Diversifying Through the Cloud

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson, how are you this morning?

Dean: I am good. How are things in Clublandia? You arrived well before me.

Dan: Well, I. I think they're. I think they're changing and I was thinking of a thought. I think that there's been just a lot of experimentation and playing that's been going on for, you know, probably since the 90s with, with Coglandia. And what they did is that they created a lot of capabilities where it created a lot of buzz and it created a lot of, what should I say? Distraction. It was sort of an entertainment. I think what I'm seeing is some trends towards highly productive use of Cloudlandia. And if you think, I mean, one example would be that you have social media, but the most useful social media that from my perspective has been Zoom.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And the reason is because I don't think it's used just to chat with people for the most part. I think it's used to create projects and. Yeah, and create. Create teamwork. It took a while for the technology to be so good that you would have, you know, really clear, you know, crystal clear vision, great sound, and then, you know, the ability to record what you were doing right there. You can actually do production work with it. So that would be an example. And I think the other thing is, I think that there's massive amount of work going on right now and reconfiguring the, you know, the getting products where they need to get to, you know, and supply chains, you know, supply chains. And not just. Not just improving the supply chains that already exist, but actually reconfiguring them. Because the manufacturing of so many things is moving from Southeast Asia back to North America.

Dean: True. Yeah.

Dan: So it's just a thought that actually people and, you know, you're, you know, your person, Mr. Beast that you've been following now for two years. I mean, he's produced basically $100 million, you know, $100 million of personal profit from using that for business purposes.

Dean: Yes. And that, you know, opening up with the assist of the. Of virtual dining concepts. You know, that as a model now is a standard thing. And this now creates. Is as a tool, it's available for. You know, I was thinking about your. Your idea of the. And you'll forgive me if I get this right, but they're the ideas and then the programs and clap. Shortcut.

Dan: Shortcuts, Programs and platform. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: And so you look at the idea that behind that, behind what Mr. Beast is doing came from an idea that the. You Know the gentleman who started Virtual Dining Concepts, his idea that all these restaurants have excess capacity and if you just take a step up, they've all got the same equipment in the kitchens, meaning they've all got the same capabilities with the. I really found that to be an aha when I went to their website and it showed how to turn your assets, how to, you know, maximize your, your assets. And it looked at the different. When it had just the illustrations of the equipment that are standard in any kitchen, meaning a freezer and a deep fryer and a surface fryer and a pizza oven and, you know, regular oven. All these things that if you've got those capabilities that allowing other people tap into them kind of reminded me of the. What Peter Diamandis shared with us about that electronics marketplace in China where basically go and under one roof combine all the components that you need to make basically any electronic, any electronics thing. Well, I think that we're at a point where these platforms, I guess is what you would call now. Would you say that Virtual Dining Concepts has moved into a platform model?

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: Where, yeah.

Dan: Well, I think the moment that you get, I mean, you could say that Mr. Beast Burger is a program on the platform.

Dean: Yes. Okay.

Dan: And so that's how they have other people who are, you know, who are, you know, expanding their own assets by using the platform. So the platform, you know, you can constantly experiment with different offerings and at the same time you're increasing the platform. And I think it's the model that has really developed since the 1970s with the growth of new kinds of tech companies, you know, and you could looked at, you know, they're not new anymore, but Microsoft and Apple and Oracle. What you look at is that they have a platform and then they have various product offerings. Apple has a single platform. It comes in the form of laptop computers, it comes in the form of your Apple Watch, it comes in the form of itunes, you know, the Apple Store and everything. But iOS, you know, what they call iOS is the platform, you know, the App Store, you know, you can put in an app, but you gotta build it so, so that it's compatible with iOS. And so my feeling is the entire economy is moving in this direction. And I'll give you a piece of information which kind of really opened my eyes. We were talking to Steve Krein and I had a podcast with Keegan Caldwell. And Keegan is, you know, a. He's had the fastest growing IP firm in the United States over the last, each of the last three years. His company has Grown at a faster rate than any other intellectual property firm. And I'm sure there's a lot of them out there because we're the, you know, IP is a very important business component. But what he said is when he looks at the fastest growing companies, 80% of their valuation is based on intangibles.

Dean: Like IP is that.

Dan: Well, yeah, well, IP, but you know that you have a new patent, you have copyrights, you had trademarks, and this all relates to ideas. Basically, it's the packaging of ideas and getting protection of your ideas. And then the platforms that grow the fastest are the ones that make it the easiest for new ideas in lots of different forms to get out to the marketplace and to become profitable very quickly.

Dean: That's great. Yeah, it's such a. I mean, so

Dan: I think that going back to Mr. Beast, when they. He did the Beast Burger, the moment he hit that button, you know, I think it was on a Sunday and he had like, I forget the exact number. It was 300 signups, 342 restaurants on the same day.

Dean: Yeah. Launched on day one with over 300 restaurants.

Dan: Yeah. the same second, actually. At same second. And. Well, he was profitable already before that because he's got no, he's got no stuff. I mean, he's got some videos, you know, he's got manuals and videos. And he has no tangible. I mean, he has no tangibles as. I mean, if you think about the restaurant, they have their kitchen and that's a tangible. You know, they have this piece of equipment, that piece of equipment. These are all tangibles. But what he's doing is multiplying immensely the value of their tangibles with intangible. With intangibles.

Dean: You know, what they have. Yeah, because I have a client who signed up as a Mr. Beast, you know, provider in their kitchen. And what they actually have, there's. They send a list of. There's 23 SKUs that you need to stock to be, to, you know, be able to prepare the menu. And, and they show, you know, all from the same suppliers that you're already using. There's only a couple of big restaurant supply, you know, infrastructure kind of thing. So you've got, you know, this lettuce and these buns and this french fries and, you know, all of these burgers and that whole thing, along with videos that are very, they're like shot on an iPhone. Just very simple. You know, here's how to prepare the beef burger. And they're just walking through the preparation of it. And this is, you Know the. From beginning to end, here's how it goes. This is the timing of everything, the syntax, the sequence of when to do it. This is how you package it and then off to go. And they go through those for every menu item, how to prepare and package them. That's it. Your compliance test is to prepare them and send pictures of the completed item so they can show you, show along the way. This is, here's the burger, here's the packaging, here's the thing. And you get approval like that and you're off to the races. They set you up with the tablet that is, you know, just for this. And all you do, the only thing you do is when the tablet, you know, rings. Here's the. The ticket, prepare it, put it in the spot where the delivery guys will pick it up. So it's almost like those. There's a special kind of, I think engineering that is a new skill of combining platforms and capabilities to create a unique capability. Like, because the thing of combining this concept of excess capacity in your kitchen to prepare somebody else's vision, somebody else. Mr. Beast Menu layered then on top of the existing Uber Eats DoorDash Grubhub delivery app platform. Really what makes that work? Layered on top of. Powered by Mr. Beast's use of the YouTube platform for Re start to see all of these, you know, the interchange between layering all of these different platforms. Amazing. Yeah.

Dan: I think the. But here again, we're, you know, we're 30 years into the Internet and. And it's taking 30 years for there to be. I mean, it's been used for advertising, you know, but that was just a shift of medium for advertising. You were just shifting from, you know, you were just shifting. It wasn't on paper. You were just shifting it to a. A new communication system essentially. And I was noticing that what's her name, Sandberg, who was the number two at Facebook, is leaving Facebook and. And you know, and a lot of people talk about Mark Zuckerberg, but from a. Facebook wasn't making any money before Sheryl Sandberg came on board because she had created the advertising model for Google and then she. Or had worked on it and then she moved to Facebook to actually create an advertising model for Facebook. And the valuations, the valuation for Facebook and for Twitter and all the social media are based on an advertising model. How do you measure people paying attention to you? And then you sell that, you know, you sell that to advertisers. You know, we'll get these many of viewers for you. But the interesting thing about it is that Mr. Beast. Tell me his name again. Jimmy Donaldson. Jimmy. Remember, Jimmy Donaldson had already developed, you know, 60, 70 million viewers just through his own creativity. And. And this is what he had. He had this amazing asset. And to a certain extent, he's multiplying his asset by applying it to, you know, to, for one thing, his favorite menu. He's. His favorite menu, and then he's creating this menu. His favorite menu can be featured at your restaurant because he can bring you the immediate buyers for the food that you're offering. You know, there. The one thing. I just finished a book called the Cloud Revolution by Mark. Mark Miles. Terrific book. I mean, really dense, a lot of factoids and. But his essential thing is that you get fundamental breakthroughs when you combine three different technologies. You know, and he was talking about automobiles. It really was the combination of the internal combustion engine on wheels, which made the car. With the revolution in the refining of gasoline and distribution of gasoline and the new technologies involved in road making.

Dan: And they all happened near the end of the teens, you know, the 19 teens and. And then in 20, 1920s, it just went through the roof. It had. I mean, automobiles had been around in one form or another for 30 years before they really took off. So the Internet's been around for 30 years. And I mean, people say, well, it's changed everything, but kind of just, I take it that they were kind of taking, you know, it's the same transitions as taking radio shows to making them into television shows. You know, if you look at what's happened over the last 30 years, this seems brand new. This seems brand new. You know, the. What you're talking about here. This seems like a major new business innovation.

Dean: Well, that's. I think that's because we're realizing these real, you know, the big five gathering places of everybody. I mean, that you can dependably, you know, reach everybody through their, you know, either their Apple device or their Android device. That's really the primary platform of everything, is people having access to, you know, mobile. And when you think about that, how many of these devices there are right now, which is literally meaning every single individual is, you know, addressable. One to one. You could reach out to. To anybody with another one of these devices. But the gathering places of them, when you look at Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube and even Google, you know, people navigating or finding their way around these things, that whole. There's really only, you know, that's where all the hotspots are, right? Like, those are the conduits kind of thing through which everybody's fitting and so getting the tremendous reach that you can develop that way. Like what Mr. Beast has done. 94 million subscribers right now, you know, and I don't know whether I told you, he just launched a chocolate company as well.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Where they make chocolate bars. Yeah. I think they partnered with a company in Brazil or Peru somewhere that makes the chocolate. But, you know, what an amazing, you know, story just seeing all of that playing out, you know.

Dan: Yeah. I probably have it on a subscription basis.

Dean: Yes, I bet you can.

Dan: Yeah. A certain amount of chocolate. Yeah. There's a chocolate maker in Toronto, right. On King Street, Soma, and Babs is huge. And I think she probably got it on subscription every 30 days. They. They send her 30 bars. Is that who makes the big.

Dean: The dark chocolate that she always.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. It's the only hundred percent chocolate that I've ever eaten.

Dean: Oh, wow.

Dan: That doesn't taste like dirt, you know.

Dean: Right, exactly. That's what I was.

Dan: No, it's actually, it's actually got a real flavor to it. I mean, it's an acquired taste, but, you know, it's cocoa beans and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Not much else. And. And so she loves it. She loves it and they love her. They send her little notes and everything else.

Dean: That's.

Dan: That's kind of the ideal target client. So that's really the other thing. I think subscriptions are also becoming part of this, you know, it's, you know, people are telling you that if you do a good job, they'll stay with you forever, you know.

Dean: Well, I've been using that on Amazon and there's a. That's an interesting thing that has evolved, is now I get toothbrushes and razors. I've got them on subscription at Amazon. They arrive, you know, you know, every 90 days. I get a timely shipment of. Yeah, exactly. I get a new toothbrush every 90 days that shows up and a, you know, new batch of razors. And even they're stacking up right now because I've been kind of beard friendly here. Yeah. Bearded. For the last. Yeah. Year now.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But yeah, that, that's all part of that convenience, you know, and having that going deeper. You know, our. Even when we look at our breaks. Off would be after unit things which are about nurturing lifetime relationships with people and orchestrating referrals and so.

Dan: Yep.

Dean: You know, I look at when you've got your reach there, when you've got your sort of constituents or, you know, I look at tremendous job of that in terms of Being my go to retail, you know, for anything place, you know, I could literally order up what, whatever I want to have it here the next morning. And so, you know, for them to be able to. I'll open that platform to other, you know, manufacturers and stuff. Even though they do it in a kind of an evil way that they, you know, end up observing everything and the products that do well, they end up making them themselves and taking over for the other people. You've seen that again and again. But.

Dan: Well, fortunately, fortunately they're profitable and that keeps them. Keeps their head screwed on. Right. You know. Yeah, the thing that I, you know, I mean, the, you know, the evil predictions, the predictions of evil people, it's where they aren't profitable and they, you know, they're selling their information about you to, to make money or to control, you know, to have power in that. You know, I mean, just to switch there for a moment because that's one of the scares about how much other people know about you. And, you know, I, I must not be a very interesting subject for them because, you know, I don't have any filters to filter out ads or anything on my computer, but I must be sort of stuck into a lifetime mode that doesn't really interest a lot of marketers because I don't get many ads. And.

Dean: Well, you're, you are. You're not in that 18 to 34 demographic that everybody covets.

Dan: That's a true statement, what you just said there. I am not in that. That's such a. That's a very true statement.

Dean: Yeah. And I just passed out of even the SEC. The next one, the 35 to 55. I just turned 56. So that's a. Yeah, there you go. There you go.

Dan: Yeah, well, it's a, you know, it's an interesting thing. But, you know, my main. Probably, you know, I'm entrenched in looking for interesting articles on the Internet. So, you know, I mean, I mean, I, that's really my. And now I'm. I've really developed a love of YouTube for their. If I find somebody who's written something interesting, I immediately check to see if they've done interview. And Peter Zion, you know, who is a favorite of mine, he has just taken off like ad on YouTube. He's got.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, if you say Peter Zion, YouTube Z E I H A N as his name is I. And if you go to YouTube, he's got pages and a lot of them are very recent. You know, they're the last month or last two months and, and the 2014. And one of his books, I think it was the Accidental Superpower. He predicted that in 2022, thereabouts, 2022, Russia, feeling desperate, would invade Ukraine. So wow, that's eight years ahead. That's a pretty good, you know, and then he explains why. Because they're, they're losing population so quickly as a country. They're not having babies and everybody who can leave leaves. So they, they're faced with a lower, lower population. And then he sort of predicted that this decade of the 20s, he said this is when almost every country in the world starts losing population. Okay. And the, this would not be true of Canada, the uk, Australia, United States, obviously the United States, Canada. And, and the reason is because they're the favorite immigration countries in the world, somewhere else in the world. And you want to go there. Five out of the top six are those British. You know the British, British founded countries and everything because they have rule of, they have rule of law and you know, they're, they're reasonably, you know, reasonably peaceful and everything like that. So he talks about that, you know he talks about, he said. But the rest of the world is de. S. will bring 80, 80% of its supply chains back to North America and it'll be in Mexico. You know, the lower labor cost ones will be in Mexico. And they've got all the energy they could possibly want. They have all the total food that they could want. There's some specialties that we need from other places, but generally pretty self sufficient. If you take United States, Canada and Mexico, it's you know, big population probably, you know, pushing with Mexico and Canada, probably, you know, 450 million going towards a half a billion. But other countries are losing population, Europe's losing population, Africa isn't. But they, you know, economically just earned a rival. But China's losing that. It's the fastest, it's losing population. The fastest in human history of any society.

Dean: Is that right? I didn't know that.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: Where are they going?

Dan: No, they're not the big five. They're all.

Dean: Oh, I see, okay.

Dan: Oh, I see. Okay.

Dean: And they've had that no 40 year

Dan: they afforded your one child.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So they don't have.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So in, by 2050 they'll have three old people for every one worker.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: When they started their huge jump, they had six workers for every old person. So. And so. So, you know, but these are interesting going back to Peter Zion he's very contrarian. He was extraordinarily contrarian eight years ago. But the things that he's predicting are actually taking place. And he's getting massive requests now to come and talk to industry conferences, military conferences, you know, financial conferences and everything, because everything that he's lined up is kind of. People are checking it off and saying, you know, this guy really has a formula for understanding what's taking place. Well, one of the things that's really happened is that, you know, generally speaking, you, me and a lot of people, if it's going to require travel, it's really got to be really important. It's got to be really important. And therefore the Cloudlandia capabilities become increasingly more important.

Dean: I'm noticing that's absolutely true, that I feel like I see it in my own life that the two worlds that become most important are my Cloudlandia world and my hyperlocal world. And just, you know, putting you. And I've talked about this, putting that little bubble or radius over where you actually. Your footprint on the mainland. Yeah. You know, as. As limited as it is. And I just went and I think you've got your favorite places kind of thing on the thing. Like, I've got a cafe that I go to here in Winter Haven called N plus one and N plus one coffee. And of course, it's a fun thing. The formula N plus one is a old.

Dan: Yeah. This is a test of one. A test of one.

Dean: Well, N one is the number of. It's the biker, you know, the bicycle riders have determined the formula for the correct number of bikes to own is n +1, n being the number of bikes that you currently own. And the ideal number is N plus 1. And that's what they say about the coffee, that the proper number of copies is N plus what, however many you've had. Plus one.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So ever improving number. But they've done a really interesting job. If you look at these. If we overlay the VCR formula on that vision capability multiplied by reach, you know, they've got. They're doing some pretty interesting moves in that the coffee shop is within the building of the bike shop. There's the biggest bike shop in Winter Haven, but in the same building. On one end of the building is the N plus one coffee shop, which has a, you know, open, open transition, like Barnes and Noble used to have Starbucks in the thing. N plus one has the. The bike shop has the N plus one in there. And then within N plus one there are. They have a little bakery section that is all distributed by other local bakeries here that they don't make anything or prepare anything there. They just have a little distribution center for it. And then all of the. Goods company that they've got little displays all through the cafe. What everything you see in the cafe is also available to buy all the decor that you see. So it's a really interesting use of their capability, their reach that they have combining with other, with other providers. And so an interesting thing. You know, I just realized how I'm really conscious of those, those that juxtaposition the Cloudlandia where everything is available. But then my local, my hyperlocal thing where the same principles kind of apply but it's just on a local basis.

Dan: Yeah, well, I think that's very true that because when we were locked down for two years, we began to prioritize things that are valuable and things that aren't valuable both during COVID and what was going to happen after Covid. And you know, and I think there's an enormous shift from that is going on that will not be measurable by normal measurements. You know, like normal way in labor markets, in, you know, and moving from one place to another, enormous amount of movement. Florida, where you live is the recipient of people moving from high tax places or you know, goofy regulation places moving to Florida and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and bad weather places. You know, bad weather. People had two years of COVID locked down with bad weather and couldn't, couldn't go south, couldn't go to a warm place and. But it kind of. They had a habit. But now they've got a value, now they've got a priority and got a decision that I think has triggered a lot of behavior. Oh. Just as a point of Toronto local interest, La select is opening at the end of June. Oh. With new owners.

Dean: Oh yeah. Great. In the same place. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And if they're smart, they won't change a thing because that's the whole point. Right. French bistros.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But it's no. Jacques is gone. Completely gone. Yeah.

Dean: That's surprising that they couldn't have sold that as well because it's an institution. Right.

Dan: My feeling is that the owners were close to retirement and yeah. Just, they just sped it up and you know, they weren't going to get involved with that. And the thing was they didn't have a, you know, the, it's not a great place for a restaurant because no, you know, they didn't have many, they didn't have many seats. But what they had was an intensely loyal Client base based on the ownership, you know, was intensely loyal and if the owners aren't there, it's not a viable. That's not true. For less select right now, let's select has got a big space and a great location. You know, it's a huge growth area. As far as condos.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: They just put in probably a thousand condos within a two block, you know, two block area them. But if they're smart, they won't change very much, you know, because it was an incredibly good formula. It lasted for 40 years before COVID and so. So I just wanted to. I'll sort it out, you know, I'll sort it out over the next month so. Table 10, you know, I'm just going to check the table 10 then and you know, if they renumber it, if they come up with another number numbering system, that's a minus mark for them. They should.

Dean: Oh my goodness, that's so funny.

Dan: I've got standards, you know, I've got standards. I know.

Dean: That's my favorite. I always. And you know, the funny thing is the menus, even the menus, like I, you know, to me La select is the steak free place for me and jocks was the. That shrimp.

Dan: Yeah, well, they had the other thing. They were the omelette place.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, 15 different omelets. And that was really great.

Dean: But I think just one for me.

Dan: Yeah. The interesting thing about it. Oh, I wanted to tell you a story, you know, because we're. We're moving into a sidebar here. But we stayed. We were in London four weeks ago and we were in right on at Hamyard, which is one of the firm. Firmdale, right off Piccadilly. And. And so there's a Whole Foods which is about a 10 minute walk from a Hamyard and there's a theater there. We went to see a musical. Babs loved it. I thought it was clever. I didn't really banging home with me called Moulin Rouge, you know, I thought it was sort of a clever play. Ben. Babs liked it, but they had a lot of modern music. It was, you know, it was a 1800s setting, but they had modern music like Elton John and Lady Gaga and Rihanna and things like that. None of which I recognize.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Anyway, so. So it didn't. The use of the sance to depict the. That depicts the plot didn't really bring home with me because I, I didn't get the punchline with most of them. But one of the things, our concierge at the hotel, we have a favorite concierge for 20 years. When we go to London, he's a fantastic concierge named Sandro. He works at the Ham.

Dean: You follow him to that hotel, right?

Dan: Yeah, this, this is the third hotel we followed him to. Yeah, we started with one, moved to another, and then the third one. But he said, you probably want to eat very close to the theater. So he said, there's this cafe, I think it's called, it's called Zado Z E D E L. And I've seen it for, you know, I passed by it and, you know, I kind of look like a, you know, sort of that sort of thing. But I went there with Babs. And you go in and then you go down two full flights into the ground. And you get down there and there's this massive nightclub, there's a massive bar and an even more massive restaurant down there. Wow. All three of them were built in the 1930s and this was the biggest hotel in the world that had over a thousand rooms. But gradually, through redevelopment, the whole hotel part of it has been taken over by office buildings. Actually Whole Foods is one of the office buildings, I mean, one of the commercial. But they've kept the space down there and they completely renovated it 10 years ago. So it's been there for 10 years. And it just, you go down there and it's like you just discovered, you know, a secret underground world there. I bet the restaurant can see 250 people.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: It's a really big restaurant. And, you know, it's brasserie. It's, you know, it's a standard French sort of menu, you know, like comfort food, a lot of comfort food and everything like that. But I was so amazed at how London has so many attractions, that something like this, which is really quite extraordinary, is kind of like something that you find out one day and it's been sitting there for 10 years. So anyway, that was a great treat because it's literally 10 minute walk from your room, you know, when you're there. So we'll go back again and we'll go back there again. But, but this is a really good theme that we're on this theme that you have Cloudlandia, which gives you global reach and then you have your hyper local. Your hyper local feeling.

Dean: Yeah, I think that is. And that's really where I launched a new program for our real estate agents this past week. And the first module that I was talking about was getting referrals. And in that, you know, I had this, I've observed referrals for a very Long time now and have observed like patterns of how and why the psychology of why people refer and who we refer. And, you know, it goes all the way back to Robin Dunbar, his work in discovering that we really have the capacity to have 150 relationships. And that goes all the way back to the days that, you know, as long as we've been playing, I've been calling it the cooperation game, where somebody figured out that if we team up, we're going to be better off than being individuals out in the world alone. And that there's so many things that go into this. You know, when we were tribal at that time, you know, that was part of the infrastructure that we would, you know, develop into tribes of 150 people. And once it got beyond that, it would split into, you know, into divergent tribes. Because in order to be safe and secure within the tribe, you had to know everybody. If I didn't recognize you, you're a threat to, you could be a threat to everything. And that's why that, that happened. And when you look at.

Dan: That's why you had a tattoo on your face, right?

Dean: And when you look at our, when you look at our society now, cities and the bigger, you know, the bigger places that were gathering were just intermingled tribes playing a bigger cooperative cooperation game where it's amazing that even though we live in cities of, you know, a million or more people, we're still, the individuals within that city are still part of thousands of 150 person tribes that are, you know, still kind of doing. And that's why I think about, you know, even in winter haven with 60,000 people, I mean, more in the winter, but 60,000 base population even, I'm still very constrained to southeast Winter Haven particularly. And you know, my, the places that I.

Dan: That means there's 400 tribes, there's 400 tribes, and probably is. Yeah, yeah, four, 400 times 150.

Dean: Yeah. And isn't that interesting that, you know, so, and that's really the way that the, the mainland kind of works, you know, is the people have these, their local, you know, their spot, their cafe and their restaurants and their service providers and, you know, all these individuals that you need on a local basis to provide for the life that you live. You know, like you. There's no, you know, we have the, the crew that comes and cleans are out that cleaning somebody's house is mainland business. You can't digitize that. And everybody, you know, they, you know, have a limited number of, of plants as well. But what my When I look at that, you know, the interesting thing that comes of it is because of that, when you, you know, I've been fascinated with local businesses as the thing that, that I've really paid attention to and developed, you know, marketing, you know, systems program solutions for businesses that can be then, you know, syndicated or duplicated all over in these local bubbles kind of thing. You know, it's really, it's just, I love kind of looking at how all of these things play together, you know, especially when you're using the Cloudlandia tools to reach a local, a local audience. You know, like if you just even.

Dan: Joe. Joe. Joe Heinrich. Heinrich. Joe Henrich is a scientist who deals with that. He wrote a book and it's called the Secret of Our Success. And it's the. That we're the species that beat all the other species to a certain extent. Yeah, but we're the only species that takes care of other species. We're the only species that knows all the other species, you know, so. But he says that basically, probably his estimation, somewhere about a million years ago, a, you know, a ape like mammal started to understand the principle that you mentioned. You know, it's really rough if you live life on your own, you know, or you're always outnumbered by enemies and everything like that. And he just talks about how we created culture. And culture is the medium, it's like the glue that holds people together. And culture is constantly being created by, you know, shared experience and then naming the experience and then prioritizing the experience. And, you know, and that, you know, there was a philosopher, Wittgenstein, mathematician and philosopher in 1930s or so, and he had a really interesting chart line. And he said the universe, the, the entire universe is held together by family resemblance. And what he said is things that kind of look alike. Congregate, in other words, that if there's something about something that you congregate, you know, that you see something that looks familiar to you. In a, in a situation where there's a lot of things that look weird to you that you, you congregate with the things that are resemble you, there's a resonance that you feel. And, and I noticed it when I first came to Canada because when you're an American and you go to Canada, it looks like America. I mean, the, you know, the people I was working with, you know, they're kind of like American, they watch American tv. But after a while you begin to realize there's like a 50%, 15% difference on just about everything that Canadians do not look at things the way that Americans do. And I remember in my first year when I was at the advertising agency, there was this big conference, and, you know, they had a social hour, so there'd probably be about 200 people at the party.

Dan: And I just noticed about 45 minutes in that I was part of a group of people in the room who were all Americans. In other words, There were about 20 people.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, but it was a Canadian conference, but every American together. Every American was here. Had found each other in about 45. Had found each other in about 45 minutes. And you just pick up on something. You know, there's like a radio. There's like a radio frequency that Americans give off that's different from the radio frequency that Canadians give off.

Dean: That's interesting.

Dan: Yeah. And I think your N plus one has a frequency to it that the customers there have a frequency that they pick up with local bakery foods. They're into biking. They're into biking. And so there's about five or six resonant touch points where they may be different a lot of different ways, but you share five or six fairly crucial, you know, something that you think is permanent part of your life. And these people have the same thing. So, you know, dog owners congregate, mothers with new babies congregate. Yeah, yeah.

Dean: And the fact that you live in southeast winter, have geography, there's so many of these little things that go in together. You're absolutely right.

Dan: Now, the people, you know, how many do, you know who are Florida born? But most of the people that, you know have come to Canada, Florida out of choice.

Dean: Yeah, a lot of them. I mean, it certainly, you know, most of Florida is that now. I mean, certainly. And going forward, I think the next 20 years is going to be all of that. I mean, it's, you know, and I think there's, you know, we've talked about that. I look at it that this is, you know, Lee Iacocca's success formula of getting in front of the baby boomers was a winning formula that is available right now in that we're at the phase where 10,000 people a day are turning 65. And that's going to be true for the next 11 years. You know, so you look at that, that, you know, Florida's going to shine on that level, you know, because it's almost become like mandatory military service, that once you turn 65, you retire from the Northeast and you sell your big house and you head to the sun. And now I think we're seeing that you don't even have to wait. You know, you couple it with that now even in your 30s and 40s, where you're in your peak career years that you would in the past be benefited by being within an hour of Manhattan or an hour of Chicago, because that's where all the opportunity is. But the fact that

Dan: it's.

Dean: I think it's even more predominant that distributed working is the new norm now. And. Yeah. That if you can have a job with one of the big companies headquartered in New York or Chicago or whatever major center and you don't have to live within an hour of it, you can live in Florida. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? Yeah, I mean.

Dan: Yeah, I think we're now in the depopulating of the cities.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: So if you take the top 50 cities and you establish total population for the top 50 cities. We're now in a decade, we're at the end of the decade, the population of those 50 cities will be less, fewer cities because people, for the exact reason, you know, we're noticing, you know, with our own company, you know, we have a hundred. We have in Toronto, I'd say 90. We have 90 team members. And, and what you look policy now,

Dean: are you, is it 100 in the office or are you.

Dan: No, it's everybody. No, everybody has to be there on workshop days. So you look at the calendar. Yeah, there's a workshop going on there. We're having clients and on those days you have to be in the office. And that works out to, you know, on average probably about three days a week. So two days a week. They can, they don't have to, they don't have to come in. Okay. And I would say that we're not unusual in that respect. You know and I think the big corporations downtown, you know, the, you know, right in the city center, Bay Street, Bay and Queen, Bay and King. I would, they got, I bet they've got a lot of empty floors in those buildings. Yeah. And, and it kind of. There's going to be some inventive people who, you know, who come up with ideas for what do you do to utilize the empty space in big 50, 60 story high rises. You know, the high rise office buildings.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And you know, so it'll be interesting. There's going to be a lot of inventiveness. You know, probably you'll start seeing some actual light factories in places like that.

Dean: You, you mentioned that I went last week, I went over to the mall here.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: After, in the afternoon after we had spoken and you know I would say that it is 50% empty, you know, like, I mean, 50% vacancy. Yeah. In there. So there's so much, you know, you've still got some of the anchor things there, but there's so much, so many vacancy. Yeah, it's great.

Dan: Yeah. And I mean, and there's some, you know, there's some outstanding qualities about that ball space. I mean, I mean, if it's 50 years old, maybe it's, you know, it's a candidate for tear down.

Dean: I think Peak Mall was, you know, the 80s and early 90s was peak.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So all time. Right. Yeah.

Dan: But they've been kept up. They've been kept up. They've got a ton of parking space. I mean, the one thing that they have is parking space. And they've got a tremendous amount of loading docks underground. Yeah. And my sense is that you could put light manufacturing in some of those places and.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And, you know, and, you know, you could. The trucks already arrived. They go underneath. The trucks can still. Still go. And, you know, I think that just like what really made Toronto, if you go back to the probably 80s, I think probably 19, June hall was the. She. I think she was the last mayor of Toronto before amalgamation, before we went to gta, when the whole city went to the Greater Toronto. Right. And she took a look at all those empty old factory buildings. You know that they were clothing buildings on Spadina Avenue, but warehouse space. And she passed the law, the zoning law, that you could use them for retail, you could use them for business, you could use them for residences, you could use them for, you know, restaurants, you could use them for clubs. Is that you could use a old warehouse.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: For anything. And they're fantastic. And they're stylish.

Dean: Well, that's what they're all. Where you guys are. That.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: That was a big beneficiary of that.

Dan: Right. Well, you have the thing that's called the furniture company. It was a big carpet factory, that furniture. And these were big industrial warehouses. And then, you know, they went out of style. That's not where you had them in the city. And they were big empty spaces. But ours was a Sear Tire warehouse. Oh, is that right where we have our offices? Yeah. Sears and Roebuck, that.

Dean: How long have you been in the offices? 30 years.

Dan: Yeah, 31. So we'll. On Labor Day, we'll be 31 years there. Wow. Yeah. And the only. We're the only. And we're tenants because these guys don't sell. You know, the guys who are in that building and we like the building, and everybody knows where to go and. But only two tenants made it through the COVID The jazz station is on the back of the building. 91.1. The jazz station is.

Dean: Oh, I didn't know they were there. Wow.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. A strategic coach. We're the only two tenants. I mean, they had probably they. Because they've amalgamated three buildings into one unit, so you can actually get to three buildings. And they probably had, I would say, 35 other tenants with 2,000 square foot, you know, places, and none of them made it through the COVID Wow.

Dean: Taken over more space in there.

Dan: No, we don't need it. We don't need it because our expansion is going to be a lot through Zoom. Yeah, right. So we. And, yeah, I mean, right now we're 25 virtual now. So we've gone from, you know, in the course of. And it'll keep going up every year, the amount.

Dean: Yeah, right. Virtual.

Dan: And. And so anyway, it's. It's great. It's really great. Yeah.

Dean: Amazing.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. All right. I've got to jump.

Dean: Okay. This has been amazing.

Dan: I have. Yeah, yeah, we covered that ground. But just to go back, you know, I sort of started off with the thought that Cloudlandia is now getting real serious about making some serious money. And it's not, you know, it's not a craze, it's not a hype or anything else. And it's now real, real serious, and you're going to see some real fundamentally new and different kinds of business arrangements that have lasting, you know, that are lasting models. So anyway, it's very interesting.

Dean: Yes. Well, I always enjoy these conversations, and I'll talk to you next time. Okay.

Dan: Okay.

Dean: Bye. Bye.