How do you price yourself in the marketplace?

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Yes, Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: And what was the exact nature of a billion dollar offer that you got this week that you turned down? It undervalued your value.

Dean: Oh, my goodness. Well, let's see. I don't think I had an offer like that this week. What do you think?

Dan: Yeah, Mr. Beast did.

Dean: Oh, I know. Isn't that something? No, I don't think so. But, you know, somebody broke down the, did the math on it, you know, compared to like a Super bowl commercial, which is, you know, $7 million or something for, you know, a 32nd Super bowl commercial. And they broke down the number each month that he has of that number of reach. And it was like. It was great. Yeah, it was. He was absolutely right to turn down a billion dollars for, for his channel. Very interesting, isn't it? These are amazing times. And that's.

Dan: Well, the interesting thing about it is the person who is making the offer would actually end up with more or less nothing if Mr. Beast did. Because is there, first of all, would there be a section in the contract where he would have to produce or

Dean: continue to

Dan: produce or create, or is he clear and free? Because if he's clear and free, he'll just go out and do it again and they'll end up with nothing.

Dean: And I wonder, you think about that, that there's certainly a more sense of fleeting value in the Mr. Beast catalog sort of thing. You know, I don't know what's going to happen now in, you know, 40 years. Is this going to be a valuable catalog? I've seen this cascading thing of all these great, you know, musical artists from the 70s and 60s and 80s now are. They're selling their catalogs. I just saw that, you know, Neil Young had sold 50% of his catalog for $150 million. And I thought Bruce Springsteen had sold half of. They're selling half of their catalog for these big upfront sums. And I remember it was interesting because I believe that David Bowie was the first to have done that, to create Bowie Bond. And it was some crazy amount of money that he was hundreds of millions that he was paid for his, for his catalog. But I had an interesting thought about that this week because I've been thinking

Dan: about,

Dean: you know, visually, it's. If I look at a timeline, if I plot them on a timeline and they're on the base and then arrive in their ubiquity or sort of peak, you know, fully realized. If you go from Gutenberg 14, whatever, and then yeah, you go in the order that they were created basically was text and then sound and then picture and then video, moving pictures. Right. So you did the big four categories of content creation. And if you think about that, those four sort of all converged by, you know, 1900, they were kind of all created by 1950. They kind of reached the peak of their, I'll call it ubiquitousness or their access, accessibility, that they're fully realized. You could, you know, in practice there was a way to capture, record, to, you know, preserve, to create all of it. Print, pictures, video, audio. And, you know, I mentioned before that didn't seem like there's been. There was much advancement that led into a long period of years until we got to the digitization of those things. And it followed the same path of words for text, first sound with the MP3, you know, pictures and the pegs, and then video. And BY, you know, YouTube, it was. Had reached the. Everything was in place. But now in 2022, we're at the point where all of those things, it's kind of like another peak level of both production, the preserving and the distribution and consumption of all of those things is at a plateau level. And I've said it kind of before that I don't see where, I don't know where we can improve on the production, consumption, distribution, all those things. We basically have every piece of any of those media that's ever been created or will be can be created instantly available to us on any device and distributable to anybody in the world. Right. We can instantly. That's what Mr. Beast is doing. And I was thinking about that from the 50s on that it was really an era of then people capitalizing on the use of those tools as opposed to the creation of those tools. And now. So we look at what's happening now and if you say, you know, Mr.

Dean: Beast, and as the perfect example of a content creator who's built, used those tools, used the ability to create video, preserve it and distribute it, that, you know, you see that now and build an audience around that. That those are the big. Those are the big wins, I think.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: The next 20 years look like, you know.

Dan: Yeah. Well, I've got three insights from what you've just said. There are some people from the 70s who are getting big payoffs now. And you name, you know, you name some of the big ones, but there's 9,999 other artists from the 70s who aren't getting a dime. Okay.

Dean: Right. Yeah.

Dan: So you have to understand that history Cherry picks. In other words, you cherry pick backwards and you say this was worth it. But that was based on the fact that these people had a continuous following from the 70s up until an audience up until now. Yeah. And the big national audiences stopped around halfway through the 70s. And there's some interesting evidence of that, that when you look at tours, you know, annual tours, generally speaking, seven out of 10 of the biggest tours will be musicians who are in their 70s. It won't be a legacy artist.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. It won't be new, bright, you know, bright young artists. They won't be there.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And because bright young artists can't create national audiences anymore because they're all the distributions are really fragmented down into niches. Okay. So you may be the 900 pound gorilla for a niche, but your niche in comparison with all the other niche niches really isn't very significant. I mean, when Elvis appeared on Ed Sullivan show, did the beat, he got 85% of American televisions that night.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know. Yeah. There isn't anybody who can get more than about, I mean, 10%, you know, of a.

Dean: Well, there's less. I thought now the ratio that. Yeah, there's hardly any shows now that have 10 million viewers. 10 million is like a huge number now for a TV show that's been. There was an article about that with the upfront, the big showcase at the be, you know, the year that the networks kind of show what they've got in the lineup and how it's really dropping precipitously, you know, and it's all about streaming now. It's all about the streaming catalog.

Dan: Yeah. I think what. Mr. Beast is a bit of a unique, unique character in the sense that he's going to make his billion anyway. So he doesn't really have to take a billion from anybody now because he's going to make the bill, he's going to make the billion anyway. And he knows it, you know, and, and. But the other thing is the moment that he's bought, he stops creating,

Dean: right? Yeah, that's what I want.

Dan: What they're trying to buy, what they're trying to buy is a creator. And I don't think they're available. I don't think you can buy a creator because creators only create when they're not reporting to someone.

Dean: That's the truth. Right? Yeah, there's something about the. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: It's kind of. It's kind of like the people who are doing the buying are looking at this as a commodity that they can add to their investment. Portfolio, you know, this is a prime piece of sirloin steak that we can, you know, we can put into ground beef and sell it off in pieces five years from now, you know. Yeah, but, yeah, so they know the price of every, they know the price of everything but the value of nothing. And, and I think he's sensing that, but I think it was a good, you know, I think getting an offer like that is a really important measurement for someone like him. He says billions. That's interesting because he said, he said that lets me sort of gauge against what the impact is the network that I've created, the YouTube subscriber base that I've created, but also, you know, the, you know, the popularity of the Mr. Beast, the Beast Burger restaurants and how they're, and how they're doing and you know, the, you know, the other, the specialty foods that he's creating, the chocolates and everything like that. So it gives him a yardstick. I mean, it's probably from his standpoint at 24, eight years after he started his project, getting a billion dollar offer is probably pretty good. You know, it's a good measurement.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. And it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty amazing that he would have that opportunity. You know, when you think about, you know, six years ago, sitting in his bedroom hoping that he had a million subscribers by the time he, you know, five years later when he wrote me in five years video, you know, you

Dan: know, what I would do if I were him and I'm not, and I want to make it clear that I'm not. I would do a show where he's receiving the author offer for a billion dollars and then just takes everybody through his thinking of why he's not going to accept a billion dollars and then he puts it out to his 160 million audience and he said, you know, you know, you know, this is the biggest offer I've gotten. But what I got in mind for some projects we're going to create in the future, just a lot more exciting to me. And you know, this would just kind of delay me a bit and it might, you know, bog me down a bit and kind of I just want to get on with the new things that I'm creating. And he just turns this into, nah, now the creativity is more important than the billion. He's making 54 million a month anyway. So he made 54 million last year. Well, you know, he's a kid from North Carolina. His taste haven't probably shot through the roof over the last year.

Dean: Yeah. And that's a really interesting thing that he's really proven. You don't have to be anywhere at the Toddlandia outpost. Are can be anywhere, that's for one thing.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know, in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina. And that didn't stop him. And he surrounded himself with the people right there. All the people that are the core people in his channel are his friends from right there in North Carolina. So shows, you know, anybody has access to all the riches of Cloudlandia. But it's the idea and the execution account I saw. Go ahead.

Dan: Yeah, it's just interesting. I was doing a podcast with Jeff Madoff about two weeks ago. Yeah, anything and everything. Yeah, that's about anything. That's a real narrow focus, isn't it? We got ourselves really narrow focus. And, and, and so anyway, Jeff and I. Jeff is for those listeners who don't know. Jeff is a, you know, he's a veteran, very well experienced, superb creator of video. Video, for example, the opening of fashion seasons for big design houses and that he'll create the video that presents, you know, the new fashion season out to the world. And he's done lots of documentaries and he teaches marketing at the New School in New York. And you know, an all round fascinating conversationalist. But anyway, we were just talking about pricing, you know, how you price yourself in the marketplace. And I'm actually writing my quarterly book on this subject this quarter. So what's it called? Interested in the topic? The title of this one is called Capitalism and Everything Else.

Dean: Capitalism and Everything. Yeah.

Dan: There's a methodology called capitalism and the first step of capitalism that is that you price yourself in a way that appreciates what your value is. In other words, appreciate is a great word. Dean, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but appreciate can mean on the one hand, it can mean sort of grateful. You know, you appreciate something, you're grateful for it. But it also has an economic term which means to increase the value of you appreciate the, you know, real estate appreciates, gold appreciates, stocks appreciate. Yeah, so. So it's an interesting word. And so anyway, I was telling him that in my early coach days, probably program started in 1989, so this would have been probably 93, 94. And I had a guy from California who is a big deal compared to most of the other clients that were in coach at that time. And he had his own jet. He flew his jet into Toronto for the workshops and, and he came up to me and he said, you know, I get a lot out of These workshops. But I'd like to. I've got something I want to think through and I'd like to offer you to get picked up on a Friday with my jet brought out to California. We spend the whole weekend at my place. I got great guest houses and everything else and fly you back on Sunday night. And $50,000 for that. So it was $50,000 in 1994 hours and US dollars. And I said, well, I'll tell you right now, that would be a no. And he said, you didn't even think about it? I said, well, I have thought about it. I'm just giving you the conclusion of my previous thinking. And I said, I did one on one coaching for 15 years and I exhausted the possibilities of it. And I got to the point where I didn't think I could learn anything more from doing one on one coaching. And we switched over to the workshop setting and I learned a lot more from the workshop setting than I did one on one. So you know, I. That weekend I wouldn't learn anything. So that wouldn't be worth it to me. It wouldn't be worth it to me.

Dean: There you go. What was his response?

Dan: It was kind of ambivalent, you know, it's kind of ambivalent because I think it might have been a new experience for him.

Dean: For somebody saying no. Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Well, or whatever, you know, I mean I didn't think that. I didn't think his sight of it through. I just thought, you know, that it would throw kind of a wrench into what we were doing in coach and everything, you know, and you know, like it would be off topic, it would be off strategy, it would be up, you know, off topic and you know, and everything like that. And you know, and that's been my total attitude now. I won't even travel period. You know, like speaker, that I won't, I won't travel, you know, I mean, I'll do a zoom call. I'll do a zoom call. If the people watching are likely sign ups for a coach, you know, that would be the only condition of what I would do it. And my sense is that one of the things is that you can go as far as you want in life if you always know your value and what enhances your value. Yeah. And money, there's a point where money isn't going to enhance your value.

Dean: Well, it's very, I mean, and you look at Mr. Beast, he's discovered that that's true. Even, you know, he's 24 years old. At 24 years old but he's already realized. He's already gone through that arc that very quickly. When he first started making money, he bought a couple of cars and he bought a big house and the things and fancy clothes and stuff. And he realized this is all kind of crazy. And somebody broke into his house and stole all of his clothes and stuff. And he realized, okay, this is kind of silly anyway, so he kind of, you know, has a. What he calls a regular house now. And he's actually got a. He lives almost mostly at his big studio. He's got a place in his video where he, you know, does wakes up. He's got his workout equipment right beside his bed. When he gets out of bed, he goes right to working out, right to the shower, and then right to eat a little breakfast, and then he goes right to work. And that's his whole environment set up to support his number one goal, which is to make the most amazing YouTube videos possible. Yeah, that's everything else distract from it. Yeah, I saw.

Dan: Yeah. And that, you know, and that is, you know, I think the whole point is that so much emphasis probably over the last 20 years, you know, with the Internet becoming a more workable medium, you know, and more accessible medium, all the emphasis was on reach, you know, it was on reach. And then you get to the point where you can reach anything at any point, anytime, you know, and then there's got to be a, you know, a coming around the circle to. Yeah, but is there anything. I mean, you can fill it up with content, but is the content worth watching now?

Dean: That's the thing. That's where we're at, isn't it? That now. Yeah, the content has to be. Because we have so much choice and over choice where nobody's just accepting mediocre content like you. You can have, you know, in the, you know, 60s or things. It wasn't. There wasn't as much like, you know, on the quality of stuff where now.

Dan: Well, the. Yeah, well, the moment you heard the national. The moment you heard the national anthem, you know, there wasn't going to be any more content for six.

Dean: That's enough. Yeah, that's enough for the day. But now it's anything you want at any time. And it's just. Yeah, but, you know, where we run into the. What I, you know, I mentioned before that the. What seems like the real, you know, the real finite resource is our attention and that that's all we have. You know, it's pretty.

Dan: Yeah, I think the. Yeah, I. I would say lack of choice is no longer the problem, I think probably lack of purpose. I think lack of purpose is really a much bigger problem than lack of choice.

Dean: I saw a video interview about with Mr. Beast. He wasn't in it, but they were talking about having spent a weekend with him. I sometimes watch the podcast that they had spent a weekend with Mr. Beast in the context of a bunch of other entrepreneurs in North Carolina all kind of getting together. The guy intentionally set up the gathering in North Carolina so that it would be super easy if Mr. Beast wanted to stop by. And he did come and spend the weekend. But they said he's got two, two guys with him at all times whose only job is to make whatever he wants to happen 24 hours a day. They're sitting there, they were having the idea at 10:30 at night. Somebody said, yeah, we should like go play basketball. And Mr. Beast guys were like right on it, calling around, trying to find a high school or a. Somewhere where they could go and play basketball. Like just any. They chased his wins kind of thing. You know, whatever he wants to have happen, they make it happen right away. And they've got basically a positive attitude, unlimited budget, but whatever it is, whatever it costs. Okay, well, well, what if we gave you $50,000 or whatever? Like, you know, your guy was kind of used to probably whatever he wants. People will. The unlocked magic key is money, which you would think you're saying in the 90s, $50,000 was a lot different than $50,000 now. But your, you know, purpose, your, you were clear, that's not the, that's not the unlock for you.

Dan: No, you know, and the big thing is that Diamantes has a great, you know, a great line. He says everybody thinks that creativity is thinking outside of the box. He said, actually it's thinking in a much smaller box. In other words, you gotta that most people are in a box. I mean, we're all in a box of some sort. If you take space, time, you know, available resources, opportunity, you know, you have limitations.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And a lot of people say, well, you know, I would be creative and I would be productive. I, if I wasn't so constrained by my conditions. But if you go Back to the 16 year old Jimmy Donaldson, who's aka Mr. Beast, you know, when you showed me the first videos, he was very, he was constrained by his circumstances. And the reason why he found YouTube is because that was the one escape he had from his situation. So it was only because he was constrained that he found a solution. He had had the two guys when he was 16, you know, that could get him anything he wanted. A snap of the finger. He wouldn't have created anything over the last eight years.

Dean: And it's a bit ironic.

Dan: I think he's just happy. I think he's just. I think he's just having a little bit of fun now, you know, and. Yeah, you know, and. Because, I mean, if at it,

Dean: I'm just gonna say, if you really look at it, he's discovered that the magic secret of what's in it for them, and that life gives to the giver, as our friend Joe Polish would say, that is the key. The turning point for him was when he started giving away money and giving away things to people. Everything switched. You know, the very first brand thing he did was giving some homeless guy $10,000.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And that, you know, people were fascinated by that. That he would go and he would give away cars and he would give away. He'd bring people over, they'd order pizzas and tip the guy $1,000 or pretty. It's really, I think that he's. His confidence to be able to turn down a billion dollars like that is realizing that he knows the key to the universe in a way. He knows how to keep people interested in videos, but he also knows the big meta key of it all is what's in it for them. Because that's really. If you listen to what he says about the. What makes videos, if you've got the first five seconds, have to be immediately clear why this is worth watching. So it's a literal what's in it for them in that first five seconds of what keeps them. Keeps them engaged.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's really. It's really interesting. The other thing is that I think that I've been reading Peter Zion, so I'm on reading number six. I read the whole book five times

Dean: and I'm gonna read which one now? The end of the world is just

Dan: the end of the world. I send it out. I send it. Yeah, I send it out yesterday. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Dean: It's a big, thick book.

Dan: And, and. And what he's saying basically, you know, is just before one way of life starts to collapse, the amounts of dollars available get really ridiculous. So I was thinking of the. I don't know if you've been following the FTX just a little bit.

Dean: I don't know the details of it.

Dan: Yeah, well, it's just that, you know, there's probably certainly tens of billions of dollars kind of down the drain, you know, for a million people, because they bought into sort of A magical story of a bunch of 20 year olds, you know, that they had come up with a secret of how you have a stable cryptocurrency plus you're able to use your profits to do great things in the world. And, but basically it was looks at right off the offset, you know, I don't know much about it because I'm not interested ever in getting involved in the particular activity. But it looks a bit like a Ponzi scheme, you know, Ponzi, you take the money from, you take, you keep generating new investors and you use the money from the new investors to pay off the old, older investors, you know, but the total value of what you're doing keeps going up in the marketplace. In other words, they got up to 32 billion, I think 32 billion, you know, and big equity firms like, you know, some of the prominent ones in Silicon Valley were, you know, we're giving him 200, 200 million because of a zoom call, you know, and everything. But it was sort of like a frenzy that, you know, you see a frenzy. And part of the reason is that there's more money in the American economy right now than there actually are things to invest in. And part of the reason is that everywhere in the world is trying to get its money into America right now. And one of the ways you can tell that is there's one set of numbers that I look at every morning and it's the currency exchange between the US and specifically Canada, but everybody else and the US is way up against every other currency which has a lesson to it. In fact, there's only one currency and it's the US dollar. And everything else that's called the currency is just a speculative investment that's measured whose measure, whose value is measured in terms of US dollars. There's only one measurement whether of what something is worth and it's the US dollar. And part of the reason is, and Peter Zion says there's one thing that makes the global economy work and it's, it's unlimited, cheap, reliable transport.

Dan: You can get anything from any place in the world to any place else in the world with great security.

Dean: Like I was just gonna say, I thought it's funny that as the reliability of being able to bring goods to us, the need to bring us to the good is less important. You know what you think about our need to personally move ourselves about is less important.

Dan: Yeah, I don't have to go anywhere actually.

Dean: I mean, isn't that funny? I was, I went to Sarasota this week to meet up with my postcard guys who were doing a big project, and so we had all these key people in this. In this project.

Dan: These are actually U.S. u.S. Coast Guard.

Dean: No, from my postcard.

Dan: Oh, I thought you said Coast. Coast Guard. Now, they're an important part. They're an important part of world transport, I'll tell you exactly.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. No, but it was so funny that, you know, it's an hour and a half. It's an hour and a half away.

Dan: People probably think we just planned that interchange. We didn't plan that.

Dean: Oh, that's so funny. But I was just realizing how much more relaxing. Like, I hit a couple of construction snags on the way there, and I'm just so used to, you know, opening the door to my Zoom room and having access to the world right in my. From my home, you know, and you realize, wow, it's just so. Yeah, I mean, it's so. It's so funny. But I had. Andre Norman came down to see me this week. He was down for a day, and that was fun. He really is such a man. Oh, man.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: We recorded Smart, as smart as the studio.

Dan: Smart as Attack, though, you know, I

Dean: mean, well, we talked about. He's got.

Dan: I mean, he's got tremendous street sense. You can tell. He's got. Oh, absolutely.

Dean: Well talked about. We did.

Dan: He's got, like, a podcast. He's got life or death. He's got life or death street sense. Most of us. Yeah, we required to learn that. Yeah.

Dean: All right, so we recorded a podcast, that studio here. And, you know, it dawned on me. We were having the conversation. I said, you know, talk about Imagine if you applied yourself is Imagine if you applied yourself, you know, implies that there's going to be a transformation that you're here. But imagine if you applied yourself, you could be here. And I said, you can't imagine much more of a, you know, a transformation from the basement solitary confinement ward of a prison to being a Harvard fellow with the United nations on speed dial. It's like such a. Such an amazing contrast and transformation. But we broke down exactly how he did it. You know, we broke down. The imagine is him having the vision that I want to be a success. I want to stay out of. Like, you broke down the whole thing. How it happened. This. Has he ever told you or have you ever heard him talk about what he did in prison, in solitary confinement? Like, he got one newspaper a month, basically, and he would read the newspaper, like, every page in the newspaper, and he would solve all the problems from 20 different angles. He would think about the situation and then he would look at it from. So let's say the, there's a article about a problem with the school board and the parents or something. He'd look at it from the parents perspective and probably look at it from the teacher perspective, from the public perspective, from the kids, you know, all of it, 20 different angles. And he said after two years of solving all the problems from 20 different angles, became, you know, an expert at connecting, seeing things from all angles and being able to come up with the solution. Really fascinating, you know.

Dan: Well, there's another example of creativity lies in a smaller box. Not getting out of the box you're in. I mean, I mean, solitary confinement in a prison is a pretty, pretty tiny box.

Dean: Yeah, isn't that something? It's not having access to all the information that's being printed on a daily basis. Yeah. It's having, you know, once a month having one input and putting it through an infinite way of looking at things. Was it Bruce Lee that said, I don't fear the man who knows 10,000 kicks, I fear the man who does one kick that he's done 10,000 times?

Dan: Yeah. I think we've been presented with all sorts of offers, you know, and you know, I mean, I'm not saying that our age is any different than any previous age, just that the means of communication are different. And what I was saying is that there's always this promise that you can get the rewards of a new capability without actually developing the capability. Yeah, then, yeah, you know, and it didn't work in the old days and it doesn't work in the new days, you know. You know, it's. You can't get good at anything unless you put in the work.

Dean: You have to apply yourself is what you're saying.

Dan: Yes, you do. Yes you do. And you've applied yourself. You just didn't want to apply yourself to what she wanted you to apply yourself at, you know, I mean, you know, it's, it's like, you know, Dan has, seems to have no respect for authority. Well, I do have respect for a certain authority and there's, but I'm sort of choosy about which authority I have respect for, you know, and, you know, and I think it's that zeroing in on what's really, you know, what's really a foundation for your future, that really, what Certainly it's entrepreneurial intelligence that, you know, that all the ready made ways of developing yourselves and making a way in the world is not, not to Your, you know, it's not to your taste. You want to develop your own foundation. Yeah, yeah. That's why, I mean, I was really interested. I was really interested. I mean, I went right after that Mr. Beast thing turns down a billion dollars. I said, that's, that's a really, I mean, that's a really useful lesson to ponder. That's a really useful thing to ponder.

Dean: Yeah,

Dan: yeah, yeah. He laid out, well, if my viewership was this, and we had this many Mr. Beast burgers and we had this and this, he said I'd be interested in entertaining the price, but I think it would be 10 billion.

Dean: Just something, isn't it?

Dan: Yeah, there's somebody out there. Somebody's out there say, let's rearrange things and.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: And get $10 billion ready. But he's making them work. You know, he's not doing any work. He's just going on doing what he's doing. Yeah, I get it.

Dean: That's all. Yeah, it's pretty. By the way, did you know you are the same age as Neil Young?

Dan: I did not know that. Okay.

Dean: You're having a better, let's just put it this way, you're having a better experience of it than Neil appears to be having.

Dan: Well, you know, I didn't, you know, I. First of all, we were probably equal about maybe a year ago because you brought his name up and it was the first time that I actually knew who he was. Which before that made us equal because he didn't know who I was.

Dean: Right, right, right.

Dan: Yeah, we both were equal and not knowing who the other was. You know, now I know who he is. You know, I mean, I looked it up, but I was interested in him because one of my clients has created a hedge fund based on buying music. Like.

Dean: Right, yeah, right.

Dan: And great Gishan here in Toronto and I got interested in the topic, you know. Yeah. But he's not going, he's not going after people like Neil Young. What he thought, you know, the lawn tail concept, you know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Long tail. Yeah. Well, Neil Young would be closer to the, you know, the straight up line than the type of music libraries that this guy's buying. They're going down the tail and it's between roughly the 20% mark and the 40% mark of music. And usually there are people who have like, they've been out there for 10, 20 years and they have steady 1500, you know, 1500 purchase downloads a month.

Dean: Okay, okay.

Dan: And that's been going on forever. And it's of a particular song and Then they start looking at different songs and they just have a very loyal lifetime audience. And that. That suggests predictable ongoing cash flow. And you can invest in predictable ongoing cash flow, you know. So, yeah, did a first one. He did it for 52 hours. Yeah, he did a first one and, you know, learned a lot. Didn't like the people he was dealing with and probably got a couple of million dollars sellout return when he sold it to a bigger, you know, to a bigger library. Learned a lot. And now he went about doing it. And so it's really interesting. But, you know, if there's an audience of check writers, then you got yourself that you can buy as an investment.

Dean: Yeah. And he's at the point, like you just said something about you reach a point where it reminded me of, you know, total cash confidence and total cash stuff. He's two things that he talked about in an interview with him with Rick Rubin and Blow at Rick Rubin's studio in Malibu. And, you know, he. They were talking about his tour. He's a big. He's like, save the planet kind of guy. Now his, you know, he wants to do a tour that is completely, you know, sustainable kind of thing using, you know, biofuels and all the stuff for the entire rigs and the trucks and the power for the concerts and all of that stuff, and wants to have all of the vending at the venues, all the food, all the. Everything from local farms and all this stuff. But he says we keep running into. People say, well, you can't do that. You can't. You know, it's hard to do that. And he's at the point where it's okay. If we can't do it, we can't do it. I don't need to tour. I don't. I'm not willing to tour without those conditions. And if we can't find those. We can't make those conditions work, then that's okay. And it's so funny that, you know, coming in a situation where it's not because he could make so much money. So I've got all the money that I could ever need. I don't need. I get to ride out the rest of my life and do exactly. I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do. That kind of a. You've said something similar, different. I've heard you say, well, yeah, yeah,

Dan: you know, it's not a bash against anything else. It's just real clear. You're just really clear of the freedom that you purchased in life. From your past success. And you don't want to. You don't want to use any of the freedom that you've created as a currency to buy something less. You know, I mean, he would be. You'd be using his freedom to buy less freedom, and he doesn't want to die.

Dean: Exactly right. That's exactly right. You know, a neat place to come from. But they were talking about recording an album that he's working on now that they're recording it in analog, you know, in going back to the old school kind of things to capture. They capture it in analog and immediately transfer it to digital, which I don't understand the mechanics or the logic of that, but that's. That's what they're doing. And it's. Because that's what he wants to do. And you can do it. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's.

Dean: Yep.

Dan: And that's, you know, he's got the luxury of, you know, pondering these alternatives. You know, it takes a lot of freedom to ponder alternatives. And.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And. But it's. It's. It's an interesting world. But the Peter Zion book, you know,

Dean: I'm excited to read what I've got.

Dan: Yeah. What I would. Yeah. What. Yeah. In this case, I would read. You know, I always tell people to read the backwards conclusion. The conclusion. But in this case, I would read the conclusion and that. I would read the introduction. I would read the introduction and. Because the introduction is. Really gives you the. He doesn't fool around. He gets right to the point and, you know, and goes back to that discussion about transportation. And he said that. He said changes in communication don't fundamentally change us as much as changes in transportation. And he said that when you live in a transportation world where it takes a long time and a big cost to get something, then there isn't a lot of economic activity. But if you get to the point where it's practically guaranteed that anything anywhere can be shipped reliably at very low cost, like less than 1% of the value, the selling value of the thing that you're selling when you get transportation, and that's what has been for the last 20, 30 years, it's less that what you're paying for transportation is less than 1% of what you're going to sell it for or what you're going to buy it for, then a lot of economic activity happens. And he said, yeah. Now he said, in a matter of months, we've gone from 1%, maybe 3%. Okay. And it's reflected. It's reflected in inflation, we can see. And people say, who's causing the inflation? He says, it's just that the transportation guarantee isn't there. You know, we're losing the transportation guarantee. And I mean, you wouldn't want to be anywhere around Eastern Europe right now, you know, because, you know, I mean, that's a troubled area. And you know, and, you know, he says that basically that area, you know, the U.K. you know, Ukraine's. Ukraine, Russia border, and then go out 500 miles from there. He said that's now risky territory on the planet. And then the Middle east is always risky territory. And then the Chinese, Taiwan thing is risky territory. He said, so people think twice about those being shipping lanes.

Dean: As I laugh when I open it, you know, I know you all like to start at the back. And I did just that. And on page 471 is the epilogue of the book. Begins 471. The epilogue begins. So that's the short version. Thanks for sticking with me. So that's the short version, 470 pages.

Dan: He's got a very. He's got a very. He's got a very unusual ability. And I haven't really come across it before that is that he writes and talks in exactly the same style. If you go, I send a link along the letter along with the book. And I just link where he's being. He's in a debate with two young guys who have more or less the Silicon Valley attitude. Technology is going to solve everything and politics doesn't mean anything and everything. And it's very interesting to watch him. It's about an hour long. And he said, they were saying, well, it does matter with petroleum because it's, you know, it's going to be EV 10 years from now. The whole world's going to go, EB and he said, well, he said, my heart might be with that particular prediction. But he said, I have to tell you, EVs are dead in the water. And he said, you know where. He says, only certain parts on the planet and most of them in the United States are going to be able to even afford EVs. And even there we might not get the parts because the parts that go into the building of just the battery come from 17 different hard to get to places. And if the transportation costs for each of those parts goes up, you know, you have an EV cost being five, ten times higher than, you know, the carbon car, you know, which basically everything's guaranteed from North America. I mean, you can pretty well get everything you need for, you know. And he Just goes through and he just lays it out and he says, look, I mean, how you wish things would be and how you hope things would be. Says one thing, but there's transportation costs. Is not a bargainable thing. You either can pull it off or you can't pull it off. And yes, I like it. But he's got some phenomenal YouTubes. He's probably got about 50, 60 YouTubes. Some of them three or four minutes, some of them an hour and a half. And. And it's just a pleasure to see how he takes things apart and puts them back together again.

Dean: Yeah. Really amazing. Well, I can't wait to. I can't wait to read it. I mean, to just look.

Dan: Yeah. For those who are listening, it's Peter Zion and it's spelled Z E I H A N. And name of the book is the End of the World is Just the Beginning, which can be taken about three or four different ways. The title and, and. But I've read it. I've read it five times completely, like every page. And I'm on six now. And I'm just getting so much from. He's just got a very unique take on the world, which is totally counterintuitive, you know, I mean it's just completely and totally counter to it. Yeah,

Dean: well, I. It's gonna. Yeah. Do you. How much do you read in a day, Dan? Just curious how you work that into your world now.

Dan: Yeah, I actually worked that out because somebody asked me the question about a month ago and I figured average week, somewhere around 20 hours.

Dean: Do you have a routine around it? Do you read?

Dan: No.

Dean: Like you schedule it pretty haphazard.

Dan: It's pretty haphazard. Sometimes it's articles on.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: On the Internet. Sometimes it's murder mystery. I just got a new Michael Conley murder mystery. Michael Conley writes about homicide cop in Los Angeles by the name of Harry Bosch. This is about number 20 and I pre order them on. Pre order them on my Kindle. And it's like a birthday. It's like a birthday treat. You open it in the morning and something you pre ordered and even forgot about pops up on your screen. And this will keep me busy for three or four days.

Dean: I love it.

Dan: Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty haphazard. I'm pretty, you know. You know, I mean, I mean, I mean, what's your ad for if you can't utilize it?

Dean: Exactly. Can't be a toddler at the picnic every now and then.

Dan: Oh, I have a request. I have a client here in Canada who's created a podcast. His name's Andre Bresson, and he's created a podcast on ad for entrepreneurial add. And he wants to know if Dean Jackson would agree to give his insights if he was invited.

Dean: Oh, I'd love to. I'd love to.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I always love talking about that.

Dan: So he's addre.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: No, he's. He's an entrepreneur who's himself. And, you know, I've given him some guidance. He's in his 40s, probably, so, you know, he hasn't been out there as long as we have, Dean.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Some of us longer than that and some of us longer than others.

Dean: You know, we've been not applying ourselves longer.

Dan: It takes a while to turn this distractibility into a business model.

Dean: That's right. Oh, that's so funny. I love it. Yes. Happy to. Happy to do that. That would be great. I do love a good podcast.

Dan: Yes, indeed. Yeah. And he'll be a good host for you, and he'll give you free reign to go anywhere you want to go.

Dean: I love.

Dan: Which is only suitable. Which is only suitable for the topic.

Dean: That's exactly right. I can't wait.

Dan: Yeah. Okay, well, I'll be on to next week. Next week. And happy Thanksgiving. We're celebrating on Thursday here. We get two Thanksgivings, Canadian in October and this one. And same meal, though, Turkey. Okay.

Dean: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I love it.

Dan: Thanks a lot.

Dean: Thanks. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Dan: Okay, bye.