Intellectual Shortcuts

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Ah, Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Thank you very much. You know, I, every time I come on a little bit early, you know, I try to be early in my life. I listen to the theme song.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Accompanies this podcast and I find new insights when I listen to it. So I've gone through what the singer isn't going to do. So if you listen to him, what he's basically telling is everything that he's not going to do.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And, and I, but I'm wondering, does that actually, does that also include that he's not going to work for a living, he's not going to clean house, he's not going to wash the.

Dean: Oh, that's so funny. But he's never going to give you up, Dan. Never going to give you up. Never going to let you down.

Dan: Never going to mess. Never going to. What was it? Mess you down messy, mess around. Never good. Never going to give you up. Never going to mess you down. What I'm not seeing is a positive commitment to a vision of your future. A bigger future. Yeah, I'm not seeing that anyway. But perhaps, you know, the listening audience has other things on their mind. Anyway. How are you doing?

Dean: I'm good, Dan. It is one of these like chamber of commerce days in Florida right now, as it will be between now and April almost every day. This is exactly why I live in Florida. And I'll tell you what, there's some good things for discussion today. I have been, you know, I think early about our. I'm excited that we're doing the Free Zone summit in Florida and that I'll be there and I'm excited.

Dan: And you'll be on, you'll be on the agenda.

Dean: That's what I'm excited about. Doing the VCR file. And there's nothing but compelling evidence that the Free Zone is the win. I mean a couple of things that have, a couple of things that have happened because I like to check back and say, okay, well, where were we when we first identified it? Right. We first talked about it and the, you know, Lil Nas X was one of the things and Kylie Jenner becoming a billionaire. Well, Cody, right now the company that bought Kylie Cosmetics, that officially made Kylie Jenner a billionaire is having record, they're having record years on strength, strong growth in the Kylie brand. Just saying that like outperformed their estimation. So they're all over the, the headlines there. So nothing but growth on that Lil Nas X turned his, what could have been a one hit Wonder into two years later Grammy nominations and the one of the titles of the top streamed artists in on Spotify right now. So he turned his foothold that he got into a really secure place in the world there. I mentioned to you that Macy's these are true VCR free zone collaborations right here that Macy's brought Toys R Us did an arrangement with Toys R Us to bring. Well they said well why don't we open up Toys R Us stores inside of our stores And I was just reading to see how that's going and they've already more than doubled their sales of toys over 2019 and they haven't even completely rolled it out yet. So as they open up 400 of these locations in Macy's stores they're going to have this huge Runway. It's such a pure and beautiful free zone VCR collaboration there. And then the other one I'll put out there right now. As I checked in on Kohl's the they made an arrangement with Amazon to accept people could take their Amazon returns on the mainland into any Kohl's store and return it as if they're returning it to Amazon without having to go to the post office or anything like that. And I just read that brought In Kohl's gained 2 million new customers on the back of people coming into their store with something in their hand that's unsuitable that they have a need to replace.

Dean: I mean it's just such a, such an amazing bit of collaborative wisdom there to think about because most people would think well that's just why would you take on that work for someone? But when you're bringing somebody in who is going to have something in their hand that isn't what they want so they've got a desire to get something to replace it and you happen to have a department store that just might have something for them and that's how it turned out over over 2 million new customers.

Dan: Yeah, well you know, you know you're really zeroing in because you have a great intellectual structure, the VCR vision capability and reach and allows you just to take a look at almost anything and almost create a score. You know, do they have any vision? Is there any capability here? Is there any reach there? But one thing thing that we're just exploring because we're as I mentioned over the last quarter we're going to create this new extra dimension to strategic coach which is called the Lifetime. It's going to be called the Lifetime Extender series and it's a 64 hour workshop spread out over, you know, spread out pretty well over a year. So six sessions and without having the real details, I don't have any video out yet to go over what we're doing. We don't have the app in, but we're pretty close to 130 kind of commitments. People said as soon as it comes out, we'll, we'll sign up and we'll do that right after the new year. Yeah, but then I began thinking the fact that we have this type of entrepreneur and in every case, our entrepreneurs and strategic coach, from the very first hour that they were in strategic coach on their very first workshop day, they have committed and started planning to extend both their lifetime and their career much longer than they had been thinking about previously. So. So everybody is primed from a mindset standpoint. Usually the issue with new technology, and there's lots of it coming out of the general area that I call regenerative medicine. That's where you take parts of your body and you restore them back to youthful states. In other words, you can take a look at any part of your body that's giving you trouble and you can say, okay, sometime in the next, I would say five years, there's going to be a capability or resource available and I'll be able to fix that. Okay. Mine is cartilage in the left knee that was torn 45, 46 years ago. And there's a good chance now that I'll be able to get a brand new cartilage and I would say 20, 24, I'll have a new cartilage.

Dan: So anyway, so I have this group, but then I said, now one of the things I put out there is that when you have your high on vision, your high on capability and your high on reach, you actually attract other vision, other capability and other reach to you that already exists out there. And that's looking for a way to multiply itself. So let's just use individuals as an example. You know, one of the frequent complaints that I hear from entrepreneurs, you know, since 1989 when we started doing strategic coach program, was where are the good people? I'm trying to find the good people, okay? And I can't find the good people. And what I've been suggesting over the past year is that's not the problem. The problem is not that you can't find the good people. The problem is that the good people can't find you. That's true. Because you're not putting any messages out into the outlandia that. Right. That you're good People that you're good people that you're a great person for great people to work, work with. So one of, one of the things, just a little exercise from this. So I recounted in our coach workshops in September and October how Peter Diamantis had invited Babs and me on his trip to Boston and New York where we were treated to 30 visions of the future with new capabilities and new reach in the area of regenerative medicine. And one of them I put down, it was actually the first one I put down on my little over, you know, overview report. And it was a platform called Inside Tracker. And Inside Tracker is this really efficient, very fast and very useful platform where they will do. We signed up, Babs and I signed up for a full year's worth. And it's four blood tests every 90 days and they measure 43 markers in your body that are all, you know, health fitness indicators. And they have this really great platform. I mean it's very, first of all, it's beautifully designed and, but they came to our house here in Toronto and did a blood draw on a Saturday and next Thursday we had our report. So it was a five day turnaround and, and very informative. The platform, when the report comes back, is very informative.

Dan: And it immediately has done some sort of calculation based on your platform what your actual physical age is compared to your chronological age. Okay, I was 77 and it said 68. Look at you. I'm look at me sitting here drinking a hot beverage that has a little bit of Jameson's Irish Whiskey in it.

Dean: Okay, that's the secret.

Dan: Anyway, anyway, Babs was the same. She's 71 and her reverse was also nine years. Hers was 62. And that's a, you know, it's a function of different things we've done. But then it immediately gives you five things that you, based on everything, these are five areas that you can work on for the next 90 days and gives you the inside scoop. So it's a scorecard, it accumulates your results. The other thing you can do is if you've had a DNA test, you know, where they checked out your basic genes, you can submit that test and then they'll relate your, your test you did with your genes that are related to the latest blood test. If you've had previous blood tests, they'll show you the sequence of blood tests and this just goes out and immediately must be an AI program of some sort that actually does the calculation. And you know, all in, you know, we went for the super best test, the Amine testing that you can get right now, which was for a full year and everything else. It's less than $3,000 per person, American dollars. And you know, and we've sure paid a lot more for a lot of our previous health and fitness investigation and coaching. I mean, way, way more. So what I put together with that because I have a vision now for having this program where there's going to be six workshops, but we're going to focus on mindset. In other words, if this is available, do you have the mindset that would the moment a new capability, medical capability, technological capability, scientific capability? If it came out, would you have the mindset that would immediately want to know about it? Would you inform yourself and would you take advantage of it? So it's not about the science technology because I now think it's ramping up and that this is all going to become available. The only question is, would you have the mindset that would even want to know about this? So that's what I'm getting from this with the VCR. There's VCRs all over the place. But do you have a mindset that would want to take advantage of other people's vision, other people's capability and other

Dean: people's reach or even be inspired?

Dan: I'm almost out of breath there. I'm almost out of. Yeah,

Dean: you know that you're right like that. The. I love your language of intellectual shortcut because the intellectual shortcut gives you like a decoder ring to look at the data and to see where does this fit and what's going on here. Like clearly Macy's and Toys R Us, you know, you think about what is the relationship there that, you know, Macy's, our Toys R Us, certainly has reach in terms of top of mind aware. Everybody knows what Toys R Us is in the marketplace. They're very well known from a brand standpoint. They've got the capability of having, you know, this great toy selling mechanism. They've been propagating the. The original and most successful toy seller in the world. And now having the reach and the capability that Macy's have in their facilities where, let's be honest, they're there, it's not going to make any difference to Macy's to allocate 20% say of their space they could have. They've got 40,000 square foot stores to have 20% of that. A 10,000 square foot installation of, you know, an amazing toy experience from Toys R Us inside their store. It makes it sort of great destination now, you know, because Everybody wins in that.

Dan: Yeah. Well, the other thing about it, the both of them had weaknesses that they couldn't counteract using just their historical approach. Right. To how they grew. Like, Macy's is an ancient brand. I mean, in the world of retail in Macy, I mean, 1800s. We're talking about 1800s, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Late 1800s, Macy's came in there and one of the problems was they had an aging clientele, you know. You know, the people in their, you know, adolescents, teens and 20 year olds wouldn't have Macy's as a destination because it's a, it's where old people go, you know. And so that was their, one of their problems. And the other thing is that they've got a, you know. You know, I don't know what's happened to me. He's. From a real estate standpoint over, you know, over decades, you know, since I was a kid. But I got to believe that they probably don't own their real estate anymore, that they, they've sold their, you know, real estate to large, multinational, you know, real estate people. But they do have location. They do have location. So that, and for example, in New York, I can remember, the number one Macy's store is on, you know, it's on Times Square. It's, you know, it's on Broad, it's on Broadway. It's, you know, it's, you know, just, you know, really right in the center of retail and everything else. Toys R Us was next to the Apple store.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: By Trump Plaza up there. But there wasn't any real hot retail around that. It was very specialized, you know, boutique shops and that. And it wasn't a natural traffic flow place. You know, it took some effort to get the toys around actually working that,

Dean: Dan, I think we're thinking about FAO Schwartz was what, the big toy store by the Apple.

Dan: Oh, that's right. That's right.

Dean: Yes. Yep, yep.

Dan: You are, you are right. And I am making feeling abject and foolish to admit to the Landia universe that I mistook.

Dean: That's when we got SAO Shorts. We got each other.

Dan: But they went. But they went bankrupt too, for the same reason.

Dean: Even that didn't stop them. That's right. But now you wonder, Dan, if, like, you know, you look at it, now that, you know, they're sharing. Macy's has taken on the, you know, the real estate burden of Toys R Us. They've got some real traffic draw with a, you know, a specific laser focused intention brand. They're able to create an experience for people it's much more, it's much more fun to shop for toys in a, in an experience place. Then it has to shop online. But the next level collaboration would be if Amazon bought or partnered with all of them, you know, to do all the back, all the back office stuff, the delivery where people can have it any way they want it. Yep. Pick it up, trip it up.

Dan: Imagine if, you know, I mean, I've heard stories, but I've actually never seen one of them, nor have I actually had a conversation with someone. But Amazon was thinking about having its own bricks and mortars and I said, you know, it seems to me that they're getting into something that really isn't their unique ability. Okay. In other words, that there's a conflict between the idea of Amazon and a physical location there. And I guess, you know, it's proven by the Kohl's example in the sense is, you know, where do I take this stuff that I don't want for Amazon? Because.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Amazon has many dimensions to it and has many, you know, has many sterling advantages. But one of them is your brain doesn't naturally think of them as being in a physical location.

Dean: Right. But, you know, that's the whole point of Amazon.

Dan: It isn't in it. Their whole advantage is that they're not in a physical location that you would go to, that you would drive and park and go to the Amazon thing.

Dean: So I've been thinking about that and I wonder if the real play for Amazon is in equipping existing retail stores with the ability to do what Amazon is doing in their own stores, where you can plot the inventory, people can go in and walk out with the stuff and automatically be billed for it without having to go through the checkout process. Amazon has several stores where that's the case now. But you think the magic of what Amazon is doing online is their Amazon pay, where you can just one click order, you know, pay with your Amazon account. You can extend. And that's an interesting, you know, recognition of what is the real thing that we're trying to eliminate here. I was having a conversation with someone about the private terminal in Los Angeles. Are you familiar with this? Have we talked about it? There's a.

Dan: No, I haven't.

Dean: Okay, so they have a new private terminal in Los Angeles where you can drive up, it's, you know, on the airport property, but you can drive up to it and you know, they valet your, they meet you right there, you go in, you've, they've got lounge, you know, environment, you check in, do the security check, all of that. And when it's time for your flight, they drive you in a BMW on the tarmac right to your plane, your commercial plane. You walk up the stairs and onto the plane. So if you're flying first class, for instance, it's like flying private without having a private flight. It's like all the 90 of the

Dan: reason that all the advantages of having.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Having. Yeah. It's like going nobody's. Yeah, yeah. It's like going to the, you know, the private jet. There's a private jet terminal at Pearson.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, you, you go farther along the.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: 401 West. You go one big intersection west and then you just go right and you drive in and. But I mean, you have to schlep. I mean, they don't. They're not equipped like the lax. You have to get your bags off and you have to get there. But, you know, I mean, you go in, sit down and then the pilot actually comes and talks to you and says, hey, we're ready to go. We'll. And then you get some help with your bags and every. Everything like that. But here, what they're doing is that they're truly giving people first class service. Yeah. To mimic private air travel.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: They're taking away all the onerousness because

Dean: that's part of the thing. It's like nobody. Part of the. Nobody's mad at the first class cabin of most commercial airliners. Everybody. Once you're seated in your seat, it's comfortable, it's nice. They bring you food, they bring you drinks there, whatever it is, once you're there.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: In a lot of ways it's a superior experience to a starter private jet experience where you're in a smaller jet that it. You're sacrificing the smaller, less comfortable cabin for eliminating the other 90% of it, which is all the shenanigans from the curb to your seat. That's what people are really most interested in eliminating. And it struck me the conversation we were having was that this was at the time, I believe it was $2,700 per use of. This is what it cost to do. Now, if you think about where you can get a first class ticket, commercial airliners now for probably 1500 maybe at the time, it was around that the thought that you're paying more than the actual cost of the ticket for the service, because I introduced you to my service that is on the ground. Right. That you pay $300 for that. Eliminate all of the stuff as best you can. But the, the conversation we had was, that's true, it sounds expensive when you're comparing it the cost of the additional cost of the commercial ticket. But when you compare it to the cost of even the least expensive next option, which would be a private flight, it's a bargain compared to the thing. So you're, you're talking about $3,500 instead of $25,000 now you're talking about that's really value that you're getting all of the things that you would choose private travel for at a fraction of. You're only paying for that. So that struck me about the place. And you know, are you really. It seems like if Amazon was to open up stores, right. That you're opening up all these things just to showcase the 10% of the thing where they make 90% of the difference, their checkout logistics and inventory management. And those things are really like, that's what the real value is. And I think that's part of this real ability to assess with a critical eye your VCR assets.

Dan: Yeah. One of the things that we're looking at, you know, and we have to pay attention to this for, I would say the next 12 months, is how our client, client base, all the entrepreneurs we have now and entrepreneurs who were very active up until Covid, but then took a year off or took two years off from coach, that now we have the optional, you know, we have the optional choice. We, we've already started in some of our, you know, less. We have two big markets. We have Toronto and Chicago. Those are our two big markets. And then LA would be a secondary market. Very important, a lot of people. But we don't have our own center there. So Chicago and Toronto, we have our own center. We have our own property there. And then we have two others which are. We don't have as many people. One of them is Vancouver. And, and that's sort of the Northwest. It pulls in people from Oregon, Washington, you know, Idaho, Montana. And it also pulls in, you know, Western Canada, British Columbia, Alberta and everything like that. And so we opened in Vancouver just to get the feel of what, you know, how we're going to do it elsewhere. And we also opened up in London, England. Okay. To get a feel for how it's going to work. So, you know, people are taking notes and we're noticing. And now we're opening in Toronto and Chicago in January. So, you know, first week of January, we're going back to full schedule. But then with everybody, we're giving them an optional date. Let's Say zoom date, you know, like if you can't make it, you're still, you know, you're still not feeling real confident about this. We'll have the zoom dates and then we're just going to keep track on what the numbers are and how people choose. And some people will choose out of four workshops, they'll choose three of them live, one of them in person, somebody else to do just the opposite. And we're just going to get a feel. But we have a sense that there's a new, wider choice that we have to be willing to provide as we go through the next year, you know, from January to January next year. And we're looking at it.

Dan: But we do know that the choice of never traveling at all, as has been a real big one for our sales.

Dean: Yeah, I mean, that's something that, you know, I look at it. So I've got a breakthrough blueprint event starting while people are arriving today. Well, we start tomorrow, so I'll head over to Celebration this afternoon. But we've had. Since I announced it and filled it, you know, we had all the Omicron. Is it Omnicron. How do you say this? Omnicron. Omicron. Whatever it is. The, the bad news. Yeah, yeah. Something

Dan: I think it is. Yeah.

Dean: Okay, so whatever. Whatever it's called that has, you know, I think driven people back to their caves with their helmets and, you know, governments are a tizzy with travel restrictions and observing it and whatnot. So we've had a few people who have rescheduled because of that. But it's funny, we've had a couple of, you know, it's funny how it's like we've had Canadians who. There's some that are coming and some that are not coming, which is interesting because people are concerned about what, you know, you never know what's going to happen on re entry back into. They could come down here and all of a sudden try to go back to Canada and fight.

Dan: And they quarantine for 14 days.

Dean: 14 day quarantine. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. So that's.

Dean: It's just kind of so unpredictable. You know, I had a event, we had an event scheduled that we were going to do in February with our real estate group. And yeah, I decided, you know, just because of this thing to just not. I'm going to do virtual until we're. Okay, until we're. Until it's, you know, completely normal that we're doing live events again, you know.

Dan: Yeah, well, we're doing that because we have a big team and they've been out of practice of being now for 20 months or more than that, I guess. And so we're. For example, this week I'll be in the office. I'll be going into the office tomorrow. And I've got three workshops this week. Tuesday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. These are full workshops. And then I have a. No, no, virtual. They're very virtual. But I'm going to go into the office and do the virtual. And the entire team, we're using this week. We're using this week to get everybody used to being in the office again and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, because there's all sorts of Canadian and Ontario and Greater Toronto.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Regulations that, you know, you have to be aware of and.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, and our team has done a really good job being on top of this and working it out. But you got to actually have people present to have the conversation. You know, it's, you know, and the office has been reconfigured, you know. You know, we've had to put plexiglass dividers in an open, you know, where there's open seating and every. Everything like that. And, you know, and we put in all these air filters.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Whoever that company is, they've made a ton during this period because we bought about 60 of them. And one of my clients, actually.

Dean: Well, depending on who you did, is I have a plant, Jasper Air Filters. And that was something. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I don't. I don't know who it is. It's a tall tube. It's a tall tube and. And it's got. You just take your hand over it and it adjusts the speed of the. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: So it's beautiful.

Dan: So we. We bought those and then I'm, you know, we're doing it and. And I'm just. Just, you know, just treating it like we're on a wagon train going to the west coast, you know.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, I mean, it's. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be annoying. There's going to be, you know, there's going to be bothered. People bothered by this, bothered by that. And.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and everything like that. But. Yeah, we'll go through.

Dean: I forget. I watched that whole.

Dan: It was a long time. It was a long time. Yeah. I think it took about three months, actually.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: From St. Louis was the last center of civilization before he went west.

Dean: But. Yeah.

Dan: Well, it's an interesting thing. One of the things that I've been looking at a thought that we've gone, you know, let's say from around 1990 to, you know, the shutdown in 2000. So there's about 30 years there, I think, at the upper levels of all bureaucratic organizations, and that would be government and corporations, and then, you know, governments at the federal, state, or provincial level, and then municipal level, and then sort of in between organizations, associations, foundations. My feeling was that the emphasis was so much computerization and, you know, people becoming good with software, but as far as the world was going, it was just. Next quarter would just be more of what you've already been through. Might be. It might require you to be faster. It might require you to, you know, might require all sorts of, you know, conferences skills and software skills and. And, you know, word processing skills and everything else. But the world outside was more or less the world in 2020 that had been there in 1990. Not a big deal. Everything was. There was more of it. There was more world trade, there was more travel. And my feeling is that the entire training of people to manage this had been more or less the same for 30 years. And then all of a sudden, the world was thrown into a point where it didn't need management. It actually needed leadership. And there weren't any leaders. They were just information processors. They could be really competent, doing anything that was predictable, but throw them anything that's totally unpredictable and they become incompetent really quickly.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. So that's what I think, is that like the, you know, the supply chain stuff and everything else is that the solution to the problems that are needed are really leadership skills, not management skills.

Dean: Vision. This is where kind of go. That's exactly it, Dan. That's what I'm saying is the vision to see these things. I've got. One of the things I'm looking up is the impact of the ice cream shop idea on grubhub and Seamless with Oranda and Uber Eats from the company that does Ben and Jerry's. That the big. I forget I've lost the name of the parent company of them. But that whole idea of It's a

Dan: Belgian company, isn't it? It's some big.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Some Muslim national brokerage. I think it's out of Europe. Yeah.

Dean: I think I want to say love it, not live something with an L. But the. Just the vision to think, what if we could deliver ice cream to people? How would that happen? We've already. We just need to find. We just need to find freezers to stash goods. I mean, just such a. So there's so many. It's such an exciting time that this is, I'm gonna, I'm trying to deconstruct and create some. A new exercise for us when we get together to do a new intellectual shortcut, a worksheet that we can, I think as we say Dan, to, to.

Dan: Yeah, I mean it's always, you know, I mean that, you know, I'm. I did a quick exercise that I tested in a 10 times one of our connectors. I use the 2 hour connectors for just, you know, come up with a new thinking exercise and test it. It might be, you know, it might be a one day tool, it might be a full quarter tool. It might be, yeah. 30 year. 30 year tool. But you don't know until you test on test check writers whether. But one of my days I just took the four freedoms, Time, money, relationship and purpose. And I said let's take a look at your freedom right now. And time. What can happen faster just as it relates to how you use time. What, what can happen easier as it relates to time and then, you know, get a bigger result out of your time. And then we did that with money too. Faster, easier, cheaper and bigger and relationship and purpose. And so at the end, you know, they have the four freedoms, but they have three improvements for each. So there's 12 improvements and then the final one is who not house that would show up to actually do the house for.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Any of those 12 improvements. And it was very knitting together, you know, it was kind of like when they thought about it, because it's really your freedom, you know, I mean, I think the closer you are to being really successful, the more your improvements are seen in terms of freedom.

Dean: Yeah. I think when you start to think

Dan: about, I mean, if you have a lot of money, if you have a lot of money, you may have a lot of money, but it doesn't feel like freedom. So how do you have a lot of money and it actually feels like freedom? You know, I mean there's. Yeah. So you have a lot of stuff, you can have a lot of stuff that most people think, oh, he's really successful, but you're not feeling it right. You know, you, you may be making $5 million a year as an investment broker, but your life is a mess, you know.

Dean: Yes, that's true. And it goes the other way too, that you may have like, I think if we were to look on that scale that my life scales that I have, I'm a time billionaire in that regard. Yeah. The lifestyle of that everything is, is done by other, other people, you know, and that's an interesting. You're right. It's a scale.

Dan: Well, it's a freedom. It's a freedom. I mean, that's.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and, you know, over the last couple of years, I've just taken more notice of conversations that coach clients have with me regarding selling their company, period, or selling one of their companies, which, you know, happens more and more that people have more than one company. And. And I talk them through it. And I said, well, first of all, I said, you know, I mean, everybody's got their own reasons for doing anything. And I said, is this a big jump for you? I mean, will this. I mean, will this, you know, getting a big check? And in most cases, it's the check. And so I said, you know, it's really kind of hard to judge it today. It's kind of hard to judge. Judge. But three years, if you do this, let's say in the next three months, let's go out three years. And at the end of three years is the transformation of going in this direction. Does this put you up better three years from now? And then they say, well, how would I look at that? And I said, well, how would your freedom of time be over the next three years? And then I take them through the other three freedoms, you know, money, relationship and purpose. And. And I see their brain working with it. And they said, yeah, it's going to put a lot of strain on home life. It says that okay with you. I mean, is it okay with your. Is it okay with your, you know, your wife or your husband? Is it okay with your children as other commitments you already have, Is it okay to do? I said, I can't. I said, you're. You're in the center of your universe, and you're the one who's saying that. So I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I will say that if there's a severe loss of personal freedom that you have created as an entrepreneur for big check, is this check actually buying you freedom or is it actually reversing your life? Is it taking you back to, you know, you know, five years ago? It takes you back.

Dean: Interesting. You're right. It's the pursuit of that check. Yeah, that is. That's often the. Yeah, that's. That's.

Dan: Wow. As if it check itself magically go up. A check itself is going to magically create freedom. And my feeling is that that's not what checks are. The possibility, you know, there are certain. It may be a fantastic capability that allows you to do all sorts of Things or it may actually be a big obstacle that prevents you from doing things. I said the check itself doesn't have. No check has meaning in itself. It's how it relates to what you're planning.

Dean: That's interesting. I've been, you know, pros now to see some, you know, close friends go have jumps in one day from, you know, a six figure account to ten figure account. And that's, that's a big, it's a big difference. Not 10. Oh, yeah. Ten plus million would be eight. Eight figures. Sorry. But that's, you know, that's a big. Yeah, that's a jump. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And we're. It's all mindset, like. Yeah, you know.

Dean: Well, it's a hundred percent mind somebody. Dan, that's. I've had this great conversation. It's a great conversation starter because the reality is that we live in the moment, we experience the freedom only in the moment. Right. Like, only right now. And I've had this conversation with people of what would happen. Like, how would what be the chronological, real time impact on your life right now? If I transferred $100 million into your account right now? If I, you know, digitally wired and we look at your account and there's $100 million in your account right now, how would that. And where would that. Where what would be the number that that would change? Because there's not. I don't know that it would, it would change differently if it was a million dollars or $10 million or $100 million. But chronologically, where does that impact what the money really is? What you. I think that the thing that you hit on is cash confidence.

Dan: Yes.

Dean: Yeah, that's the, that's the byproduct of the, the actual amount of the actual money.

Dan: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, the, you know, I guess this is really the heart of what gives your life meaning. In other words, what. And for me, I'm noticing because Ben Hardy and I are writing book number three in the Hay House series, you know, and we're, you know, the first two years are doing us a lot of good. It's doing Ben a lot of good in the way he wanted things to happen. And it's doing strategic coach a lot of good in a way. And Hay House feel. They're feeling really great about it. And Tucker, Max is feeling. So four people who were, you know, who are in the same. We're all feeling really good about what it's doing. Okay, so that's, that's great. But the next one is about 10 times and the question came up, well, why don't you go 100 times? And I said, well, I said, if your pattern has been basically two times up until now, right. The jump from two times to 100 times, I just don't think you. You got much to work with there as far as operations, you know, but 10 times, you might have a lot of aspirin. So you can see that. Yeah, I can see that. And probably there's a lot of things that right now you can't get to because you don't have the difference between 2 times and 10 times. Okay? Already 2 times is a lot of work. And right off your brain says two, that means that 10 times is going to be five times harder. Well, that's not actually what it means. That's what, that's the shift that you have to make is that 10 times could actually be easier than two times. But I don't think somebody can say a hundred times going to be easier than two times. You know, like, I just don't think where you are right now. And ours, I mean, we've gotten a really healthy respect for reserves for the company because we did really well. We had really good reserves that were that, you know, we had stockpiled a lot of reserve financing and various instruments, and we had the banking relationships all set up for this and everything like that.

Dan: So that we were able to, you know, we had 130 team members going into Covid, and we're coming out with about 123, you know, 123 people. So my big thing is to not lose your organizational power during the downturn. If it's a financial downturn, this was a big one. But the big thing is a lot of your competition just disappears. Competition in the sense that people are talking about coaching, you know, and should I go here, should I go there? I've been talking to these people and everything like that. And our salespeople, I asked them, you know, over the last six months, you notice your prospects mentioning other. Any other coaching course, and none of them are mentioning any other coaching. And I said, we lost a lot of people who were, you know, competing for the same dollar, you know, one way or another.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And it gives our salespeople a lot of confidence. And we're having our best, you know, we're having our best sales here since, I don't know, 2011, 2012, something like them, you know, in terms of total numbers, signing up and, you know, and that's great. And the class of the workshops we've been doing is about 30% less. So. So well, but there's a nice gain in that. But I think the, the reason I'm so interested in what you're saying, Dean, is the mindset. The mindset part of it is so crucial as I approach this new lifetime extender one. I said, yeah, you know, and one of mine is, you know, one of my goals is that this comes from working with my trainer. When I turned 75, which was 2019, I was 75. And I was 75. So I'd had three 25 year old periods in my life. And I'm looking at the fourth one, which takes me to 100. And I said, tony, my trainer's name is Tony. And I said, tony, the exercise that we just did today, we did a really good workout. Can I do this when I'm 100 years old? And he says, sure. I said, how do I do make sure that I can do this when I'm 100? He says, do something like it every day between now and your hundredth birthday.

Dean: Ah, right, right, right, right, right.

Dan: Well, that's a valuable piece of information. Yeah, but that's thinking it through, actually thinking through the practicality. And

Dean: that reminds me of there was a story about a strong man that could carry his goat to the top of a mountain and a full grown goat and on his back. And what he said, well, how did you know? Every day since the goat was born, I've carried him up this mountain. So it doesn't seem any more difficult today than it was the day before. You just keep carrying the goat up the mountain every morning. And he only weighs a few ounces more than he did the day before.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's where the vision comes from that your things are easy or difficult or impossible based on what your vision is. In other words, what you're going to do today is really a function of what the reason why you're doing this today, you know?

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Yeah. And I think that there's enormous inequality among human beings and just how far they're seeing into the future to make sense of what they're doing today.

Dean: Yes. Well, Dan, I can't tell you how much I enjoy these conversations.

Dan: Me too, me too.

Dean: I will hesitate to call them podcasts, but they are.

Dan: Well, you know, I mean, the thing is that in each of the conversations we've had right from the beginning, what we ended up with after an hour was created during the hour.

Dean: That's true. That's exactly right. Yes.

Dan: You know, yeah. And you know, there was New material fed in, new experiences from both sides. And, yeah, I've been talking about. Yeah, I'd like to talk about, you know, in one of the future ones, because I was reading an article about, you know, the manic race now in some parts of the technological world to hook your brain up to the cloud. And I'm trying to imagine and said, would you like to hook your brain up to the cloud? And I said, it's not on my list for.

Dean: Not today.

Dan: Not today. And I said, do you know how hard it is for me throughout my lifetime just to hook my brain up with what's just actually happening to me today? I said, yeah, I have to be medically enhanced. I have to be chemically enhanced to just hook my brain up with what's actually just happening to me today. And I said, do I want my brain hooked up with everything else that's happening? I'm going to give this. I want to see more instructions on what this is going to do for me.

Dean: Yeah, crazy. Crazy. I don't think. I don't think I'm going to be first in line for that.

Dan: No, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna watch what happens. You know, I'm gonna let. I'm gonna let Mikey do it.

Dean: You all. In a lot of ways, Stan, this is what we're doing part of the thing. I mean, you do so many podcasts. I do podcasts. It's kind of a delayed action. We are kind of hooking our brains up, letting everything come out, because once we do this now it's all digitized, and there's hours and hours of what we were thinking in. A good predictive AI could build a model around how we think and, you know, create that from there.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. But my sense is, you know, my. My mind is just. I don't. I think there's a theme. And, you know, I'm not saying it's a major theme for next time, but I think it's going to be a constant theme as we go forward, is that there's a thought in some technological circles, especially that computers and the human brain are more or less the same thing happening. And I think that they're radically different. I mean, from my standpoint right now, I think that if you have one computer and it takes information and processes it in a particular way, a hundred versions of that computer with the same program will more or less do the same thing with the information. And that's why we like computers, is they will predictably respond to the information and more or less the same way. I mean, that's basically. I think, why we want to have computers is because they're predictable. And my sense is that you take 100 human beings and give them simultaneously the same input of information. My feeling is, very quickly, within a matter of seconds, you got a thousand different versions that humans have translated this into all sorts of things that don't have anything to do with the information.

Dean: Yeah. Wow.

Dan: I think we're meaning makers. I don't think we're information processors.

Dean: That's true. And that's all our intellectual shortcuts do, is help us make meaning. Yeah. That's why they're so valuable.

Dan: Yeah. And that's what we're doing here, is we're making meaning. Yeah.

Dean: I love it.