Join Dean and Dan as they plant their flag in a new frontier.
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep066
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Mr. Jackson, it's been a while.
Dean: I has been. And here I am and here we are.
Dan: I'm noticing that even a two-week break makes me jittery. But if we don't talk every week it makes me kind of jittery.
Dean: It doesn't feel the same. Does it? Yeah.
Dan: There's so much new stuff to talk about. And I had a question for you.
Dean: Okay. Tell me.
Dan: Joy of Procrastination. We're now in our 36th month, so we started three years ago.
Dean: It sounds right.
Dan: Yeah, 36 months. So, we started in July 16th. That was when we started.
Dean: Yeah. We're approaching it.
Dan: We're in the 36th month but when we get to the end of this quarter, the 36th quarter ... 36 months, we're in our 12th quarter.
Dean: Right. Here we go.
Dan: That will take us to 36 months.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I'm good with math but sometimes I'm weak on my concepts for applying math.
Dean: You get the ideas. Right.
Dan: So, I had a question. I had a question you for you. What have been the three biggest joys for you of looking at procrastination? What have been the three biggest joys for you?
Dean: Well, number one, the greatest joy was at the genesis, to the beginning, because I still remember the feeling and the look on my face when you shared the idea with me, and we were in, of course, the Bistro, the Select Bistro, and you were outlining this idea with me. There's very few occasions in your life where you hear something that just completely fits and it's completely revolutionary, and you can't believe that you hadn't thought of it like that before.
And I just remember my initial thought to you was, "How long have you known about this?". And I remember you saying, "No, no. I just thought of this." And then our conversation that led to the immediate start of the podcast, literally less than 24 hours later.
Dan: Yes. Yeah, I do too. And, you know, I was reading that story and I'm going to apply it to your first Joy, and I was reading how in North Dakota and in Texas, West Texas, which are the two biggest oil ad gas areas of the United States right now. North Dakota being number two to the Permian Fields in West Texas, which probably within the next five to 10 years will be the largest fossil fuel field in the world because there has been a huge drop-off in the big Saudi Arabian field.
But I was thinking of natural gas, which for 100 years was simply burned off when it came out because the natural gas came out before the oil had shut out through the derricks. The old deal, they would see a derrick and the oil would be shooting out the top, but preceding that natural gas that came up and they just considered it a waste, so they burned it off. It's called clearing off. And so, it was just a wasted, annoying phenomenon of getting oil reserves but you had to burn off the natural gas first. And today natural gas is considered almost as valuable if not more valuable that oil.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And actually, a lot of people don't know this, but the switchover in the United States from coal-burning electric plants to natural-gas-burning electricity plants has actually made the U.S. two things: one is, now it's the number-one energy exporter in the world from corn energy. Do you remember early in your lifetime, maybe in your teens, when the U.S. was just totally dependent upon corn energy?
Dean: Or on oil, the 70s, the gas crisis, the oil crisis. Right.
Dan: The oil crisis. Right.
Dean: I remember in my entire adult sort of weak lifetime has been that we're always going to run out of oil.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: That was the thing. This is a big month for both of us, birthday months here.
Dan: Yes, it is. Yeah, I'm going to be turning 53 and you're going to be turning 75. So, now 53 years later I've never heard that we're going to to run out.
Dean: No. There was a concept called Peak Oil.
Dan: Yeah. Right. Peak Oil. And actually A lot of people don't realize this, but this was actually the birth of the environmental movement. The Green Movement actually was triggered by the notion that we're going to run out of oil. And then, about halfway through the 53 years that you're talking about, all of a sudden a bunch of real entrepreneurial pioneers came across two ideas. One is that natural gas is incredibly valuable, and that you can actually get it out of rock. And the fracking, the whole fracking notion that seems to get both natural gas and oil out of rock with very advanced micro-technology and other kinds of technology.
And it's really, really interesting because if the complaint against oil is that it's dirty, natural gas is very clean. So, you've brought across an entirely new technology. But the point I'd like to go back to is the burning off of this free source for more an 100 years, and still in some places in the world the big oil fields they still burn off the natural gas because they don't have the means to actually capture it and actually turn it into electricity.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But here is the thing. It's wasted, it's bothersome. It's a negative that got turned into a positive. And the article that I was reading that reminded me of procrastination is that in the oil fields in North Dakota now they're capturing the natural gas at source and using it to generate electricity right in the field. So, all the energy needs for the oil fields themselves, electricity is now being supplied by what used to be a total waste. And they've now taken this resource and actually turned it into electricity, and so they're electrifying all the oil fields. Everything that's needed to actually operate the oil fields is now being driven by what used to be a waste product at the oil fields.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: And that seems to me to be analogous to what you and I have been doing for three years with procrastination. Instead of querying off and wasting the time, and the effort, and the thinking, and the emotions that we're tied up with, procrastination has a negative thing. What we're now doing is we're using it as a source of fuel. We're now using it as an energizer to actually identify the whos that we need to actually achieve our goals instead of us doing the hows. Or trying to do the hows, because we weren't really doing the hows.
Dean: Right.
Dan: We were stuck and paralyzed. So, it just shows you how concepts can be a source of energy.
Dean: The thing is, it's worth almost 36 months into a now 12 quarters into it, and routinely asking, "Okay, procrastination, what have you got for me today?" And that is a well that never runs dry.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And it's just ever green. It’s constant. Right at the top of my mind, right there, always right there, it's bubbling, gushing to the surface.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: You never have to mine.
Dan: So, talk about that because I think we're onto a second choice it seems to me.
Dean: Well, yes.
Dan: Well, there is just the recognition of the possibility.
Dean: Yes. The recognition. And that was the concept that you shared. That was the joy that really realizing that this is the thing that it's like this always-on thing that points us in the right direction. And that awareness really was the fuel that led and put direction to this thought of who, not how.
Because that's been something that when you think about that why, in the exploration of why we procrastinate or why that happens is often because it's addressing something as the big thing rather than the action that needs to be taken and softening my verb into the power verbs for me, which are brainstorming and talking. Talking is the big thing now. And that's been something that came out of this that you really realize that that is the killer move.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: That's the one that both of us have evolved to a point now where it's almost exclusively what we do. And so, given that permission or that sort of shift now to really surround everything with having whos that can take that output of what we're talking and turning it into all the things that we need it to be. And that's the thing. Whether the talking is really true about whether it's giving directives or creating content like we're doing right now. Creating, getting our ideas into a digital form.
Dan: Yes. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about this as I look at the world that treats procrastination as a negative thing, it's a silent world. There's no talking in the negative procrastination world.
Dean: Right. That's true, because it's like this thing that everybody is hoping that nobody finds out that they do this. Yeah. It's a secret and everybody sets up things to cover their tracks so they can seem like they don't procrastinate.
Dan: It's shameful. It's a shameful thing. So, the last thing that people will openly talk about or even bring up the subject is that they're a procrastinator.
Dean: Yes. Nobody wants that to be a known about them, so they go to great lengths to set up workarounds and set up things that pad deadlines and give themselves time to get something done, and to be able to show the appearance of things happening and moving towards the finish.
Dan: Or complaining and blaming.
Dean: Yeah. Yes.
Dan: And shifting the topic, you're sort of, "Well, I don't want any attention to be on me so I'm going to show that there's something wrong with the situation, there's something wrong with the circumstances."
Dean: Yeah. "I really need this to get this done."
Dan: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: Shifting it externally. Yeah. So, it's really interesting but I'll tell you a particular joy I have. Since your 53rd birthday is on the horizon here. My 75th. And one of the questions that has come up to me, when you think you'll run out of ideas.
Dan: Well, let's see.
Dean: I'm 75 and I'm looking at the next 25 years now as a workable structure and framework for me, so that would take me from 75 to 100. And I said, "Now, is there any chance that I would run out of ideas?" And I said, "My future is safe within procrastination." Okay? So, what I'm looking is, I've got a creativity life insurance policy for the next 25 years.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And all I have to do is come up with goals, part of which I don't know how to get there, and which means that my goals, my ambitions for something bigger and better actually confronts me with a how that I can't do. I was part of the silent community, the global silent community, then I would stop. I would have to stop at 75. "Well, I can't go any further because I'm just running into hows now that I just can't pull off. But, since we have a trick and we're saying, "Well, yeah. Well, that just means you have to go out and find some even bigger and better whos that you've ever discovered before, and simply explain to them what it is that you're trying to achieve, and off to the races you go. And that's exciting and it's fascinating.
Dan: I would relate this back to another conversation we had quite a bit of time ago and beyond three years, was one evening I was simply asking you the question of what would fascinate and motivate you for the rest of your life. And I just wonder if you would actually connect the conversation we had there, because that was a big one for you, I remember.
Dean: It really was.
Dan: Real big, so how do you connect that to the Joy of Procrastination? So, if you can put those two concepts together, how would you see that playing now?
Dean: You know how when you've gone down a path and you can now look back to the thought and realize how perfect that path is, because that is almost exactly now. The very beginning of May, seven years ago now when we had the big conversation, because I remember that the very first Breakthrough Blueprint event that I did was in June of seven years ago now. And I just remember booking the hotel for the six weeks from when we had the conversation, literally the morning after having the conversation. And this was the first time that I had heard you use that particular articulation of unique ability in a way. Right?
Dan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dean: When you were saying that it's really internally about what's going to fascinate and motivate you, I looked at that and I look at it now, how the Breakthrough Blueprint checks off so many boxes that are right in my go zone. For one thing, it's based around one thing, and that one thing is the framework. The Breakthrough Blueprint's framework would be a profit activator. So that is the fixed framework that is the overriding thing. Then you bring in the variables, which variety is my favorite thing as a quick start and as a ABD, and all of it that I like to have new inputs.
And so, having 12 people, new people every time, the event is never the same twice. So, I'm getting to use my quick-start abilities to line up and challenge my knowledge of and all the stored-up experiences of how the profit activators apply to all businesses. I've had so many, so many experiences of that now.
Dan: Hundreds. Hundreds. Right?
Dean: Hundreds. Yeah. And I look at that as an asset that makes each new layer of information, and experience, and testing, and results have layered on top of it that it becomes more and more valuable, like machine learning. The more and more I do it, the more and more inputs I have. The more and more experiences I have with it, I get to see how all of that vast experience applies to anybody in any situation. And we've been able to take things that we've developed for a financial advisor role and apply that to a dance studio, or take something that we learned with the dance studio and apply it to a law firm that helps people with a very specific import/export visa.
And so, it's just so funny how it fits right into my procrastination proof sort of way of doing it. I'm the who for that particular part of it, but all I have to do is be there for the three days. So, it fits in my world and that makes up about 270 of the 415 hours that are required to maintain my base business, but it's stuff that only I can do. It's the highest-value things that I do.
Dan: Yeah. Here is a question for you because I have a process too here that I started back in the 80s, which is BODA, the strategy circle but it's really BODA. And it's a vision opposition and then you transform the obstacle into action and the action creates it then. I think that probably if you asked me how long I've been thinking about procrastination before I shared it with you, the actual connection didn't happen until about two days before we had our conversation.
But I've been dealing with this formula for allowing the opposition to come up, and one of the things that I bypassed back in the 80s was the notion of the positive-thinking community saying never think in terms of the negatives. Just think about the positives. And so, there was a discouragement on the part of people who prided themselves on being positive. They wouldn't allow any negative thoughts to come into their mind. And it struck me that they were doing a kind of a lobotomy on themselves by doing that, because it's actually our brain engaging with the negatives that actually makes us creative. And so, I've been doing that. So, you say for 34 years I’ve been creating obstacles as a positive. In other words, I had been saying that all those things which seemed to oppose our goals are actually the raw material for achieving our goals. But I didn't have the procrastination lynch pin. I didn't have that until a couple of days before we actually had our conversation, genesis conversation. We'll call it the genesis conversation. So, in some ways I had been thinking about it for a long time but I hadn't seen the connection that we talked about. And I've always said, "Well, you don't know anything until you know the obstacles." Really all the money is in the obstacles and I've been thinking about that a lot.
Dan: So, can we say that your total confidence now about the Eight Profits Activators is the-
Dean: Wow! Did you hear that?
Dan: What was that?
Dean: Did you hear? That was the loudest lightning thunder-strike that I've ever heard.
Dan: In Orlando.
Dean: In my lifetime. It may have blown a transformer or something. Maybe that's why.
Dan: Did the lights go out?
Dean: Did the lights go out? I don't think so. No, no. Okay so far. Yeah, so far so good.
Dan: Yeah. There is an energy source, but however, we don't really have the capability of dealing or actually capturing those things. Yeah. Anyway, so, it's really, really interesting because going back to the question, "Are you ever going to run out of ideas?" I have the same sort of insurance that you do. Just because of the way my mind works, I'm always thinking of something bigger and better in a particular area of business and my personal life. And the moment I think of that bigger and better thing I put measurements to it and I put a deadline to it, then immediately I'm confronted with the obstacles. And as long as I take the who-not-how approach there's no end of the growth and there's no end of the fascination and motivation.
Dean: Yes. And I think that the thing that I'm learning about this is that the only thing slowing us down is the ability to rally the whos in a positive way to keep up with the whats that we can identify. And that's really the fun thing. That's where the creativity is envisioning the whats, the what you really want to have happen. Of course, you've had so much training with that and spending 25 years every day saying, "What do I want?"
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And that's a big skill, I think.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And I think that the people who have the biggest achievements or the biggest accomplishments are really the people who cannot limit themselves in the size or the scope of the whats that they can imagine.
Dan: Yeah. And I've noticed that. I'll talk to people and I'll say they seem to be up against some sort of limitation and being in a coaching role with them I'll say, "So, what do you really want here? What does it really look like?" And I notice that there's a lot of interference in their thinking coming from somewhere. I don't know where it's coming from, but they say, "Well, I don't know." And it's kind of funny. There is this question that I've noticed. It's that if you did know what it looked like and they can answer that question, they can answer that question immediately.
Dean: Right. Right.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And so, it means that in some part of their brain there's actually an answer to the question, but there's all sorts of static that's getting in the way of them identifying that thing. It's like the bother exercise over the past quarter. You'd say, "Well, this really bothers you. But if it didn't bother you what would be the fast solution to this?" And immediately they have the solution.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, I think I mentioned to you that's one of the things. For years and I've brought it back now, it's I would always ask what would make my life better? And then I would ask the things like What am I tolerating? What are the things that bother me? And that's a good way. When you can identify them and you can have a magic wand . I had a yellow legal pad that I would imagine if I could just write it on this yellow pad that it could disappear or be made real.
And that's really what it comes down to. It's our ability to articulate what we want, or what's bothering us, and what we want instead, or how we want that to look? And then know that that can be taken care of. Which reminded me then: I'd love to hear you talk more about actually this idea. The first time I heard you say it was in Game Changer with Total Cash Confidence.
Dan: Yes.
Dean: And there may be something to that. Maybe talk a little more about that.
Dan: Yeah. Well, in the Game Changer program which is, I'm told that more than a year old in the Coach program, it's where you are at a point in your entrepreneurial career where you definitely have unique capabilities that are not only making life good for you. In other words, you're able to have the lifestyle that you want, you have all the teamwork that you possibly want right at this moment inside your company, so that your role, if I use your number, you have so much teamwork in your life that your entire lifestyle can be paid for with slightly more than 400 hours of concentrated achievement every year.
And that's total cash confidence. That tells me that you have total cash confidence. So, then you say, "Okay. What if I were to play at 100 times game?" I'm going to say that my capabilities right now are 10 times, and I certainly am comparing myself to who I used to be. 225 times since the start of the Strategic Coach program. And I'm working far, far less but the whole teamwork aspect of Strategic Coach with all of our team members and our other coaches, sales and marketing, and everything it takes to run a company, that's vastly bigger than it was when Lucius, Carlos, myself, and Babs.
And so, I can undertake projects out in the world with other entrepreneurs who have the innate capabilities where money is not my main concern that this is going to produce money right off the bat because if I needed the money then I couldn't play the game. I'd have to be concerned where's the money going to come from? But the further I can move money down the line it's going to be there and it's going to be really big, but I can explore other things, like acquiring new capabilities, exploring how collaboration works.
I can create new types of concepts out of this. It's such a uniquely creative activity that I can create entirely new kinds of concepts. My credibility goes up because I'm combining my capability with someone else. Yourself, for example, on the Joy of Procrastination. If we had to get money out of the Joy of Procrastination that would take all the joy out of it.
Dean: That's true.
Dan: And we'd probably procrastinate too.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: It would throw us back into procrastination and it would just gum up the works, really. The two of us I can tell have a commitment that this is just an enjoyable activity that we're going to do for the rest of our lives. And what's interesting is, great concepts come out of our conversation, which actually produce all sorts of new moneymaking possibilities.
Dean: Yes. That's true.
Dan: But we're not concerned with it because we know how to handle the money and we're totally confident that the cashflow is going to come out of what we've already mastered.
Dean: Yes. That's true, and sometimes, in those kind of things, like the reward comes even just from doing the thing. Like this collaboration has been one of the great joys of the last three years here. We're in the middle of these conversations that really feel very selfish that we're just having this conversation. We're not paying attention to the fact that this is something somebody else is listening in on consciously.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It's like, this is so helpful to us that it's just a nice serendipitous benefit that other people get to listen in.
Dan: Well, the interesting thing is, because I think that whoever is listening into this knows that we're just more or less doing this for fun.
Dean: Right.
Dan: We're doing it for serious fun. We're seriously interested in the ideas that will unpredictably emerge from the conversation. But other people find that very enjoyable. I know I have a number of fans who, at the next workshop that they're at with me, they make a point of saying, "Oh, that one you did then, oh, that idea, that's really interesting." But think about what we're doing, because we're already cash-confident in another part of our life. This is an activity. It's not pure. It's not free-time activity. It actually would fall into really exquisitely focused a type of activity.
It's sort of a focused activity, but the fact that we've moved any possible money that might come out of this way to the end of the line, but we're focusing on other rewards, so, content, credibility. And I think the other thing is connections. In other words, we'll each talk about connections we've made as a result of the thinking that we're doing here, and that there's kind of a community. There is the Joy of Procrastination community that's formed out of this, and then we both have a lot of confidence.
And the interesting thing is that there's all sorts of moneymaking activities that are presenting themselves to me quarter by quarter as I go along. Now, not all of them really interest me right now, but they do interest me that they're starting to emerge as a possibility. And I can sit there and say, "Well, that might be interesting," and everything like that. But I know that they've been created out of the very activity that we're doing.
Dean: Yes. Yes. It's so great. I love that. When you really think about it, I'll say to people often, "If you've got it." Like you were talking about the audience of people, because I have the same thing. People will always say they listen. Also, people email me with something that we've said on the thing, or they'll email a link that would support something that we were saying, which I'll pass onto you.
When you start to think about just the activity of this as pure procrastination-proof sort of thing that we know when we're going to do it, we've got the time locked in. We know exactly when it's going to happen, and we don't really have to give it any amount of thought or preparation. There's nothing to procrastinate. It's just show up on the phone and start talking. And that's really what, for both of us, is the thing that makes it effortless.
Dan: Yeah. I've come up with an idea that I'm developing into September's book. So, I have a book coming back in June that's now at the printer called, Who Do You Want To Be A Hero to? And that got generated out of the Game Changer. And then there's a new concept, which is called Free Zone Frontier, which popped out in the last quarter of Game Changer, and I'm using America, the moving of the frontier in America, the anniversary of which is next year. From 1620 to 1890 there was a moving frontier in the United States, which at a certain point reached the coast of the Pacific.
So, that was for the lower 48 states. That was the actual frontier experience, the geographic frontier experience. My sense is that the U.S. as a country in 1890 then went into a huge systems creation period of history, which lasted about 80 years up until the 1970s. And I was thinking about this yesterday because I'm mentioning that in the book. And from around 1890 to 1970 the U.S. created the interstate highway system. So, the completed the highway system in the United States from coast to coast was established.
The electrification system, the movement of electricity across the country. The telephone, the national telephone system, the national radio system, the national television system. And it's a free trade system, so they worked out all the interstate commerce and everything. So, it was massive. And then there was the national air system, the airplane system. And all that happened during that 80-year period and it required a fairly large bureaucratic organization to pull that off, government and corporate bureaucracies to pull that off.
So, you had about four generations of Americans that were not on their own because there was this huge system building and then there was the military system because there were major wars, global wars during that time. Two of them, which were active wars and then a third one which was a standoff war with the Soviet Union. And then all of a sudden with the introduction of the microchip, all of a sudden the entrepreneurial period took off again. And physically you could create free zone frontiers on an individual basis.
If you think about the great microchip heroes that we've known over the last 50 years or 60 years, and the things that are being done with the digital. Think of what you were able to do digitally with creating competition-free zones for the residential real estate. You created a free zone frontier for as many real estate salespersons who wished it. They didn't have to take advantage of it, but if they wanted it they could have a free zone frontier with existing real estate, just by conceptually overlaying that concept. That's how they could spend their entire real estate life inside of a single neighborhood.
Dean: I was just thinking that same thing now fits even in Cloudlandia. Now we've got the whole frontier.
Dan: No, no. But I'm just saying that you have to have cashflow confidence to actually sit back and look at digital possibilities. For example, I've talked to you about the deal that I have with Ben Hardy, the writer, who now wants to take my small books and make them into big national globally published big books. So, the first one that happens he kicks off in June, and then that book will be ready by the end of 2020. So, it would be about 16 months start to finish, and that's a normal publisher sort of thing.
But the way I get it, I simply said, "Well, Ben, you know, just to make this a really good collaboration, we'll take as our reward the benefit of your capabilities and we'll take as our reward the actual having this book out, and we're shooting for a million big books, so that's very definitely a New York Times best-seller, Wall Street Journal best-seller.
And I said, "And, you know, people will read this book and they'll get excited and they will inquire about joining the Strategic Coach Program. And so, my reward is when reading the book that we write together, they'll sign up for a Strategic Coach Program. But meanwhile all the money related to the book itself, well, that will be your money." I mean, if I wasn't cash-confident I could never even entertain such a thought.
Dean: Right. Exactly.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And that's a big shift when you move into that kind of collaborative role, versus being like you said, right?
Dan: And I tell people, they said, "Well, why are you letting him have all the money?" And I said, "What money?"
Dean: Right.
Dan: "What money?" "Well, the money he's going to make from writing the book." And I said, "Well, there was no money unless I had a writer to write the book."
Dean: Right. Right.
Dan: I said, "I didn't have an agent, I didn't have a publisher, and now he's linking up with all sorts of geniuses on how you promote books like this, and how you take bulk sales. It's like if you sell bulk 200 you can make each one of them actually be an individual purchase, which really counts in how many books you've actually sold. And all that now, who is that doing that? That's coming out of Dan's budget.
Dean: Uh-huh. And that's not anything that you wouldn't even know how to do that.
Dan: I wouldn't even know who to talk to.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I wouldn't even know who to talk to and I wouldn't even comprehend what can be done.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I think that was a great question you were asking me about cash, double-cash confidence, because that's the whole thing. And somebody said, "Well, what if he makes $10 million?" I said, "Well, it will make him more committed."
Dean: Right. Exactly. Yes. I think that's absolutely true, and that's the kind of thing where you're creating opportunities out of nothing, out of something that was free.
Dan: Free. Actually free.
Dean: Yes. Uh-huh.
Dan: Yeah. In other words, if I'm not concerned about the money, then all these capabilities are actually free.
Dean: Right. And whatever is happening there, if it's not big of a success that he's going to make $10 million, the outcome of that for the reach and what's going to happen for Strategic Coach is phenomenal.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: And you weren't doing anything else. It was all just given to him. He was the who that made that happen.
Dan: And I didn't require any how except the how that I've already demonstrated.
Dean: Right.
Dan: And that how I actually enjoyed doing. Like, creating the little books I actually enjoyed that. And even there I started off with the first one thinking I would have to do it all myself, and now I've got a team of 10 other people who reduced my hours per book down to 35 hours per book. So, in the past I've written books where I scored 500 hours over about two years, and now it's 35 hours per quarter.
Dean: Yes. Isn't that amazing?
Dan: Yeah. You know, I think we're really onto the threshold of an entirely new entrepreneurial world here, Dean, I mean personally. And I think that if you talk about the definition of entrepreneurism is someone who takes three sources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And my feeling is that what prevents taking resources from low to high is actually your need for immediate cashflow.
Dean: I think that's true. It really is. I'm in a bit of a trance because my mind is just trying to calculate the scope of what we have as an opportunity here in this free-zone frontier. When you start thinking about just your rundown of what's happening in the last 80-year period here. It was 80 years. You were going down this thing of all of the stuff, the entire auto industry, highways, electricity, radio, TV, airports, all of this stuff that has literally been in the last 100 years or so.
And now we're at this opportunity where with Cloudlandia I just feel like Cloudlandia is the ultimate free-zone frontier that we're faced with here. And with your citizenship in Cloudlandia comes a radio station which we are broadcasting on the Cloudlandia radio network, globally with our podcast that costs us very little money. When you really think about the small cost of the tools and the bandwidth or whatever we require to get this out to the world, but essentially we have access to it through these phones. And the same thing with TV. We have a TV station where you could broadcast the same thing. We have our own post office where we can connect with every single individual for free. It's just ridiculous when you think about this, and as that's growing now, what are we up to? Billions? About seven billion people on the planet? Five billion?
Dan: 7.8, I think. Yeah.
Dean: What are we up to with the whole wide world?
Dan: I check every six months or so because it's going up.
Dean: But we're approaching a billion online? What are we online?
Dan: Yeah. Somewhere. Yeah. I think it's one way or another. I mean, the whole thing is that they're now closing in a major project and that is that there's still a billion without electricity, which is going to be another huge jump because what keeps people in poverty is their lack of connectiveness and they don't have the power to be connected. Almost everything bad that can happen to human beings happens when they're not connected, because bad things can happen and no one even knows about it. There's now way of communicating with each other in order to organize. There’s no way of just letting the world know what's actually happening.
So, it's a really fascinating world. When I think of 1944 when I was born, what was possible then. You were still inside the big systems creation process. To be an entrepreneur and try to make your mark as an individual entrepreneur for the first 30 years of my life, and even till the personal computer, I think it was probably in 1978 or 1979 when the first personal computer came about That's the first real crossover moment. There were computers but they were very, very expensive and they were very limited what an individual could do with them or even have access to them.
If you look at all the early pioneers, Bill Gates and Steve jobs being probably the crossover heroes, because they're the ones who made it possible for billions of individuals to have access to their own computers, that's the late 70s. And so, that's really the threshold. That's when I think that going back to the free space where single individuals are now creating the free-zone frontiers again, I think that really is back then. But it's an interesting thing. I'm going to actually introduce free-zone frontier into the Ten Times Workshop next just to show people that they actually are taking advantage of a lot of free-zone frontiers that they don't even know about.
Dean: Right.
Dan: One of them is being more ambitious from 75 to 100 than I was at any time up to 75. That's a free zone frontier.
Dean: Right. Exactly. As I think about it, this is going to be, I think, the era of freeing versus doing. Freeing is the power skill, and it's like ideas. The whats, that's the only limitation. It's creating better ideas.
Dan: Well, I think it's driven by your own personal goals. You list figuring better as a capability and that's what drives using the procrastination, the automatic pop-up of procrastination and then saying, "Oh, well, this kind of bothers me. And if it didn't bother me how does it get handled? And who handles it instead of me?" So, it's almost like a generator we've created here. It's an automatic and the raw material that goes in as the fuel is the automatic procrastination that's triggered by bigger and better goals.
Dean: I'm just thinking now, like, when we're in the computer age, getting everything up to where all the problems were solved, all the capabilities were built out with personal computing and internet programming and that kind of thing, I think there might be now is the opportunity for whogramming. Whogramming, we'll call it. I think that's the new skill where if you're treating this connectivity to who capabilities online as a circuitry in a way, and you can Whogram the algorithm that makes it all happen, that I think is the power skill.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: We have to think of the words for that.
Dan: It's all triggered by wanting what you want. Not wanting what you need. See, I think wanting what you need was the economy up until a short time ago. In other words, going back a couple of hundred thousand years, humans wanted what they needed and that got them from one day to the next at the most minimum. But now we crossed over into an entirely different world where it's not wanting what you need. I live in Toronto, you live in Orlando. You're smart enough to have more than enough cashflow.
So, as far as needs go that's pretty well handled. Now the big question is, are you wanting what you want? And I've got a full thesis that I've been following because I'm interested in the socialism within that story and as a topic. This wouldn't have even been brought up in private 40, 50 years ago because the great enemy was the Soviet Union, which was socialism.
Dean: Communism.
Dan: Well, yeah, communism, which is socialism plus armed people showing up in the middle of the night and taking you away. And so, America was the counterpoint to that. But I'm really, really interested now that we're passing from a world of wanting what you need, you're actually into wanting what you want, and the words socialism. So, I've been playing around with this for the last few months. I said, "What's actually going on here with people actually?" Because the people who are most espousing socialism are actually really, really good at capitalism.
Dean: Ah, yes.
Dan: And I think it's a bit of not wanting competition. I always suspect that when people go socialistic it's because they've got theirs and they want to make it difficult now for anyone else to actually get there. So, let's regulate, and limit, and tax, and everything else but not us. So, anyway it's an interesting thing but I think where this crossover from the world of wanting what you need to wanting what you want I think it's great. I's a threshold moment psychologically, intellectually, entrepreneurial thing. Yeah.
Dean: If only there was a book that shared how to want what you want.
Dan: Yeah. I think it would be useful. I think it would be useful.
Dean: Wherever books are sold, available now. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. Well, this has been a fast hour.
Dean: It really has, Dan. It's never long enough.
Dan: Yes. Well, are we on for next week?
Dean: I'm in London. I'm flying to London.
Dan: You're in London next week? Okay. So, you're going for two weeks?
Dean: I'm going to have to stock up on ideas during this two-week period. Yeah, my 75th birthday actually happens when I'm in London. That's two weeks from today, actually. But I'm all primed.
Dan: This has been very helpful for me to get a handle on what's happened over the last three years with our wonderful vehicle here.
Dean: I love it.
Dan: Well, if I don't talk to you, happy birthday.
Dean: You bet. And when is yours? Yours is the end of June?
Dan: Mine is in May. No, mine is May 10th.
Dean: May 10th! May 10th!
Dan: I'll be before you.
Dean: Yeah. That's really interesting. We're cosmic twins almost.
Dan: That's exactly right. Yeah.
Dean: Okay, Dan.
Dan: Okay.
Dean: Well, I'll talk to you soon.
Dan: Okay. Bye.