Join Dean and Dan as they discuss automation for the sophisticated procrastinator.
What would you want to have happen, if you trusted yourself to consistently do it?
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep037
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Yes, Mr. Jackson.
Dean: How are you?
Dan: Well, I wanted to pass on to you that about two or three clients, and I'm sorry I don't have their names, because the comments just in passing have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the Breakthrough Blueprint ... They had been in session, so the Breakthrough Blueprint-
Dean: Oh, that's great.
Dan: I'm just giving you market research. I'm just giving-
Dean: Market research, anecdotal as it may be. But yeah, that is ... That's exciting. I'll tell you what, I have a Breakthrough Blueprint this week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Dan: In Orlando or-
Dean: Yes. At Celebration. That's right. I just love ... There couldn't be a more unique ability suited environment for a guy like me than the Breakthrough Blueprint and I'm forever grateful for the conversation that we had that led to it.
Dan: Yeah. I can remember it. I was in my element and I was talking to you and I asked you the question, which is useful for all of our listeners, what single activity would keep you increasingly fascinated and motivated for the rest of your life.
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative), and that was it. I had it immediately.
Dan: And you had it right off the top.
Dean: I tell you, that was the big ... The big shift for me in that conversation was that I had not heard you, and I think it was kind of a new way of articulating it for you, but I had not heard you articulate unique ability in that way really, because that immediately clicked for me, where thinking about introspectively what your unique ability is was always sort of a struggle for me.
I think that as I watch other people who start the program, who start with Strategic Coach, who come back to me and say what do you think my unique ability is, without fail when I ask them what's the thing, the single activity that would keep you fascinated and motivated for the rest of your life and/or the next 25 years anyway, and they always have an answer for that, which they would never ... I think that you're on the right track with your unique ability if you think that can't possibly be possible to just do that.
Dan: Yeah. I mean you've got a lot out of the conversations, but so did I, because I immediately reframed our introduction to unique ability through the ABC model. In other words, anybody can do an inventory of what they're involved in. Let's say they go back over the last quarter and let's ... In the first instance, let's just talk about it from a work standpoint, I mean how you're making your money in the world.
I say just do an inventory of all your activities that you did during the last 90 days and you probably do over the next 90 days if you didn't make any changes, and immediately I'd say some of these activities actually irritate you, so that's A. Some of them are just okay activities, and that's B. But C activities are the ones that are really the answer to what would fascinate and motivate you, and you can do a time allocation to how much your spending on A, how much you're spending on B, and how much you're spending on C, and then you can very practically make some shifts of time. You could bring in the Jackson time system, you know.
Dean: That's exactly right. You get an immediate abundance of time with 100 units a day.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I have a project for you in the future where we will co-author one of my quarterly books, because I'm doing it with Joe Polish and the Joe Polish one ... Joe and I are devoting 10 of our podcast series to a concept called Unique. We're just identifying what are the mindsets, regardless of what activity that you're ... Industry or business you're involved, where over time you will start to appear as unique in your thinking and your activity.
So Joe and I have this, and the interesting thing about this is it put me in the mind that I would do ... I would start using the quarterly books to do partnership books. In other words-
Dean: How nice. Got you.
Dan: What I thought about was just the time system as one of the books, where we really go in depth on the whole notion of breaking your day into 10 minute units and what kind of mindset do you actually have that you would find that easier to do because it will lead to what you just said, which is that you have a feeling that you have an abundance of time rather than I don't have enough time.
I've felt that. I mean I have to tell you, since we had that conversation and we talked about it over three or four of our Joy of Procrastination podcasts I have felt more and more an abundance of time, and you've reported the same thing.
Dean: I really have. Yeah. What it helps do is reclaim all the sort of awkward in between times. My best thing ... The most absolute assurance that I'm going to do something is if it's synchronous, scheduled, and involves somebody else, 12:30 Sunday afternoon I'm here 100% involved for one hour. I know exactly what's going to happen.
So the things that go on in my week that are like that have 100% certainty of getting done. But it's when we're ... The times that require us to just be on our own, either being a catalyst or moving things forward, or really it's about deciding what we want, this is where I find those 10 minute units really come into being very useful, because as you know if you've got a 12:30 commitment you're not really going to start much of anything after say 11:45.
You start thinking about okay, I got to start getting ready 12:00 certainly. But there's still three good units between then and now, you know? You can get a lot done.
Dan: Well, I can tell you I just went through that, because it was 12:00 and I go on high alert, because there is an event today, and I made sure my cell ... Actually, when I got up this morning I made sure that my cell phone as fully charged, because this is the first call that I've had on my cell phone since our last podcast. I should just put the Dean Jackson ... You know, I should get a custom made-
Dean: The Dean phone. Yeah.
Dan: The Dean phone, because first of all nobody has the number except Babs, and I'm always with her, so she uses just personal communication rather than the phone if she's in the same room with me. That's an interesting innovation, isn't it? That if you're actually in the room with the person talk to them. You don't have to dial them or leave a message.
This harkens back to our last podcast, where we talked about my particular approach to being communicated to from the outside world. In that time, I actually brainstormed the tool, the impact filter, and everybody who's in Strategic Coach knows what the impact filter is, and I just ... I was setting up a podcast that I want to do with Peter Diamandus so instead of going to the purpose, importance and ideal outcome, which is the usual intro, I just went to the success criteria and I was able to write down eight success criteria for the podcast.
Here's the real breakthrough for me, Dean. Increasingly I start the impact filter by going to the success criteria, because I'm seeing it out there in my mind, what needs to be achieved. I have my own impact filter tool on my ... A custom one that I've made for my desktop, and I changed success criteria to brainstorming, what are eight ... What are the eight most interesting points I can make about this? That's the question I have for you, and I just zip through. In about one and a half units I got all eight of them down, and now it's very easy for me to go back and talk about purpose, so I do it backwards. I'm starting to do my impact filters backwards.
Dean: Start with the brainstorming? That's really-
Dan: Start with-
Dean: I like that.
Dan: And I introduced this into the workshop this past week. This is the second week of this quarter, so I've done four workshops, and I've started telling people look, just brainstorm and let the things are that you want to communicate and why this is such an interesting idea and do that.
I just want to tell you the Joy of Procrastination conversations that I've had with you, going on two years now ... In July it'll be two years since we started, is just profoundly changing my thinking about a lot of things.
Dean: Me too. I said that to ... I was at ... Barry Mizell invited me to come speak at his Art of Less Doing Mastermind in Miami this week, and some of the people there were saying how they love the Joy of Procrastination, listening to it, and I was sharing that with them, that that's really been ... Just this check-in of keeping this conversation going ... And the funny thing is they all said we never know where it's going to go, but it just is like listening in on you guys having the conversation more than anything, which is exactly-
Dan: If any of the listeners ... I'm just putting out an offer here. If any of you know where we're going with our discussions before we start stuff, we'd enjoy the guidance. Maybe we could learn from this. Maybe other people have a better idea than we do about where these discussions are going.
Dean: That's so funny. This week actually was my ... This is the first of my 10 Times Workshops that I have ever missed.
Dan: Well, you didn't miss it.
Dean: Right. Exactly. But I mean I would normally have been in Toronto for ... Was it-
Dan: This Thursday.
Dean: This Thursday.
Dan: Yeah. The thing was that the schedule got rescheduled, so it would have been the week before actually.
Dean: Right.
Dan: It would have been the week before that you would have been here and we would have had our lunch at either Jacques or Select Bistro. Yeah, we're going to have to take this as a serious challenge, because something has been taken out of our lives with this new schedule, and I think we should give some serious thought of how to create something better, create something that-
Dean: Yeah. My intention is that I'm going to come to at least the summer, the warm weather sessions in Toronto while I'm in ... I'll catch back up in June and in September, but then I'm very excited about the Game Changer Workshop.
Dan: I'm so excited about it. It starts on April 10th, so we're dating this a little bit, but it starts on April 10th. We have 32 signups now, which is terrific. We put a second start date for June, because I have about 10 people who either couldn't make that one or couldn't make the schedule of the April ... The workshops that started in April.
So right off the bat we've given everybody an option of two dates that they can come to their Game Changer in the first year, because entrepreneurs are scheduled ahead. They have commitments. So we were faced with this, and I said why don't we just start a second group? Everybody said we won't fill it up. I said we will eventually, because people will bump up from the 10 Times Program. I said this gives them more options. You want to give people options.
Dean: Yes. Exactly. I'm super excited.
Dan: Well, speaking ... Okay, now I've given you all sorts of market feedback and reports. Now you give me yours.
Dean: Well, I was going to mention that the Art of Less Doing had a couple of really great breakthroughs. It's interesting how I have really like come to not allow myself to think how, or to catch myself whenever I'm thinking ... Whenever I'm going down the path of how do I do something and keep myself up into really deepening my understanding of what more than how.
So it was really ... It was an interesting exercise for me because the workshop in Miami, there was very ... I actually went through the workshop. I didn't come down just to speak and run off. I actually sat through it, just to be part of it.
I'm always looking and testing out my resolve around the temptation of wanting to learn how to do something, which I noticed in the room people ... That's immediately the thing. They're wanting to get a grasp on how to actually do something, and you could see it going down into ... And I really kind of caught myself a couple of ... I would ask the question about how ... And then I caught myself and said forget it. I don't want to know how to do anything. What I really want to know is what about this? This was just to deepen my understanding of what is possible with the tool rather than how, and to be able to immediately then describe what it is that I want to the appropriate ... Who can make that happen, which happens to be on my team Stuart.
So I was able to ... A couple of things. You and I had talked about the email situation, right? The frequency of email, and what I discovered through listening to one of the sessions at the workshop that the ability through a program called If This Then That you can set up rules that are if an email in my inbox, any of my inboxes, but let's say my main inbox, is starred with a purple star I'd like you to gather those up at 6:00 p.m. every day and send me a digest of those to this email address.
So that really takes the ... We had talked about my experiment of I'd like to just see what it would be like to get my emails once a day rather than constantly throughout the day. So this week will be the first week and it'll be a good experiment, because I've got a Breakthrough Blueprint, as I mentioned, so I'm not frequently checking though those workshops anyway. But to have it a 6:00, I'd get a digest of any of the emails that Lillian or Diane have deemed that are outliers and require me to see them. So that will be a really great experiment for me to do that.
Then I also found through that another way that I can make the process of my podcast even easier, because I mentioned to you I just dial in and we do the podcast, and then for my More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast and my Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast I record an intro and an outro after I'm done with the podcast on my iPhone through my voice memo, so I've set it up now so that whenever I record a voice memo, as soon as I'm done with the memo it automatically emails it to my team for the audio processing, so I've taken out the step of having to manually type in the email addresses, so I literally can do it with my, you know, which allows me to save-
Dan: You know, as you're talking Dean, because I think like since birth I guess I've seen things visually, like thoughts visually, and I don't know if you have a pen there or-
Dean: I do.
Dan: Do you have that ... Well you have Remarkable.
Dean: I have Remarkable, and-
Dan: Can you put out another pitch for this?
Dean: Have you got one yet?
Dan: No, I haven't, because I freed myself up mostly from doing this. The reason I did is that I've stopped doing all diagramming work by myself and I do it with an artist, either one of my program artists or the people who actually does all the artwork for the materials in the program, or my cartoonist. First of all, I lose, I'm trying to push myself more and more to the point that I'm just talking, you know, and-
Dean: Yeah. Me too.
Dan: But if I'm with an artist, I will just quickly with a pen and paper talk it through. But if you just draw sort of an X, two lines that make an X, but it's wider than it is higher.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Okay. So if I can just retrace your conversation so far on emails, that you answering emails is written in the left-hand side of the X. In other words, the one that goes down to nothing.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Then on the other side there's a freedom that you get out of that, so you're freeing yourself up from, and then you get to the intersection point, and on the other side you're freed up to the point. This exactly is what you're doing as you're taking activities that annoy you, that are how activities, and you're freeing yourself up for who activities on the other side.
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative). I like that.
Dan: Yeah. I mean it's just a very simple diagram that shows what the game plan here is, and it could be about anything. This just happens ... You know, we're just focusing on the particular thing about ... So what's happening is, the how part of the email is declining down to nothing, as close to nothing as you can get, but on the other side you're actually reducing the how down to automation actually. On the other side is the increasing number of who’s who take care of everything on the other side.
Dean: Yes, you're absolutely right. That was the big thing, is that the ... Realizing that ... One of the things that Ali talks about a lot is ... Of course is his process of optimize, automate, outsource. I'm good at outsourcing, but I haven't really ... I haven't really gone into the automation portions of stuff. My eyes were opened really in Miami to see all the different ways that you can actually automate something, especially when I include human automation. But to have that is really a cool distinction.
Dan: Can I stop there? I've never heard that term used before, those two words, human automation. That's a neat idea.
Dean: That's been my-
Dan: I know it has, but you've never said the words before and ... I mean we call it delegation, but it's actually more than that.
Dean: Yeah, it is. It is.
Dan: It's a set of rules that you put in place that you can-
Dean: Yeah. The way I describe it is that once I opened up my ... Expanded my definition of automation to include things done by other people, humans, that changes everything. My definition of automation is I'm not doing it but it's happening. That's the-
Dan: You're not doing the how. You're not doing how, but you're identifying the skill and setting up the rules.
Dean: I'm identifying the what. I'm driving the what.
Dan: You're a whater.
Dean: I am a whater. That's right.
Dan: You're also a whyer. You're also a whyer, because in order to communicate a what properly you also have to communicate the why so that people get the full context.
Dean: I agree. Yeah. I use that in ... A lot of the times that we're talking about the email campaigns that I run that are so responsive is because they're actually manned by humans. There are some things that humans are still ... We're still, as far as we know, the most intelligent things in the universe, so we've won as far as we know.
Dan: Well, yeah. I mean we have, what is it? I was just reading Tim Larkin's wonderful book, which is called When Violence is the Answer, and the more I read it, I think it's one of the greatest philosophical books I've ever read. I saw Tim three weeks ago now at Genius Network and I bought 600 of his books and gave them out to everybody, and we're going to actually have Tim in for a two-day workshop with our entire team next year and everything.
Anybody listening who hasn't gotten this book, download this book and read this. I have a feeling I'm going to read it about every six months because it's such a great book. Tim's got two rules. Do everything you possibly can do to avoid any violent situations throughout your entire life, but if you cannot avoid it, then disable or kill the person who's doing violence. Those are his two rules.
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative). That's right. That was pretty impactful, his thing I think is saying that violence is never the answer until it's the only answer. But when it is, it's the only answer. Yes. Exactly.
Dan: But anyway, going back to the ... He just has quotes from somebody that the human brain has ... We have 100 billion ... It's 100 million or 100 billion, but it's a big number ... A 100 million synapses and they're all connected ... Each of them is connected to 10,000 other synapses, and it's the most dense and extraordinarily well-developed mechanism in the entire universe as far as we know. So I think what the technical innovation, technological innovation is doing for us, it's allowing us to actually appreciate the possibilities for human automation.
Dean: Yes. I'm a big embraceor of that. I've found ... I've been using another service called Get Magic as well, and that's been just a ... I just like that as a little extension of my ... It's right there on my cell phone and it's just a little extension where at any time there's anything like ... If I'm not buying something from Amazon, for instance my Remarkable tablet, I saw the video and within 30 seconds of watching the video I decided I had to have it, so I immediately took a screen capture, texted it to Get Magic, and said can you order me one of these?
They've actually got my credit card on file and they've got all this stuff, so I saved the hassle of like going there and filling in the form and doing all the stuff that's just such a speedway. So anytime there's anything like that, once I know what I want, that's my first thought, is can Get Magic do this for me and it will help. It can be from getting movie tickets or getting anything, getting a reservation, setting up a massage, doing anything like that, just being able to describe in a text what it is that I want. It just takes a little bit of like practice and thinking, if I'm consciously thinking about who can do this?
Dan: You know, Dean, you're getting pretty close to levitation here.
Dean: Fingers crossed. That's really ... That's the goal, you know?
Dan: I would just try ... Just to get started, I'd just try to do it for a 10 minute period.
Dean: Right.
Dan: See if I can levitate for like 10 minutes.
Dean: See if I can levitate for 10 minutes. I mean really.
Dan: Well, think about it. What's the number one problem that people when they feel overwhelmed ... What's the issue? Right. I just don't have time and I don't know how.
Dean: Yes. Well, I think that's really ... I think we hit on this very early on in our conversations, that the brain ... That's why brainstorming is such a great thing. That 10 minute ... I mean it's the instant 10 minute procrastination buster. That's really what one 10 minute brainstorm session can instantly break you from the pattern of avoiding something, because out of that brainstorming is certainly going to come the clarity of at least something down some ... The next steps, or who can do something. You get more clear on what's actually involved in the macro what of what it is.
Dan: Yeah. Can I ask you a question about Ari's workshop?
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Did you make contributions that really drew people being interested in how you're thinking about this? Because I've got to believe for Ari it was real plus to have you in that workshop.
Dean: Yeah. That was what I was down there, to speak at the event. So I just decided I would go and actually attend the event too. So yeah, I was there to talk about automating. We talked about a lot of different things, because certainly I've been an advocate for doing less before Ari. That was why it was such a ... Since third grade really.
Dan: No, you were on this career path early.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: And you were getting very, very specific market feedback from your teachers early. I mean they were identifying your unique ability. You had the benefit of having your teachers identify your unique ability early.
Dean: That's right. That's right. So yeah, I spoke about that sort of thing, about the how and the who, and we spoke about a lot of email marketing things, because that was something that everyone was very interested in as well. But yeah, so I got to contribute over the two and a half days, so it was a lot of fun. It's almost like it's a really interesting thing for people to think about human automation, especially when it comes to really running high volume email campaigns.
I've coined a phrase called email baristas, and that's the human that is handling the human element of the replies to these emails that we send that are eliciting a response from people. The reason that I call them email baristas is because the person with the skill level to run the espresso machine at Starbucks and remember how to make all those complicated drinks on demand is ... That person has the skill to handle managing incoming email replies in high volume, because often people say when you do like adding that human element that's not scalable.
Well, I say you know what? If you look at it, if you describe Starbucks on the surface it's completely unscalable. You're selling custom, on-site, ready-made beverages, customized with millions of variables, on demand, in person, for $3 to $5. That doesn't seem scalable, yet it's one of the most wonderful scaling stories in American business, you know.
Dan: Yeah. Well, here's one that sort of relates to it, because I will tell you in addition to Starbucks, which is sort of a standard feature of my life, I go to Starbucks and I'll look for a Starbucks because it's sort of an 80% solution for me. I'm going to get a pretty good coffee. But I have to tell you, if you have a favorite independent coffeemaker where there is actually a great barista and they remember you, that's a dimension above Starbucks. My feeling is Starbucks actually created all of their competition because they trained hundreds, thousands of people, who probably if you look at all of their great baristas from 20 years ago ... I think the automation of Starbucks happened about maybe 15 years ago, 20 or 15 years ago, where the machines ... They built in enough knowledge that the machines can do a good job. Then they just exploded.
But I can remember some baristas ... I still remember them. There was a guy in Vancouver who we were there only once every quarter, and Babs and I would walk in the front door and he says, "I got 'em, I got 'em," and he remembered how we wanted our coffee from three months ago. That's the type of skill that you're talking about here.
Dean: It really is. That's amazing. There's a place like that in Yorkville that I go when I'm there, Café Vulva, and Rafe, the guy who is the owner-
Dan: Where is that?
Dean: It's on Belair, right next to Café Nervosa.
Dan: Yeah. Right. I know-
Dean: He used to have where ... There's a gelato shop there now, but there used to be the upper area, it was just a little walk-in thing, but he would ... He was the most personable guy. I always thought about him as like if there's ever such a thing as return on enthusiasm this guy has it. You could see ... I'd sit there ... He's Italian and I would sit there and the whole front of this ... It was not much more than like a 10 by 20 or 10 by 15 little area, right, but the whole front of it was like a garage door that kind of opens up.
Dan: Yep. Yep.
Dean: The whole thing opens up and he's Italian and he would sit there and I would sit just in the transition from the outside to the inside and I would see these ladies walking from the ... Towards Harry Rose, and walk up to Yorkville Avenue and you could see the look on their face ... They would start to kind of like smile and get ready for it, because as soon as they would cross into the visual area it was all this stuff. He would yell that to all of the ladies, you know, and you could see them looking forward to that moment in the day. They know what's coming and you could see them kind of preparing for it. It was just kind of funny, but you walk in and he's knows ... You know, I'm up every quarter and he knows exactly what I like and-
Dan: Well, you're unforgettable Dean. You have one great personal quality. You're unforgettable.
Dean: Well, that's ... I mean he's unforgettable.
Dan: I mean that in the best possible way. Some people are unforgettable for other reasons.
Dean: That was funny.
Dan: Yeah. This is a fascinating discussion, because I've got one of my books in the ... I sort of line them up in my mind. I don't write them down because I don't want to make a commitment, you know, because ... But I have one that's third or fourth in line right now. It's called Making People Irreplaceable. It's my creative response to all this talk about machines eliminating human beings.
It was triggered a long time ago, where I went as just an invited guest into one of the Strategic Coach Workshops with one of the other coaches at what we call the significant level of the program, and ... So I usually walk in and rather than me having a presentation I just say, "Has anybody got any thoughts or ideas about coaching that if you ever saw me you would like to ask me?" That's how we get started.
One guy got up and said, "Are you replaceable?" I said, "Absolutely not, and you should have the same goal, that you're not replaceable." They said, "What if you get taken out of the picture, like you have an airplane crash or something and you get taken out of the picture?" I said, "If that happens, Babs is gone too," because we fly together everywhere.
He said, "Well, what happens to Coach?" I said, "Insofar as we're able to anticipate that, we've already thought it through. We've thought it through from a legal standpoint. We've thought it through from a financial standpoint, so all the game plan is there. Every one of our team leaders has a written plan of what they would do during the first hundred days if anything happened to Babs and me.
"But I want to say they wouldn't replace me and they wouldn't replace Babs. They'd have to come up with another game plan. They would have to come up with another solution. They'd have to reorganize. They'd have to restructure."
Then he said, "Well, how do you feel about that?" I said, "I feel great about it." "No, but they would have to come up with another game plan." I said, "Why do I care? I'm gone."
Dean: Right. Exactly.
Dan: I'm on to the next whatever it is. I said, "Not only that, I will tell you right now I can identify very quickly a dozen or 15 of our team members in Coach, they're not replaceable either. We'd have to come up with another solution."
Dean: Another game plan. Right.
Dan: Yeah. They said, "Well, isn't that a dangerous way to build a company?" I said, "Okay, well let's add over there is one way to develop your company. What's the alternative?"
Dean: Uh-huh (affirmative). What is the alternative? Yeah.
Dan: I other words, that they're interchanging parts. I said, "You get greatness out of interchanging parts?" You have to be kind of satisfied with average to mediocre to be able to do that. In this instance you've got irreplaceable and greatness and over here you've got replaceable and mediocre, so is that your choice of how you'd like to proceed? Here's the thing ... But he said, "If you think they're irreplaceable they have power over you." I say, "Well, where else are they going to go and be irreplaceable?"
Dean: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan: I said, "If they're irreplaceable to me, guess what? I'm irreplaceable to them, so we've got a double compact here." I mean you could just see a buzz going through the room. I said, "Don't have mediocrity as your future ideal."
Dean: Right. Yeah. I mean just go with it. That's great. I mean milk it for all you can, right? I mean that's the thing, be remarkable and aim to be irreplaceable. That's great.
Dan: Yeah. I mean think of any great entertainer or great athlete. Are they replaceable? Absolutely not. That's why they're great, is because they're irreplaceable.
Dean: Yes. Yeah. Very cool.
Dan: I mean there was an article in ... I'm trying to think, it was in one of our ... I have a quarterly discussion book, so it was an article ... We take articles and make them into a book. There was an article about how when you have a great entrepreneur like Steve Jobs, the person who takes over is usually not an idea person. They're an execution guy.
Dean: That's true. Yes.
Dan: So a huge who knows the why and the what is replaced by a person who knows the how, but what drops off, there isn't any new why and how. Because remember Steve Jobs, when Steve Jobs would introduce a new Apple thing, the whole world would stop. The stock market would stop. The technological world would stop for Steve Jobs.
Dean: Yeah, to watch their keynote. Exactly.
Dan: The reason is because he was going to explain a new what and why in the world, and that's what drove all the other innovation in the world, is this one innovator would come out with a new what. The only difference between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk is that with Steve Jobs it was available tomorrow, and with Elon Musk it's available when we get to Mars. You know what I mean?
Dean: Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
Dan: Yeah. So he's not selling the future. He's selling if you buy this tomorrow this is going to be your future.
Dean: Yeah, we're shipping today. Uh-huh (affirmative).
Dan: Yeah, we're shipping today. The whole thing of, you know, getting preoccupied with automating how as the ideal for your future, you should be putting yourself up for more what and why as your ideal future.
Dean: Yes. I love it. And setting up so that it occurs. I mean that's really the best of it, to see your things moving along. In a way, that is almost a way of ... You're never going to make yourself replaceable in the what and the why area, but it's almost imperative that you make yourself replaceable in the how and the execution of it.
Dan: Oh, yeah.
Dean: That's really a ... That's a cool thing.
Dan: That's a great distinction, what you just said there. That's a really great distinction, because so many people ... And I came up with a definition of retirement that really has a lot of bite to it this week, just on the spur of the moment because somebody ... I will just catch people that use the retirement work in the Strategic Coach and I say, "Here's my definition of retirement for entrepreneurs. It's a sudden and permanent loss of personal and organization capability."
Dean: Sudden and personal-
Dan: And permanent-
Dean: Oh, permanent?
Dan: Permanent loss of personal and organizational capability.
Dean: That is wonderful. Personal and organizational capability.
Dan: Think what happens when an entrepreneur retires.
Dean: Yeah, the big party and the watch.
Dan: The big party is over.
Dean: Can you imagine, most people would have a ... If you announced your retirement Dan, at which ... You know what? In most companies of your size and your likes of being a business, a party like your 70th birthday party could very well have been a farewell to Dan retirement party at 70. That's what that might have looked like, to celebrate a lifetime of work through Strategic Coach, and send you and Babs off into the sunset for endless cruises and ... That would have been an appropriate celebration of an accomplished life, and here it is that that was the kickoff of your 25 year plan.
Dan: Yeah. But think about it and let's just re-step that Dean. You got us from the lobby area of the Four Seasons Hotel up to the party room under false pretenses.
Dean: I really did. Yeah.
Dan: And I could have had a heart attack when the door opened and ... So it could have-
Dean: Oh, man, that's so funny.
Dan: It might have been. It went one way or the other. What have we talked about so far? This has been fascinating.
Dean: It really has.
Dan: I love this concept of human automation because it really changes the whole conversation, because it's always been human or automation, but actually it's human automation.
Dean: That's the best. I think that that's the effective thing right now. You look at it ... I'm seeing that most people are looking at them either/or, right? They're looking at automation or they're looking at humans and-
Dan: Well, all the stuff we're talking about ... You know, I mean the big part of what's being presented at Abundance 360 and everything like that ... And it seems to me like ... I can't quite talk about it, but it's like they're talking about chickenless eggs or something.
Dean: That's right. Right. You know it's funny, did I miss an announcement for some avatar robot or ... Somebody mentioned that, that it was just announced, a contest for a physical robot avatar that you could transport into and control everything about it. Now that is an example of looking at ... But that is going to be a long way away. I mean that's not going to happen immediately. It's going to be very expensive.
But then I read in Japan there are people who are renting themselves out as like Ubers with an iPad attached to them for people to attend conferences or meetings or whatever almost in person. It's almost like a human ... What's the robot that you have?
Dan: The Beam.
Dean: It's almost like a human Beam, where somebody is like ... You know, they've got the iPad Pro FaceTime with ... So you're seeing everything and you could just instruct them to ... Okay, let's go over here, and somebody ... They've got like a helmet type of thing with the thing attached to their ... In front of them, almost like you're looking at them attached to this human body, so you can stand at eye level and have a conversation with somebody, or tell them let's go look over here, you know. It's pretty fascinating to see what's happening.
Dan: To make it really work, if they had the helmet like some of the motorcycle helmets where there are actually mirrors on the front-
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly what's happening. Yeah.
Dan: So the helmet has your face.
Dean: Yes. That's exactly right.
Dan: You know, here's an interesting thing about the Japanese, and this has been in place for about 30 years. I read about it 30 years ago. You can rent ... Let's say you're a child of parents and you don't like visiting with your parents. I mean you just trying to visit with your parents. You can actually hire someone to go and be you with your parents. And it works out really well, because the person you meet is very sociable. They've got time. They've got no emotional record with your parents because these are just ... They're on their best behavior. They show up, and they find over time the parents actually prefer the surrogate to their actual child.
Dean: Right.
Dan: They've had some problems with who the will gets left to over the years, the one who comes ... They arrive on time. They bring presents. They remember things and everything like this, whereas their own son was a bit of a slug and a stick, so it's all boredom and it's hours of stillness where nobody talks and everything like that, where the surrogate son shows up with lots of news, plus the surrogate son is an expert on visiting with parents, so this is a barista of a very high level. This is a-
Dean: That is human automation. That's it exactly.
Dan: Very human automation.
Dean: Dan, did you ... I think that I emailed you an article about something we talked about the last time, about this migration to Cloudlandia. Did you get that or did I?
Dan: Yeah. Yes, I think I did. I think I did. I've got a pile from you and I just popped it in the pile, because it's been two workshop weeks in a row, so-
Dean: There you go. Let me share with you want I found in that, because I wanted to talk about it a little bit. Remember we mentioned that I really feel like everybody is migrating to Cloudlandia as if it's a real place. There is some real data on this, that 26% of Americans right now are self-reportably almost constantly online, meaning that they're living their life online. They're in Cloudlandia.
43% are on several times a day, so 77% of Americans right now go online at least daily, if you include the 8% that are on once a day. But among millennials, four out of 10 are almost constantly online. There are only 5% ... Less than 5% go on less than several times a week, 11% less than daily, which is really-
Dan: This is just online, period, for any purpose, right?
Dean: Yes. Uh-huh (affirmative). That's right.
Dan: Well, I put in two hours a day-
Dean: Sure. Yeah.
Dan: But mine are mostly looking for things I didn't know I was looking for.
Dean: That's exactly right, but you find it. But you're in and out in that two hours, and then, like you said, your phone bill has one recurring number that comes out of your smartphone, the Beam phone, and that's it, you know.
Dan: I don't even know if they billed me for using Beam.
Dean: Right. Probably not. It's all included in your plan now.
Dan: Yeah. Sometimes my phone isn't charged up, but always on Sunday morning it gets charged up. It's one thing ... You know, I get up on Sunday morning and say let's make sure the phone is charged up completely because we do not want to lose power in the middle of one of these discussions.
Dean: No, not at all. I'm constantly looking for that, for evidence of that migration. I think that-
Dan: I think it's a huge thing. There was a very famous book that was written in the 1960s by David Riesman and it's called The Lonely Crowd. He was just observing the impact of television on the population. What he was noticing was three different kinds of ... And it was about America, so three different kinds of Americans.
He identified them as traditional centered, inner centered, and outer centered. What he was showing was that there was still a considerable portion of Americans who took their values and what they were thinking about every day and what they were involved every day with the traditions that they came up in.
It could be a small town tradition. It could be family tradition. It could be ethnic tradition, religious tradition, right, something like that, but these were traditions that ... They were basically things that were diminishing in society but they were still fully a part of. Amish would be a really good example of all of them, like if you belong to an Amish community or a Mennonite community.
Then there were the inner centered people. They had moved away from the physical circumstances of their tradition, but they still have the principles inside them, and I would count myself as that individual. I'm an inner centered person. I'm not a tradition centered.
Outer centered people are people who their judgments about themselves and who they thought they were was all coming from what other people thought about them and their interactions with other people, so they had no inner or traditional base to themselves. It was all how they were making sense of their interactions with the world, and that was only involved in television. In the area of Cloudlandia and the social media aspect of Cloudlandia, that would be 100% for a lot of people.
Dean: Yeah. I think you're right. This is really ... I just think this ... It's going to be a very interesting thing. I was sharing how if we look at this graphic 20 years from now ... If we're saying that it's taken 20 years to get from zero to that in terms of the life of the internet, the functional internet really ... Like I still remember 20 years ago national magazines and television shows ... That it was daring journalism to write an article about I locked myself in my New York City apartment with my only means of communication as the internet to see if I could survive, as my only contact with the outside world.
Now it's almost 20 years later. The daring argument would be I locked myself in my New York City apartment without access to the internet to see if I could survive.
Dan: I just read an article about someone who was so outraged by the results of the presidential election that he has not connected with the internet at all since then. But what's funny about it was the interview with him is all over the internet.
Dean: Oh boy, that's so silly, isn't it?
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. But he cannot ... I mean if he's true to his goal, he will not have read his own interview on the internet.
Dean: Right.
Dan: Anyway, I mean it's fascinating what we're doing here, but there are some key takeaways for me, and that is the human automation is by far the big new thought for me right here.
Dean: Good.
Dan: This is a tremendous thought.
Dean: That's great.
Dan: We've taken ... I mean just like we took procrastination and made it a joyful activity, you've taken the polarity out of human and automation. You've turned it into a single concept, and I think it's a wonderful concept.
Dean: And, you know, that really fits with ... I think if I can tie it into your thing of being ... Aiming to be irreplaceable, is that rather than thinking about making yourself replaceable, thinking about making your multipliable, you know, because that really becomes the thing. That's your real goal, is that if you're what Wyatt Woodsmall would call an adaptive problem solver, someone who's figuring out things that don't exist and figuring out what to do and packaging it in a way that it becomes a technical challenge, which means that the answer in known and somebody just needs to know how to do it, that allows you to be multiplied.
So you're replacing yourself from the actual doing of anything, but at the same time multiplying the impact of what it is that you've figured out to do.
Dan: Yeah, multiplying without doing.
Dean: That's exactly right. Let's pick up there next time.
Dan: Yeah. Okay. We're on for the next two Sundays. I like to schedule ahead. Actually it was a real joy.
Dean: Me too. Okay Dan.
Dan: Procrastinate away.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: Okay. I'll talk to you next week.
Dean: Bye.
Dan: Okay. Bye.