The Fusion of Innovation and the Natural World

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia, Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: How are you, Mr. Jackson?

Dean: Well, welcome to Cloudlandia. I'm sitting out in my courtyard, and it's a little bit of a cold, rainy morning. I don't know if you can hear the rain gently falling in the courtyard. It's relaxing.

Dan: Do you have an umbrella over your head?

Dean: No, I'm in a. I have a covered. Covered area here that I'm sitting. It's a belt. I don't know what you call it, like lanai or a loggia. I don't know how it is, but it's a covered under roof. Under roof thing that's attached to my courtyard.

Dan: What you're saying is that there's something between you and the sky.

Dean: That's exactly it. I'm not getting rained on. I'm undercover, as they say.

Dan: Yeah. Well, it's sort of poignant. Almost like a Japanese day, right? Yeah.

Dean: This almost feels like a Japanese Zen garden here.

Dan: I hear the.

Dean: Like, the little. The water coming off the roof of a tile roof, so that. It's very Japanese Zen, actually, because the. There's a spout that, you know, drains the water down into a. Oh, yeah, Drainstick. Yeah. So nice.

Dan: Yeah, it's very interesting. When I was a teenager, I sort of fell in love with Japanese culture. This is. This would be early 60s, late 50s, early 60s. And, you know, I read the literature, I looked at the artwork. I was interested in their architecture, their history. And then in my military, I was drafted into the US Military and got sent to South Korea. And on my R and R, rest and relaxation. That's what they called it, R and R. I went to Japan. I went to twice.

Dean: Oh, nice.

Dan: And my memory is of being in the mountains at a place where they really didn't speak English, that I don't know even know if they. You know, having Americans was part of their experience. But it was perfectly understandable. I mean, the hospitality was so great. But I can remember being in one of these little rooms where they had. They had sliding doors and opened up, and you could see the mountain, you could see the water. And I remember it raining and. But I was warm and I had tea and I was sitting there, and it sort of corresponded to what my teenage visions had been.

Dean: I always remember. Great. I love it when stuff like that happens. Well, this would definitely be the kind of day that would be conducive to tea. And sitting out here, it was kind of a Zen. A Zen garden that I have in the courtyard. So it's nice.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Zen. There's a lot about the jump from the mainland to Cloudlandia that has a Zen like quality to it.

Dean: Tell me more, tell me more. Especially now.

Dan: A lot about it. Well, a lot about it. You have to imagine, in other words, that you only get as far in Cloudlandia as your imagination will go. I'm really seeing this. I'm kind of being a creative collaborator with Evan Ryan. Still in his 20s, but he's, you know, he's been, you know, investigating artificial intelligence for the last, for the last 10 years. So he's. Wow, he's well into it. So it's been, you know, basically his adult life has been. And he's, you know, he's got a very thriving business and he's got clients from all over the planet and. But he wrote one book which was superb. It was called AI as your teammate and he put it together into a six module coaching course for companies. And our entire company went through that. Oh wow. With six. Six to our modules and just to. The main purpose is just to get people over the hump that this is scary. Any scarier than any technology that they've already mastered. It's just a new technology and it did wonders. It did wonders. And I can see, you know, the last module was probably four months ago and I can see the, you know, the investigations and the experiments that are going on across the company, each person sort of focusing on something different. And then Evan is writing a new book and I just shared an idea with him and maybe it'd be a topic that we would discuss today. But I said, you know, there's all sorts of predictions being made by, you know, people about where AI is going and where it's going to take us and you know, both exciting and scary. The predictions are both exciting and scary.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: And what I realized that all these predictions, no matter how expert the person tried to present themselves, was just one person's. One person's prediction. And more or less their prediction for everybody else was simply what they wanted to do for themselves. Right? They were, yeah. And that's Mark Zuckerberg. And you know, there's all sorts of people, you know, the big tech people and government people and everything, corporate people. And I say all your. You're trying to make this a prediction for the world, but it's only probably a prediction for you that this is the direction. And, and what I realize is that this, there's an exponential breakthrough with AI and it's in the area of tinkering, which is a neat word yes, tinkering. And I. So of. Evan and I talked about it, and he's gonna, you know, he's developing the idea as exponential tinkering, and I really like it. Oh, I like.

Dean: Yes. What a nice combination of words because they're.

Dan: They're kind of two words that are jarring when you put them together. Huh.

Dean: That's very good. I like that a lot.

Dan: Yeah. So what are you tinkering with?

Dean: So I'm tinkering with a couple of things right now, and deep into the. Are you talking about technology things?

Dan: No. Yeah. Well, technology or specifically AI. Are you tinkering at all with it? Seeing what do.

Dean: I'm starting now to. Did you see the latest thing a couple of days ago, the release of Sora, the video creation tool?

Dan: Now, that was OpenAI did that. Right.

Dean: Open. AI has just kind of. I think it's only very limitedly open to their top tier, you know, data users or whatever.

Dan: Yeah, that.

Dean: But the demo reels of it, you know, showing what it's capable of. And I mean, it's certainly. You see now where that's the focus. Final piece of the puzzle here. Like, two things have happened in the last 30 days that have, you know, really kind of cement where I. You see this going. I've been predicting here that 20. That, you know, almost like the big change 1975 to 2025 will kind of bookend the, you know, all the. All these exponential improvements reaching the top of the asymptotic curve.

Dan: That.

Dean: That there's.

Dan: You're using big words.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: So asymptotic. Asymptotic. I think that deserves a subhead for our listeners.

Dean: Well, async, in math, when you do exponential, it's. It's exponentially increases, increases, and then it reaches a point where it's just marginally, like, improving slightly. You know, like, there's not really the exponential leap, for instance, of going from. If we just take text, we've gone from, you know, writing it on Papyrus or having people handwrite stuff. Yeah.

Dan: Chiseling, whatever.

Dean: And then Gutenberg was an exponential leap in. In that. But it got better in terms of when we were able to, you know, create digital photocopy and things like that. Then we got to the text file where you could digitize text, and that became a PDF. And now so everything, you know, the functional, like, improvement in text has really reached the top of. There's nowhere really to go from everything ever written available instantly on any device you have. And that same thing has been over the last 25 years kind of cascading series of those with increasing complexity of them. Right. Like it's not. That's the easiest thing to fully digitize is text and then pictures were the next thing that you could digitize pictures so we can transfer images, then moving pictures. Right. Audio, sorry was next after text. Audio, images or images, videos. Now we're at the point where, you know, every piece of media, video, audio, text or images is completely digitized. It's available on any device at any time you want it. And this next piece that's falling into place is the ability to generatively create from description images and videos that you can describe. And so when you take this sora and you take Dall E and you take the, all the things that are converging with the, with the AI and we'll give them another two year Runway which would sort of double their time that they've been in our world mainstream. They'll be fully cemented into the mainstream use. And then you look at what's happening with the release of Apple's new Air Pro goggles or whatever they're calling them.

Dan: Vision Pro.

Dean: Vision Pro.

Dan: And that is, you know, everybody who's going to use any of this.

Dean: Exponential tinkerers.

Dan: Yeah. But that somebody who's doing it.

Dean: Yeah,

Dan: a tinker is just someone who's doing it for their own purposes. You know, they're not trying to create something for anybody else. They're just.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: For example, I gave you the example that I've had a real interested. You know, I wrote a new book and I had, I was writing a new book and I had one chapter finished and it was how we put our company together. And the chapter was unique ability teamwork. That.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Basically a fundamental difference between coach team members and other team members is that everybody operates according to their own unique ability within unique ability teams. So that's that. But I've always had a fascination with Shakespeare. You know, he's one of my five. Yes, you know, five lifetime role models. Shakespeare because he was not only a great poet, a great playwright, a great, you know, creator of, you know, creator of plays, but he was also a tremendous entrepreneur and you know, he created the first company that was self sustainable and he created a new theater and everything else. So he was very entrepreneurial and seems to have made a pile through theater and anyway. But I was always fascinated with the language form that was operating in London in the late 1500s and 1600s. So Shakespeare is 1560, 15 to 16. 16 lived for years and it was called iambic pentameter. And it was a structure where there's only 10 syllables per line. You get to the 10th syllable and then you go to a new line. And. And so I had one of my team members actually go to AI, go to chat GBT and say, we would like to translate Dan's copy into iambic pentameter. And it was back in 24 hours, you know, came back, and I was just fascinated. I was just fascinated with it because I thought differently about my own thoughts when I saw them come back in a different language form, English, but about a different structure. Yeah. So I was sitting there, I was reading that, and I gave it to some of our team and I said, what do you think about this? And they said, wow, I get totally new thoughts from reading it. It's, you know, the basic ideas, but they're in a different language form. And. And I said, now what I'd like to do is I hear it, like it. Hear it spoken, you know, by someone who was really great with Shakespeare's language, you know, so it was a very famous actor who we have their recordings of. And so we, in. My team member, Alex Varley, who is British, you know, so he's from the uk, so he has a feel for this type of language and he has a feel for theater. And.

Dan: And then he worked with Mike Koenigs, great friend of ours, and Mike. Mike gave him two or three other AI programs that he could take a look at. And about four days later, I get this wonderfully eloquent reading the whole chapter in iambic pentam. And I listen to it every week. I listen to it every week, and it does things for my thinking. Okay. And I've shown it to a few people. You know, a number of people have listened to it, and they're all saying, wow, that's amazing. You did that? Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that?

Dean: Why'd you do that? Just tinkering.

Dan: I was just tinkering. And I just. I kind of said, you know, if I put this together with this and maybe put it. Put the two of them together with this, I wonder what it sounds like. And I have no intention of. I have no intention of going any further with it, but it really serves a purpose that it really influences my own thinking. And I've noticed that my writing has changed as a result of listening to this for three or four. Three or four months. You know, I just. I just get a different take on my own ideas. And I call that tinkering. I Just call that tinkering.

Dean: I like that.

Dan: And I believe that with AI, what you have, there was always tinkering in the technology world. But I think what AI does, it makes. It allows tinkering to be exponential.

Dean: That's interesting. So there's a. Yeah, there's an artistry to it, in a way, you know, in that there's. It's kind of like doing something for your own pleasure, for your own.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And your own enhancements. You know, you see. You see an extension of a capability that you already have, but you can see new dimensions of a capability that you already have. And that in itself is the reward. That in itself. And people say, well, are you going to. You know, I tell people, and they say, oh, so are you going to actually produce this? And, you know. You know, like, we produce our books. And I said, no, I'm just doing it for my own reasons. I just like the feel of this. I just like the feel, you know, And I do not think I'm unique in this experience. I think there's 100 million people doing the same thing with something that kind of fascinates them.

Dean: And I wonder if that's the artistic expression gene or something. I mean, that's our internal desire to chase our whims, you know, in a way. Yeah, that's one of the great joys.

Dan: The reason I'm saying this is that we're always making the predictions about who the giant tech giant is that's going to dominate this. And I said one, I don't see it emerging. I think all of them are scrambling like mad so that they don't get left behind. But. But I don't think the idea of tinkering really exists in that world. You know, quarterly stock prices, investments, that. That's what they're looking for, you know, and. And everything else, but I don't see the dominant player even, you know, even OpenAI isn't the dominant player.

Dean: Have you had some experience? Have you tried the Vision Pros yet, Dan?

Dan: No, I don't like goggles.

Dean: I don't either. I mean, I'm not inclined either.

Dan: They're antisocial.

Dean: I wonder, you know, it's gonna be. I know there'll be a lot of people at Free Zone next week that have them that are. So we'll get a chance to try that for sure. But I know Mike Koenix has his. I know Lior has his.

Dan: One of the things that. I always look at their past date right now, but it'd be interesting Ch their Lives down six months from now whether they're actually using them.

Dean: That's what I'm curious about.

Dan: Right.

Dean: Like it's.

Dan: So I don't need to be first in with anything, right?

Dean: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I just think that this chasm, it's getting, you know, I think it's getting wider and wider this, that there's even now nuances of going deeper into Cloudlandia because I think that's like immersively diving into Cloudlandia. And I think that there's. Nick Nanton just posted thing about some big movie director who was, you know, tweeted about, you know, just spent the day editing. Move like a. This is a feature movie mainstream movie director saying he just spent the day editing in the Vision Pros with collaboration with his editor on a big screen. They were theatrical like movie screen size and just fascinated. He said, you know, no headache, no anything.

Dan: So I don't know well where I think. And I felt five, ten years. Well let's say five years ago when people were talking about visual reality. Okay. So it was. And Peter Diamantes had a lot of proponents of this at abundance. 360. And I was sitting there and I said, first of all, every. Everything that I've seen I find boring. And the reason, because what you're seeing is the creation of one brain. And if it's not an interesting brain to begin with, the result of their creation of a VR program is exponentially less interesting. Okay. And what actual reality is good? You know, I look out in my yard and you have the same opportunity there. I look at them and I've got these seven giant oak trees in our yard. I mean they're 100100 foot oak trees. And the reason I love those trees so much is nobody created them. There was no intention for this to happen. It was just a lucky acorn.

Dean: Right.

Dan: I mean they produce thousands, millions of acorns in our yard and it's just squirrel food, you know, and, and it's the non intentionality that interests me. It's not the somebody's intention. Okay. And one person's story really doesn't interest me for the first time if it doesn't include a lot of other people's stories, you know. In other words, you're putting that together. So I don't know. I mean, I think there's a fundamental obstacle to all technological breakthroughs as called human nature. Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. This is where that's what I wonder. The goggles themselves, like, it just, it feels like, wow, this is a. You Know, unless we're at a point where I think the improvement of the vision pros is that you can actually see out of them.

Dan: Well, you can see out of them and it's got the thing that I think is really going to make a difference and that's augmented reality.

Dean: Yes, exactly.

Dan: In other words, you're looking at a real thing. Yeah, there are useful pictures, useful data, useful messages on it and there's useful capabilities. In other words, there's like email and I'm sure the design, you know, design tools and everything that you can do and that I believe is good, but it only, it'll take hold. Where the use of this speeds up an economic process that already makes money, but you can speed up an economic process I'm seeing.

Dean: I wonder if everything is, you know, being shaped to drive us deeper into this Cloudlandia existence here. That everything's happening in the goggles that. I just had coffee with Stuart, my operations guy and we were saying how it seems like there's a trend towards, you know, have you ever heard the term hostel design for outdoor. For architecture where the Starbucks, one of the Starbucks here in Winter Haven just went under when it's 10 year renovation and they completely turned it into like a Baskin Robbins where it's all the character, you know, Baskin Robbins. There's no sense of that third place kind of, you know, origin that Starbucks started with. Where when Starbucks was first getting started in the 90s, they had, you know, nice design, comfy chairs. It was inviting to come and get a coffee and sit and you know, gather kind of thing. And now it's essentially designed with the hey, keep it moving, keep it moving kind of vibe to it. There's no nothing about the chairs, the seating. It's just literally one long banquette with facing single wooden chairs, you know that on and round tables. So there's no of comfort or invitingness to come and linger.

Dan: Well, they commoditize them. So you know, in other words. Yeah, they started off at very special places and you know, you could go in if you could use it as an office. It could be your office all day

Dean: if you were an entrepreneur. Yeah, I think that's what happened is that post, as we got into the last 10 years where it became more WI fi is ubiquitous and you know, demanded in public spaces like that. That, you know, I was saying to Stuart, my theory about it is that in the 90s and early 2000s, the Internet was still a place that you had to go to.

Dan: Right.

Dean: Like you had to go to your computer to go there. And these third places were of, you know, an important part of you're putting that aside and you're coming to this third place to be there. And as laptops and WI fi and all these things made it possible that people could go and set up shop in a Starbucks and spend the whole day there. That became defeated the whole purpose. It wasn't a third place. It was the place, you know?

Dan: Yeah. And that. The other thing, it became every place. You know, I mean, when you commoditize it, it's every place. And. And, you know, I mean, you know, and the other thing is that there was a fundamental change in the Starbucks culture. And I can say exactly when it was. It was in the 90s, and I think it was probably around 1995. They said there's a risky part of our future, and that is we can't guarantee that we're always going to have good baristas. Okay. Because the real skill, right, the real skill, I mean, of Starbucks is who are the baristas who can do the coffee just right? And they said, we can't, you know, it's too risky and we become too dependent on these people, you know, and they said, we've got to make it mechanical. And what they did immediately is that their espresso drinks, you know, whatever form it came in, was only 80% as good, but it was predictably 80. The moment you give away quality in order to achieve quantity, you've lost all uniqueness.

Dean: Yeah, I agree.

Dan: Yeah. And that's what they've done. And now the other thing is that they created their own competition because people seen how a coffee operation worked. They went to Starbucks University and got their degree, you know, and it probably take a year to do that. And they went out and created their own independent coffee shop. So I think those unique coffee shops still exist, but they're not trying to take over the planet.

Dean: Yeah, it's really. It's interesting. I'm looking for places like that, but you just. It's kind of a sad thing. It's almost like you've talked often about the. The black cab knowledge of the drivers in London that they have.

Dan: London, I think London or London. London, Birmingham and Manchester, I think they. They have. But the black cabs are the best cabs in the world. Yeah, okay. They're just. There's nothing to compare an experienced black cab driver with the black cab experience in the world. There's just nothing. Nothing like it. And it takes you three years of dedicated study to even pass the Test to become a Black Cab driver.

Dean: You know, and it's very interesting that all of that now can be, you know, anybody in their Honda Civic equipped with their iPhone has the knowledge right. On their phone.

Dan: Well, actually, it worked out. It didn't work that way out in London.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Because Uber came in and they said, well, you know, the Uber guys got it, but they have no feel for the city.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And. Yeah. And so within six months of Uber coming in and actually threatening, Black Cab developed its own Uber software. So now they have the Uber software plus the knowledge of the driver.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Right.

Dean: It's just great.

Dan: It's like AI, an AI program defeating a world champion chess champion. Okay. And within a year, the chess champions just said, okay, we've upped the game and now it's us plus our AI program against each other. Yeah.

Dean: It's very.

Dan: You know, humans are infinitely smarter than technology.

Dean: Yeah. It's a fascinating time to be approaching your 80th birthday right now too. You know, looking into the next decade here.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: What are you guessing and betting on for the next?

Dan: I'm betting that people's grasp of their past is now their trump card. Okay. That the future is completely and totally unpredictable. Okay. As far as I'm. I mean, I think you could predict the Future More in 1980 then, you know the book you gave me, the 1900-90, the Great Change, I would think. Yeah, it's called the Great Change. If I think back to 1950, where I was alive, I think that the first grade teacher. I had a first grade teacher in 1950, Sister Mary Josephia. Sister made Mary Josephia sometime first grade. She says the reason why you're learning this now, reading, writing and arithmetic, is that when you graduate from high school, because nobody went to college in those days, you know, you left high school and you went and got a job. She says everybody's going to be looking in the job market how good you are at reading, writing and arithmetic and showing up on time and finishing what you start and saying please and thank you. Yeah. And everything else. And she was totally correct. 1962, exactly what she predicted was true. Okay, try a first grade teacher in 2024. Can she predict anything about what a first grader will experience 12 years later?

Dean: Yeah. No, true. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And that's just a general condition on the planet. I just think the future is no longer predictable. So what's the unused resource? The unused resource is your past.

Dean: Say more about that. What do you mean, the unused resource?

Dan: Well, first of all, it's unique. I mean, I mean, if I sat down with you and asked you questions about your past and it went on for a year, day in, day out, for a year, not one thing that you say about your past during that year is anything but unique to you.

Dean: That's true. Yeah, exactly.

Dan: That's where all the raw material is for creativity. It's in your, it's not in the future, you know, and, and it was so funny because I remember four or five times in abundance, 360 Peter would invite in people from Google, okay. And they had these moonshots, okay. And, and what was interesting about them, they were predicting new things in the future that hadn't been imagined yet. Okay. And seems to me like sparse ingredients, but it was what they were up to. And there was presentation after presentation and they had videos on YouTube and everything else. And I said, is there any customer experience in this? No, there's no customer experience. They were just making it up, you know, and they were sort of. And these teams were in competition with each other who could come up with the most convincing thing that didn't exist. And then I kept track of it and over a 10 year period, they shut all those projects down. They never went anywhere.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: They never went anywhere.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And I said, all you do is let's find three examples of things that people are already enjoying and can we put them together in a new way and create something new where people already have experience with at least a third of the new thing? And that's what Apple does. Apple never does anything. First they sit there and they say, MP3 player, Napster, making money doing this Internet. Let's put the three of them together and see where they go.

Dean: Yeah, that's smart. They were doing triple plays and didn't even know it.

Dan: Yeah, well, maybe they were, Maybe they,

Dean: maybe that's just your clever observation of it, right? Exactly.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Put a framework.

Dan: There's a great technology thinker by the name of Mark Mills. And, and he wrote a really interesting book called the Cloud Revolution. Okay. And it's really worth a read. Okay. And what he said, if you go backwards 100 years and you look for all the major technological breakthroughs that have more or less been the mainstream of the last hundred years, he says they, you always discover it was never one thing, it was always three things.

Dean: Oh really?

Dan: He uses the radio, he uses electricity, he uses internal combustion, uses cars, he uses airplanes, he uses, you know, motion pictures and all the major things, air conditioning and everything. And he shows the three things that went together before the breakthrough was possible.

Dean: Oh, wow.

Dan: And part of the reason is you're putting together already existing habits.

Dean: Yeah, that's really. You have to piggyback on something that somebody's already doing. Right.

Dan: That gives them their existing habit, Even though you're adding, you know, you're adding factors that are two other habits. But you have to give people something solid to stand on before you ask them to take a step into the. Into the new.

Dean: What was the name of that book again?

Dan: It's called the Cloud Revolution.

Dean: Okay, The Cloud Revolution.

Dan: And he uses. Interesting example, and this is a prediction he's making for the future. He said, with reshoring take place. So that's one factor. The supply chains are going to get shorter and shorter in the future because Covid sort of proved to everybody that relying on products that came from 100 different places and required 5,000 miles of ocean travel to get to us wasn't reliable for the future products, you know, foods and everything. So what the major thing is that you're going to try to have supply chains for important things as close as possible to where the customers are. And he said, that's one trend. Okay, that's reshoring. That's that process of bringing your manufacturing and your industrialization back to close to you. That's one factor. The other factor is no long obsolete shopping centers. Okay. And he said, let's suppose that you just take every obsolete shopping center and you turn it into a combination of warehouse, factory, distribution center. Okay? Okay. All the existing infrastructure is built in. It's already zoned. It's got huge parking. It's got massive big spaces like the big anchor stores. They're massive big bases. You already have delivery docks. You have truck docks that go underground and people go, yes, and everything. He said it already exists, but it's obsolete for the purpose it was created for. But he says if you think about it as a nexus point for trade, supply routes, in other words, raw material come in and then supply routes going out to the actual customers. And he says, all of a sudden you got a new use. But people are used to shopping centers. People work in shopping centers, you know, and everything else. He says, you know, and they have major. Usually they're situated where there's major transportation routes, there's major highways. There's, you know, I mean, probably the best shopping centers are in places that have, you know, highway access. They have.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Airline, you know, ups. Yeah. You know, and so that he says, just look. Look at a lot of stuff that already exists. Put it together in a New way and people's habits already support it.

Dean: That's smart. Yeah, I like these. Yeah, I like those things. So that fits in with the whole Jeff Bezos, you know, what's not going to change in the next 10 years model looking not at what's going to change, but what's not going to change because that's what you can anchor on.

Dan: Yeah, it's kind of like I'm just watching all the EV companies, the electric vehicle companies, with the exception of Tesla, because they've got a unique established niche. But I don't think any of the other companies that are based on a profit motive are making it. Ford shutting, cutting back. Volkswagen's cutting back, GM is cutting back, Everybody's cutting back. And because they're losing anywhere from 30 to $70,000 on a vehicle and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better. Okay. And then. But what made it unnatural is the fact that you had have massive government insistence for it to even get off the ground.

Dean: Yeah, this is, that's, you know, you just kind of hit something on the head there because there's nothing. Elon Musk has definitely like thrown his hat over the fence on electric vehicles and it is dominating the market for it. Right. Because he's all in on that. Which is something that Ford and Volkswagen and all these companies can't do. They're not, they're only like dabbling in the electric vehicle markets, you know.

Dan: Yeah. And they did it because there were massive subsidies, there was math, you know, and the states like California were mandating, you know, and you know, in by 2035, we won't have any fossil fuel vehicles. Okay. And you know, if the strong arm of government is going to come on and just forbidden the alternative, well, of course we're going to invest our future in it. But those governments are going to be thrown out. I bet the government in California is thrown out within 10 years.

Dean: I mean, by the way, that just reminded me of something. I just watched the Tucker Carlson interview with Putin. Did you see that?

Dan: Yeah, I saw parts of it. I saw parts of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dean: Nothing extraordinary about that. That wasn't what I was getting to. But while Tucker was in Russia, he did a series of short videos that were just kind of exploring what is it actually like in a, you know, post sanction Russia that, you know, since they put sanctions in place and, you know, and it was funny because he was describing, you know, like every visual that we have of, you know, communism in Russia is, you know, empty shelves and limited supply and limited choice and utilitarian things. So he went, he did an interesting series where he went to a Russian supermarket to see. Okay, so what is it like, like what's day to day life like in Russia under sanctions during wartime? And it was, you know, the most fascinating, like grocery store where you go in and it's, the shelves are stocked with everything you can imagine all these things. It's a beautiful, clean store, very modern. Everything about it was amazing. They filled up their basket with what would be, you know, a week's worth of groceries for a family of four kind of thing, what you would get if you were kind of feeding a family of four. And they, you know, found everything they, they wanted a beautifully, you know, fresh baked bread, all the staples that you could need. They filled them all up. They all. Him and the producers kind of guessed that they would have, you know, $400 or 400 worth of groceries if they were buying it in America kind of thing, which was their frame of reference. And turns out they got all of that stuff for like $104 is what it, what it costs.

Dan: Yeah. Don't you find it fascinating that he found the one supermarket in all of Russia where that was?

Dean: That's what I wonder. That's what I wonder.

Dan: Oh, no. You think he went there just haphazardly on his own? I said, I like to go, all right, yeah, yeah. The Soviets had one in Moscow. It was right near the Kremlin. It was called Gum G U M, if you look it up on Wikipedia, capital G, capital U, capital M. And he went in and it was just well dressed shoppers, everything you.

Dean: Yeah, I think that's, that's might have been where he was. That might have been it.

Dan: Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's. And it's a show place. It's a show place. And then what they found when they found out the history of it, shoppers would go in and they would come out the front door and then they go around the block, go through the black door, back door, and give back everything that they had bought. And then it was restocked on the shelves.

Dean: Oh, boy.

Dan: They were all actors.

Dean: Oh, wow. Very interesting. I wondered the same thing because they did. He went to a subway station that he admittedly said was the most beautiful. We never seen a subway station as nice anywhere in, in America. And it was, I mean, they showed the footage of it, you know, beautiful artwork and chandeliers and steam cleaned cleanliness and no graffiti, all of those things. And it did have the sense of Is this a show place? Because there's an interesting YouTube channel. There was a gentleman from the UK and his channel is called Bald and Bankrupt. And what he does is he goes just solo with a single camera. And he was touring all these Soviet territories, all the outposts, they don't like that. Were the height of the thing to compare. And every one of it is just like everything is run down. And you know, all of the Soviet Union, you know, post communism is completely, you know, run down. And what you would expect, right. What you would. That your vision of it. And I think that you kind of just hit it on the head. That's. It's more likely that's like a show place or a. Yeah.

Dan: That subway system was put in the 1930s, okay. They had. The boss of it was Khrushchev. Khrushchev came fame because he put in. But there was no limit on cost and there was no limit on how many people died building. They estimate about 20,000 workers died putting in the subway system. Okay? And. But if those are not costs you pay any attention to, then you can build anything in the world. But if you wanted to go to another city and see the subway, they wouldn't let you do that. You could only see the subway that they. Because subways were a bigger deal, you know, in the 1930s or 1920s than they are now, you know, because most people don't use the subways. But in Europe, you know, where people don't have cars and they live in very dense populated areas, subways make sense. I mean, 80% of the public transportation in the United States. I'm talking about buses and subways and commuter trains. Is the greater New York area that once you get outside the New York area, only 20% of the public. Public transportation. Public transportation exists because everybody's got private transportation.

Dean: Yeah, exactly, right.

Dan: I mean, you got your own. I mean, you got a plush travel vehicle called the Tesla X. You know, it's kind of neat. You don't use it 99% of the time, but it's nice having, you know.

Dean: Exactly. You know what I said I was talking about you yesterday. I had to drive somewhere that was about an hour away. Just over an hour, actually. Dan set a new high water mark for my migration north. I went just about a half an hour north of I. For the first time since 2020.

Dan: What's it like? I'll tell you.

Dean: Way up there, half an hour.

Dan: I mean, do you need oxygen? I mean,

Dean: talking about, you know, I was using the self drive, which is just name you know, it's only in name, Dan, as it has a nervous breakdown if you take your hand off the wheel for more than 30 seconds at a time. But I said, you know, Dan Sullivan has it figured out. Dan Sullivan has had self drive since 1990.

Dan: Five years. 25 years.

Dean: Exactly. You've had true self drive, self automatic self drive, you know.

Dan: Yeah. It's an interesting thing. But what I notice, you know, I'm just, I'm developing the reason this thing about the past is interesting because I'm writing my new quarterly book right now and it's got. And it's called Everything is Created Backward. And, and what I mean, everything that sticks is actually created by starting with the past and picking the best of. And I think three things is really formula. I mean, there might be things where it's five things, but I think three. Three is useful because you can go looking for three. Okay. And, and, but, and what I'm seeing is that the tech world has basically ground to. A lot of people don't know this, but the investment part, the venture capital part of the tech world has just hit a wall. I mean, there's a massive amounts of money available, but nobody wants to invest it because so many things promised as new things in the last 10 years really haven't amounted to anything. It's about, I think about less. Maybe around 10% of IPOs, initial public offerings have panned out. Okay. That's a high risk that you have a 9 to 1 chance of losing your money if you invest in something new. And I think the hype factor for getting investment has lost its energy. Yeah, that's changes everything. This changes everything.

Dean: Oh, that's no good then. That's a sure sign that it's doomed.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: This changes everything. Should be your signal to run away.

Dan: Yeah. And you know, I mean, but it does change everything for certain individuals. And this is the mistake. It's like Joe Polish calls this cruel optimism, you know, cruel optimism.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah. And he has a great take on this. And he said that, that when it comes to, you know, because he's very interested in addictions and how one gets off an addiction. And he says there's thousands of predictions that if you do this and do this, you it'll work for you. And he said what's true about it is it'll work for somebody. Okay. But it's their willingness for it to work that actually makes it possible. Okay. And so there's a lot of human agency to things turning out the way you want. If you take complete Ownership, and it has to work for you. Probably it'll work. But if you think it's going to be done to you and you don't have to do anything, probably it won't work. Yeah, it's.

Dean: That's a very.

Dan: Yeah, but I thought it was. But you said it's very cruel. Because when it doesn't work and it doesn't work. And it doesn't work, your addiction gets more powerful.

Dean: I said to somebody I have been talking about, I've often talked about the difference between in marketing, a slot machine versus a vending machine.

Dan: That's a great analogy.

Dean: It's often the way that most businesses take on marketing. They put money in the slot machine and they pull the lever and they hope that something happens. And they're surrounded in a room by all the other entrepreneurs.

Dan: We got two out of three oranges. We got a trend going here.

Dean: That's right. So everybody's pulling their slot machine and they're all in the same room, and somebody hits the jackpot. And they all flock over to that machine. Look at. They go, it works.

Dan: See? See?

Dean: It works. They're like, yeah, trying to do the same thing. And then, you know, every. All the testimonials.

Dan: That's cruel optimism.

Dean: That's exactly what that reminded me of. It's cruel optimism that sometimes. See, it does work. But they're usually talking about something that happened quickly and to a great extent and once. And it's not the same as the prediction vending machine. It's not. You know, every time I put in a dollar, I get ten dollars out. That's like.

Dan: But you know that one of them has. One of them comes with a dopamine factor. And the vending machine doesn't come with the dopamine factor.

Dean: That's the truth, isn't it?

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: But we're all seeking that excitement of the. The plot machine.

Dan: Yeah, it's a cruel optimism.

Dean: That's funny.

Dan: I think it's a good. I think it's a good title. You know, he. Every. But. And. But it has that somebody else's formula for the future is going to work for you, you know, So I have a. You know, I have a little saying that in order to create a more bigger and better future, you have to first start by creating a bigger and better past. And the reason is the past is all yours to work with. The future is nobody's to work with. Right. Yeah. And so my feeling is the greatest breakthroughs with the new Vision Pro, you know, and, you know, the other AI technologies that are coming along with it is that. My feeling is that the best breakthroughs for this will be actually an industrial work where you're actually dealing with existing engineering, you're existing with existing infrastructure. And I think quality control is going to go way up as people can check out every system, you know, and they look at, you know, they go backstage, they go into a boiler room and they can do a check with their goggles on of every piece of machinery and they have a checklist. Does this check and does this check and nothing gets missed. And I think it's going to. The great greatest breakthrough is going to be an industrial quality control. I think that's where it's going to be most used.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: And warfare. I mean, all the F35, the latest jets, they operate a six pilot, six plane units and all. Every one of the pilots is aware of the other five pilots and what they're doing. Okay. And they operate as this six person unit. Their radar allows them to see 500 miles out in all directions. Okay. And they can see any threat coming, probably two or three minutes before the threat sees them, which makes a big difference, you know. So, yeah, somebody said all breakthroughs happen in three ways. All human technological breakthroughs. Number one is weaponry. Okay? That's number one. Number two is toys. And number three is porn.

Dean: So there's a triple play right there in the making.

Dan: There's a triple play. I mean, if you can check off the box that this is good for warfare, it's good for play and it's good for porn, you got yourself a winner.

Dean: Oh, my goodness. That's funny. I like that.

Dan: Within three, three days, the biggest complaint about Apple's new Vision Pro was you couldn't do Pope porn on it.

Dean: I mean, it's funny, isn't it, that, that's the way. That's the thing. Oh, man.

Dan: Now instead of being horrified by that, you're being told something important.

Dean: Yes, exactly. That's great. So this, this is the week, Dan. This is our.

Dan: Yeah, so we'll be in. We'll be in Orlando at the Four Seasons in Palm beach at the Four Seasons. Thursday, we'll be arriving there. I've got all day Friday completely free and. But we already have Saturday for dinner and Sunday dinner in the calendar with others who have requested it.

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Okay. So. So I got lots of time.

Dean: Okay, so that's my plan initially. I may come down Friday then, but Saturday was when I was going to arrive, so maybe let's, you know, put Saturday lunch for sure.

Dan: Yep.

Dean: If that works for you, Just to kick it off.

Dan: Just.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Yeah, so we're completely, you know, completely flexible with those days. All my materials for printing have to be in by Tuesday this week. Okay. So you're gonna.

Dean: You're relaxing. It's all underway.

Dan: Yeah. It gets printed out of Chicago and it'll be sent to the team when they get to Palm Beach. It'll be in Four Seasons and they'll just have all the materials for the workshop. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Dean: Okay. Well, worst case scenario would be Saturday at lunch. Maybe Friday. I'll come down on Friday. Okay.

Dan: Where'd you get out of today?

Dean: Fascinating. I think this whole. I like this idea of the exponential tinkerer. I think that I really.

Dan: Evan will be there. You should chat with him about it

Dean: because there's so many people. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody. I can't believe it's been a year, you know?

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean: So there.

Dan: Anyway, I think we're gonna have a good. We're gonna have a good. A good event. We have about 70 freezoners, and we have another 90 guests. Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Dean: Okay, great.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: So hopefully that'll yield some new Freezoners too.

Dan: Yeah. Okay, Dean, see you on Saturday.

Dean: Thanks, Dan. Bye.

Dan: And just let Becca know, you know, and she'll work things out. Okay.

Dean: That sounds great.

Dan: Okay.

Dean: Okay, thanks.

Dan: Bye. Bye.