Welcome to Cloudlandia Ep164: AI, Employment, and the Future of Human Connection
In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, Dean and Dan explore the rapid transformation happening at the intersection of AI, work, and human relationships. Dean shares insights from an AI marketing conference where attendees split into two camps—those excited by technical possibilities and those overwhelmed by the pace of change. The key insight? Focus on the "what" and "who" rather than getting lost in the "how," treating AI as a tool that handles the backstage work while humans shine in front-stage interactions.
The conversation takes a sobering turn as they examine how AI is fundamentally reshaping employment markets. Entry-level jobs are vanishing as companies choose AI over inexperienced workers, and the educational system continues training students for positions that may no longer exist. Dan shares a fascinating study showing how teachers' cognitive profiles have shifted dramatically toward fact-finding and rule-following—exactly the skills AI now replicates—while entrepreneurial thinking remains uniquely human.
They discuss the growing value of authenticity in an increasingly automated world, from the appeal of live podcasts to the irreplaceable nature of genuine human hospitality. Dan shares his successful framework for using strategic thinking in political campaigns, demonstrating how human connection and listening remain the foundation of influence. The episode concludes with a powerful observation: as AI attempts to take center stage, the real response will be a return to valuing live, in-person human experiences more than ever.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
Links:
WelcomeToCloudlandia.com
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
ListingAgentLifestyle.com
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Dean Jackson:
Welcome to Cloudlandia. Mr. Sullivan. Hello there. There he is. How are you?
Dan Sullivan:
Good, good.
Dean Jackson:
There we go. Well, you are in Chicago now?
Dan Sullivan:
I'm in Chicago, yeah. Reasonably mild for this time of year. It's just a little bit above phrasing, still not too bad. Not too bad. Well,
Dean Jackson:
It's reasonably perfect here, just exactly at room temperature in the courtyard. Yeah. So there we go. You had a great week with the live 10 times talk podcast with Joe this week. That was good.
Speaker 3:
I think
Dean Jackson:
That there's a real pendulum swing right now in live, craving live and authentic and real stuff. It's a pretty interesting juxtaposition this week because I spoke at a conference on Monday and AI bought/marketing conference that Perry Belcher was holding in Orlando. So about 650 people there and it was just speaker after speaker sharing all the amazing things that are coming, that they're doing with generative AI and agentic AI, all the things. And we had a panel at the end of the day with all the speakers and I noticed two types of questions. It was open for Q&A. So people would come up to the mic and I noticed that there were technical people asking technical questions about the mechanics of how do you string together these syntax and using all this language of what the behind the scenes, the things that are making things happen.
Dean Jackson:
And then there were other people who came and were sort of like deer in headlights caught with feeling overwhelmed that they're in the wrong room, that they're so far behind, they'll never catch up. And it was really what struck me is it was, I said, the best thing if you're a creative person, a visionary in this, is the best thing you could really do is just pay attention to what they're doing, what's actually possible to get an idea of what the actual applications are and how you would see this working for you because that's what your strength is. And note who is doing these things and just focus on the what and the who and just completely bypass the how. Don't worry about how to do any of this. I said, this room is full of people who are ready and will do, which is see how it could apply.
Dean Jackson:
And that's a ...
Dan Sullivan:
I talked about about- Could you restate that? You blacked out for about five seconds there. Oh,
Dean Jackson:
Really? Okay. So
Dan Sullivan:
We didn't. It's what you said, the room is filled with people who know the how. You don't have to worry about the how.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I said, the thing is that I talked about the self-milking cow, that the biggest frustration is that sometimes the creatives are worrying about having to be a self-milking cow where they have to milk themselves and pasteurize it and package it and take it to market, all the things. Where if you just focus on making the milk, you can surround yourself by farmers and do all of that other stuff and just free yourself to be a cow. It was funny to see just the shoulders relax and you could hear the collective for those people, for the people in the room that were in that situation.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. I've had the same experience talking to strategic coach clients. And I have it in the workshops, but not so much because the people in the workshops are there to think about their thinking about what they've been doing and what they're doing next. But when I'm in a more social setting, and in my case, it would be when I'm in one of our two main offices, Toronto or Chicago, and it's lunchtime and there are other coaches coaching the client. Then at lunchtime, I'm in the cafe and as many as eight or nine other people will come and join me for lunch. But the last three times that I did that, that was probably in December. The entire topic for the entire lunchtime hour was AI, which is interesting. I mean, to compare it a year back, it wouldn't have been that way a year ago.
Dan Sullivan:
So it's a topic that's grown in importance over the last year. And one of the groups was a first year group. They were just in their first year of strategic coach. And a woman asked me, she said, "How are you looking at this? " And I said, "Well, I take a theater approach to entrepreneurism, and that is that there's a backstage and there's a front stage." And I said that, "I think that what AI is allowing us to do is to increase the automation in the backstage so that we can make the front stage more and more human." So it's actually freeing humans up to be in the front stage and because there's so much that AI does, which is sort of predictable and repetitive work that's now using up the time and effort of backstage people and so we can free them up. So we put our emphasis on the interaction of engaging with people and that's largely unpredictable.
Dan Sullivan:
So unpredictable front stage, more predictable backstage. So that's been my approach to it so far. And it seems, first of all, it also has that relaxing impact that you talked about. I mean, it is amazing, but if everything's amazing, it stops being amazing.
Dean Jackson:
I think you're right. And the question I've been asking now, whenever I see these things or I hear people talking about their rather ... And people take pride in the way they've strung together all these agentic bots doing these complex workflows of things. But the question I've been asking both to myself and to them is to what end? That's the thing is I always have to think like, to what end is this? What is the outcome that we're attaching this to? Because a lot of it's just activity for activity's sake, content for content's sake, without really understanding like, how is this making the boat go faster? Is it improving the ability to get a result? And it's a very interesting thing when you work backwards from the outcome that you're looking for, as opposed to just working at the workflow. Everybody immediately assumes that more content is better and that more having ... I've noticed that the proliferation of clones, that's the big thing now, setting up your AI clone to create these videos for almost you.
Dean Jackson:
As Jerry Spence would say, we can all detect the thin clank of the counterfeit. And so it's not exactly as ... If you've got the chance to watch or to give your real life attention units to something that is not authentic, or you can be on a live 10 times talk podcast with you and Joe where you know 100% that it's real and it's you guys and there's like a real gathering of humans. There's a different energy to it.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. I get that feeling. And the other thing for the people who are straining things together right now in January of 2026, how's it going to be any different in 2027? They're still going to be straining new things together, but have they produced everything to be different- Have they produced any breakthrough impact by their straining things together?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. What's the result? That's the exact, that's the thing. That's what I always look at is that, to what end is this going to actually make a difference? I shared with you my new ... The process now of creating my five new thoughts a week of brainstorming the ... Today is come up with the idea day, and then through the week I'll write the five thoughts. And I'm finding this ... I'm just relaxing into this as like a really good thing, but using AI to handle everything beyond me coming up with the actual thought. I write it by hand in my remarkable and just upload the handwritten pages to Charlotte, and Charlotte can read my handwriting and type them out, and then they just get emailed to my team, and that's the end of it. All I'm doing is writing them, right? That's the great thing and documenting them.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And for those listening for the first time, Charlotte is a created entity that's being created.
Dean Jackson:
Charlotte is my personified ChatGPT.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes. Yeah. Well, the big thing, I mean, to use your milking and cows analogy, it seems to me that what those strainers will coin a new name, the strainers are doing,
Dan Sullivan:
Is that they're adding new varieties of grass. They're buying more pasture acres of pasture. They're buying more cows, but they don't have enough time to actually milk the cows they have. And cows, if you don't milk them, one, get sick, they die, or they just stop producing milk because there's no point to it. But if you measure the outside impact in terms of nodal ... Are they become ... To use our four freedoms in Strategic Coach, is it freeing up their time? What I've noticed is it's using up more of their time. The other thing is, is it giving them greater financial freedom, and that sort of is no, but it will when I string the next bunch of stuff together, it's going to ... But that day- Hopefully, right. ... producing a greater financial impact, is it producing better relationships in the world, and is it giving me a greater sense of purpose?
Dan Sullivan:
And what it seems to me is that it's kind of like an activity treadmill. I liken it to gambling in Las Vegas. If you're not the house, you're the loser. Right, right, right.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. And it's very ... There's a whole science to the way that they orchestrate every experience within the casino, including the oxygen levels and the sound that the machines make and everybody running over when somebody, a machine starts beeping and worrying, kind of gives people the chance that, "Oh, I could be
Dan Sullivan:
Next." Yeah. And even the people in the AI world, the big tech companies, Nvidia and OpenAI and now the big ones, Google and that if you're anthropic, if you're not ... And they're desperately trying to be the house. I mean, they're not leading easy lives themselves. They're not easy because they're competing to be the house of houses. And if you're not the house of houses, you're probably, after a while, you're not a house. And so you have that fierce competition, and they're pushing out stuff every day to hope that they can get a bigger audience, a bigger network of users out there, because that determines their status. And it just seems to me like it's ... I mean, it's not ... But someone like yourself who've just decided to have a first class digital team member, Charlotte, and then changed the way you handle your personal time, and now your productivity, your creativity and productivity is going up every week, but your five ideas and you're expanding your reach with people who are listening and reading your blogs and you're saying that seems to me to be a smart approach to this whole world.
Dan Sullivan:
It seems to me to be a smart approach and satisfying and satisfying-
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, that's the thing. That's what's satisfying is seeing the feedback, the interaction, the engagement by posting up these ideas and getting the responses back. But it feels good that these ideas are 100% originated by me and just facilitated the distribution. The packaging and the distribution of it is what is needed by AI. Instead, depending on AI to come up with the ideas and package them and send them out. It is rewarding. Just it's like being able to do ... It's like you say often like, "Can I do this without doing anything?" And there's not a way to extract the thoughts from my mind without doing anything. What's the least that I could do and the least that I could do is do what I really enjoy doing, which is sitting here in my courtyard with my remarkable and writing one thought in 22 minutes,
Speaker 3:
Enjoy
Dean Jackson:
That. And that is the least that I can do and then from there, everything else can evolve.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I mean, one of the changes that I see that's I think a major social economic and probably a political change is what the introduction of AI, the fact that it's now available, has done to the employment markets. For example, what college graduates, whether it's undergraduate for four years or it's postgraduate, what they're finding now, they can get all the degree that they want. They can put in all the study they want, but their chances of getting employment based on their education when they leave university has been reduced drastically because the whole concept of entry level jobs is really, really disappearing in the sense that people are asking them the question, do we hire someone who doesn't have any experience or do we just install an AI program that can be doing the repetitive work that the entry level person would be doing? And they're taking a look and they said, "Well, the AI, the use of the AI is just incredibly cheaper and we don't have to deal with all the startup human problems that you have when somebody just starts a job and that you have to devote training to it.
Dan Sullivan:
You have to devote management to it. " Whereas we can just have a ... I mean, just take Charlotte for an example that if you had a person doing everything that she is increasingly learning for you, you'd have a pretty crowded house.
Dean Jackson:
You're absolutely right. It was very interesting that Perry was sharing at the conference some of the different ... Where it's really up for grabs right now, where the big transition is going to happen is the $110 trillion labor market. That's the thing that's going to be the most effect by this. It's really the whole, the end of the middle management, there's no middle layers required and there's often very little much of the labor stuff like the entry level stuff is happening. I just watched on 60 Minutes last week, they had a segment on the Atlas robot from the Boston Dynamics that is ... Or is it Boston Robotics or Boston Dynamics? The company that makes the humanoid robots and they're just launching these robots into auto manufacturing factories to do the things that humans have been doing. And you see, I've been seeing these kiosks, AI kiosks for restaurants for fast food, like having an interaction with ... It looks like you're talking to a real person, but it's an AI taking your order and you just realize how many jobs are up for replacement.
Dean Jackson:
You see the clear path to that future. I saw Elon Musk was-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, but would you go to a restaurant where that's apparent?
Dean Jackson:
Well, I think that in some cases, if you're going to like a quick serve restaurant or-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, I think it's at the
Dean Jackson:
Airport
Dan Sullivan:
Or- Yeah. Yeah. For fast food, it makes sense, but I mean, there's something to going out and eating in a restaurant besides how fast and efficient the restaurant
Dean Jackson:
Is. You're absolutely right. There's not going to be a Michelin starred robo restaurant. No, that's the hospitality of it. That hospitality is a decidedly human. Human. Human to human.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the thing is that it's very definitely requiring a jump up in terms of how people have to prepare themselves for employment. You can just get a job where you don't have to use much thinking throughout the day to get paid. That's going to be less and less a possibility.
Dean Jackson:
I think you're absolutely right. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's going to be less and less possibility. And the problem is that the educational system, I'm just going to go on a little sidewinder here and tell you a conversation I had with Kathy Colby about 10 years ago, Kathy who created the Colby profiling system of identifying how humans naturally take action to get their results. In fact, Fact Finder followed through Quick Start implementer.
Dan Sullivan:
And she was talking about Phoenix and the county that Phoenix Arizona is in, which is Copa County, Maricopa. And she got a contract where she, they did the Colby on all the teachers and principals, but mainly the teachers in the entire school system of Maricopa County. And she did that back in the early '90s, late '80s or early '90s, okay? And then she had just done it again 10 years ago, which would be 2015. And she said there was just a drastic change in the Colby scores that they were getting from the teachers. And she said in, let's say 1990, the full spectrum of Colby profile was represented by the teachers. There were fact finders, there were follow throughs, quick starts and implementers as their main approach. She said that when she did it 25 years later, it was just fact finders and follow throughs, no quick starts and no implementers.
Dan Sullivan:
But the students stayed the same. The students were across the board, but the teachers were now just fact finders and followers. And it had to do with the change in government policy that you train to the test, you educate to the test. There's going to be a test and you just train them to learn how to take the test so they get a good test and you can pass them on to the next grade. But anything that required Quick Start as part of your approach to life outside of school and implement or outside of school, we're not going to teach them anything about that, but that's the entrepreneurial sector of the world. I mean, if you look at our scores in Strategic Coach, very, very heavily represented with quick start and implementer as major skill sets and everything. So they were driving them, the school system sort of driving people through their education to the exact activities that AI will take over.
Dan Sullivan:
So they're training them for a future where there isn't a future. That doesn't exist. Right, right, right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
That is
Dean Jackson:
Crazy.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. But it's an interesting progression, and then after a while, the teachers won't exist because Babs has this cartoon in her office. I found it in a French bookstore in Toronto, and it's a big cartoon, and it's got a great deal of complexity to it, but when you get up to it, you realize it's just millions of millions of sheep that are approaching and falling off a cliff, except right in the middle, there's one sheep that's going in the opposite direction and the bubble, the word bubble, excuse me, excuse me. Excuse me. Yes. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
I think that's the thing.
Dan Sullivan:
But that's the thing. Once you get into the employment thing, you get the full range. It's political, it's economic, it's social, it's cultural, it's psychological. I mean, this is where this is really what we're seeing and the protests, the protests that are going on in lots of different places in the world, they're saying the protest is about this, but if you dug down to why people are really protesting, they're probably just anxiety written about their future, not so much about the political issue that they're protesting about. It's just that they just kind of feel that they're heading toward the cliff.
Dean Jackson:
I agree. I saw Elon Musk was on podcast with Peter Diamandes this week. I don't know whether it was new, but I saw the thing and he was talking about how in the next 10 years, people won't have to worry about saving for retirement or whatever that we're just headed to a surplus abundance of everything. And that's an interesting take from someone who he's saying it's funny how it's evolving so much faster than they anticipated it would, and every week is a new surprise that even for Elon to say like every week there's a new surprise. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
But abundance of what? What are you talking
Dean Jackson:
About? Of resources. That's what I was curious about. And I don't know whether you've heard that, but I mean the terms of that there will be ... I think he's talking about just as a country will be so productive or an abundance of stuff that everything, a combination of all the vital services becoming less and less expensive, more accessible, more that we won't need, that we'll be able to have that umbrella of sort of basic universal income or ... I don't quite understand how it all fits as well.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's going to be very complicated. I don't think it's going to be completely complicated. For example, I think that anyone who's on your universal basic income, and you have to picture yourself that you're receiving, but you're not contributing anything. You're getting-
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, that's what I wonder, right?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And my sense is that you're automatically, in other people's eyes, you're automatically a second or third class citizen if you're that way. You have no social status whatsoever. You Yeah. You're kind of a layabout and my sense is an individual's sense of whether they feel good about themselves or whether they feel proud. My sense is that they'll feel depressed. I think people will feel very depressed about this.
Dean Jackson:
Well, I just look for evidence of what ... If you look at the ecosystem that Elon is creating, even just within his companies, it's very foreseeable right now. He's created the solar roof, the shingles that you can have on your house that will draw power to the battery wall, that can store that power, that can charge your electric vehicle that will be enabled with full self driving to go out and be a robo taxi while you're not using your vehicle. And so this infinite loop of creating ... So your things are out creating money for you. It's pretty ...
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. But would you want your Tesla out working during the day? Other people in it?
Dean Jackson:
Other people in it. I'll tell you what is fascinating to me though is I don't know whether you and Babs use the full self-driving on yours, but I-
Dan Sullivan:
Not available. Not available. It's mostly not available in Ontario.
Dean Jackson:
Got you. Okay. So let me just share with you how it's evolved for me. We're 11 days into the new year here and I don't think I've touched my steering wheel all year. Literally, I get in the car and I just push the button. I say, navigate to the Florida Hotel. And comes up blink. I push the button and it pulls out of the driveway through the neighborhood, through the gate, through all the roundabouts, the turns, the traffic lights, the everything pulls me right up to the Florida hotel with not a single intervention. I'm literally sitting there with my arms folded. Just relax listening to podcasts. And I just got ... I was in Clearwater yesterday. Same thing. I just pushed the button. So you see now how this is here in terms of where that's all available. It's literally ... Elon is saying the same thing that we're moments away from being able to not even have a steering wheel in the ... None of the robotaxis have steering wheels.
Dean Jackson:
It's not even about that. So you start to ... We're talking about living a thing that 25 years ago we couldn't have even imagined. It's very ... I mean, in Orlando, in Orlando-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, but can you go a lot faster in traffic now because you're not driving?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. So there's three modes.
Dan Sullivan:
When there's a lot of traffic, are you going any faster? Oh,
Dean Jackson:
No. You're going whatever the fastest ... They have a mode called hurry, which a hurry mode is to find the fat, like changing lanes to get there the fastest and the acceleration up and all that stuff. But it's pretty seamless.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, the big thing is you have to understand that Elon is a salesperson.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, he is. Absolutely.
Dan Sullivan:
He's a salesperson.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
And his sales for the Europe are down 15% for Tesla. And the reason is that government subsidies and subsidies cut off on September 30th. And so 2026, there'll be fewer electric vehicle sales to consumers than there were probably last year in the United States. I'm not talking about the world, but the United States. And part of the reason is ... There's a number of reasons for it, but for the most part, the electricity isn't there yet. You'd have to do that. So there's about 50 factors that have to be true from a political standpoint, from the regulatory taxation for this to be actually true. It's like his boring company, the boring company that we would have tunnels under cities.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
It's difficult in the United States because every different piece of property that you put your tunnel under is the property rights of the person who owns the property on top. Okay.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
So the reason ... It's an apply named company and I think so far in the United States, maybe a mile has been drilled so far. And the problem is that a lot of people don't want that going on underneath their property, and they would just say ... Or they want to be paid. If you're digging a tunnel, this is how the fracking natural gas industry works is that there are pipelines, they go down a couple thousand feet and then they go laterally two miles or three miles out, but they have to pay every property owner at the level. They have to pay them a commission for that. So from a conceptual standpoint, you could see how it works, but when he says it's just around the corner, it might be around the corner for some situations where he's doing it, but that doesn't mean that it's around the corner on a big scale.
Dan Sullivan:
Right.
Dean Jackson:
It's very interesting.
Dan Sullivan:
And you're passionate about this. I would say the vast majority of people couldn't care one way or less. I just
Dean Jackson:
Noticed
Dan Sullivan:
That as a- The experience you just had the other day, I've had that experience for 25 years.
Dean Jackson:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. That's what I say is you've been living in the future since 1997. That's very-
Dan Sullivan:
No, I've just been living in a presence. I've just been living in a present where I have somebody else do it.
Dean Jackson:
That's exactly right. And I'm fascinated by it in that there's no other driving experience aside from having someone else do it for you. I'm just amazed by how it all plays
Dan Sullivan:
Out. I mean, yesterday we arrived in Chicago and went down to baggage and our driver was standing at the baggage place and he says, "The car's parked right outside." On weekends, he said, "There's no police to tell me not to park." And he took all our bags by himself. He just took all his bags and he just took it out, put it in, drove it, got to the front door and he took all the bags inside. And so you're going to have to add some robots in the trunk to get that experience with your car.
Dean Jackson:
I think you're right. I've got a friend that bought one of these Neo robots that will be delivered this year, and it's one of the first available household robots that you can have. And it was very interesting to see that the agreement that you sign with them is that you acknowledge that maybe situations where your robot is being mirrored, or it may be a human operator looking through the robot's eyes, but actually manipulating the robot to do certain things as it's learning to do. That's how they're gathering the data, to teach the robots how to load the dishwasher or how to do the thing. Maybe that they have to manually do it with them the first few times so that it learns the moves. And I mean-
Dan Sullivan:
Well, you think of a household and ours is not a busy household and besides a housekeeper, we have housekeepers. But I was talking to Peter, Peter Diamandis about this, and he said all of his talk with the robot makers is that for the longest time, it's going to be just factories because factory work is incredibly simpler than household. And he said that it won't go big until it's household. Yeah. I mean, first of all, we've had robotized factory. If you think about the beginning of the industrial revolution going a hundred years, I mean, essentially factories were more and more automated and robotized over a hundred years. We're used to it in the factory and the work situation, but we're not used to it in the personal living space. And if I was invited to somebody's house and they had a robot and they made a big deal about it, I wouldn't go back to that house.
Speaker 3:
Right. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
If you see them, I don't like it. I mean, if they're invisible and they're ... It's like the ... What is the hotel in Singapore? I think it's called raffles. And they have spaces in the walls for people and that when somebody says something and they have secret doorways in the rooms and everything. And so when you leave your room, automatically somebody comes in through the secret doorway and cleans the room and puts everything and to do that. Now, if they do that to human beings, they're going to do it to robots too. The robots can't be seen. They got to be invisible. I don't want them around.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's true. That is true.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. But it's interesting, but I think that being good at human relationship is still the key to all business success. I
Dean Jackson:
Agree. Yeah, that is exactly right.
Dan Sullivan:
And I think a lot of people who are trying to ... They're trying to ... I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and I mean, before AI became the big thing, they weren't good at dealing with people. They just weren't good with people. And then AI comes along and says, "Oh, now I really don't have to deal with people. " But the basic problem from their lack of success before and after AI is that they're not very good with people.
Dean Jackson:
Agreed. Yeah. The whole lot of people, that's where everything happens. I'm talking with Joey Osborne this afternoon, we're going to record a podcast and he's running for Congress in North Carolina. And I thought it was going to be an interesting conversation to talk through applying the eight profit activators to a political campaign. Similar to, I know you've done some work applying the DOS to- Well, Ted
Dan Sullivan:
Budd, Ted Budd is the senator in North Carolina. He was elected three times to Congress, and he used DOS as the basis of his campaign.
Dean Jackson:
Can you explain that a little bit? I'm curious, because I remember the basics of it, that every conversation that he had or every speech that he had talked about the, here's the dangers that I see facing North
Dan Sullivan:
Carolina. Well, it's the way that you get your information that goes about. So what I did, I say ... So Ted's an entrepreneur and he wants to run for office and he decides to do it for the congressional seat, not the Senate seat.
Dean Jackson:
Right.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay. And this is the federal, this isn't the state that we're talking about.
Dean Jackson:
Right, exactly. That same with Joey. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
And so what he did, and starting a long time before, you know, you have to give some foresight to this, and he went out and he did an equal number of DOS conversations with people who were Republican on the one hand, certain number, 15 or 20, but these are influencers. So these would be individuals who have big networks. Their say so would influence other people supporting you. And then you do the same thing with the same number of Democrats, okay? And you get the information and all you're saying is if we were having this discussion and it was three years from now, or whatever the time period is for Senate to be different, the term you'd do it. What has to happen in North Carolina, but specifically in this area for you to feel happy with the progress of that area? What dangers do we have?
Dan Sullivan:
What opportunities do we have and what strengths. So DLS, there's opportunities and strengths. And it has ... And then you're forthright about it. If you're talking to a Democrat, you're a Republican, you're forthright. I'm running for the Republican nomination, first of all,
Dan Sullivan:
And then I'm going to run for in the general, the congressional election. And then you send them a ... Each of the person that you talk to, you send them a little thank you letter and say, "Just want you to know this is what we talked about and these were your answers." And then you have a DOS party with your campaign staff and you pull out the three biggest dangers. If you look at everybody's answer, the three biggest dangers, three biggest opportunities, three biggest strengths, and then that becomes your platform. Regardless of what the party tells you to do, this is going to be your platform. And I've done it with a woman who ran in Charlotte for the county, Mecklenburg County, and I did it with the current senator, and I did one for a state senator in Oklahohoma. And first of all, they had to win a primary, and in each case, they took more votes than the other opponents put together.
Dan Sullivan:
And then when they ran in the general election, I mean, some of them, if you won the nomination, you won the election because it's a traditionally Republican, but in some cases you're the underdog and Ted Budd, he was the underdog and he was down by eight to begin with and he won by six. So 14 point swing in the course of the election. And generally speaking, and the whole point about it is what the influencers say after you've done the talk with them and the Republicans will say, "Boy, we've got a real star on our hands here." He's going to go. So they're talking to their hundreds and thousands of people. On the Democratic side, they're saying, "Well, usually Republicans are dumber than offense posts, but this is a smart one." And I can't say- I think we can work with him. I can't say that I would vote for him, but if he got elected, I wouldn't be unhappy.
Dan Sullivan:
So you've neutralized, you've really accelerated one side and you've neutralized the other.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
So it's just that you've not been a fanatic, you've not been a partisan, and you've actually asked questions and say, "I just want to get a handle." You live here, you have an understanding of what people are saying about your area, and I'd just like to know what your view on this is. I mean, actually you're just being a really great person for ... You're being scientific about finding out what really matters about this particular area.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I mean, it's kind of an exciting ... It's such a common sense approach too, right? When you say influencers, who would you consider ... What do you mean by ... How would you identify who those people are?
Dan Sullivan:
Well, they could be media people. They could own a television station, they could be a university president, they could ... It's just somebody who is in a position to know a lot and in a position that if they said something, it would influence people.
Dean Jackson:
I mean, yeah, that's great. I'm very excited to-
Dan Sullivan:
I mean, people say, "You should create a program." I liked the people I did it for, but I said, "No." I said, "I know what my day job is and I do it.
Dean Jackson:
" Right. That's exactly right. It's good just to- Yeah, it's good to experiment. It's good to experiment. Yes, exactly. And to know you've got a playbook that works.That's valuable enough. And anybody that's paying attention could do the same thing. Yeah, Joey's got the ... So the primaries are coming up in the spring here, that's his ... So there's a 82 year old incumbent who's- Democrat. Republican. Republican.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay. So if you win the primary, probably you'll get elected, right?
Dean Jackson:
Probably, I imagine. There's four. I think there's four plus her competing or whatever that are going to run. Yeah. But I don't know. It's kind of interesting. It's kind of like the ... I don't know why anybody would run for political office, but it's fun to have someone-
Dan Sullivan:
Well, and I'm in communication with Ted quite a bit. I talk to him and I'll ... I mean, he's been in coach for 16, 17 years, but he really can't do it while he's a senator. It's just harder. It's a full-time job.
Dean Jackson:
It's interesting. I think about Richard Vigory too, just thinking about ... And if you just look in our strategic coach ecosystem, there's a lot of experience in that too.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. It favors one side more than another. Oh, that's a good observation. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
That's an upside. Yeah. You kind of get a sense of which team they wrote
Dean Jackson:
For. Oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
I love it. All right. Well, I will look forward to next week. I'll share with you what our conversation is today and you-
Dan Sullivan:
Well, I think the point you made right at the beginning of our podcast here is I think that the ultimate impact is that the value of live and in- person is going to go up. And there's an attempt by people to make AI the front stage, I think the response to it will be in the opposite direction.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I agree. I agree. So say hi to everybody for meet tonight and I'll meet you right back here in Cloudlandia next week.
Dan Sullivan:
Will do it. Thank you very much.
Dean Jackson:
Thanks, Dan. Bye.
Dan Sullivan:
Bye.