Overcoming Old Barriers

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yes. And I'm looking out at our cottage splendor here.

Dean: I like that. I'm sitting in my courtyard on my white couch, noticeably cooler than it has been. And we're about to make some. I forget what the length of time now, but we may. On August 29th here today. Two more days and we may get through the entire month of August with not one named tropical storm in hurricane season here. So that's an interesting. I don't know whether that's for or against the global warming theory. I don't know, but here it is.

Dan: Everything's caused by global warming.

Dean: That's what I wondered. That was my point, actually.

Dan: Human civilization as we know it was caused by global warming because before 11,000 years ago, things were really cold, like, they were frigid.

Dean: That's my. That's what. I just can't wrap my mind around that, Dan. Like, how in the world did the Earth raise its temperature without the assistance of humans and combustible engines back then?

Dan: Yep. Yeah. Well, you know, where we live in Toronto was under 11,000 years, 8,000 years ago. What is downtown Toronto was underwater, except for some of the biggest buildings, and the shoreline was actually Casa Loma. If you think of the rise. And that's a rise that goes up right, from docks, you know, right from the Queen's Cay, which is the. You know, the road right along the lakeshore.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And if you think it's a constant climb and then it's a big climb when you get to Davenport, then you're going really uphill. And that was called Lake Iroquois.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah. And that. And there was a ice dam on the east of Lake Iroquois that all broke. You know, it got warm enough that it just collapsed, and then the water rushed out and probably, you know, really expanded and created the Gulf of St. Lawrence. You know, if you think of it going east, you know, from Kingston all the way to Nova Scotia, you know, and there's some. Excuse me, I just had breakfast. We got. We fiddled around till midnight last night, so.

Dean: Oh, my God.

Dan: We got up. We usually don't do that, but I find travel days are kind of disruptive. Excuse me. I'm just trying to avoid hiccups here.

Dean: That's okay. So you were traveling yesterday to get up to your cottage. Are you there for two weeks now?

Dan: No, we're just here till Friday. So we started Friday. And then. Then the workshop. The workshop. The heavy workshop period starts. And until I get rid of the hiccups you're just going to have to carry the show.

Dean: Okay, well, that's fine. I've had some. I've had a lot of reflection time this week and interesting conversation about your thinking. My thinking that is absolutely right. I had an interesting experience. So I've been going to a particular coffee shop in the mornings. N plus one coffee here, which of course N plus one is a play on the. The correct number of coffees to have is N plus one, N being the number you've already had today. So that's the optimal number is n +1. So there's always room for more coffee. But they are. They're closing on the 1st of September. They just couldn't make it run. And since they opened up, there's been two more independent coffee shops open up within half a mile of them. And, you know, all the supply chain things and they're not an actual roaster, so all just this whole host of reasons that, that they're going to close. And.

Dan: Well, part of it is the price of. Price of raw beans.

Dean: Well, that too. They're not. That's what she said is they're not a roaster. So they're kind of like held hostage for that. And then the cost of milk has gone up and the access to other things. They don't bake stuff. They have to buy things from the baker. So it's interesting that the. The whole thing. But in any event, I realized how, you know, it's. I am a lot like you in my desire to grant people monopolies and I like to have a monopoly. Just like I feel even though I haven't been up back up to Canada in three years, I still feel the void of Table 10 at Jacques not being available for us when I come back. That.

Dan: That the select. The select, yeah. As I mentioned last time, I've successfully overcome my hiccups, so. Perfect. I can be actually a conversation partner with you now. Yeah. But I think that, you know, monopoly's got a bad word, you know, and it's like procrastination, you know, like everybody knocked. That's what got us started on our podcast Journey.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And I think that procrastination is. I said, well, if everybody pro, you know, procrastinates and everybody does it. I mean, I've never met anyone who doesn't procrastinate. Even those who say they don't. I say, well, what about the people around you? Do you have team members that procrastinate? And they say, oh, yeah. And I said, is there one in Particular that just kind of sets you off because they procrastinate so much. And they said, yeah. And I said, have you done anything about it? And they say, no. And I say, well, you're procrastinating because, you know there's going to be an endpoint to it. You know, don't stop procrastinating. You're gonna, you know, you're going to part ways with that person. You, I mean, you've done it before, so why would you not do it again? And usually when you do it, everybody on the rest of the team says, oh, finally, because they're not just procrastinating with you, they're procrastinating with everybody. And, and you know, and I said, you, you all do it. I said, you've got goals that you've been thinking about for three or four years, you know, envision and capability and the reach and you know, you could take advantage of it, but you haven't done it yet. So I would call it, I think that falls into the area of procrastination. Yeah. So, but that's with. What I said is I think it's wisdom. And your response to that was very immediately, within a week or two of our podcast series, you immediately said, you know what it is, you're excited about the what, but the how discourages you. But if you immediately, the moment that you come up with the how you look for the person who's going to do it,

Dean: it's the perfect answer. I had a wonderful.

Dan: And that's been worth millions to us, Dean.

Dean: That's great. Yes. I've had the, you know, the who. I had a great who, not how experience in the last couple of weeks here. One of the things, you know, with TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and you know, all the social media, the reach opportunities that are really coming about video now that, you know, I was thinking about, I've done a lot of, you know, more cheese, less whiskers podcasts, a lot of listing edge and lifestyle podcasts. All those are the main drivers of things. And Joe and I have done, you know, 350 plus. I love marketing podcast.

Dan: Yeah. And, and it was your example that prompted me to, you know, and I talked to Joe about it and it was instant. You know, I mean we instantly said we should have a podcast. And, and Paul Culligan, who was the, you know, the coach for both of us and he does the behind the scenes work to get the podcast out and he just announced he's. It's very funny. We had just crossed 2 million independent downloads. And, and you know, that's a big fact because about 1% of all podcasts ever get to that number. Oh yeah, your way beyond that because you have probably twice as many as we do. But he just announced that we crossed the 2 million independent. That means not passing on, but actually. Right. You know, going on as independent entities, which is the, the gold standard. It's really the gold standard in casting. And what he did was he recorded our very first. He took the recording of our very first podcast. So we're about 100 and you know, 170 or 180 down the, down the path. And he turned it into an LP and created a whole LP cover for our first podcast. And, and now I'm procrastinating finding a record player. Oh. Because it's on vinyl. It's on vinyl. And I say where am I going to find a turntable for this?

Dean: You know, that's funny. Yeah. Wow.

Dan: And. But it's beautiful. I mean It's a beautiful LP.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and a big 33 and the third, you know, 33rd. Yeah, third final record inside.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And then I said, yeah, what a

Dean: great, what a great song. I love that.

Dan: Yeah. And, and but what was really interesting, when Joe was away for the year, you know, he took his sabbatical. That number one podcast episode is still being downloaded, you know, in a three month period. It was downloaded, loaded several hundred times. And that happened. Yeah. And yeah, I'm sure that people are just discovering, I love marketing for the first time and they want to do the whole thing. I mean they're.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I mean it's one thing to binge on, you know, on a. And you know, streaming. You know, when you go back and you suddenly discover a series that happened four or five years ago and you just, you know, you just, you know, you just binge. But you're talking about maybe, you know, 15 hours. Okay. Yes. But here you talk, you're talking about more hours non stop but than is in several weeks with your podcast.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. So try binging. 350 podcasts in a row.

Dean: Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly true. That's. Yeah, it would take, you know, that's an interesting thing if somebody listened to one. We're at the point where you could. There's probably one books.

Dan: There's probably 50 books. If you.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: You know, if you chose to move in that direction or you know, just create a little.

Dean: John, One of the things we did up to the first 200 episodes. We would create little, not little, encyclopedic yearbooks for the first 50 episodes and then 51 to 100 and up to 200. We've got four volumes of the slightly edited, slightly condensed transcript. So it was all the greatest hits of it kind of thing for every episode. And yeah, it's quite an amazing, like, library to look at. That big, you know, encyclopedic book we did eight and a half by 11 and, you know, hundreds of pages for each of them. So big volumes. And one of them we sent into space for its launch. So we had our. The COVID of the book along with some. Some 3D printed action figures of Joe and I up into space and had the, you know, the film of it and stuff was one of those. We had a guy who sent things up into space with weather balloons. You know, you go up into the app, out of the atmosphere kind of thing, and then it would come back down. But that was, you're right, like so much there. And that's what I was thinking about now going forward.

Dan: And that's two people, you know, that's two people. Yeah, I mean, we're just talking about two people. But just multiply that. Well, there's 2 billion right now. They crossed the 2 billion mark in podcast series. And is that right? And just think about the sheer amount of creativity and conversation and important ideas that represent. I mean, some of them, you know, never get out of the starting gate. You know, the number of podcasts of those 2 billion is, you know, if you average them out, they're probably in the dozens of average. If that much. You know, it's.

Dean: Oh, yeah, some stat of both. So many podcasts never get past the fifth episode or.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, but then you have the, you know, then you have the big series like Seth Godin and you have Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss. You know, they've got, you know, each episode is in the tens of millions.

Dean: Joe and I were looking for the audio as well. We had Tim Ferriss. We've known Tim for a long time. And we had Tim as one of the first guests that we had on. I love marketing. Yeah, this is before he had his podcast. And we were, you know, after.

Dan: And he. If I understand Joe's account of it, he was very resistant to podcasts. He was.

Dean: That was it. So we were. After we were recorded the podcast, like, put a wrap on the recording part of it. We stayed on, we talked for another maybe 30 or 40 minutes afterwards, trying to, like, get him to come around on the Idea of a podcast because he was big into the blog at that point. It was all about, you know, just blogging and writing. Yeah, he didn't see that he would, you know, what are you. How he would work that as a thing. So it's just kind of funny to see that. That unfold. But as I was thinking about it going forward that, you know, you see all the top ones now, like Joe Rogan, as you mentioned, all of these are video based podcasts. And the. So I was thinking, okay, I'd like to do more video because, you know, I'd say I've got so much stuff that I've said in all the More Cheese. All of these podcasts. There's so much like chunks that you have, but they're kind of more awkward to distribute just as audio. You know, you turn them into articles. I've done turned them into medium articles and things like that. But I had the idea that, okay, what would it. I'd love to start doing more video like this. And I was thinking about turning one of the rooms in my office into a studio, you know, type of thing, so I could just go and record whenever. But as I was having the thought, you know, I was thinking, I was looking at cameras and, you know, lighting and microphone, thinking, what am I going to need to build out on here? And I had this who, not how moment where I started thinking, this is exactly. This is friction for me trying to do this. What I really want is I want to walk in and sit down and start talking and then I want to get up and leave. And that's all I want to do. Right? The milk. That's the milk of this. Right. The output. And I, you know, there was several, maybe five years ago, there was a building that was for sale close to my building that was a big recording studio.

Dean: It was a sound stage, like a pretty historic soundstage that's been in Florida for quite some years. There's been a lot of really mainstream stuff done in this studio. And it's full out. There's about 3,000 square feet of it. Is this. If you've ever been in a sound stage where it's all completely silent, optimized like, you know, if you go into one, it's kind of amazing. So.

Dan: But yeah, we, you know, we have one in the basement of our building. You know, that was.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: It was the number one post when it was created. It was the number one post production studio. So it had a floating, you know, it floated. Yes, and then it floated. Completely sealed and we had an earthquake. I mean, Toronto gets little. Yeah.

Dean: Tremors.

Dan: Not California style, you know, tremors, but it was enough to knock the. In our, you know, in our.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Lobby between the two workshops, we have the lobby and we have the whole wall of bookshelves with books on it. And half the books fell off the, you know, fell off the.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: Yeah. So it was enough. And upstairs they definitely felt that, you know, things. Things tremored. But down in the studio, we went through it and there was whatsoever. I went up, I said, what happened? You know, they said, well, the earthquake, you know, And I said, news to me.

Dean: Wow. So somebody bought that studio five years ago and they modernized it, put in a bunch of money. They've got one of those. They've got a 20 foot by 12 foot LED wall. Like the big screen thing that you've seen everybody using. Yeah, yeah. Like it's a big thing. And then they've got a infinite white wall and all the different orientations you can have for that stuff. But they've also got a podcast studio that has, you know, four cameras and fully optimized sound dampening screen, you know, the best microphones and kind of like the way Gord sits in your studio. They've got the room for the engineers and all that stuff. And so I went in and, you know, I met the guy who owns it and I said, I went in and just popped in with Stuart because we were at the coffee shop talking about how, you know, I wanted to get this dude, but I. This is such friction, trying to think about what to do. So I went and said, I wonder if we could just record there. And so I went in and spoke to Juan and asked him like, you know, whether we can do that. And so he said, of course, you know, so that they. They offer this as a service now because they're a studio for hire. Kind of is one of the. One of the items that they do. So for $350 to go in for two hours and record and have a tech, you know, an engineer, somebody who's there to do all of the. They'll set everything up, they'll get all the levels, make sure everything is working. They've got a live switcher that switches between all the cameras they can. Then they'll edit the video afterwards, adding in lower thirds and intro and outro music or whatever you want on the things, any graphics or whatever. And I thought to myself, okay, so we set up. That was on a Monday. I said, can we come in tomorrow and do that? So I Booked, you know, two hours the next day. And I got, I did one with Stuart. We talked about 90 minute books and how to know when, if it makes sense to use a book to grow your business.

Dean: And then I had friend Billy Bishop, who owns Top Flight Electric here in Winter Haven, which he started five years ago. We laid out the blueprint for it and he's, you know, now a very, a thriving electric business. So we did a more Cheese, less Whiskers episode with him and it dawned on me afterwards. So for. I've just signed a contract to go in there every Tuesday morning and record for two hours. So I'll just fill it with guests or do stuff on my own. And, you know, I realized that for. I could do 10 weeks, 10 of those for $4,000, let's call it, which is less than the cost of one of the cameras that they have. And no setup, no, no having to do anything before or after or maintain the technology or learn the technology or find somebody who can do the stuff. And so it's just such a real, you know, real benefit of this. Who, not how, thinking like just looking for the capability that you're looking for.

Dan: I mean, that's the, you know, it's just a fundamentally exponential capability. And because I started, you know, my awareness of this, everything you just described at the ad agency where I, you know, was a writer for three years and, you know, I don't have the exact figures here, but everything that you're saying that you're going to do in 1971, that was over $100,000. It was over 100,000 at a minimum, that was over $100,0000. And.

Dean: And then how would you distribute it?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, then you had to pay, you know, major dollars to distribute even, you know, 20 minutes of it was enormous, enormous amount of it. And you know, and that in 19, you know, in 1971, 72, when I was the. Was a writer, the number of individuals who would be involved in that entire process would be in the dozens. And that's part of the price. That's part of the price, you know.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And yeah. And you know, it's really interesting the reason there's so many factors that you could break out of what you just described, that it would have been hundreds of hours of work on your part, you know, quite hard from their part, what they were doing. And that's all in one capability. All you have to do is show up.

Dean: Yes. And that's so amazing. Right like that I've gotten it. I'm really getting to this mindset of unit economics is what I'm thinking of everything this way lately. Like I've got this new way of thinking about something and I'm thinking that if I look at it like that, you know, $350, $50 more for the editing time. So $400, let's call it for two hours of two episodes. And so I think that if you then take that raw material, that's to produce the actual episode, but then to get that, you know, convert it to odd, just strip the audio, take the. Get it transcribed, hire a writer to, to take out the. Identify the tracks or the chunks or the, you know, the highlights of it. To then divide the video into like the Joe Rogan, you know, bite size pieces. One distinct thought that you could distribute through all the different social media channels, turning those into emails, blog posts, medium articles, all of that like filleting up the big side of beef kind of thing. If you take the whole cow and divide it up into all those things that I think that if you were to take, if you were to have a budget of maybe $400 per hour of recorded output, that would have like a pretty amazing output, you know, like that would drive your entire content, you know, stuff. Because that's asset of that is asset that you're creating. Especially if it's all evergreen ideas, you know.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So that's kind of, that's an interesting thing that if you think about. If you got those who's in place that packaging those who's productizing, which is really what we're kind of. That's all I'm doing this all under this umbrella of money making, marketing, that, this, that being able to give somebody a sense that this is about the budget per hour of executing these things as a push button product where all you do is show up.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, it's. You know and I think that the. There are some barriers to entry to this world. One is the biggest barrier is that you don't have any ideas.

Dean: Doesn't mean.

Dan: Right. The second one is there's no reason for you to communicate these ideas. That's a barrier. Okay. And yes. And number three, you're not saying anything that's valuable to the audience. Right. You know, I think the, you know, the proper thing, you know, and Gord Vickman and I, Gord, for the listener's sake, is our. My manager of my entire podcast operation. And we established that the. What makes our podcast work and I'm talking that would include my podcast with you is that what you're selling is a relationship. In other words, people choose to make listening to welcome to Cloudlandia and you know, the joy of procrastination before that. People build this in as part of their, you know, of their continual learning, their continual thinking. And they're the ones who give you the monopoly. Yeah, yeah. So going back to the monopoly, because I started this conversation by saying I, I procrastination is a bad thing. And I've got reason to question that and actually prove just the opposite, that procrastination is great skill. You're not following through on it. You're not following through on it to immediately surround yourself with who's. Who can actually supply the hows that get you to the exciting what that you're thinking about. So that was the whole, that was a whole two years of our partnership. And then we began and you're the one who triggered this. You said, you know, let's. Let's talk about this thing. Cloudlandia. Cloudlandia operates by totally different multiplier rules than, you know, than who not how, who, not how. People kind of get it instantly or they don't There. There's not a lot of convincing that you have to do to do it. And then. But this whole notion of the. What you're talking about now and just using our podcast as an example, that it creates a monopoly and podcasting works is because everybody has their own monopoly. The audience, the listening audience is the one that gives you the monopoly because there's value creation. It's a value creation monopoly.

Dean: Yes. I love that. And I mean, that's something that, you know, when you're. Because along this having a context like, like welcome to Cloudlandia, where, you know, that fits in that umbrella of talking about everything that sits in that intersection between the mainland and Cloudlandia and the juxtaposition of what you can and can't do in each one, like this kind of thing, all this distribution stuff is really what you were describing in 1971, completely mainland or the in the 70s, all completely mainland and analog. Whereas now in 2022, it's completely 50 years. Yeah. Has made it completely digital. And I was thinking, I was reading if you take even 50 years earlier than that to 1922, that I was reading the book about Albert Lasker, who was one of the great advertising minds, the guy that hired Claude Hopkins. And I remember reading in the book that he was talking about his. He had a wall of shelves that were every newspaper in the country that he subscribed to all the newspapers of all the major cities. So they were all brought to him by mail or however he would get them. And he had them all there. So you think about like access to knowledge. You know, he had this analog, you know, Internet basically available to him. He had, looking at all of these things which allowed him to see in California the budding citrus business and what was going on there. And then realizing then with now the ability to bring citrus to the Midwest and the, the rest of the country. It's amazing how all those things, it just, you know, the vision is what drives everything, but it's just so much easier to execute on vision.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the interesting, interesting thing, I'm just completing the latest Peter Zion book for those who are interested. He's just written, this is his fourth book. And they are riveting, I would say, reading what he says about the geopolitical situation. In other words, he said that we're going through one of the greatest fundamental transformations and it's. You can interpret it as transformation or disruption. And he said that basically we've lived inside of a single deal. The whole world has lived within a single deal since the end of the Second World War. America was the only top country. It wasn't that. It's not even, not even accurate to say that the US was one of the top countries.

Dean: Right?

Dan: There was one top country and nobody else was even in the picture. And simply because the US economy had gone through probably a 10 times jump during the Second World War. Just to give you an idea, producing planes, the Americans supplied the Russians with 90,000 trucks during the Second World War. And jeeps, you know, these were not machinery that the Soviet Union had. And they were, you know, they were friends in the sense that they were the enemy of our enemies, but they weren't really friends. They were part of the big picture. And then that sense of transforming everybody's capability continued after the Second World War. And, and we've lived in a world where essentially the US provided all security so people didn't have to spend their money on defense. Actually, the best periods of Soviet history were the time between the end of the Second World War and when the Soviets finally, their system, you know, based on all the wrong principles, collapsed in 1990. Yeah, 1991, the Soviet Union disbanded and, and all the defense for all the supply routes, all the trade routes, the entire oceans of the world were entirely protected by the US and still is. And that's gone on. And the US didn't do that for economic reasons. They did it because they just did not want to send millions of their young people across the ocean to Europe to fight a. Fight, a war, you know. You know, and, and so, and now it's all changing. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, little by little, the US has started pulling out their military protection for the whole world. Actually the two biggest places where they still have large military contingents. The only place in the world right now is actually Japan and South Korea for reason. Nearby reasons.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And, and they're, you know, they're so they've really cut down on their military engagement. And, and so it's not going to be easy for other countries to supply trade routes, you know, because piracy is going to make a major. Two types of pirates, actual pirates who do it for a living, and countries who, because they can't get what they need, countries will become pirates. And you know, and that's kind of totally different kind of world. And so that's a major capability that the entire world has had and you know, since that started. I was born six weeks before that agreement was made in 1944. It was in first week of July in a place called Bretton Woods, a big luxury resort in New Hampshire. And that's the, that's been the single deal that's run the world. The globalization, the global economy is all because of this deal. And the US has decided not to do it again anymore. And everything's coming back to the United States. Supply chains are coming back, manufacturing is coming back, you know, and. Yeah, yeah. And they're basically, the US Is going to use its military to prevent any other power from coming into the Western Hemisphere. So none of the Europeans or the Asian countries will be allowed to, you know, have any kind of, you know, you know, encroachment upon the Western Hemisphere in the US is instead of going east and west, it's now going to go north and south.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And the South Americans, I have, you know, I've got a growing number of strategic coach clients who are from Central America and South America. And I said to them,

Dean: which countries are leading the way there for.

Dan: Do you notice, I think Colombia is Brazil. Columbia, not Brazil. No, Colombia. And Colombia is perfectly suited to actually have an entire new arrangement. Actually. They have a, you know, they have a significant specific one on one trade agreement with the United States because they have two advantages. The country actually is both on the Atlantic side and they're also on the Pacific side. So they have ports on both sides of the country. So they can do the west coast of the United States, they can do the Gulf coast, they can do the eastern coast through shipping. And. But I told them, I said, you know, the biggest that, you know, Central America and South America has had against the United States is that they don't pay any attention to us. And I said, you may look at that as the good old days, because now they're going to pay attention to you.

Dean: Right.

Dan: It's like Canadians, you know, since I've been in Canada, Canadians are always complaining. You know, Americans just don't pay any attention to us. And I said, that's your greatest defense. They don't pay any attention to you.

Dean: I heard a comedian say something about that one time about our friendly neighbors to the north. He was referring to Canada. He goes, yeah, we get along fine and everything, but one day it's going to be, hey, Canada, we're out of wood. Get out.

Dan: Yeah, I mean, we're out of potash.

Dean: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Yeah. We have new needs for your crude oil. Exactly. You got nickels. You know, you got some really good stuff up there.

Dean: So funny that we're going to be

Dan: needing and I think a lot of the internal tensions in Canada right now. Yeah, it's sort of in a state of stagnation. I've noticed that the country probably in the last 10 years has sort of been stagnating. I mean, lots of people are still coming, so immigration is good. Lots of money is pouring into Canada and everything else, but they haven't come directly into the crosshairs of the United States. And. And that will change. That will change over the next decade or so. And the Albertans. The Albertans are. Their big complaint is that they would love to do amazing amounts of trade with the United States, but it's being prevented from the. You know, from Ottawa. It's being prevented because, you know, Alberta is the province that has the most ancestors who actually came from America from the United States. No. And so they. They're. You know, it's really interesting because it just brings everything to a halt. And so I think there's going to just be major breakdowns and breakthroughs over the next half century. Yes. Yeah. But this goes back to that. The one bypass for all this is digital.

Dean: Yes. That's the greatest. Like, that's what I'm super excited about. You know, I don't.

Dan: I don't need the US Navy protecting my overseas podcasting.

Dean: Right, right. That's the best part. Right. Yeah. The pipe.

Dan: That's cheese.

Dean: That's cheese. That's the truth.

Dan: Yeah. There's just a lot of. Yeah. The beer, the World is going unshaven.

Dean: I'm doing a. I'm doing lots of whiskers.

Dan: Lots of whiskers.

Dean: I'm doing a podcast this week with the owner of the studio because, you know, he's. They're struggling a little bit now because of, you know, they were really. They opened up, they spent time doing all the renovations, everything, and they opened up in November of 2019 was the grand, you know, opening kind of thing. And then within four months they were shut down basically because of COVID and stuff. And it was a, you know, it's been an uphill kind of, you know, getting things back on track there. But I think that it comes down to, you know, they're concentrating on being a capability factory where they're not involved in the. Participating in the output of the factory kind of thing as opposed to like being farm. Thing. That is the, you know, participant in the outcome and that's. I'm going to have that kind of conversation with him because that, you know, they've got excess capacity for certain. Like if you think about that podcast studio on its own, in theory, they could be, you know, if you just go regular, you know, working hours, they could have 8 or 10 hours of productivity coming out of that. That's the capacity for that one.

Dan: Yeah, per.

Dean: Yeah, that's what I mean. One, eight or ten hours of the machine running kind of thing. They could be pumping out that level of content. So let's call it that. They've got, you know, a 40 or 50 hour capacity for that podcast studio, you know, of output per week. And if they're, you know, right now after me, like I'm in for two of those hours, you know, ahead of the time, I don't know who else. Otherwise it's sitting dormant. Yeah, it's sitting there as excess capacity. And I really see that it started a couple of years ago, this idea of excess capacity as an asset that most people don't realize that they have and the actual like, you know, a lot of that is sunk cost already and overhead where they've already. They already have the equipment, they already have the facility.

Dan: They already have the team.

Dean: They've got the team. But you know, you could argue that's an incremental cost because they only. They bring in the engineer, you know, on a contract basis because they don't have an, as an employee, a person there. But you think about there, if it costs me 350 or $400 they're charging on that, that they're making a profit on that Certainly, right. Like that their pricing is based on, you know, figuring out what percentage goes towards the overhead and what percentage is the things. But the actual incremental cost, the really directly associated cost of deploying excess capacity would be just that engineer, if you don't have that capability or whatever. Right. It would really just be that person. Because it's not like you need to buy film or do, you know, anything like that. That's no raw materials that go into it. It's all digital. So the cost of capturing it is, you know, built into the capability. You've got the machine, you've got the computers, you've got the cameras, you've got the mics, you've got all of that. So let's call it $100 an hour. If we're being super, you know, conservative on what it would cost or generous cost should. Could be. And so what I'll explore through the podcast is what. Where could you invest that $100 to create an outcome like, you know, not thinking about realizing that I'm investing that $400 or that three, $400 for two hours. So he's getting $200 for me. But what I'm looking is that, that I'm going to turn that $200 into, into content that's going to drive thousands of dollars in.

Dan: Well, the big, the big thing that I would add to his component, and it's, it's an upcoming book, one of my quarterly books. It's called Technology Dash Teamwork. Okay, so there's three words, and the dash in the middle is coaching. Okay. That he should, first of all, he's being. React. In a certain sense, he's being reactive. In other words, that if you hadn't decided to go and check it out, he never would know you. Right?

Dean: That's exactly.

Dan: So he's waiting for people to find out about him and, and you know, and you know, and then come in and he's taking it for granted that they know what they're going to do with it. They're no good.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Not the content. I'm not talking about the content. I'm talking. I'm talking about the, the vcr. Do they have a vision for where they could go that requires coaching? Do they even identify it as a capability? That's coaching. And reach. That's coaching. You know, and so my sense. Well, you know, my, my feeling is that, you know, it and information technology is the fastest growing industry in the world. Okay. The number two industry taking everything that falls under this definition is coaching.

Dean: Okay?

Dan: And the reason is technology doesn't coach itself.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And the other thing is teamwork. People who are teams don't understand how they can multiply themselves through technology. And I think a lot of people, you know, who are listening to this podcast are saying to themselves, they'll do all that for, you know, because they were thinking, well, how do I do this? And how do I, you know, how do I get the recording done and how do I, you know, don't. You don't. The secret to getting it done is not to know how to do it. The secret is knowing to go, you know, knowing how to link up each step with, you know, with the who's. Who can who do this as a matter of course, hour after hour.

Dean: Yes, yes. And that's so. Right. So I think you hit it on the head. Most of the business passive, meaning somebody's walking in or calling in saying, hey, can I do something here? You know, as opposed to seeking out the right person that this capability would be valuable and being a participant in the outcome that creates. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. So this is. I've been kind of having this conversation with Richard Miller. Who. Richard Miller in Phoenix. Owns a studio called Mission Control Studios.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And he. I met him because he. He was doing all the AV for by referral only when we were doing all the big seminars, he was doing all the audio there. So I've really gotten to know him. He's a really good friend. And so he's got a great studio in Phoenix there, again, with all these capabilities, but he's getting what he gets kind of thick. You know, people come in and they want. They're shopping it as a commodity in a way.

Dan: Right.

Dean: Like they're looking at the. As a factory, just an output thing. The real opportunity is to add some vision to it, you know, so I'm interested in that because it's one of those things that recording video, you know, in person is a mainland experience, and that it's a little different than recording just digitally in the cloud, like through zoom or something. There's a different layer of.

Dan: Yeah, I think, you know, what I think is the flaw between reactive and proactive is that you've mastered. You've mastered a capability that gets you in the game, but you think that then you stop learning because you think the game is going to play itself.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. You think that the capability itself is. If you build it, they will come kind of thing. I think that's really. And so the funny thing is, Dan, in most cases, it's somewhat true, right? It's a little bit. It's a little bit true because there's so many businesses that are that way right now that, you know, you open up a restaurant on the intersection.

Dan: Coffee shop. Where.

Dean: Yeah, coffee shop. You open up those things and some people will stumble and discover it and then come back again and again. But if you're not doing something to proactively.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Like, it broke my heart to see, though, when she told me there, like, they literally told me, you know, two weeks ago that, hey, we're closing up on September 1st. And I've been sitting there that whole time, like, if I had known that they needed some marketing help, we could have

Dan: started this, could have started a long time ago.

Dean: Yes, absolutely. And, yeah, so there you go.

Dan: Yeah, it's a. It's an amazing, you know, and what I, you know, and I think that the. Taking this back to last week's podcast, the thinking about your thinking.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: If you're thinking about things, recording studio, and you're thinking about people who need our recording studio, and you're thinking about thoughts, well, all we have to do is be highly skilled and produce a good product. That's a thought. But there's no thinking beyond that. You know, that the world is changing. And, you know, and, you know, if there isn't some, you know, very persuasive message that we're putting out to more and more people that the capability that you need to jump to your next breakthrough. We have that capability, and we'll help you think it through. Why this is such a great capability, you know, and everything. And that's where the coaching is missing. You know, the. They're just not coaching people. They're taking for granted. Everybody knows that what we do is really extraordinary and that you can do extraordinary things with this, but you need a big vision to really take advantage of it. You, capability like this. Because once you have our product in hand that we create with you, then you have an amazing reach. You can. You can.

Dean: Yes. I just think, man, this kind of thing, I can't wait for that book. That's two or three that you mentioned anticipating coming out here.

Dan: Yeah. Well, the big thing about it is I say, I think every business in the world, if it's successful, has these three components in their offering to the public. They're offering technology. You know, if you don't have a technological component to your offering, you know, you're a century behind. Okay. And. And if you don't have teamwork to take advantage of the Technology to really multiply. You've multiplied yourself with technology, but you're not multiplying. Yeah, I mean you've multiplied, you personally have multiplied yourself through technology and, and you've been able to create a great team around you, but you haven't connected the teamwork with the technology because that requires coaching.

Dean: Yeah, that's really something. I was thinking this week I've been really reflecting on your idea of shortcuts programs and platforms. And you know, I was thinking about the. I don't know whether it's you're part of the platform or part of a separate thing, but of actually productizing that at the outcome. Like I look at the things like let's take one of the realtor things that we have got. You know, one of my shortcuts is knowing how to get listings without making any cold calls or outbound phone calls. You know, if you phone only accepts incoming call. So create that into a program called Getting listings which is part of this platform called the Listing Agent Lifestyle. That's it's over one one of the elements of that. But there's a, you know, there's an opportunity within that to be the who for somebody on that where you don't even have to know how to do it. Is it the how bypass? Right. Like if it seems to me like if there's anything that you can show somebody how to do, if that's what really a program is in a way, right is here's how to do this, this shortcut or how to get this shortcut for yourself that there's almost always, I don't know, I'm looking to see whether it's true bypass where you could just push the who button and get the outcome. And I don't know what, where that fits in that shortcuts.

Dan: Well, the big thing is that people knowing it or not knowing it as they deal with different kinds of clientele and they're in touch with what the clientele really wants. There's constant new possibilities for you creating additional, creating additional value for the client. Okay. But you never are really interested in what's going on in the clientele's life if you're just selling the commodity. You know, how is this, you know, how is my client or customer actually using what. What I'm providing And the other thing is what new things are coming into their life where additional solutions are required. Okay. And then we create little one off solutions for this particular client but in doing so we've actually created a new shortcut. Okay. That can be Translated into intellectual property. Okay. And that adds to the value of your company. And so we're doing, we now have a full fledged, you know, collaboration with Keegan Caldwell who's, you know, the. He's the IP lawyer who's in Free Zone. And he just talked about it for two days. I think, you know, you, you were in on Zoom for those two days and 35 people in the two day period, you know, we probably had, you know, we probably had about 60, 60 different people over the two days, including the Free Zoners who were there on both days. And 35 people just phoned him and say, I want to talk to you about how I can start doing this. So that's okay. And you know, that's just offering a new capability and, you know, I mean, if they sign up with him and they spend money, it's his money, I don't really care. And the reason being I just acquired a new capability by having him as a. Go to. Dean. I've just lost you.

Dean: Am I back?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, I just lost.

Dean: Okay, there we go. I was saying it's these interwoven collaborations, you know, these capability collaborations that really, it takes the vision to, to set those together, but the, you know, the output outcome is so much greater. Yeah, these are exciting times.

Dan: I mean, well, and just to talk about the impact of just having Keegan talk through that, I have eight people who were in 10 times but not in Free Zone come to me and say, I think it's ready, I'm ready for Free Zone. Because if we can work with Keegan, then I know where the Free Zone is. So we're immediately rewarded. We're immediately rewarded for it. You know, people are jumping and so my feeling is that there's. I won't say there's an infinite amount of these, but there's always more than you're taking advantage of.

Dean: Yes, I agree 100%.

Dan: Yeah. Anyway, boy, that was, that was one of the fastest hours on record.

Dean: New land speed record.

Dan: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I think it was. We were actually off the ground there. And anyway, I'll be back in Toronto next Sundays, so I'll look forward to talking to you.

Dean: Me too. Thanks, Dan. Say hi to Babs for.

Dan: Okay, bye.