Brands

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. We're back.

Dan: We're back. And you missed a hurricane

Dean: and you got one.

Dan: Well, not actually. It just got real cold.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Well, it is. It is delightful here in Cloudlandia. Always sunny and perfect.

Dan: It is.

Dean: And I can tell you the winter haven't outpost is particularly delightful today. I'm sitting outside in my courtyard and it is absolutely room temperature with a slight breeze undercover here. It's so good.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's the same here in Toronto.

Dean: So you had a successful venture up north to close out the season?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, we had. Well, we didn't get any. We had one absolutely amazing lightning thunderstorm one night and it was a category 4, which 5 is the taps that you get. And. But it was. It was amazing that lightning across the sky, you know, and fierce, fierce rain and. But the power didn't go out, which was great. And yeah, it was just one. You know, there's about an hour's worth and just fierce and, you know.

Dean: Did you go for. Were you up there for one week or two weeks?

Dan: Eleven. Eleven nights.

Dean: Oh, yeah. Perfect.

Dan: Worked out well. Yeah. And we have a nice, you know, we have a nice view out in Cot Tree in Ontario. It was endless, you know that just the sheer amount of lakeside.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know, adventures. And they're selling like mad. I mean, attractives. I mean, Ontario is going through some sort of craze where every available cottage site is up 30%, 40%.

Dean: It's quite. The world is. The world is like that now. Right. Everybody's looking for their escape places, you know, and I think that's really a thing and that's really where we're learning. It's. There's two things, I think that whole Covid thing, people wanting to escape stuff. But there's also this, that it's okay to do this now as you realize, listen, I can be just as productive in. In Cloudlandia from my Muskoka outpost as I can from a cubicle in downtown. That's really. I think it's okay for people to disperse. They're getting the green light from. More and more companies now are giving people the green light that you don't have to come back to the office and you can, you can do it. Another, Another benefit of Cloudlandia. It's kind of an interesting development. I learned something while you were gone. More examples of. Of the VCR formula in Cloudlandia that Toys Are Us has worked a partnership with Macy's, where they're going to open 400 Toys R Us. Stores within Macy's locations. So, you know, because they just went from closing down their standalone Toys R Us stores and, but still have a strong, vibrant brand with big draw. But now if they cut out the need for all of that space on their own to make it, you know, because they were definitely competing against Amazon and you know, people buying toys online and delivered right to you. But to now have that inside of Macy's, what a great opportunity for both of them to, you know, prop each other up. Because Macy's as a general department store with now a big draw. And I think that'll be the cascading of seeing more and more of these happening. I mean I mentioned it early on with, with Kohl's and Amazon. Amazon using Kohl's as a reef return center, right where you could just drop your returns off at Kohl's and they would process it and send it back and smart on their part give you coupons to see what you could find in the store while you're there. So using it as a way to draw foot traffic to their, to their store, that's I think Macy's, that's going to be nothing but a win.

Dean: So it's another flavor now of this combined access to capabilities that is really the, that's really the win now. You know, like it's fitting that they've got what, what Macy's had because the, this, the aisles are the, you know, the people per square foot of Macy's. They certainly weren't packed to the guilds. They could have. They had excess capacity of standing room for more shoppers in the store. And, and so they have this now draw to potentially bring, bring traffic which gives them great reach as well. So it's very exciting to see these unfold when we're kind of like observing it with our version of the, the legend, you know, of how it all works kind of thing to see them in.

Dan: Well, I think, yeah, I think the. There are certain brands that have what I would call a retro value and Macy's would be one of them. You know, like I, I can remember Macy's growing up as a kid, you know, in the Cleveland area. The Macy's and of course they had the big they were Thanksgiving parade in New York City. New York City. The Macy's Thanksgiving parade was a big thing. So I was just reading something, not quite sure how it relates, but it was ride. Dodge probably shouldn't have an electric car. They couldn't have an EV because Dodge has a retro value as a muscle car. And that's true.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: A muscle car and electric actually don't go together very well because if. If Dodge becomes electric car, they're just another electric car. Okay. But if they retain their brand, they retain their brand as a muscle car. Sort of an outlier. It's an outlier car. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, only a. Would have a. An electric Dodge.

Dean: Yeah, that's. That's. There's so many things that just seem counter.

Dan: Well, it's cultural. It's cultural. You have to understand that culture. Culture really is the entryway to economics and culture is the. The entryway to politics.

Dean: Do you remember there was a couple of, like, missteps on that direction. There was a very funny moment when Pepsi launched a brand or a version of crystal Pepsi, which was there. Like, Pepsi is clear. And that prompted Saturday night.

Dan: It's Pepsi for. It's Pepsi for sissies.

Dean: Yeah, right. Well, it was the funny thing.

Dan: You're not actually up to drinking Pepsi, so you have to have crystal Pepsi.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. Saturday Night Live, then. Saturday Night Live did a sketch about the new thing of crystal gravy. You can imagine that Thanksgiving dinner. That's the crystal gravy. So it's just this gelatinous goop that you're spooning on your turkey dinner. Oh, man.

Dan: Yeah. How do you know it's not super glue? You know,

Dean: it's crystal gravy. Yeah, but you're right, like, sometimes I've

Dan: noticed that Elon Musk has put off his truck. You know, he was going to come out with his Tesla truck, which looked.

Dean: I have a deposit on one of those, by the way.

Dan: Oh, do you? Well, good for you. That deposit will probably be worth more than the truck at a certain point.

Dean: That's probably true, but.

Dan: Yeah, but the, the reason is that he's not grasping that pickup trucks are a retro brand. And the, the vehicle that he put out on stage that time has nothing retro about it at all.

Dean: No, it looks a.

Dan: Looks a bit like a runaway iceberg. You know, it's iceberg. And the, you know, if you look at the truck statistics and it's the. What I would say it's the great despair of the environmental movement is the addiction to pickup trucks. And that would be, you know, and each of the, Each of the companies has a really solid brand. You know, GM has a solid one. Chrysler has a solid. The Dodge Ram, you know. Dodge Ram. Yes, Your electric Dodge Ram. Well, it's a bit of a sissy Ram, you know, it's. You know, you'd milk it for Crystal gravy. You know, it's, you know, and the F150 is like the number one seller in 20 states. You know, it sells. They sell more F150s than they do passenger cars in 20 of the American states. Yeah, I think it's a retro thing that goes along with the lead paragraph, you know, when you started off this morning about people choosing to kind of live and live their lives and live their location the way they want. And that's kind of a retro thought because the thought 10 years ago, well, everybody's going to be in the big cities. You know, you're going to, you know, the, you're gonna be on the 53rd floor. Well,

Dean: you know, and this is an interesting.

Dan: Not really where I want to be.

Dean: I've been thinking a lot about that this last couple of weeks here that, you know, this whole idea of the reason people would move to the big cities is access to big city stuff. Right. Like when you think about access to being able to congregate with the best people in whatever fields you're in. You know, if you were something in a small town, if you were a, you know, high performer in a small town, your idea would be to move to the city and, and be with the best of everybody. Right? Yeah. Other people, but now we're the best is showcased in Cloudlandia. There's no sense of regional best. You know, it's a really, it's an interesting thing that you would go to the cities, they would have better restaurants because they had access to better, more creative chefs who were pioneering and making better food. You had, it was economically viable for chefs to open restaurants. You had more variety of restaurants. You had all of that available to you. All the, all the intellectual property was distributed locally in these high centers. Right. There wasn't an economically viable way to have big city, you know, New York City creativity and, and access in Poughkeepsie. And it was. And now, now we're coming to the situation where you're starting to see through ghost kitchens, through Amazon delivery, through all. You know what I mean? You'd go to the city to get. If you needed some fashion forward things or things that. Access to products, that all the innovative products were only distributed in the stores and shops in the cities right now you've got, even on the. The level anything that is made on earth can be at your doorstep at tomorrow morning at the latest. So you've got those. It was rethinking about the consumers distributing and shoprite catalogs when we were, I grew up, you know, in Toronto, right around the time when you first moved to Toronto, like in the 70s, in the 70s and early 80s, I remember the Consumers Distributing catalog being delivered to my house. And you would like pour through the pages of the catalog. It was essentially like having the Internet delivered to your house. Right?

Dean: You would pour through the catalog and then you would go to the Outpost in Georgetown and fill in your application for this product and hand it to the gentleman. And they would go back in the warehouse and 80% of the time they'd have it in stock there or they would order it and it would arrive and they'd tell you when it was there. So, you know, compared to if you lived in Toronto in the city, you could walk into the Hudson Bay Company and find anything you were looking for that was available in the country, basically was at the Hudson's Bay. And so now we look at. I mean, I am fascinated by this return to local, but local being the best of global. We're not on the mainland. We really have access to, to the best. Because all these. If you have the equipment, the. It's. It's an interesting thing. I was laughed because Ron White, the comedian, he told the story of getting thrown out of a bar in New York City. And they said I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability.

Dan: that's our difference.

Dean: It's a great line, isn't it?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I had to write I didn't have the ability. And I thought about our, you know, our. When we talked about the difference between capability and ability and that all of these, when you look at what virtual dining concepts really showed me was when you go to their website and you look at the equipment like there, there are this standard equipment of there's only like eight pieces of equipment that there are this, the, a pizza oven, a regular oven, a fryer, cooktop or a cooktop, a fryer, a, like a deep fryer and all the, the refrigeration and the freezer. All of those things are available in any of the restaurants all over the the country. Right. But what they don't. So they have the capability to make these, to make creative stuff, to make amazing food. But what they don't have is the ability that a, that a top chef would have the vision to be able to do that. But now through virtual dining concepts, they have access to the vision and recipes and format and secret herbs and spices of the creative visionary who might only be available in the city is now available on, on the mainland in any number of outposts. And I'm really fascinated by this whole, you know, it's almost like the shifting now where everything that was going on in the cities is available. And because you look at it, why some of the cities are, let's say, the kind of the shittiest places to live. But you know, compared to living on a lake in the world, if you had all the best access to the things that people sort of sacrifice lifestyle wise to live in less than optimal conditions where you can live in, you can live in a superior environment without sacrificing anything. That's the shift, I think that's going on.

Dan: Yeah. And I think the other thing is that there's a division in the workforce that I've noticed and that's, it's a division and it's actually a split and started off by saying that, you know, that people now have the ability to, you know, take advantage of Cloudlandia. I'm noticing even within the people that I know that there's a very, very wide spectrum of their ability to actually utilize. Do you like, you know, they kind of, you know, virtual kind of had me at hello? Yeah, like, like, you know, I didn't have to sleep on it to decide tomorrow whether I thought the thing I'd seen yesterday was a good idea. I, I kind of got right. Yeah, I kind of got the idea right off the bat. And what I didn't realize that I had a whole bunch of stored up possibilities in my mind ways of engaging people that simply didn't work all that well in person, but they work superbly well in virtual. So what I feel is that there's been a massive splitting People's, what I would say, success and their progress and their achievement as individuals. That has happened because of the force that they were confronted with. The fact, look, yep, yep, yep, you want to do in person and you've been flying all over the world to do it and Yep, yep, we got it, you know, got the, got the story. I'm sure it'll make a good movie script sometime. But you aren't going, we're not going to allow you to cross borders for now. You're not going to get on planes and if you do, you're, it's going to be such a painful experience, you're not going to want to do it very often. And that was my, that was my first, you know, I mean, I, I didn't actually have an experience of flying after the original cutoff. So it was about, you know, a year and a half before I ever.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Again. And in the meantime, I just, you know, I just monopolized my, my sudden access virtual world where I was more or less guaranteed that I wasn't going to have a hundred percent audience from before, but I was going to have an 80% audience before. And 80%, but.

Dean: But 80% of the, the total available audience is completely so much bigger.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's what I've discovered. And, and you know, the thing about not to work. Well, it's not like, I mean, it's being made that they have a choice, but actually they don't have a choice because what they did before is not deemed valuable right now. You know, it's not like they could go back to doing what they did before. What they did before wasn't. Was borderline valuable, but in the two years since they've been doing it and getting paid for it, it's being. And so there's this slush fund that government has to, you know, to bail people out because the educational system and the, whatever training systems that have been available just haven't done a good job of preparing people for what's next. And so anyway, it's really, really interesting. And I was going back, as I always do, to the last comparable, you know, sort of the last comparable shift like this. And I think, I think it was literacy. I think it was the ability to read what printing presses were.

Dean: Wow. Really?

Dan: Yeah. I think you have to go back to the late 1400s. 15. 1500s to have another period like that. Yeah. I mean, if you weren't literate and suddenly the requirement for a job was you knew how to read and write.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I mean, speaking of the Renaissance, I get, I get, I guess that Codlandia is like literacy.

Dean: Yeah. Speaking of the Renaissance, the Rihanna. I don't know whether I mentioned this to you. The singer is now joined the billionaire world, the VCR billionaires with a twist. So Rihanna is now, according to Forbes, worth $1.7 billion. And she is following that same model. She had the vision and the reach and partnered. But the partnering is an interesting subtle shift that now she's partnered with Arnaud, the Bernard, I think Renault, the guy from lvmh. Second richest guy in the world, apparently. And he is a. I was likening this new shift now to the modern Mediti, Medici, Medici family kind of guy that this financial backing of artists, visionary artists. I look at all interchangeable vision, art, all of that is a visionary, creative creator person with total cash confidence. To be able to create what they. What they want. And she's done it through, through fragrance and cosmetics and through fashion. She's going through all the way. But they're backing her in whatever. Whatever category. Yeah. She wants. They're like, we're in for 50% of whatever she's doing. And that's an interesting. I think that's a. I think that's going to be kind of the. A possible path forward is a great safe haven and use for capital is attaching to a creative, attaching to a visionary. What do you think?

Dan: Well, the other thing I want to. I want to add that there's a cultural aspect that, to that more and more that culture, you know, is really what we all create together, actually. It's, you know, there. There are individuals who, you know, will lead the way with a song or with something that attracts people's attention, but then the public itself, the audience sort of takes over and they make it into something. And they'll elevate certain people. They'll elevate, like Rihanna, they'll elevate that person. And, you know, Kylie Jenner, they'll elevate that person. And that person becomes a medium of values, comes a medium of ways of thinking about things. Ways like we're having a conversation about her. But you were using her as an example of a larger conversation that's been going on for a couple years between the two of us. And you can find it. And I would say that in a reverse way. The trouble that the President Biden is and is an example of the sheer bankruptcy of an old way of doing things. It's like his getting out. If he gets out of bed in the morning and talks to somebody, his ratings go down because he communicated wrongly. He just can't communicate in a way that's acceptable anymore. Like they bring the coffins of the dead Marines back from Afghanistan and they actually have caught him on video that every time one of them comes out, he looks at his watch.

Dean: Is that right? Wow.

Dan: Yeah. And that becomes the subject. That becomes the subject for the day. What a clutch. He can't even stand there without looking at his watch when, you know, grief, grief is being delivered in coffins and the families are actually there, you know, the families with dead people. But it's almost like I said, I've never seen a guy drop this fast. He's dropped from 62% down to 43% in seven months.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And if it had happened five years ago, he wouldn't have grabbed. But something has happened in the meantime, you know, what we want in the leader, how we want that leader to talk, the topics that need to be talked about, and everything else. Same thing's happening here in Canada. Trudeau is going to lose the election. I mean, he's dropping by the day right now.

Dean: Yeah, that is something. Who's. The. The. I don't have any access or any following of what's going on, but who's. Who's leading the way?

Dan: Not important.

Dean: Okay, good.

Dan: Not important. It's just that we want this guy out.

Dean: Yeah. Not important. That's so funny.

Dan: Yeah, it's not important. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who's replacing them. We want this one out. He's just not who we want anymore. So it's. It's an interesting thing, and this is one of the things I think you've touched on it about 10 times. But there's something that happens in this world that's kind of instantaneous, where before there were trends over a long period of time, but more and more, there's things happening in the Cloudlandia world that they're binary. You know, it's either 100% or zero. Yeah. Yeah. It's really. It's really interesting. Yeah.

Dean: These are, you know, this is. What's the fun thing about the conversations that you and I have get to have here is you don't know anybody else. I have this kind of conversation with. To look at and see what's actually going on here and how that's gonna. How that's going to impact things, you know, like, I mean, you look at your. Your adoption here over the last 18 months, switch 100% to virtual. That and you don't see. I know in conversation you're saying, you know, this last next 25 years, there's going to be so much faster and less friction doing. Having the impact virtually and gathering the right people that way. I'll tell you a word that is gaining momentum is the metaverse. Have you heard that the word

Dan: that. That's where Mark Zuckerberg is going to hide, so they can't indict him.

Dean: Exactly. No, that's what everybody. Everybody's joining in on that bandwagon, though, that that's. It's a race to the metaverse right now, meaning the next. The place where everybody's going to, you know, hang out. And that's where it's the consensus, you know, virtual reality getting all the focus right now. That's really. You start to see it. I like to look at and start to see trends. Like when the first time that ghost restaurant kind of, you know, five or six years ago or whatever it was, came on my radar, you start to see a thread of this is. This is going to be something here. I just think.

Dan: I mean, why do we already know that? Yeah, I mean, it's a word. I've seen the word. You know, I've seen it.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: You know, I've read it maybe 10 times in the last two or three. Three. But you know, what contributes. I mean, in itself it doesn't mean anything. I mean, word. I'm listening. Metaverse. I mean, I kind of.

Dean: Right. It's got Exactly.

Dan: Universe. Universe. And meta means above everything else.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: If I put those two words together and everything. Everything else. But what does it have extra. That mentioned already there, if you're.

Dean: I think it's what. What I'm looking at it now is the user interface of Cloudlandia. It's. We're all roaming around blind in Cloudlandia right now with access to, you know, we talked about the, you know, the, the tippy top of the digital asymptotic curves that have brought music and video and print and pictures and words. All of that is at the highest level available to everybody now. But the current, the interface that we interact with, it has largely been pre those things. Right. Like the interface we're still largely dealing with with the, you know, you say the iOS, the, the mobile operating system is really the thing that we've. That we've used, but it's not in Windows, kind of on your desktop. The organizing system. The way that we experience and access the Internet is really sort of in our own individual bubbles that are not joined. You know, Clubhouse is a good example sort of auditorily. And Zoom is kind of the beginnings of bringing these experiences together. So, you know, like Clubhouse, for instance, you've experienced is an auditory kind of metaverse that we can all kind of gather. But it's really. We're all in a dark room with the lights out, just being comforted by the closeness and sound of each other's voices. Right. There is a very sort of intimate experience of they really. It's a wonderful sound experience for, for voice to have many voices together and you start to pick up on the subtleties of people's voices and tones of voice. What Zoom has done has sort of created a. A operating user interface for video being together. Now that there are other. Now Metaverse type of. That's a great way I think, to describe it. Operating systems, user interfaces for us to gather and experience. There's a whole world that you and I have firsthand knowledge of because we're not in this gaming world. And if you. There's. It's shocking how big the game economy is of what's going on in both PC gaming and set top boxes, you know, you know, all of the PlayStation and Xbox and all of those. That economy and environments there that's largely going unnoticed because it's mostly the realm of the teenage kids, right.

Dean: And sort of younger millennials that were right on the beginning of it, who have evolved with it and those full immersive environments even without the, without the need for the headsets. Like that really is a whole different level of it. But as far as, even on the screen the universes like the games like Grand Theft Auto and games like all the first person shooter games and the pure creative games like, like Minecraft and, and, and Fortnite for instance, those universes are amazing, you know, and you start to see now where they're setting all of these records. Like a couple of years ago, Marshmallow One of DJ had a concert in Fortnite that was attended by 10 million people simultaneously. And now it's been up that there's been, you know, I think the record. I don't know whether this is 28 million people in a live, you know, experience kind of thing. And I think that that's what is shaping up now is this unified user experience that almost like the, the shopping mall of all these sites, the next level expression of navigating the Internet. You know, like before the Netscape browser, all of the sites were there, but you had to go individually. You know, I think that's a pretty good analog or a comparison of what, what we're, I think going through now. That's what I think this talk of the Metaverse is.

Dan: Do you know anyone who's deeply involved in it?

Dean: Oddly enough? Joe Polish. I mean, I think that's where, I think that's the vision that Joe has now in. I don't know if you've seen any of the things that he's done with mapping his office and all the VR things. And I think that when we take the virtual reality away from beyond the helmet, you know, beyond putting on a helmet, but thinking about like a screen based virtual reality, like it's just a more realistic screen environment, like a windowed environment into, into what would be more realistic. I think that's where we're, I think that's something that's heading like where you could really create you know, a sense of everybody sitting around the table and being in the, in the space. You know, it's enough that it's got my curiosity that I'm going to start. I've opened up a window in my mind.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, I understand the, I mean, but it's really interesting, you know, because I'm really, you know, because I've got so many mainland experiences and sort of understanding mainland distinctions. And one of the things is that there's another way in which boundaries become more important, actually mainland boundaries. So. Well, the, you know, the Afghanistan thing that we've just been through, well, this has been, this is the Peter Zion, Peter Zion has been predicting this now for about 10 years, that America is basically pulling out of the rest of the world and is getting back to the United States right now. And you know, and it originally, you know, Washington, the first president, when he retired after two terms, he said the one danger that faces the country is that it'll get, it'll get very, very caught up in the affairs of other countries. And this will, this will inhibit the progress of the country. The, you know, what he would call the entanglements with other countries. And that for the most part didn't happen until the 20th. Yeah, yeah, so 1914. And then it's been non stop since then, you know. And my sense is that Covid is the final breaking of the rubber band. In other words, the country kind of got stretched out as being held together by rubber bands and Covid sort of broke the rubber band. And one statistic that I pay attention to is every year they do a worldwide survey and it's quite big. It's like a couple hundred thousand people and they ask if you could move somewhere else in the world, would you. And generally it's, it's in the area of about 700 million people every year. So about 9% of the global population, if they could move someplace else, they would. Okay, Most of them can't. Most of them can't. But of those, about 20% would move to the United States. You know, so, yeah, last year be about 135 million. Well, the most that's going to get in, in a year is maybe this will be a big year because they more or less, you know, they've not really policed the border at all. And so, you know, it might get 2 million in a year. Okay.

Dan: But it kind of shows you that at any given time it's like a faucet that the US could turn on or turn off, deposit and supply more people and These people will work. The other thing is that a lot of people aren't working.

Dean: Okay, Right.

Dan: And that's being factored in that we're going to have a growing number of our own population who, you know, don't know how to work, don't want to work. And you know, the country is rich enough that we can, you know, we can send them a check every month just to keep them, you know, from robbing the local 7 11, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And you know, and it's being built in now that we've got this non useful part of the population and not non useful in the sense that they're not, they're not doing any work to contribute. Contribute that we can see, that we can tax.

Dean: Right, right, right, right.

Dan: Good. A good aspect. And my sense is that probably, I think probably with the creation of the microchip, you know, probably going back 50 or 60 years and the, the impact of the microchip, the end of history for the Eastern hemisphere. So the Eastern hemisphere starts in Greenwich, England and goes to the east, you know, so it was right down the middle of the London. So the division between the Eastern and Western hemisphere goes right through, right through London. My feeling is that the history of the Eastern hemisphere, which then goes all the way to the mid Pacific is over and that the history of the world from now on is basically going to come out of the Americas, us being the most important part. And in one ways it's driven by technology. On the other hand, it's actually the boundaries, the geographic boundaries that are going to make the big difference. You may want to move here, but you can't move here. The rules are going to become more stringent. Canada rules for immigration are much tougher than the United States.

Dean: Yes, but is that looking forward? But let's fast forward with that and I'm wondering about if we fully mature to a global blockchain and the full on metaverse where there's no discernible difference between being anywhere physical. As long as you have access to Cloudlandia, you can access it by satellite from Namibia as easily as you can access it from, you know, from New York City. Does that then reverse itself? Are there areas that open up like, will people discover the reason people sort of migrate to Southern California is because the people who have can live anywhere, choose to live on that coastline for the weather and the scenery and the beautiful places. But does that open up the, let's call it the Chilean coast, that now the most amazing, beautiful coastlines in the world are accessible to Cloudlandia? That does that. What would be the reason for the geographic constraint of wanting to be only in America or Canada?

Dan: Safety.

Dean: How does safety.

Dan: Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, the rest of the world is going to take on a lot of the quality of Mad Max.

Dean: I wonder.

Dan: Yeah, you wouldn't want to be, you won't want to be in Afghanistan right now. And there's parts of South America, there's parts of Africa, and they're not getting better. I mean, it's not like if we can just get everybody into the meta universe, they're going to become people. So my sense is that the number one reason why people want to get into the US Is actually safety. One of the reasons why people are moving from New York to outlying areas is because of safety.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, out of San Francisco, out of Los Angeles, out of Chicago is it's not safe to live in. It's not safe, especially when the politicians are defunding the police force. So.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I said that this safety is actually a real cloudland. I mean, a real mainland issue. And I mean, you can create marvelous universes in Cloudlandia. But yeah, outside of the home or the building that you're in, it isn't safe to go out walking. You know, it's.

Dean: Right, Yeah.

Dan: I mean, you're, you're, you live in a very, very protected community in Florida. I mean, Florida is attracting immigrants really, both from outside the US and from inside the US Florida is attracting New Yorkers, you know, and, you know, I mean, the population shift, I bet some, the population shift from New York, especially at the upper income groups, is quite pronounced over the last five years just because of tax things. But it's not safe. You know, it's not safe. And I think safety, I mean, safety is pretty primal. You know, it's like hunger and so it's kind of like Los Angeles, you know, I mean, when the Uber, there's just certain areas, if you call an Uber, and, and they won't come and pick you up because it's not a safe area to drive into. So there you've got a collision between Cloudlandia and the mainland. So, yeah, that's just an observation of mine that, you know, and the, you know, one of the things that I really follow is the shifts in the population from the American states to each other. So in the last. And this is readjusted every 10 years because of the census. Okay, so the, so you had a census in 90 and 2000. 20, 10. And so last four census and the last four. What happens then? Is they determine that there's only 435 congressional districts. Okay. And that's, that's an amendment to the constitution in the 1920s. So they said they can't be more than 435. So you take the total population with the census, every 10 years, you divide by 435 and you get the number of people who should be in a congressional district.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And it goes up. You know, it goes up because the population goes up. And then the states are given. You know, you have one more congressional district. So what you have to do is you have to adjust all the borders boundaries in the state or in some part of the state, you have to add one more district. So.

Dean: Mm.

Dan: Have to adjust the lines. And in the last 30 years, so that's 1990 to 2020, the one party has won out and all that. One party is accumulating new seats and the other party is losing seats is Congress. And it's always two. And the next one will be really, really big because right off the bat, the Republicans will pick up 13 seats just because of the census. So they add 13, the Democrats lose 13, and pretty soon the one party, the Democratic Party, is just going to become the party of big cities. And if you look pretty much.

Dean: Yes. I'm just going to say that's really how it is right now.

Dan: Yeah. And it's a, it's a trend and it's. The reason is, is that the people who can live in the big cities are highly educated, highly skilled, high income, and they live in a different world. You know, they, they, they, they don't really understand the rest of the country.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And, and, and so, so the, the interesting thing is that if the Cloudlandia has opened up the possibility that you can live where you want. Okay. That's a new factor. That's an entirely new factor. That is a, that's an earthquake factor based on what people were predicting for the future.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. That's a shake up of the boundary. Yeah.

Dan: It's seismic. It's seismic. And my sense is that one party knows what this is about and the other party doesn't.

Dean: Right. Yeah, I think you're right.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But whatever it is, we are. How do they say living in interesting times?

Dan: Well, it's. Yeah, it's seismic.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, in my reading of history, the last two years have been more consequential on a global basis than any comparable period that I can think of in history.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. Well, now I'm excited for every.

Dan: Where everything, every, everything Everywhere is getting shaken. Yeah, that's never happened before.

Dean: Yeah, I think it's really paving the way for the free zones, Dan. That's really where we're going. That this. There's all of these things are, you know, making it a clean Runway for the Free zone frontier. I mean, it's really a. You start to see. I. I'm thinking now about who's next if this perfect. I think Free zone collaboration between Toys R Us and Macy, nothing but upside for both of them.

Dan: I mean, without knowing anything else, without knowing anything about the deal, you know, I would say that that's a classic Free zone example.

Dean: Yeah. Nobody. Nobody.

Dan: They're just putting. Because Toys R Us moves into Macy's with a very loyal following.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: In other words, people who would never go to Macy's will go to Macy's now because toys are there. Yes, the toys are also there. So they're bringing something with them. And. Yeah, it's very interesting. I have a client from Pakistan, and he joined a year ago. So he joined in the middle of 2020, did his year in signature, and then bumped up to 10 times. And he'll spend a year in 10 times, and he'll bump up to the free zone. And he's a confectioner. Well, it's biscuits and cookies. It's one of his companies. He's got a number of companies, but one of them. And he's the biggest distributor of cookies and biscuits in Pakistan. So about March of this year, a big international conglomerate, global, comes to him and said, we'd like to buy into Pakistan, and we'd like to buy in, you know, 51% of your company. And we've got, you know, a whole array of new products that we can bring to you. And he had just read the $15 trillion free zone, and he says, oh, no. He said, you don't want to buy into my assets. He says, you don't want to buy my assets. He says, what you'd like to do is take advantage of my capability. Well, why don't you just provide me with your products and we'll sell them and we'll work out a deal and you know, how much you get and how much we get. The system's all there, the capability. You don't have to do anything that's already set up for you. I mean, you know, we just have to get an agreement on, you know, logistics and distribution and, you know, what the price is. But he says, no. He says, you don't want my asset.

Dean: That's great. The VCR formula in action.

Dan: Yep, yep. And they settled it in about four months, four or five months, couple trips, a lot of zoom calls. And he did it and now it's great. Now he's providing. He doubled or tripled his product offerings just with this one agreement. And then we're on a. One of our 10 times calls. One of the. He's in a workshop and he ends up in the very first breakout group with me. And this first time I meet him and he's in a breakout group with me, and he's with a client from Cartagena in Colombia. And so each of them tell their story. And the guy from Columbia said, he says, I've got an international investor who's got really, really big cookies and distribution. And he said, would you like to talk to me?

Dean: Did.

Dan: Ten minutes later, he. The two people agree, and now they're talking about another free zone agreement. And I said things really right. But he's got the right attitude. You know, part of it is just all attitude. And the reason is.

Dean: Hang on.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And he said the thing that got him most is that your money is your money, our money's our money. And he said, that just changes the world for him. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want any of the money that you've created over the last 20 years. That's your money. Why would I want that money? You know, that's when you're buying into someone's company, you're buying yesterday's money. Why are you buying yesterday's money?

Dean: Right.

Dan: Why don't you just. Why don't you just acquire access to someone's future, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's very, really interesting. And a lot of people have a really, really hard time with that, you know? You know? Yeah. And so my sense is that it's not everybody who's capable of this, that you can have all the technological means in the world, but if you don't have the right mental, you don't have the right mindsets and the right emotional approach to things, you probably can't do the free zone.

Dean: Right?

Dan: Yeah. I mean, you can have. I'm not saying you can't be successful and you can't have success and everything. You just can't pull this off.

Dean: You have the right to remain silent. You just don't have the ability.

Dan: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, theoretically, every entrepreneur could be. I mean, you, you have the right situation, but.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Not looking at it in the right way.

Dean: The capabilities are there. That's Right.

Dan: Yeah. But the ability may not be there.

Dean: Yes, that's exactly right.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: The capability.

Dan: Let's sum up. We've covered a lot of Terry Metaverse. We're gonna have to include a section on Metaverse.

Dean: Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm really. I mean, that's.

Dan: I'm gonna have to get. I'm gonna have to get burst on the metaverse.

Dean: Well, I think. Me too. You know, and I think that that's part of it is. As I was thinking about what it really. I think it is. Is going to be really about the upgrading the user interface of how we access things. I'm noticing just like the. The whole app world is getting pretty spectacular. What's going on. Like, a lot of these photo apps and video apps that are. They're all the base capabilities that we have, like, for manipulating photos and, you know, creating things is. It's like this one upsmanship whole world, you know. So I think just having your own environment where you can sort of visually store things differently than a file architecture or a desktop architecture, the way that we keep things or these app icons on your phone, it feels like we're ready perhaps for another more immersive environment like that.

Dan: All right.

Dean: Always enjoy it. Thanks, dan. Bye.

Dan: Okay, bye.