. And they said, boy, you know, you don't see that this is an infringement on your liberties. I said, nothing. Nothing's happening out there that's preventing me from getting my goals achieved over the next quarter. There's not a single thing happening in the world that is getting in the way of my own Personal progress.

Dean: Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, the whole, all the, you know, the, the thing about these suggestions or the things that people are questioning, conspiracy, you know, tones of the, all the, you know, the negative things about vaccines, about what they want you to get. You know, the funny thing is, it's like. But if it was somebody who really had the best of intentions, if it really was real, if I'm saying this to the person who's so conspiracy oriented that they, you know, doubt the veracity of the, the virus, you know, that it's, if the intention was the best of intention to really do something that's good for people, it would mirror exactly what they're saying. But you're taking that spirit detailed to it.

Dan: Right.

Dean: And it's just so, it's so sad that it's come down to do that, you know.

Dan: Well, it's a bit, it's a bit, you know, and I, I, you know, when I'm having a conversation with people and people bring up, you know, bothersome things, I said, do you watch the news? And they said, oh yeah, we watch the news all the time. I said, you know, it's not good for your mind. Watching the news really isn't good for your mind. I said, are you on social media? Yes. Do you watch scary films? Yes. Do you listen to other people's bad news? Yes. I tell you, it's not good for your, it's not good for your brain.

Dean: So I'm excited about my grand experiment then in de. Digitizing a lot of my consumption.

Dan: Well, the thing is, you know, I was thinking, everybody, I don't know in what context that came up over the two days at Genius Network, what they were talking about. Did we ever think that social media was going to turn this way? I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I said, Zoom is social media.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I said Zoom proves where how you can make social media into a really good thing. I mean, if anybody tried to do any of the behavior on a Zoom conference that is being pointed out as the terrible thing about social media, that'd be the last time you were invited. You know, you, you wouldn't, you just wouldn't get invited back or somebody would just stop. Why are you talking about this? We're trying to, we're trying to create some value here. Why, why are you talking about this? So my sense is that one, there's, I've just thought about this in this moment. One of the reasons why Zoom, you know, went exponential in the last year and a half was because Other forms of transportation were eliminated. And this was a really good form of transportation. Yeah, that's one. The other one is people really like the idea of social media, if it did any good. And Zoom was able to create a very, very positive form of social media for the right people, you know, and. And the reason why people waste their time on social media is because they're wasting their time anyway.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: It's just a new. It's just a new way to waste their time.

Dean: Yeah. And for people who have real use

Dan: for their time, then Zoom became the useful person's social media.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how. What. You know, you always. I love your quote of the. Your eyes only see and your ears only hear what your mind is looking for. Right. And that's the. It's a. Did I tell you about the. The documentary I watched with It's Happening Right now or the Time is Now or something about women in Hollywood? I think I may have mentioned it.

Dan: No, no.

Dean: You wonder.

Dan: Yeah. And where you brought up the Reese Weatherspoon solution.

Dean: Yeah. Did we talk about that? Did we.

Dan: Yeah, we talked about it at Genius Network. Yeah.

Dean: No, I'm saying, did we talk about it here?

Dan: No.

Dean: So it'd probably be a good. Because it'll be good transition that just. So everybody can catch up on what I'm talking about. I watched a documentary about women in Hollywood, and it was all these directors and filmmakers, writers who were lamenting that they were not getting fair representation in Hollywood, that studios were favoring men over women. And they. This documentary goes on to show it. I mean, some powerful women, Geena Davis, all these women who are not unknowns in Hollywood, were all banding together to document and aim to change this. Right. To level the playing field systemically. And they went. This was what was amazing to me, Dan, is these women, this group of them, spent for one year, every Saturday documenting, going back and creating a ledger of the disparity over the year.

Dan: Right.

Dean: And I thought to myself, man, that's such a. Like, what an effort to. And then try and pursue lawsuits to mandate the level playing field. And in this, the bright spot of the whole documentary was Reese Witherspoon. This was, you know, this documentary is three or four years old now. But Reese Witherspoon said she went to all of the heads of the studios, took a meeting with every one of them and. And said, hey, what are you developing for me or for women like me or anything that I might be interested in for me? And they all said, well, she was shocked. She Said at how little, you know, female strong forward content there was, and she saw that as an opportunity, and she opened up a little production company called hello Sunshine and she started developing strong female content. And just so funny enough, Dan, because the movie's been around for years, I only saw it this week, and then two days ago, I saw that Reese Witherspoon sold her production company for 900 million. And I thought, rather, like, what a different approach to things rather than trying to point fingers, shame people that they're wrong, and they need to level the playing field systemically. She just went and did it, and there's nothing stopping anybody from doing that now.

Dan: Yeah, but she probably miss, you know, but here's the thing. Think of the opportunity she missed by not going to those Saturday. Saturday movies. Yeah, I mean. I mean, she's just out of the loop.

Dean: Yes, but isn't there something there? Like what?

Dan: Well, yeah, well, yeah, with that.

Dean: I mean.

Dan: Yeah, well, it's the, you know, I mean, it's. You know what it is? It's. It's wanting to be in a collective rather than being out there on your own. She was out there on her own, okay.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And what they want it to be is that they want things to be equalized for their collective. Okay. It's not for any one of them that they want things equalized for.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And she wasn't even looking for anything to be equalized. She was just looking for. She was just looking for, where's the opportunity here?

Dean: There's a market here for this. People want.

Dan: Yeah. Hey, and if, you know, and the thing was, there wasn't any room for any of the projects she wanted to do when she started the conversation with the directors, you know, the producers and the directors. So there. There was.

Dean: She had to.

Dan: She. She had to create it, but she at least knew who she was creating it for. And she kind of got. She probably picked up a lot of notes on what kind of strong, you know, strong role, strong plot, you know, strong production that they would be looking for, you know, and, you know, she. She was doing the dos on all these people, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. You know, the other thing is that, you know, here's another thing, you know, I mean, it's sort of along the same lines, but there's been a forever movement in women in corporate management to get proper mentoring for male from males, you know, who are at top to get proper mentoring. Okay? And then the Me Too movement starts, and no man can afford to be alone in a room with a woman right under Any circumstances. Because it's her word. Her word about what happened in that room when you were alone is more politically powerful than your word. Okay. And so what happened is that all mentoring has basically ceased between, you know, male executives and younger women across corporate America because no man wants to, you know, end up with a charge or, you know, and, you know, and it's an interesting thing.

Dean: Yeah, that's. It is.

Dan: And then there were articles saying that men should take the risk anyway. And I said, why?

Dean: It's right.

Dan: The risk. Yeah.

Dean: They're already benefiting from the patriarchy, Dan.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. They've got this. They've got this patriarchy thing down pat. That's right. You know, and everything. Like it. You know, I like. I've noticed a couple times when I was on Zoom, not everybody understands my sense of humor. When we have a company meeting and I dropped something, which could be misinterpreted, and there were six complaint notes to the person that runs our company meetings about what Dan said, that's going to

Dean: go on your permanent record.

Dan: Yeah, I got written up. And so I said, all right. I said dumb on my part. I said, first of all, dumb on my part. They didn't understand what I said. But, you know, communication is the result you get. So, yeah, I didn't communicate anything. And. But in the last three company meetings, now I just ask questions. I don't make any statements or anything. I just ask questions, you know, and questions are really safe.

Dean: Yeah, right. That is true.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: What's happening?

Dan: But I also, you know, I also said, you know, all the people who work with me get me, they kind of know what my sense of humor is. So I said, these six individuals, I said, you should make sure that they're not on any of my teams.

Dean: I meant to ask you, Dan, are you looking. Team going to be hybrid going forward? Some. Some at home, some in the office, or is everybody going back to the office or.

Dan: The answer to both is yes, in the sense that we have a rule going forward, and this is, you know, in both Chicago and Toronto, that when there's a workshop in that office that day, everybody's there.

Dean: Okay. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. I wondered, are you. If you're taking this opportunity to do some staffing up in or teaming up in other areas, like in Australia, whether you're building a virtual Australia base.

Dan: No, no, no, no, no. It's too, you know, the hour thing is really, you know, it's. It's. I mean, wouldn't be resident in Australia, you know, There, there might be the emergence and it might be in, you know, like Hawaii or something like that.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Where our salespeople are, you know, you have a group of salespeople who don't mind doing, we don't mind doing night work, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: That they would, you know, they would do it. But, you know, we're, we're benefiting so much now just from the sudden reach that we've gotten so far that, you know, this is the best sales here in history of our January. And so, you know, we'll just push it, you know, like you get to the point and you know, you say, okay, but what would 10% more look like? And then you start running into, well, we have to expand our reach a little bit more from a time frame, time standpoint and everything like that, you know, and, but the interesting thing is that the more you get outside of the reach of North America, people make. People in the other parts of the world have already made the adjustments to do things that out of business hours.

Dean: Yes. I think you're using. Yeah, I've found, I found a Sweet spot of 3 o' clock to 6 o' clock Eastern Time is really like, that's the, that's kind of the middle where you can get from Hawaii to Brussels, you know, as the reasonable thing. Early morning for Hawaii, late ending, late evening for most of Europe, you know, and that's a really good, that's a good time.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And, and, and then the other thing is that you can do six to three Eastern time and the like Eastern Australia, they're just getting up then, you know, that's like seven o' clock in the morning.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And that's cool. I've got long term clients, Barry Vanderburg, who lives in Sydney, and I talk to him every quarter and I've done so for 20 years. But it's 6 o' clock my time in the evening and Barry, he's just arriving at the office then.

Dean: Right. It works.

Dan: It works really well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you adjust and then, and then you see what the payback is. I mean, is it worth making this adjustment after a while you say you know how it works. But anyway, you know, I mean, but there's something so controllable about the digital thing as opposed to the physical world. I mean, I mean, just the trouble we're having to go through so we can get on a plane and fly to Boston. I mean, it's like we put in about. If we take our total Time of getting ready so that we can go to the airport and be accepted and be put on a plane. I bet, I bet it's 12 hours. Yeah, it's 12 hours. And then you got the plane flight and then you got the other end and everything like that. And I says, buddy, you know, the real world travel really wastes a lot of time.

Dean: Well, do you know what's really. I see what's happening now. I've noticed an exponential increase in the use of the word metaverse over the last several weeks here. That. That's where everybody seems to be focused now on creating a spaces within the cloud, within Cloudlandia, that are going to rival in person. You know, I think Zoom is still going to be, in my mind, the standard. But they're, you know, they're going down this path of creating environments where we'll really indistinguishable between you and I sitting table 10, for instance, you know,

Dan: well, maybe. I know a lot of people want it to be that way, but it's based on the notion that our brain is in our head. And my feeling is our brain is in our body. Our brain is in our whole body. And, you know, I mean, Jeff go ahead and talked about that. And Jeff talked about that on Friday, but, you know, well, you know, I mean, try it out. See if people. You have to wear a goggle. If you have to wear goggles, you've got a. You just lost probably 80% of the possible market with the fact that you have goggles.

Dean: What I would be much more. What I would love more than anything, Dan, is I can imagine a room in my home like, you know, like my Zoom room that I've got, but that whole wall being, you know, the highest definition looking glass type of situation that. With built in, you know, cameras in it, that I can imagine it like being the center point of me sitting on one side of table 10 and you sitting on the other side of table 10 and us looking into that glass in a way that it's almost like we're right there, you know, which Zoom can almost do if you have the right cameras and lighting and stuff. It would. It would feel like that.

Dan: But yeah, yeah, I mean, you have to test it out whether. Yeah. Whether it works. I mean, and, you know, and. But what I've noticed is that the people are always thinking of these ideas. If you look back in their history, they were bad at getting dates.

Dean: Mm, that's true.

Dan: That's true. Yeah. I mean, the thing about Avatar, you know, Peter says we need to get you an avatar. I said, what's, what's wrong with the way I am? No, no, no, no. But it's much easier if you're an avatar. I says, no, no, it isn't. It's a lot harder when it's an avatar. You can't see facial expression and everything else. I said we pick up enormous amounts of information. I mean, you act as though it's talking and hearing words, that communication is, it's, it's way, way bigger than that. It's way bigger than that. And so I, I don't know. I think that there's probably a, you know, maybe there's multiple worlds and there's people who live entirely in the metaverse and they never come out. But we've got people like that. We've got people like that are almost. Gamers are kind of like that.

Dean: All right, that's exactly right.

Dan: Yeah. And, you know, but I, I think their marriage rate is really low. I don't think they reproduce.

Dean: Okay, there we go.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, it's, it's really, really. Actually, there's possibilities. There's possibilities. But actually, I think that things went in reverse for the last 16 months because people spent a lot more time with each other personally. You know, very restricted and how many they could do that. People they spent time with, they spent far, far more time over the last year. And I, and I think it undid a lot of damage that's been done by the busyness of the last 15 or 20 years of being always on the run and out of the country.

Dean: I think it's going to be interesting to revisit this whole idea of our, you know, local. Our mainland tribes again. 150 people in your mainland circle, you know.

Dan: Yeah. Well, I think you, you hit on the. I think the new reality is, is great local, great digital.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: In other words, make local just as great as it possibly can and make digital as great as it possibly can.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. You know that I think that's really the thing of making local. Like the beacon that you're then sending out into the cloud, in a way.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's, it's, it's interesting. I mean, I think I've got a new book that, you know, is forming in my mind, one of my quarterly books, and it's called Guesses and Bets.

Dean: Guesses and Bets. I like that already.

Dan: Yeah. Because that, that's, that's all that everybody's now doing is we're making guesses and we're making bets, and scientists make guesses, and they make bets, and, you know, politicians make guesses and bets, and technology people make guesses and bets. And so the question is, if you're going to be a. What. What. What are the skills of a good guesser, and what are the skills of a good. Better. You know, and. You know, and these are known. I think these are already known because some people are really good at guessing, and some people are really good at betting. And, you know, and. And my. My sense is that predictions and certainties and everything like that, that's sales talk about your guesses and get your guesses and bets. You know, I think we're all guessers. I think the one thing that technology can't do is it can't guess. Humans. Humans are great guessers.

Dean: Mm. That's true.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Because intuition.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just guess where. How'd you do that? At a hunch?

Dean: I had a hunch.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So when are you. When are you off to Boston?

Dan: I go. I go on. I go on Tuesday, and we come back on Monday. So I won't be available for next Sunday.

Dean: Okay. But we'll have a very exciting.

Dan: But then I will be. But then I will be available.

Dean: We'll have a very exciting return. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Well, I'm just going to take notes, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Mike Koenigse and I came up with a really great distinction, and I was thinking of speakers that were at Genius Network, and. And what we came up with is that I actually don't want to know what you know.

Dean: Okay. Right.

Dan: But I do want to know why I should know you.

Dean: Mmm. That's interesting.

Dan: Yeah. If you think of that as two boxes.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The last thing the world that I want to spend my time is knowing what you know. Because you've already done that.

Dean: Yeah. I don't want to know the details of what you know, but I want to know what you know or what you know.

Dan: I want to know why it's him. Why I. I want to know why it's important to know you.

Dean: Yeah, that's because that's the basis of the who. How somebody can be a whole.

Dan: That's the total basis. And a lot of people try to convince you by telling you everything they know, and you're not interested in that, Right?

Dean: Yes, that's true.

Dan: Yeah. You're interested in a certain situation when I need someone to have exactly the right shortcut. Are you one of those people?

Dean: I've got an opening.

Dan: No, but think about.

Dean: Think about.

Dan: Yeah, but think about who you pay attention to in your life. And you'll find that the criteria is that they're important people to know in certain situations.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Because they'll have just the right shortcut. I'm looking for.

Dean: Yep. Gotta fill out my hula next for just the right situation.

Dan: Alrighty.

Dean: Okay, Dan. Always enjoyable. Have fun, travel safe, and I will talk to you in two weeks.

Dan: Okay, thanks, bye.