Ep171: The Inevitability System

The most productive stretch of your life probably isn’t waiting for motivation, it’s waiting for the right constraint.

In this episode of Welcome to Cloudlandia, we follow Dean’s hundred-day phone fasting experiment locking his phone away from 10 AM to noon and what it revealed about the power of inevitability. Dean calls this his most consistently productive stretch ever, and Dan predicts that by the one-year mark, at least 20 other habits will have quietly shifted as a side effect. The big lesson: willpower is unnecessary when you design a system that removes the other options entirely.

Dan shares that he’s now at day 116 of his ‘Creating Great Yesterdays’ practice and is finishing a new quarterly book, Yesterday Creates Tomorrow. He also makes a sharp case for proactive health investment twice-yearly full bloodwork, AI-assisted cancer detection, and taking personal ownership of your body rather than waiting for the system to catch something at stage four. The conversation moves into the language of regret, where Dan breaks down why ‘should,’ ‘would,’ and ‘could’ are manipulation words and how reframing your past experience as a source of lessons removes its power over you.

The episode closes with a great business story from a Free Zone client: while every gas station in Washington State started charging for bathroom access, he went the other way, free bathrooms for everyone and created lineups of grateful customers who paid double out of sheer relief. It’s the kind of counterintuitive move that’s easy to describe and hard to execute, which is what makes it worth hearing about. This one’s got a few moments you’ll want to replay.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

• Dean’s 100-day phone fasting experiment, locking his device away from 10 AM to noon, produced what he calls the most productive stretch of his entire life.
• Dan’s prediction: by the one-year mark, at least 20 other habits will have changed as a quiet side effect of the phone fasting discipline.
• The willpower myth, debunked: Dean’s biggest transferable lesson is that the system does the work when you engineer inevitability and remove all other options.
• A Free Zone client turned Washington State’s ‘pay $20 before you can use the bathroom’ rule into a competitive advantage, by being the only gas station that didn’t charge.
• Dan on why ‘should,’ ‘would,’ and ‘could’ aren’t grammar, they’re manipulation tools used to distort your relationship with the past.
• AI is now detecting cancer predisposition three years before convergence happens. Dan’s case for twice-yearly blood panels: 20 extra healthy years for anyone willing to pay attention.

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.
Dan Sullivan:
Good morning.
Dean Jackson:
Welcome to Cloudlandia.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the impact of Cloudlandia.
Dean Jackson:
I love that. There's always a home for us here in Cloudlanvia.
Dan Sullivan:
Yes. It's
Dean Jackson:
Our third
Dan Sullivan:
Space. Yeah. Well, yeah. And it's custom designed.
Dean Jackson:
That's exactly right.
Dan Sullivan:
It's custom design.
Dean Jackson:
You know when I say that, that's a really interesting thing, our third place, because that's how Starbucks, that was the intention of Starbucks when they got started as a third place between work and home, somewhere where you go to meet people and have great conversation. It's so funny because they've completely moved away from that. Now with the drive-throughs and the ... I described the interior spaces of the new coffee places as prison cafeteria style. It's like get your stuff and move along. Don't see them.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, they went through a period, I think it's trying to think about a 10-year period where they were preaching to you, trying to make you a better person. And that didn't work. Don't have a goal in selling any product of transforming human nature. It's one of my- Observable. It's one of my firm foundational stones. Humans are going to do what humans are going to do and don't try to create a better human being. Just give them a little caffeine jolt and some sugar and they're okay.
Dean Jackson:
Observable life lessons. That's
Dan Sullivan:
Exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
It's so funny.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I think that's really the big thing now because this was actually ... I read an interesting book and it's called The Progressive Era in American History. And it starts kind of, I would say probably right after the Civil War. And it was a middle class. It was like people who lived in nice neighborhoods and they had nice things. And they made it their goal that their responsibility in life was to look at anywhere in America that didn't look like their neighborhood, didn't have their mindsets. And they were going to transform everyone else. And there were two presidents in particular who actually bought into this and were advocates. One was Teddy Roosevelt and the other one was Woodrow Wilson. And he was probably the biggest that I don't like human beings the way they are. I'm going to create a world where we have better human beings.
And it didn't work. It didn't work. That's what got rid of alcohol. One of the things they went after was alcohol. Prohibition.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Prohibition. And they created sort of this whole concept of the American way of life. And it was virtuous. It was moral. You cared for your neighbors, you were charitable, and you were comfortable, but you weren't lavish. And we're going to make the whole world like this. And we're going to watch everybody scrutinize everybody's behavior and give them little nudges and perhaps even bring in laws to regulate their behavior.
Dean Jackson:
Little nudges to get them in the
Dan Sullivan:
Right direction.
Dean Jackson:
I
Dan Sullivan:
Mean, we think we're going through it now, but it was nothing compared with the beginning of the 20th century. It was really a profound, profound movement. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Traditional values, right? I guess labeled under all those things.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Made up traditional values.
Dean Jackson:
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Labels. That's
Dan Sullivan:
Funny.
Hollywood was the one that really created the American way of life. This was in the 30s and there was this whole series of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney films. And the father was usually a judge. He was a judge and they had beautiful ... They had beautifully kept lawns and there was everything. And that was a pure creation of Hollywood. And the phrase, the American way of life actually doesn't date too prior to the 1930s. I mean, it wasn't there when the founders did it in the 1700s. It wasn't there in the 19th century through the 1800s. It didn't really arise until the 1930s.
Dean Jackson:
Isn't that interesting? When you think about the ... But that's when that was the multiplier of spreading a common vision,
Dan Sullivan:
Where
Dean Jackson:
You first got to see something that you could plant in the minds of many, many people asynchronously at a distance. Yeah, radioism. Yeah, because otherwise you would have had to go to a play or go to see something live to spread that out. It's very interesting. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. But
Dean Jackson:
It's so funny.
Dan Sullivan:
It was something that people aspired to because they weren't actually living ... They didn't have that lifestyle. So it was an aspirational like that. It wasn't really supported by too many people who actually did that, but they had certain controls over the media.
Dean Jackson:
And that's a really good extension of what's happening now is that everybody has access to spread those visions. I've been ... Two things over the last little while, probably since last time we talked is I've consciously sort of opted out of paying attention to anything news related in any way, really. No, I'm the least aware of what's going on, just vaguely on the periphery of the things that are happening, but I'm also realizing-
Dan Sullivan:
It's good that you have me in your life so that I can give you a full report if you need
Dean Jackson:
To. Exactly. But even you, I don't get the sense that ... I mean, I don't know. Is that a part of your ... I mean, you're going to your real clear ...
Dan Sullivan:
Politics. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. So you are kind of keeping on top of the daily briefings or whatever. Is that an important-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some big issues which are ... It's mostly an American-centric world, like the war in Iran and of course the removal of illegal immigrants in the United States and making it difficult for people to use airports because they closed down the funding for TSA. I mean, I keep track of the latest storms and floods and everything like that. So yeah, I keep track of it, but I have sort of a contextual approach to it. I mean, it's kind of like, which way do things seem to be moving? And yeah, so there's some big shifts going, but there's always big shifts going on. If you checked in once a month, that would be sufficient.
Dean Jackson:
That's the way I'm feeling that it's ... Yeah, when you realize how little of it actually affects my day to day, it's something. And I've been ... Now this is ... I'm coming up on, I would say over a hundred days now of phone fasting of the 10 till- That's
Dan Sullivan:
Terrific.
Dean Jackson:
... till noon. Yeah. And I would say that 80%, there's certain days where there are certain exceptions like today where we talk right before noon, so it's a
Dan Sullivan:
Little
Dean Jackson:
Bit earlier. And then when I have events going on or whatever, those are outlier days. But on the days that I am in control of the things, the standard day, that's the standard routine, is the phone goes in at 10 and it comes out at noon. And it's been a game changer. I was just texting with Tim Ferris yesterday about the ... I saw a video that he had put up about this thing and I was telling him my experiment in phone fasting and what a different ... It's just like, I see it when you think about that, that 14% or 14 hours of my day are screen free, which is a ... Mind you, eight of them, I'm sleeping, but still the main ... I sleep better even without the first thing that I do when I wake up reaching for the phone. What I've noticed, very interesting because I wear my aura ring for sleeping.
And I noticed that there's a different level of attachment to when I check my score, the first time I see my sleep score is after noon and there's no kind of attachment to ... There's no cortisol hit or no
Thing of if my sleep score wasn't great. It's
Dan Sullivan:
Funny. It's very, very interesting. I would predict, just based on my own experience here, that when you reach the one year mark, like you've been made for one year, you will see that not only did your use of the phone change, but I bet 20 other significant things have changed because that's a central habit. Those 14 hours, that's a really major central habit, but you'll notice that it influences all sorts of other activities and especially other ways that you schedule your daily life will be profoundly affected by this one habit.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I mean, I realize how much of our life is really rhythmic, that there's a rhythm, and I realize that me setting the rhythm and the pace by thinking in terms of zones of my day, it's great. I just find I recognize that from ... Up until noon is my creative time. So the two main things I'm doing is I'm spending the first period of the time reading and thinking, and then I spend two hours doing, create with an output, like writing my emails or working on whatever I'm working on.
Dan Sullivan:
Would you say these hundred days are the single period of time in your entire life where you've been most consistently productive?
Dean Jackson:
Yes, absolutely. 100%.
Dan Sullivan:
That's great.
Dean Jackson:
What I have to get ... And that's probably, I would say that my next level of this though is being more intentional on what it is that I'm going to do
Dan Sullivan:
In
Dean Jackson:
Those times, like making the decisions and allocating those times to the best specific outcomes. And it's
Dan Sullivan:
Really
Dean Jackson:
Funny because I've been working on ... I mean, I best describe it as kind of working on a thinking tool that ... I think I mentioned to you the idea of choosing your regret. And I've been thinking about the interplay between ... When we look back that regret is framed in three primary ways that it's, we look back and realize that we could have done something or we would have done
Dan Sullivan:
Something- Or we
Dean Jackson:
Should have. ... or we should have done something. Exactly. But each of them has a different flavor. There's not much emotion attached to
Dan Sullivan:
Could.
Dean Jackson:
It's like, I could have gone for sushi or I could have gone for steak or I could have whatever. And there's not much consequence of the outcome of that. And should, on the other hand, is there's regret in that, in its. Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Should is the real guilt, should is the biggest guilt word. You should have done that. You should have done that. And yeah, I was just thinking of previous conversations that we've had. I mean, going right back to the beginning when it was about procrastination, but the big thing that I said, just because a word is in the English language, it doesn't mean it's a good word. It might be a bad word. It's just a word, but should, would, and could are manipulation words. They're only used to manipulate your understanding of the past. And it goes along with another word, and this relates to what your teacher said to you, and that is potential that Dean is so talented, but he's not really living up to his potential, which I know because which I, of course, as his teacher know what his potential is. I know what that is.
And I've got a vision in my mind of what he's really capable of, what he's really capable of achieving, but he's not doing it.
Dean Jackson:
That's interesting, right? It's somebody else's ... Yeah, there's that level of someone else choosing your stakeholder or whatever, or an influencer, or somebody
Dan Sullivan:
Trying
Dean Jackson:
To tell you what you should do, but it comes down to the ... It has the regret attached to it, that I should have done this. It feels like you knew better or you knew, but you didn't do something. It was in your power and you knew that this was the right course, but you didn't take that action. And would, interestingly, as I think about it, is a blame shifter that I would have if ... It's almost like there's some sort of external block-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, I was interfered with, I was interfered with.
Dean Jackson:
I was either interfered with
Dan Sullivan:
Or- Or I was prevented. ... relieving yourself from ...
Dean Jackson:
I
Dan Sullivan:
Didn't know. I was prevented from ... I was prevented from ... Yeah. It's
Dean Jackson:
Either that there was something blocking you that was an obstacle that you could overcome, or that you would have, meaning if I had known, I would have, but there's a really ... It's an interesting thing and it fits so perfectly with your guessing and betting certainty and uncertainty. And I think that there's ... So as I'm imagining this thinking tool of choosing your regret of looking at ... It's always attached to ... When you think about your guessing and betting, it's always about the allocation of resource towards a future outcome. So we're looking, when you and I are thinking about the concept of creating a better past, that's only done in the moment in today is the only time. And so we are wagering, betting our resource of time, energy, attention, and maybe money on a future outcome that hopefully is certain. I mean, that's where you're-
Dan Sullivan:
Well, the big thing here I think is really is that you're the only one that knows what your experience is. Okay. So right off the bat, there's just one person on the planet that knows what's happened to you. And from the sense that you actually experienced this, other people may be aware of it, they may have observed it, but they didn't actually have the experience. You're the only one who has had the experience. And I said, "If you take ownership of that, then you can do anything you want with that experience." You can reformulate it, you can say, "Here's five lessons from this bad experience." And the moment you do this, you remove the negativity from the experience because you've created something useful, you've actually created something useful.
Yeah. I mean, you can go back when you ended up in the ER, which you've talked about and said, "If I had been doing my phone fasting, would I have ended up in PR?" And I don't know what your answer is, but I do know is that you say, "I now have a capability that I didn't have in the past. If I had this capability in the past, how might that have turned out differently?" Well, I can't relive the past, but now that I've got the lesson, then I've got something I can say, "I've got this knowledge and skill and capability now, so why is my future going to be different from my
Dean Jackson:
Past?" My greatest learning about that, Dan, my transferable learning about the phone fasting is the value of inevitability, that the removal of any other option, that's really a thing that there's no willpower required when you've set up a system that makes something inevitable. So I look at those things and it's like any of the outcomes are pretty amazing. So very interesting thing. So you know our good friend, Ilko Dubois
Dan Sullivan:
From
Dean Jackson:
Amsterdam. So Ilko has just hired someone who travels everywhere they go, and his whole role is to create a healthy environment for Yoko, meaning he arranges and prepares and does all the food and does all the training, personal training with Ilko. So he enforces and makes the healthy choices inevitable, and that's a really-
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, he's like a head butler.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. But as a physical trainer, that's essentially what this guy is, and he owns some gyms in Amsterdam, but the business kind of runs itself. And now he travels wherever Ilko and the family goes, he's there and ensuring he's created that infrastructure, that scaffolding that makes the choices more
Dan Sullivan:
There.
Dean Jackson:
It's so funny, I think about those things, like if you think about the measurable outcome, health conditions are essentially future, they're bets, and there's a lot of, would have, should haves involved in health. I think what you're doing, all the choices that you're making with your health, with everything, is coming from a framework of intending to live to 156, and that you're not, in order to do that, your joints and your mobility and at a cellular level is going to have to be fit for the task. And that's why you're willing to go to Buenos Aires 11 times to ensure that outcome.
Dan Sullivan:
And Nashville too. Nashville. Nashville. Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, with David Housey. Well, the big thing is that we were talking about ... Yeah, who was I talking about this? I have a really great new, he's within the past year, physical therapist,
He's right here in Toronto and he's been in the program. He's not in the program right now, but he's been four years in the program and was in 10 times, but he's really, really quite prominent in that world. He worked with Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. He's been consultant to several National Football League teams. So he has really quite a bit of experience at high level of performance. People are high performance. And we were talking about it and we were talking about everything has to be paid for. The big thing, people say, "Well, healthcare should be free." And I said, "That doesn't work because it wouldn't make you more healthy because you would blame everything on the system that is supporting you because you don't have a perception of paying for it, this has to be paid for. " And my sense is that people, right off the bat, if they would do two things every day, and that's a complete top to bottom health check at a very reputable clinic where they do full blood tests.
If you did that, it would just doing that twice a year and paying for it would guarantee you probably another 20 healthy years, anybody in HU, you could do that. But they think that should be given to us, those people, especially Canadians. Canadians believe that
Healthcare should be given to you. I don't think Americans do because America, you do have to pay for it and everything like that. But the testing is so good these days, and especially since AI has come into the picture now, like cancer, they can now identify your predisposition to almost any cancer at zero degrees. Yeah,
Dean Jackson:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
You die at the fourth level, fourth level of cancer. That's when you die, but now they can see from blood tests that about 10 things are converging to a point where you're going to develop some sort of cancer in your body, and that can be picked up three years before the The convergence actually happens and they can alter your diet, they can alter your behavior and everything like that. But you got to take ownership for it. This is the big thing. If you don't take ownership, it doesn't happen.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I remember hearing Craig Venter talk about that when we met him at Abundance A360 years ago. That was the big aha breakthrough in my mind was his thing saying it's not going to be about cancer treatment. It's going to be about cancer detection. That's the big win. And I think that that's absolutely true now. There's no reason for somebody to show up with stage four.
Dan Sullivan:
Oh yeah. Yeah. There was just a US senator, a former US senator and he got fourth level pancreatic cancer. And pancreatic is the one that moves the fastest of all the cancers, it moves the fastest. But if you do it, you get a complete checkup every six months. It has predispositions that get picked up on, so you could actually interfere with that. And yeah, we're going through quite a thing here in Canada with medically assisted suicide. Have you been ... 100,000 Canadians have been assisted to commit suicide in the last- Yeah, I
Dean Jackson:
Have
Dan Sullivan:
A- Four or five years. It was a Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, this was a great idea of his. Let's help people commit suicide. Because of you.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, I had a good friend whose grandfather elected assisted suicide last year.
Dan Sullivan:
And
Dean Jackson:
So I got to observe it kind of ...
Dan Sullivan:
One degree of separation.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Yes, exactly. And my observation, like at first, everybody was sort of upset, but grandpa had a terminal disease that was slowly killing him. His quality of life was really going down. It was becoming a burden on his wife who was his caregiver. And so he made the choice to do this. And it was about a month or so away before when he did it. And everybody initially was sort of shocked and sad and there's a lot of emotion around it. And then it was going to happen on a Monday and the whole family from everywhere came in and spent the weekend with him in the hospital. And he was surrounded by everybody that loved him and he loved. And then they got to have that last weekend with him. And then on Monday morning, they did the ... I guess it's an injection, I don't know, an IV or however they do
Dan Sullivan:
It. It's a couple things. It's a couple things they do. Yeah. But
Dean Jackson:
Their injections- And then he was gone. And so I thought on reflection, I thought about the other ... There's a certainty. He was going to die at an unknown time in the future where he would be completely diminished. And then it would be a surprise in the moment when it actually happened. And it would be grandpa died and then everybody would gather and have their commiseration and morning and stuff with the family, but without grandpa. And I realized there's a ... I don't know what's better. It was the first time I really kind of thought about that as a ... Comparing. "What's your thought?"
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I've never had the thought, so there's been nothing in my life. And
The other thing is, I know people who've done it and I have no understanding whatsoever of what was going on with them when they did it. So it's kind of an empty ... It's an empty event. That's what I've discovered about is that when someone just dies as a natural course, it actually pulls people together. And what I've discovered from people who've had this happen and they've been knowledgeable and involved with it is it separates people. Each person sort of retreats into themselves, and so that's what I've noticed. And it's like Robin ... The other thing is, you can have an enormous lifetime of achievement. If you commit suicide, what people remember most about you is that you committed suicide. Robin Williams being a great example. People say, "What an amazing comedian." I said, "Yeah, but he committed suicide." Committed suicide. Yeah. Who was that?
Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Remember that actor? Yes. Tremendous actor.
Dean Jackson:
Of
Dan Sullivan:
Course. Yeah. Yeah. He committed suicide. And I said, "So my sense is that it's a mindset predisposition. It's not a physiological predisposition, that there's a series of mindsets that line up together. There's sort of a mindset stack, and it's the mindset stack that predisposes you to commit suicide. It's not a physiological predisposition. It's a mindset, predisposit. You were thinking suicidal thoughts 20 years before you actually committed suicide.That's my take on it. I mean, everybody's got their own take.
Dean Jackson:
I mean, is it in Canada, can anybody just go and say, Hey, I don't want to live anymore? Or is it out of ... I thought about that as more of a compassionate type of relief from an inevitability kind of thing.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Is it something that-
Dan Sullivan:
Well, I think it's complex. I think it's complex. I don't think there's any one contributing factor, but there was a major story in the weekly newspaper, the national poster, about a woman who was 84 and she had severe back pain. And she was having a particularly painful week, and she checked herself into the hospital because she needed medication to pain relief. And the first doctor said, "Do you want to commit suicide?" And she said, "Commit suicide?" "No, I want some pain relief from my back. "And she says," Well, we offer medically assisted suicide here. "And this was about a year ago, and it made her so angry that she went through a big physiotherapy thing, and now she's climbing mountains a year later, and she said," It woke me up. "She said," I was stupid. I was being stupid about my back. What I need to do is do some work.
"She did. And this is the first time I've seen an article where somebody was approached by the official medical system," Hey, you want to commit suicide? "We can do this for you. Yeah. Yeah. My sense is that fundamentally there's something wrong with the culture that it makes this something that they suggest. And my sense is that the healthcare system in Canada is so bad right now that they're just trying to cut costs. And if we can get somebody off the healthcare system by committing suicide, that'll be a good thing. We'll cut some costs here.
And I'm not saying that's the only dimension you think about, but my sense is if you start going in this direction, other participants join the parade as you're going towards it.
Dean Jackson:
Join the parade. Oh my goodness. Yes.
Dan Sullivan:
Pretty soon it'll be entertainment. You'll do it on stage and a hundred people will pay $50, which goes to charity and they can watch you die.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Oh my
Dan Sullivan:
Goodness. I know how the world goes.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Plot, plop.
Dan Sullivan:
Everybody wants to join.
Dean Jackson:
Whatever relief it is.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Oh, man.
Dan Sullivan:
I just saw a movie. I don't know if you've seen the movie, the project, Hail Mary. Have you seen that? I
Dean Jackson:
Did. Yeah. Yeah. What did you think of that?
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I thought it was well done because Babs had read the whole book and we went together. Shannon Waller and Bruce Green, we went to it. And those who had read the book or listened to the book felt that they did a good job of catching ... Missed a lot of the valleys, but they caught most of the mountaintops. Yeah, I thought it was good. I found it very engaging. It was very engrossing. And I thought Ryan, what's his name? Ryan-
Dean Jackson:
Gosley.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Huh? Ryan Gosley.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I thought he was the perfect actor for that role.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Because it's essentially like a one ... It's a one man show really for most of it.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. I walked out. I didn't think about it. I said," God, it's nice that Hollywood can still produce a good film because they haven't been recently. "First of all, this violates almost every rule of woke philosophy. You like the woman who runs the whole project to save the planet. She's a hard nosed bitch. She's a Strat. I think her name was Strat. And she manipulates him. She actually drugs him and puts him on board Chip to do it. But I thought it was just well done. The CGI was fantastic because they couldn't have done that with CGI. But I just thought the actor was, he was the perfect actor for it because he had no hero instincts whatsoever. He had no bravery instincts, but he ends up being a hero and he turns out being brave in spite of himself.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. I was very ... When I do my Breakthrough Blueprint events, we go, one of the traditions on Monday evening, we go to the dine-in movies at the ... There's a place here called Studio Movie Grill, and they bring food to you and you so you have dinner and watch the movie.
Dan Sullivan:
Sure.
Dean Jackson:
And that was the choice. Very rarely is there a movie that is both critically an audience acclaimed in Rotten Tomatoes, as an example. This was in the high 90s on both sides.
Dan Sullivan:
This one was. This one was? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, the neat thing about it, they just got into the movie. They didn't do anything, no credits or anything. They just started the movie and I like that.
Dean Jackson:
I do too. I do too. Yeah. Yeah, it was really good. How often do you go to the movies?
Dan Sullivan:
That was number four since the year 2020.
Dean Jackson:
Okay. Oh, that's
Dan Sullivan:
Cool. I went to see the green book. And I went to see Barbie.
Dean Jackson:
Oh, did you? Okay.
Dan Sullivan:
And I went to see F1. Okay.
Dean Jackson:
There you go.
Dan Sullivan:
F1 is
Dean Jackson:
Really good too.
Dan Sullivan:
I love that. I thought Brad Pitt, best movie ever for Brad Pitt.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. And well, Ryan Gossip was in Barbie King. I was just
Dean Jackson:
Going to say that 50% of your movies involve Ryan Gosley.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, and he's good. I mean, I think he was just really ... He's got sort of a sympathetic personality. He's not trying to be anything. He's just going through life and things happen to him. I think
Dean Jackson:
That he's Canadian, actually.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, he is. Yep.
Dean Jackson:
Okay.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah,
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Still there.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And like many successful Canadians lives in the United States. Yes. Below the border. He's below the border Canadian.
Dean Jackson:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
Still
Dean Jackson:
Claim.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Still claiming.
Dan Sullivan:
I mean, the author, Andy Weir, who he did The Martian. I think The Martian was his movie. And I mean, he creates some scientifically implausible situations to create the plot. How does a thing like this actually hop from solar system to solar system? I mean, any explanation how this thing ... It's a star eater, a star eater. And I said- Yeah. So he's got to create then he's got the coma gene, the coma gene that you can only be on that chip if you're resistant to dying from the coma. And so there's only 7,000 people on the planet who have resilience to that. But it's okay. I said, "He's creating the game and these are the rules of the game and let's just play inside Pearls." But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Dean Jackson:
I think that's awesome. Yeah. I got a great appetite for movies like that. I wonder now how long away we are from AI movies that are fully built out like that. It's amazing to see what's happening with music.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, you know what I mean? We've had that for a hundred years with cartoon movies. Cartoon movies are ... Yeah. I mean, starting with the Walt Disney film. So we're used to created characters, but when it's very, very close to human, I think it's a different game.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. But I think, I mean, that level-
Dan Sullivan:
I don't really care. I mean, I mean, if it's a good movie, it's a good movie.That's my attitude toward it.
Dean Jackson:
I agree with you 100%. And it's kind of funny, like the whole ... Everybody's up in arms over the music and visual imagery stuff that everybody is jockeying for compensation for their work being used to train the model, but it's very funny that every single ... That's how every single original artist was trained by observing and taking in examples from their observation of life kind of thing, their experience, their inspiration. So it really is that AI is replicating what humans do is they
Dan Sullivan:
Observe
Dean Jackson:
And they filter and they output.
Dan Sullivan:
Well, I mean, we had also the great example 20 years ago with the Lord of the Rings and the character of Golan. So that was Andy Circus, Andy Circus. And he made him so believably they did. He provided the motion and the voice, but the CGI people really created that. He was a totally credible character. I mean, he's one of the three central characters of that entire series and everything like that. I mean, aren't actors pretending to be somebody else?
Dean Jackson:
That's exactly it. That's what I mean.
Dan Sullivan:
Isn't that the skill of that particular profession that you can pretend to be someone else?
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah? Yeah. That's why I never enjoy Julia Roberts because Julia Roberts is just pretending to be Julia Roberts. I mean, it doesn't matter what film she's in, it's Julia Roberts. Yeah,
Dean Jackson:
That's right. She's not ... And there are some ... I heard Jason Bateman talk about the same thing that he's not playing characters. He's not acting to be something else. He's just doing his interpretation of something, but basically being himself. Same thing with George Clooney, same thing with ...
Dan Sullivan:
Oh yeah.
Dean Jackson:
There's a lot of actors that are just themselves.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. And going back to the golden age of Hollywood, I mean, Clark Gable was Clark Giebel, Marilyn Monroe was Marilyn McGraw. So there's a section of the acting profession where you have ... The fan base has such an attachment to you that they actually want to just see you in the role. But then you have other actors, the current probably best is Gary Oldham. And Gary Oldham just becomes a completely different creature.
Dean Jackson:
Yes. I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah. There's a difference
Dan Sullivan:
Between that. Alleghenis in the old days, Alleghenis, you'd have to check the credits to see who the actor was because he so completely immerses himself, but it's all part of the entertainment.
Dean Jackson:
Philip Seymour Hoffman, which you were
Dan Sullivan:
Just
Dean Jackson:
Talking about, he
Dan Sullivan:
Was
Dean Jackson:
One of
Dan Sullivan:
Those
Dean Jackson:
Disappeared into roles.
Dan Sullivan:
I think the biggest fear is I used to get paid for this and I'm not going to get paid for it in the future. I think that's the biggest fear. Right. I think the biggest fear that everybody shares is, how am I going to get paid to exist in the future?
Dean Jackson:
Right. Yeah. I mean, but it's very ... I think the most creative of them is still going to position themselves up above ... You said that that always precedes like a human always is upstream of an AI. And so the smartest people, rather than staying where you are and lamenting that this AI is doing your job is get on top of it and
Dan Sullivan:
Write
Dean Jackson:
It to do your job better than with superpowers. Because just knowing it can do everything you can do accept your unique fingerprint, your unique thought, insight.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. And besides that, nobody cares how you're feeling anyway.
Dean Jackson:
Right. That's exactly
Dan Sullivan:
Right. Yeah. I mean, you can download it. It's by Bloomberg, Bloomberg, and it was the end of Hollywood. It's about 13 minutes. It's just a series of interviews with some of the stars, some of them are ... George Clooney is interviewed, Tom Hanks is interviewed. I think those are the two big ones. And then just a lot of backstage people, writers and everything else. And they're all having a hissy fit, that this is crucial. Hollywood is crucial and everything like that. And what the series, whoever put this 13 minute film together, they said, "Your big problem is you're not interesting anymore. Your biggest problem is that movie going, fans just aren't interested in you anymore. They're not interested in your political views. They're not interested in your theological views. We're just not interested in what you're talking about or what you're trying to get us to do it.
" And I said, "Yeah." I mean, one of the key boxes you have to check in the entertainment world is that you have to be entertaining.
Dean Jackson:
Yes. I think that's the big thing, right? If you look at, if we go all the way back to what people are objecting to is the mechanism that they used to do. I imagine that the scribes back in the day who were doing the hand transferring of manuscripts into volumes, right, into books, that they were ... It was just mechanizing the process that they did, but the content of the books is what was the real human thing. And I imagine the same thing before photography, they depended on portrait artists to capture with paint and skill, what they saw.
Dan Sullivan:
Engravers, the engravers. Yeah. They had almost reached ... Just before photography, the quality of engraving had almost become photographic. The people were so good at it. And then it became technological, you could do it same way. Yeah. Well, it's interesting, but once ... I think what happened is they became politicized and we're not interested in mixing entertainment with politics. Most people aren't.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
And I thought that's why one of the reasons I enjoyed the project Hail Mary so much is that they just had a really good plot and they had really good characters and really good dialogue and that's it. They weren't trying ... It was Sam Goldwyn of MGM. He was one of the names, Metro ...
Dean Jackson:
Metro
Dan Sullivan:
Mayor. Goldwin Mayor. Mayor. Yeah. He was the G. And they complained to him that his movies didn't have a message and he said, "If I want to send a message, I'll go to a Western Union and send a message." He said, "I'm producing entertainment."
Dean Jackson:
That's the best. Oh, what a great statement.
Dan Sullivan:
I'm not sending messages.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.
Dan Sullivan:
I'm entertaining people. Yeah. Yeah. Everything's got to be a message. I said, "I'm not sending messages."
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. Oh, that's the best. Dan, I'm curious what your next ... Your full quarter now on creating a better past, what's the next evolution of that going into a new quarter?
Dan Sullivan:
116 and really solidified the best four months. I mean, I'm just within four days of having a complete month and it's going to be the next quarterly book. It's called Yesterday Creates Tomorrow. That's the
Name of the book. And I start that. I'm just finishing up the current book, which is called Who We're Looking For. And this is the first time we're saying, "This is the type of person that we're looking for in Strategic Coach." And we just describe that person at their best and then we say, "In Strategic Coach, we have a community that supports you in being your best." You already have the experience of being your best, but it's a lot of work to keep it all together and we'll help with keeping your different aspects of your best behavior together. So that'll come out first week of June. It goes to the printer for a month. We'll have it in about two weeks. Anyway, but yeah, it's really great. And by far, it's just like your phone fest. These have been absolutely the best four months productive voice of my ... Yeah, so it's been great.
Yeah. And I'm talking to people about it, usually not in the workshop, but I talked to them at breaks and lunchtime and I said, "I've got this thing I'm working on, would you be interested in hearing it? " And then I take them through it and just about everybody gets the concept.
Dean Jackson:
Well, that's exciting. I mean, I think it's really ... I think there's something there.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah, I do too, but it feels good. I mean, the one thing is that my getting emotionally attached to the future is just not there anymore. I'm just not getting captured by some future possibility.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah. You know what I love about these conversations, Dan, is just the experimenting that it's just kind of a ... I don't know that this is a natural or frequent conversation topic anywhere else on the planet than right here in Cloudland. Yeah. But people talking about the experimenting of creating a better future or a better past is it's something.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. Yeah. I was describing, because this is public where it's recorded, but I was just describing in one of the workshops with free zone clients, what you're doing with the phone box and the lockdown, your lockdown box. Anyway, and people said, "Yeah, but what if you really need to get in touch with him?" I says, "Make sure it's afternoon. Make sure it's between what you should learn from my description of what he's doing is don't try to get in touch with him at 10 o'clock."
Dean Jackson:
Oh my goodness. That's so funny.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah.
Dean Jackson:
That's true, right? I mean, it's so ... Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a you problem.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. The rule is you can get in contact with anyone anytime you want. And I says, "Well, he's putting some rules. He's putting some boundaries up there." Yeah,
Dean Jackson:
Exactly.
Dan Sullivan:
Yeah. We have a client who just joined Coach Free Zone and he was talking about that his family ran sort of gas stations that had stores, like the early thing. And Washington state, not British Columbia, but Washington State, is that all of a sudden the entire industry of gas station stores adapted a rule that you couldn't use the bathrooms unless you spend at least $20 on-
Dean Jackson:
Oh my goodness.
Dan Sullivan:
... on gas. He said, "I'm a marketing genius because I said, yeah, you don't have to pay for the
Dean Jackson:
Pee." Right.
Dan Sullivan:
And people came in. And there's a certain amount of urgency related to- Yeah, of course. Yeah. And he'd come in and he said, and they were so thankful they'd buy twice as much just to be thankful. I mean, if you were in danger of not being able to get to the bathroom, but they let you do it, you'd pay almost anything. I think you're
Dean Jackson:
Absolutely right.
Dan Sullivan:
Out of gratitude. We were just talking about how you create competition free zones. So I said, "There's a competition free zone." Yeah. Yeah. I said the word went around that this was the only gas station that didn't charge him. He had lineups. He had lineups coming in. And everybody paid, everybody paid because they didn't have to pay.
Dean Jackson:
That's amazing, right? There's a chain of stores in the Southeast called Bucky's, and that's one of their-
Dan Sullivan:
Are you talking Stuckey's or Duckies?
Dean Jackson:
No, Bucky's, B-U-C.
Dan Sullivan:
Oh, Buckies.
Dean Jackson:
Yeah, Buc-ees. And it's become ... They pride themselves. They pay super salaries to people who are in charge of making the bathrooms sparkle at all
Dan Sullivan:
Times. Oh
Dean Jackson:
Yeah.That's a big thing. And they have more gas pumps per square foot than anywhere else, like super number of gas. So you're always going to get a pump and you're always going to have a-
Dan Sullivan:
A dump.
Dean Jackson:
Get a pump.
Dan Sullivan:
Pump and dump.
Dean Jackson:
Who's the marketing genius now?
Dan Sullivan:
Who can compete with that? Pump and dump.
Dean Jackson:
There we go. I think we've said it all, Dan. I think we should leave it on a high note with that.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay. All right.
Dean Jackson:
That's perfect. I'll
Dan Sullivan:
Talk to you next week.
Dean Jackson:
Bye.
Dan Sullivan:
Okay, great. Bye.