Money, Scent, and the Art of the Did List

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan.

Dan: Mr. Jackson.

Dean: There he is. Yes

Dan: Indeed.

Dean: Sue Cloudlandia. I think I just realized last week that I mistakenly thought you were going to be traveling yesterday and then I saw the

Dan: Notice that

Dean: You had joined in.

Dan: I had joined in, yes, yes. Didn't shatter my confidence though.

Dean: Good. Because you knew that I was never going to give you up and never going to let you down and that if you tiled in next week at the appointed time, I would be there.

Dan: There I am. There I am.

Dean: That's funny.

Dan: No, we were at Canyon Ranch.

Dean: Okay, great. Yeah. I zoomed in for a lot of Genius Network. Yeah.

Dan: How

Dean: Was your week?

Dan: Well, weather wise, the weather in Phoenix and in Tucson was spectacular.

Dean: This is the time of year, right? This is while Canadians are dealing with false springs. It's the real deal in Florida and Arizona.

Dan: Yeah. There's this great podcast, YouTube podcast and Omar's talk it's called. And this guy is a tremendous communicator. And what he does, he's got sort of one perspective, one topic. He just shows the businesses, the millionaires and billionaires and many others who are leaving New York City, leaving San Francisco, leaving Los Angeles and moving to Florida or Texas, basically Texas. And he just really points out how they're on a death spiral. Seattle's another one in Seattle

Dean: In

Dan: Washington. Chicago, Chicago really bad.

Dean: I saw funniest real today. I was just waiting to join in here. There was a gentleman talking about why California is broke and Texas is not. And he was telling the story of how the governor was out walking his dog in California and the dog got bitten by a coyote and then the coyote bit the governor and he went through the whole thing that he started. The governor started to intervene, but then he reflected on the movie Bambi and realized that the coyote's just doing what that coyote is naturally inclined to do. And so he stopped and then they called the animal control who came and got the coyote for $500 and then took it and did testing to make sure it didn't have rabies or whatever for another $300 and it took it to the vet who charged another thing. And then the governor had to get tested for rabies for 500 and they implemented a study to see about these and awareness campaign and all like $100,000 worth of stuff. And then he said in Texas the governor was out walking his dog and the coyote- He'd

Dan: Shoot the coyote. The

Dean: Dog and he shot the coyote and continued jogging and he spent

Dan: 50

Dean: Cents. That solved the problem.

Dan: So

Dean: Funny.

Dan: Yeah. Well, coyotes in California come in many forms.

Dean: Yes, I think you're right.

Dan: Do you have them in Florida?

Dean: That's a good question. Do we have coyotes? We have Panthers. Do we have coyotes in Florida dining? Yeah, right across the street. She said there's coyotes. Yes. Yes.

Dan: Coyotes are there. I think they're in all 50 states. They're very adaptable animals. They're omnivores and they can eat anything. We have mirror. We have them within probably two or three miles, two or three miles of where I'm speaking from right now. I'm sure we have coyotes. They're everywhere.

Dean: We also

Dan: Have

Dean: Panthers.

Dan: Yeah. And they have Bobcats too. I was reading the Bobcats really like python meat. Oh, is that right?

Dean: Okay.

Dan: So they're thriving. They're killing the pythons in the Upper Glades.

Dean: Oh,

Dan: That's

Dean: Great.

Dan: Yeah. It's really great. Yeah.

Dean: I love it.

Dan: Just kind of let things be the way they are. Yeah. Well, the story about the governor and the coyote, that the coyote was just doing what

Dean: Coyotes

Dan: Do. Yeah, that's true of cartel members too. Cartel members just do what cartel members.

Dean: That's true.

Dan: Yeah. You can't fault them. It's just their nature.

Dean: Yes, exactly. So how long were you at Canyon Ranch?

Dan: Well, we spent basically two weeks. We went on a Tuesday to Phoenix and then we were there until the Saturday. So we had the two days of Genius Network and then we went down to Canyon Ranch. That was Saturday afternoon. And then we left on Friday. We left on Friday. We came back just a couple of days ago. Yeah. But it was nice. It was just a really very laid back, read lots of murder mysteries and did a lot of walking. I'm doing more walking than I have in three or four years, so it's pretty good.

Dean: Are you

Dan: Getting

Dean: Your step count up?

Dan: Yeah. I averaged about ... I'm not like some people who are Olympic level, but I'm 8,000 steps.

Dean: Well,

Dan: That's the

Dean: Optimal I've read. Is that

Dan: Right? It's not 10 anymore. It's not 10 anymore.

Dean: No, I think that that's the reality that the diminishing return is there's no extra benefit to 10,000 or 15,000 over there. There's

Dan: Status.

Dean: Right.

Dan: No, you always have to factor in status. Does your no good, but there is status.

Dean: Yeah. But 8,000 is like the peak all the benefit stuff you get. What are they called?

Dan: What's the round of golf gift? Do you do nine or 18 when you're playing?

Dean: Well, normally I'll do 18 but you're driving a cart, but even in a cart, it's 6,000 steps or something. And I think it would be probably 15,000 if you walked the whole course. Yeah. Okay.

Dan: So let me ask you a question.

Dean: That's DJ.

Dan: Yeah. If your drives were always down the middle, right online with a hole and your approach shots were always right where they're supposed to be and your puts are right there, 6,000 or you accounting for little side

Dean: Trips that

Dan: You have to-

Dean: Yeah, little side trips. Like some places you're not allowed to ride on the cart. But if you take, let's say that an average, let's say the golf course 6,800 yards divided by three, 20 ... Oh no,

Dan: 6,800

Dean: Yards.

Dan: We're talking about steps. We're talking about-

Dean: Yeah, so 6,800 yards times three, 20,400 feet divided by thousand roughly. So it's just the straightest path is four miles, which would be probably, I don't know how many steps in a mile, but-

Dan: 8,000 steps, 8,000 steps.

Dean: So about 24,000.

Dan: Oh, 24,000. Yeah.

Dean: Steps?

Dan: When I was 16, I was a caddy and one weekend I double bagged so I had- Oh

Dean: My goodness. And

Dan: I double bagged 36 holes on Saturday and 36 holes on Sunday. Made $100 that weekend. This is 1960. It's important because that was on two days I made more than my father made that week.

Dean: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah.

Dan: That's with tips and everything. It's not just the labor, the tips.

Dean: You were hustling as they say. I

Dan: Was hustling. I was hustling.

Dean: Yeah. Dumble bagging. Wow. Did you ever play golf, Dan, or just caddy?

Dan: No. If we got early to the course we could do two or three holes before everybody started showing up and it's a game that puts you in the gap right off the bat. It's guaranteed to put you together.

Dean: Yeah, because I've never heard you mention it as a-

Dan: Oh no. Yeah. And my entire lifetime of watching professional golf on TV, I've only seen two happy golfers and both of them were Mexicans. Chi Chi Rodriguevino. And Lee Trevino. Of all the years that I watched the top golfers, I only saw two of them that were ever happy.

Dean: That is so funny. That whole thing, I think about the difference like Chi Chi Rodriguez and Lee Trevino all grew up on basically dirt courses, right? Oh

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yeah. But you realize-

Dan: I

Dean: Had the

Dan: Realization- They were just happy to see the grass.

Dean: Well, that's exactly it. But I had the realization years ago that a golf course is basically a hollow deck. I mean, it's basically all visual stuff because the amount of stuff, like when you think about it, one golf course versus another, you're on the tee box, most of the tee boxes are fine, but you're hitting the ball off a T so that has no impact. And where the ball actually lands is when you hit your next shot, you're standing on one square yard of the course

Dan: Kind

Dean: Of thing. All the rest is really, it's visual. It's

Dan: Funny.

Dean: Yeah. It's all visual trickery. There's a few designers that use that fruit golf course designers that use that visual trickery to their advantage. They'll put bunkers in the middle of the fairway that look like this area is very treacherous, but on the other side of the bunker, it's just like smooth fairway. So once you get past the visual of everything, it's funny.

Dan: And then you get the Scottish courses where if you go into a sandpit or something when Tiger Woods was just exploding, not later in his career, I remember he did, he won the British Open, and I think it was at St. Andrews. Yeah,

Dean: I was there.

Dan: Yeah. And remember the guy who was sort of the competitor at that time and he took a nine I think on a sandbunker and he had nervous breakdown afterwards. He never came back. He never came back after that.

Dean: I'll tell you, I witnessed, so one of the guys that we were playing with Mike Hardwick, I'll shout him out. He owns Churchill Mortgage for all your mortgage needs, but we were in Scotland together.

Dan: Talk about a sandpit. Talk about a sandpit, a mortgage.

Dean: There was one hole where the bunker is like over your head and almost like just a brick wall that you have to like get up over and Mike-

Dan: It was sort of like the Normandy invasion. You have to go up and clip.

Dean: But it was the funniest thing because he hit the ball in the bunker and it was too close to the face of the bunker that there was no way to get the angle to get up on the green. So he had to hit it against the thing to get back further in the bunker to have at least a shot to get up. So he hit it and he did that, but then he hit the top of the bunker face and it fell right back down and he got an 11 on this par three by doing this. It was the most frustrating fun thing. That was at the old course in St. Andrew's. I just

Dan: Love

Dean: That whole ... It's such an amazing ... Have you ever been to Scotland?

Dan: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh,

Dean: Okay.

Dan: Yeah. I've been to ... There's one that's got the Eagle in the name.

Dean: Edinburgh.

Dan: Yeah. Near Edinboro. Yeah. I gave a talk there. Oh,

Dean: At Glen Eagles. Glen Eagles.

Dan: Glen Eagle.

Dean: What a beautiful ... Like to this day, that Gleny lobby lounge there is

Dan: One of

Dean: The best days we'd had. We played golf there in the morning and we basically spent the whole afternoon having tea and lunch in the lobby restaurant there. What a great beautiful place. But I just love the old ... I don't know. It feels so ... I don't know what the permanent maybe, I don't know what the word is, but the funny thing is like to put it in perspective at St. Andrews, the new course was built in 1895. I think that's funny that they still called it the new course.

Dan: Speaking of which you're bringing up an interesting idea with that, my sense is that, and it's just an intuition, that what humans are now going to get interested in as AI makes its way through the economy and through cultural life and everything else, is that people are going to get real interested in history. And my sense that things are going to speed up, they're going to speed up. I have an intuition that things are actually going to slow down.

Dean: I think so. I think you're right in the ways that matter, but it's all going to be perspective because as we know, life moves at the speed of reality, 60 minutes per hour. It's always been that way and it always will. But yeah, I think that that does slow things down. I've been asking myself, I've been joining in

Dan: On your- By the way, I'm just marking day 153 on.

Dean: I was just going to say, I've joined in on the ... I've been making ... I mentioned my ... I know I'm being successful one has always been, I wake up and ask what would I like to do today. And I've started the day with what would I like to did today is that ... And that's the best ... So I make my

Dan: Two days- No, it is. It is.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: First of all, it's funny. It's kind of like a hundred percent under your control.

Dean: Yes. And it's amazing how-

Dan: Like tomorrow I've lost half my control. A week from now, I've really lost my control, but today I've got a lot of control.

Dean: Yeah. I've really realized that that's the ... I keep the frame ... The thing where you can actually have the most impact on didding is in the next hundred minutes, you totally have control over

Dan: What

Dean: You can did in that timeframe. So that's been the start of the day is that process of making the list of what I would like to did today. I've been definitely playing these zones like I break the day now and by the way, my sleep and my readiness stuff is like way up now, which is great because I'm setting anchors for things like I'm lights out by 11:00 and I'm out the door

Dan: In

Dean: The car at 8:00 AM to leave for honeycomb and the phone in the box till noon and it's been ... I just find I'm much more focused on getting stuff on the did list than the to- do list, because that becomes the game is what can I did in the next hundred minutes?

Dan: Yeah. It's so funny. It's very definitely ... I'm noticing it's about 22 weeks in my 22nd week of doing it and one of the effects is I'm just not in the gap and what I'm not measuring, I'm not measuring what I'm doing today against some future ideal. I'm just saying tomorrow morning when I look back, what's the last 24 hours look like? And boy, you got a lot of control with it. You have real agency with that.

Dean: That's the word. Agency. That is exactly what it is. Yeah. How do you phrase it? Again, what's

Dan: Your- All these predictions about the world is speeding up and everything else and you got to be ... Well, you should just be eliminating sleep altogether because you have to be alert. You don't know what's going to happen. If you're sleeping for six or seven hours, you're falling behind by tomorrow morning.

Dean: Yeah. I don't buy into that.

Dan: I don't buy that. I don't buy that.

Dean: No, exactly.

Dan: Somebody selling somebody something.

Dean: I think you're right. I had some really interesting things this week we did ... I was listening to a podcast from the UK and it's a marketing podcast, but it is primarily about restaurant marketing and hospitality industry. And there was a gentleman on there talking about how in restaurants and hotels, how they use color theories, like making particular cocktails, a particular color to stand out from everything else and the effect on sales of certain colors and sounds that they're using in the restaurants and smells like aroma stuff. I was listening to it. I've got my friend Josh that's here for the week and I was saying, you know what'd be a good book title is Smells That Sell. And so the science of smells that sell or repel ... And so literally within less than 24 hours, we had the book that cover the first draft of the book and ad running for the book and we're getting leads for this book for a dollar, Dan. It's ridiculous. It's funny that I started looking into this like the commercial scent industry, the market is a. 6 billion market

Dan: Diffusers.

Dean: And if you go in the Hazelton, there's a signature scent at the Hazelton and the Four Seasons and all the five star hotels have a definite cent profile and there's studies that show in retail stores that the scent has made like an 11 to 20% difference in sales based on ... I forget how many transactions they monitored two million transactions or something, but that isn't that ... I mean, it's just kind of crazy. The leader in that field is a company called Scent Air. They're based in Charlotte and they do $170 million a year in sales.

Dan: Pretty wild. My next door neighbor is British and he was a perfumer by trade. Late teens, he went into ... No, I think he went to university, but then he came out and he got into the ... And the biggest scent company in the world is Swiss and they have 40% of the scent market in the world and that includes everything, perfumes, they white label many of the big perfume companies-

Dean: Formulations.

Dan: Right. Yeah. And so he was himself a practitioner, an actual perfumer, and then he went into the organization and now he's their number one training vice president worldwide. And so he goes around, but he said that they've graded countries who are ... They have a list of all the countries in the world where they sell their formulas and they rate the countries as either the top scent makes the biggest difference or scent makes the least difference in the countries and in the world Mexico is number one and Canada is last.

Dean: Is that right? That's interesting.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Did they mention what makes the difference? Why would Mexico be so much more responsive?

Dan: I would suspect that climate makes some of the difference. Maybe humidity- I would suspect cuisine makes part of the difference. I mean, you never really associate Toronto with, boy, you can just smell the food on the street.

Dean: Well, some areas you can.

Dan: No, it's mostly tar. It's mostly tar. Yeah, it's mostly tar. But I would never think about a good smelling place in Toronto. I mean, you should have a scarf over your nose, you shouldn't-

Dean: At most

Dan: Points.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Your nose is frozen. Your nose is frozen. It's hard to smell with frozen nose. Anyway, but he was really talking about that and how they then ... They have to identify what the culture is and what are the smelling aspects of every culture, but Toronto Canada is the very last, which means the fins and the Norwegians of the Swedes are more- Even higher. Even higher on the wrist than Canada is. Anyway, but it's interesting talking to them about this because ... But AI will have no impact whatsoever on ... I mean, there's a lot of our senses that AI doesn't really enter into the equation touch, touch doesn't ... No, scent obviously doesn't obviously ... You're down to two senses with AI. It would be visual and audio, I guess.

Dean: Yeah. And even that our ... I've noticed now you can definitely tell. That's the thing that I think my ability to discern is up on that in terms of knowing whether something is AI, it always reminds me, I think I've shared with you that Jerry Spence thing of our psychic tentacles, that our psychic tentacles are constantly testing something for authenticity and it can detect what he calls thin clank of the counterfeit. I think that that's what's happening deep down on our cellular level. We don't know what's happening. By the way, speaking of cellular levels, I've also been doing my daily, this is your captain speaking announcements and it's been so amazing. Every time I say it to myself, I do it in the morning when I'm waking up and just kind of visualizing what I'd like to did today. It's almost like as soon as I say, "This is your captain speaking," it's like every cell in my body is alert and attentive. And it's like an announcement came over the public address system and you feel like it's funny to feel it that when you take that position of the captain and just kind of future pacing and give them the flight plan for the day, because I've already decided What the day's going to be and how much more relaxing it is. Doesn't leave it up to chance. And then I do the same thing in the evening, thank the day crew and welcome in the night crew. Tell them, "Here's what

Dan: We're going to

Dean: Do. We're going to sleep. We got to be up by 7:15." It's just funny. I don't know. I don't know why, but I get such a kick out of the programming that way.

Dan: Yeah. Well, I mean, you've fundamentally changed 40% of your day in the last how many months now? Six, seven?

Dean: Yeah. Since November. Yeah, since after.

Dan: Six

Dean: Full months.

Dan: Yeah, six full months. Yeah. Well, that's a big shift. That's a big shift. I mean, the one I'm on, I've fundamentally reversed time. And I really, really know, especially when I had like two easy weeks, I didn't really have any assignments to do whatsoever over the last two weeks. And I just noticed how I'm just really contented just to be spending the day doing what I'm doing. There's a great book I've got and I think I may have mentioned it on a previous podcast. It's called Money.

Dean: And is it

Dan: The

Dean: One-

Dan: David McWilliams. David McWilliams. He's Irish, Irish banker. He's a banker and I'm reading it for the third time. It's got that much depth to it. It's got that density. But he just said that it's the original technology. He said that humans had fire for hundreds of thousands of years and then they created money and he said those are the two technologies that have created humanity.

Dean: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I'll have to read that. I'm reading my Angus books now. Angus Fletcher getting ready for Coach Kahn. So that's very exciting. I'm looking forward to that.

Dan: Yeah. But he tells a lot of really interesting stories about history. I really didn't know. I didn't know who the Lydians were. The Lydians were essentially what is now Turkey. And he said that when we look back at history, he says that those places that seemed to have been significant were people who were very advanced in their use of money, that they had created money concepts and starting with a place called Sumer, which as far as I can tell, is where Iran is right now. The name of the first individual that's named in any kind of history so far, his name is Kazeem, K-U, I think it's Z-I-M, I think it's like that Kuzem. And he was a beer maker in Sumer and the people in Sumer were known as Sumurians and they were the first ones who really figured out time and money where there's a record of Sumer of Kuzim, this individual borrowing enough barley and it was a 30 month contract. He had borrowed this much money and he would make this much beer and the interest rate was 33% per year.

Dean: Oh my.

Dan: Are you serious? Yeah. It's all recorded. It's all recorded. So he must have really, really made a pile on the beer to be willing to borrow something that 30, 30. And what he borrowed was barley and barley was the essential economic valuemer. Everything in the society, a day's labor was measured by a bucket of or a bushel of bush and bar. So

Dean: That goes way back. That's all there-

Dan: It's 5,000 years ago. Yeah, 5,000.

Dean: There was a ... Do you ever see The Onion, the Parody newspaper, Satire newspaper? They had a headline that was ancient Sumerians look on confused as God creates the earth. And they had man in the street interviews. We were just in our sophisticated market and all of a sudden there was this bellowing voice that said, "Let there be

Dan: Light."

Dean: We already had light and then there was. And he said this went on for about a week every day and you announced it.

Dan: Yeah. But here's the question, was it patent? Did they have a patent?

Dean: Right, exactly. That's so

Dan: Funny. And then it jumps and every time there's a jump in the use of money, he tells another story. It's really interesting. And what really comes out is he said the dollar is at the top of Mount Everest in terms of money. As we've come along, the dollar is just ... And I didn't realize how early they created it in 1792, Hamilton. Hamilton and he geared it to the ... The Spanish had a dollar. So that was the reserve currency. It was the Spanish because the Spanish had this mountain in Peru, which they got 50,000 tons of silver out of. That's a lot of silver. And so it was a silver based currency. And what Hamilton did, he was the first treasurer of the United States, Secretary of Treasurer, and he geared the dollar to an existing currency and that's where it started. But Hamilton comes across as a real genius, a real genius. He's the one who really, really gave the United States a really good financial structure to begin with. But have you ever heard of the Frenchman Talan? Have you ever heard the name- No,

Dean: I've heard the name, but I don't have any of

Dan: That. Yeah. He was an amazing guy. He was an amazing guy and he made a lot of mistakes, but to avoid being guillotined during the French Revolution, he escaped to the United States to New York and he talked to Hamilton. They were great friends. Hamilton was from New York City and he said, "I made all these mistakes. Don't make these mistakes." And so Hamilton was very young at the time. I mean, he died at 49. He was killed. Killed in a

Dean: Dual.

Dan: Yeah. You can play golf and get in the gap, but don't get into dueling. Don't try this at home.

Dean: Exactly.

Dan: You can get into a total gap with dueling. Anyway, but he really explains how the extraordinary intelligence that went into creating the financial structure of the US. A lot of people don't realize this in the current situation with Iran that the United States has identified all money that came out of Iran to ... If it was sent electronically, the United States knows where it is. And they're just very quietly talking to all the banks where that money is. And he says, "This is frozen money. This money cannot be withdrawn."

Dean: Oh, wow.

Dan: It's really big in dollars, the amount of money that got shipped out of that country.

Dean: It

Dan: Was all the leadership. Apparently Kamani, it was 127 billion dollars.

Dean: Wow. Yeah. I've heard ... I forget what the estimated Putin Putin's network.

Dan: Putin's got a lot. But the interesting thing is what comes through from reading this book is you can explain anything you want. You can explain it technologically, you can explain it politically, you can explain it economically, you can explain it socially, but I have to tell you at the center it's about money.

Dean: Yeah. So when you think about that, that along with the freedom to pursue and exchange money, that's the combo there, right? Did he mention anything about Bitcoin and where

Dan: This

Dean: All going?

Dan: Yeah, he thinks it's just all bullshit.

Dean: Oh really?

Dan: He says it's not a currency. It's not a currency because he says a currency has to be stable. The whole point about a currency is that it's got a future predictability about what the price is going to be. And he says, "Well, we know that none of the cryptocurrencies have that because every one of them is a Ponzi scheme." Yeah. The first in get rewarded and the last in get punished. Said that it's not an investment and it's not a currency, so why call it money?

Dean: Yeah. And I mean, it's without any irony that the value of it is expressed in dollars. I mean, it's true, right?

Dan: Yeah. In this sentence, a Bitcoin is now worth $50,000. There's just one word in that sentence that makes sense. Exactly. Dollars.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And he said only a state can give legitimate, because we're using what's called fiat money now. It's not based on gold. It's just based on the reputation of the issuing government basically, but it's a fascinating, fascinating book. I've read it three times and I'll read it a fourth time. It's really, really good.

Dean: It's

Dan: Called Money. The author's name is David McWilliams, Irish from Dublin. Yeah. Anyway, and he's a very good writer, it's a very entertaining read.

Dean: Do you know what's funny is I remember in college it was Western Siv classes were like, "Oh, what are we doing? When am I ever going to use this? " That's kind of the sentiment when you're young, that seems like ancient history, like totally irrelevant, but now the older I get, the more fascinated I am by Western civilians. I really want to know that stuff now. I wonder if there's in your past have you ... I wonder if there's like a series, a documentary, I'm sure PBS or somebody, Ken Burns, or someone has done a series on the definitive kind of history of everything, because that would be great. I would love to go from the beginning and look at the different eras and trac the history of civilization. So many lessons in that, you know?

Dan: Yeah. Well, that's my whole college was based on-

Dean: The great book.

Dan: Great books college, but boy, he mentions books. I said, "I wish we had read that. " I said, "I wish I'd read this Greek rather than that Greek because there's some Greek who had really good one named Zenithon, but you could tell that he said the people who hate money most are the people who consider themselves intellectually and morally superior but don't have any money."

Dean: That's true.

Dan: Who are those?

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Academics. Academic careers. Academics,

Dean: Right.

Dan: Academics. Yeah. And he says that they're trailing along after he ... I said that most academics are like people who are explaining the circus because they're sweeping up elephant poop the day after the circus has left town and they're trying to describe what went on in the circus by looking at elephant poop.

Dean: That's funny.

Dan: Yeah. And that's what happened. Yeah. But it's really, I mean, I did four years and fortunately I graduated on a Sunday. This was I think June 4th in 71. I graduated on a Sunday. I flew to Toronto on a Monday and I started at an advertising agency and that was the perfect antidote. That was the perfect antidote for me for spending four years because there was this sort of attitude only the things that happened 2000 years ago are really important and I immediately started working in a industry and working in a business where what you did yesterday doesn't matter.

Dean: How did you end up in Toronto? How'd you end up getting that position even? Well,

Dan: I think it was a trade. They knew that you were going to move to Florida so they had to bring an American as a replacement.

Dean: Right, exactly. I know this guy, we got about

Dan: Double entry bookkeeping, double entry bookkeeping. Yeah. I had a friend at college who lived in Toronto and I came off at a Christmas before I graduated. So this would be 1970, Christmas, 19. And I was at a party and I met a guy really interesting and he turned out to be the founder and half owner of the number two ad agency in Canada, Baker Luvick at that time. And he was really interested and he was a street kid from Windsor, Detroit and Windsor. So he spent part of his existence in Detroit and part of it in Windsor and his father was a member of the Purple Gang in Detroit Al Capone. It would be the equivalent. The Purple Gang was like Al Capone in Chicago, but in Detroit and he robbed a gas station and that was beyond the limit and got sent off to prison so there was this battle of his mother and his grandparents battling. Anyway, so he was a street kid who was a hustler and entrepreneur and now I met him when he's like 71. He died at 50 so I met him when he was about 41, 42 and he got talking, but I had created the college newspaper when I was ... They never had a college newspaper and I created

Dean: It.

Dan: Oh wow. And so I was a writer I could write thanks to the army. They taught me how to type and he said, "Have you ever seen an ad agency?" And I said, "No." So I went and visited with him and he took me to lunch and he said, "I just have a instinct about who could be a good ad writer." And he says, "What would you think about having a job when you get out of college here? And I'll give you a six month

Dean: Contract."

Dan: And he says, "It'll get you across the border." And that was it. And so he wrote it up for me and I had it and all you had to do in those days is when he got to the airport, wasn't Pearson in those days, but Toronto Airport. He went to customs and immigration, you gave him the letter and they said, "Show up at university in Dundas and start the process." Six weeks later I had my ended immigrant card and off and running.

Dean: Wow, that's great. And you say it wasn't that you loved marketing or anything. It was just sometimes the right words at the right time, right? To be just plants

Dan: Of seeds or- Yeah, it was really good. And he said, "I'll let you know in six months." And I think it was maybe about four weeks we were out to lunch with a bunch of us and he says, "I just want to tell you your six months are up. You're a good writer." So anyway, after about a month and I have a feel for the craft of copywriting and yeah. So that's how it happened. But I knew I couldn't do it. Oh by the way, the hip hop thing that you did for Otis, for Otis

Dean: DeBoer. Yeah.

Dan: That was terrific. That was terrific. Speaking about copywriting.

Dean: He's

Dan: Great. He's formidable.

Dean: Yes. I just think what Ilko is doing that whole adventure. So we should

Dan: Sit on

Dean: Stage for anybody listening. So our friend Ilko Dubois, he's from Amsterdam and he's in 100K at Genius Network with

Dan: Dan.

Dean: Yeah. So they are traveling the world. There's three kids and his wife and their whole posse. He's got a guy that travels with him that does-

Dan: Education.

Dean: Education. They've also got his new one. He's got someone who works out with him and is in charge of all the food. But anyway, Otis is an aspiring rapper and

Dan: That's- 10 year old? 10 years old.

Dean: 10 years old, just the sweetest kid, Know all the confidence. The confidence is dialed to 11 on him. It's perfect to see. I think that's one thing that Ilko and Danny are doing is raising super confident kids and being out in the world doing all this stuff is great. So he wanted to be a rapper and he's been doing the stuff. I remember you probably remember this as a copywriter. One of the great copywriters, Gary Halbert, always recommended that if you want to be a good copywriter that you hand write out the great letters and ads so your neural pathways have the experience

Dan: Writing

Dean: Great copy and it sinks in. And so I was explaining that to Ilko. And so I think if I said if I were a rapper, what I would be doing is take the greatest rap hits and write versus over top of great-

Dan: And you did.

Dean: And I did. So I wrote one for Otis and he performed it at-

Dan: Two weeks after he got the script.

Dean: It's so great. He's so good. Yeah. So that was fun to see him thriving and doing that. That was really good. I missed Peter and Steven Kotler. Was that at Hunter K or was that at Genius Network that he did Peter Diamandis did a session sounds like from your

Dan: Point? Yeah. Well, it wasn't our session. Yeah. I had three podcasts with Peter last week and it's called Exponential Wisdom, the podcast and he provides all the exponentials and I provide all the wisdom.

Dean: That sounds exactly right.

Dan: Yeah. He asked me a question, he asked me a question and he says, "Think about 10 years down the road and what AI is going to be. Look what's happened in three years." And he says, "What's it going to feel like? " I said, "It's going to feel normal." The future always feels normal. If it doesn't feel normal, we don't do it.

Dean: That's the truth. I mean, the self-driving now in the Tesla is it's tippy top level. I mean, it's literally now we went to the movies the other day, had our team yesterday or Friday we went and I literally leave, I get in my garage, tell it where we're going and I push the button and I don't touch anything till we get there now. And I mean, it's unexplainable. It's what you've been experiencing since 1997. You get in and you say it knows where you're going and you just

Dan: Sit there until you get there. I don't even have to tell it where we're going.

Dean: Exactly. It knows.

Dan: Yeah, already. Yeah. I like chatting. The only thing about it is I really like chatting. I always chat with the drivers because the drivers hear a lot of conversations in the course of a week and one of the things that was interesting, the very first woman limousine driver in Chicago, she was like 30 years at her craft and this is in 2016 redhead, she's probably about 60 years old and she sort of checks out the passengers of what their political leanings are and she said, "I get a feeling that a lot of Hillarys, all those people say Hillary's going to win." She says, "I think they're going to be really disappointed." I said, "Oh yeah, me too." Then she let loose and she said, "I've had easily 90% of the people who travel with me and she says, you know they're all business people. " She says, "Not one of them is going to vote for Hillary Clinton." She said, "Just by the way they're talking in the backseat or on the phone and everything like that. " And what I feel is that these people are listening in on haphazard conversations, haphazard in the sense that they never know who's going to get in the car With them. Right, exactly

Dean: Random.

Dan: So it's actually a pretty good polling, it's a pretty good polling medium with that. Yeah, observational. Yeah, because it's completely unpredictable who you're going to get, but if you get a hundred people, it probably gives you a sense of a cross section at least to the people who have money and how they're voting. The Yeah. And she said, "No, no." She says, "I'm convinced that Trump's going to win." And at that point, the New York Times had her at 90%. She was going to ... All the mainstream media, of course, had her way out in front that this was going to be a humiliation. It was a humiliation but it just went in the other direction.

Dean: For Wolf Blitzer.

Dan: Yeah. But I think what they're doing with Iran right now, I'm reading all the ABC CBS and they said, "This is like Vietnam. He's just totally trapped." And I said, "It Doesn't look that way to me. " I said, "The Israelis and the Americans, the three Bs, they've accomplished the three Bs. They beheaded them, they broke them and they're bankrupting them." And I said, "That sounds like a winning. That sounds like a winning side to me. " And anyway, but it's pretty clear they killed all those. They killed the Ayatollah and they created like 47 other leaders who were in the same room in the first two hours. They were all dead. And there's been some very interesting YouTube investigations that there was an insider. They feel very, very strongly that there was a high ranking member of the IRGC that's the Iranian Republican Guard that actually tipped them off and that this had been developed over 10 or 15 years.

Dean: Wow.

Dan: The Israelis had developed this insider there. Anyway, but it's really interesting, but right now the US controls all the choke points in the entire oil, the entire shipping of oil around the world. They just control everything where oil can go through. Anyway.

Dean: Well, there we go.

Dan: There you go.

Dean: So I noticed in my calendar that we will be dark for the next two Sundays.

Dan: Yeah. Because we're going to London and it's just too much of a hassle to coordinate over the five hours. We'll

Dean: Both

Dan: Have

Dean: Had birthdays by the time we get back together. Our birthday is yours on the 17th?

Dan: 19th. 19th.

Dean: 19th. Okay. So 12

Dan: Days apart.

Dean: I'm the 10th.

Dan: You're the 8th?

Dean: 10th.

Dan: The 10th. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if things keep going the way they're going, when we talk next, we'll be smarter.

Dean: That's exactly right. I believe that to be 100% true.

Dan: Yeah. Good.

Dean: Well, enjoy your trips and I will talk when we get back.

Dan: You bet. Thanks.

Dean: Thanks, Dan. Bye-bye.