In this episode of Cloudlandia, we navigate the intriguing notion that our world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals just like us. From the mundane aspects of traffic rules to the profound sacred texts influencing civilizations, it's all the product of the human mind.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
- The world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals like us, with everything from traffic rules to profound sacred texts being the product of the human mind.
- The art of argument is discussed, with insights from Jerry Spence's enlightening book. The best argument won is one that doesn't feel like a fight.
- They explore the perception of change and how a single country's decision can shift the global landscape. Embracing change and moving fluidly in a world in constant flux is important.
- Dean and Dan take a nostalgic trip through the transformative era of 1950 to 1980, discussing the assimilation of technological advancements like electricity, radio, television, cars, planes, and telephones.
- Exploration of the future of entertainment includes pondering whether YouTube could be the new generational torchbearer for cross-generational awareness of stars.
- The evolution of work is discussed, including the importance of strategic coaching in achieving success. The right people can make a world of difference. It's not just about working hard, but also about working smart.
- They explore how everything is made up by specific individuals, including the fear that gripped society at the advent of automobiles and how we've evolved to take speed for granted.
- They discuss the importance of winning arguments and how the best way to win is to not make it feel like an argument. It also explores how people perceive change differently.
- The podcast compares the 1950s and the present day in terms of success, discussing how quickly a book can be produced now, thanks to the internet and Zoom. The importance of having a designer who can understand and deliver what is desired is emphasized.
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dan Sullivan
welcome. We're being recorded, that's right. Welcome, always welcome.
Dean Jackson
Welcome to cloudland here, that's right. We're, we're always recording. Well we're always Everything is recorded.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, nobody's in charge, and and life's not fair.
Dean Jackson
Exactly right. I'm holding in my hand my Geometry for staying cool and calm book yeah it's very exciting.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, this one has gotten Kind of surprising to me anyway. Just, it sort of clicks. Those three things seem to do some Mental geometry, you know, when you put the three of them together as a triangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Dean Jackson
I love it and the I was once the cartoons like that's my.
You know my process for reading the book is. I like I open up the inside cover and I see the overview of the Graphical overview within cartoons and tells you the whole Everything you need to know, kind of just looking at it. I love this guessing and betting. It's very good. Then I go to the contents and I look at the titles of Chapters and I'm very interested in, and haven't gotten to yet, chapter 750 out of 8 billion. I'm not sure what that's, the cops.
Yet but, then I go and I read the headlines, the chapters and the. You know your opening statements that you say about them. So, chapter one everything's made up. You realize that everything in the world is always made up by specific individuals. And then I skip to the cartoons, mm-hmm in between the chapters that I look at those and I see the Yep. Gandhi was making it up, confucius was making it up. Everybody seems to be that. They've been making it up since the beginning of time, right to three to today. Yeah, I'm making it up.
Dan Sullivan
I love it. You're making it? Yeah, we, we've been making it up. This whole thing got made up.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, but the interesting thing.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, the interesting thing is that I have people say well, you know what about, like sacred books? And I said well, I said, and they said aren't they divinely inspired? And I said, yeah, they're a finally inspired, but it takes somebody to write them down. Right, Right then you and you, and you hope you hope they got it right.
Yeah, yeah, but what it does is, I notice in the I just brought it up as a talking point in maybe five or six workshops, both free zone, in ten times and you can see people they have this almost like little mental jolt. They get a jolt and they say, wow, that's true, isn't? I said, yeah, so you can make things up, so you're freed up to make anything. I said everybody else does it, why don't you do it? And then nobody's in charge. And they said, well, what's in charge? I said rules are in charge. We make up rules and you know, send every situation, if people are cooperating and doing things together, make they make up rules. You know, not not necessarily at one time, but they gradually put up a set of rules. You know, if we approach things this way, things work. You know, think of traffic. You know think of if there were no rules.
Dean Jackson
Right, exactly, that's one of the frightening things about driving in India, say oh yeah, I was just thinking of India.
Dan Sullivan
I mean, you don't need brakes, you just need a horn.
Dean Jackson
And get quick reflexes.
Dan Sullivan
And and a lot of determination.
Yeah, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Sensor. You're right, you're first and you're right. These are all good things. Yeah, I was thinking about that one day. We were going, you know, on the Gardner Expressway in Toronto and we were, you know the traffic was flowing really, really quickly. You know it was 50 of these 50, you know 50 miles an hour and you know there were hundreds of cars In sight going both ways and I said, if you took somebody in time, traveled them back a century, back to 1923, and you put them in this situation, they, they would go catatonic in about 60 seconds. Just the Motion, yeah, yeah, and but we take it completely normal. And what normalizes it? We know, we know everybody else knows the rules.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I understood. I Think I remember reading that people when automobiles were first getting started, that people there was fear that your brain might explode at speed. Oh yeah, 30 miles an hour.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, well, and I think that there's. I Don't think that was a stupid worry, you know, we just had never, experienced. Nobody had ever experienced speed like that.
You know, yeah, and I think one of the attractions of Maritime travel, let's say, two or three centuries ago, like one of those sailing ships with full sails and, you know, properly constructed, you know the whole structure of the boat was meant for speed and you know they could get up to, you know, if they had a tide with them and they have current with them and everything else, they get up to 30 miles an hour. You know, at some speeds, you know, and this were sailing ships, you know, and that must have been extraordinarily thrilling to. That was about it, for you know, all of human history, up until trains.
Dean Jackson
Horses, I guess I mean.
Dan Sullivan
Think about probably about 30 horses, horses probably about 30, you know, they would be. They would be that that fast and you know.
But then all of a sudden, geez, you know, you know they were getting in. And from the Wright brothers, in 1903, I think, the Wright brothers, their first flight, you know, which lasted about 15 seconds, and and to Even the second world war, at the end of the war, they were introducing jets that could fly 500, 450, 500 miles an hour. Let's just yeah. But we've just showed you that the human brain adjusted these things, we normalize.
Yeah, you know, Well, number one skills that humans have is we can normalize new situations really quite quickly. Yeah, that's true. People saying you know this, all this AI stuff, yeah, I don't think our brains. So I said we'll normalize it just like we did anything else, you know we will normalize it.
Dean Jackson
It's so. It's so true. I've been getting, I've been seeing a lot of you know, what I wouldn't call AI enabled. You know, you know I've been seeing a lot of AI content or outreach, and you can. I was thinking about Jerry Spence and he wrote a great book called how to Argue and Win Every Time, and he said that our brains are equipped with psychic tentacles that are reaching out and testing everything for truth and realness and congruence, and these psychic tentacles can detect what he calls the sin clank of the counterfeit.
I thought that's the truth.
Dan Sullivan
You could tell that something was not written by a person. Yeah, I mean, on my birthday there was a company party for me. They do it all the time. Usually they lied to me in some way to think it's something else, and there's this big party. When they put it in your schedule, they're not gonna have to lie, and so, anyway, I go in and there's, this person gets up and, on behalf of the company, gives this very, very flattering talk about me.
And I could tell she was five seconds into it, this chat, gpt, I could just tell. So afterwards I went up to her and I said, did you get a little art of AI help with that? And she said, yeah, I did a show. And I said, yeah, right, and you know, what's missing is that we have a feel that there's a heart there, there's a mind there, there's a soul there when it's human.
Dean Jackson
What do you know? You know what one of the what I take as one of the highest compliments I've ever received about an email that I sent is Kim White said to me, or Daniel said to me, that you know. He says I know that these emails that you're sending are sent to thousands of people, but when I got it I always think it feels like you're speaking right to me and that was really that was really something you know. As a guy who's a energy plumber worker, you know whose whole thing is being coming into energy, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, it's really interesting. We went to see we're in Chicago today and Joe and Eunice and Mike Koenigs were here early, so they come in for Monday and Tuesday, but they came in yesterday and then Daniel White was with us and we went down to the theater to see personality because Joe hadn't seen it and the others hadn't seen it and there was an extraordinary actress in this play, or I don't know her last name, but her first name is Alexandria, and she plays the role of Lloyd Price's wife and she turns out to be a complete and total scammer.
Like she's getting them for his money, she's getting them for his celebrity and everything like that, and when he goes through rough times she gives him a rough time, you know, and anyway and then later on.
she plays a completely different person who seems great. That's actually the person depicted in the play is Bertha Franklin, who is the, who is the older sister of Bertha Franklin, okay, and she seems this great hit to actually Janice Joplin became famous for her called A Piece of my Heart, and she just knocks it out. And then afterwards I meet her and it turns out she's 19 years old. You know, she's 19 years old and she's easily portraying someone in their 30s, you know.
And as an actress, as a singer, the way she moves and everything, you get a sense that she's you know. And but I was introduced to her by Jeff Mattoff, who was the producer and writer of the play, and I said I wanna pay you a compliment and I said I want you to know how much I totally disliked you as the play won you. Just, we're just a horrible person. And she said, oh, oh, thank you very much. That feels so great.
Dean Jackson
That feels great that you I love it, I love it yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Because she was supposed to. I mean, that's it calls for her. To be that type of person and she nailed it, but she's 19,. You know she's 19 years old and it was really quite you know, but you really, I mean I, but I spotted her from the moment she came on stage. This is a scammer. I can tell this person is a scammer. You know, oh, that's amazing, but I do think you're going back to the jury spent comment that you made. I'm gonna read that book.
I'm always interested in winning.
Dan Sullivan
I'm always interested in winning an argument, you know.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, no, I would highly recommend. I mean, I tried to avoid.
Dan Sullivan
I tried to avoid them, but I said you know I can't avoid them, I wanna win.
Dean Jackson
Well, and this is he's talking and this is like it's like one of my top five wisdom books ever, like it's, I think, one of the biggest impacts on me and his. Of course, you know who Jerry is the attorney, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a defendant of Mel DeMarco's and the whole thing's never lost a case and the. You know he thinks in the proactive thing about. You know he's using argument in the sense of your idea.
You're more persuasive, what you're more persuasive.
Dean Jackson
You're a person. That's what the lawyers make an argument. What's your argument for your idea?
here no.
Dean Jackson
And this is how he's presenting things, and it's just been such a such an amazing, such an amazing thing, so I would highly recommend it.
Dan Sullivan
I've never experienced Dean Jacksonin an argument but, maybe it's all argument.
Dean Jackson
It's all argument. That's what he's saying. That's exactly right, the best way to win is to win.
Dan Sullivan
Actually, you've never seen Dean when he wasn't arguing.
Dean Jackson
That's right. That's it feels like that's the point of it. It's the best way to win an argument is to not make it feel like you're in an argument.
Yes.
Dan Sullivan
It's just, you're in normal experience. Yeah, right, yeah, but the thing of normalizing. Peter DM Monace and I had a podcast about three weeks ago and he was talking about the future and everything else. I said you know one thing I've noticed? I said and I've got I'm closing in on 80 years of dealing with the future. You know probably didn't yeah, really.
You know probably didn't really have it as a mental capacity 80 years of guessing and batting Six or yes, ain't batting, but I said, you know something when you get to the future, it's always normal, it always feels normal when you get to the future, yeah, no matter how different it was from the past. The moment you get there and you're and.
I go back to your, the Jerry Spence line, that every second we're feeling out what's coming next. Okay, and so it's not like you suddenly went from white to black or you went from light to dark and then you went through infinite little second by second, gradations of adjusting yourself to a new set of circumstances.
Yeah, yeah, yeah you are absolutely right and that's, you've closed down your thinking and you're not taking in the new stuff. You know, I mean, that's also possible. And then you know, I say people, people sense that something's changing in different ways. Some people, some people. All you need is to touch their head with a feather and they say oh, something new is happening.
Some people.
Dan Sullivan
you need a sledgehammer and some people need a Mack truck.
Dean Jackson
Yes, exactly Wow.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
But the big thing is that I'm super sensitive, you know, to changes of circumstances or something I notice is out of place or something's happening. And I get that sense about the whole world right now.
And I think you know I'm very influenced by Peter Zion's take that we've been living in essentially an artificial world since the end of the Second World War and it's been overseen by one country and its military just to keep trade routes reliable and on time. And now that country's decided that they've done that for enough and they don't want to do that anymore and they want to get back to their own affairs. And everything vibrates and shakes just because of that one decision. Yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, that really is. I mean, you look at it, you think about it since the, it's true, right Since the. You know, I often think back then to that, the big change, the book from 1950.
And.
Dean Jackson
I think if we were to look at the you know, the big change from you know, 1973 to 2023, that's been, that's really you think about all of the changes that are going to take place. And what I really wonder is are we entering into another phase of the period from you know, 1950 to 1980 where there's not a lot of, where it's more of a normalization? Right by 1950, what you were saying is it feels normal. By 1950, it felt normal that you have electricity and radio and you go to the movies, and you've got TV now and you've got an automobile and you're living in the suburbs and we're flying on planes and everybody's got a telephone. All those things felt probably normal.
Dan Sullivan
Why was it that I was in 1950 and felt normal to me? Felt normal to me Exactly, yeah.
Dean Jackson
So you didn't feel the sense of why, then, how it was to go from, you know, not having these things to having them, and you enjoyed that 30 year period where, I mean, what would you call the difference between you know, like, do you buy into that premise that from 1950 to 1980, there weren't the same level of changes from 1900 to 1950, or was it just a mass of migrations?
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, I mean you can take cars, for example you know, Cars were kind of stylish up until about the early 50s and then they started taking on this very, very conforming they you know, they got a lot longer, they got a lot bigger and they were like rodeoids.
Dean Jackson
Right, right, exactly they can't.
Dan Sullivan
and that continued and meanwhile they were getting blindsided. In the 60s I probably started low in the 50s with Volkswagen, but then you started getting these really small sort of stylish imported cars, you know as they came over. And then they really got their clock cleaned in the 70s, you know, but there was. I mean you don't look back at that period, 1950 to 1980, as a particularly stylish or the only one I can think of that, and they really stuck to.
their look was Corvette, corvette came in around 54, I think 1954 is when it came in.
And it was, and Thunderbird came in at the same time. This was Ford. You know Chevy was Corvette and Ford was the Thunderbird, and then Thunderbird went all over the place. You know it changed every and then it disappeared and then they brought it back. But the Corvette if you look at a Corvette for this year 2023, and you look back at the original Corvette, you can see that this is the same car with numerous, you know, technological changes. But no, it's very definitely a Corvette today and it was a Corvette back there.
They've made the only American car that I can think of that maintained its look over that long period of time, but it was great. It was great to begin with and they didn't screw it up, you know. But planes, you know. 1950s, you were already when the first 707, the first well, you had the DeHavilland comet.
That was the British plane, was the first real no worthy, and that was around 1950. And they could do 550 miles an hour. And they do 550 miles an hour. Well, they still don't do that because that's the optimum speed for the combination of fuel, passengers, cargo, and that is 550, you know, I gotcha, yeah, but I think you're right, I think you're really right. And computers were coming in, but they weren't a big deal in 1980 yet, right.
Dean Jackson
Exactly, there was the beginning of them. It was like you either. If you were looking back now, like on it, if you were paying attention, you would have seen the seed of everything was kind of getting into position. The transition from mainframe to personal computing. That was a big thing but it took a while to you know. It took another decade to get to that level.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, really, television was still the trade networks.
Dean Jackson
That's exactly it. I mean from 1950 to 1980, it was really just the three networks and that's where everybody had a very homogenous experience. You know everybody watched the same. You know I love Lucy and Guns Most. Ed Sullivan Show.
Dan Sullivan
Ed.
Dean Jackson
Sullivan Show Exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah.
Dean Jackson
So when the Beatles came, all they had to do was be in one place.
Yeah.
Dean Jackson
And on the Ed Sullivan Show they're automatically a rantic.
Dan Sullivan
You could see it in music too. Yeah, If you look at the last 10 years, let's say, of the biggest grossing concert tours, they're all guys, mostly guys who are in their 70s.
Because they became famous.
Dan Sullivan
They became famous when there was a national audience. Yes, that's right, there's not a national audience for any particular star these days.
Dean Jackson
Well, that's where I was going with this that there is, in a way, that YouTube. Is that now for the new generations, right, like they're growing up? The kids that grew up now they all know who Mr Beast is, they all know Casey Neistat, they all know the top YouTube star way more than television.
Dan Sullivan
Well, here's a question I have for you, though. What I noticed is that there was a continuity between the generations, in other words, that when Elvis came on, people in their 50s saw Elvis, people at five saw Elvis on the. Ed.
Dean Jackson
Sullivan Show.
Dan Sullivan
I don't think you have this cross generation awareness of great stars.
Dean Jackson
That's true. That's exactly right, because nobody, not everybody's gathered around the television with their TV dinners watching the same shows all three generations and one now watching them with the kids and the parents and the grandparents. Oh, what are we going to watch on television tonight? They're often in the room with their iPods and their phones looking at their own individual, everybody's their own individual. Entertainment director. Dopamine dealer.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Dan Sullivan
My sense and here I'm kind of interpreting the predictions that Peter Zion is making about the way the world's going to go on the future it's actually going to look quite a bit like the world looked like before the First World War, so back in 1914. So what he says is.
There's now going to be regional markets and regional political alliances. He gives a series of examples of that Anywhere that the US pulls its military out of, and the first area where the US has pulled its military out of is the Middle East. There's no presence of the US military in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Red.
Dean Jackson
Sea.
Dan Sullivan
The reason is the US is self-sufficient for oil. They're completely self-sufficient for oil and gas. The US is the lead exporter now of fossil fuels.
I think, that's why the rest of the all of a sudden, there's this anti-fossil fuel movement. I mean it's one of the reasons. There's never one reason for anything. It's always a confluence of different forces. But the US was just doubled down on the Middle East because they needed the oil. The economy needed the oil, the world that they traded with needed the oil, so they had to protect the sources of oil. But fracking fracking is one of the great breakthroughs. They can get fuel out of the rocks and it's really good oil. It's really. I mean, it looks like baby oil when it comes out. It's like Johnson's baby oil. It's the purest, cleanest oil in the world because it's just oil. There's no grime and dirt and everything that comes up with it, just the oil comes up and then the gas comes along with it.
And that changed the world.
Dan Sullivan
I mean that just utterly changed the world. There's one event in the last 30 years, since the Soviet collapse, that changed the world. It was the fracking, the American fracking revolution and Texas Permian basis, because once the US doesn't need anybody else's fossil fuels, then they rethink their entire military, they rethink their entire political, they rethink their entire economic view towards the world and they're the spoon that stirs the global soup. Yeah, so I think that was a huge change and I think that a lot of the changes that are taking place right now are a function of that breakthrough. Because it's a transportation breakthrough, because you saw all you want about electricity those freighters aren't electric.
Dean Jackson
That's true, but it's funny, the US military the staples are nuclear submarines and ships that can go forever.
Dan Sullivan
Seven years, seven years without I think the subs are seven years. The aircraft carriers, I think, are about the same and they've had no killing accidents with those since 1953. So it's 70 years.
They've had crises, but nobody's been killed.
Dan Sullivan
There's been no radiation and I think that's coming back in a big way. I think that they've Mike Wanler, who is a free zone terrific guy from Wyoming, and he's in the process of manufacturing these little micro reactors. I mean, people think of a nuclear reactor and that looks like the Taj Mahal, it looks like the US capital, it's like with huge smoke stacks. These are the size of a standard carrier box.
So if you think they're 40 feet or 20 feet, the ones that go on board ship or they're on trains or they're on semis, and this is about 40 feet, so you can walk into it. It's probably about six feet, six feet by six, eight feet by eight feet. I don't know what the dimensions are exactly, but and it's a nuke, it's a little nuclear station. They use spent nuclear.
They use this spent nuclear fuel or they have a new kind of salt compound that they use. So think of it. You're building a factory, like outside there's a lot of factories. I see the area north of Toronto now the number of warehouses and factories that are going in. They're immense. Up the 404 and up the 400.
Dean Jackson
And anyway.
Dan Sullivan
But the US is going. Us, Canada, mexico are going through a huge reindustrialization with new factories. But you're outside the city and you got a farm line. You got 600 acres of land and you built a factory on it. What you do is you bring in the little nuclear power plant first, and then the entire energy that's needed for building the factory is supplied by that little nuclear plant.
And then when it's built, the nuclear plant powers the factory and it's manufacturing thing, and you don't go to the grid at all. You don't have to pull any electricity from the grid at all.
Dean Jackson
Wow, that's a big deal. Totally self-contained, it is a big deal.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, you're putting in a new housing development, I think it's north of Las Vegas they're building a new 100,000 person city. It's called the Galaxy City. It has put a nuclear, it has put in three or four of these little nuclear plants into it and you don't have to. You build the houses, you build the stores, you build the businesses, you build everything, but it comes from the little nuclear plant.
I think that's breakthrough.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's a breakthrough.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that's the model of it, I guess, in process right now.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, actually, paul Van Dijn, who's a FreeZone member, has got the complete engineering contract for that new city.
Wow.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, these are amazing times, you know, like I think. But, they're completely normal. What does it look like now in a normalized world where you can literally go?
Dan Sullivan
anywhere you tell people this sort of thing, they say, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yankees went last night.
Right exactly. Oh.
Dan Sullivan
Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, you know she's got 150 million hours. Now they're having trouble getting ticket story concerts now and they're stealing the pirating live stream from her concerts and I said, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, I wonder. You know the? So if that is true, then if we're in a stage right now- where you know. I mean Cloudlandia is, less than you know, viably, 25 years old in the first 25 years of it here. Everything, all of these things are normalized here. If we equate right now 2023 with 1953 kind of thing that all the infrastructure of the big factories innovation wave.
All of that was in place. We had, you know, radio, television, automobiles, movies, all of that. Whowhat's the similar playbook for thriving in this? You know, next 25 years? Where it's not, you know, I think. If you look at AI, I don't see anything on the horizon that is as big an innovation, possibly, as what the Internet and all of that has brought for us.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, because AI is only meaningful because of the Internet.
Dean Jackson
Right, it's. I think the pinnacle achievement of the Internet is that we've gotten to a point where you know there's an artificial intelligence that knows everything that's happened on the Internet so far and can access.
Dan Sullivan
No it doesn't know anything that you want to find out. You can find out with a few prompts.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Dan Sullivan
It doesn't think. It doesn't feel, it doesn't understand it just smells like sardars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
I think that's a big deal. But you know, what really strikes me is the huge difference from the 1950s because I was, you know, fully active through that entire decade of the 1950s is that the way to succeed was to kind of be good at standardized, conforming activities where you were guaranteed employment. You were guaranteed you know, lifetime employment if you, you know, got into the right place, and it seems to me that that is 180 degrees changed.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, that there's now.
Dan Sullivan
you look, just be good at just just be good at nine word emails, that's right.
Dean Jackson
That's the truth, isn't it?
And that's it.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, or little more creative new book every quarter.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, so I think, what's going to be fun is to, you know, track the zeitgeist with your, with your trail of 90 minute books. That's kind of a you know how many is this? Now, which one is this?
Dan Sullivan
This is the one. The one you're reading is 34. And, and I'm just getting to the final stages of the 35. I do it by quarters, so it's quarter 34, book 34. And this is quarter 35. I did, I started on my um in my right, you know, within six months after my 70th birthday, and I said, you know, next 25 years, I think I'll write a hundred books.
A hundred books, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah and uh, so I'm, I'm on track, you know, and um, but the the thing about it is is that, um, and we had the conversations back then of how fast you could, you know, turn out a book, and we had a little one week contest where we both created a book and one week, and you know, and uh, and and so the the whole point is that it's just a quarterly process, you know, as part of the it's just normalized.
For a lot of people, writing a book is the scariest, scariest project of their, of their life, you know you know, right, yeah, um, uh, you know. On their gravestones says didn't get the book finished.
Right, I mean you know, or uh, we're on chapter 38.
Dan Sullivan
I said well, I saw that problem, just make each chapter a book.
Yeah, right, exactly.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, so the, I think the um thing is. But think about 1950. I couldn't even conceive of how you could turn out a book like that, you know yeah you know, it's all internet based teamwork. I mean, everything I do is internet. I've been cartoonist. I see him about once a year, you know personally. He lives in Prince Edward Island and, uh, the smallest of the Canadian provinces. Uh, way out, way out of these kind of Cape Coddage type of place.
And you know and I see him. He's in Scotland. He's living for Scotland for two weeks tomorrow, so we'll have a little interruption. But uh, you know it's all on the internet he's, and zoom has been a wonderful breakthrough, you know. Yeah, he can actually draw the pictures.
Dean Jackson
Do you um? Do you storyboard the, the cartoons, or talk about what, what you're seeing for them?
Dan Sullivan
No no no, he just gets the rate on. You know, he gives a page on zoom so we're off to the side. You know our two little pictures are up to the side.
And then he draws the two page outline, because there are always two pages in the book format. And then he we say you know, I think this starts in the center. I says I think something in the center and I think it's a person and the one thing we uh, at a certain point we just didn't pay any attention to the galley in the middle the you know the separation of the two pages we just treated it as a single page and that was a great right.
Exactly, and then we um uh I have a fast filter that I've created laying out what the chapter headings are and what the context of the chapter is, and then we read it through and I talked to him and I said, okay, so what's this look like? You know what's this look like. You know where's it start. Where's the center of action? Yeah, center is a lower left hand corner, is it? And yeah, if you look through the cartoons to this one, you'll notice that the real energetic center of the cartoon moves around.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yes, I love it. I mean, I'm looking at the. Nobody's in charge, you're completely free with the, the arrows in the path and it's just. Yeah, I like that idea of just treating the whole two pages as one. Yeah, one thing that makes sense, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
And if you um said to people you don't mind the separation between the pages and the middle because you have to do that for the book, and I said, yeah, I don't know they're, they're, they're. Their mind has eliminated that separating thing down the center of the human brain. Yeah, treats it as one thing you know. And I said oh no there's a separation down the middle of every cartoon picture and I said really, and I said yeah, look. And they said, oh my, I never saw it. Right, that's great yeah.
Dean Jackson
It's very obvious in the what the world is made up by you. Yeah, just big circle. But as you're looking at it, it looks like one one thing I like this I'm, you know, I have a um, you got to have a wonderful designer who, uh, you know, can do these kind of things. It's so, uh, it's so nice to be able to articulate with words what you're looking for and have somebody be able to interpret that and deliver what you're looking for, you know.
Dan Sullivan
Well, the interesting thing is, uh, t um, uh, we have two kind of artistic skills with Amish. Amish is Amish, mcdonald is my cartoonist name, and we've been working together now for you know long, long time, you know. But the other thing that's happened is the technology has gotten so good, okay, and uh, we were just finishing one off before he took off for Scotland and literally um, dean, I could say I said okay, let's put that into the complete color spectrum, and he hit a button and the whole background was a complete color, you know, sort of like a. It went from the colors of the spectrum and but it was sort of a continuous change.
You know, it wasn't right, uh, separate colors. And I said, okay, now uh, the characters here. I said let's move the characters around a little, and he moved them around and everything like that. And I can remember first working with my first computer artist back in 1990, let's say, and the changes that Hamish and I just made in about. I would say two minutes would take two and a half days.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, and that amazing right.
Dan Sullivan
Chip speed and the great capabilities of software, you know, yeah, and it's. I mean it just goes together. I mean we used to, we used to take about um, I would say it would take about three days, three days of three, the three days work to get a cartoon done, and now we do the storyboard and he checks in the next day and he's got it almost completed. Artwork.
Mm, hmm.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, so, uh, that's great, yeah, that's great.
Dan Sullivan
And I think that's a I. You know the fact that he can do that, and uh actual intelligence right? Yeah Well, evan Ryan, who was one of our panel speakers on a, he's got a neat little book and we're going to send it out. Maybe you already have it, but it's called AI as a teammate.
Okay, and uh, he's putting our entire company, 130 of our team members, through uh starting in September, and it's six modules, two hours each, and all they do is analyze their work between what's their unique ability and what shouldn't. Somebody else could do, so anything a who can do. Then you find the AI who, who can actually do it without having to hire another person.
Dean Jackson
Oh, nice, I mean. So that's yeah, talking about being able to for people to uh multiply, you know yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah. But he says, uh, people freak out about this word AI. He says zoom is AI. He said the internet is the AI. He said you know all the programs you use on the computer you know already from you, know from Apple or from ours are mostly Apple, you know in design is artificial intelligence. He says it's just automation. He says don't talk about artificial intelligence. He says it's just automated.
Okay A machine function can do what a person used to be able to do. He says that's all that it is. And he said you know, that's been going on for a long time.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, well, and you still have to just think about what you're trying to do. Yeah, you still have to understand what the outcome you want.
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan
That's the big skill.
Dean Jackson
The big skill is being able to identify what you want.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, yeah, that is the skill of skills that is. That is that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How many years?
Dean Jackson
did you do that every day? You said, well, it wouldn't be the same without our appearance from theory.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, Well, it just shows you that you know that there's real progress to be made in that field, Anyway, anyway, yeah, I did 25 years.
Dean Jackson
I have 25 years every day.
Dan Sullivan
What do I want?
Every day for except for 12.
Dan Sullivan
So there's 9,131 days and 25 years. And I did it 9,119 days and you know and and and and. What I got really good at over that period is just, in any situation, kind of knowing what I want, you know and and and. The one thing I cut off of you know I want this and the next. If you wrote that down for an AI program, they'd say the next word is because. And I said I just leave the because off because I want the truth, because is some sort of fiction. I'm making it up to make it.
Everything is made up. Yeah, yeah, everything is made up, yeah. And so so I got real good at that and, you know, my life changed from the first day to the 25th day. My life really changed. Coach came into existence, my partnership with Babs came into existence, strategies, strategy circle, and then a whole bunch of other tools came into existence, you know. So, yeah, it's a great skill. I mean, if you know, if, how would these?
Dean Jackson
is there? What were the? Were there any particular prompts? Let's call it in modern terms that you would use or or no, I just I would go through that process yeah.
Dan Sullivan
Well, I just had to do this every day. You know that that was I committed myself. I had just gone through a divorce and a bankruptcy on the same day, in August of 1978.
And I said you know, the only way I'm going to come to grips with this is to take total responsibility for what's happened up until now. So no blaming anyone else, no saying and no going back and reworking it. If only I had done. I said, let's just accept it, that and that I wasn't. And I said, I came to the conclusion all that bad stuff had happened because I wasn't telling myself what I wanted. Okay, I was expecting other people to tell me what.
Dean Jackson
I wanted and.
Dan Sullivan
I said so next 25 years, I'm just going to get really good at telling myself what I actually want and that's it. That's. That was the only requirement and it could be a set it had to be at least a sentence. It could be a whole page, it could be two pages, but it had to be at least a sentence once a day, and I just did it for. I just did it for. I had notebook after notebook after notebook after notebook.
And yeah and we had a flood, you know, in our business last August and all these files were in the basement.
That got flooded and disrupted and they're all gone all the, all the files, all my notes are gone and I feel so, and I feel so freed up. Right right.
Dan Sullivan
Did you ever? Look at those Did you ever.
No no, never went back and the and the reason is it was the skill.
Dan Sullivan
it was the skill I was developing. That wasn't what I wrote down, Right yeah.
Dean Jackson
Yeah, yeah, this is that's really but we went to Matt.
Dan Sullivan
if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't never been in position to me to Because you never would have started strategic coach or never would have gotten off the ground, started looking for certain kinds of people.
Right.
Dan Sullivan
You being one of them. Well, I'm glad you're here I wanted someone who is incredibly smart, and if only he'd apply himself.
Dean Jackson
And a lot of them. You want a lot of those people.
Dan Sullivan
Yeah, and money comes easy, money comes easy. Yeah, the great ones, and once they have a purpose, the money flows, yeah. So anyway, I got to jump early because I have a little bit of a question, Okay my friend Daniel Wait in about five minutes but real pleasure. Yeah, thanks for the feedback on the geometry book. You know, this one surprised me. You know, this one caught me by surprise.
Dean Jackson
Well, it's fantastic, like I was curious what it was going to be about. You know, when you look at the, just the title geometry for staying cool and calm. And now, as I look through the content, this is my. I'm going to pretend I'm hopping on a flight to Chicago right now. Yeah, toronto, and read the whole book in one hour. That's my, that's my next hour right now, yeah, good.
Dan Sullivan
Alrighty. I got a question yeah, thank you very much.
Dean Jackson
Next week I'm good. Okay, good, me too.
Dan Sullivan
Bye, okay, bye.