Capability Amplifier EP#88 - Strategic Stumbling and Shortcuts

A recorded conversation between Mike Koenigs and Dan Sullivan about "strategic stumbling": intentionally creating small, high-trust gatherings of diverse, high-value people to generate rapid creative breakthroughs and "shortcuts" (knowledge, resources, capabilities). The episode describes how Mike organized a Baja mastermind (criteria for guests, structure, and exercises), specific attendee contributions and successful outcomes, and distilled practical takeaways such as the "certainty/uncertainty" exercise and the framing question "Why should I know you?".
Chapters
All right, this episode is all about strategic stumbling. What does that mean? Well, imagine being able to realize that there are humans that are amazing shortcuts that will help you solve any problem imaginable. And Dan and I are going to dig into something that I think is very profound. What is the most profound thing that you think we did in this episode, Dan?
Well, we're going to.
Probably give people a handle so that when they talk to people and they really want other people to know what they do, that they answer a simple question, and you have to. You have to listen to the rest of the podcast to get that question.
That is a cliffhanger. So everything's inside this episode. I guarantee you're gonna have a lot of fun. Dan even insults me in this episode, but I love it. So all that and more, check out this episode of Cape D of Park.
Thank you.
So, Dan, in this episode, we're talking about strategic stumbling. And strategic stumbling is an idea that came from John Bowen, and he first brought it up when we were in the Baja on a fishing trip. We called it a mastermind, but really my intent with it all along was to put really, really smart people together, find unique ways to collaborate that they wouldn't normally do anywhere else, and create some thinking exercises, encourage this to occur. And by the end of the experience, Howard Getzen, John Bowen come together, and they felt that they had created $100 million to $250 million opportunity, which since has doubled. They think it's about a half a billion. So my goal in doing this episode with you is to get your thoughts and ideas on how to create really great strategic stumbling environments, thinking exercises that encourage collaboration and imagination and novelty, because that's your favorite word of. Of the day, I think, is novelty. That's how you get Dan's attention.
Yeah. I'd say, first of all, you know.
Are you the host or is somebody else the host? That's one question. And the other. The other thing is.
What qualifies someone to be on the guest list?
Okay, so in this.
Yeah, you know, because some people just don't know how to be good guests.
Well, and I put it in harsher terms, which is, if there's a turd in the punch bowl, everyone gets sick. So.
Okay, I think that's hilarious.
But I think it's good. I think it's. I think it's good. No, I was. I was deep into the experience there.
Reminds me of. It was from Caddy. I think it was Caddyshack when some kid threw the baby writhe in the swimming pool. Bill Murray pulled it out and he sniffed it. He goes. And then he took a bite out of it and someone fainted. But moving right along from that tangent. So here's yes, I'm the host. And the real origin of this experience came from I was telling Vivian one night all I wanted to do more than anything was just get really fun people together, go on an adventure in an interesting place. And I just happen to love to fish. I grew up fishing. We ate out of the lakes. I grew up in these little farm towns. We ate out of the garden and out of the lake. So I have a lot of dad memories associated with that. And the Baja in particular in Mexico is fantastic. And the Sea of Cortez is very gentle waters. And I decided one afternoon to throw together an offer and Vivian said, why don't you do fishy business? It was her idea. And I thought, that's kind of a cute little idea. So I whipped up a sales page, made a little video, put it up, and I texted five or six people. And some of them are people that I know from coach. Some of them are not. So I think the first thing when you say, what are the criteria? Number one, yes, I was the host. Number two, I needed to find people who I knew.
Were coachable, collaborative and had a history of playing well together, but also would be high quick starts. Because in my experience, if you got a bunch of fact finders in a room, it's usually not that fun. No offense to our factfinder friends. But then they.
Loved imagining and have a history of making things happen as well. So there's certain. I could break this down into the nth degree of personality profile. But then what I did as an experiment is I just took that little video and I texted it to some folks. And the way it went is, hey, I'm thinking about putting together a really cool adventure with some high value people I think you should know and you'd love to be with. Are you interested in a video? I call that the money phone strategy. So I sent it out to a few people and I got like five yeses in ten minutes. And.
And I did. They didn't. Some of them didn't even watch the video. But I made a little under 10 minute video. So Charlie Epstein was one of them. Howard Getson was another. Richard Rossi, who you know, and of course John Bowen. So those are some folks from the coach community. And then there were some other folks that I've known for years. The other qualifier was it was people I've worked with, had a history with or want to work with.
And I thought magic would happen. And the other thing I know about them is their very appreciative of introductions and connections.
Right.
So I have a history with all of them of introducing them to people outside of their network and magic has happened. So there was a high degree of trust. And so from there when we got together, I organized and created a bunch of little thinking exercises and questions that created a collaborative environment. So I'll let you take over from here and ask some more questions about what you think works.
Yeah, well, the first thing that I'm convinced of that you know the rightness of your path on this is that I'm convinced that all.
Creativity really comes from conversation and discussion.
Among people who just enjoy having a great discussion and conversation with people. And what I mean by that is there are people who are so, you know what I would say, work focused and work.
Deadline focused and project focused that they wouldn't enjoy a conversation that was just open ended. And they say, well where's this guy? Where's this leading? Where's this going? And, and you say geez, you know, you know, do we, do we have uber water taxi here that we can send it? We'll, we'll pay, we'll pay, you know, we'll, I don't care if it's a thousand miles, we want to get him headed home pretty soon, you know. And, and I think there's a real thing that.
I, I think that there, there's an enjoyment of unexpected.
You know, and quick starts a bit like that. But I've met quick starts who are really tyrannical and they're, you know, they're control. I've met a lot of high quick starts that are control freaks. And it's like, it's a double whammy, you know, it's, and everything like that. But I think you're absolutely on the right track. And the other thing is that the.
The people, when they're there, they're not thinking about being somewhere else.
Yes. Yeah, you definitely have to be present. And as you were describing this, I think.
You have to have a history of loving the game. Let's pretend.
Yeah, yeah. And they're cool. They're, they're cool. They are. Whatever's taking place back home is self managed, you know, like, you know. Yeah, there's just a lot of people I know who couldn't pull that off.
Yes. Well, what I'd say all of them had in common is they all said yes and were registered within 15 minutes. They were like, yep, I'll be there.
Yeah.
And, and there were a few people that I had a couple stragglers and couple, you know, people who said yes. But I, you know, it was like they asked me a million questions and all of the deep question or questioning the value and all that kind of those were no's. And the lesson I learned from marketing this is if you're not an in in 10 minutes, then you're a no.
Yeah, yeah. And kind of, it's kind of like they want drug tests, they want, you know, they, you know.
Right on.
And so what, what happened? I'll take you through this. And again, I'm really curious about if you were doing it, how you'd encourage the thinking.
But I, well, the other thing about it is that you were doing this within the context of what was happening in the world over the last 12 months. So I think these people are probably pretty hungry for this actual. For this activity.
Yeah, for sure. Three of them said specifically, I just had to get the hell out of Dodge and I didn't care whether it was a good deal or whether I was going to get something out of it or not. They were pleasantly surprised. That is very true. I think that that side of timing.
And what happened that that helped is I asked everyone to come prepared, to present something unique, special and exciting that they had been inventing or working on that of course they wanted feedback on. But I think anytime you create a platform for creative people to share and feel valuable and that, that's always a winner. You know, Joe Polish does his 10 minute talks, which has always been a genius strategy. You do an amazing job of, of asking everyone, you know, what did he get out of this? What was your breakthrough? And, and creating encouragement.
What tell you, you know, what doing right now that you know, that this may be of future help to you. But that new exercise that came out around December, January. Certainty, uncertainty. A certainty uncertainty, focus. And what you do is you talk about a big possibility and then you say everything that you're certain about the possibility and then five things that you're not certain about it. Because what we do is that we have people who are 95% across the bridge to the free zone and we say, just bring your, your big collaborative. You know, we've done it three times at a connector and they come in and there's exercise. You know, just that everybody does like this morning, the questions. And then we have the person say, okay, he's got, he's got a possibility here. Just Say, what the. We've got to print it off for everybody so they can read it and everything else. And they say, this is the possibility. This is what I'm certain about. And I've got five things that are uncertain. And the uncertainty column is a total who attractor.
And the reason is we don't want to help people. Nobody wants to help somebody who's certain.
Oh, yeah.
We only want to help people who are uncertain. You can't be a hero with someone who's certain.
Well, you know what, here's what is interesting though, Dan, I'd like you to deconstruct this. So every single person who is there.
I would say, is excited about the future, loves collaborating. Certainly was excited about the idea of going to an easy to go to, but novel place, which the Baja is great for. It's beautiful, it's safe, there's great drinks, awesome food. And we had a little adventure component. Not everyone wanted to go fishing at all, but we got a luxury boat with air conditioning. I mean, it wasn't a struggle. But when you get to the uncertain, none of them are what I call financially uncertain. They're not uncertain about who they are.
No, no. It's just things you don't know.
Okay.
It's brand new. How can you know everything? I mean, if it's brand new, how can you know about everything you know? Yeah, yeah. It's like project. We're talking about the storytelling with collaboration. You can map this out, but there's certain things that you're uncertain until you've tested it out. Who do I test it out with? You know and you know and everything like that. Certainty. Being uncertain isn't being not confident, it's just not knowing.
As a matter of fact, it's confident people who can talk about their uncertainties.
Yes. Okay, well. And again, I want to understand the psychology here because out of everyone. So Howard Getzen, for example, he's got the AI hedge fund, plus this platform.
For him. He's always looking for right fit investors and of course, people to contribute to the fund and people who can see the vision of the platform, the AI itself, and create license opportunities. That's his free zone. For John Bowen, he's got this new platform which was super fascinating. He demonstrated this VR meeting room for financial advisors and their clients, which is a great idea. And it was very impressive. Everyone really enjoyed it. We had Richard Rossi there and he did two things. One of them is because he's doing this longevity mastermind, he has.
Access to some really fascinating longevity experts. And he brought in what I would. He kind of compiled the best of his stuff. Plus he also has been doing super high end masterminds where everyone felt special. So he talked about 25 strategies that makes everyone feel special, like how they gift and I mean really interesting things I would have never thought of. Charlie was there demonstrating and showing off his new documentary.
And his play and he got some great ideas to roll it out. We had another expert there. He's not part of coach. I'm actually referring him in right now who designs supplements. He is the world's leading.
Ingredientologist.
I've heard of him. I think you've talked about him before.
I have. He has a new brand new book. I'll just tell you his name. His name's Sean Wells. Great guy. And he talked about the latest in formulations and what we call energy stacks. You know, things to enhance your, your body, your brain, your energy, et cetera. And you know, you think about everyone there is contributing decades of research and knowledge inside of a 20 to 40 minute segment and then getting feedback and help. Another guy is a social media expert. We had someone from Korea there. And the, I guess the point is what everyone was interested in is the idea of being able to present, you know, being able to deal, make, collaborate.
A great adventure. But I'm still struggling a little bit with what's the big unknown other than knowing that you don't know everything and you want access to maybe the latest in marketing technology and ideation. What other unknowns might show up for this brand or breed of person, do you think?
Well, the, the way, I mean, when you're doing a new.
New venture, you're an expert on the long way to do it.
What you're looking for is shortcuts. Yes, shortcuts of knowledge, shortcuts of resources, shortcuts of capabilities, shortcuts. You know, somebody's already done it and it's already custom made, but they're not doing it for the reason you're doing it. But it would be easy to modify it.
Humans have a voracious appetite for shortcuts.
That is true, the overused term being hacks, but that is for sure what everyone's looking for. I think the way I frame it is imagine being in a room where you've got centuries of wisdom and knowledge and you could bypass days, weeks, months or years of figuring something out with a simple conversation.
I think that was a, I mean that's, that's why we're 8 billion instead of 8,000 fighting saber tooth tigers. You know. Right. No, I mean, that's why, you know, there's a book, I'm sending it out to everybody. It's called the Secret of Our Success and why this one mammal that's not fast, not particularly strong, can't climb very well, dominates every other, dominates every niche on the planet. Okay. And he says, and he showed me an example. In this example, they took a two and a ten, two and a half year toddlers. They took ten same size chimps, older, but not same size, and ten orangutans. And they gave each. Each of them presented it from a lawn tube that's closed on one end and a stick, and there was sweet syrup at the bottom of the tube. And they gave it to them. And.
They took about 10 minutes. And one chimp had figured it out in 10 minutes. Orangutan was still trying to figure which of his four hands he was going to work with. And all the toddlers had it in two minutes. One of the toddlers stuck it down, stuck it in his mouth and all the other toddlers did it. That's why we dominate all the other species. We're looking for shortcuts and we're watching. Who are the great shortcut people? I'm looking for shortcut people. And apparently humans have pretty well figured this out by the time they're one year old.
They know Mom's really useful, dad not so much, you know.
So it's basically.
Cut, I think what you. Well, you've created, you know, you've created an environment for the most, you know, on their own, intelligent, creative people to profit from each other's shortcuts.
But they got to come with something. They can't show up and be a taker.
Yep. Can't have a turd in the punch bowl. That's right. Yeah, exactly. No, there was. And part of the appeal of this is it's only referral. This isn't anything I advertise or market. It's purely. I send out invites to people who I. I created a big map of folks who I knew I would have fun with. And the theme was, to me, in my mind is work is play and play is work. And so it had to feel like play the whole time.
Well, and the other thing is that, you know, I think it's the way you've done it. It's got enough time and it's a small enough group that people can do deep dives with just another person, you know, And I think that's important that.
You know, you have enough structure with that Everybody's got to make a presentation, and you don't need any more structure than that. I mean, you know, all, you know, the one thing everybody checks is that everybody's a giver. You know, the first thing any group checks out is who's the taker here. They don't want to be with takers. If you're a giver, you don't want to be around takers.
God, that is true. Yeah.
I think it's great. I think it's really, really great. And it's sort of, you know, I mean. Well, it generated a huge. I mean, there was a lot of preparation for John and John and, you know, and Howard to, you know. No, they just hadn't clicked. They just hadn't clicked. I mean.
Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, for them, it had to do with proximity and time, for sure. So as the old saying goes, pressing the flesh, they had to have time to iterate. And I think that's more of the same. But also get exposed to what happens to everyone. Every business owner is. We either get in the habit of telling the same stories over and over again. In other words, our marketing message is the same, and it's lacking nuance. And what we think is valuable isn't what the market often thinks is valuable. So they had to get past the. And again, they've got six years of history. How they didn't arrive at this conclusion is fascinating, but I think it again came through John's description of strategic stumbling. Both of them knew there's something here, but they had to play what if and let's pretend long enough for something to show up. And I will also say what frequently happens inside an environment like this is you'll have eight or 10 people going back and forth, and something from a completely different industry suddenly becomes relevant and useful. And you have that aha. Experience. It's like. Of course, I think.
I think the other thing, knowing both, you know, John and Howard, I know them, you know, really well, and they have their. Each of them, you know, has a winder, which apparently they got passed in your event. And for Howard, his thing was always about the technology.
And it's the technology. The technology, the technology. And with John, it's 300 people.
It's 300 people. I mean, I can't create something that's not for 300 people. And what they came up with is that both of them came up with the solution is.
10 people. That can bring 50 million.
Yeah, it's a big leverage place.
Not only that, but the 10 people know each other. And the 10 people are all the same kind of people. And, you know, they're pre qualified. Completely pre qualified, because John will select the 10 will do it. I mean, John is essentially referring 10 people that he's already pre qualified. You don't have to qualify. He's already pre qualified their investors, you know, and. But Howard is not about the technology. The technology is a given.
Yes, they're absolutely true. Yeah.
Yeah. So I think the blinder is that John always thinks in large groups and Howard always thinks in technology. And it wasn't about the technology. It was about the right 10 people who have the right.
You know, have the right referral capability of bringing in an average of 50 million each.
Yeah, that's so in my language, it would be the perfect whole for John specifically.
He also has a tendency to think through a certain linear lens on how a deal should look like. And this one kind of broke some of the old rules. I hope he's not offended when I say that, but.
He genuinely had a collaborative excitement. And my suspicion, I don't know this with certainty, but I also think John thinks some of his new technology will be very applicable to what Howard is doing and give him access to a completely different audience because there's opportunity for leverage there. And I think, again, having a shared platform is always, always. Anytime an entrepreneur sees a platform they're in, they're going to contribute. And for Howard, it's not just the technology. Something I've been working with him on intensely is it's like, Howard, tell me a story. Tell me a short story of transformation and stay out of the weeds. Because he can't help himself because he's so smart, he knows so much stuff, and he forgets that all the things that are important to him aren't important to everyone else. So, you know, I give him. When I'm asking him questions or we're doing interviews now, I'll say, I'm going to give you three minutes, or I'm going to give you one minute. And I want you to start by telling me a story. Yeah, it can't be a story.
And he's a good storyteller.
When he gets a great storyteller and he's infinitely coachable. Yeah, he will. He. He doesn't take anything personally. And that's. That is quite remarkable.
Yeah, well, people don't want to know what you know. They want to know why they should know you.
Yeah.
You know, knowing what you know is really a long slug. Knowing why they should know you is a real Shortcut, right?
I don't remember.
Your story is. The story tells them why they should know.
Have you told us this one before? I don't remember this.
I just, I just graded it on the spot.
Damn.
That's really good, Dan.
No, it is. That's all people are figuring out. Why should I know you? You know, why should I know you? You know, is there any reason why I should know you beyond the next hour?
Yeah. Well, I think this is a. Another subtitle for this. Are People are the Ultimate Shortcuts?
Oh, yeah. Well, it's like humans are, you know, the only. I mean, the only resource is human ingenuity, and the only source of human ingenuity is other human beings, you know? Yeah.
And when I think about this, I know.
And I do think about this a lot. I'll be listening to someone and I'll be like, okay, I know enough. And I don't care at all if I know anything of what they're. I just have to first of all make sure I trust and believe them.
Right?
So you got to make sure they're credible and get past the sniff test. And then from there, having a person as a resource and a referral is the ultimate shortcut, which is you don't need to know anything. You just set up the conversation. And.
If there's a way that you can create a collaboration inside of a threesome, that's even more magnificent. Right.
You know, where are the multipliers there? And I, There's. It's much more complicated math, but.
All right, that's a big idea. That is, that is a genuinely powerful, strategic, stumbling strategy.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and you know, that's all. If that's all people want to know, what should you tell them? You know, I mean, here's why you.
Should, here's why you should know.
Who does a great job of that is He's. I forget his name sometimes, but he appears at Genius Network a lot and he does a lot of different things and he's been Shark Tank and everything. Not Kevin, not Kevin Harrington, not Kevin Harrington. But he's, he's, he's, he, he, he's really informative. Like he'll tell you 15 things in 15 minutes. You know, new softwares. And I'm just, I'm just trying to think of it.
Just describe them a little more. Some of the details. I'll try to think of it.
It's kind of short. He's kind of short. And, you know, he apparently lives a great lifestyle, but he owns like 50. He's got parts of 50 different companies and, you know, and everything like that. It'll come to you right away when you hear the. Hear the name.
But it's not Roland Frazier.
Roland Fraser. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Huh.
And Roland. Roland comes in and he says, I've been looking at all sorts of softwares over the last year. So I. I'm just going to show you 15 that I find really intriguing. And he gives you 15 and then he gives you all the information and he's got a video afterwards. And I said.
This is why we should know you. Right? Yeah. Like you're a scout, you know, I mean, it's like Peter. Peter Diamante is, you know, I mean, Peter said to me, he said, you know, he said, you know, I'm starting to get a feeling of it that I have to be your advanced scout for anything that has the possibility of letting you live to 156. I said, that's a good. That's a good rule.
That's a good reason. The reason I should know you, that. That is another profound worksheet opportunity.
It's yours.
Okay.
You can use this for your storytelling because the only thing that should be part of your story is why other people should know.
Oh, what shortcuts do you represent and what access you can provide. So for years, I always thought.
I thought of access as being the ultimate value. And I don't think that, first of.
All, I think it's not possible to predict why people would want to know you, but I do feel that it'll fall into the general category of some sort of shortcut. Yeah, a knowledge shortcut, a resource shortcut, or a capability. You can just start with those three.
Yes, I agree. I'm taking. I'm furiously taking notes again. So.
If you think to yourself, and I agree with Roland, he's very, very good at that. And it also sets him up very well because a huge part of what he does, this is another genius idea.
Is he puts himself smack in the middle of deal flow and so he can effectively scrape the cream off the top of deals as they're coming in and meet the founders. And he's really good at knowing where their pain is and being able to solve that with a shortcut or a connection. So if you think for a moment about anyone else who shows up that way, who is the type of person that right away. So we talked about Peter. He's your longevity shortcut. What other shortcut people do you have? You've got Joe Polish is your connector shortcut.
Yeah, he's my one person Rolodex.
Crazy unpredictable podcast. Probably. You okay?
Yeah, yeah. I mean the fastest way to a crazy batch podcast is just start talking to Mike. Mike Enix.
Something valuable comes out of every one of them, but what the hell.
Well, the thing is we have a lot of different channels, you know, every individual as multiple universes and you know, you want to have relationships in those universes that are permanently enjoyable and productive.
You know, I've got this guy, it's very interesting. He was in 10 times workshop and he always does the first 10 times of the quarter and the last, last one 10 times. So he always does two. So we get kind of a grade at the end of the quarter. And he's a, he's a nine fact finder to quick start. Okay. And he, and he's got the number one by.
100 miles, number one site surveying company in metro Toronto. So right now he's working on about 2500 major construction projects in the city of Toronto. And he's the site surveyor. And the site surveyor is the guy who always gets paid because the.
Nothing happens on a deal until the legal authorities have the site survey. You know, it's got to satisfy every requirement, you know, you know, that they have about property. And so he said, you know, I've got your site survey here and as soon as your check arrives, you'll get your site survey, you know, and. But what he did, I'm just going to tell you, interesting thing is that he. There's enormous amount of public information about land acquisition and land assembly in the city that's available from a whole bunch of different sources because there's some legal, you know, legal requirement that involves each of them. And then there's just the talk on the street who's going big and what they're looking for and everything else. And all this information is available, but it takes a nine quick start to collect it all and to put it into a system. So what he's got is an electronic map. I think I've told you about this. He's got an electronic map of the gta. So the GTA is Greater Toronto Area. Okay. And he's got every block and he knows every piece of property. And he's got different colors that electronically show up on a block. When let's say acquisition is three, three yellows and three yellows pop up. And he says, okay, I predict six years there will be a project there. And then he starts his marketing for that project about three years before the day. And he's a nine factor. He's a nine fact finder.
And yes.
So we had this discussion in the workshop yesterday about, you know, well, quick start. So the creative ones. And I said, no, they're all creative. This go about it in a fact finder is just as creative as a quick start. They just go about it in a different way, you know, and they need a lot of facts before they execute. You know, follow throughs need to put a system together before they execute and quick starts have to go in motion before they learn anything.
You know, and implementers have to have it tangible. You know, the bigger the implementer, the more they want hands on, they want to feel what it's like. I said they're all creative. And I said, if you got a great team, you got to have all those different ways of creating. I said, you know, this is a bias, you know, you're just cutting yours. You're just telling yourself stupid stories that cut you off from other people's creativity, you know? Yeah, yeah. I said, you know, there is no bad activity or bad job in the world. There's just ones that aren't good for you. I said, don't, you know, don't, don't make judgments about other people's work.
Yes, yes. So while you were describing that.
I have a long time former client who used to do online marketing stuff and then got into the drone business. And this is very relevant and germane to what you're just talking about.
Which. So they started using drones and they'd fly over rooftops and they had some sort of an AI algorithm that would determine if a roof needed to be replaced and then they would sell these leads to rooftop replacement companies. So I'm like, God, I wouldn't. It's like one of those brilliant, brilliant ideas. Now what he did, which is equally genius, is they adapted the technology and figured out a way where they would fly drones over fruit orchards and they would determine the ideal picking time, the volume of spray they needed and all kinds of other, I don't even remember all the details that are super important. But it's grower data for predicting stuff that normally is very human resource intensive, prone to errors. And this AI could make assumptions just based upon, I don't know, foliage and wind and all kinds of other things that again would be way too detaily for humans.
That's, that's how the DEA really cut down on illegal pot, you know, pot growing. And the reason, the reason is the electric. They could fly drones over and they could tell the. It's just an abnormal amount of electric usage coming out of this building because, yeah, it's all hydroponic, and they're probably even tapping in illegally to the, you know, into the power thing. But they can tell just by the building what kind of electric signature is coming off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean. I mean. Yeah. I mean.
Criminals have to get smarter, you know. Yeah. I mean, you know. Yeah.
Well, pretty soon we're. We're. You know, there's. I bumped into another guy recently, he's in the military, and they're making drone shields because they've got micro drones that have explosives on them. And their whole business is creating electronic nets because they can't make nets that are fast enough. They have to be smart nets that prevent the drone. So I think the level of complexity that's going on is fascinating. And this gets right back to the original premise of this episode, which is strategic stumbling. Without strategic stumbling, I don't think you can spot the opportunity or get the solution, at least in shortcut time, without cross disciplines. You've got to get people in from a whole bunch of different industries if you want the fastest shortcuts. So diversity of science and history and tech and knowledge, and that is one of those beautiful things about.
Organizing and putting together.
Well, and I think the other thing is a lot of.
On the ground trial and error with things where there was failure, had pain attached to it, actual pain attached to it, and success had celebration attached to it. No, I mean, it's the divide in society of people who are over educated in theories and short on actual practical skills. Yeah, yeah.
I used to say when I used to diagnose people who'd come in, I go, I know what your problem is. They go, what's that? I go, you got too many letters behind your name.
Or you feel the need of letters behind your name. Yeah. Oh, God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mommy and Daddy didn't give you enough attention growing up.
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, the thing is, I think we've really dived down on some really permanent takeaways here. That.
One is that you should have a really good.
Story how you're a creator of shortcuts.
That is an unbelievable takeaway. Consider that one. That'll be a new exercise. So that'll be one of them.
It's all yours. You're the story. You're the storytelling guy. And the other thing is.
You know that the first thing that people check out is not what you know. They want to know why they should know you.
Gosh, that's so good.
That is so good. I, I, and we don't have a.
Lot of time, you know, I mean, I mean, we have to sort things out kind of quickly. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you don't have all the time in the world to find out why you should know somebody, you know, I mean, the other person has to give a helping hand on this. You know.
This one deserves some, some high quality thinking.
Yeah.
So, well, here's what I, my action items and homework assignments are going to be to pull out and figure out our, our, some of our forums and between the last, the other two episodes, if you go backwards on creating purpose for other people.
There'S purpose for your who's who do things, but there's also crafting that integrated purpose on a collaborative level. And the other one with the creating money that doesn't exist is really creating an assessment of, you know, where's that wisdom, where's that knowledge? And in a funky way, bringing all this back to a triad, creating money that doesn't exist has to do with exploiting those shortcuts.
And doing that either as a brand, as a business brand, or as an individual brand. And I've said this for quite some time now, I believe Elon Musk will be the first trillion dollar personal brand. And most of the time, not always when he opens up his mouth, the stock price increases. And if it doesn't to his stuff, it does to something else.
And so there I, I believe that the, the day of the platform CEO is now more valuable than ever before. And don't think that you're going to create your platform when you leave your company. You need to do it before you exit while you're still meaningful and relevant. And, and yeah, no, I take a no.
I mean, it's really.
Faster, you know, it's a much faster game. And one of the things I was talking to, you know, one of the big takeaways that I had from my association with Peter Zion, you know, with, you know, the Disunited nations accidental superpower. And I said, do you have a feeling that the general turmoil in the world, like it's almost like everything's in turmoil. And I've never seen just kind of uniformly the sheer amount of bother that's being talked about, you know, and.
I think people are just kind of bothered. And I said, you know, what if a major historic, there's a, I said to Peter, what if there is a major historical paradigm going on here? And I said, if you think about human history, what we call history, you Know, where things are written down. It goes back, you know, where you have some sort of markings or you have some sort of records. And, you know, it's less than 10,000 years, you know, maybe seven, 8,000 years. And I said, but if you think about the entire history, you know, of what are humans, maybe goes back 200,000 years. And I said, could it be that up until now, recently, let's say, last 200 years, all the history of the world has been in the Eastern Hemisphere? And what if all the history of the world going forward is in the Western Hemisphere?
And that Europe is, you know, it's kind of a gated retirement community that Europe, you know, it's, you know, I mean, it's where old folks go not to be challenged anymore.
You know, and, you know, and new ideas not welcome, you know, and, you know, and that, you know, you think of the. The Eastern and Western Hemisphere runs through London. You know, the line, you know. Oh, yeah, there's part. Part of the UK is in the Western. And that's why the Brits always play both sides, is because. Because they're on the line.
Because they can. Yeah.
Yeah, well, they can, you know, and they. Everything but all of the. What I see from the biggest problem in the United States right now is too much capital and not enough to invest in, because everybody in the world wants to get their capital to the United States. They want to get their children to the United States. They want to get their new idea to the United States. Okay. And, you know, and it's the hemisphere. And Peter Zion said, you know, the biggest complaint about South America for the entire history is that the Americans don't pay any attention to them. He said. And he said, in about 50 years, they'll wish that was still true.
Yeah. And that's just because of the increasing birth rate and the talent pool there. Or what specifically are you talking about?
What's the enormous amount of resources that are underdeveloped? I mean.
Yeah.
You know, and they just don't have the capital. I mean, one country in South America really has the wherewithal to be. That's Argentina.
Right, right. That's what Peter talks about. That's part of its. Yeah.
And Mexico is perfectly positioned because they have such a. They have such a young population and they're, you know, and the other thing is that.
It'S easier for a Mexican company to actually do business with the United States than it is to do Mexicans in another city because they're all broken up into these separate. They have about 12 cities and they're not easy to get from one to the other. It's easier just to get to. The United States.
Yeah, the States. I think I've told you this, but I haven't. We're. We're building a place down in the Baja and I'm very, very fascinated right now with Mexico. And we, we had clients down there over about almost 20 years ago and just getting around and getting stuff done was impossible. And you know, the, the when we always made jokes about Mexican marketing because it looked like a 1970s infomercial, everything was horrible. The Mexic English or the Spanglish, everything was so ridiculous, it was like watching a cartoon. And now the level of sophistication and it's still cheap. The exchange rate. There's amazing opportunities for partnerships and I don't know how to put it, positive exploitation where it's mutually beneficial growth.
I agree. I think the opportunity down there is immense right now. In fact, I'm going to be down next week.
Because there's just.
And first of all, they learn that they, their future is great if they disobey one rule. You know what the one rule is in Mexico? Don't lay on. Don't lay a hand on an American.
Oh, hell yeah. Yep. That is, that would. People always ask me, is it safe down there?
You can go out and kill 50 of your own people and there's no problem. Do not inconvenience or lay a hand on an American.
Yep. No mess with the gringos. That is very true. And when a gringo gets hurt, it's usually from two things. It's, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time at the wrong time of night, which is, you know, there's. I always say there's certain things you don't do, like don't drive through Compton at midnight and shout certain words out of a window.
All right?
And then see, in Mexico, right, there's just some places you don't go to. But the other part of it is it's if you're resisting petty theft, because that is a problem down there because the cops are corrupt and there is petty theft. But it is very pleasant place to be in, get around to and increasingly do business in the right kind of businesses. I think if you're in building and construction, not so much anything where there's resources, there simply aren't enough resources to go around. But I agree.
But my sense is that a lot of the, you know, that the place in the world that's been historically most important in all the stories of history, it's not important anymore. And it's all shifting. And my feeling is that the US Is consolidating and pulling back and going into space. And they had uses for United nations on the planet, but they don't have any use for United nations in space.
Yeah. Well, and the other part of this that you can't ignore is it's not just outer space. It's the new inner space, which is in virtual reality. It's alternate universes. Maybe one thing that I'll.
End on. I talked to John Bowen when we were doing our mastermind. I got turned onto this a while ago for my son. It was called Earth 2.0, and it is a place to buy virtual real estate. And it is a map. It's a full universe where pretty soon, when you're wearing augmented reality glasses, there will be Advertisers in Earth 2.0 that don't exist in the physical space. So the whole idea is you'll be looking at billboards through your. You know, it'll look like it's real, but it's mapped on 3D space. That is a internationally recognized map. Now, other people could create virtual worlds, but it.
Well, you know, Dean Jackson already was doing that 20 years ago. Yeah. You know what he did?
Which. Which thing?
No, he. What he does, he mapped out about 50 major urban areas in the United States and he broke them down into residential real estate. You know, there's kind of. He said that every. Every viable real estate market has seven different sales and depending on what age the person is. And that covers about, you know, what they. What they will buy at 20, what they'll buy at 30, you know, in their life conditions. And he mapped it out, and he had the map and he had it all laid out, and then he sold the rights to this to individual real.
Estate agents and.
Basically arbitrary territories.
Yeah. And you got an exclusive. You didn't have to use it, but. But every month he had to be able to deduct your. Your fee and you could just take it and not do anything with it. And he sold all the real estate and 50. Maybe. Maybe urban centers. He sold it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a great. It's a great pitch and that. Yeah. So I didn't. I didn't know that. And it's. It's genius. But I think.
Back to your original point. The stumbling block up until recent has been. And this is something else that Elon's doing with starlink. You know, the. The hard no, for Some people to move and live in parts of the world is. Do you have high speed Internet?
Those right over. Goes right over our cottage.
Did you get a starlink? Did you get.
We've got really good, we've got really good WI fi, you know, I mean it's the WI fi really good up there, but you know, it's, you know, it goes over some really isolated areas, you know, and you get, you know, you get perfect. Anyway, this is, you know, it's been another.
Typically unpredictable batch. It set of podcasts that we've just done.
Always, always fun.
I like going around, you know, it's like driving Baja, dune buggying. We get to go all over the place and everywhere there's something interesting to look at. So. Well, we'll call this one strategic stumbling. But I think the people are the ultimate shortcuts being the grand subtitle of this.
Yeah. And that thing is why, why should I, you know, why, why should I know you? You know, why should I know you? I, I would get, I would get. Because that's. This seems to me to be a multi platform sort of thing. So I would get to the, to the IP on this right away. You know, whoever does ip, I would get it logged right away. I mean, sure, I'm not going to do anything with it, but that would give me a handle of how to position you to help everybody else.
It's beautiful. So consider us on it and it'll be Marisa on that. So. Hi, Marisa, you've got it here. And in the meantime, I think the other thing that for anyone who.
Tell me why I should know you, I think that's the.
Tell me why I should know you.
Tell me why I should know you. Yeah, I think it's very compelling.
It is. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Excuse me, excuse me just a minute. Could you very quickly tell me why I should know you?
It's really strong. It's really strong.
Yeah.
So. Well, and there's one other takeaway in here as well, which is if you want to know more about these trips that I do, just send an email to VIPaidforlife.com or send a text message to that number that I've been sharing, which is 858-43-45316 and text the letter CA. That's capability amplifier. You'll get a transcript of this and the tools assist is by the time we publish this, I'll have a tool made. So you'll have access to the tool also and start playing with it.
Yep.
All right. Well, Dan, another. Another creative masterpiece. It was a total blast. And everyone who's watching, listening, make sure you give us five stars. Leave some great comments and share this with some friends.
Great. Thank.
You.
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