Podcasts

Episode 25 - Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Dean Jackson - Welcome to 'Cloudlandia'

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to the next episode of Decoding AQ, I have a very special guest with me today, a good friend, Dean Jackson, welcome.

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Dean  

Welcome. I'm excited. Look at us globally connecting.

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Ross  

We are on this transportation network called Zoom.

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Dean  

Yes, exactly. I like that.

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Ross  

For those of you who don't know, which I think will be the very few. Dean is an amazing entrepreneur. He's got a whole suite and collection of tools for marketing, businesses, and essentially to help entrepreneurs make more money and be more successful. And we met through a strategic coach, right?

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Dean  

That's exactly right. Yeah. Many many years.

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Ross  

Many years, how long have you been in coach?

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Dean  

So I started out in 1997. And I did the three-year program, and then I moved to Florida, and I was spending all my time down here still kind of stayed connected with Dan. And when he started his new 10X Program about 10 years ago now, I was first class in the group and we've been together non-stop since then and now into the Free Zone Frontier.

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Ross  

Which is amazing. Can you think back to that first Free Zone Frontier day and just give a description of what that was like and what is Free Zone Frontier the group that we go to? 

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Dean  

Well Dan is crystal clear of this idea that the future is in collaboration and that we're developing our unique abilities, our capabilities, organizationally and we are in this ever-expanding opportunity for joining those forces to find people who we can collaborate with, to plug into their operation or their capabilities to make something even bigger. And nobody's really thinking like this, it's more about collaboration is really what the future is andI 'm very excited because you see all the tools and directionally just everything is going that way as we migrate to Cloudlandia here.

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Ross  

And I think it's interesting, just that shift of mind to go from one which was around, how do I protect my thing? How do I make it so bulletproof in terms of how unique I am, how much I protect it, how much I'm in competition and I go all out to win? And that's how businesses survive and thrive and succeed. To then think very differently and radically about collaborating not with those that might be friendly but those that historically might have been perceived as the enemy, that your competitors become collaborators. How, did you find that thinking for you, did it instantly just switch? Or was it an adaption that took a bit of time from where you'd come before?

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Dean  

No, I'm always you know, it was right on track with, because you could see there were everything that we had been discussing in strategic coach, in conversations, in this whole environment that we've put ourselves in, all the conversations and everything were kind of leading towards that. Anyway and so it was really just a formalization of it, of kind of recognizing this is what's that's about. And there's the thing,  the reason the whole the words Free Zone meaning that it's free of competition, it's free of you're not approaching somebody trying to be a vendor, you're trying to be a collaborator with somebody and together reach the bigger.

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Ross  

The bigger goal. I think what was interesting for me was the difference between, say the conceptual thinking of red ocean and blue ocean. And blue ocean being where nobody else sails. That's kind of one way of thinking about free zone is that you're playing a game no one else plays great, but it's just a magic set of glasses you put on in a red ocean, to change it to a blue one, not because no one else is there but because the people that are there you play with. And that's a different way I felt of what triggered for me of what a free zone could be. It could be where no one else is playing great. Or it could be playing where everyone else is but in a different way,

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Dean  

Or gathering somebody from the red ocean and say, “Hey, let's go together and go over here, try these glasses.”

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Ross  

And even better than the ocean is Cloudlandia, right? Tell us a little bit more about Cloudlandia.

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Dean  

Well, that's been the loving term that we've named this place, which is really, it's taking on all the characteristics of that. This is as you mentioned, we're gathering in the cloud, where it feels like we're together. And we could just as easily be having this conversation sitting across a table from each other. But we're having the same conversation here in Cloudlandia, where we each have instant access to. And so there's so many that I think what we're seeing right now, is this unbelievable migration of the world to Cloudlandia as a real place, like as we're spending more of our time here, we're staking out corner of Cloudlandia and we've got instant access to everybody, every other citizen of Cloudlandia.

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So amazing because there's so many opportunities that come with that. If you look at where we are right now, I started thinking about if you just take content, you take the things that we're doing, the ways that we share with words, with audio, with pictures, with video, all of those things, I started thinking and tracing back kind of, through history, what have been the big advancements kind of thing, right?

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And so if you start out thinking communication, the way we communicate, and the current game, that we're playing as a species called the Cooperation Game, where we're all increasingly cooperating more and more to advance the survival of our species. And we've been the pinnacle of that. Now, when you look at it back, I'm sure communication started out with us, sort of grunting and gesturing, and pointing and things like that. But then the first sort of communication that was asynchronous, was probably the first time somebody etched a picture on a cave wall, or in the dirt or something like that, right? That that was the technology advancement that we had right then. So you could have a message if you wrote it in the dirt that lasted as long as till the rain came, but you've left a mark, and somebody else could do it.

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And I started thinking about all the advancements as we go along. It probably wasn't until we developed language, and we developed words and things, but you can only communicate as far as your voice could carry. And in real-time, there was no way to think and somebody maybe started saying, “You know what, we should start writing these down, we should start writing down what he said.”

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So people would start scribing things and paper got invented and then it wasn't until 1450 or so when Gutenberg invented the printing press and that the movable type, there was printing presses but movable type opened it up to now make duplicate some stuff. And I was thinking, Dan Sullivan and I have started a podcast called “Welcome to Cloudlandia.” And this, I was thinking we're joking about the scribes, the monks, that for decades or centuries thousands of years maybe, no centuries, were the ones who were tasked with recreating printed things. That was the only way to do something they would…

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Ross  

Hand scribe.

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Dean  

Hand scribe each thing. So you could imagine around the water cooler the talk of, “Have you heard about this Gutenberg guy? He's gonna put us all out of business. Oh, you're such a worrywart.” Like, imagine the history of adaptability. Talk around the water cooler at the monks. And that's probably when they decided to get into the beer-making instead of the things.

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But then you fast forward. It wasn't until then, the mid to late 1800’s when the next advancement came, which was the ability to record sound, followed quickly by the ability to record pictures, moving pictures and photography, all of that stuff kind of happened in the 1800’s. And then from there to now, it's been this ongoing…

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Ross  

Explosion.

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Dean  

Have never satisfied some certainly not being satisfied. I think about Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite things the way he thought, imagine Ricky Gervais, imagine Thomas Edison showing Ricky Gervais the motion picture for the first time, right. And your first reaction would have to be, “Wow, that picture is moving! What's going on?” But then Ricky Gervais would be the guy going, “Yeah, but can't hear him, can we?” Then he joins up the sound with the thing and it was all in these boxes where you had to wind the things to watch it. And that for decades, that was the way that people watched motion pictures as one minute little things in the pub, that they would, still then they thought, “Well, I don't want to keep standing here.” 

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And so they go over and they make motion pictures now create movie theaters, and then nobody's satisfied with that but I'd rather stay home and invent TV. And then well it’s not in color is it? And then they do color TV, and then there's three channels, and in the 70’s they’re going well it's not really much is it. And then cable comes and you keep advancing. And we've gotten to the point right now where the proposition that we have with content creators is…

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I tell you what I want access to every piece of video ever created in the history of the world. I want to access it on any of the devices that I own at any time, right now for me and my entire family, or anybody I share my passwords with. And I will pay you sir, 30 cents a day. That's the proposal that we're at right now where we've landed. And it's just, it's amazing, where not only now, can we consume any of the content that's ever been created, we can also distribute any of the content we create. And there's no…

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Ross  

There's no limit.

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Dean  

There's no obstacles. Even 20 years ago, at the peak of the music industry 1999, the top year $14.6 billion in CD sales, right before Napster came on board there. That there were three music companies that owns over half of all of the music that was created. So there were probably a dozen people that were the gatekeepers of deciding what music got out into the world because of the tramendus cost of doing it. And now, there's nobody stopping. Now we've come to the point where a kid in his grandmother's closet can produce the number one song in the history of the Billboard charts on his own. That just happened last year.

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Ross  

With collaborators, with collaborators he'd never met.

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Dean  

With collaborators in the Netherlands. I mean, it's such a, the adaptability and all of that has been just cascading.

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Ross  

I think what's interesting, we live in this sort of Oliver Twist world of where more please, more please, sir. We don't know. We don't have an enough button. That when is it enough. And I was reading interestingly, just an article earlier today about Netflix. Because it was spurred on by another story. That was the last remaining Blockbusters store is a collaboration now with Airbnb. 

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Dean  

Airbnb I saw that. Yeah.

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Ross  

I thought how cool it was that you could go into an old blockbuster store.

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Dean  

But if you look at that, the time in our lifetimes, we’ve seen something, we've seen the invention of the VCR, the rise of Blockbuster, and the elimination of Blockbusters in a one 30-year period.

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Ross  

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, at their peak, they were like 80,000 staff, 9000 stores of Blockbusters and the Netflix guys when they first started…

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Dean 

Tried to get them to buy it

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Ross  

Tried to get them to buy it for 50 million. And they were a struggling just DVD by post startup and here you go Blockbusters get into the DVD proposition, each of those shifts. And it was, I think it was one of the guy's daughters who wasn't it, that they'd been up late watching Aladdin and then they were chatting in the car with one of his other friends and saying, you’ve just had to pay an exorbitant amount of a late penalty fee. I remember those at Blockbusters, you'd run to try and get it, get it in the mall. 

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Dean  

That's how they made all their money. That and the rewind fee.

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Ross  

$40 late payment fee and surely there's a better way. So this comes to an interesting point about adaptability and adaption, in terms of a point of frustration, a burning platform. So there must be a better way, a $40 fee for something I need to invent because I've been hurt. And therefore I want to adapt and come up with new ideas. Other things that we've realized in the last six months, is that it might not be our choice, and something happens outside and environmental change, an industry and change shift, that then forces us to rethink who we are, how we function, what we do.

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And I've got two questions for you Dean, because I know you love the movies, you were talking a lot about the communications of movies. And that was a big part of your life, wasn't it? In terms of going and visiting?

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Dean  

Going to the Movies, yeah.

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Ross  

Going to the movies. I used to look forward to your Facebook post to the movie that you've seen.

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Dean  

I movie reviews at reporting live. That's right. 

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Ross  

And how have you dealt with that from this balance of yes, we can watch anything we want at home? 

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Dean  

Well, I mean, this is the thing about the equalizer is that there is no obstacles to you being a choice for people to watch, like my access to content so really, what we'll call it, right? Content, video content is through, I have a smart television, as we all do, access to that's online and you can watch YouTube or Amazon Prime or Netflix or any of the cable thing, whatever you can have, I've got it. And there's no difference now between, no distinction between watching something from Netflix or something from a professional, or an organized kind of thing, or watching individuals, like watching something that anybody…

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Ross  

The barrier is zero.

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Dean  

So it truly is creating, Cloudlandia is 100% of the meritocracy that if you create great content, you will win. That's just the… But you have to have reach, you have to have that great content, but get the, to the right audience.

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Ross  

So in terms of some of the challenges that companies are facing and you faced it, a lot of what you were doing, and had an in-person element. You know, your training, live events going and working on whether it's your nine-word email, or it's your marketing, messaging, or all of these things. A lot of that was the ability to be in the same room. feed off the energy of each other, we're human beings that like the same space to collaborate in. You've now had to go, well, many have had to virtualize and digitize, but there has been a choice. Do you virtualize and digitize the experience that you had before? Or do you start again and look at what do we now do? And how can we do it better? And you were telling a story about yourself of what you've done and rethinking how to take people through a process that traditionally was an in-person training kind of program live event. Tell us what you did, and what have been some of the benefits of that. How it was for you and how it's been for people that have been taking part.

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Dean  

Yeah, so I live in Florida, most of the year, and it gets hot here in the summer. So traditionally, I used to split time between Toronto and Florida. And then the last six years I've been just traveling more through the summer so I go on up sort of world tour where I go to Toronto and London and Amsterdam and Sydney and come back to Florida, doing live events in each of those places. 

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And so in March, I remember it March 13, Friday the 13th, watching the television, and this Coronavirus was just kind of making its way. And they shut down international travel into the United States. And I had an event scheduled for the end of March where some of the people that were coming, we're coming from Europe and Canada. And so I knew, Okay, that's a no go. So immediately, literally 90 seconds after I heard him say those words, I immediately got in got to work, I created this, had my guys create this environment for me, I learned Zoom, the capabilities of doing virtual events and decided we're going to do the events or we're going to do them on Zoom. 

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And so immediately flipped, we did five of the breakthrough blueprint events just like that, because the essence of it. They're small boardroom events, 12 people at a time, which is perfect for zoom and having this conversation, the essence of what you get from it is there but you don't get the camaraderie or the in between the social elements of it. So it went well and then I realized because I'd been speaking at other events and seeing other people do events that we were really, all of us treating Zoom virtual events as just a replacement of live. 

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We're doing what we do at the live events, but we're doing it virtually now. And it struck me that that is sort of a limiting thing that if you look back historically, we've always sort of adapted to the new thing with how it relates to the old thing. So when cars came in it was horseless carriages. And when the movies started, it was motion pictures, moving pictures. And without really understanding what the whole new capabilities that we had, all the things that we have uniquely possible because of the new technology. 

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And so I adapted, again, I've launched a new workshop where it's spaced thing where we focus on one specific topic. So I just launched my elite conversion intensive, where we go in over three sessions, three afternoons focused 100% on from the moment somebody opts in, till the moment that they agree to collaborate with you, and spaced out so that people can do what we do in the first session, test, experiment, get feedback, adapt, come back, and we take it to the next step, and then come back again. And that experience has been amazing, because we just did the second session on Tuesday and people have taken what we did in the first session and gotten results already from what we did in the first session.

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Ross  

And what I like about that is the richness of a unique opportunity, what you needed to unlearn of that baggage that you brought in the room and then deciding, maybe let's experiment. Let's have some flexibility here to see what the new possibilities are. So  “Oh, I'm going to do an event. It's this and by the way, it's going to be over for over a month, and you're going to have to come to this location for just two hours. And then you're gonna have to travel back,” and you wouldn't even think that way. 

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Dean  

No, it wouldn’t be practical.

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Ross  

Yeah, impossible, it'd be impractical. And it just wouldn't be good for anyone. Whereas now, that's not only practical, impossible, it's better in some ways.

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Dean  

Instant travel. Like, you and I are having this conversation. Literally, two feet outside of this door here. I'm in my home environment. And it's just that, instant travel.

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Ross  

Now, you were able to rethink an existing proposition and do step one to digitize it and then reimagine it. And you have built the ability over many years to do that, the freedom of your reflection of yourself thought, of your mind set and the way you see the world. Now there's many people and organizations that aren't equipped with those kinds of muscles, that kind of lens. And today is a repeat of yesterday with a tiny tweak. And yesterday was a repeat of the day before with a tweak. And there's an awful lot of organizations that are so disrupted. How might they be able to look at the world differently? What sort of things could they do? What kinds of attributes? What ways of thinking, could you give them any tips?

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Dean  

I think my thinking around it was what is the outcome? Like, what is on the other side of doing the live events, I was really parsing out the elements of it, almost like somebody would deconstruct a recipe for something, or whatever, where you might say, “Well, what's the essence of this? What's the active ingredient in this?” And so what I was looking at, is that the essential thing of the breakthrough blueprints in the boardroom, are the communication or being able to have the conversations, that's the essential thing. Which there was no difference in the ability to do that, and so you start to them, the first as I said five events that we did, we're just mirroring what we had done. But then I started realizing, well, what what was possible now, like it is kind of, even doing it at home or in an environment, it's still a little bit unwieldy that to sit for a whole day to do the thing, even though it's exactly what we would be doing in the boardroom, it's just not necessary. It's like the reason that we're doing it that way is to efficiently use the time that we are away, right, like to get the most out of that. But if it's not, if there's no friction in the travel, could we get the most done in a three hour, three hours is I think the perfect half day type of environment.

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Ross  

I think it's interesting. It comes back to some of the dialogue you were talking about before of this Oliver Twist of more, we always want more. So because…

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Dean  

Yeah, there's a psychological principle for that, that were wired…

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Ross  

Wired that way.

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Dean  

Yeah, I wish I could remember what it was. But well, if they're definitely…

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Ross  

We've gone, “I don't need to travel so I can fit more in. I've got to do more, I've got to do more.” One of the challenges is that in Cloudlandia that we can instantly be beamed into. There's a couple of things going on, in my mind, as I think about Cloudlandia, that we're designing this, we're redesigning it in a way we want it to be, we're immigrants, as you like to talk about it into that place. And it can be a ready player one where we go into it, and it's an avatar, and it's a manifestation of something that is in our mind. Or it can be the real Dean Jackson, that as we are.

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Dean  

I think I've come to that, that I think this is, I don't think that, and I could be wrong, open to being 100% wrong. But I think it's gonna be a long time before we all agree that putting on a headset and fully going into that environment is the, for most of the things that we're doing that would be an incremental improvement, not offset by the hassle of…

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Ross  

Yeah and I guess it's as hard as us to think of ‘Well I can't collaborate through the TV screen, I have to be in the same room until it's possible.”

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Dean 

Until it's possible I can say…

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Ross  

And so I can visualize it. I can see it.

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Dean  

It’s a big wall. Like, I think it's more likely that we'll have some equivalent of a holodeck. In a room like this, like, I'm just on my MacBook here, so I've got that screen. But I can imagine seeing the whole, six feet across here of all super high def clarity video that would literally feel like we're sitting across the room.

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Ross  

And it should be that the technology is invisible. We shouldn't need to see the edge of the screen or the MacBook or those things. And the other thing that I find interesting is that we have these choices, we can go and visit Cloudlandia have a conversation and we can become either overwhelmed or addicted. Is it a place we'd rather spend our time with than our home? Is it the blend? 

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Each of these things our decisions and choices that we all need to make, in order to say, from our perspective is, is it sustainable? Am I adding to myself or am I draining? Because one of the challenges that we've noticed and people talk about this Zoom fatigue is just how cognitively hard it is to have a conversation. You mentioned three hours, just the amount of brainpower we need to look at somebody watch them understand what's going on, it's exhausting.

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Dean  

That's why you, really it would be hard to do that one-on-one, but in a group where you can kind of rest a little bit and sit back and watch the conversation for a little bit and then lean up and interview.

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Ross  

In terms of your, we've got a little bit of period left of 2020. And we, as a fellow coach, people working 90 day chunks, we look that far ahead, but also, as visionaries and entrepreneurs are always looking for where the opportunities are and what kind of future we want to create. If there's somebody who is in an organization, and where historically, they thought, “Oh large equals secure, I went got educated.” 

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And there are many people like that, that go into large organizations and into companies, that's all of a sudden, the future doesn't look that secure, it looks very insecure for them. And entrepreneurs have built this muscle of being able to navigate in uncertainty. There's many who aren't able to navigate in that uncertainty. As entrepreneurs how might we help those others that aren't necessarily entrepreneurs yet? I'm interested in your thoughts of are entrepreneurs born or are they made? I know that Gino Wickman has got a book in a very interesting view on you either are or you aren't.

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Dean  

Right.

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Ross  

And what's your views on entrepreneurs and the next, you know next part of this year, for those that are perhaps facing a situation that's so uncertain and they're thinking about hustle, they're thinking about a side bit that where could they start? What could they learn from you as a very seasoned entrepreneur who works with so many of them of how to start thinking like an entrepreneur and what to...

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Dean  

Well, I think right now there's a market, I think this idea no matter what is building your life, around your unique abilities, your passions, the things that excite you, the things that you like to do, imagine there's never been a better time to say, “Well, all I want to do is this,” and when no matter what it is, whether you just want to do accounting, or whether you just want to do, take customer service calls or you want to do something out, whether you want to do something as a contributor to someone else's vision, or you want to have your own vision and enlist other people to take your vision, there's never been a better time for it. 

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I mean, the littlest thing where no matter what it is that you can do, you have access to the totality of Cloudlandia, the entire population of Cloudlandia. There's somebody out there looking for exactly what you can do and contribute. So you can be entrepreneurial, let's call it that, I think the whole notion of entrepreneurial is really changing where you can, there's another level of it, where you can be self sufficient in a way, where you can do only the thing you want to do no matter what, you can tap into cash flows.

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You look at even there's I think a lot of room to think about the distinctions between the mainland and Cloudlandia. And there are opportunities on both, it's more like the mainland is definitely more of a linear thing where the laws of physics apply and all of those things. In Cloudlandia is more of a multiplier, there's zero friction in Cloudlandia. You can get from one place to another, we can instantly connect in Cloudlandia even though you're, I'm assuming you're in England right now. 

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Ross  

I am. Yeah.

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Dean  

But you could have been anywhere and it doesn't matter, right. So, but on the ground, still there's an opportunity for people to be mainland providers of services, or meaning, you can drive Uber you can do Instacart or Uber Eats or any of the, there's so many things that you can do.

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Ross  

It's hard to have your haircut in Cloudlandia.

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Dean  

Yeah, it's hard to digitize a haircut. 

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Ross  

Yeah, it's hard to get a tattoo, and all of these interesting things of where's the opportunity in each. And I believe entrepreneurs are the ultimate adapters. 

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Dean  

Yes.

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Ross  

Because they're able to understand ability, their character and their environment. And seek to leverage the environment, leverage their ability to be able to create value. And that to me is the bottom line, that the moment we stop adapting is the moment we collapse.

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Dean  

Future's great

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Ross  

It is, it is. And it's bright because we decide it so, of those things. If people have been listening and they are intrigued about your blueprint courses, your lead conversion courses all of these different things, how do they best get in touch with you, Dean?

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Dean  

The best place is DeanJackson.com that's just got all of the things that we're involved in, that's the best place to start. And then listen to the “Welcome to Cloudlandia Podcast,” which will be, the first episodes will be up this month, so very excited about that.

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Ross  

I really love it. And there's one last question. So you kindly got a sneak peek to our documentary film that we're releasing. 

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Dean  

Yes, amazing. 

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Ross  

And you've also had a little experience of our AQme Assessment. What were perhaps some of your lasting impressions and insights from those things.

Dean  

Well, it felt like, well the documentary is amazing. Well done. I mean, Nick is great. The content is great, the topic is great. The assessment that I did, the process of taking the assessment was unlike anything I've ever done, it felt very conversational. Like I was being guided through it, which is amazing and it was it was a fun experience and insightful to see the results, to see the how you break down what the information that came out of it.

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Ross  

Fantastic. It's been a real joy. I always look forward to your pearls of wisdom when we're in workshops together because it's over to that to Dean to be able to come up with unique words, what was one of them. Hoopertunis? 

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Dean  

Hoopertunities, who not how.

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Ross  

Hoopertunities, who not how, I just love them, and I think that's certainly one of many of your unique abilities, Dean and thanks for joining us.

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Dean  

Thanks, Ross.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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