The Impact of Urbanization: Toronto's Tale and Personal Growth

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Welcome to Cloudlandia.

Dan: Is that the Mr. Jackson who hangs out in that domain?

Dean: That is exactly right.

Dan: Ambassador of Clublandia, Writing, possibility and splendor.

Dean: That's exactly right. And is this the Canadian ambassador to Cloudlandia? Yeah, the main one. Yeah.

Dan: We both are. We're. We both go both. Both of us go both ways.

Dean: That is so funny, actually, because you are a American living in Canada, becoming a Canadian, and I am a Canadian living in America, but I'm an actual dual citizen. Did you have Canadian citizenship? Yeah.

Dan: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah.

Dean: But you had to earn it, right?

Dan: 1985, something like that. Yeah. Now it's been close to pushing 40 years and I've been a Canadian. Yeah. And it makes crossing back and forth across the border much easier.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. I always. I look at that as one of my most wonderful uniqueness is being a, you know, natural born dual citizen through my mother and father. So having it every way possible. Being born to a U.S. father and a Canadian mother on a U.S. air Force base in Canada. So it's like, talk about the triple play there. It's every way you can have it. I've got it. So I look at that as a really unique. A really unique asset. Yeah.

Dan: And having listened to that, I have you on duration in Canada.

Dean: That's probably true. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. This is my 52nd year that I've been living in Canada.

Dean: Okay. Right.

Dan: Consecutively. Yeah, consecutively. Yeah. I've been here. I came in 71 in June, so it's 53rd year that I'm in the 53rd year. And I came up for a job offer with big ad agency and said, why not put in a couple of years, see what it's like. And here I am.

Dean: You fell in love with it. That's funny.

Dan: It's. It's a. You know, we find places that suit us.

Dean: Yes, that is true.

Dan: People say, why do you live where you live? And I said, yeah, it suits me. You know, it suits me. And, you know, Toronto is. Toronto kind of lets you alone, you know, as a big city. It's the metropolitan area. The GTA Greater Toronto Area is 6.6 million and got a lot going on. 60% of the people who live in that GTA were not born in Canada. They were born someplace else. Wow. So, yeah, majority of people, including myself, we were born someplace else. And so it. It doesn't have the fervor of some other cities, you know, where there's a, you know, civic spirit. I don't really detect a Civic spirit in Toronto and something. But I think it has to do with. I think it has to do something with uniquely different neighborhoods that make up Toronto. You know, that they have character. Like I live in an area called the Beaches. There's a contention whether it's called the beach or the beaches, but I come down on the side of the beaches and it's like closest I come. It's like a small New England, you know, seaside, seaside town. And it's got its own. It has a lot of different things going on during the year. Parades and parties and festivals and. And so it's got a. It's got a nice quality to it. Yeah. Boardwalk along Lake Ontario. So it takes us, you know, and it's about a two mile boardwalk which is very nice to walk on. And then two minutes the other way puts us into a neighborhood storage district. You know, you know, you're residential but you have stores and then you have the water and there's lots of parks there. And you know, walk all the way to.

Dean: Can you walk all the way to Harborfront along the path?

Dan: I don't know if you. I don't know if you. I don't know if you would walk. I mean, it's a bicycle.

Dean: That's what I mean.

Dan: So it's there. Yeah, but it's got. Yeah, well, it's. Goes for. It goes for a long ways. It goes out, goes all the way to Niagara Falls actually. And then it goes.

Dean: I wonder, is it unbroken? Like there's a. Yeah, there's a trail.

Dan: I think it's, it's temporarily broken because they're all. The area which is called the Docklands, which is that big industrial starts at Cherry Street. It's between Cherry and Leslie and it's south of Lakeshore where big factories, cement factories and everything.

Dean: Yeah, sugar.

Dan: There's a 25 year. Well, that's further along. That's almost. Red Pass is almost downtown now saying that the real estate that they have their sugar factory on is probably worth more than all the sugar they've ever sold, I bet.

Dean: Holy cow.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, so it's, it's a nice city. I mean it's a new city, you know, compared to, you know, New York or one of the other cities which go back to the 1600s. Toronto really just kind of starts in the late 1800s and so it's, and I am told, kind of a boring place. Montreal was the key, exciting city and Canada up until the 70s. And then it sharply changed because they put in the language laws, the you know, the French, defending the French language. And yeah, it doesn't make for a dynamic. Doesn't make defense. Never makes for a dynamic spirit. You know, a defense is not an entertaining activity.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Yeah. You don't find defenders telling jokes. You know, they're short on sense of humor. So anyway. So anyway, but Toronto, all the big corporations that had their headquarters in Montreal quickly moved them to Toronto and it became the keeping. You know, it's a major city.

Dean: Yeah. I've been working, you know, on in my mind here. I was looking at some projects that I'm working on that we're going to roll out. This is with a client and we're looking at rolling out in what I've identified as NFL cities. Basically, like every. When you look at it that there's, you know, 30, you know, NFL cities and they all have. They're all these metro areas basically similar to the gt. And I wonder, you know, having grown up, my only experience is having my childhood be you know, filtered through the lens of the gta. So there's all that, what all that means the Canadiana and the. Specifically the Toronto sort of, you know, environment. Everything was around, you know, the Toronto newspapers, the Toronto radio, the, you know, your out. Your look to the world was cbc. Yeah, CBC through that. And I imagine, you know, same thing in Canada if we take, you know, NHL cities or CFL cities that, you know, the GTA has a different vibe than Ottawa and Montreal and Vancouver, Saskatoon, Calgary. Yeah, all those things. And I wonder now, like, what. How is this shifting, Is it relevant now for Generation Z on the COVID of Wired magazine this month as a Gen Z theme for the whole magazine. And, you know, there's such a big generation. I mean, there's 72 million of them, which is kind of funny. They're bigger than baby boomers and bigger than Generation X and the Millennials. But I wonder, you know, they've been grown into a Cloudlandia first world that really their primary world is Cloudlandia. And it's almost like the thing, the importance or interaction or sense of identity or community that shapes as you kind of, you know, grew up in that thing, do you think that's as relevant or do you think it's a. Makes any difference now? Like, you had the opportunity, you kind of grew up in. If we take an NFL city kind of orbit or satellite, you grew up what would have been in the Cleveland Browns, the Browns. Right. So your whole. That's kind of like your. Yeah, you're a satellite, you know, or in orbit of Cleveland as the big city kind of thing.

Dan: Yeah. And yeah, and that was sort of a real treat because I grew up on a farm 60 miles west of Cleveland and it was always a big treat when you got, we got to go downtown, you know.

Dean: Yeah, right.

Dan: And Cleveland was a hopping place. I mean, I was born in the 40s and Cleveland was probably the fifth biggest American city then and a lot of wealth there. The Rockefellers are from Cleveland and. Yeah, I mean, and. But then there was the Western movement, you know, but the World War, the Second World War changed, really changed a lot of things. I always say there's four things that happened in the 40s and 50s that really changed the geography of the United States as far as what you thought of as places to go. And the first one was the GI Bill. You had 16 million people who got the GI Bill and that gave them really cheap education, really cheap, really cheap home loans. And so you had a lot of blue collar people who had, would never go to education beyond high school. And suddenly the universities were filled with these veterans who came back and when they got their degree, first of all, they went away. They didn't do it in their home village, hometown, or the, you know, the neighborhood in the city. They went away someplace to the university. They had four years away. They had already been away for three years. Three or four years with the service. But with the education being cheap and then also the home loans, they didn't go back to where they came from. And then that coincided with the interstate highway system, us put right.

Dean: Yeah, yeah.

Dan: And the suburbs and the interstate highway system. So inner city people moved to the suburbs or they moved to another city. And. But all the westward growth was towards California, you know, towards the South, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona. And so you had that, and then you had air conditioning. And air conditioning made it possible to have business in really hot places. You know, you could, you could have factories, you could have, you could have plants with air conditioning. And so that. And the other thing is, I don't include it in my four, but generally these new places were very resistant to unions. Labor unions were mainly in the big established cities in the east and in the north. But when they got to the south and west, they were, were not union states. They came much later. And so you could pay wages, you know, that the unions would not have agreed to. But the unions weren't there. And then they, I think the fourth one, so we had the GI Bill, we had the highway system, we had air conditioning. And the fourth one was national TV. And that came at 50. So you had the three. You had the three networks, and they were basically competing for the same audience, competing with the same themes, competing, you know, with the same kind of programming. And I think that that totally changed the character of the United States from what it had been before the Second World War. I think those four things. Yeah. I mean, you could add. Everybody would have something else to add to that. But it'd be hard to find four things more central than those four. Yes. I think.

Dean: And that's. So all of those even, you know, then the. Yeah. That sense of everybody having the same experience. I think the kids now, I think. You think, like, if we were to take that. Because some of those are infrastructure things, right. That you were. That you're talking about.

Dan: Well, almost all four of them. Almost all four of them are infrastructure of one kind or another. Communications infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, educational infrastructure. And then, you know, the air conditioning is. I don't know, that would fall under a technological. Technological infrastructure.

Dean: Yeah, yeah. And that's interesting. I mean, I wonder, you know, where in. If you take these and kind of like overlay, that's all, you know, circa right around 1950, that all of that in place now that if we take this to today, you know, and I think when you really think about the Gen Z, you know, to 1996 to 2010, those kids, you know, the oldest of them now are in the workforce and in the early 20s. So it's. But they grew up with an infrastructure that the Internet was already established. And then the Internet, by the time they were, you know, teenagers, the modern Internet, everything was in place. And I still think about the, you know, that all eyes were kind of on that in terms of, you know, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, now Twitter. And then I don't know whether you've been following threads. Just got released, which is Facebook's sort of Twitter competitor. And it was the fastest. It's the fastest thing to go to 100 million users. They went to 100 million users in five days. Right. And that's kind of a. You know. But I guess.

Dan: But they were the same customers.

Dean: That's what I mean. When you start with. You start.

Dan: They were Instagram customers who just added another channel.

Dean: You just start with a billion already and you get, yeah, yeah, now you're at 100 million. But those things. It's almost like the. I start to see that all of those main platforms tend to now, you know, sort of mimic each other in that, you know, whatever. Whenever anybody starts to take a lead, everybody. Oh, yeah, we've got that too. So, you know, TikTok with the short form, endless scrolling videos, you know, between TikTok reels, YouTube shorts and, and Instagram stories, you can't really tell which one you're on. It's all that same thing. And I think that when you look at what Twitter's, what you know, threads is trying to do with Twitter because Twitter was kind of unique in a way that it was the 140 character, you know, mostly words and comments, commentary, discussion, type of. They're really. The others haven't, you know, didn't really.

Dan: Yeah, I would say there's a big fundamental change that is happening right now that probably it will give the newest generation a completely different future. And that is the, the notion of a global economy is disappearing. You know, 10 years from now there won't be a global economy. And it's already, I mean, it's already starting to break, break apart. And that's a function of geo, that's a geopolitical change that is fundamentally different than anything that happened since 1945. So we're, you know, and you know, you go to conferences and you listen, you know, we're going all global and you know, at a certain point we'll change over where there's a single global government and borders don't really matter and everything else. And that was a bad guess and that was a bad bet. That whole thing was disappearing because it was basically with the agreement of one very powerful country that would be true. That country's changed its, that country's changed its mind. And. But the other thing is that there's a much better prediction that can be made that a lot of the Generation Z won't go to university, they won't go to college because the money is all going to be. The money's going to be in the trades again.

Dean: Yeah. And that's what I wonder if the, you know, what I've been kind of wondering about now is the. What is the relevance of these little, you know, your kind of NFL cities, your city, your MSA cultures kind of thing. Like I was, you know, only had the Canadian experience, but I imagine people who grew up, you know, if you live in Chicago, that's got a different vibe than living in Detroit or in Cleveland or in St. Louis or, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina, all these things. I wonder what the role of these is kind of in the next 25 years. Is it, you know, we coming back. I always remember, I don't remember the exact way that you said it, but you talked about the dueling, you know, the dueling furniture stores or the, you know, the best furniture store on the street or the best furniture store in town in the state. Glow in the world. And then it was. Right.

Dan: Yeah, the best one on the street. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. Yeah, I haven't really given much thought to that, so I don't really know. But there's an interesting thing with Chicago. The Bears, who have been, you know, the most downtown of sports franchises. The White Sox baseball team is on the south side and the Wrigley Field. The Cubs are kind of going towards the wealthy sections, the North Shore, Evanston, you know, sort of moving towards Evan Evanston and Lake Forest and those really wealthy cities. But the Bears were right downtown. They were right on the. At Soldier Field, which is right near the lake. They're leaving. They're going to go out to one of the northwestern suburbs. You know, just depends on which one of them. But they'll be like easily 25 miles from downtown. And the basketball team, and I don't think they're in the center city. The basketball and the hockey team, I don't think they're center city. But they're losing population. I mean, Chicago's downtown. Yes, losing. As a matter of fact, I think Toronto's inner city now is bigger than Chicago's inner city. The suburbs. Chicago suburbs are bigger in Toronto. But. And, you know, and. And my sense is that the need to be in the most densely part of a city for business reasons has lost its force. And I think Covid.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Had a huge impact on that. Where people who normally commuted downtown spend a couple of years not commuting downtown. And I think they had a chance to figure out maybe there's a different way of my work future than going downtown. Yeah. So I think that Covid, as we go along and the lockdowns that came with COVID will be seen year by year as we get further away from. Had a profound sociological. I think it had a profound economic impact on people where they started planning out a different future that did not include every day, an hour into the city, every night, an hour out. They got those two hours back. And they're kind of choosy and picky about whether they want to spend their whole future that way.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. Like that was so normal. You know, I look at growing up in Georgetown, in Halton Hills, that was like a normal. Almost everybody in Georgetown commuted, took to

Dan: go train and that's exactly right.

Dean: Yeah. And that was like just a normal. That's just a normal thing or at the very least, they drove to Mississauga or, you know, 30 minutes somewhere. Not a lot of industry.

Dan: So I think, I think that every year the effect of those two lockdown years will be more pronounced. I think, I think it won't go the other way. They say, you know, will get past Covid and we'll go back to things the way they were. I don't think that's going to happen. And then the other big thing is the repatriation of industry and manufacturing back to, and I'm talking about the States here and, and the US has gone through greater industrial and manufacturing growth in the last three years than it did during the three main years of the Second World War, which was, Yeah, I mean it was out of sight how much manufacturing they did in the industrial plant. And, but it's not coming back to the east coast, any of the, you know, not the old established New England. It's not going to, it's not going to the Great Lake States, you know, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago. You know, it's going to, you know, it's going to places where they have really cheap land and you can build new tsmc, which is the highest level chip makers in the world. From Taiwan, they've, they're just completing a 20,000 employee chip factory just north of Phoenix.

Dean: Yeah. And that's the one that they're going to power with the small nuclear.

Dan: Well, I'm not sure that's true. I was just talking to Mike, I was just talking to Mike Wander and it said, it seems to me that a project like that would be a really good use of your new thing. No, I think they're, no, I think they're, you know, they're using their own, they might have their own generators, but they're not nuclear generators.

Dean: Oh, maybe that I thought maybe it was because I do remember something that they were going to make it.

Dan: No, it's not solar. Silver, definitely. Well, they would use solar for part of it because they've got pretty steady sun all year, all year round. Yeah. But anyway, I don't really know the ins and outs of it. I was just thinking that TSMC on Taiwan and 100 miles from China decided that 8,000 miles from China was better.

Dean: Right. That's funny.

Dan: And I think the other thing that you're going to see is the Japan set, a model about 30 years ago. So Japan was going to take over the world and then they didn't take over the world. Okay. And so remember in the 1980s we go to movies and it would be about how smart the Japanese were and how stupid the Americans were and, you know, we'd be taking orders from the Japanese. Well, they hit a wall. They hit a wall at the end of the 80s and they've been essentially flat economically for the last 36, 36 years. But what they did, they made a very strategic decision. This is companies like Toyota, they made a strategic decision that they have such a falling population. They had the fastest collapsing population in human history up until the Chinese. The Chinese now are losing population faster than any country in history. And but what the Japanese sort of at the government level and at the, you know, at the investment level and the actual industrial level, made a decision that from now on they would have their factories where their customers were. And most of the customers were in the US and then other, I mean, the top level customers who were right, right for the price here items. And so they have moved a large portion of their industrial base to mostly south of the United States, you know, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, you know, Tennessee, Kentucky, but below the Mason Dixon line. If, you know, if you. Yes, that was the division between essentially between the Union and the Confederate. So all the factories are going to the former Confederate States during the Civil War. And, and, but they've said they voluntarily did that. I mean, well, voluntarily is that they were constrained and they said that if we're going to have future. And then the money, you know, a portion of the money comes back to Japan. But they hire American. They're hiring. That's. The people who run the factories are American. The people who work in the factories are American. And you know, they pay taxes in the state and to the country. But my sense is that as we go forward over the next 10 years, there will be a tariff for other countries to sell into the United States.

Dan: There will be tariffs unless you move your factory to the United States. Yeah.

Dean: Wow. This is, yeah, this is why I wonder now. It's like almost like the, it's almost like the wave kind of thing that the waves are shifting back into, you know, more an inward, an inward shift here. Well, I think exciting times, I think.

Dan: Yeah. I think the central thinking here is we want the supply chains to be guaranteed.

Dean: Yes. And that makes sense. It's all internal.

Dan: I mean, if it's Mexico, the United Mexico, United States, Canada, it's all, you know, the, all the rail lines are there, all the highway systems are there, you know, and they're not enemies of each other. And, and you know, when the, when the Canadians nationalized pot, you know, marijuana, you knew There wasn't going to be any invasion by Canada into the United States.

Dean: Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, yeah, that is funny.

Dan: For those of you, you know, know something about the United States of Canada, that was a joke I just told.

Dean: I love that

Dan: placid Canadians got more placid.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. That's so funny. This was. I did hear a comedian talking about the. How our friendly neighbors to the north, the Canadians are just so chill. He said, let's face it, our Salvation army could kick their butt.

Dan: Well, here's the thing. They just had NATO exercises. Canada is part of NATO and they don't have enough working equipment that they could participate.

Dean: Wow, that's something, isn't it? Well, there you go.

Dan: No, I mean, probably, you know, I mean, looking at it from Canadian standpoint, I kind of understand it because nothing's going to happen in Canada that would in any way be seen as a threat to the United States. And the American military would be all over it. You know, the. Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Dean: But talk about one of the best. Like, just. That's why. That's why I look at my Canadian citizenship as a gift. You know, I look at it as something that's very rare. And, you know, you just look at. It's why Canada is always amongst the top places to live in the world, you know? Yeah, it's just got so much. So much going for it.

Dan: Yeah. Proximity, thesis. I mean, this started with Generation Z conversation, you know. Yeah, it started. You know, it really started. You know, we experienced growing up where we were in one way, but I suspect that somebody was born in the late end of the 90s and is in their 20s now. You know, their take on the world would be radically different from what our take was.

Dean: That's what I'm. That's what I'm saying is that it feels like they wouldn't have that same sense of identity or association with their clique, you know, with that they were. Because I think it was. It's less and less relevant in your daily life.

Dan: Well, the chances are that first of all that you would, for example, have to go in the military. I mean, I was born in the 40s, and when I got to the 60s and the Vietnam War started and I got my draft notice, I didn't give it a thought. Well, you know, I had one, two, three. I had three older brothers who had already served. I mean, they volunteered. They didn't. And mine was conscription. I never gave it a thought because all the growing up, all the adults I talked to had been in the military. So it didn't seem like. Yeah, it was kind of like a tax. You know, it was two years of your life and it was kind of like a tax. But, you know, and there was no thought. But then you had the anti war period during this. But I was already back from the military when that all started and, you know, I didn't really pay any attention to it. I mean, it wasn't, it didn't concern me at all. And you know, and you didn't get into discussions going through college that you had been in the military. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a. It wasn't a popular topic and. Yeah. So. Yeah, and I think that's where the sharp change happened. I think it was the late 60s. Anti war protests and then. Yes, a lot of protests. I remember Little Abner. It was a cartoon series. Little Abner, Al Cap. And he had, he was reflecting in the late 60s, a protest group called Swine. Swine, that was the acronym was S W I N E. Students wildly indignant about nearly everything.

Dean: That's true. That's great.

Dan: And they, they run the, I mean, on one side of the political spectrum, they run the country now they're in their 60s and 70s.

Dean: Well, the size of the, the size of the swine, you know, army now is huge because it can be collective on the Internet. Cancel culture.

Dan: Well, what we call WOKE used to be called. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a. There's you can chase. You can easily track the genealogy, the ideological genealogy of the present WOKE population and. But it started with the swine population in the 1960s, you know, but students wildly indignant about nearly everything.

Dean: Yeah, I think that's something, you know, that's so great. Yeah.

Dan: This whole, you know, I mean, if you're not creative opposition gives you a lot of focus and identity. Being against something can give you a lot of energy, you know. Yeah. And. Yeah. But it, it doesn't get you a high paycheck.

Dean: Yeah. This is. Yeah. I wonder now the whole, this whole, like, notion of work and what. How that's going to shape this generation. I haven't gotten to that part in the, in the magazine.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yet. But I mean, it's certainly, you know, there's a different level of. Apparently they're saying that we're. That it is a very entrepreneurial group, which is.

Dan: Well, as far as, I mean, just by observation, because we have. I would say we certainly have 20 of our team members out of 130. Might be more than that. I haven't counted, but they seem like worker bees to me.

Dean: Okay, interesting.

Dan: Yeah, they work real hard. They work real hard. They, you know, they show up on time, they do what they say they're going to do, they finish what they start and they play. They say please and thank you. And, you know, and so I have a very positive take on those individuals who we've hired. You know, and I mean, we have. There's five steps to get hired at coach. So there's a filtering and a screening that goes on. Yeah, it was one thing that we had a lot of millennials, you know, we had a lot of millennials and a lot of them are still with us. And I asked the person most in charge of hiring for a coach, I said, is there anything you're doing different with these people? Because I don't see, I don't detect any of the attitudes that are supposedly millennial attitudes. And she said, well, we have one more question. We asked them. And I said, and it's, if you come to work as strategic coach, what do you think you're entitled to? And if they answer the question, they're gone.

Dean: That's so funny. I like that.

Dan: If they even know what the word entitled means. Yeah, they disqualified. They disqualified themselves. Yeah.

Dean: Oh, that's funny.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Well, I didn't, I didn't ask you, Dan, but how did Free Zone go this week? I know everybody was in. Gathered in Chicago.

Dan: Well, I had one of my periodic last minute creative changes where what was the planned out workshop on Friday was completely changed on Monday. Okay, okay. And what I did was, and I just got a feel for it that something more is needed. And also we had a guest speaker. For the first time, we had a guest speaker. And we had Andre Norman. We had Andre Norman come in and spend an hour with us. And I gave Andre script in the term in the form of a fast filter. And I said, andre, we're just going to talk about entrepreneurism and we're going to divide your life into three parts. When you were a gang leader in Boston, you're the boss. And when you got into prison and you were the prison boss, and now you're out and collaborating with Joe Polish and you do crisis intervention with individuals and groups across the country. But you're the boss of doing that. And I'd like you just to walk us through your three entrepreneurial stages and looking back, things you might have done differently. Now from your, you know, from the, you know, the advantage of backward perspective, what would you have done differently? But we had two TikTok. We had two videos and there was about a two minute TikTok where he's just telling the story about how he went through five guard stations and got into the kitchen to ask for a hamburger and shake cheeseburger and was confronted by the warden and then let the warden know who actually ran the prison and that he had no issue getting through five gates and getting into the kitchen. But the warden was being an issue and that the warden had a choice of how he was going to handle this. And the warden at the end goes over and says, give him a second cheeseburger, make him two.

Dean: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: And then at the end, it was just the. The trailer for the movie that's been made on Andre. So we. That was sort of neat. One was about two minutes, the other one was about two minutes at the end. But it was a terrific hour. So that was a event in the workshop. But what I did was I drew a diagram and it's an upward arrow, you know, goes up and it's broken down into eight arrows. And they're the decades of my life. So next year I complete my eighth decade, eighth arrow. And I just observed that my creativity and productivity since I was 70 was greater than the 70 previous years. I've created and produced more in the last 10 years. So I had them all do that. They had to draw it out. I just drew it on the whiteboard and. And then you laid down, you know, everything. But just under the category of creativity and productivity and that I had. I Bet I had 10 people at the end of the first hour because they just drew it out. And then they went into breakout groups and then we had the general discussion, let's say the first hour and a half. They said we could go home right now. This was worth the trip. And I said, well, that's good. And I had a prepared sheet which said what their best ever decade was going to be ahead. So mine was a bit easy because I'm going to be right at the end of a calendar decade. My chronological. Not a calendar decade, but my chronological. So I'll be 80 next May. And so it'll be 80 to 90. It'll be 2024 to 20, 2023. I says, now choose a one. And I said, you may have it start right away. You may have it start in a couple of years, you know, but you're

Dean: going to now chose them too.

Dan: Yeah, start creating the decade that will be your best effort. And you've seen what you've done with the best one in the Past. And we did that. But we're going to break it into two parts. One of them is creativity times productivity. That'll be one side. And the other side will be fitness times health. Because I said, you know, right now at 80 most, they get the people born in 19 in the United States, people born in 1944, 61% of them are dead, you know, 61. And so, so, you know, you gotta put a bigger emphasis on your physical energy. And so I said, and you won't plan for something bigger in the future if you're not in great shape, and you will not plan for greater shape in the future if you're not becoming more creative and productive. And this was a huge. This is a huge new tool. A new time tool. A new time tool. And it went. It was a whole day. Just that. That thing. Yeah, we just. And then they picked three things that were most important and then they did a triple play on it. So I think we had about. We had about three breakout groups and then general discussions and we had a party the night before and on the Monday where you have the 10 times workshop. It's just free zone people in that 10 times. There's no nobody else in the 10 times. And that really worked. And then there were people who were going to do their 10 times the day after Free Zone. And I had. We had another party at our house that night and that included a lot of ten times a week of party.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: But it's all, you know, all the success and achievement is strictly for the parties.

Dean: That's exactly right. I like that.

Dan: Yeah. And being. Having a 7 in your print, you would appreciate parties.

Dean: Yes, exactly. I love it.

Dan: Everybody happy, enjoying life and having fun.

Dean: Yeah, I love that. Well, I'm excited. So we're going to go through that same thing on you.

Dan: So you'll do that on. You'll do that on the zoom. Yeah, I like it. And that's next week? I think that's next week. I think that's next week. Is that next week or. No, it's this week.

Dean: This week. I think one of these.

Dan: Yeah, I think it has to be this week. It has to be this week because we're at the cottage for two weeks.

Dean: Oh, yeah, There you go.

Dan: Starting next week. Yeah, yeah. But it went really well. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So anyway, that's. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Dean: Now. Did. I saw in one of the. I got the. The prep package and stuff and I saw something that made my pupils dilate and I Think it was some indication of some free zone expansion into Toronto.

Dan: Yeah, what we want to do, because it's getting big now we have 91 in free zone. And so we want to add another available workshop day during the quarter. And there's been a growing interest from people in Canada who would do it if it were in Toronto. And so we looked at the date. It'll start in early. It'll start in early. 24. 2024. And. But there has to be enough interest that we would have a good size and by good size we'd have more than 20 people there, either new or existing. And. And. But to save you the bother of going to Chicago, we're still going to charge you in American dollars.

Dean: Right on.

Dan: Yeah. So it's great. We're not having a deeper one.

Dean: Yeah, no, this is great. I think it's so nice to see it expanding. I mean, the. That our group in. In Palm beach was really something. I mean, it's really a great energy amongst everybody.

Dan: And next year the summit's back in Palm beach, too.

Dean: I like that. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Well, the Four Seasons. There's, you know, there's nothing you have to think about with Four Seasons.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, I mean, their instant response and anything you want. That's great. And we're going to have our first big global conference in Nashville next year and I think it's in May, first week of May, so it'll be two day and it's everybody who's been involved and we'll have out clients come. So we're shooting for probably 1500, 1600 people and we're going to break out sessions and guest speakers.

Dean: A global overall strategic coach.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. So people come from overseas for it. But yes, you know, a lot of it is mingling and, you know, and yeah. Mining and dining and everything. But. And I have nothing to do with this. I was told it was going to happen.

Dean: So, you know, you're just relaying the news.

Dan: Yeah. I'm usually the last one to know. And. And yeah. And people say, boy, how do you find time for all this stuff? And they said, well, what stuff? And they said, well, you know, moving the other coaches up to 10 times. I said that was 15 minutes on my part to do the whole. I simply announced that after 2023, I wasn't going to do any more. After 2022, I wasn't going to do any more workshops.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Well, how are we going to. I said my security clearance is not high enough to be involved in the discussion.

Dean: Yeah, nothing but Rave reviews for Chad.

Dan: Yeah, Chad, that was really good. Yeah. And in fairness to, you know, in fairness to, you know, someone else, they had to split their tension between free zone and 10 times people on the same day and that stuff. And. But Chad just got the pure, the purebred lambs.

Dean: Oh man, that's so funny. The purebred. Yeah, the Mayflower. Yeah, that is funny. Well I, you know what's funny feel I feel good about is I've been, I was the mayflower of the 10 times program.

Dan: Oh yeah.

Dean: The maiden voyage and Mayflower. Free Zone. That's funny.

Dan: Yeah. Well, you know, it, you know, I mean there's, you know, my whole approach is that you don't know how good your team is and you don't know how good the program is until you're not involved in any of it. Yeah, yeah. So it's one of the people say, well, all this free time. And I say, they said don't you worry about the company. And I says actually it's on my free days that I find out how good my company is. Or as, as a result of my free days they can't phone us. We don't phone them or zoom them. We don't. And they have to sort things out on their own. And that's. And they do, they do and they grow.

Dean: Did you, how many days did you who up with the, you know, letting without doing the 10 times prep and workshops?

Dan: About 60 days. Yeah. And then.

Dean: But you've already replaced some of those with.

Dan: Oh yeah, I'm expanded the programs and I'm busy. I don't think I'm any less active. I don't think I'm any right. I'm just doing different things. But the big one for the last five years and on Tuesday it'll be five years. Was the no television for five years. And I got back about 4,000 hours over the five year period, about 800 hours. So you know, I truthfully I kind of worked like 10 hour days when I'm working. So that was 8, 80 years and 80 days a year. And then I got about work time and then I got 60. So it was a big, I had a big return of days available for doing new things and you know, so it says stuff works, you know.

Dean: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've been really enjoying and expanding on my adventures in Dean Landia.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Less screen time, more team time. I'll tell you, there is so much, yeah. There's so much more compelling things going on in Dean Landia than in on Netflix. Or on YouTube or, you know, tick tock, any of those things that take

Dan: up all that well, you can be more of a, you can be more of a connoisseur, you know, but, you know, I mean, I watch YouTube, but basically half of it is just watching Peter Zion's latest take on something, and that's never more than about seven or eight minutes. And. But you begin to realize, you know, that if you're truly a. An entrepreneur who's expanding freedom time, money, relationship and purpose, that there's a lot going on in the world that doesn't or should, shouldn't really concern you.

Dean: Yeah, I think that's really the thing of being able to know that this, you can let go of a lot of this. Right. That's really. I think that when you, when you really come to the fact that, that there's no way to keep up with it, there's no like all the content that's out there. It's kind of like you're saying about swimming in the ocean, you know, you miss a lot of it, but you really, you know, it was.

Dan: As long as you get a good, as long as you get a good swim in, that's all that really matters. But the other thing is people say, well, how do you keep up with the world? And I said, if I knew what the world was, maybe I would have an answer. But I says, our world is basically a measurable number of relationships that you have, you know. You know, I mean, people say, what do you think about what's going on in Africa? And I said, well, not very much. And I mean, I don't really think about it that much. And. Because.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I've got some clients. I have a client clients in Botswana, I've got clients in Ghana. You know, there's some clients there and we interact and I know about them. But Africa itself, not really much. And. But people. I think what's happened over the last 40 years, we've had a sizable number of people who went to college with the, and came out of the college with the mission of changing the world. Yeah, but they don't know how to change a tire. You know, so they have theoretical, this theoretical sort of vision, but they don't really have any practical skills. And I think as the world becomes less united and less interconnected, which I see happening already, and it's going to happen more so over the next 20 years, it strikes me that people will become more practical in their focus and they'll be more local and not local in the sense that they're dealing with real relationships, and they're creating things and producing things with real relationships, and they're not buying into a lot of fantasies about what's going on in the world. And this is Generation Z. I mean, we started with this topic, but I think they're going to turn out to be more practical than the two or three generations ahead of them.

Dean: Yeah. And they're much more, you know, they're technically fluent. I mean, that's certainly a thing that they're, I think, especially now, the younger ones that are going to, you know, they're going to grow up with their chat GPT sidekick, you know, always available to them. I think it's going to be an amazing.

Dan: Yeah, I think it's. There's some changes in the wind, huh. Anyway, got a job. Oh, by the way, always fun. As a pickup on a previous thing, I checked with Julia Waller about the strength finder, and we do not have your numbers.

Dean: She sent me an email. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it today, actually. I'm gonna.

Dan: Yeah, good. But I'm just gonna send you. I. I have it on a draft and I'll just punch the button and you know, the thing is that you take your top five strength finders and you plop them into the FAST filter.

Dean: Perfect.

Dan: The fast filter has five success criteria.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I'm gonna put down whatever your five are. Yeah. And it's got a. It's got a neat outcome when you do that.

Dean: I like it. I can't wait. Well, I will report back. Are we are next week?

Dan: Next week? And then I won't at the cottage. I'm just gonna cottage. I'm just gonna cottage things.

Dean: Okay, great. So no podcast next week. Okay.

Dan: No next week. We have it. I haven't left next week. I'm here on Sunday, so. What?

Dean: Okay, yeah, we'll do that.

Dan: If you would be so inclined.

Dean: Yeah, of course. Always.

Dan: Okay, talk to you then. Okay, bye.