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by Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan

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Join Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan as they talk about growing your business and living you best life in Cloudlandia.

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Recent Episodes

May 20, 2026

Ep175: Money, Scent, and the Art of the Did List

The most enduring business lessons often come wrapped in the most unexpected stories. In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dan and Dean kick off with a wide-ranging trip through Canyon Ranch recoveries, golf course geometry, and a viral coyote-versus-governor parable that perfectly illustrates why California and Texas have taken such different economic paths. From there, Dean shares how a podcast about restaurant scent marketing turned into a live experiment: within 24 hours he had a book concept, a cover, and leads coming in at a dollar each for a title called Smells That Sell. Dan adds color from his neighbor, a professional perfumer who revealed that Mexico ranks #1 globally for scent responsiveness while Canada sits dead last. The conversation deepens as Dan walks through David McWilliams’ book Money, tracing currency from 5,000-year-old Sumerian barley loans to Hamilton’s genius design of the U.S. dollar, and why McWilliams dismisses Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme that only makes sense when priced in dollars. Both Dan and Dean also reflect on their personal productivity experiments: Dan at week 22 of his “looking back” daily system, and Dean six months into his “What would I like to did today?” morning ritual, with sleep anchors and a captain’s-announcement practice that—as he describes it—puts every cell in his body on alert. This one covers a lot of ground, but the thread running through all of it is the same: agency. Whether it’s scent science, ancient money systems, or a daily captain’s briefing to yourself, the practical question is always the same: what can you actually control in the next hundred minutes? Have a listen. <center> SHOW HIGHLIGHTS <ul style="list-style-type: circle;"> </center> <li>Dean launched a book concept, cover, and lead-generation ad for Smells That Sell within 24 hours of hearing a podcast about restaurant scent marketing.</li> <li>A professional perfumer’s global data reveals Mexico as the world’s most scent-responsive market—and Canada as dead last, partly because noses freeze.</li> <li>Dan’s “look back” daily system at week 22: measuring only the last 24 hours eliminates the gap and gives you real agency over what you actually control.</li> <li>Dean’s “What would I like to did today?” morning ritual, paired with lights-out at 11 PM and phone-in-box until noon, has measurably improved his sleep and readiness scores over six months.</li> <li>David McWilliams argues Bitcoin fails both tests of money: it’s not stable enough to be a currency, and the first-in/last-out structure makes it a Ponzi scheme—and it can only express its value in dollars.</li> <li>The first named individual in recorded history was Kuzim, a Sumerian beer maker operating on a 30-month barley loan at 33% annual interest—proof that entrepreneurial hustle predates civilization as we know it.</li> </center> </ul> <center> Links: <a href="https://welcometocloudlandia.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WelcomeToCloudlandia.com</a><a href="http://strategiccoach.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> StrategicCoach.com</a> <a href="http://deanjackson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeanJackson.com</a> <a href="https://ListingAgentLifestyle.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ListingAgentLifestyle.com</a> </center> <center> TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) </center> Dean Jackson: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan. Dan Sullivan: Mr. Jackson. Dean Jackson: There he is. Yes Dan Sullivan: Indeed. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Notice that Dean Jackson: You had joined in. Dan Sullivan: I had joined in, yes, yes. Didn't shatter my confidence though. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: There I am. There I am. Dean Jackson: That's funny. Dan Sullivan: No, we were at Canyon Ranch. Dean Jackson: Okay, great. Yeah. I zoomed in for a lot of Genius Network. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: How Dean Jackson: Was your week? Dan Sullivan: Well, weather wise, the weather in Phoenix and in Tucson was spectacular. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: In Dan Sullivan: Washington. Chicago, Chicago really bad. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Shoot the coyote. The Dean Jackson: Dog and he shot the coyote and continued jogging and he spent Dan Sullivan: 50 Dean Jackson: Cents. That solved the problem. Dan Sullivan: So Dean Jackson: Funny. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, coyotes in California come in many forms. Dean Jackson: Yes, I think you're right. Dan Sullivan: Do you have them in Florida? Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: We also Dan Sullivan: Have Dean Jackson: Panthers. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And they have Bobcats too. I was reading the Bobcats really like python meat. Oh, is that right? Dean Jackson: Okay. Dan Sullivan: So they're thriving. They're killing the pythons in the Upper Glades. Dean Jackson: Oh, Dan Sullivan: That's Dean Jackson: Great. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's really great. Yeah. Dean Jackson: I love it. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Coyotes Dan Sullivan: Do. Yeah, that's true of cartel members too. Cartel members just do what cartel members. Dean Jackson: That's true. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You can't fault them. It's just their nature. Dean Jackson: Yes, exactly. So how long were you at Canyon Ranch? Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Are you Dan Sullivan: Getting Dean Jackson: Your step count up? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I averaged about ... I'm not like some people who are Olympic level, but I'm 8,000 steps. Dean Jackson: Well, Dan Sullivan: That's the Dean Jackson: Optimal I've read. Is that Dan Sullivan: Right? It's not 10 anymore. It's not 10 anymore. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Status. Dean Jackson: Right. Dan Sullivan: No, you always have to factor in status. Does your no good, but there is status. Dean Jackson: Yeah. But 8,000 is like the peak all the benefit stuff you get. What are they called? Dan Sullivan: What's the round of golf gift? Do you do nine or 18 when you're playing? Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: So let me ask you a question. Dean Jackson: That's DJ. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Trips that Dan Sullivan: You have to- Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 6,800 Dean Jackson: Yards. Dan Sullivan: We're talking about steps. We're talking about- Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 8,000 steps, 8,000 steps. Dean Jackson: So about 24,000. Dan Sullivan: Oh, 24,000. Yeah. Dean Jackson: Steps? Dan Sullivan: When I was 16, I was a caddy and one weekend I double bagged so I had- Oh Dean Jackson: My goodness. And Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: That's with tips and everything. It's not just the labor, the tips. Dean Jackson: You were hustling as they say. I Dan Sullivan: Was hustling. I was hustling. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dumble bagging. Wow. Did you ever play golf, Dan, or just caddy? Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Yeah, because I've never heard you mention it as a- Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Yeah. But you realize- Dan Sullivan: I Dean Jackson: Had the Dan Sullivan: Realization- They were just happy to see the grass. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Kind Dean Jackson: Of thing. All the rest is really, it's visual. It's Dan Sullivan: Funny. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: <ol> <li>I was there. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Talk about a sandpit. Talk about a sandpit, a mortgage. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: It was sort of like the Normandy invasion. You have to go up and clip. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Love Dean Jackson: That whole ... It's such an amazing ... Have you ever been to Scotland? Dan Sullivan: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, Dean Jackson: Okay. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I've been to ... There's one that's got the Eagle in the name. Dean Jackson: Edinburgh. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Near Edinboro. Yeah. I gave a talk there. Oh, Dean Jackson: At Glen Eagles. Glen Eagles. Dan Sullivan: Glen Eagle. Dean Jackson: What a beautiful ... Like to this day, that Gleny lobby lounge there is Dan Sullivan: One of Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: On your- By the way, I'm just marking day 153 on. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Two days- No, it is. It is. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: First of all, it's funny. It's kind of like a hundred percent under your control. Dean Jackson: Yes. And it's amazing how- Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: What Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: In Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: That's the word. Agency. That is exactly what it is. Yeah. How do you phrase it? Again, what's Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Yeah. I don't buy into that. Dan Sullivan: I don't buy that. I don't buy that. Dean Jackson: No, exactly. Dan Sullivan: Somebody selling somebody something. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Diffusers. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Formulations. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Is that right? That's interesting. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Did they mention what makes the difference? Why would Mexico be so much more responsive? Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Well, some areas you can. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: At most Dan Sullivan: Points. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: We're going to Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Yeah. Well, I mean, you've fundamentally changed 40% of your day in the last how many months now? Six, seven? Dean Jackson: Yeah. Since November. Yeah, since after. Dan Sullivan: Six Dean Jackson: Full months. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: And is it Dan Sullivan: The Dean Jackson: One- Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Oh my. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: That goes way back. That's all there- Dan Sullivan: It's 5,000 years ago. Yeah, 5,000. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Light." Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Yeah. But here's the question, was it patent? Did they have a patent? Dean Jackson: Right, exactly. That's so Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: I've heard the name, but I don't have any of Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Dual. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You can play golf and get in the gap, but don't get into dueling. Don't try this at home. Dean Jackson: Exactly. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Oh, wow. Dan Sullivan: It's really big in dollars, the amount of money that got shipped out of that country. Dean Jackson: It Dan Sullivan: Was all the leadership. Apparently Kamani, it was 127 billion dollars. Dean Jackson: Wow. Yeah. I've heard ... I forget what the estimated Putin Putin's network. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: This Dean Jackson: All going? Dan Sullivan: Yeah, he thinks it's just all bullshit. Dean Jackson: Oh really? Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: It's Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Yeah. Well, that's my whole college was based on- Dean Jackson: The great book. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: That's true. Dan Sullivan: Who are those? Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Academics. Academic careers. Academics, Dean Jackson: Right. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: That's funny. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: How did you end up in Toronto? How'd you end up getting that position even? Well, Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Right, exactly. I know this guy, we got about Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: It. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Contract." Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: DeBoer. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: That was terrific. That was terrific. Speaking about copywriting. Dean Jackson: He's Dan Sullivan: Great. He's formidable. Dean Jackson: Yes. I just think what Ilko is doing that whole adventure. So we should Dan Sullivan: Sit on Dean Jackson: Stage for anybody listening. So our friend Ilko Dubois, he's from Amsterdam and he's in 100K at Genius Network with Dan Sullivan: Dan. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Education. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: That's- 10 year old? 10 years old. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Writing Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: And you did. Dean Jackson: And I did. So I wrote one for Otis and he performed it at- Dan Sullivan: Two weeks after he got the script. Dean Jackson: 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 Sullivan: 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 Jackson: That sounds exactly right. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: 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 Sullivan: Sit there until you get there. I don't even have to tell it where we're going. Dean Jackson: Exactly. It knows. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Random. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: For Wolf Blitzer. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Wow. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Well, there we go. Dan Sullivan: There you go. Dean Jackson: So I noticed in my calendar that we will be dark for the next two Sundays. Dan Sullivan: 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 Jackson: Both Dan Sullivan: Have Dean Jackson: Had birthdays by the time we get back together. Our birthday is yours on the 17th? Dan Sullivan: 19th. 19th. Dean Jackson: 19th. Okay. So 12 Dan Sullivan: Days apart. Dean Jackson: I'm the 10th. Dan Sullivan: You're the 8th? Dean Jackson: 10th. Dan Sullivan: The 10th. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if things keep going the way they're going, when we talk next, we'll be smarter. Dean Jackson: That's exactly right. I believe that to be 100% true. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Good. Dean Jackson: Well, enjoy your trips and I will talk when we get back. Dan Sullivan: You bet. Thanks. Dean Jackson: Thanks, Dan. Bye-bye.</li> </ol>

May 13, 2026

Ep174: Guessing, Betting, and the AI Attention Economy

The most valuable currency in an AI-saturated world isn't data or content, it's the 1,000 minutes of attention each person has available every single day. In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dan shares a new thinking tool he's been developing with entrepreneurs: Intentional Times Accidental, a framework for distinguishing between results you planned for and opportunities you simply recognized and seized. The conversation connects naturally to a powerful quote Dean encountered, "You don't get what you want, you get what you are", and how that idea links to Dan's work on creating a better past. We also hear how Angus Fletcher trains elite special forces operators not by scripting their responses, but by deepening their personal story so they can make sound decisions in chaotic, unpredictable situations. From there, Dan and Dean trace the same pattern into global affairs, examining how recent moves in the Straits of Hormuz reflect high-stakes guessing and betting under pressure. The conversation shifts to AI's financial sustainability problem, the gap between what AI companies are spending on infrastructure and what the market will realistically pay, and why Dean believes AI-generated content faces a fundamental ceiling in a world where human attention is fixed and finite. Dan observes a cultural blowback already forming, with young people pushing back against AI predictions that threaten their futures, and a surprising surge in religious interest as a counter-reaction to tech-driven culture. This episode finds Dan and Dean at their most candid, trading observations about Perplexity's flattery, Dean's 40 Hz brain-stimulating Beacon light, a dog-calming gadget called PetGentle, and a Henry Kissinger story that perfectly captures what's happening on LinkedIn right now. Listen in for a conversation that moves fast, thinks wide, and lands on ideas you'll be turning over for days. <center> SHOW HIGHLIGHTS <ul style="list-style-type: circle;"> </center> <li>The global attention budget is fixed: 8 billion people × 1,000 minutes daily, AI-generated content must compete within that hard ceiling.</li> <li>Dan's new Intentional Times Accidental tool helps entrepreneurs separate planned breakthroughs from lucky ones they simply recognized and seized.</li> <li>Elite special forces operators are trained not with scripts but by deepening their personal story so they can decide well in chaotic, unplanned situations.</li> <li>Dan believes OpenAI cannot legally convert from nonprofit to for-profit mid-streamand predicts the dispute will reach the US Supreme Court.</li> <li>A fake AI-generated scientist published 13 bestselling books over the past year and doesn't exist, Dan's verdict: only dangerous if you believe it.</li> <li>Young people are opting out of AI adoption and turning toward religion in growing numbers, a cultural blowback Dan says is entirely predictable and already underway.</li> </ul> </center> <center> Links: <a href="https://welcometocloudlandia.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WelcomeToCloudlandia.com</a><a href="http://strategiccoach.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> StrategicCoach.com</a> <a href="http://deanjackson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeanJackson.com</a> <a href="https://ListingAgentLifestyle.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ListingAgentLifestyle.com</a> </center> <center> TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) </center> Dean Jackson: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan. Dan Sullivan: Hello there, Mr. Jackson. Dean Jackson: There he is. Are you in Chicago or Toronto today? Dan Sullivan: Toronto. Dean Jackson: Okay. Dan Sullivan: Well, it's very cold. It's very cold. Dean Jackson: Somebody told me that they've had their ninth false spring and it's coming into back to winter. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's overcast. It's gray. It's damp. It's cold. Dean Jackson: Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Well, it seems like you have- Welcome to Cloudlandia. Welcome to Cloudlandia. Are you in Chicago or Toronto today? Okay. Dan Sullivan: Well, it's very cold. It's very cold. Dean Jackson: Somebody told me that they've had their ninth false spring. Back to winter. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's overcast. It's gray. It's damp. It's cold. Dean Jackson: Oh boy. Well, it seems like you had a great week in Chicago talking to Chad. Dan Sullivan: You've been talking to Spice. Dean Jackson: I've been talking to Spies. I got my men on the inside. Yeah. So good times? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I had a really good time. I created a new tool which is called Intentional Times Accidental. And I just have the entrepreneurs in the room take a look at what results they got, breakthrough results, Dan Sullivan: Where it Dan Sullivan: Was intentional. They intended to get that breakthrough. They put a plan in place and they got the result and compared to things that just happened to them and they took advantage of it. Dean Jackson: That's an interesting distinction. I just had a great quote that I heard just this morning and I thought, what a perfect timing. The quote was, let me get it right because it's ... Oh yeah, you don't get what you want. You get what you are. That totally fits with our creating a better past because you are what you did. And what you did is created a better past. Dan Sullivan: Or a better you, maybe. Dean Jackson: A Dan Sullivan: Better Dean Jackson: You. Yeah. But that context of everything we've been talking about that really fit well, you don't get what you want, you get what you are and you are, I'm adding this, but what you are is the collection of what you've done. Dan Sullivan: Did, what you did. Oh, what you did, Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that requires a totally different approach. Dean Jackson: Yeah. It's like it's the inverse of what people ... There's a difference in what you're going to do and intending to do and what you did because that's the only thing. Yeah. What you did is what makes you what you are. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Angus Fletcher who's coming to talk to us in Orlando. First week of June, he talks about the special forces, the Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Green Berets. There's a lot of these different kind of special operators, they're called special operators. And he said that what they train them is how not to ... They don't tell them how to handle situations. They constantly work with them to tell their story. When you were in this situation, what did you do? When you were in this situation, what did you do? How did you handle this? And because they're put into situations that are chaotic, Dan Sullivan: Sort Dan Sullivan: Of chaotic situations, all guesses and bets and they don't have a lot of information being in the chaotic situation, but they have to make good decisions and how do you do that? And he said, "It all depends on the story that you tell yourself. What's the story? What's the story? How have you handled this? How have you handled that? " It's a lot of experienced transformers, to use the coach term. "You did this, this part of it worked, this part of it didn't work, and because of what you know worked and didn't work, how do you handle this similar situation going forward? Dean Jackson: "So you're saying like his whole thing is activating the part that so that you ... Well, how do they use that? To what end is that? How do they train people? Dan Sullivan: Well, they put them into all sorts of practice situations and that you can't prepare for. So they have these vast bases, a lot of them in North Carolina and they put them ... Usually it's dark and something happens, they're given an objective. They have to go and do something and then they're presented with all sorts of unpredictable situations and how do they actually achieve the mission where they have to make it up on the spot. Dean Jackson: And Dan Sullivan: They do this over and over and over again. And the big thing is they have to know what their story is because they can't know what the conditions are because that's not available to them. So they have to fall back on previous successful and unsuccessful experiences. They have to go back and say," How did I do this before? Okay, this is what I have to do. "Yeah, Dean Jackson: Whatever you don't do this. Dan Sullivan: They have to go back to what they are. They have to go back to link this idea up with the idea of great quote. That's a really great quote. Dean Jackson: And I think that then once you've had an experience of something when it comes up, if you know what the right thing to do is, that helps. I find that even in our marketing things, that's one of the progression that we talk about in the VCR formula, vision plus capability multiplied by reach is the vision thing starts as a proposition, moves to proof that once you say ... And imagine it's the same kind of thing there, right? That you look at a situation that a soldier might be put in, they have a proposition based on, well, this is similar to this or whatever, but the next level is proof that this worked and then it moves to be a protocol that now when you reliably have proven that in this situation, if you do this, that this is the outcome and then that becomes property and that Dan Sullivan: Becomes- Dean Jackson: That's an interesting Dan Sullivan: Thing. It doesn't always work. It doesn't always work. Dean Jackson: That's the whole- Dan Sullivan: There's a recent example in world affairs on 28th of 28th of March, Dean Jackson: 20th, Dan Sullivan: I forget when they bombed Iran. I think it's the 25th of- February. February. February. Yeah. And the Ayatollah, the head guy said," We're going to have a meeting on a Saturday morning and that's safe because it's the Sabbath for the Jews so the Israelis won't do anything on Saturday and the Americans only do things at night. So you can feel safe. Say they all gathered at one spot and the Israelis decided to do something on the Sabbath and the Americans decided to do something in the daycare. Dean Jackson: During the day. Dan Sullivan: During the day and they lost 47, 48, 49, I forget the number. They lost 49 of their top leaders in about the first five minutes of the bombing career and they're making a whole series of really bad guesses and bets. On the one hand, we'll cut off all the shipping that comes out of the straight format. We just locked down and the Americans said, "Well, we'll be just outside and nothing can go to Iran or come to Iran during that time." And now they ... I don't know what's going to happen. I don't think they want to do anything willingly. I don't think their hearts and souls are in coming to an agreement, but their economy depends upon shipping through the straits of hormones. America's economy doesn't depend on any of that. Dean Jackson: Right, exactly. And that's an interesting thing, right? When they don't the unintended thing, nobody expects that if we can't pass through there, nobody's going to pass through there. That seems unpredictable, right? No, they wouldn't do that. Dan Sullivan: So the only thing that can't pass through is anything bound for Iran or from Iran. All the other stuff from the United Arab Emirates, that can pass through because they've got the US Navy protecting them and everything like that. I think it's your VCR formula, I think that what the president of the United States has a real handle on his leverage. He knows how to leverage situations. We got the greatest Navy in the history of the world and we're just five miles outside of the Straits Hormuz. We're just going to take an interest in any tanker that comes by and we say, "Where are you going? Who do you blonde to? " If you're going to Iran, no, you have to go someplace else. We're not going to take your oil or anything. We're just going to send you someplace else, but you can't go there. Something comes from Iran, they say, "No, you have to go back or you have to go back. You can't come out. Dean Jackson: " Yeah. Dan Sullivan: You wonder if they thought that through Dean Jackson: I don't think so. Yeah. I wonder though now that what'll be the work around like where you headed? We're definitely not Dan Sullivan: Going to rant. Yeah. I think Cuba, next week Cuba will start. They're going to say, "We want to get the casinos back into Havana. How about let's get the casinos back in Havana?" Are you a betting person? Dean Jackson: Yeah, right, exactly. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Now let's talk about your electricity because right now you don't have any. Dean Jackson: Oh man, do you miss it? Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I Dean Jackson: Think that's funny. Dan Sullivan: But the thing about guessing and betting, you really see that with the AI world. Boy, there's some really big bets being made that it's going to turn out a certain way.What's Dean Jackson: The latest Dan Sullivan: Picture? I don't think this is ... Well, one of the predictions is that OpenAI with Sam Altman started off as a nonprofit organization and now he says, "But don't pay any attention to that. Now we're going to be a profit making corporation." And Elon Musk says, "No, I don't think you can switch like that because what about all the people that you promised things to and now you're going back on your promises?" I don't think you can just like that. I gave you 10 million or 20 million. I forget what he is. He said, "I don't care about my money, but I don't think you can just switch like that. " Well, it's going to be a Supreme Court case. You know right now it's going to go right to the US Supreme Court, but I think he's dead in the water. I think OpenAI is dead in the water. Dean Jackson: Oh, wow.You wonder like Dan Sullivan: That- I don't mean that technology is dead in the water. Dean Jackson: No. Dan Sullivan: But his corporation can't become a profit making organization. He can't start off as a nonprofit and then in the middle say, "Oh, but we're actually for Dean Jackson: Profit." I just heard on a podcast, I don't remember the exact details, but the general idea was that the infrastructure spend and the cost of providing this AI, all the demand and everybody using it, that right now it would be almost impossible to charge enough that the market would be outpriced to actually pay for what it's costing. I think they're spending $600 billion or something on the infrastructure, like the servers and the stuff which really will be obsolete in three or four years that require even that investment again to keep up with it and the energy and the whole stuff that where does the model, how does the monetary model of that work out, like being able to charge you like most people are using it for free or the $20 a month plan, which is not anywhere near what needs to be done. So do you end up ... Yeah, you wonder like it's got to be advertising to be embedded in, which is going to Dan Sullivan: Change. Well, and then they have the problem of data centers to have these huge data centers. Dean Jackson: That's what I was saying was the data centers are, that's what I think that infrastructure they spent $600 billion or something on the data center, which is only going to be viable for three or four years and then requires to be upgraded. It's not like building a nuclear power plant that's going to last for 50 years or whatever. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It seems to me that there's a lot of selling of fairy dust in the whole thing. And what's the interesting thing, I think that consumers are actually getting a really good deal right now. I don't know what it costs me. It costs me 200 a month. Because I got the super max. I don't have the computer yet. I haven't started working with the computer, which will do work while I'm sleeping and not sure I need that. I'm not sure that I actually ... I'm not going to just get it so that I can have the experience. There's got to be a reason for it, but yeah. Well, this morning I just knocked off two chapters of the book with Perplexity. Yeah, Dean Jackson: What kind of book is this? Dan Sullivan: Yesterday creates tomorrow. Dean Jackson: Oh, okay. Right. That's the one. Dan Sullivan: That's the next book. That's the next book. Yeah. Yeah. And so here's what I'm thinking. This is really good for consumers. I don't think it's so good for investors. Well, it's good for investors if they're first in because there's a lot of other money piling in like a Ponzi scheme. The early investors get paid off, but I'm not seeing the lawn game here with any of them. Dean Jackson: I don't either. I just wonder ... Yeah, the question I've been asking is always I just push the accelerator pedal on it and I'm kind of asking people to what end? That's the question I'm asking, right? So when you look at it that, well, look at, you'll be able to create videos with just a single prompt and your cloud can do your whole year's worth of emails and your content. It can create your whole years worth of content while you're sleeping, but then you go again to what end, right? We know when content is AI, it's not the same. It's got that thin clank of the counterfeit and it's going into an environment where our limited attention, everybody's attention, it's almost like universal basic income. Our universal basic attention budget is 1,000 minutes maximum per person. And that's a fixed thing. The global attention budget, the gross domestic attention of the world is 1,000 minutes times eight billion daily. That's the maximum- Dan Sullivan: And you have no control over what people are doing. Dean Jackson: That's exactly right, but they can only spend that much attention, right? If you take out the daily things like what you're really competing for on AI front is for the content stuff, you're really competing for about 400 or 450 minutes a day of available attention unit, but you're competing against everything else. You're competing against people doing original work, which is, I don't know, it's going to be a fascinating thing to watch this unfold because as our capacity to create content is reaching infinity. Dan Sullivan: It's certainly beyond where anybody thought there were limits. Dean Jackson: Yeah, exactly. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. My sense is that it's really interesting because everybody's saying everything's speeding up, but my feeling is that everything's going to be slowing down. And for example, there's been easily 15 articles in my YouTube last week and this isn't stuff that pops up for me. This is stuff that I go looking for. Anyway, it's all about how AI is going to be one of the really hot election issues. I thought it was going to be in 2028. It's actually going to be in 2026 and that young people are opting out of AI. Young people don't want to ... And the reason is because all the predictions are they won't have jobs. They won't have jobs. So why should I get involved with something that ... And everything ... Not saying they're correct. I don't think they're correct. I don't think they've really thought it through deeply because they don't have enough experience yet to think things through deeply. But I think that there's all sorts of blow back that's starting to happen with AI right now that ... Well, first of all, that Mark Zuckerberg is now the second most hated person on the planet. He's the first. Yeah. And these are not heroes anymore. These people are not heroes and there's sort of a cultural ... It's not a social blow back, it's sort of a cultural...One of the things they're noticing that young men are turning to religion a lot more than young women are. There's statistics now. The Catholic church especially is getting an enormous number of converts. I saw something about Dean Jackson: That, that Bible sails among young people is way Dan Sullivan: Up. The Dean Jackson: Bible's Dan Sullivan: Back, I think was one of the Dean Jackson: Advices. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And I think the reason is anything that adults are for, we're not for. So adults have gone atheistic, so we're going to go to religion and I think it's just a cultural ... Whatever the people older than us are for, we're against, whatever they're against, we're for. And that's not predictable. Dean Jackson: I met Shep Gordon who was Alice Cooper's manager and- Still is. Still is, right? Yes, that's right. And that's what he said was that he realized he didn't have to convince people that Alice was good. He just had to be the ones that ... You have to convince the kids that Alice was good. He had to convince the parents that Alice was bad for kids. And that's pretty funny. Whatever the parents were against, that was the best thing. Dan Sullivan: And I think that just seeing more and more signs of pushback on AI, the more extreme the predictions of AI, the more extreme the pushback is. And must be nervous being the head of one of these companies. Dean Jackson: Yeah. I mean, when you see now the ... I was just with somebody the other day, they were showing me their infrastructure for all these agents that they're creating and just the sheer number of ... When they're kind of creating them as thinking of them as employees, right? The sheer number of agents you can have employed on single tasks or whatever, twenty four seven. It's pretty amazing, but it's really interesting to see how platforms like LinkedIn have become bots posting content where other bots are commenting on the content and nobody's actually really connecting. It's just so funny to me. That's why I say to what end, like, is this really ... Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's really interesting. There's a story about Henry Kissinger, secretary, I think the National Defense and Secretary of State, I Dan Sullivan: Think he Dan Sullivan: Had a couple positions, but at the same time he was at Harvard. He was a special professor at Harvard and he said, "Well, it's just going to be a lot of time and it's very young students." So what he would do is he would record his lectures and an assistant would take the tape recorder into the lecture room and make sure it was working and make sure people could hear it. And so instead of Henry Kissinger being in the lecture room, tape recorder was his broadcast tape recorder was in there. And then after a month or so, Henry Kissinger said, "Gee, I wonder how the students are reacting to the broadcast tape recorder." So he Asked another assistant is to go and he went in, he said there was nobody there. There was nobody there. He said, no, there was a tape recorder on every desk. Dean Jackson: Right. Dan Sullivan: Tape recorder. Dean Jackson: They Dan Sullivan: Said they're tape recorders. We're recording the tape recorders. Dean Jackson: Oh Dan Sullivan: Man.That's kind of what's happening. Dean Jackson: That is exactly what's happening. And that's I think the thing. I always go back to these, you've said it too, what's going to be true in 25 years, what's the things that ... It's not going to change that we have a thousand minutes of available attention. I've really been looking at how is this going to affect the economy in a way, like your personal economy. And I realized how much of our personal family spending is local within a five mile radius of where you are. And so much of it is local economy stuff. Everything about your house is consumed locally, all your food, all of that stuff is all local economy stuff and that makes up ... I forget what the actual percentage, but it's less than 10% of people's budgets are kind of like discretionary spending on things outside of the big things. House and your car and your health and your kids and your food. It's the me category of what you're spending money on would be that those are all the personal preference things, right? Consumer spending, I guess, is what you would Dan Sullivan: Call Dean Jackson: That on entertainment, on clothes and things. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: And if you travel somewhere, it's local wherever you travel to, then it's local to that market. That's always local. That's exactly Dean Jackson: Right. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Well, Dan Sullivan: There's Dean Jackson: The thing is Dan Sullivan: You have all this- I actually brought this up in the free zone last Tuesday. And I said, "All of your reality is actually local reality." I said, "Nobody has global realities. You just have local..." I mean, you say, "Well, I go to England, that's global." And I said, "Yeah, but when you're in England, it's local." Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: You've just moved your local spending to a different place on the planet, but it's so local. Dean Jackson: Yeah, you're just landing into that bubble. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: That's a really Dan Sullivan: Interesting- And that really goes for your relationships too, your relationships. I mean, Zoom has made a big difference, but I just consider that when I have one of my two hour sessions, I might have 45 people on it, but they're all local to the experience of being on Zoom together. I think global is an abstraction. There's no reality to it. Dean Jackson: Yeah. I mean, it was so very interesting. As I think about from my first kind of realization of this was in the '80s when I was ... We used to fly all the time to Florida because my dad worked for Air Canada, so I would always fly and get there. But when I went to high school, I left my senior year and drove down to Florida and then drove back in the summer. After the school year there, so I was making a couple of trips a year up and down Highway 75. I realized as you're driving down that way, you go through Detroit and you go through Dayton, Ohio, and then you get to Lexington, Kentucky, and then you go to Knoxville and Chattanooga. And I started realizing all these places, they've got their own ... You'd stop at Cracker Barrel, but the newspaper was the local newspaper and if you spent the night, the TV channels were the local things and you realize you don't ... USA Today was the kind of unifying thing that you could get like the national newspaper kind of thing wherever you are, but that was as global as we had access to in a way until CNN came along. But when I was growing up in the '80s, '70s and '80s, that's the ... I realize now on reflection that my whole world was filtered through this lens of being in the GTA, right? In Toronto and in Canada and then North America, but very little information or access to whatever's going on in the world. Back in 1972 when the Canada Russia series was like ... They may as well have been from Mars because we had no clue as to what is Russia, you know what I mean? The Iron Curtain, it's like you have no glimpse of what life is only rumors and readings, but now it's like Dan Sullivan: Everybody- The only thing I've known about Russia my whole life is that I hope I never go there. Dean Jackson: Right. Then Sting had this great song called Russians. And it was the ... I hope the Russians love their children too as a thing because in the Cold War, that was the big all the rhetoric around the thing. He's saying, I think the Russians love their children too. And that's very like that message of hope kind of thing. But you never Dan Sullivan: Knew Dean Jackson: What they were thinking or what was going on because there was no access to all of it and there was nobody incentivized or trying to steer your thinking around it. And now that we've got AI to even add on top of that, up until just a few years ago, we had reached peak where everybody was a messenger and there was lots of misinformation or specific information, agenda driven information that people are posting out on everybody how to voice. Dan Sullivan: Well, the only thing I know of a little bit more than two years with Dean Jackson: Complexity Dan Sullivan: Is that it approves of my biases. Dean Jackson: Yeah, of course. You're right on track, Dan. Dan Sullivan: That's a brilliant ... Dan- Dean Jackson: Yeah, that's a Dan Sullivan: Brilliant ... You've done it again. You've done it Dean Jackson: Again. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And I always thank it at the end of the session. I always say, Perplexity, thanks a lot. You were a great help. And then it comes back out and says, "You're a joy to work with, Dan." Dean Jackson: Yeah. I mean, it was so funny, Dan Sullivan: The thing- I mean, how many people in your life have you ever gotten that treatment from? Dean Jackson: Oh boy, I had perplexity. I mean, Charlotte knows who I am and knows everything about it, but I was in conversation with perplexity the other day and something I was researching something, getting some opinion on something, but I came up as one of the things. It was some email marketing thing or whatever and simplicity and conversation, all the things it was like suggesting for me that, well, Dean Jackson says blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I said the perplexity, "Well, I'm Dean Jackson." They go, "Oh, what an honor to be in. Dan Sullivan: " It Dean Jackson: Was just, "Oh, mind blown." Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I said, "You know, the way you feel about me, that's the way I feel about me. " That's the Dean Jackson: Way I feel. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: I think that is so funny though. You're absolutely right. And that's become memeable how friendly it is. Dan Sullivan: I mean, the amount of compliments I get on my searches and they said, "Boy, that is a really brilliant, clever search that you've just done. Let me take over here. I can really do a lot with this. " Dean Jackson: Yeah, exactly. I've noticed the seeding and salting for next steps. That is brilliant, Dan, because of this, this, and this. You know what would be great? I could show you this and this with one little shift or whatever. I'm like, "Yes, please." Dan Sullivan: But I'm getting better. Do you find yourself getting better? Dean Jackson: In what way? Measure Dan Sullivan: That. Well, just I would say sort of in a structural way that my prompts really ... If I just compare a year ago, I'm so far ahead with my prompts. Yeah, Dean Jackson: Me Dan Sullivan: Too. Yeah. And one of the things that I find really works, I said, "Now perplexity, this is going to be a 40 page document, and I want to make sure there's a sales hook in every paragraph over 40 pages." Dean Jackson: Okay. Dan Sullivan: Yeah, do it. And sure enough, all the sales hooks are right there and I wouldn't have even thought about that a year ago. Dean Jackson: So this will be interesting. This will be the first one. Is this going to be one of your quarterly books or is this something separate? Dan Sullivan: This is a quarterly, yeah. It'll be a 2027 Hay House book, I think. I'm starting to get a feel for what they're looking for. Well, I've never had one turned down and they're big sellers for them. They like the work. Yeah. So this I have the Greater Game, which comes out in May 26th, that's with John Bowen and then I have casting that hiring with Jeff Madoff. So about as soon as the greater game is out, so starting in June, I'm going to start sending myself, I got an idea for next year. I've got another one and I'll send them always more ambitious. That's a good one. Dan Sullivan: Send Dan Sullivan: Them that one. And then I say, "But I've got a second one." Because the ideal cycle is you sell one in May and you sell one in November. Those are the two perfect seasons for books. May and November are the really great ... Yeah, so two a year. Dean Jackson: Okay. John Grisham. There we go. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. John Grisham's not the only writer out there who's got a factory going for him outside. Dean Jackson: I was actually thinking of James Patterson. He's Dan Sullivan: Got Dean Jackson: The- Dan Sullivan: Yeah, he's in the 200 or he's way above 200. Yeah. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: He's Dean Jackson: Got Dan Sullivan: The Dean Jackson: Real factory going. Yeah. I wonder what happened with his bookshots. Did you ever see his thing of that? He thought he was creating short fiction books, like episodic books. Imagine one book as an episode of something kind of a thing. I don't know whether it took off or whether it's ... I don't read fiction. Dan Sullivan: There's a lot of them out there that are doing at least two books a year. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Well, I got my first quarterly collection is being laid out right now. I've mentioned I've been writing the emails- These Dan Sullivan: Would be like essays, right? It'd be like Dean Jackson: A book of editing. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. I'm treating it. I thought about it like rather they're not because they're not like a single topic book the way you're doing your quarterly books, these are episodes, more like a collection of poems or whatever. So my great thing, if I'm thinking of the 10 year collection of these is using the same size, same format, the way you've stuck with the thing, you definitely know that your quarterly books are part of a series and using Bedica as the timeless font using the same size and format of the 350 word thoughts collected. And I was wondering about the titles, but I came up with the idea of using the most popular subject line, because I send them all as emails, the one that got the most open rates as the title of that collection. So the winning one for this one was High Status Chimps is the one of the High Status Chips and having a simple bold, Halvetica bold, those words on the thing and just a black line drawing of a ... I'll send you the cover. It's very funny to see. And then the color scheme being the Pantone color of the year. So for 2026, it'll be all in the Cloud Atlas Color palette and then whatever the 2027 color of the year is, that'll be the Dan Sullivan: Pallet for it. Well, there was a scandal about the Pantone. Dean Jackson: I didn't know that. Dan Sullivan: Did you know that? Dean Jackson: No, tell me. Dan Sullivan: It's white. Dean Jackson: Yeah, that's exactly Cloud Atlas is white, yes. Dan Sullivan: I mean, that's a political word. Dean Jackson: It's not white. White, white. It's cloud. It's cloud white band. I don't care. Dan Sullivan: It's white. Dean Jackson: Yes. Dan Sullivan: It's white. Dean Jackson: But I'm never Dan Sullivan: Going to Dean Jackson: Mention, aside from telling you that's the pattern, that's going to be kind of my deep track Easter egg for 10 years from now when you look at the spines of the box set of all of these books, the color rainbow of the color of the year sequentially from left to right. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. We have about five colors for books. We have an orange, we have a red, we have a maroon, we have a Dean Jackson: Teal. Dan Sullivan: Nice. Yeah. We have sort of like a teal kind of blue. We have a deep blue and we have a green. We have a green. And we have a purple, so there's seven. And we make the choice, my artist who does all the cover work, she'll just send me four or five to choose from and I'll just say, we'll go with this one. And we never repeat from quarter to quarter. We make sure that we don't repeat. Dean Jackson: Right. You rotate through. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. You Dean Jackson: Know what's funny? Dan Sullivan: But it's an interesting thing and I think there's going to be a lot of this. I think with AI, actually there was ... I have a site that I go to every day. It's called Arts and Letters Daily and it's sort of a ... Do you go to that? No, I do not. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. It's kind of academic, sort of academic. It's mostly articles, essays and book reviews and things like that. And they were talking that there's an incredible scientist who's coming up with incredible breakthroughs over the last year and he's written 13 books over the last year, but he doesn't exist, but he doesn't exist. Oh Dean Jackson: Boy, that's how they get you. You see? You see? Dan Sullivan: But he's the bestselling scientist because he's making up the craziest discoveries you've ever ... Dean Jackson: Oh my goodness. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: See, that's the thing of where that's the danger of all of this, Dan Sullivan: Right? No, that's where the entertainment, that's where the entertainment is. Oh, Dean Jackson: I got it. Okay. Dan Sullivan: No, it's only dangerous if you believe it. Dean Jackson: Otherwise, Dan Sullivan: It's just entertaining. Dean Jackson: It's this ... Dan Sullivan: No, it's not parity. I mean, but you have to have a certain mindset to know that it isn't real, but it's entertaining. Dean Jackson: Oh, that's so funny. I like things like that. Dan Sullivan: Well, you know, PT Barnum had it right. There's a sucker born every minute. Dean Jackson: That's true. Yeah. That would say one out of three people. So look to your left and your right. It's not them. It's not them. There's three of them. Guess what? Guess what? Exactly. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I was looking at the Elon Musk predictions, which did not come true last night. There's about 25 of them. Dean Jackson: What is that? Dan Sullivan: Usually they're ... Huh? Dean Jackson: What recent predictions, you mean? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. There'll be things like I think in 2024 he said by 2026, 90% of all cars will be self-driving. Dean Jackson: By 2026, yeah. But I'll tell you this much that I very rarely touched the steering wheel now. I literally get in the car and I speak where I'm going and I push one button and I get there and that's it. And it's so good. You see very clearly where it's going that there's with any rate of improvement, Chad and I were just talking about that, that the next thing now Florida is actually leading the way and going to be the first commercial testing ground for the drone, human transportation drone. So they're opening up literally 13 minutes from my house in Auburndale, Florida is this ... It's right in the center of the I- 4 corridor, which joins Orlando and Tampa. And the idea is that you'll be able to hop in like a six-seater drone like van or whatever and it will take you to Orlando or take you to Tampa in minutes instead of an hour or whatever, like cut down on all the traffic. It's very ... I don't know. It's a real thing now. Dan Sullivan: I'll tell you something. In Dan Sullivan: 1918, Dan Sullivan: More than a hundred years ago in the state of Ohio there was what's called the interurban and these were electric street cars, electric streetcars. And you could get from almost one town to any other town in Ohio, they had that much track laid and it lasted for about 30 years and then it all disappeared. Well, even Toronto had that, Dean Jackson: Right? Toronto had that, the Dan Sullivan: Trolleys Dean Jackson: Or whatever. Dan Sullivan: Oh, well, they had the trolleys. They still have the trolleys, but this was from every small town to ... Every small town was on it. You could literally get to anywhere from anywhere and then it all went away. It all went away. But the big thing is I thought of a book cover that somebody is not everybody. And what I mean by that is there will be certain individuals that just can't get enough of the latest technological breakthroughs, but it isn't everybody. Dan Sullivan: Right. Dan Sullivan: It's not 90%, like 90% are not going to go for it. It's like that. But his predictions are always, within two years, 90% of people will be in self-driving. I mean, it's some fraction of 1% Dean Jackson: Didn't take you ... You've been autonomous driving since 1997 or whenever you started with your limo service. Oh yeah. Yeah. So Dan Sullivan: You've had the benefit of that. We went to our next door neighbor, our next door neighbor here in the beaches, she's written a really great musical that was at the Italian Cultural Center, which is on Lawrence, kind of Lawrence and Warden, not too far, Lawrence and the Don Bella, the Allen Expressway, so Lawrence right up there. So we just called an Uber, picked us up at six o'clock and drove us there and then we got finished and we called an Uber and the first wait was 10 minutes and the second wave was eight minutes, great escalates, really nice escalators and everything else. Okay. The thing is that everybody who wants to get a custom design technological breakthrough for some part of their life activity can get it, but it doesn't mean everybody's going to do that. Yeah. But the big thing, everybody wants that there's going to be complete change over to a new technology. There never is. Dean Jackson: Right. Yeah. There's always ... Yeah, exactly. There's always holdouts. I think it's going to be amazing times. It's great to be alive right now. Dan Sullivan: If you're interested in new things, there's always going to be new things to be interested in. Dean Jackson: But if you're not interested- I mean, the things you're doing, you think about all the things that we weren't able to change or improve, you're doing a whole Dan Sullivan: System Dean Jackson: Reboot. Dan Sullivan: It's really interesting because I was in Chicago the whole last week and a lot of people know that I'm very interested and I was telling them about Buenos Aires. We've made about Dean Jackson: 13 Dan Sullivan: Trips. I think it's 13 trips now. And they said," Well, what's that cost? "And I said," The cost is that you won't do it. Dean Jackson: "Oh, that's Dan Sullivan: Exactly right.You're asking the wrong question. I said," If you ask the cost, it's not for you. I can tell you it's not for you. Dean Jackson: "Right, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly right regardless of the treatment, just do the math on the trips themselves and. Dan Sullivan: They give me a number and I said," Will you believe me if I say I don't know? Dean Jackson: "Yeah, right, exactly. I think that's the best. It's fully Dan Sullivan: Sold for you. I do not know how much this is costing. Dean Jackson: Yeah. And it doesn't matter because it's less than you have. So that's the greatest thing, right? Dan Sullivan: Yes. Yeah. Dean Jackson: Yes. It Exactly. So it does not matter. The funny thing I was sharing with Chad, do you wear an aura ring, Dan? Or do you have your ... You do. Dan Sullivan: I have an aura. Dean Jackson: Okay. So I was sharing with Chad. I've been using this 40 Hertz light that I have from Beacon 40 and I don't know whether you've heard about 40 Hertz light waves, how they affect brain support, memory focus, all of that stuff, your brain, gamma waves. And I had been using it for three weeks and my HRV has gone up by 40%, which is really like it's pretty interesting to me because there's Dan Sullivan: No- Is it a wearable? Is it a wearable? Dean Jackson: No, it's a little beacon, little lamp that I sit on the shelf beside my TV. So when I'm just watching TV it's on and let's say the TV is at noon, the beacon is at about 10 o'clock or whatever. So it's in my peripheral vision and it's strobing these 40 hertz lights, but imperceptible. Dan Sullivan: It Dean Jackson: Doesn't take away. So if you're reading for instance, or you're in your living room reading if the beacon is on the table or shuffles in your peripheral vision, it's getting in. It's getting into your eyes. But it's fascinating. Dan Sullivan: It's fascinating. Makes you smarter. Does it make you smarter? Dean Jackson: It makes your brain does good things for your brain. That's what it does. Dan Sullivan: Good. Dean Jackson: Tickles your brain. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I'm going to start buying a little device called Pet Gentle. Look it up if you want to see it. They have great commercials. So it's Pet, capital P, capital G, but it's put together. The two words are put together, pet gentle. And it's imperceptible, but if you have a dog that kind of goes crazy, you just press it and the dog immediately looks a little bit stunned, but just walks around quietly after you press. Dean Jackson: Okay. Ah, number one pet trainer for humans and effortless dog training. That's Dan Sullivan: Funny. Dean Jackson: Easily train. Hardheaded Dan Sullivan: Dogs. It's Dean Jackson: Just one click of a button. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And they show really great videos of the dog going crazy and somebody just presses the button and then they just stop and then they look very confused. They look very confused because they don't know what happened. And apparently- I wonder if this will Dean Jackson: Work for humans. It's for entrepreneurs. Dan Sullivan: Well, that's what I wanted. Dean Jackson: In the workshop. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: That's exactly what I wanted to know. It breaks. It breaks. You just press it. Dean Jackson: Come on back. And everybody's Dan Sullivan: Like- Come on back. Everybody just comes back and says- Oh, so funny. But apparently it only works on dogs, but it does something to their adrenaline system. And he said the trainer who created it, he said they're not really bothered by something. What they're experiencing is an adrenaline overload, adrenaline overload. And what the sensor does, the little device that you press and the signal goes up, it just changes their adrenaline flow and they immediately calm down. Wow. Dean Jackson: The video, this is amazing. Dan Sullivan: That's Dean Jackson: Funny. Dan Sullivan: I think Trump has one of those that drives his enemies crazy. He's got a little beamer. He's even got the poke hooked. Dean Jackson: Oh man, what a great website this is too. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But the videos, the commercials are really great. Dean Jackson: How did you find out about Dan Sullivan: It? No, it was on a YouTube. I was watching a YouTube- Right. YouTube and the commercial came on and you see the ... I mean, it could be AI for all I know and everything, but it's just interesting. I mean, how many times have you been around a dog that's going crazy? I wish I'd get him to just calm down. Dean Jackson: Yeah, that's wild. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: I love it. I love it. Dan Sullivan: Look, we're doing free advertising. Dean Jackson: There we go. Today's podcast brought to you by the wonderful folks at tripetgentle.com and beacon40.com. There you go. Sound wherever internet is provided. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Okay, Dean. Talk to you next week. Dean Jackson: All right. Thanks, Dan. Dan Sullivan: Bye.

April 22, 2026

Ep173: Rules Over Insights: Time Sense and the Decider Role

The most powerful systems aren’t built on motivation; they’re built on rules that make the right action the only option. In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we follow Dean’s ongoing experiment with structured daily rhythms, phones locked from 10 PM to noon, meals pre-ordered the night before, and two daily golf sessions anchoring his mornings. He’s framing it not as discipline but as finally becoming a “law-abiding citizen” after 30 years of trying to be a maverick. The bigger discovery: for someone with ADHD, freedom lies within structure, not outside it. Dan shares a quiet but significant shift in his Strategic Coach tools, replacing the prompt “What are your three biggest insights?” with “What are your three biggest rules?” Insights are just thoughts. Rules are decisions with direction. He also returns to a theme from his 130-day “Creating Great Yesterdays” practice: that your past isn’t a fixed record of what happened, it’s your interpretation of it, and that interpretation is entirely yours to change. The episode closes with a wide-ranging discussion on AI, technological revolutions, and who actually profits when the world changes, spoiler: it’s rarely the builders. Dan’s historical read on railroads, radio, and automobiles applies just as cleanly to what’s happening now. This one rewards a second listen, especially the segment on time sense and what it means for how you take action. <center> SHOW HIGHLIGHTS <ul style="list-style-type: circle;"> </center> <ul style="list-style-type: circle;"> <li>Dean’s new rule: phone locked from 10 PM to noon daily, not as willpower, but as a structure that makes the right choice the only choice.</li> <li>Dan replaced “What are your three biggest insights?” with “What are your three biggest rules?” on his thinking tools, and the difference in entrepreneurial traction was immediate.</li> <li>Your past isn’t a fixed record, it’s your interpretation of what happened, and that interpretation is yours to change at any time.</li> <li>In every major technological revolution, railroads, radio, automobiles, only about 5% of builders profit. The real winners are the consumers who apply the technology to their most productive opportunities.</li> <li>ADD and future-thinking may be deeply linked: Dan’s observation that spending today’s attention on things that don’t yet exist is what creates the paralysis most entrepreneurs experience.</li> <li>Dean’s “Decider” role: the bottleneck in any creative system isn’t ideas or energy, it’s the decision about what actually makes it into the real world.</li> </ul> <center> Links: <a href="https://welcometocloudlandia.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WelcomeToCloudlandia.com</a><a href="http://strategiccoach.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> StrategicCoach.com</a> <a href="http://deanjackson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DeanJackson.com</a> <a href="https://ListingAgentLifestyle.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ListingAgentLifestyle.com</a> </center> <center> TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) </center> Dean Jackson: Welcome to CloudLandia. Mr. Sullivan. Dan Sullivan: Mr. Jackson. Dean Jackson: Well, here we are. Dan Sullivan: Here we are. Here we are. I was listening to the actual words of the song that you have introducing our podcast. And my feeling is that the guy who's singing is lying. Dean Jackson: Well, let's Dan Sullivan: Break it down. He's actually doing all those things and he's actually going to do all those things that he's saying. And I'm just wondering if all songs of that nature is that the singer is actually expressing something that's not true. Dean Jackson: Shadow. Some shadow. Dan Sullivan: Shadow. Shadow. This is the Dean Jackson: Challenge. The shadow side of it. I'm never going to give you up. I'm never going to let you go. Dan Sullivan: He's letting her go. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Dan Sullivan: Forget you. I'm Dean Jackson: Never going to Dan Sullivan: Forget. Well, I'm not sure of the gender that he's actually talking about. There we go. These days, you can't be sure. Dean Jackson: That is so funny, Dan. I love ... This is true. Yeah, you've been the first one to dial in. We should let people know the conference service that we use. We have it set up so that there's music playing when the first person arrives and the song is Rick Astley Never Going to Let You Go. Yeah, yeah. So you've been treated to some contemplative time with the lyrics of the song. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. My whole feeling is that anything that people are singing about kind of tells you that they're not actually that kind of person. Dean Jackson: I saw there was a- Dan Sullivan: If you have to say it, if you have to sing it, you're not doing it. Dean Jackson: Yeah. I saw a t-shirt that had an image on the front. It said, "Things Rick Assley will never do. " And then it was check boxes. Let you go, give you up, forget you. Check, check, check. Dan Sullivan: Or it's the reverse. That person is doing all those things to Rick. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of funny. The happiest people in the world are probably not talking about it. Dean Jackson: That's it. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's up? What's up? Dean Jackson: Well, I'll tell you what, it's been another adventure in Club Landia, another week of being in one place geographically on my six month stay radical, let's call it. And I've really been embracing the locking in the big pieces. I've come to see now and suspected it all along that life is really a series of rhythmic patterns that are persistent and are never changing. Trying to align myself with those so that it feels downstream. And I'm really gamifying a lot. I have completely locked in the 10:00 PM till noon, no phone. I feel so much freer with that. Walking in, I think I'm trying to gamify. I'm really learning about my flavor of ADHD, which is really an executive function outside. So for me, that is embracing structure and just kind of realizing that the freedom is in the structure for me. And as much as we try and resist it, it's embracing it is the freedom rather than resisting it. And so I've been setting up my life into zones and that 10:00 PM starts the kind of wind down process. My little gamification lights out by 11:00 PM, that's kind of the thing because otherwise I can kind of just scroll into things. So I'm just setting up little ... If you're imagining skiing down a mountain, it's like I've got little gates that I try and get around. So it's like I've got the 10 o'clock, the phone goes off and I start the wind down practice of getting my day prepared. This last few weeks, I've been choosing my meals for tomorrow in the spirit of creating a better past. I've been choosing my meals using the pre-order function of ... I use Grubhub and DoorDash and Uber Eats. I've got a series of meals that are good. And I pick them the night before so that I don't have to ever make the decision. I look at my day and I figure when would be the right time for them to be delivered. And so that's a great thing. I make it my aim. The other gamification gate wheels up at eight o'clock, meaning I'm up and dressed and out the door and in my car, wheels up at 8:00 AM. And that's a fun thing. I've got the first stop honeycomb, and then I read and have breakfast, and then I'm over at Concord, and I've got two hours of focus times of my golf. I've been golfing. Of course, my analogy is the golf is having a goal, an optimal environment, limited distractions at a fixed timeframe. So those two golf sessions before noon, and then I'm back home, and my phone unlocks at noon, and I spend the first little time catching up, seeing what I've missed, all my appointment, all my time, obligations of talking to people are in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, one o'clock till six o'clock. And yeah, it's a fun, really learning to embrace the freedom and creativity within the framework of what's reality. Dan Sullivan: So what you're telling me is that after almost 60 years, you've become a law-abiding citizen. Dean Jackson: Well, what I've realized is, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it's perfectly suited that the ... I really started ... I turned pro on the journaling at 30, and I've observed now those 30 years. I'll be 60 next month, and I've realized in looking back at all of those journals, what a gift it is, but it's still been 30 years of sort of not being a law-abiding citizen, trying to be a maverick. And so now it's like I might as well experiment with living within the law. Dan Sullivan: The interesting thing that I've been ... I made a switch in the tools about two months ago, and so you know all the thinking tools we have in Strategic Coach, but at the bottom of every thinking tool, when you've done everything else, you've done the first sheet, which is a new concept, and then you do the triple play, and then you come back and you finish it. And at the bottom, I always had, "What are your three biggest insights from doing this Dean Jackson: Thinking?" Dan Sullivan: And I don't quite know why I did this, but there was a tool and I said, "I don't think we're looking for insights. I think we're looking for rules Dean Jackson: Here." Dan Sullivan: So instead of your three biggest insight, what are your three biggest rules? And it's made a profound difference on the entrepreneurs. And usually, I do all my testing of new tools with the two hour connector Dean Jackson: Calls. Dan Sullivan: And for example, if I do, I do a new free zone workshop every quarter, but I've tested about four or five different tools to determine what's the best structured particular quarter, but I've done tools. I've done rules for the tools. I've done rules to it, and it makes a profound difference because an insight is just a thought. It's just there's no traction, there's no commitment, there's no decision whatsoever. You just had a thought. It's brainstorming. Basically, it's just brainstorming. But rules are a decision that you're going to go in this direction and not that direction. I see that my focus and my activity has to be doing then, therefore, I have to get rid of everything else. And we had a discussion on Friday, on Friday, two days. And I said, "If you talk to any entrepreneur, they don't like following other people's rules." But the big question is, you have to have rules. So if you're not following other people's rules, you have to create your own rules. You got to have rules. Dean Jackson: That's exactly- That exactly harmonizes with what I've been experiencing here in that I am making rules. My rule is 10 o'clock is the start for the window. One o'clock, lights are out, eight o'clock I'm out the door, two hours of golf. And that's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday as the people elements. And yeah, that's really something ... I think it's not going to change. The reality is it's been 30 years of the ... Nature doesn't change. We've been saying that for the last 30 million years, however long we've been going, that time moves at the speed of reality and there's no way around it. We can only experience the things in the moment. I had a really ... Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And you're really seeing that with the world that, for example, with cloud landing and AI and everything that's coming along with that, I said, "I've really studied other technological revolutions. This is a big one that we're going through right now." And I said, "Who actually makes the money when you have a technological revolution?" So they went back and they looked at railroads, they looked at automobiles, they looked at radio, they looked at television, they looked at airlines, all the things that have happened within the last 200 years, 200 years. And it's almost never the people who make the new technology that actually make the money. It's only about Dean Jackson: 5% Dan Sullivan: Of the people who make the new technology that everybody else loses. The people who actually make the money are the consumers who consume the new technology. In other words, they adapt some aspect of the new technology and they apply it to their most productive opportunities, their most profitable opportunities. So you look at all the big tech people right now who are spending enormous amounts of money to be number one, 95% of them are going to be losers. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty- Dan Sullivan: Because I think they're creating something that doesn't follow the rules of history. Humans have been creating new capabilities since humans were humans, and they think that they're changing the world. They think they're changing human nature. They aren't human age. Human nature will watch, human nature will say, "All right, this is really interesting." "All right, all right, all right, this is really interesting, but I'm just going to use your new technology for this reason. ""No, no, you have to make a complete change." "No, no, I'm just going to pick what I like and I'm going to use it and I don't care if you make money or not. Dean Jackson: "I read your ... Sent me that coach is always upstream from AI thought essay, whatever we'll call it, manifest that. Yeah, little Dan Sullivan: Article, article. It's Dean Jackson: An article. Yeah, your article. And one thing that really struck me, the most impactful thing that I read was you talked of the coming world of delegators and the tiny minority of deciders. I realized, wow, that is where my economic ... Or not my executive function, that's my big thing, is the deciding. I actually added to my ... Imagine if you applied your self framework that I created Ds as a progression that imagine is starting out as a dreamer, being able to see something, create a vision of what something that could be and the if is as a designer where you can now imagine if that were to be true, this is all the things that would have to take place, but neither dreaming nor designing is actually getting anything into the applied world. It's all in the theoretical side of things. And the next level down then is that it has to go to you, the capital U of this as the decider of what is going to make it into the applied world. What are you going to usher into the applied world, the applied world? And then it goes to, I'm calling this role, the dispatcher, because the dispatcher is who can ask the things," Is there any way we can do this without doing anything? "And that would mean that there's something ... I mentioned the SELF of self as your sphere, meaning is there a service? Is there something that we know of that could just do this? That would be the ... Well, dispatch it to the S is the ... If you have to do anything, what's the least amount that I would have to do? And that gets dispatched to my own energy. I have to invest my energy in this, or L is leadership, so that's delegation. Who can I just describe what I want? And then F is finances. Could I just use money to get more people to do the thing that I want? And that's where ... So that's my big thing. I've been off of my vitamin A regimen now for ... I was on for about a hundred days in a row, and I did notice my ability to stay on task and to do things with energy, but I realized that it doesn't help with the main thing that my executive function struggles with is deciding. I can do what I want to or decide to do, but that's why my 50 minute Focus Finders work. That's why golf works is because the G is essentially deciding I've got a goal, this is what I'm going to do. And so I'm really now leaning into almost detaching myself from this in a way of kind of agreeing with myself that I will be on a ... I've been referring to it. I heard about something as an FSO contractor. Have you ever heard those words for services? So oftentimes actors or entertainers will have a company that enters into contractual agreements with the studio, but the studio is entering into the contract with the company for services of Dan Sullivan, not just the company. It's like, " Okay, we're going to pay your company this, but it's specifically for the services of Dan Sullivan. "And that's an interesting thing, right? I realized how my afternoons, I never miss anything that is synchronous and scheduled and involving other people. I'm super duper reliable. If I can figure out that element of it, of being super duper reliable for myself when there's no external consequences per se of doing it at this particular time, I need to put myself in that sort of detached role that I am, that the rule is, that's a great way to think about it actually, that maybe that's my thing is that the rule is I do two golf sessions a day that are predecided by that this is what this is going to be. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I think I'm noticing because I'm at day 130 of my time experience, so 30 days. And what I've noticed is that I don't pay much attention to anything that's more than 24 hours in the future. And what I mean by that, I look at next day's schedule and I say there's certain things that other people are depending on me for tomorrow, and therefore today I'm going to do those things so that I do what I've agreed to do and people are ... They're happy. They're happy with what I've done. And I'm just noticing my mind has become very resistant to thinking a month out or six months out, anything like that. And I said," Well, whatever six months out, when it gets to that, that is tomorrow, then I'll do it today, but I'm not going to be extending myself out into the future emotionally and everything like that. "My sense is that, and we've talked about this before, that we have three timeframes that we just enter into when we're born and we're growing up, there's yesterday, there's today, and there's tomorrow, three things, but somewhere along the line, we either get hooked on not getting free from the past. So instead of it just being yesterday, it's last year or it's five years ago or it's 10 years ago, and there's people that had negative things happen to them 20 years ago, and some of today's time is still being used up with something that's 20 years in the past. And I said," Well, you're kind of trapped by the past, so you're kind of trapped. Instead of having access to your full attention today, there's a portion of that, that you're paying for something that happened 20 years ago, and you can't get free from that. "But the other way, it happens in the future, and instead of paying attention tomorrow, you're paying attention to a year from now, or five years from now, or 20 years from now, your attention today is being used up with something that doesn't even exist. I mean, with the past thing, the past thing actually exists. I mean, it actually happened. You've got proof that ... But the future stuff, I mean, it's just a vapor, you're just Dean Jackson: Responding Dan Sullivan: To a vapor, but there's an emotional excitement with the past one, usually it's an emotional, a negative emotion, something that you haven't gotten over. But in the future, it's something that's really bad. Would've, Dean Jackson: Could have, should have. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And more and more, you're using today's energy and devoting it to something that doesn't even exist that's a long way in the future. And what I've noticed is that I've lost ... I've never had real problem with the past aspect of this, but I've had a lot of problems with the future aspect of it. And I think, and I said," If it was just one thing that I'm attached to in the future, that'd be okay, but it's 20 things, and Dean Jackson: They're not connected, Dan Sullivan: And they're not connected to each other, and they're all fighting for attention. Dean Jackson: "Yes. Dan Sullivan: And they're all saying," No, no, no. It's my turn. It's my turn. "It's everything Dean Jackson: Like that. Dan Sullivan: And I think that a lot of what we experience as ADD is actually that future attachment to things that don't even exist yet. I Dean Jackson: Agree with you, 100%. I mean, it's really, I look at the things ... I forget who it was. I think it was Jason Freed who wrote a book called Rework and Jason Fried is the co-owner, co-founder of a company that produced ... Their company's called 37 Signals, and they have notoriously been single focused, like having things very much buying into this idea that slow and steady wins the race kind of thing. And I hope I'm giving him the right attribution. So if somebody listening knows that maybe somebody else created this, it's not. He said," If we imagine our attention, which is the ... "These are my words, the crown jewel of our time, the laser tip of our point is our attention, meaning our gaze, our energy is in the moment, always engaged in something. And if we imagine that as the stage, that on center stage, there's always something on center stage and as soon as we put our attention on one thing, that it's almost like all these other things that are competing for our attention are stage left, stage right, backstage, idiot, all shouting for our attention like, " Oh, look at me, look at me, look at me, me. "And then when we choose something, there's kind of this sense of that you've let the other ones down kind of thing. But he said," If we treat this like managing the stage, instead of averting our gaze, spraying our gaze all over the place, if we keep our gaze on the stage and we move into ... I think what fits perfectly is this decider role of what's going on stage now, what's going on stage now. We're the program director of what our attention is going to be focused on, right? So we bring one thing on stage at one time and that's kind of ... If we think about it as a broadcast day, the good news is that we really ... One of these rhythms of life that is inescapable is the 24 hour cycle, which involves 16 waking hours, right? Our 10 minute attention slots, that's what we're filling for today. And I think what you are absolutely right about is the ... I would, like you, spend a lot of those units dreaming and designing things for the future, not doing things in the present. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. But it's actually the things you do in the present that actually create what- Dean Jackson: What you did. ... Dan Sullivan: What Dean Jackson: Tomorrow Dan Sullivan: Is. Dean Jackson: It's Dan Sullivan: Basically ... Yeah. Dean Jackson: That's where the idea of creating a better path is that the thing of doing is that at the end of the day, that becomes That's what you did. So we're creating the past in the present, like you said that we can ... Dan Sullivan: Well, I just write down little notes as they occur to me and oftentimes as a result of something that got discussed in a workshop or the two hour connectors. And I said, people's passion, I think, and especially you see that among entrepreneurs and you see that among very creative entrepreneurs because not all entrepreneurs are creative, but creative entrepreneurs. And what I notice is that they're trying to escape from a predictable past. They say, "My past was like this, and I want to create a future that is not predictable." Okay? And I said, "But what if you reversed your mindset here and you made your past unpredictable?" Okay. What I mean by that is that you can take any experience you've had in the past and if you go deep in the experience, what worked about this experience, what didn't work about this experience. And then you say, "Based on my new understanding of this experience, what can I do in the future?" My sense is you just changed your past. You made your past unpredictable. Hello. Dean Jackson: I don't know what happened, Dan. You were on fire and we got- Dan Sullivan: I just had an unpredictable past experience. Dean Jackson: Exactly. That was perfectly fitting. Yes. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. But the big thing is that there's this belief that the past is static, Dean Jackson: But Dan Sullivan: When you really think about what you're ... For my past and for most people's past, your past is not what actually happened. Your past is your interpretation of what happened. It's not the content of your past, it's the context that you've created out of having those experiences. And my sense is good experience, bad experience doesn't matter. If you go deep into it and say, "What did I actually ... Looking back now, what did I actually learn from that experience?" All of a sudden you have a new insight, you have a new possibility, and a certain sense, you've just used the past to create a new future. Okay? But it's actually based on real stuff. The future is not based on real stuff. It's just you're just casting images on the screen, but there's no emotion. Nobody's ever had an experience of the future. You've had an experience of seeing things from your past that now become real possibilities if you look at the future. And you have total control over it. Nobody has access to any of the information that's related to your past. I mean, it's totally your property. You can do anything you want with it. And the other thing is it's completely competition free. Nobody knows you're doing this. Nobody knows what you're doing with it. Nobody knows what you're doing in looking at your past is going to show up in the future. The future is all competition. It's everybody's images, competing with everybody else's images. Dean Jackson: I mean, the future is all competition. Dan Sullivan: Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you can see that. I mean, you can just see that following the news of the big tech companies. And I was noticing that where Anthropic wants to get to now is just the next stage that is going to cost them $65 billion to get to the next stage, without any guarantee whatsoever that the 65 billion is going to do anything there. And the reason is they're in a hundred percent competition with everybody else. It has to pay off or they're done. They're in a position where everybody ... And I said, "Yeah, but maybe the 37 steps or whatever the name of the company is camp." Dean Jackson: 37 signals. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: 37 Dean Jackson: Signals. 37 signals. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. They got the right idea. This stuff works. If you'll concentrate on it and give it your full attention, this stuff works. It's not a guess. It's not a bet. It's just a function of giving things that already work your full attention. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: No, I was thinking with your 14 hours, you've gained ownership of 14 hours of your 24 hour daily existence.That's roughly two thirds, basically. It's roughly about two thirds that you didn't have before. And just the fact that you have ownership now is going to make a huge difference in the future. Dean Jackson: Yeah. And the long-term ramifications of it, like what I realize now is that I've certainly conditioned people in my life. And by the way, nobody misses you. Did you know? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. I always say that people said, "What are people going to think about? If I do that, what are people going to think about me? Dean Jackson: " Dan Sullivan: And I says, "Relax, you're safe. They're not thinking about you at all. Dean Jackson: " They're not thinking about you at all. That is exactly right. So that's been one of my big realizations there is that I'm living in Dean Landia for 14 hours a day, And that's a much better outcome. The majority, that puts me at a majority. The majority of my time is spent in Dean Landia, and I'm aiming that I'll get that even more. I've disconnected from ... I have no access to, or I actively do not go to any news outlets, any ... I don't watch anything real time. I'm carefully training my algorithms that ... What's very interesting on TikTok now, there's a function where you can ... When you follow somebody, right, there's two streams. You can go on what they call your For You page, which is what the algorithm thinks that you would be interested in. And then if you follow that person, you have another option, another tab in your Instagram or in your TikTok called following. So I've selected the things that I'm interested in exclusively, and I can go and only just view my following column, and I don't get caught up in going down these rabbit holes. I'm curating my experience that way. So I'm woefully unaware of really what's happening in the world. And so far, I'm not missing anything. It feels like we're still ... There was a website years ago, do you remember when the large hydrant collider or whatever was a big out thing? Dan Sullivan: Yep, yep, yep. Dean Jackson: There was a website called, has the large hydrogen ... Or what was it called? Is it hydrant or collider or whatever? So the website- Well, Dan Sullivan: All I know is it's in Europe and I don't think it's going to amount to anything. Dean Jackson: Yeah, exactly. So there was a website, has the large hydrogen collider ended theworldyt.com. And you go there and there's a reassuring, nope. That's the only thing on the page. Nope. So you just check it daily. Has the world ended today? Nope. Carry on. It's good enough. So that's the way I feel. I wake up and I'm here and that's enough. You know what I'm curious about, Dan, is I love your idea of rules and I'd love to hear if you've given any thought or if maybe we could create them, your three rules that you've observed from your 138 days of creating a better past. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's interesting. I haven't gotten to that point where I have three of them, but one of them is that how you consider time, and I'm talking about anybody. One is that I think almost everybody does something different with time. There's been, according to anthropologists, people who make guesses about how long there's been actual human beings on the planet, and it's somewhere around 105 billion, in other words. And they have reasons for the number, and maybe 20 years from now, it'll be more than that or less than that. But one of the things is that it seems to me that what makes humans is their time sense. There's a sense of time sense. And I know that children don't have it when they're born. And Shannon Waller had her oldest daughter, they taught her sign language. There's a school in Philadelphia where they can learn. The parents can learn signs. They're almost like they have people who do hand signals so that deaf people can understand what's going on. And you can actually teach your baby rough, and they'll get it. And they had about 50 things, and they would do hand signals. "I'm hungry. I have to go to the bathroom. I want to go outside and play and everything like this. "And she was probably about, let's say, a year and three months old, and she began telling stories using hand signals that she had seen a bird, and the bird was before her last dark sleep. So She realized that naps are light sleeps, and going to bed at night is a dark sleep, and she said," I saw a bird in the park, "and she had a hand signal for that, and it was before my last dark sleep, and she was telling the story, and the next week she started to talk. She actually started using words, and she actually started to talk. And so my sense is that there's a relationship, I'm just putting one person's experience together here. There's a relationship between our time sense and our need to communicate, or it goes along with our desire to communicate, and that humans seem to be the only species who can't ... One, they have time measurements, and then they're able to use time measurements. But my sense is that I have a suspicion that yesterday, today, and tomorrow really means something different to each person. They're very creative with it. They've worked it out. But with some people, it actually makes it possible for them to take action, and for some people, it actually makes it impossible for them to take action. There's something about their time sense. And both of us have been experimenting over the last half year or so, you a little bit longer than I have, but we're playing around with our time sense, and you've had great breakthroughs, and I've had great breakthroughs. And so my sense is that if your time sense actually inhibits action, your time sense is not good for you. And if your time sense actually encourages action, it's actually good for you. Dean Jackson: Yes. Wow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? And the only thing is that what ... I've been calling it the permanent record, what's actually documented on the permanent record, and the only time we can actually put something on the record is today, is right now. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Action today. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Really, I've also learned that it's about a hundred minutes kind of thing is about the right ... I consider that to be the immediate present, like what's actually ... I think I have absolute clarity of what's going to happen in the next 100 minutes, but there's a lot of variation of what could happen a hundred minutes from now, unless there is something that is anchored in that time. If I have an appointment like this, my day, the only thing on my Sunday is this time locked in to spend this time with you. And so that dictates how my morning goes. For first thing, I have to set my clock to my phone to come out. I come out 90 minutes earlier than what it normally ... I set my phone to unlock at 10:30 instead of noon on these days because we talk 11:00, and that gives me some time to do that. But the morning is pretty ... I went to Honeycomb this morning, had breakfast, I was reading, and then I got to do one session at Concord, and then I'm here, and now I can decide what I'm going to do for the rest of the day, but I don't ... It's unwritten. It's unwritten, all options available, and I have not ... That's where my executive function Needs some direction, because I have all options, and I'll often end up really just not doing anything. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And I think that along with your sense that it's about a hundred minutes ahead of you, it's sort of like attention reality. You've Dean Jackson: Got Dan Sullivan: About a hundred hours of attention reality, but I Dean Jackson: Also Dan Sullivan: Think that there's a certain amount of having taken action during the day that makes it a really satisfying day. And if you do less than that, it makes it not such a satisfying day. Dean Jackson: I agree, 100%. Yeah. Dan Sullivan: But my sense is that taking action has a requirement, and that is it could be verified by other people that you took action. I think it's Dean Jackson: Where-That's what I mean Dan Sullivan: By- Where there's a social reality in the sense that ... Yeah, I think I did something important here, but I don't have any witnesses. I wouldn't have any witnesses to that. And there's a sense where we can spend all the time we want by ourselves thinking things through, but if there isn't a social verification, somebody tests you out, Dean Jackson: That was really- Yeah, I've been thinking about that as there's a ... That is easy when there's a transcript or record of an interaction. No matter what, we have created and documented this podcast episode as evidence that we did something today. This is on the permanent record. And I think that on the other side, when I'm doing it by myself, there has to be an artifact that is an output of you thinking through and developing a new tool is a necessary component of actually creating the artifact of that tool that you're thinking and everything that goes into it ultimately has to manifest as this document that can be entered into the permanent record. Dan Sullivan: Yep. Yes. Dean Jackson: What an adventure life is, Dan. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, and there's some sort of cloud landing of police Dean Jackson: Which Dan Sullivan: Can investigate and actually say," Yep, Your Honor, we can say that he actually did what he said he did. Dean Jackson: He can Dan Sullivan: Actually say that. Dean Jackson: "Yes. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Yeah. That's amazing. Dan Sullivan: It's interesting. I get a feeling ... I have voracious appetite for investigating what the creation of AI, especially robots going along with them, what kind of psychological, emotional, intellectual, political, economic impact that this is having, because it's new. Dean Jackson: Yeah. Dan Sullivan: I mean, you can go 40, 50 years and not have something new like this. And I think that this seems to go to the heart of everything. This new capability gives you a chance to reexamine almost everything that humans do from a new end. But what I'm feeling about this is that it's not so much what we're going to find out about technology because of this new technology. It's what we're actually going to find out about humans with this Dean Jackson: New technology. Yes. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. My sense is that you and I would not be having this discussion if ChatGPT had not come out in November 30th of 22. Dean Jackson: I don't Dan Sullivan: Think we'd be having this conversation. Dean Jackson: No, I agree with you. I think you're absolutely right, but I think it was 23, actually. Dan Sullivan: Was Dean Jackson: It 23? Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. Dean Jackson: <ol> <li>23. But you look at the ... Yeah, I think about just the cascading things like we don't even think twice about the fact that we're talking on a phone that didn't exist 150 years ago and that's in the big grand context of things and the fact that it's being recorded digitally with the microchip is really only 50 years old, that that's even a possibility, right? So the acceleration of things and being recorded in the cloud on the internet, which is only 30 years old, and now here we are with something that's only 30 months old is like, what a time to be alive. I really do think, Dan, Matt, I would love the same kind of ... The book that I got for you, the big change from 1925 to 1950, I think it would be amazing to see the 50 years from 1975 to 2025 is crazy. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. It's really interesting because everybody's freaked out by the war, the war. And I said, "You know something big is happening when people go to war." You've reached a point of irreconcilable difference with someone else. But the other thing is that I always say, as I think about the war with Iran, I said, "I don't think it's a war with Iran. I think it's a war with China that Iran was a customer of Chinese technology and they've been making big claims about their technology. They can do everything else." And my sense is the US, it's too dangerous to go to war with China because they have lots of nukes, but it's okay to go to war with a customer of China who has bought all of the Chinese technology and let's just show the Chinese how much their technology is actually worth and do it in a couple of weeks, everything they claim for. But my sense is that AI has really entered the realm of technology, wartime technology and that the ... I mean, everybody say, "This is a disaster, this is a quagmire." I said, "This has been the most one-sided victory in the history of the world." I mean, they just wiped out everything in the first 24 hours. The entire leadership was gone and everything like that. But Dean Jackson: I Dan Sullivan: Think that they're using it as an example. This is a safer bet type of war to have because nothing's going to happen to the United States. I mean, it's half the world around, but we can test all sorts of stuff, but especially the organization, military effort. I mean, that's where I think ... I don't think the AI is so much in the weapons. I think the AI is in the coordination of everything like that. And we're just going to send a message to the Chinese, "You thought you were ahead of us and we're just going to show you that you're still about 20 years behind us." Dean Jackson: Wild. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Dean Jackson: Well, here we are. Dan Sullivan: I don't like being in them, but I find wars interesting. Dean Jackson: I'll have to take your word for it. Dan Sullivan: I'll keep you up to date. Dean Jackson: Exactly. Yes, that's the best. Dean Jackson: I Like it. Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah. I was doing it. But anyway, it's interesting, but this time sense, I think we're really onto something with- Dean Jackson: I do too. Dan Sullivan: ... just exactly how are you conceptualizing and how are Dean Jackson: You Dan Sullivan: Organizing your time? I think it's at the center of everything human. Dean Jackson: Yeah. So I think I'm going to continue developing that, the dreamer, designer, decider, dispatcher, and doer. That's in one of those five roles at all times. Dan Sullivan: Yep. Alrighty. Dean Jackson: Yeah. All right, Dan. Always delightful. Talk Dan Sullivan: Next week. Talk next week. Okay, thanks. Bye.</li> </ol>

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What is Welcome to Cloudlandia?: Join Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan as they talk about growing your business and living you best life in Cloudlandia.
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