Join Dean and Dan as they talk about a procrastination breakthrough. The introduction of a new thought technology... How to get Who'd-up.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep049
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Mr. Jackson, I am never going to run around and desert you.
Dean: I love it. I thought about that. I had a-
Dan: I don't know. Our listeners don't hear that, do they?
Dean: They do not hear that because it only starts when you and I pick up together. You get, of course, this-
Dan: I was just thinking. There's a theme song. Tell everybody what the theme song is that's-
Dean: So I've set it up so that when on hold, our on hold song or our waiting song is "Never Going to Give You Up" by Rick Astley, so one of us gets to hear a little bit of Rick Astley each week.
Dan: Yeah and I try to take a different piece from it every week to show my commitment to you, recommit to things that I'm not going to do to you in the future.
Dean: That's so great.
Dan: Today it was I'm never going to run around and desert you. There we go.
Dean: That's the best.
Dan: You're in Florida. Do you have a cold?
Dean: I am in Florida and I do not have a cold, but it is allergy, so yes. I appreciate your concern.
Dan: I don't know if you knew this, but there's a country called Canada where it's virtually too cold for half the year to actually have allergy problems.
Dean: No allergies in the winter, that's exactly right. That's so funny. I have to reconsider that.
Dan: You had a good thing going, Mr. Jackson. Anyway, want to report a procrastination breakthrough from the past week.
Dean: Tell me.
Dan: You will go through this if you haven't already done it because I sent the materials for the 10x workshop in the first week of December.
Dean: Perfect.
Dan: Anyway, you'll be in for your 10x workshop. First of all, because of the who not how development, I created a new word and the word is who'd-up.
Dean: How do you spell that? Who dat?
Dan: No. It's W-H-O apostrophe D hyphen U-P, who'd up.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Who'd-up is a stronger version of freed up, when you get freed up. But who'd-up-
Dean: Oh, I'm who'd-up. I like that.
Dan: Who'd-up is where you have a bigger and better goal and instead of you launching yourself into how to get there, you stop, you define the what and why of the project and then you get someone else, another who to do the how.
Dean: I like that. I like what I'm hearing a lot.
Dan: Anyway, we've set a goal for everybody in the 10x program, that we're now going to follow quarter by quarter going forward. It's called 1000 who'd-up hours.
Dean: 1000 who'd-up hours. I like that.
Dan: Yeah, 1000 who'd-up hours. The timing on it is everybody's choice and not only is the timing... For example, I have 1000 hours that will be completely who'd-up and you are completely who'd-up when over the next year you don't do any of those hours that you did where you used to do the hows. So it's a point in the future where every year after that, you're no longer doing the who'd-up hours. It'll actually take me til the first of January of 2023 to be completely who'd-up.
Dean: Oh man.
Dan: Yeah. But I'll probably get 150 or 200 over the next 12 months which is a substantial amount to get back. Roughly about 200, well, it is 200. 200 come back, and this is the point I was trying to make, my breakthrough. I have discovered that I never procrastinate on any project when I'm working directly with someone else.
Dean: I've discovered that same thing. I look at this right here, I've never yet procrastinated a Joy of Procrastination podcast recording.
Dan: No. No.
Dean: It's without fail.
Dan: Not only that, but I probably get ready and prepare more for our podcast so that I'm completely here. Everything's set. The phone is at 100%. I've got my procrastination priority scorecard out in front of me. The reason is because I know that if I'm interacting with you, good things are going to happen and that's exciting. That's not a how.
What I did, because I'm actually presenting this 1000 who'd-up hours to the 10x workshops this quarter, I immediately came back and we have a short version of the impact filter called the fast filter.
Dean: Fast filter, mm-hmm.
Dan: Fast filter and I jotted it out. I went and talked to Anna, who's our, Babs and my scheduling genius and she's the one that keeps us 12 months ahead in our schedule. I said to her. I explained to her what I wanted. I said, we're just going to start with Dean, we've got a scraping noise going on. Do you know what that is, this kind of scraping noise?
Dean: A scraping noise?
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: Do you hear it right now?
Dan: No.
Dean: Okay. Maybe it's something I'm doing. I'll see. I'll be aware now, but I didn't hear it.
Dan: Are you multitasking?
Dean: I'm not. But let's see.
Dan: I thought maybe you were doing your podcasting sculpting at the same time.
Dean: No, no.
Dan: So anyway, it was just going quite noticeably there. Now it's completely silent.
Dean: Okay, good.
Dan: I just explained it to her in five minutes and she said okay. She said, "Well, I'll talk to some other people." But I wanted to start off with impact filters and I said, "When I do an impact filter, I just want to talk it through with someone and they fill in the boxes for me." I'll back and forth at each box is the way I like it and then that comes to me as a PDF and then we send it off to whoever it is. That was on the Wednesday and on Thursday they had the person, staff member who's a writer, does blogs for us, does a lot of work with people who are trading program materials, marketing materials and she said, "I'd be delighted." She said it would be exciting to do that.
Dean: Wow. It's funny because I just got the updated 12-month schedule for our recordings here. That's kind of a different thing. I can't think of any other person that I know that has that level of clarity on their calendar a year out. You're only one that I have that level of interaction with all outlined out, and it works. It works. I've taken from you this approach of setting out my calendar for a year. Last year was the first year that I had done that, this year, the second. I find that level of clarity is good to really kind of work around.
It's funny how it's kind of counter to the way that I've traditionally thought about my time in that my constant pursuit has been to keep my schedule clear thinking that that's the ultimate freedom sort of thing. But what I'm finding is that there's even a deeper freedom in the freedom to have my time blocked and accounted for, which is ironic. You wouldn't have that kind of understanding there. It's almost like I'm able to have more freedom in the time that's not accounted for by having the time that is accounted for.
Dan: If I can give a little background explanation of where this started with me. Up until we started the workshop program, in other words, for 15 years I was a one on one coach. I would think a quarter ahead because my coaching sessions with one on one clients, we determined them a quarter ahead and then there was variability at the last moment. There was shuffling around. There were cancellations. But once we got to the workshop program where we're putting... We started off with six, making a commitment to six people, but there were four dates in the future when we'd show up.
Then once you went beyond another person, then it required six people putting it in their calendars. It kind of locked into my consciousness that you can't fool around with dates at all. To give you an example, we were in Chicago when 9/11 happened on a Tuesday and there were my workshops by this time in 2001 were 40 to 50 individuals. I actually had 60 on the day of 9/11 itself. So of course, they went about their business. Some of them stayed for the whole workshop. I kept about 25 of them and 35 left. I told them at 9:00 because the New York stuff had happened before 9:00 Chicago time.
Dean: Yeah, 8:45 right?
Dan: Yeah. "You all gotta make a decision in the next 10 minutes. You're either here for the day or you're on your way back home, but you can't be somewhere halfway between. You can't be here and thinking about what's happening back home. And if you're not going to be here in the workshop, then start the trip home." Our staff worked heroically for about four hours and we got everybody a mode of transportation to get back by noon. By noon and they were on their way back.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: Okay. We had clients in from California, so we immediately got Rent-A-Cars for them. One guy just bought a new truck, a new Econoline and he drove it.
Dean: Just buy me a truck.
Dan: No, he had a dealer in California and he says, "Look, I'm just going to buy a truck here. Can I get a good deal from you at the other end?" The guy said, "Sure." He says, "Absolutely. I'll give you a good deal." He just bought an Econoline. He had six passengers and they just drove home. That's an entrepreneurial thing to do.
Dean: Yeah, right.
Dan: You can't rent any trucks. Well, just buy one then resell it when you get there.
Dean: Right.
Dan: But anyway, but there were two individuals. I had a Thursday workshop and two individuals had come in from overseas and they couldn't get back. They were in Chicago, so I did the workshop for two people. They said, "You don't have to do that." I said, "Nope. It's in the schedule. You're here, I'm here, let's do the workshop." So we did it as a nonstop conversation. They'd do the exercise, we'd talk and everything else. To this day, one of them is still in the program and he says to this day. He says, "That's one of the high points of my professional life is you actually doing the workshop."
Dean: You know what's funny? I thought about that. One of the best workshops that I've ever been a part of is when I was part of a small workshop with you when, I believe it was when Peter Diamandis did this first workshop that we had. We had six people.
Dan: In Toronto.
Dean: In Toronto.
Dan: You came to the Toronto workshop. Toronto, yeah. I remember that workshop.
Dean: Yeah. That was great. Setting it up in the calendar like that and being committed to it. You're right. It's in the calendar, it's going to happen. You're going to do the workshop, two people or not. That's fantastic.
Dan: That part, for Babs and me, that part of our calendar is totally fixed a year ahead. We actually established at a quarter before the beginning of that 12-month period because we have to give everybody their dates when they're thinking about renewing. They have to have their dates for next year. It's actually 15 months. They get the news, so it's put out there. And then once those are in the schedule, then we schedule the time set ahead for all our free days for the same period of time going forward.
Dean: I was going to ask you what comes first, whether it's the workshop days or the free days.
Dan: No, it has to be the workshop. It has to be the workshop because you're dealing with hundreds of other people's schedules and you got to make that priority number one, that if you told them you're going to be there, they'll immediately launch into getting their tickets. If you order your tickets, you're ahead. I don't know. Some of the airlines don't allow you to do that, but as far ahead as you can. Then you don't want to fool around with their hotel, everything about it.
By launching a date, you've actually traded an ecosystem of commitments on the part of other people out there and you don't tamper with it. The only workshop I've ever missed, this is our 30th year next year, the only workshop I've ever missed is actually my mother's funeral. My mother died.
Dean: Oh boy.
Dan: But we didn't cancel the workshop, we had another coach in. She did the workshop and we gave everybody in that workshop an extra quarter.
Dean: Oh, that's nice.
Dan, how many workshops days do you, I'm interested to be an advocate for everybody. I'm interested in how many workshop days you have. I'm thinking now as I'm coming into the last quarter of the year, it's a good time to start thinking about next year now for me even. But how many workshops days and free days do you do?
Dan: I'm going to give you a number. It's between 44 and 48 and the reason it's between there is that we have workshops that'll merge.
Dean: I gotcha.
Dan: You have erosion. You'll put two workshops together, so it's not two days, it's one day and it takes a workshop day. But I'm always starting new workshops too. But I'm keeping it right in between, let's say, the high 40s and 50s, probably not skip over the 50s.
Dean: But that's in a quarter? Per quarter?
Dan: Per quarter, yeah. And then you multiply. No, that's for a year, so it's 12, 13 probably somewhere between 11 and 13 a quarter, depending on the merger schedule.
Dean: Okay. So that's it. 11 to 13 workshop days per quarter. Or per year I mean. Or yeah, per quarter.
Dan: Per quarter then four times.
Dean: So 44 to 48 workshop days.
Dan: 44 to 48, yeah.
Dean: Okay. For some reason, I thought it was more. I thought it was more days than that.
Dan: Well I'll tell you, the biggest year I'll tell you how extensive it was before I had other coaches. In 1995, I had 136 workshops a year. It was about 34 per quarter. I was working my tail end off.
Dean: Yeah, wow. That's something. Wow.
Dan: So I'm at about a third of what I was. I'm about a third of what I was.
Dean: You're who'd-up.
Dan: Yeah, very who'd-up.
Dean: You've who'd-up two-thirds of your calendar there.
Dan: Yeah, it's really interesting. I have a custom beer maker from South Carolina and he was in one of my 10x workshops. I said, "You know, that'd make a great custom beer, who'd-up."
Dean: Who'd-up, Who'd-up Pale Ale.
Dan: Who'd-up and he says, "You'll have it the next quarter."
Dean: That's so funny. I love it.
So then you block in the free days. How many of those have you do?
Dan: The free days and then everything else would be scheduled probably in some cases, a quarter ahead and some cases just weeks ahead. So I've got these skeletons, if you can think of it. I've got these two skeletons which are the workshop days and the free days. And then Genius Network would go in and we'd try to get those in a year ahead of time. As a matter of fact, Joe will phone us when he's putting in the Genius Network. Joe Polish will have Eunice call me regarding all the Genius Network workshops that Babs and I are going to be in for the next year before they set the dates, so that it works.
Dean: I gotcha. That's great.
Dan: And then my podcast calls. I should say that I have other podcast series and each of them are pushed out 12 months, so we've got those in the schedule. I mean those are movable because it involves one individual. But once you get up, you're involved in the lives of 40 to 50 other individuals. You got to fix it and just stick to it.
Dean: I like that. That's a really wonderful thing. That's good. But you do block your free days for the whole year?
Dan: For the whole year, not what we're going to do with the free days.
Dean: I gotcha, but you know when they are.
Dan: But yeah. When they're available. Babs and I sometimes will actually go right up to the last moment. I've seen situations where we planned to use a week away and we'll get the day before or the day being the day before and Babs says, "You know, instead of doing that, why don't we do this?" And I say, "Oh, that's great. That's great." You know why we do that? We're both quick starts and any new ideas are usually better than any existing idea.
Dean: Yes. That's true. That's true.
Dan: For you, too. For you, too, isn't it?
Dean: Yes. That is absolutely the truth. But I think that's kind of-
Dan: But you can't do that when other people have already scheduled. You can't fool around that way.
Dean: Yeah. No, I get that. That's encouraging. I look at that for some reason, I thought there was maybe even more structure in the way that you set things up. But it's really the main chunks are, like you said, the skeleton. That's kind of what I've done, too. I choose my breaks, blueprint dates. Knowing now, I've gotten into this nice rhythm where I know the June in Toronto and London and July in Amsterdam and August and Sydney and the rest in Orlando. I know I'm getting into that rhythm and that's good to have that freedom on the schedule.
Dan: Yeah. And then if you operate on the basis, I can't schedule that far ahead because I don't know what's going to happen, then the world is in charge of you. The world's in control of you. You aren't in control of the world. So my feeling is, people say, "Well, it's becoming so uncertain." I said, "Well, just establish a forward framework of everything you know you're going to do right now. But they said I might have to, well, change it at the last moment then, but structure it right now.
The more you do it, the more you find you have more and more control over the forward. First of all, it's your time. You own it 100%, nobody else owns it. I mean I'm an entrepreneur, nobody else owns my time except where I've committed and people have paid money. That's the only place. But there, we're mutually in control because it's an agreement. It's a teamwork agreement.
Anyway, but going back to the kicking off insight there's this, more and more, I don't accept the few use of strategic coach tools. I love doing mindset scorecards and I could go for two or three hours. I'll never procrastinate on a mindset scorecard. What comes off of that for me is the outlines for my books. I love doing the outlines for the books. So those are two by myself activities, but I don't procrastinate on them. I love the activity.
Dean: Right. Those are my favorite verbs, brainstorm and outline. If we go all the way back to the procrastination-busting verb, that's the ones, brainstorm and outline.
Dan: Yeah. What about yourself? What's been showing up? Because it's a week ago since our last podcast.
Dean: Yeah, exactly. I've had some interesting things. I've done a lot of thinking just because I'm observing different people in my life in different stages and I'm thinking about how this applies to me as well. We mentioned in Toronto when we were together there, we had Tom in the room, Tom Cook, real estate agent-
Dan: Yes indeed, yeah.
Dean: Just passed 70 years old and a conversation that we had been having was he was kind of thinking about winding down. But in the conversation, I could sense it was a reluctant winding down. I could see that actual thought going on is, well, but what am I going to do now? Really, his whole life has been he's been passionate about real estate and using real estate as his both entertainment and sustainment. It's like when you're passionate and you enjoy something, it becomes just part of your blended life.
You love learning about it and experimenting and applying stuff. He's a strong quick start, too. I look at there were other people in that room. I'm not sure whether you met Zac Pasmanick who-
Dan: Yes, I did. Yes, I did, yeah.
Dean: Okay, Zac's a wonderful guy who for, even longer than Tom now, he's not quite as old as Tom, but 40 years of being in real estate. He's a guy who his whole life has kind of blended around that. I can't ever imagine Zac retiring. I find that I'm seeing people at that stage and there's kind of a crossroads for them.
Then on the other end of the spectrum, I had a friend recently who they sold their business and they now are 100% cut off from the business. Their period of help or whatever, transitional period is over, so they've got the money. They've got the cut from the business, just went on a vacation that I was thinking about their position of being 100% cut off from having one foot back in the business kind of thing whenever they went away to now having zero thought of it, waking up with 100% freedom to do whatever they want to do next and not having a clear sense of what that is.
I thought, wow, it's really interesting the opportunities for procrastination in the transitions where there's not a clear, definite path.
Dan: Yeah. It's really interesting. I have a newish podcast series with Mike Koenigs. You know Mike.
Dean: Yes, I do.
Dan: Do you know Mike?
Dean: Yeah, of course I do.
Dan: It goes back. You guys were covering the same territory in the early Internet marketing days.
But anyway, its Capability Amplifier is the name of the podcast series.
Dean: Nice.
Dan: And we were talking about capability, one's sense of capability in the world. My sense, if I think back, I don't really know that I have any capabilities unless I'm in teamwork with other people where what I'm doing is being judged outside of myself as being valuable. In other words, you get applause, you get money, you get praise. It's that constant being in teamwork with others which actually tells me that I actually have the capability. I mean I can think I have the capability in my own mind, but if I don't test it as being useful for other people, then I have a feeling I don't really know whether I actually do have that capability.
You're talking about when the person retires, now I'm able to do all sorts of things. But you were thinking about all those things while you still had a capability. So when the workplace, the marketplace capability no longer exists, do you still feel you have the freedom to do those things? Or your sense of freedom, do you still have the feeling of sense of freedom?
Dean: Yeah, I wonder it's kind of-
Dan: Well, I'm never going to test it.
Dean: I'm never going to test it. I mean that's really, that's so funny.
Dan: I just want to run some tests there to see. Why don't you retire and go out there and tell me what it's like?
Dean: Yeah. I'm quite enjoying observing it and vicariously thinking it through. You kind of interesting that It's a different thing in your 30s and 70s, I think. Or is it? I don't know. Do you feel any different in your 70s than you did in your 30s? Do you think about it differently? Were you able to think this way in your 30s?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. No. First of all, my 30s was a terrible decade. My bankruptcies and my divorce and my business failure, I had three major surgeries, bone breaks, which my orthopedic said probably came from extraordinary stress, emotional stress and psychological stress I was going through. He said you were just putting extraordinary strains on your body as you were going through and it showed up as three major surgeries.
It's interesting. The 30s was, I mean if there was a decade of my life that I can apply the word, sucked, to are the 30s. The 30s really sucked.
Dean: The 30s sucked. That's funny.
Dan: Anyway, the 70s are a dream compared to the 30s. Part of the reason is just the massive more capability I have in terms of other people's skills. I can think of something and 90 days from now, it's true and I haven't really been involved too much in getting it done. That's a dream for me. That wasn't true in the 30s at all. Probably it was miserable because I lacked that capability.
Dean: Maybe that's true. That comes down to the freedoms, I guess, maybe that was it. If you think about your time freedom, you were describing that you were kind of scrambling. You were doing more workshops or doing more one on one in your 30s.
Dan: No. It wasn't even that far along.
Dean: Oh okay.
Dan: I started coaching exactly when I was 30, so it was about two months later. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have a business model. The whole concept of coaching was not well-established. It was still well a corporate world in the 1970s. I was 30 in 1974. You had to explain what coaching was, first of all, before you could even interest them in what you were doing and my model wasn't well-developed. I was in a marriage that didn't work out. It's just a lot of headwinds. I was just getting hit with headwinds.
The world sucked in the 1970s, too. You had 18% inflation. Here in Canada, it was 18% inflation. It was killing people on fixed income. I often I think of things that I don't see any use for at all. I say the decade in my 30s, it's like February. I could just eliminate February from the calendar.
Dean: Altogether, yeah.
Dan: Altogether. I would add 15 on January or 14 on January and 14 on March. It would just go from the 35th of January to March 1st.
Dean: Right. That's perfect. Just skip it altogether. Nothing good will come to it.
Dan: Even the word, February, depresses me. I mean it's not just-
Dean: Because it's got that stupid R in there, February.
Dan: Yeah, February. I mean visually, it just has no redeeming features. I'm talking about Northern climes here. It's like raccoons. I look at raccoons and I say I know every species is supposed to be important, but I can't see how this one serves any purpose at all, raccoons. Even just-
Dean: Let's not even get started on leap years. They've tried to be all awkward with the 28 or 29 days. I mean come on.
Dan: Yeah. Anyway, that was bad. That was a bad decade. But when I look back, it was a bad mindset decade for me. I didn't have the right mindsets. If I compare the mindsets that I had about myself, about my relationship with other people, my mindsets about how you actually create a success and achievement in the world, I just didn't have the right mindsets back then. I had skills, but I didn't have the mindset.
I'm pretty good now. I mean I have to tell you. If I'm operating on a bad mindset or an incorrect mindset today, it doesn't go more than 24 hours and I've shifted it.
Dean: Because you know more. You've had more refining.
Dan: No, I immediately know If something's not working, I immediately go to my own mindset about it before I look at anything else. I say, "You know, you're just not thinking about this in the right way." That actually gives you a lot of sense of control when you know that how you're looking at it is really the key to improving it.
Dean: Yes. I find that to be true for almost everything. I mean it's really, it's all on the inside. That's for sure. That was really-
Dan: Yeah, not everybody believes that. There's a considerable portion of the global population who have another notion of what's wrong.
Dean: That's true. But I'll tell you-
Dan: All you have to do is look at the news every day and know that some people don't know their own mindsets are what's causing most of their unhappiness.
Dean: Yeah, it's interesting when you were talking about the mindset things, I've always kind of had that thought, but when I read Jamie Smart's book, Clarity, that was something that really was a great book in just getting that absolutely clear that everything is 100% from the inside out, not from the outside in. Everything is we're creating that reality based on our thoughts and what our brains, our minds are the greatest special effects department in the world, that we can create all these emotions and all this reality from our thoughts.
Dan: It's kind of interesting because I'm thinking continually about the distinction that you established some time back between Cloudlandia and the mainland. I was just reading, I think it was revealed yesterday that there were on Facebook, 50 million personal accounts on Facebook got hacked.
Dean: I just saw a headline about that, but I don't know what happened. What was the-
Dan: Well, the whole point is it's not a good year for Facebook for a lot of different reasons. I mean they're hitting a lot of headwinds and they're mainland headwinds, they're not digital headwinds. They're mainland. I mean that's a mainland experience, getting 50 million because it affects the trust level of the organization. If you know that the organization that says, "We'll protect your personal information," well, they've never promised us that. Facebook's never promised that. They've resisted promising. Their business model is premised on resisting promising that they will protect your personal information because, in fact, they want to do anything they can do with your personal information.
But now he's got hacked. I get a feeling that the walls are going up around Facebook. I get a feeling that they're in a defensive position now. Where a couple years ago, three or four years ago, they were cosmic, cultural heroes, now he isn't, the organization itself. We're starting to feel towards digital institutions the way we feel for a lot of mainland institutions. You can't really trust the people when they have a lot of power and they have a lot of wealth and you don't really trust them. I got a feeling he doesn't have my best interests at heart. Nothing illegal or anything else, he's just not contemplating anything of taking my...
And there's a new guy. Not a new guy, but an old guy's coming back. He says, "I'm going to create another"-
Dean: Internet. I saw that too.
Dan: Internet, yeah. He's going to build-
Dean: One of the founders of the Internet.
Dan: Yeah, one of the founders of the Internet says, "I'm going to build another Internet." He says, "Now we've learned what kind of safeguards for individuals you have to build in." It's going to be called Solid.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: The platform's going to be called Solid. I think that's a beautiful thing because it shows that the models out there, while as good as they are in how they've leaped things forward, they have deficiencies. He's picking up and he says, "I'm going to build it." One of the big deficiencies is the safeguarding of personal privacy and property. I find that it's great. It's very stimulating to me that someone is thinking in those terms.
Dean: Yeah. Last week we mentioned the one to one future and we talked about that idea of voluntarily giving up our privacy for convenience is a big thing. It's an interesting dynamic, our desire for our privacy to not be revealed kind of thing, but yet our willingness, it's just so much more convenient to let Amazon store my credit card so that I don't have to enter in my credit card every time I want to buy something. And for them to know what I actually prefer to purchase so that I can go back and see what I bought and say, "Order that again."
It's really an interesting dynamic that we have of, we want to protect our anonymity, but we also want to-
Dan: I'm reading a book right now and I have a discussion group series every quarter with a dozen strategic coach clients who are local. It's been going for 17 years. We're actually in our 17th year, every quarter. Really interesting and then people will recommend a book, so we have a book every quarter. And then the members of the group send in articles usually in digital link and then I have a team member who actually downloads all the links and formats it in 8 1/2 by 11 and then we turn it into a book.
Dean: I love that. I remember seeing a few of those. Yeah.
Dan: Usually the downloaded article book is more interesting than the single author book because of more dimensions. It's got a lot more dimensions to it and no dimension demands too much of your time. The book is a single dimension and the author demands a lot of your time. Except me, mine only last an hour. Yours only last an hour.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Dan: But the one for next time is called, Who Do You Trust? It's talking about the shift of trust in the world right now from mainland institutions to digital networks, the profound shifts. It's a very profound shift going on right now. A lot of the seemingly things falling apart of the daily news. I went through The New York Times this morning. We get The New York Times in paper version. I just went through and there were about, in the front section, there were about 26 articles, 25 of which had a negative headline about something falling apart or something at risk.
Dean: Wow.
Dan: Yeah. I said it's like a Richter scale. We're like at a four Richter scale right now as far as institutional solidity. I said, including The New York Times itself. It's being shaken because there's probably floors in The New York Times building where they used to have 100 people on the floor and now they've got 35 and the rest of the space is empty. It's hard for the people on that floor to think that their future's bigger than their past.
Dean: Yeah. That's something. I mean it's kind of interesting that you have been reading the paper versions of it. I haven't asked you this in a while, but I know you used to read six newspapers.
Dan: Six, yeah. A day.
Dean: Do you still get the physical newspapers or is it mostly online now?
Dan: Yeah. During the week, I get two. I get The Wall Street Journal, which to me is still the best newspaper in the world. And then I get the local Toronto National Post, which is barely tolerable but it's better than the others. We've got four dailies in Toronto. Toronto's very unusual in North America that still have four daily papers. London must have 10 daily newspapers, paper papers.
I read it, but I'm noticing The New York Times, we used to get a daily and the rest of them, I just let them go because they just piled up and I didn't get to them. There are only so many fireplace fires you can have to get rid of that amount of paper.
Dean: Even with three houses on the compound now, still there's only yeah. That's pretty funny.
Dan: In the cities, you can't just take a pile of newspapers out-
Dean: And burn them.
Dan: ...in the yard and burn them.
Dean: That's so funny.
Dan: Now they send people around. They discourage you from doing that.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Well, they have the recycling.
It's funny how I've never asked you this, but I always said my top thing was that I like to wake up every day and say, "What would I like to do today," as kind of a time metaphor for the freedom that I look for. But I've never thought to ask you, how would you describe what yours is? I'm fascinated by how your days are much more structured. Do you prefer, do you have-
Dan: Yeah. I mean I have my structured days which are workshop days. On a workshop day, there's three things that I'm going to do, but the three things have to do with the workshops. So I never put any competing activity with the workshop because we have to show up at around 7:45 in the morning to prepare for the workshop. It goes to about 5:45. It's a 10-hour stretch and my attention has to be 100% there. I won't allow, I don't do any other coach work. But I do have ongoing conversations with workshops members when they come in and then I'm trying out new concepts.
All the three things, I set myself three things for the day. All three of them are within the framework of the workshop on a workshop day. And then I have days which are creating new materials, actually getting materials ready for two workshops because I have the 10x and the Game Changer now. And then I have podcasts. I have podcasts. Yours is the only one that I do that's not during business hours. This is Sunday, which really works for me and it works for you, so that's why we both chose it. I don't know if we chose it because it works for us. It was just we agreed to do it on a Saturday and you said let's do it on a Sunday.
Dean: Yeah, let's do it tomorrow. Let's get going. Right, exactly. I mean that's the reality. And then you're like, okay. How about next week?
Dan: Hey, wait a minute. We didn't agree to do it on Sundays. The only thing we agreed on was tomorrow.
Dean: Yes. That's so funny and true. But it does work really great.
Dan: It does work. It does work. Because I always do work on Sunday. Saturday I never do any work. The only thing coming close to work is when you and I have lunch at Jacques' Bistro. But that's usually just a tour of the horizon, not real work.
Dean: No, that's not real work. Exactly.
Dan: Yeah. I do three things. I coach. I create new materials for the workshop and then I do marketing. I podcast with Paul into the area of marketing and also product development because I get a lot of ideas out of the podcast discussions. Then I have videos that I do. I do probably five to eight videos a month, usually in two, probably it might take me 90 minutes to do, they're short videos, five minutes, six minutes here. Webinars, I do webinars. And very, very infrequently I'll do an actual live presentation, Toronto or Chicago.
Dean: But doing that is Q&A. Even that is Q&A, right?
Dan: Yeah and I'm doing it more and more with panels. Like I'll have three or four veteran coach people on a panel and then what I do is I'll do a concept and just explain it for about five minutes and then I tell the panel that this is a concept and they explain to the audience what they do with the concept, how they've actually put it into play. It works like a charm.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, there's nothing like seeing something really applied in the field.
Dan: Well, the social proof. I don't know whose name that was. Do you know who created the concept of social proof?
Dean: It was Robert Cialdini who brought it to my attention.
Dan: Yeah. But somebody saying great things about your product is always more effective than you saying great things about your product.
Dean: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right.
Dan: I mean if they have credibility.
Okay, what did we cover today?
Dean: Well, let's go back to the beginning.
Dan: We shot through that hour really, really quickly.
Dean: We really did. But the thing I was really, what I was interested in getting was this insight into how you're planning your calendar here because that's what's on my mind right now as I'm going forward. I look at that I schedule what would be the equivalent of the workshop days, my Breakthrough Blueprint events so there's nine of those times three days that's-
Dan: Nine events?
Dean: Yeah. Nine events, 27 days.
Dan: It's actually five days because you have a day getting there and a day getting back usually, right? Or something like that?
Dean: Oh yeah. I guess if you count that. I mean the ones here in Orlando are literally right down the street from me.
Dan: Yeah. That day.
Dean: Yeah. There's that day. But I count those, yeah, just count the main days there. Then the podcasts, I've done a really good thing of blocking off the ones I do with you because it's you and I and we can coordinate our schedules through the whole time. This Sunday time works out well. For the other podcasts that I do, the two main ones, The Listing Agent Lifestyle and my More Cheese, Less Whiskers where I've got a different guest each week, I block off those times. Like this Friday was the time for those, so I do every other Friday as I'll do two of those at a time at 10:00 and noon.
And then two Thursdays a month, I set aside all of the live calls that I do for, I do a live call for our GoGo Agent members and then I do a live call for my Email Mastery program. Both of those calls are set up where it's live coaching and brainstorming and interacting with people who have things that they want to talk about and get shared. So there's no real preparation. For none of it, do I have any real preparation, which is great. And so what I'm finding is that that's been a new thing that I've embraced. I came a long way because I used to look at having anything on my calendar as a blight.
It was almost like a setting up that that's not a successful day in a way. But now I'm realizing that those having those days set up allow the other days to be completely free in a different way because I'm not exerting any mental energy trying to make stuff happen or figure things out. I know with certainty what's going on.
Dan: Yeah. I am just thinking, this thing of you have as much control over the future as you're intentional about things that you want. In other words, people say, "I don't have any control over the future." Well, that's their intention, so they have no control over their future. Or if you say, "I will continually exert more control over my own future." Well, that's your intention that'll be true. To a certain extent, it has to do with that fundamental mindset, whether you feel you can or you can't or you want it or you don't want it. But whatever that happens to be, that's what you're going to get.
I just wanted a lot of control over my future, I don’t want the world to interfere with me basically. I don't want to get interrupted by the world. I don't want to get blindsided by the world. I don't want to get splashed by the world. So I've created all sorts of protections so I can just pursue my own intentions as I go forward. I'm immensely better at it at 74 than I was at 34. I see this as real growth skill that doesn't diminish as you get older. It actually gets better.
First of all, what you think is important actually simplifies a lot as you get older. I've noticed that.
Dean: Well, it's really the big evolution for me, especially in the last year since we had this conversation on one of our podcasts, that my shift from waking up and saying, "What would I like to do today," to adding in just the thought of, "What would I like to do tomorrow." Because I find that the days that I wake where I've already thought ahead what I would like to do today, where it's already organized, are the most relaxing, enjoyable in every way, both on free days and focus days.
Knowing that I've woke up knowing that all the wheels are in motion to make it so that I can go to a Breakthrough Blueprint workshop and not have to have any thought of anything else. You can't pull that off in one day. I can't wake up today and say, "You know what I'd like to do today? I'd like to have a dozen people in a room here and talk about marketing for the next three days." That has to require some thinking ahead and say, "I'd love that to happen, so when do I want that to happen? I want that to happen on these nine times during the year."
Dan: Yeah. Plus, you can get other whos involved with that and you have to-
Dean: That's it. Now I'm completely who'd-up and all I do is... No, but that's true. That's the point. All I do now is those things. It's so great. I love this, who'd-up.
Dan: That's the only alternation I would see having your black sweatshirts or black T-shirts that just have the word, who'd-up, on them on the front.
Dean: Well, that could be the catchphrase of my cow because that's who I've been wearing, my cow, as a symbolic representation of being who'd-up.
Dan: Yeah. Wonderful talk, Dean.
Dean: I love it. Thanks, Dan. Bye.
Dan: Bye.