In this episode of Cloudlandia, we journey through cottage renovations, explore the landscapes of North America, and decode the power of vision and reach in building successful ventures.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- The episode begins with a discussion about cottage renovations, exploring the landscapes of North America, and building successful ventures.
- The hosts discuss the renovation projects of Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Jackson, the smoky Quebec forest, and the history of the Canadian forest industry.
- Insight from Peter Zion suggests that even if the U.S. population doubled, there would still be room to spare, and Florida's unspoiled grapefruits are also discussed.
- They introduce a useful tool called the FAST filter, a quick 15-minute method to help evaluate the success potential of any project.
- The episode covers three fascinating life roles: everything is invented by someone, no one is really in charge, and life isn't always fair.
- Productivity strategies involving intense physical feats are discussed, along with the hosts' experiences with rising early and its surprising effects.
- Steve Jobs' philosophy of creating technology that's not only functional but also beautiful and user-friendly is another compelling topic.
- The hosts critique Bud Light's marketing choices and emphasize the importance of getting feedback from the right audience.
- The episode explores the concept of being the buyer in ventures, with examples from Mr Beast's Cloudlandia and the strategic approach of Prime energy drink.
- Finally, the hosts emphasize the importance of maintaining quality control for your product, finding the right partnerships, and understanding that everything in life and business is a guess and a bet.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson
Mr Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan
Ah, Mr Jackson, are you enjoying your play show four seasons.
Dean Jackson
Yes. I'll tell you what it's so nice that everything's done now. It's like having a new renovation. We got new carpet, new hardwood, new wallpaper in the kitchen. Everything's all fantastic. Done now, finally. We're excited about that. How about you?
Dan Sullivan
you're up at two o'clock it's yes, I am, yeah, and it's been spectacular. We've done really, really great, you know, sort of that idyllic cottage, culture, weather and yeah and although it was very smoky for the first two days. Oh yeah, Because we have Quebec, you know yes.
Dean Jackson
In.
Dan Sullivan
Canada, in Canada, you always play with that Quebec.
Dean Jackson
That's right, that's right. It was just separate already. Come on, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But this is a big forest area on the very west side of Quebec which is basically forest. You know, hundreds of square miles of forest. So even though it was a major fire there was, it didn't affect any towns at all because there are no towns.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, the Great Wilderness.
Dan Sullivan
There is so much nature in this country. Yes, absolutely.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, how's your construction project going?
Dan Sullivan
Well, we, you know the wheels of government approvals here really grind very slowly, and so we have to get a demolition. We have to get a demolition thing first, and we're going to have it done after the college season, the cottage season is over, and it'll be that'll. You know, that doesn't take very long, that takes a week or two. And then we have to really get the cottage fine tuned. The new design this is second. For those who are listening, this is a joining property that we have with our main tree, so we'll have about 300 feet of frontage on the water with a two, and they go around a bend, and so one of them is facing sort of more west than south and one of them is more south, so there's a curve.
Dean Jackson
And this is old rock.
Dan Sullivan
This is, you know, this is Canadian shield rock. Yeah, and this is 4 million years old rock and it's. It's a very striking locale, you know and. Muskoka, of course, is the great cottage country. We're in Halliburton, which is to the east. It's about you know it's about an hour's drive to the east and this was the great forest industry part of Canada like 1800. And the. British Navy came. The British Navy's ships were mainly wood from this area.
Dean Jackson
Oh well, they had a huge number.
Dan Sullivan
It was the number one industry in Canada, in what is now Canada, in the 1800. And yeah, and of course they thought, you know, there was just so much natural resource that they just cut and cut and cut. And then somebody said you know, maybe we should replant.
Dean Jackson
We're going to run out of wood. Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, but it goes on forever. I mean it's not just here in Ontario, it's in Quebec, it's in when you get to Manitoba. You know you have all that and it's just goes on forever. So you know, it's no wonder that you know the big complaint about modern Canadians and modern Americans, how wasteful they are.
Well, when you've lived your whole culture where you couldn't run out of things. It doesn't make you particularly, you know, stingy. It doesn't make you, yeah. So but I was thinking about that, that interesting statistic from Peter Zion that if you doubled the population of the United States, you know, sort of spreading the new population across the entire country, it would still feel. And you got to 650 million, 616 million. If you got there, the country would still feel pretty empty.
Dean Jackson
Yeah you know it's so funny, like I did a when just up and I were doing all the big real estate seminars, we were very sort of Western, western United States.
you know, weighted, we were doing more. You know over half of the events were in. You know, in California We'd do Phoenix and Palm Springs and LA and San Francisco and Seattle and Denver and you know that kind of all on the Western side and I was making the argument for more East Coast events and got a satellite view of the US by light source. Have you ever seen that map that showed light and you could draw a line, like at the Rocky, like you're right up the middle of the country, and it looked like just the entire right side was lit up, where all the population is Over on the east side very much.
And you're saying that makes total sense with Peter Zayam, that you could kind of fold that over even onto the west side, especially in the western United States, there's nothing and that would make no difference. But out of even Florida, if you look at Florida right now, there's 22 million people right now. We're projected for 29 million by 2030. So we're growing up to 15 million people a day right now. But the most of Florida, the entire middle of Florida, is basically the outback. I mean you can drive for miles and miles and not see anything.
Dan Sullivan
We were way back in the 70s. I went on a trip to Florida and it was on the west side. We were staying in Lakeland Florida. And we had a friend there who was a cattle breeder but he had gotten interested in citrus fruit so he had big grapefruit. But he was in a cooperative so all the work was done by the workers in the cooperative. And the neat thing about grapefruit is that it doesn't spoil on the trees. Oranges- and grapefruits.
you can leave them hanging there for as long as you want, they don't spoil. So it gives you some really good timing as far as when to pick and sell. And he was canny. He was kind of like just a canny person. He understood cattle. But we went to a cattle ranch in the middle of Florida and it's like the in the lower 48 states, like the number three cattle ranch in the United.
Dean Jackson
States.
Dan Sullivan
It just went on. I mean, we got on the ranch and then it was 30 miles to the homestead, you know we had to drive 30 miles. Once we were on the ranch, but it was right down in the middle, just above the Everglades, and so what we saw is a lot of pigs. You know, there were hundreds and thousands of cattle, but there were a lot of pigs and they just seemed to be wandering around. And so my friend yes, no, no, they were domestic, they were domestic but they yeah they didn't last long enough to go wild, you know.
And anyway, he said I said what are all the pigs for? This is a cattle ranch. And he says, well, you know, yeah, you can have beef every night for so long, and he just want to change. And so we go out and just roast up a couple of pigs and eat that. And I said, well, I don't think there's no fences. And I said you don't worry about them. He says, well, how are they going to get off the ranch?
Dean Jackson
We had to go 30 miles.
Dan Sullivan
That's a real trip for a short-legged pig, you know.
Dean Jackson
Right right, right right.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway, the sheer size, and this is, you know, psychologically, if you go back, the huge difference between the New World and the Old World. If you think about Europe, where every square inch of landscape is surveyed and owned and is populated, I mean I think Holland has the greatest density in any country in the world, even more so than some of the Asian countries. Oh really, wow.
And yeah, and then they come to this New World and they just give you 100 acres. You know, like, here we're just going to basically for almost nothing. We're going to give you 100 acres and see what you, if you make an improvement on it over the next five years, then you own the. We'll give you the land for life. You know, and everything like that. And what a draw that must have been for people who had nothing in Europe, especially in.
Dean Jackson
Europe.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you know, if you can make it across the ocean, we'll give you land and the New World. Yeah, and if all that's taken where you are, then just go another 50 miles to the west. There's a lot and my sense is the frontier took from 1620, jamestown, you know, the first permanent settlement in town, virginia, to 1890,. When they finally surveyed the last bed of whichever western territory, it was In 1890, they, it was all surveyed and they said the frontier is now officially over.
You know, we have no more frontier and but that 270 years, really, I put an incredible stamp on probably what would you say? 15 years per generation, even let's say 20 years per generation, so 20, you know it's about 15 generations. And that probably just put a permanent stamp on psyche of the Americans. Yeah, you look at the.
Dean Jackson
I mean it's amazing now if you take the parallel and you bring it into Cloudlandia, if you count Jamestown, if Jamestown was 1996, you know when everybody started kind of landing in Cloudlandia even though there was no infrastructure, really there was no, you know, no electricity, no, all of that stuff. You look at the highway system and we liken the development of Cloudlandia over, you know, a generation and a half here.
Dan Sullivan
Well, and that's, and we're never going to run out.
Dean Jackson
That's the amazing thing. Well, there's an infinitely.
Dan Sullivan
There's an infinitely expanding frontier in Cloudlandia and you're not trespassing. You're not really trespassing in the same way you do on the mainland, right yeah.
Dean Jackson
And I think that's why?
0*Dan Sullivan*
you know the chat GPT took over. You know which is the latest new adventure in Cloudlandia is chat GPT that if you look at the numbers, they say 100 million. Right away, 100 million people are using it and I said but not everywhere, not everywhere and my sense is that it's. I was just breaking it down. I said it's mostly Americans or people connected to it. There are people connected to America digitally. It's probably males, they're probably single and they're probably between 25 and 45. And they just want to go places where nobody's gone before.
And this is they got a vehicle for doing this, and that's the frontier, that's the frontier mentality.
Dean Jackson
What's beyond the?
Dan Sullivan
settled territory. What's beyond the settled territory?
Dean Jackson
Right, right, right. And what are you going to settle on the territory? I mean, this is the really. This is the thing. It's such amazing times, like a couple of things that that have jumped out over the last little bit here. Here I just saw that Mr B Again now with feastable new company is chocolate. Your confection company is global. Now They've got in there all over the world. They've taken over the United States and things. And I read what happened in the last few weeks is Mr Beast has sort of soured a little bit on on Mr Beast burger as a as a collaboration, in that he can't control the quality of what the product is being delivered. Right.
There's a little variation because it's going, you know, it's expanded so quickly and there's so many restaurants making the, you know, making his burgers, making the menu, and that was a collaboration largely driven by someone coming to him with that like virtual dining concepts. But Robert Earl was the driver of that. And so, if we take the VCR formula, robert Earl went to Mr Beast with the capability offering to bring him into the burger business with tapping him in his range Right.
Dan Sullivan
So it wasn't there.
Dean Jackson
It wasn't driven by Mr Beast and it wasn't Mr Beast capability to to do the thing. Now feastable. What they did was they started with division and they sought out the capability and they're the. It reminded me of your always be the buyer. That there's a difference where, with your the visionary, you're the buyer of this Right. Your your partnering with a capability that, if you have the vision and the reach, partnering with the capability is that's kind of the power position and the difference between feastables, which is packaged goods that you can 100% controlled quality of, and then partnering with Walmart as reach to multiply the reach that you have a physical you know Mr Beast's Cloudlandia reach with an outlet at the largest footprint retailer reach in the country Makes a huge, huge difference.
It's a product-based thing. I look at prime. There's another major story in the VCR world right now, which is prime energy drink, which was driven by Logan Paul and KSI another you know, two big global YouTubers who have partnered to make this energy drink and they're, you know, last year sold 250 million dollars of this energy drink and now they are kind of funny how this the you know it's like VCR squared. They are now as an entity, a capability, partnering with other big reach outlets like they. They're the official hydration of USC, the ultimate fighter competition, the Dana White big MMA thing, and they were just announced as the official hydration of the Barcelona football club, which is a huge international thing, and they did it with Manchester United and those guys are there's no limit to where that's going A package, good product that they're the driver of the.
Dan Sullivan
Well, and, as you said, the central issue here is quality control. Yes yes, I mean a shitty restaurant. Anyway can produce shitty, mr Beesburgers.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly what I mean. Yes, that's the thing, right that you're, rather than having something that you can just deliver to somebody in the experience, the unboxing, it's only just distributed to some.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you know my newest quarterly book is called the Geometry for Staying Cool and Calm, and one of the there's three roles which we've You've very kindly talked about on the podcast. The three roles are everything's made up by someone sometime. Okay, sometimes someone made up something, so things that are thousands of years old, it was still. Someone at some time made this up. Somebody wrote it down, you know. And somebody said, well, what about the Bible? And I said somebody wrote it down.
You know it was just a discussion until somebody wrote it down, somebody. Okay, so the big thing is that if you take the three roles, everything's made up. Nobody's in charge, and number three, life's not fair. There's some byproducts that come out of that, and number one of the things that come out of that is it's all guessing and betting.
So, the future is all about betting. Yeah, the future is all guessing and betting, you know. And so when you hear somebody this is very definitely technology is going in this direction what you have is someone telling you that they're guessing on something and they want you to bet on it. And so this whole notion that the future is predetermined is silly, because even with Mr Beast, who knows the power of YouTube I mean, he's proven that he knows the power, just with his community is hundreds, you know more than 100 million, but he's guessing what he can do with that community and he's betting.
So Mr Beast, mr Beastburger was a bet, okay, and took up time, took up energy, took up skills, took up probably some money, and with him it's not so much money, it's just how does he want to spend his time, you know that's really, I think, his biggest thing is not wasting time, you know but he just tested on something. And now one thing he's learned we have to control the product. That's. That's a useful learning. I'm sure he didn't lose any money on Mr Beastburger he's still going strong still going strong.
Dean Jackson
But he's just losing. Like it was an interesting thing, he tweeted that you know that he can't. You know virtual diving solutions won't let him out of the, they won't let him out of the contract or he can't stop. Even he said you know I can't, my partners won't let me stop, even though it's bad for my brand, you know which is really interesting Well he's at 20, you know, at 26,.
Dan Sullivan
I'm not sure his exact age, but 24, 26. He's learned a powerful lesson that applies for the rest of his life. You got to be the owner.
Dean Jackson
Yes, always be the buyer.
Dan Sullivan
Yes, yeah, yeah, and you know he just learned it. I mean, I didn't learn that until I was in my 50s. I'm a committed learner, but sometimes I'm a slow learner. I've got a tool variation for you, OK. Ok, and this was prompted by your raising the topic of Dean Landia. So I've always kind of liked the tool we have called the FAST filter rather than the big impact filter. Yeah, and the FAST filter. The FAST filter, you just write down here's the project, here's the best result, here's the worst result and here are five success criteria.
And for all practical purposes. It does 90% of what the impact filter does, but in about half the time about half the time. So you and I are people of a quickness nature that we've got 15 minutes or we lose interest.
So I go for a tool that only takes 15 minutes. But here's the thing, and this is a question for you. But I'll just tell you what I did Of all the profiles that we've done the Colby profile, we've done in coach, we've done the Colby profile, we've done Myers-Briggs, we've done Desk. You know D-S-I-D-I-Z, we've print and we've just done the working genius. And everybody in FreeZone is going to get that in the next quarter.
We're just sending it out in September, everybody and just go do that profile and they can do that with their teams, and you know the whole thing.
But of all of them and I didn't mention it yet, but the one that really struck home for me was the Strength Finder, which came out of the Gallup organization. So my five strengths are number one ideation. You know that if I'm going to take action on something, it'll be on an idea. Number two maximizer. I'm interested in ideas that don't take average things and make them better. I'm only interested in things that take already extraordinary people and make them even more productive. So, maximizer. Number three, self-assurance is that personally, I don't think I can ever get into trouble with a new idea.
You know that I always have confidence that you know it'll either work or I'll get some learning out of it. But there's no loss with coming up with a new idea. And number four is context. Is that I'm passionate about how this connects to everything. So if I create something, I immediately want to know how does this connect to everything else I've done? And number five is activator, that there's no idea we're spending any time if it does not lead to action.
Dean Jackson
So those are my thoughts.
Dan Sullivan
And you know, experience and the observation of my team would pretty well prove it out that there isn't any one, any other strength on the list of 34, these are the top five out of 34. That would replace one of the ones that are in the top five. Okay, and that's good enough for me. That's good enough for me. I said I don't think so either, and so what I did is that on the stra, on the fast filter, you have five success criteria, so I just put in the five, you know ideation, multiple maximizer, self assurance, context and activator.
And then I think of a particular project and I said, okay, so what's the central idea here? What's the central idea here? Ideation, okay, and really make a big jump with it. Maximizer number three that this will, if you pull this off as the real jump in your self assurance, okay, number this actually connects with about five other things that I'm doing, or 10 other things that I'm doing. That's context and number five, activator, and I can immediately see that I can take this action within the next day or two. And then I go back and I write worse result of doing this, best result.
So I do it backwards, I do the five success criteria first and then I do worse result and said ah, this is just one of your another hair brain scheme that you get all excited about and you distract a lot of other people. I tell the whole story how this is just puts me in the ditch like other. And then I go to the best result and I said this is a breakout moment in my entire 17 to 29 year life and everything and away we go. And so I just wondered did you do the strength finder, did you?
Dean Jackson
I did years ago and it's for ideation, ideation was at the top of my.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, we're both ideation which probably people could guess yes. And that's what it's interesting, but it'd be interesting because you've got the fast filter on your website. You just yeah, but all you do is that you the first word in the five success criteria are the five strength finders, you just put the first word and then you say and you know, and you can see what that, their explanation of each of those are. But you kind of know anyway. But I'm noticing that it does amazing things with projects.
First of all, it gives you an incredible amount of immediate motivation to do the project because it checks off all the boxes where you get energy. Anyway, I just thought it would.
Dean Jackson
So everybody would put in the fast filter, they would feed their five. Their five strength finders.
Dan Sullivan
With their five strength finders. So it custom designs it immediately that you're only doing this project for your purposes.
Dean Jackson
Yes, where could I find my strength finder again, oh.
Dan Sullivan
Julia Waller. I'm at the cottage and she's in the next cottage. I'll just, I'll see her tonight and I'll just said could you just look up Dean Dean Jackson's strength finders? Okay, great, and if she can't, she'll just give you their contact information. I mean, you do it over again. It's $35, $40, something like that.
Dean Jackson
So you know you you gotta do it, but it's a very, I think you know, do four or five of them.
Dan Sullivan
Just take that random, just take five projects and run it through. And you see that it makes you into the total buyer of everything that you do. I don't go into this unless it checks off my five strength finder boxes. I'm not devoting an ounce of energy unless it checks off my boxes, and I think that's as good a definition of what being a buyer for you means as it does you know, anyway, so just thought you'd be interested in that.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I'm very fascinated by that because that I've gone through and I've had a buddy on my team through the working genius and James probably put together a team profile that shows a map of where everybody is on your team. So when you're building, you're kind of the next thing. When you're going forward with a project, I know that we need all of the widgets, you know we need everybody, somebody's genius in every aspect of it to get it all the way through, all the way from wonder to synastomy, somebody to follow through with it, and so that's kind of a. I like all these combinations.
Dan Sullivan
I love what you're looking for, what I'm looking for is just the one tool that works everywhere. You know, I mean I created lots of you know and coach. We've created lots of tools, but I'm just always looking for the one tool that's a really fast tool. That's just the starting point for everything. You know, just yeah, and you know it's like Jack Pell. I'm talking to Billy Crystal and you know Billy Crystal and he said I'm going to give you, billy, I'm going to give you the secret of life.
And he holds up his finger, one finger, and Billy Crystal says your finger is the secret to life. And he says yeah, but we're all looking. I mean, especially if you're AD and you're a 10, quick start and ideation is your number one strike fighter, you're subject to a lot of distractions, yeah.
Dean Jackson
Like hourly, like hourly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, and sometimes in the middle of the night and so funny that that was where.
Dean Jackson
Oh, by the way, michael.
Dan Sullivan
Bruce. I'm meeting weekly with Michael Bruce and he just wanted to pass on his best wishes to you. Oh good, we had some conversations where he's really good at what he's really good. I tell you he's really really good at what he does. Yeah, For the listeners, this is a great sleep psychologist named Michael Bruce. He lives in Hermosa Beach, California, and yeah.
And I'm going through a 12 week program with him where I have to diary my sleep every night in the morning. I do that and the whole thing is to get me two things. One is to establish a regular get up time for me which is five o'clock. So this is really good, because I'm in my just finishing my fourth week now and I've gotten up at five o'clock every morning for 28 days and then he won't let you go to bed earlier. I'm at 10 30 now, so I get six and a half hours sleep. But the ultimate goal here is one is that I always have a wake up time that's predictable, so that my system kicks in and creates the sleep drive during the day.
I don't have to use meds at night. And I'm down to half of my meds after four weeks.
So in just four weeks. I'm off half and then during the day I don't have to use Adderall to propel me for the whole day. So I have an early morning slow release. I have a slow release that I take right away. He's leaving that alone. And at night I have a lunesta that I take just to start the night, and he's leaving that alone. He's gotten rid of the halfway, the two thirds through the night sonata, so that's gone. And my daytime Adderall, like let's say, afternoon, that's gone. So I pre-dropped two of them in four weeks, so it's really good.
Dean Jackson
Did you get a chance to experiment with telling yourself you could be being happy that you get to have the best two hours of sleep? Two hours here when you wake up. I've tried that.
Dan Sullivan
I've tried that, you know, but that's a trick that we had.
There's this mad, crazy sort of like survival thing I forget what it's called, but where you go four weeks and you're a team of four One of them has to be a woman and you have to climb mountains, you have to swim across you know straights of water, you have to go through jungle and everything else, and you only have 24, 96 hours to pull it off and they have tricks, and one of the tricks is they go on two hours of sleep per night, but it's the last two hours before sunrise and if you wake up at sunrise, your body thinks that you, for four days, your body can pull you, or your mind can pull your body into believing you got full night's sleep four nights in a row, and then it falls apart on the fifth day. Really, you go one. Yeah, yeah, so it's an interesting.
Dean Jackson
And that you're, that, you know, limiting to six and a half hours, or whatever that worked out to be, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But this is not forever, this is just to get me through this period and I think I think I'm probably at my limit right now. I don't think he's going to push it any further, and but he might. And first it was seven hours, then it was so it was 10 o'clock and then it was 1015 and now it's 1030. So we'll see I've had lots of energy and I've gotten lots of things done.
Dean Jackson
But what I've done is wherever, why. I'm curious about why five am. Is that? No, you choose that.
Dan Sullivan
You choose that. No, you choose that, you choose that, but then it's that's what it is. So he said you get up anywhere from four to five, 30. But if you had to do it every morning, which would you do? And he's the upside. Both agreed we do it at five o'clock and he says good, so five is fixed. So regardless of when you go to bed although I'm not going to let you go to bed earlier than 10 o'clock, the one time we did, we went to see Jeff Maddox, Premier play a Premier week personality in Chicago, which is a dynamite play and musical, and he, we got home at two o'clock in the morning.
It was downtown and we went out afterwards and I said Baps, there's no way we're getting up at five o'clock, so we just got up at nine o'clock because we had to get to the airport to play home.
Dean Jackson
I said, you know, every once in a while.
Dan Sullivan
I'm just going to. I mean, yeah, rows aren't any good if you can't make exceptions. Right, right, right.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, my, I would love, like I think, that my natural if I just look at my natural cycle, it would probably be it would eight hour period, it would probably be 11 to 7 would be my natural preferred. I think that's like the person, yep yep, I think everybody's rhythm for me.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't matter just his whole point is it doesn't matter what the hours are, just so that you stick with it, because your body adjusts and then adjusts its system. But if you're all over, the map with it your body, then you get all sorts of sleep disorders and right, right, right yeah.
But I'm from childhood I've been an early riser, you know farm boy, you were at the break of dawn and you know I was in sports going through schools. You were too, but you got up early. You had morning practices and and it was in the army, army you get up at, you know you get a six, six o'clock, you know so you know I was just used to it and and I find that most creative before noon. You know I get most my creative creativity. I can talk endlessly after three o'clock, but don't ask me to create anything in the afternoon.
Dean Jackson
That's funny. I have a second, like if I were to say I have a second period of period, you know, like three or four in the afternoon till six or seven. That's like a really good. If I just look at my, you know, biorethm or whatever it's first thing in the morning, you know, till noon, and then another, I think the European, you know the fiesta model is like the perfect thing, I think. You know. Get, get up, do what you do creative work.
Dan Sullivan
Well, you've got forward a heat. You got forward a heat to blame on it, even though you're in air conditioning. But you know, you know I think it's a light thing too how much light you get. You get way more light than we do in Toronto during the year.
Dean Jackson
You know it's fun the way that you and I talk about these things. You know different approaches to it, but part of the thing, I guess, is picking the game that you like in the way that you like to play the game and establishing your life around it, you know, just fitting it into what you're natural and not everybody's the same, like like you. For you, I don't like the idea of waking up at five o'clock. Even you know Robin Sharma.
Do you know Robin Sharma wrote the five AM club, so I had lunch at the table I sure don't want to.
Dan Sullivan
I'll get up at five, but I'm not going to be a member of the club at five o'clock.
Dean Jackson
Exactly the five AM club.
Dan Sullivan
Are you kidding?
Dean Jackson
I said you know it's so funny that everybody tries to in personal development. It feels like everybody tries to pigeonhole you into their method of you got to get up at five AM and if your dreams aren't big enough to get you bouncing out of bed in the morning, you know.
Dan Sullivan
The last time I saw Robin was at the Soho hotel in London, and he just happened to be in the restaurant when I was there, so we pulled up a table. You know, we got a table together and I was talking. He was saying, you know, he was sort of at a decision point in his.
You know what he was doing and you know that every he had stages and he was at the end of one of his stages and he was and I said, robin, maybe it's time for the monk to buy a new Ferrari.
Dean Jackson
That's right, I love it. So for everybody listening Robin Sharma, very famously, first thing, wrote a book called the Monk. We sold his Ferrari and that's great, that's my favorite. Ferrari.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's fantastic Dan His language, so he wouldn't, it's his language so he would know what that means.
Dean Jackson
you know Of course, and it was just so perfectly appropriate, like once you, you know it's so funny that the you know I think about that often and for the last 25 years, or 23 years, my go-to I know I'm being successful when I've been. You know, I wake up every day and ask what would I like to do today? And maybe it's time that I wake up and ask myself what would I like to do tomorrow instead of doing and do the thing that I need to wake up.
Dan Sullivan
I wake up every day and I know exactly what I'm doing for the day and that's another variation, not that you'd want to make this the main course, but just for sort of space. Is you wake up in the morning and say what am I glad I didn't do yesterday? Ah right, exactly.
Dean Jackson
Phew, that was close.
Dan Sullivan
I almost did that. I almost did that and I didn't do it.
Dean Jackson
That is funny, I get point for that.
Dan Sullivan
They asked Steve Jobs very close, you know like you're to be very died. They asked him what were the 10 best decisions he had made during his Apple career and he says the 10 times I said no to something that would have really gotten us bogged down if we had pursued Wow, yeah. So I think that's as useful as what did you achieve? It's what did you not? It's not what a lot of people grade themselves on what they said yes to, but they there's just as much value in remembering what you said no to.
And we have the tool, the experience transformer and coach. You know where you take something that you haven't resolved in your mind.
And I had everybody just pick something during their teenage years. Because there's a lot of stuff that goes on in teenage years. You know that's not understandable at the time and maybe you didn't resolve it at all afterwards. So I said just pick something that's negative from your teenage years that anytime you're reminded of it it kind of rankles. You still get an emotional, negative, emotional hit from it. And so they picked it. You know a number of people. It was a relationship, okay, you know, and this one guy said he says boy, and what we do is you write down what worked about that.
And they this is the hardest time of it because their memory of it is nothing worked about it. But then you go through and he said and then he you know. And I say now, so you know. And then you say what didn't work about it. So after you've done what worked about it, it's easier to emotionally face the things that didn't work about it. It's very hard to what's not working head on.
You have to you have to get your confidence level up before you can actually look at the things that didn't work. And then you say, if, in a similar situation going forward, what would I do differently, based on my thinking so far. So yeah, and this one guy said well, I had this girlfriend and she was a knockout. Then I just thought she was going to be the woman of my life and everything else.
And and and so, yeah, we got to a nice is so what worked about that? And he says well, I didn't marry her. I said you missed a bullet, didn't you? You missed because he had met her about 15, 20 years later and she wasn't the woman of his dreams.
Dean Jackson
When he met her? Yeah, and I'm sure the women.
Dan Sullivan
The women would have the same story to tell about men. Thank God I didn't marry him, so anyway. But but I'm a great believer in reworking my past. My past is my property, so I can do anything that I want with it. Your past is an interpretation of events. It's yeah, I mean, our entire past is our interpretation of what certain events you're not changing the events you're simply changing your interpretation of the events.
And I spent a lot of time in my past. You know I go back and I said what did I learn from that? Gee, that's really useful, but by intent is always, I'm going to learn something from the past, that's applicable to the future. I think that's what I think, that's what I think, that's what humanity does Is that right Because I wondered if I thought maybe that was uniquely.
Dean Jackson
I thought maybe I spent a lot of time in the past and I do it with an analytical mind, like I think I mentioned to you, like looking back and kind of really breaking it down into the four to five year pretty serious inflection changes and looking back for three lines and recognize that when you were talking about guessing and betting, that I think that the you know it was really interesting is looking back at the things that I guessed right and bet and the. I think the reason that we take such comfort in looking back or that enjoy the fantasy of being able to go back, is that because we know the, we know the outcome now.
Looking back 25 years. It would have been, it would be really amazing to go back 25 years now that we know where it's all heading. You know, we know that, having seen 2023, it would be very interesting to go back to 1997 and know that the bets that you're making, you know, are going to pay off. But the real skill is to be able to turn that thinking and project forward for the next 25 years and make those bets, you know. But it's also very interesting that there's probably, you know, when I looked at, when I look at, 25 years is an amazing framework for looking backwards, but there's not, there's not a lot of.
There's not a lot of things that you could kind of place a bet on with certainty that we're going to pay out and a lot of the things wouldn't have even come into existence, Like I think you know, if you look back at 1995, like we said, 28 years ago, the internet was just kind of getting started.
So I guess that would be one thing that you could kind of place a bet on, but all of the things that the biggest winners among the internet. Like you know, apple was going bankrupt in 1995. They were losing almost a billion dollars a year because of mismanagement and scattered efforts, and Steve Jobs didn't come back till 1997 and simplified things, and so you wouldn't have bet on Apple in 1995 as being and then they just crossed.
Dan Sullivan
No, they just crossed three trillion dollars, first three trillion dollars, so there's no you wouldn't have guessed that in 1995.
Dean Jackson
There were no indications that they were going to be that. But you look at that period of innovation, the 10 years from 1997 to 2007 were tremendous innovation and game changing things, all on the back of internet. And I think that if you look at, what Steve Jobs was able to see was going just like he went all in on personal computers in a phase when it ball mainframe and business. He in the 70s yeah, that 25 years or 20 years or whatever went all in on personal computing and then when he saw the internet, that was the world that he was like how can we bring the world to the devices.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I mean, and you know, the Walkman was the breakout product of that. Well, the Apple, that wasn't Apple, but.
Dean Jackson
The iPod.
Dan Sullivan
The iPod, yeah, the iPod. I mean he just and that was strictly internet. You know that was totally making use of the internet.
Dean Jackson
I mean and the.
Dan Sullivan
Mac was the Mac. I mean, he always had a great operating system before he was fired.
Dean Jackson
The iMac was the first thing that you know, really made the computer. That was really the thing that was acknowledging it's all going to the internet. So the iMac was first, then that brought in.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and the other thing that he brought back much more so than he had in the first place, was his was the sense that your product should be beautiful.
Dean Jackson
And nobody in technology.
Dan Sullivan
nobody in technology did before or since has ever placed the emphasis on beautiful and ease of use and ease of use. And you know and you know, I mean, and certainly Microsoft, never twig to that, even when they saw what they were up against. They never, they never saw. Why would you make things beautiful?
You know why they know right it just adds to the cost of development and everything else. Why would you do that? But if you don't have that sense? But he zeroed in on the artistic market where beauty is a big deal. Style, beauty, you know, elegance, you know all those things. That's really not part of the technological brain. You know most part and free, because they're mostly in. Yeah yeah. And you know they, he got rid of computer. You know it was just Apple.
And then they came up with their long range purpose, which was we make beautiful technology that people love using. I said, oh God, that's a forever. That's a forever purpose. When you're not bound in by any particular technology, you're not bound in by any particular period of time, You're not bound in by any particular target market is we make a beautiful technology that people love using. I said, God, you can live with that forever.
Dean Jackson
I mean, if you'd had that 4,000 years.
Dan Sullivan
If you had that 4,000 years ago, it'd be working. It'd be working today.
Dean Jackson
That's so great. I love that. That's a great thing, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so what have we covered today?
Dean Jackson
What territory have we covered? What have we mapped out in?
Dan Sullivan
claimed as our own. Well, I think that we've mapped out.
Dean Jackson
Like I'm looking at these, you know I was fascinated by the whole.
You know by the all these VCR collaborations you know, like looking at how Mr Beast, but just looking at the distinction between Feastables and Mr Beast Burger and the precariousness of kind of you know being the capability that then brings the idea to the reach. That's kind of precarious, you know. But I was looking. I was just thinking about like some of the clients that I'm working with now that are you know, and people that I've met recently that have these amazing capability things. You know, like I was. When I heard about Feastable, I was thinking about our friend and FreeZone member, shahid in India, who makes all the biscuits and confection.
Dan Sullivan
No same.
Dean Jackson
Capability Pakistan. Yeah, pakistan yeah yeah, he would know the difference. Of course he would. Yeah, yeah, and I should have known the difference. I've spoken with him, had joined with him, but there's a guy who's like that, the capability that he has, you know, just ready for he's Well it's really interesting.
Dan Sullivan
He's just started a new collaboration in Italy. Okay, using his know-how. You know they brought from that market and now he's looking for the United States. And I said you don't want to go to a, after you've done Italy, you don't want to do another European country. And he says no it's not the US. And I said great you know, yeah, that's great, right, right an impact builder and what you're looking for and and everything.
Well, I think the big thing is the custom designing of the future. You know, and that's my use of the fast filter tool. I'm sort of cussed. I said, you know, I'm picky about going forward. I'm picky about, yeah, and I said, does this check the ideation box? Does this check the you know the, you know maximizer and the others? Does this check? Does it check all the boxes? And I'm not buying at all, you know, I'm just not getting involved if it doesn't check all the boxes. Right, you know, but what it does, it makes something that's sort of reactive and passive, makes it into active and kind of aggressive.
Because, then you can go into any situation and say you know I'm, I know exactly what I'm looking for, and if it's not there, I'll know about it. I'll know it almost instantly.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that's an interesting thing. I look at the maximizer, one of the realizations that I'm having about me and about my you know ideation and my in the widget world, my discernment and invention that those are best suited to tap into an existing engine. Like I look at the biggest impacts that I've had and been able to join something you know be an accelerant, a rocket booster to something that is always. Yeah, already exists, yeah, yeah, without me having to be an operator, because that's where my strengths fall down, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah Well, I've always called you the marketing Buddha and as far as I know Buddha didn't keep office hours. That's right. That's right.
Dean Jackson
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you just enlightened the future. That's all you do. You enlighten the future, yeah, yeah, that's what that marketing strategist for Bud Light was doing. She was enlightening the future. She was going to elevate the brand and enlighten the future of their oh boy of their future. I said well, you certainly got a result.
Dean Jackson
Amen Holy cow.
Dan Sullivan
I mean this is yeah and anyway. And a lot of people are saying that's a debt grant, it's not retrievable, from where they put it with one camp. Pretty amazing, yeah. Yeah, it is because I was in the local. We have a thing called Jug City here which kind of tells you that it certainly defines the customers here Jug.
City, you know Anyway and I was in there and I was in line. I came in and I just checked because people had their purchases in their hands. I went in and then I came out again and I saw 10 different kinds of beers being bought, but not Bud Light. And this is Canada. This isn't even the United. States and everything like that. But, boy, you know you don't want to get caught in a crossfire favoring one side, you know.
Dean Jackson
I know that.
Dan Sullivan
And they just, she just took it into the zone. And now the former CEO of Bud Light is saying the president CEO of Bud Light should just resign. He should just resign because he's been an abysmal failure and he was hired to take care of situations like this. He was hired not to get into situations like this. And now right but at least be able to extract him in Really dense. But I bet this is being studied in all the business schools.
Dean Jackson
Oh, man, talk about, yeah, one of the amazing things, just like this amazing story. You know, yeah, such an, I can't even I think I'm. I wonder what other examples of that. You know, can't even think of anything that.
Dan Sullivan
No, I can't think of a single. I mean Target had a little whiff of that, but they got out of it pretty soon because they were, and you know this is the third rail of the subway. You don't touch the subject, you know.
Dean Jackson
I guess it's a little bit back to when the Ford Pintos were exploding again. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, nobody would touch up Ford Pinto or.
Dean Jackson
That would ruin the driving brand right.
Dan Sullivan
You know I mean we live in a million times more viral communications world now than we did back then. And you know I mean I go whoa. And now Dylan Mulvaney, the actress in the situation, is bashing Bud Light for nuts sticking up for her, you know and everything. Wow, wow, wow she's saying we're done with you. We're done with you. So the very target audience they were going out Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean that's yeah, so that qualifies as a bad guess and a bad bet. Well, there you go, Okay.
Dean Jackson
Dan.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, but you know, you know you should kind of do it in a 10-person focus group before you do it live on the Internet.
Dean Jackson
Oh my goodness, nobody might have been able to say, hey, wait a minute. What about this?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, why don't we get some of these backward, out-of-touch people who happen to be the number one consumer of our product, in a room and show them our new idea?
Dean Jackson
Unbelievable yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But anyway it makes it for an interesting, entertaining world. Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Well, you have an amazing Are you having another week at the cottage?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and I'll be available. Next Sunday I'll be in Chicago next. Sunday Okay. So yeah, we're going in on Saturday because Joe and Eunice are going to personality with us, so we'll see you again on Saturday night, oh nice Anyway that's good, yeah, so 11 o'clock, your time.
Dean Jackson
Yes, perfect, I'll be there. All right, okay, okay, bye, bye, guys.