Your Future is Guessing and Betting

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Ah, Mr. Jackson.

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Yes, Cloudlandia is a surprising place. It is.

Dean: It's always full of surprises. I saw a funny meme this morning. It was a picture of a poster that said, vote for Rick Astley, you'll never. And then it had check boxes for give you up, let you go, let you down, tell a lie, vote for Rick Astley. Here's what he'll never do.

Dan: But he is a whiner.

Dean: Yes, that's right.

Dan: He'll be telling you every day, never let you go, never let you down. And after a while, it just gets boring. You want to leave him and you want to let him down and leave him behind.

Dean: A psychologist break them. Kind of. Why? You're right. There are a lot of ways I'd never do that to you.

Dan: Yeah, there's a form of manipulation where you. You protest that you would never do the thing to someone else that you're actually doing to them.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know what?

Dan: There's actually. Do the. Do the listeners to this podcast, do they hear the music?

Dean: No, they do not. That's just.

Dan: We better give them a. Better give them a. Yeah, my background.

Dean: I have a pro. Account of our conference line that we have. And one of the perks of that is you can set your own hold music while people are dialing in. If you're the. If they're the first one to dial in, they'll hear music until the second. Till the host joins the party. Got it. Set up for the Rick Ast Never Gonna Give youe Up song. So that's why Dan and I always joke about if we're the first one on, it's the reminded that I'm. I'm never going to let you down. Never going to give you up.

Dan: But we do check the box for each other. We do check the box for each other.

Dean: That's right. Yeah, that's right. I've been thinking more about. I saw that. That Russell Barkley ADHD video again. And you know this. Our situation here checks all the boxes of what, it's 80, you know, compliant in that we have an external structure set up in our calendar that is. There's no thinking involved. I know that at the appointed hour that you're going to be here, I'm going to be here. And we never miss unless prearranged. I mean, unless we. There's something that is going on. And I was realizing how, you know, my whole. The way I approach my calendar and the way that I Approach my desire stuff. I always feel like I need lots of space, lots of. Like, I want to keep my calendar free of time, commitments and obligations. But it's. The more and more I look at it, I realize that the. It's the thing that the only things that get done are the things that are externally out, you know, scheduled and. And happen, you know, to contrast that. Like, I look at your approach to your time to your calendar. You're booked an entire year out. A rolling year, you know. Exactly. There's very little discretionary. Well, there is discretionary time built. Lots of that built in, but the majority of the things are. Are there. That's. To me, the more I look into it, one of the key attributes of applying yourself is getting applied into the real world. And your calendar is the evidence.

Dan: Well, the key to applying yourself is to get things that apply you.

Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.

Dan: And, you know, in my world, things apply me. You know, I've got deadlines where I've committed or obligated, depending on the nature of the topic, to other people. And my reputation. Yeah, my reputation, you know, is based on me following through on my commitments and obligations.

Dean: Yeah. And you may be on a streak, Dan, that might be unrivaled in terms of the. You're even just your small books now. You're over 30. Small books.

Dan: 34. 34.

Dean: Yeah. I wonder how many people have kept up a pace like that. You know, you're coming up on. Pretty soon it's gonna be 10 years of that. Eight years so far of a book every quarter with no quarters missed.

Dan: Yeah. When we get to 40, it'll be 10 years. Yeah, yeah. Which will be somewhere the end of next year. I think it's the end of next year somewhere. 20, 24. And. Yeah. And it's. It's not only a structure for me, but it's a structure for nine other people. I immediately interact with the various team members who have a part in the block. Audio, video, printing, you know, writing, editing, interviewing. And. And it just moves forward. Everybody expects it. And then there's a distribution system when the books go out to coach clients and. Yeah, and three of those books popped up and became major market books with Ben Hardy as the collaborator in Hay House and Tucker Max as collaborators on it. And that was a surprise to me. I mean, I wasn't writing the books for that purpose, but now that I know that can happen, it is something I keep in mind when I'm writing the book, you know, is what I'm saying.

Dean: Got the Potential, Right?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you're consciously lucky, after a while, you consciously do everything that's going to make you even luckier in the future.

Dean: Oh, that's true. That is so. Yeah. That's so funny that I think luck is a skill.

Dan: I think. I think lucky is something that happens to you. But if you're conscious at all, you say, now, why did this? You know, why am I lucky and other people aren't lucky? And you said, well, you know, I was there early, I was prepared, you know, I was cooperative in this situation, you know, and I supported other people. And you begin to see that luck actually is. It seems like a big thing, but it's broken down into a whole number of behavioral.

Dean: Yeah, we just. I'm down in Delray beach again this weekend. Lupa and I just had dinner with Mark Lachance and Sonya last night. And so he's written a book called the Lucky Formula. And that's his whole. That's part of his whole thing. Luck. Like that. But how was your. How was Free Zone this week? You were in Chicago. You had workshops.

Dan: Yeah, it was great. And I. So I'm doing something this quarter I hadn't done before. Speaking of the small books, when I start, this could be a zoom session or it could be in person session. I put the COVID picture of the latest book up on the screen and then I. And then I bring out a concept for the latest book. And so the book I'm writing right now, well, the book that just came out is Capitalism Dash and everything else.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then I, I've taken capitalism and I said, capitalism is a methodology that consists of five growth stages. The first is pricing, you know, and knowing how to price yourself in the marketplace and getting better at it. And then that your creativity over time creates intellectual properties, so property, and allows you to buy other kinds of property. And then you become more productive, getting things done faster, easier, cheaper, and producing a bigger result. And then things become more profitable as your revenues and income increase. You keep more of it as profit. And that allows you to indulge yourself and those around you in prosperity. And. But it's a flywheel. So when you're finished one round, one capitalist project, then you rinse, you re lather and you do it again with another project. And really successful entrepreneurs have flywheels that are the five Ps, pricing, property, productivity, profitability, prosperity. They have many different flywheels. If you think about your 8, 8 profit, each of them has a flywheel inside of it. A five stage growth process. Yeah. Anyway, so I, then I asked them, well, what's the best you've done on each of the five? And what would be a next improvement with each of the five? And so they do that. And I said, now pick three that you have the biggest response to. You've written down two for each of the five. So you got 10 things written down. Pick three of them, and then we put them into a triple play where how are these two connected to each other? Then you write down the connections, and then you have a breakout session where people talk about this. And then you, then you have a general discussion when people come back from the breakouts, whether it's in person or zoom. And then I say, okay, now let's go a step higher. Let's take your connections, the three connections, and connect the connections. And that's where the real breakthroughs happen. People just say, oh, my God, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. And so with the Free Zone, I'm usually ahead of the rest of the, you know, the program. So with Free Zone, I'm putting out the most advanced stuff. So I wrote down on the whiteboard, this is on Tuesday in Chicago.

Dan: I put down on the whiteboard, your future is guessing and betting. Okay. Your future is all guessing and betting.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: And then I put down, well, first of all, I just talked about that. Everybody talks about, oh, the future can be predicted and the big data now is predicting the future and artificial intelligence is predicting the future. And no, somebody's making a guess that big data will predict the future and they're betting on it.

Dean: That's the truth.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, and the reason is that if big data predicted the future, everybody who's using big data would be successful. But I had a discussion with someone and he says, you know, big data is going to predict the future for us. And I said, well, do you remember when Brexit happened? It got everybody by surprise.

Dean: What about Trump?

Dan: What about Trump? I remember seven o' clock night and a bunch of happy news media were saying, the New York Times thing, I still watch, I still watch the. There's like these compilations that go for about an hour. And I said, it's just really interesting to watch the transformation downward to people who thought this was in the bag,

Dean: you know, oh, yeah, seven o'. Clock. They're predicting who Hillary will have in her cabinet and what's her going through her first hundred days in her mood.

Dan: Yeah, but what does history tell us? What does history tell us about what kind of President. She's going to be. And, you know, fans are saying, well, this is going to be one of the most remarkable presidency. These next four years are going to be some of the most surprisingly unpredictable four years. And I said, well, that turned the next four hours. That turned out to be true.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: You know, and then Covid, you know, Covid, I didn't see any big data. Predictable, predictable. So, you know, and what I'm saying is that the people who are creating big data systems are guessing and predicting, and we all do that.

Dean: You know, there's always in. In looking back, there always is somebody who was predicting these things. Somebody was predicting a global pandemic being a problem.

Dan: If you look, you had a film of a broken clock, 24 hours.

Dean: Yeah. Nobody.

Dan: That's right. It was right. Betting on was right. Yeah. Things only make logical sense looking backwards. Nothing makes logical sense looking forward. And, you know.

Dean: Yeah. What was that? There was somebody, I think it was, they would say about Harry Dent that He correctly predicted 17 of the last three downturns. Yeah.

Dan: Al Gore, you know.

Dean: Right, right, right, right. Well, that's interesting.

Dan: All the. This would be in the 1990s or. When did he become famous? It would have been 2000. Around 2000. Because he became famous for something negative in 2000. Anyway. But then around three or four years, he licked his wounds and he went out and then he became a. Of the climate. He became a climate prophet, you know, and then he was talking about how the Himalayas would be without snow by 2020. And that didn't.

Dean: True.

Dan: The Rockies actually had more snow than in history, the written history of the Rockies. They had like 600ft accumulated feet of snow. That's 50ft. 50ft of accumulated snow. So they're expecting massive floods on the westward side of the Rockies, which is California. California and Nevada and others. Other folks are going to get a wet summer. Anyway, so anyway, I put that. And then we talked about that, and then I just put down on the board the three geometry rules. So the title of the current book is Geometry, and that's in quotation marks. Geometry for staying calm and cool. Cool and calm. Staying cool and calm. And there's three rules. And we've talked about this on a previous podcast. The three rules are. Yeah, go ahead.

Dean: One, everything is made up.

Dan: Yeah, everything's made up.

Dean: Number two, nobody's in charge.

Dan: Right.

Dean: And number three, nothing is fair.

Dan: Light. Life's not fair.

Dean: Life isn't fair. Life is not fair.

Dan: Yeah, life's not fair. So I. And so this was, you know, we had about 50. We had 50 coach clients for the free zone. And boy, did the room go crazy. I mean, the room went crazy for a solid hour. And people said, when I hear those rules and I put them together with each other, I feel freed up. I feel. I said, yeah, but I can find you a person out in the general world who, if they heard the three rules, it would make them feel even worse than they're feeling right now.

Dean: Well, we were just talking this morning, Lupa. And this week Biden announced their new housing fairness program that's going to give home buyers with lower credit scores better, more favorable terms on mortgages than people with high credit scores to make it more fair.

Dan: That sounds profoundly unfair to me.

Dean: Exactly. But in all things, it's funny that the intention is to make it more fair for the people with lower credit scores. Yeah. Which it's so. It's. Yeah, it's just. It just seems so crazy, you know?

Dan: Yeah. And. Well, they did that before the prime, the subprime loan thing. And it was with Fannie Mae, the too big lending, the guaranteed Freddie Mac. Yeah, Freddie Mac and Fannie. And. But what they did is that they could no longer turn down loans. And what they broke it out was postal. So you had postal zones. Postal zones had credit ratings. In other words, most people, Most of the people live in this postal zone, you know, are subs. They're sub positive as someone you'd want to lend money to if you lived in this postal zone, you know. And prime. Yeah, they are subprime. We will give subprime loans to subprime borrowers. And, and, and that's what. And then it. And what it did, it took all the risk out of lending because it was backed up by the government. And then they could take the loans and they could tranche them. They're. Interesting word, tranche. D, A, R U N. Hey, Dean. Dean, why don't we sharpen our knives tonight and tomorrow let's just get together and just spend the whole day tranching.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: Tranche means to cut up an investment into 30 parts and then take other investments and then mix it all together and put a number of what the value is and send it out around the world with no following paper paperwork that indicates what's what and that's what really happens. Yeah. So you had, you know, you had single mothers who worked in a casino in Las Vegas and they had three kids who owned five houses. Okay, that was the, that was the. I'm trying to think of the, you know, Siri really tries. I got to give her this. She really tries to be useful, but she is. And anyway. And the. Who is that guy who wrote the book? The big. Was it the big. The big hit or the big short? Yeah, the big short.

Dean: Big short. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And everybody was playing a Ponzi scheme, you know, I mean, it was a global Ponzi scheme.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Like you should.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And then it all collapsed, you know, and. But the US Was the worst of it, you know, I mean, the US Banking system was absolutely the worst on this, and the companies and everything, everybody wanted to get in the feeding frenzy and then. Yeah. I mean, the feeding frenzies are good until you're the food.

Dean: Right. Exactly. Yeah. That whole. I was thinking about your. Those words of guessing and betting, and it's funny, but that it reminds me of, like, hedge funds and what the capital allocators are doing at the highest levels. Right. Guessing and betting. And that's. And they're guessing right. Based on, you know, really better insight, better interpretation, I guess.

Dan: Yeah, we all do it. It's human. The only way we as humans can deal with our individual experience as individuals is to guess in bed. You get up in the morning and you've made a guess and somewhat of a bet on what today is going to be. And then you, end of the day, if you do some evaluation, you say, you know, I bet on this today, but it's not a good. I can tell it's not a good bet for tomorrow. And then you change your bet for tomorrow, but you're guessing, you know, and that's what the human brain does. It's a guessing and betting mechanism, and it's constantly shifting. Yeah. That's what makes life so delightfully unpredictable.

Dean: So how. What was the. The idea then of what do you do with this?

Dan: Well, then I said I had. I put together an exercise which is called best guesses and bets. And I had the, you know, the free zoners. I had them just brainstorm the best guesses that they have made, you know, going back as far as they want to go. They can pick the last or they can pick. They can pick their career or everything, but put down your best guess.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And then pick three. And then pick three of them and explain why that was a really good guess example. You know, my lifetime partnership with Babs was a good guess.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And I put it down. It's also a great bet, you know. Yeah, it's great bet. But what I. What you end up with, you brainstorm guesses, pick three and Then you get brainstorm bets. Pick three. And for variety's sake, if you've won them as a guest, don't put it down as a bet so that you get a variety of the. And then you pick six out of the six, you know, the six final contestants. And you're thinking you pick three of them and then you do a triple play, triple play exercise on it. And it's an exercise that goes forever because the conversations are so amazing on it, you know. And yeah. So it's really from my standpoint, the little books now are starting to become active players in the next quarter's next round of workshops. So I was very pleased with results at the end because not only did I do the book that's just out the capitalism and everything else, but I'm doing the new book, Geometry for Staying Cool and Calm.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? This whole, you know, I think back in 1999, I was going through a process of. I was deciding, okay, what would I like to invest in? I don't want to, I don't want to become a stock trader or picker or anything like that. I started thinking about what would be, you know, 25 year decisions if I could make. Could I make 25 year decision to invest in something that you don't need to think about over the next things. I went through a process of thinking. I found it really interesting that in order to think that way I had to think what companies that are around today are going to be here in 25 years. If I'm Tibet. Right. And my, I see where your idea of guessing and betting. So I started, I was guessing, thinking, okay, if I could have.

Dan: But guessing is brainstorming, you know, Guessing.

Dean: Yes. I love that.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So I started brainstorming, thinking, if I can have anybody manage my money, what I would love, I would bet on Warren Buffett.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And so I thought, right enough, I said, because I'm not going to learn how to do that. So he does it better than anybody. And so I bought some 2A shares of Berkshire Hathaway and put that, you know, as a sort of thing, you know, then I started thinking, okay, what company is going to be here? 25, I can have a. If I could own any company. And I started thinking about Procter and Gamble as a collection of tides not going anywhere and all the. They've been in business since 1854 and they've had the number one brands in so many categories that that's going to continue for.

Dan: Well, the interesting thing there was an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal and how in spite of the fact that P and G has raised its prices in all product categories, sales are increasing. That's how much of a good bet it is.

Dean: Right. And so that was my second. I only picked three stocks, that was the other one. And then I thought about a growth stock that I wanted to have there. And at the time my thought was Starbucks because they had such a simple model. More stores, more money. Totally. You know, even if they over expanded they could easily track because it's all made up of individual outposts that the more outposts they have, the better they're going to be in 1990.

Dan: And they're not franchises.

Dean: That's exactly right. Yeah.

Dan: With one exception. With one exception, Magic Johnson has. Right. He's the only one who's got franchises.

Dean: That's right.

Dan: He's been a good guess. He's been a good guess in bet.

Dean: Yeah. And that was my third pick. But what I, you know, missed out on at that point from The Vista of 1999, if you look now, those have been really great picks by the way, over the period of time. But the, what I missed out on, you know, making that decision in 1999 with that branch of money, that capital allocation then was, you know, I didn't, I didn't bet on Amazon, I didn't bet on Google, I didn't bet on, on. Well, Facebook wasn't even around at that point but you know, missed out on that and Apple was the other one. And so you look at it from looking backwards. In 1999, the three to pick would have been if you picked Amazon, Google and Apple, that would have been equally great. But you couldn't. The view forward wasn't as certain in mind as a guess because Google hadn't.

Dan: And interestingly of the three, Warren Buffett himself is only bet on Apple. That's the only data.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And only recently that's actually the only technology. That's the only technology stock that he's actually bet on. He says, first of all, he says, I understand the company. You know, he says if I don't understand the industry and I don't understand the company, he says, you know, he said, I don't have any basis for making the bet because I just don't understand it. But there are blue chips. You know, of all the technology stocks, Apple is the blue chip. The blue chip stock, it's got market dominance in many areas. Okay. And they have built in profitability because they're the highest. Yeah, you know whatever they come out with are the most profitable. Yeah. They're pre premium. Yeah. And those check his boxes for first of all just noticing them in the first place and then actually betting on them.

Dean: Well, he's actually the reason that I made those choices that I made. He said something that was really interesting like he doesn't bet on technology because he can't see who's going to be the clear winner five years from now even.

Dan: Yeah, I mean I know that would be especially true with the new chat, you know, the AI, the GP GPT. I mean.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: Instantly there's a million competitors out there that are doing something and you don't see where the assembly into a giant is going to be. Just, I mean Google was caught by surprise, totally by, you know, and so there's nothing to bet on actually.

Dean: Yeah. But Warren said of the technology, said I don't know who's going to be the clear winner. But he said, I know that 25 years from now men are going to go to bed and they're going to wake up with whiskers and that King Gillette is going to be there to help them solve that problem in the morning like he has been since the 1800s. And I know that men, they're going to, people are going to love hamburgers and they're going to want to wash them down with a Coca Cola. It's not going out of style, you know.

Dan: Yeah. And I know things are going to still be transported by railroad. I know that.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know and I know oil and gas, I know oil and gas are still going to be good bets, you know.

Dean: Yeah. And it's really, it's a funny thing when you really take the Vista from 25 years in the future at some future point that you have to really connect that through line and that helps you make those decisions. This is a very big simple idea. Almost seems so simple that it seems obvious but it profound. When you really think about the implications of it and you really practice it, you start to think okay, what am I guessing that's going to happen in this particular, you know, especially when you think about it as brainstorming like you said. But when you narrow your focus to a particular, you know, thing, when you narrow your focus, start looking at something there. What do I, what am I guessing is going to be true about this in you know, this is kind of similar to my Florida migration project I'm working on of that I'm guessing based on everything I see that over the next 10 years Florida is a Good. It's growing. There's. We were growing by 1500 people a day right now. And that's projected to continue through the next 10 years to, well, a little less than that now, because when I first started thinking about this, it was 2021, but by 2030, that's the path that it's projected to. Along with the, you know, most predictable march demographically in the history of the world was the. Is the baby boomers inevitably marching their way into retirement? You know, and leading baby boomers now are 58 years old and the youngest.

Dan: The youngest of boomers are 59. Yeah, 58. That's what I mean. Yeah, that's what I mean.

Dean: Sorry. The lagging.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So.

Dan: Well, and the other thing that makes it makes inflation predictable, I would say, for at least the next 10 years. And the reason is that en masse over about a 20 year period, the highest level of systematic, systematic skills in the American economy are leaving the marketplace right now for 20 year period. And, you know, it started happening in 2000, probably 2010. It started. The boomers were starting to retire and it'll go on for another six years or so. That, that huge phalanx. There's a word I haven't used on a podcast that's phalanx.

Dean: You know, 50 points, 50 bonus points. That's a big word.

Dan: Yeah. For the first person to say phalanx. Yes. And, and knows that it's, you know, that it's a military term anyway. But you have this massive about people who have what I call implicit knowledge of how things get done. Implicit are things that can't be written down in a rule book, but the rules have been worked out with massive amount of experience and teamwork over a whole number of years. And the place where it's showing up most is in transportation, especially airline travel. You know that there's just a lot of people who are newbies in the airline industry and they don't know the complexities. You know, I mean, it's uniquely susceptible to weather. I mean, airlines more than any other transportation system is uniquely susceptible to weather and, you know, and government rules and, you know. Yeah. I mean, none of the freight trains stopped during the lockdown. None of the, you know, none of the, you know, I mean, the boats from overseas got locked down because they couldn't bring their stuff ashore, but they still made the voyages. But airlines just, if you don't have any passengers, that's a disincentive for taking off.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, that. I just heard a podcast in the last six Months by someone who's starting a new, you know, airline model to create supersonic flight again to make supersonic airplanes that like the Concorde to bring that back into the mainstream.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a. It's a guess.

Dean: It is a guess, right? Yeah. That people are gonna want. That people are going to want.

Dan: Yeah. I don't know who's gonna do it by. Because by necessity the cabin has to be cramped, small and cramped, you know, because the heat difference they've been able

Dean: to overcome with that is through advances in, in materials and stuff to make it a little more comfortable, I guess.

Dan: Yeah, well, I guess. I mean neither of the airlines that. Well, the only two planes that really developed was the Tupolev, which was a Russian version of the Concorde. And out of the. I think, out of the. I think they only made six of them and out of the six, I think three of them crashed in the first 12 months with fully loaded with passengers. And that's a disincentive, you know that, that would be a disincentive for me. You got a 50, 50 chance of getting killed on your first fight. No. Yeah, that's. Those are bad Betty nuts. Those are bad Betty nuts. You know, and the, and then the Concord, which was a French, was a European project, British French and some other companies. And it never made any money. It was, you know, it was a white elephant right from the beginning. And, and you know, and so, and the other thing is that you get, apparently you get twice the jet lag from traveling that fast and you do. Taking a normal flight. So if you go. Right. Yeah, I mean it takes, you know, a flight to London. Yeah. You leave at, if you're doing it overnight, you leave here at seven and you get to London at seven. And so it's a, it's five hour time difference. It's a five hour time differential. So it took you seven hours to get there. Basically, you know, you're going to get basically a five or six day jet lag out of that unless you take counteractions. I mean there's all sorts of counteractions that you can take personally to do that. And you know, and. But getting to London in three hours, you know, you know, I think it's a, it's a big whack on your system. And you know. Yeah, I bet there. I mean, hey, look, you know, if Maze guessing and somebody's gonna bet and hey, go for it.

Dean: And what was your. I'm interested to hear your thought about the betting. You know, so that this is really. Because you're actually the only, you know, the only way to have a guess really pay off is to the proportion that you're willing to bet on it.

Dan: Yeah, you can.

Dean: There's no prize for being for guessing. Right. Without a bet.

Dan: Yeah. No, guessing is a pass. A guess is a possibility. A bed is commitment. You know, it's a bit like bacon and eggs. For the chicken, it's simply form. It's just simply a form of involvement. For the pig, it's a total commitment.

Dean: Right, right.

Dan: That's between. Yeah, the chicken is guessing. Well, I can, you know, I can risk one of. I can risk an egg.

Dean: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Dan: You know, but for the pig, you know. You know. Yeah. I mean, what part of me doesn't come back, you know, and. Yeah, but the, I think that the, it allows you to really evaluate things like the, you know, like the new part of AI thing. It's a guess that this is going to be bigger and bigger in the future. But it's not clear who specifically will be the winners, you know, on many different fronts. I mean, this is going to cause big economic change. I agree with that. It is. But it's hard to pinpoint specifically what the changes are that you could bet on or not bet on. You know, it's.

Dean: That's where I've been going in my mind as I, you know, was I just saw the headlines today looking up some stuff how Amazon and the headlines are Amazon flooded with Kindle ChatGPT books. Like there's a few, there's a wave of books that are now being uploaded into Amazon because everybody now empowered with their ability to have ChatGPT write book is. And that's kind of like the leading thing that all the chatgpt opportunists, low hang fruit are betting on. Hey, you can get ChatGPT to write these books and they'll sell. But you know, my concern, as I've expressed in previous conversations, is that this exponential output capability for content is being fed into a decidedly fixed capacity to consume it. That's. No, that's not keeping up. And I don't know what that means yet.

Dan: Well, there's no expansion. I mean, yeah, it's, it's like, you know, if you look at the beginning of the. Well, let's go back in. Cyrus McCormick.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Cyrus McCormick's invention couldn't have happened in Europe because there was no cheap land and there was no freely available. It was lacking three things. It was lacking a location in Europe, like, you know, I mean, France has wheat fields. You know, France, France produces wheat and Spain produces wheat. But there was no. There was no cheap land on which to do it. Number two is that chemically there was no easy money to finance it. And number three, there was no. There was no available labor to take advantage of the situation. Whereas. And doing it in, you know, let's see, 1840s, I think it was in Cyrus McCormick. 1840s, yes, that's right. Yeah, 1840s. Every 10 years, there were two or three new states that had flat land, you know. Right. And wheat's the easiest food on the planet.

Dean: The prairies. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: I mean, no, I mean, you plant it and you harvest it. There's no, you know, there's no. No in between. And therefore, if you cut the cod. I mean, if you just extraordinarily cut the cost of harvesting it, which the reaper does, and it just explodes. Plus, you had an overabundance of free, low cost money. Free, low cost land, free low cat, low cost labor. I mean, you had three free, abundant resources that you could take advantage. Plus, it was being done in the. Within the framework of the Mississippi River Valley system, which is the greatest usable water system in the world. The navigable water in the world. River water is the Mississippi Valley. I mean, the Mississippi isn't even the longest of the rivers.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Missouri goes into it. So you had all these pluses. I mean, Warren Buffett would have bet on that.

Dean: Right, right, right. And you think about that leverage.

Dan: 25 years, people go, 25 years from now, are people going to be consuming wheat? Are we going to be. Yeah.

Dean: I love it, I love it, I love it.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. There was nothing. But not only that, but I'm sure that there were other competing inventions with Cyrus McCormick, but he thought it back so that everybody was a winner. Everybody was winner. The farmer was a winner.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The markets were a winner. The labor markets were a winner. The banks were a winner. Everybody won, you know. Everybody.

Dean: Yeah. And that was the thing, the big, you know, the big thing at the World's Fair. He was able to, you know, have one farmer beat the work of 14 men. And that's a, you know, that's a pretty good demonstration of a better idea. What a capacity multiplier, you know, and then the free idea of give me the money from the harvest was such a revolution, you know.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: My mind, I'm just, I'm very excited about, you know, my, my next. My journal sessions coming up this week. Brainstorming and betting.

Dan: I think that's, well, guessing and betting. I mean, first of all, I mean, it emphasizes your insight. You know, it really reinforces your insight that you feel free to brainstorm because, in fact, you're not betting. You're not betting on anything that you're writing down. Okay, Right. And I think that. So it's. I just. One of my next quarterly books, you know, is Guessing and Guessing and Betting and Guesses and Bets. Guesses and Bets, it's called. But anyway, that's. That accounts for 100 of the future, the wrong guesses.

Dean: And that fits because part of the future.

Dan: Because part of the future is people saying all sorts of guesses with the hope that somebody will bet on their guess. Yes. I mean, I do that every day. I do that every day. You do that every day. I'm always making guesses about what I think is going to work in the future. And what I'm asking you to do is to bet money to see if that's true.

Dean: You know, what's so funny is to me, I just had this insight that guessing is like, you know, imagining if and betting is applying yourself. I mean, that's really. That's really what it is. The two. That's the two sides of the. You know, I think I've been sharing with you the equation that, you know, seeing, breaking, parsing down the words of imagine if you applied yourself, that those and if are definitely guessing. Right. That's brainstorming and thinking about what could possibly be. And then it's got to go through the filter of you and it's got to get approval from the committee that's going on inside your head, which is steadfastly committed to, you know, the basic things of, you know, staying alive and recreating and eating all the calories and avoiding pain, seeking pleasure and conserving energy. Everything has to be filtered through that committee to get into applied in order to get approved, to actually do anything. But it's the application of your self, your sphere, energy, leadership and finances. It's placing those bets on what are you going to do about it? What are you going to invest in about it? What are you going to do? How are you going to place that bet that can pay off in the future? Very fascinating, Dan.

Dan: Well, here's the thing. We just had a moment over the last month, let's say now, of the vice president of a major brand of beer making a guess. Okay.

Dean: Oh, my goodness, yes.

Dan: And then bet on it. Then bet on it. Okay. And we were tired. I was talking to a bunch of girls who got very angry. They Were very angry about the whole thing. And I said, yeah, but look at from her standpoint, she guessed that the world is going woke. And that applies, you know, that applies to all products and all brands. I'm going to just get out there and be in front of this, you know, and I'm 39 years old and I'm the VP marketing for one of the brands. And I have aspirations to move up, you know, I have that aspirations to move up from where I am. And you know, and so I'm going to bet that putting a person, controversial person in the cultural world right now on a can of beer, that's going to be a big payoff. I'll move the brand. And she certainly did.

Dean: Yes. Oh boy.

Dan: Six billion losses so far. That was a minus $6 billion bet.

Dean: Unbelievable. I didn't realize the measurement of it when it happened. That's wild.

Dan: Yeah. But one of the reasons is that there are certain things that people want certain kind of permanence in and that's their guess. And it's interesting. I was reading article and it was the fact that there. And this article had deeper research than I've ever seen before. But it was a thing that in the world Today, there are 5,500 companies that have lasted continuously more than 500 years, which I think is how many companies. 5,500.

Dean: Wow. There were that many?

Dan: 3,500 are in Japan. Okay. And it has to do with all sorts of cultural, political, economic factors that are peculiar to Japan. Not going into it right now. But the interesting thing about it is that In Japan, the 3502/3 of them are related to alcohol in some way. Okay. So it's either a brewery. A brewery and you know, they, they have rice as one of their alcoholic, you know, ingredients. Sake is a big ingredient. And they have, they make fruit wines, all kinds of fruit wines. So there's a wide variety. Japan has quite a wide spectrum of different kinds of beers, liquors, wines and. But two thirds of them are alcohol related. And so I was saying why alcohol related? And I says, well, alcohol is probably the most emotional of drugs. Okay. And what I mean by that is, first of all, it's the most communal of drugs. You know, you don't get together and have a wild pot party.

Dean: Wild, Right, right, right.

Dan: You know, you don't, you don't have a really rambunctious tailgate party with opioids.

Dean: Right, right, right, right, right.

Dan: Most of the drugs put you into your world, allowing you to feel good about being completely isolated. And alone.

Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan: They kind of reward you for, for disconnecting and dropping out. But alcohol is the one that you do if you want to feel closer, you want to feel closer, you want to feel more communal. It's got a lot of romance tied to it. It's got a lot of babies are created out of alcoholic social lubricant.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. And it's easier to sell things and people are, you know, are slightly inebriated and everything else. So my feeling is that she didn't realize that she was tampering with something that has great emotional and cultural force. Okay. And she was going to change the entire context of what a, you know, a low alcohol beverage was going to meet. And she got her market results. You know, she got some feedback. She's taken a leave of absence from the company.

Dean: Oh, my goodness. Is that true? I didn't realize. Wow.

Dan: It was announced on Friday and they're bringing in a big hitter to take over. The VP of all marketing for Anheuser Busch Worldwide is taking over that brand. So they're pulling in, they're pulling in a, you know, somebody with. So they're going to have to, you know, going to have to adjust their thinking about who their customers are and who their marketplace is. You know, so that was fun to watch it not, you know, I'm not involved in the product at all. I'm not involved the brand at all. And. But I was just watching that she made a guess and she made a bet. Yeah, it was a bad guess and it turned out to be a disastrous bet. And I said, well, that's what you get. That's what you get from a bad guess and a bad bet.

Dean: Right? Yeah. Wild. And, you know, it's an interesting, you know, not for nothing that's, you know, it's a different environment to make that kind of bet when you're in a big corporate environment compared to, as in an entrepreneurial organization where you're, you're the whole, the whole thing.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, but it's interesting that you can have all sorts of very interesting discussions about world affairs, current world of no trends and everything, just from the standpoint of guesses and bets.

Dean: Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, that's, I hadn't thought about it like that, but the first thing that came to my mind was the, my discussion with myself in 1999 making those investment decisions and, you know, realize that now 20 years felt like that's a long way away in 1999. But here we are, you know, 24 years later. And I see those. Those were good. Those are good bets.

Dan: Yeah. The one thing is the. And we can pick one of the, you know, any one of these topics up on the next podcast. But when you think I'm seeing a lot of silliness in media about how the US Is about to lose its reserve currency for the dollar.

Dean: That's all over now. Yeah. All over the news now. Everybody's worried about that. Yeah.

Dan: And what they don't realize is that these period, are a guess and a bet. Okay.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: So you say why we might favor the American currency over other currencies. Okay. And the one being put forward is a unity, united effort on the part of China and Russia to create an alternative currency. And they're getting outstanding advanced thinking countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia and. And Brazil and North Korea. North. Of course, North Korea is going to be part of it and everything like that. And Cuba, probably. Cuba will probably join in.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And I said. So in other words, you think that comics tied to totalitarian countries where every bad thing can happen to people is a good reserve currency. That we can really bet on this in the future.

Dean: Huge.

Dan: We can really bet on this in the future. You know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And. And, you know, together those countries have a military capability that's not equal to America's carrier fleet, you know, like Salvation army.

Dean: That somebody.

Dan: That's the Army. They're not. They don't even have. They don't even have the firepower of the Salvation Army.

Dean: That's right. Exactly.

Dan: All right. Well, this was a great one. This is a great one. Today I think we. I think we. I believe. I think we've introduced a secret. Go to Sauce. Guessing and betting.

Dean: I'm doubling down. I'm guessing that this is going to be a very fertile discussion, and I'm going to bet on that this week and come prepared next week with even some bets from my guessing.

Dan: You bet.

Dean: I love it. Thanks, Dan. I always enjoy it.

Dan: Thank you. Bye.

Dean: Okay, I'll talk to you next time. Bye.