JP is an Army Ranger turned corporate lawyer turned Hollywood screenwriter turned cannabis operator turned branding strategist. He sold scripts to DreamWorks, Paramount, and CBS, built a dispensary from a dirt lot to $20M a year in eight months, and is a four-time Pan-American jiu-jitsu champion. He now runs Stoned Ape, a branding consultancy built around what he calls the Superhero Questions.

We got into how Hollywood's shift from original stories to sequels taught him why branding comes before marketing, why most business owners can't answer "Why should anybody choose you?", why AI is creating a sea of mediocre sameness, and why his 7 Superhero Questions pull the real story out of founders who don't even know they have one. If you've ever struggled to explain why someone should pick you over the other guy, there's a framework here.

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What You'll Learn

• Why "best product at the best price" is a feature, not a brand — and what the difference costs you

• The 7 Superhero Questions and how they're designed to pull a real brand out of any founder

• How Hollywood's shift from original stories to sequels and reboots is the single best lesson in brand ROI

• Why JP built a $20M dispensary in 8 months by answering one question nobody else was asking

• How origin stories build trust — and the specific Steve/Tacfirm example that proves it

• Why AI-generated website copy is creating a "sea of mediocre sameness" that makes businesses invisible

• The difference between proactive brand creation (Steve Jobs) and reactive focus-group branding — and why the focus group always produces the lowest common denominator

• Why JP thinks AI search actually rewards original storytelling — and the jiu-jitsu experiment that proved it

• How JP uses AI as a writing partner without surrendering point of view or creative control

• Why brand is ops — and how a shitty shopping experience negates everything your marketing promised

• What a near-death experience with open heart surgery taught JP about the gap between success and fulfillment

• Why the Wall Street Journal is running job postings for $300K storytellers — and what that signals about where business is heading

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Books & Resources Referenced

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz — https://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom/dp/1878424319

Stoned Ape Theory by Terence McKenna (concept, popularized by Paul Stamets) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_hypothesis

Ray's previous episode with Bob Perkins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZf-nYlwUd4

Companies Are Desperately Seeking ‘Storytellers’ (WSJ) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-are-desperately-seeking-storytellers-7b79f54e

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Guest Links

JP on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stonedape/

I'm sitting looking into that hole and I'm like, why should someone shop at your dispensary? And ultimately, like the most fundamental branding question, just to expand it out to cover everything is why should anybody choose you? And if you ask that question to most business owners, they can't answer it.

I have the best product at the best price point is not an answer. That is not a brand. That was JP.

A 15 year Hollywood screenwriter who sold original scripts to Dreamworks, Paramount, CBS, you name it. He's a former Army Ranger, he's a corporate lawyer, he's a Jiu-Jitsu black belt and four time Pan American champion. He's also the guy that built a $20 million cannabis dispensary from a dirt parking lot.

And he just said something that I think a lot of people need to hear. And that is if you're using AI to write your website, to write your content, to write your brand copy, then you are building the exact same thing as everybody else. That is, by definition, what AI is doing for you. And he calls that a sea of mediocre sameness, and he thinks the companies that lean hardest into AI for their brand are the ones that are going to wake up and basically have nothing to say at some point.

So whether you agree with it or not, this conversation goes deep on branding, storytelling, and why his superhero questions might be the most useful framework that I've seen for for standing out in that sea of mediocre sameness, good for virtually every industry where you've got stiff competition and need to tell your customers why you're unique.

So let's dive in. Welcome to the show, JP. Glad to have you, man.

Ray. Good to be here, man. I watched you and Bob the other day and, um, thought that was pretty brilliant.

I watched that podcast. I did the podcast, obviously, but that I had to go back and watch it. And I swear I got more insights the second time around, like actually listening to it instead of being in it. And yeah, there were a ton of ton of soundbites and some learning from from that was a good one.

Who thought the smartest mind at AI would be an 80 year old dude. Like.

No shit. Terrible as it is. I had to hit him up after that. And I'm like, you know, I'm surrounded by 25 year old young guns and AI is all they do all day, every day. And you spoke and, you know, two hours with Ray. With more of a grasp of the big picture and I think intelligently than, than anyone I've ever heard.

And I'm just kind of. And it's not even what he does, and it's sort of in awe of it. It's like, man, I boy, do I.

Feel.

He fits.

Here's a he has a knack for that on on virtually any topic. And we'll link to this if you guys are listening we'll definitely link to it. I think the advantage that Bob has, or that somebody like Bob has this, he never stopped learning. Like he's an active learner. He's always in it. Like, I bet there's no difference between 30 year old Bob and how hungry he is for knowledge in 80 year old Bob, and how hungry he is for knowledge because of that, he's gone through all of these iterations, he's seen these different phases, and he's now had like I think it's context.

So the 20 something year old that hasn't done the job, hasn't done this, didn't know old marketing, didn't know pre I didn't even know pre-internet. I think without that context it's like your your view of it is narrow. You may you may know more technical stuff about AI, but you don't have the broad context that it's that it's operating in right now.

You know what I mean?

That's a great observation that I also did not make. Um, that makes a lot of sense. Like he can place the modern developments in a historical context, which gives him great insight. That's it's really a.

It's like I see a lot of people selling AI sales solutions, but they've never sold anything. Listen, that's going to be it's going to be hard. So. Well, listen, man, I first of all super, really, really happy to have you on on the podcast. I saw some some content of yours not too long ago. Last like a week ago.

And I said, JP, can you come on? I want to talk to you about this. It was it was in the spirit of branding and how branding relates to marketing in general. And we're going to dive into that. Before we do that, I just want to say something like from as I was going through and we've known each other for for a while.

Yeah. So I had never like, read, read your whole bio and I went through your entire bio. So like to put this in context for, for listeners grew up in a, in a farm town, rural Michigan, US, former US Army Ranger. Um, got your law degree from from Saint John's and were actively successfully practicing corporate law.

Like doing that quit litigation and then had a 15 year Hollywood screenwriting career. Like I think something like 20 something original scripts, you know, stuff with Dreamworks, uh, CBS, you name it, and then pivoted into Cannabis both on like the growing and the retail side. And now. Oh, and you're by the way.

A Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, like four time Pan American champion. Now you're in in Costa Rica, I think you're I think you said the most decorated jiu jitsu person in Costa Rica at the moment. And you're talking about, you know, branding and the importance of it and the and the question after this, this whole wind up is when we were talking a few minutes ago, you said, yeah, Ray, I'm I'm a little crazy, right?

Like I see things a little bit differently.

Yeah.

In my question is, did all of the diverse experience drive the way that you see the world and you thinking you're crazy and how you make some of those decisions and not wanting to do stuff you don't want to do? Was it the experience created that? Or was it because that's how you see the world that created all of these crazy, diverse experiences?

I think when I say I'm crazy, I mean, it's a little tongue in cheek. I just you can't you can't help, you know, I mean, I shared with you my experience with open heart surgery and, you know, my own, my own death, sort of experiencing my own death in a pretty profound way. And that inspired a long look back over my shoulder and also a long look ahead in terms of how I wanted to live my life and what I really saw.

And the reason I say I'm crazy. Maybe a better word is different or a more fair word. You know, like I was not good in school, in grade school, in junior high because I didn't want to do anything I didn't want to do.

And that was a real problem. And I think that's just followed me through my professional life. Like, I understand that money is important and we need to have it, but my reality is I don't really care how much of it I have as long as my immediate needs are met and I don't want to do anything I don't want to do for money, it's not enough to get me out of bed in the morning.

So I became an Army Ranger because I felt like that's what I wanted to do. And then when I got out, I was like, well, you want opportunity, you want options. So I went to college and then I really wasn't sure. And I'm like, well, what's going to open the most doors? And it leads to law school. And then I'm practicing law and I'm like, well, I hate this.

I really want to write. And it was no problem for me just to quit and go try the next thing. And and then when I wasn't feeling that anymore, that's when I transitioned to cannabis. And I had my reasons for that. But even jiu jitsu, like, in a weird way, like all of those things,

were things that I always wanted to be good at. Like the ju jitsu thing, like when I was a, you know, in the third grade kid getting bullied in my new school, you know, I wanted to be able to take care of myself in that way. And ultimately, I found a moment in time in my life where I could go and fulfill that desire to add that to, you know, who I was.

That part as being a ranger, too, you know, was the study of language really? I mean, a lot of people get confused by it, and they think it's the study of law and they think, you know, you talk to a lawyer and they spit out the law. But great lawyers are all masters of language. They they pull words together, pull words apart and put them together and use them in the service of persuasion or making things happen that might not otherwise happen.

And that was really my fascination there. You know, I got into cannabis because when I was 13 years old, I was a little rotten, little degenerate stoner kid who thought growing weed was the coolest thing on Earth. You know, I knew guys in rural Michigan who grew it, and I thought they were super cool. They'd show up to a bonfire party in the middle of a field with a pound of weed, and I was

like, wow, wouldn't it be cool to be that guy? And I, you know, as silly as it is, it? You know, 45 years old or whatever it was? On screen, when there was a writers strike and screenwriting became really challenging, I was like, I looked at the economics of it and prop 215 and you know how much money I could make if I did this at this amount of time.

And I looked at it and I'm like, oh, shit, I could grow weed in my house and make $30,000 a month. That's something I want to do. And it seems like a pretty good, pretty wise move. And I think this is going to go full recreational and be legal. So I'm getting them on the ground floor of someone with unlimited upside.

And so, you know, it's I don't know if this is answering the question, but it's been a mix of fearlessness, of internal desire, of unwillingness to do things I don't want to do, of natural curiosity and and a reckless disregard for potential consequences. You know, do.

You say, is that tongue in cheek, too? It has never really been, I mean, at least from the outside looking in. Negative. I mean, you were successful in cannabis. You were successful in corporate law, you were successful in each of these things that you've done.

Well, let me give you an example. So there have been a lot of, you know, scrapes. You know, I made the decision to be a screenwriter, and I and I negotiated an exit from the firm and company I was with and managed that pretty well and got some help to move to California. You know, actually, Bob helped me a bit with that.

And, um, you know, I was on my

like literally my last $5 in my, you know, and I walked away from a, you know, $175,000 a year job. And I'm in a two bedroom apartment that's $600 a month adjacent to the 101 freeway that's covered in soot from exhaust every morning. I'm on my my last 100 bucks. I'm, like, doing a resume to be a bike messenger or something ridiculous.

And I can't make rent and I can't buy food, and I don't know what's going to happen. And, uh, Paramount buys a pitch from me, and all of a sudden I'm in the game. Um, but it got to one point when I said when I transitioned to cannabis or my career went away, you know, I had this huge swing up. And then the writers strike happened, and it didn't work for two years.

I mean, at one point I had to sell my favorite surfboard to buy groceries. There aren't many people that are willing to pay that price to do what they want to do. I don't know anybody. I mean, even when cannabis, you know, I was sharing before we started recording, you know, I had the five acre farm in the Mojave Desert.

I was in an unincorporated area, and I could aggregate recommendations under prop 15 and pretty much grow as many plants as I wanted. And then San Bernardino County, that changed the law. And I had five trailers lit up like the North Star that you could see from 30 miles away. It became a 20 year felony overnight California Highway Patrol.

Helicopters were buzzing the property, taking pictures, and a local found out what I was doing and ratted me out to the Mongols, who approached me in the Joshua Tree Saloon and suggested that I needed protection if I wanted to survive in the desert. They didn't know I was a jiu jitsu black belt, and I also carried then two.

So that conversation, you know, ended quickly. But that's serious. You know, that's that's

so, you know, it's those are consequences. And when you, you know and I was really I mean, honestly, I don't want to get too caught up on the weed of it all. But I had a lot of moments when I had transitioned to cultivation. Not any once I got to retail because I was completely aboveboard and fully licensed and everything was fine, but I was kind of in the gray area.

As a cultivator, I can't tell you like how many close scrapes I had where I was just like, what are you doing? You were a lawyer, you were a writer. Now you're in a Ryder truck with 1,000 Thousand pounds of weed in the back, and there's CHP behind you, and there's a helicopter over here like this is going to end badly.

And what keeps you going at that point? Like, is it is it the money? Is it the the win? Is it the.

No way out. You got to keep going. You can't, you know. So these gross. You know, I had probably, you know, the Mojave project. I was pulling scrap double wide trailers onto a five acre property in the Mojave Desert. There's probably $750,000 invested in that project. I got all five trailers lit up. Every dime I have invested in what I'm doing, and those plants are going to take as long as they're going to take to finish.

Mhm.

So what do you do. I mean you either walk away from all of it with nothing and try to figure out how to survive or you do what I did, which was sleep in my guard tower with a 12 gauge and two Rottweilers for six weeks and get the run out. And when I pulled that rundown, I pulled it down. I put it in a truck. I gathered all my belongings from that property and I left, and I never looked back.

Did you have a team like did you have did? Was it just.

You? Yeah, I had staff, I cashed them all out. And I also kept them appraised of what was going on and said, look, you know, if any of you don't want to be here right now as you feel at risk, I understand. Couple people did leave. A couple guys stayed on with me. You know, I tossed them out when we were done. And, um, you know, that was the end of that property.

And then I was able to transition to to license retail. But even that was a process. I when I launched chopper and I went back to being a lawyer, I drafted the merit based application because, um, cannabis licenses for retail are competitive. So Santa Ana was opening up for ten more licenses, and I had a friend that was waitlisted under medical.

So he had like a leg up and he wanted to partner with me. So I became his counsel. Put the lawyer hat back on, drafted the merit based app, won out. And then that began my transition into retail and things, you know, weren't nearly as sketchy as they were in the cultivation days. But even that was like, I didn't I didn't anticipate it going there, but it was just like it was where it went.

You know, you ever watched, like a movie, a simple plan or

or read that book? Sometimes when you make a decision, you get stuck in a on a on a path, on a trajectory, and it just goes where it goes. And yeah, I guess I could have jumped off the train at any time, but I wouldn't have known what to do. I didn't have a cushion. And so it was like, you know, the die is cast. I made this decision to jump into cultivation, and ten years later, I'm in the Mojave Desert looking at his CHP helicopter, wondering when the Mongols are gonna come.

It was not what I anticipated or what I wanted, but seemed ridiculous to me when I thought about it.

That was that wasn't on the vision board.

No, it was absolutely not on the vision board, which made me pretty foolish because of course it can go there, right? I mean, that's a potential consequence. But again, maybe that gets to the reckless disregard thing. It was just something I wanted to do. And part of that too is and this will go back to the Hollywood of it.

You know, I had a lot of success in Hollywood. I sold a lot of original work. I made a lot of money, did an episode of CSI New York, did an uncredited rewrite on talk, but I did not have a lot of success getting my original work made. And I reached a point where I felt like, you know, I'd been in this town for almost 15 years, and I've made a lot of money, and I've gotten to do what I love, which is writing, but I don't I very much to show for it.

And it felt incredibly unsatisfying, like, almost like I had done nothing, even though I was the farthest thing in the world from nothing. Part of what motivated the transition to cannabis was like was something I always wanted to do, but it was also like a like a tangible thing. It's either good or it's not.

You know, when you finish a script, you you hand it off to the producers and the studio and it's like, it's just not yours anymore. And whatever's going to happen is going to happen. But at least when I got into farming, I was like, okay, you know, I want to learn how to do this. I really enjoy it. And when it's done, it's objectively good or not.

And if it's objectively good, it's going to sell for whatever the ticket is for objectively good cannabis. And it just felt like a like something more substantive were real than the basically selling air, which is what I was doing before.

You can do a great job as a writer, and it never sees the light of day. More often it works. It's on a show.

Yeah, I'm shopping one right now, and it's actually the best thing I've ever written in my entire life. And my whole lawyer who's, you know, a really connected guy in Hollywood who's read it, and he's like, this is by far the best thing you've ever read. It's pretty incredible. I think you deserve another shot.

Um, I think the material deserves another shot. I want to get behind it. And, you know, he's shopping it right now, but, um.

We'll see. You know.

When I hear the the cannabis part of this, I think there's a lot of business owners that don't appreciate how similar cannabis is to so many other industries. You know, like, they they see the weed part of this. But when I read some of what you're talking about with marketing and with branding, when it comes to cannabis, I see so many industries in the exact same light that you see cannabis, because to your point, you can have a good product, but you have a lot of people with a good product, right?

And competing and selling that good product, it starts to feel like a commodity, right? Like it's or at least my view. And you can correct me if I'm wrong about the industry, but as you're talking about, how do you differentiate? And this is obviously from the growing into the retail side of it. Is it a commodity?

Is it or am I am I looking at that wrong.

We're going to switch and now start to talk about retail. I mean I think I got a little off on a tangent talking about the reckless disregard and how some decisions can manifest in outcomes that are negative. And you don't want a little sidetrack there. But I had a moment. So yes, cannabis can absolutely be a commodity.

And what we do see in almost every market out, you know, two years after licensing takes hold is, you know, typically the model is unlimited cultivation licenses, limited retail licenses. Every state ends up producing more cannabis than they can possibly sell. There's no interstate commerce. There's no international commerce.

So all that weed stuck in state in theory, in reality, it's not. Almost every licensed cultivation entity is up front for some form of interstate or international trafficking, and that's what's keeping the business on life support. But when I got to retail, so I won out on the license, my application was a top five application.

We were up and running and Tropicana wasn't even Tropicana then. We were this shit brown butterscotch building on a nowhere corner in Santa Ana. Had never done retail before, had no idea what we were doing, and and there were 20 stores that had been open for five years before we got there. I was sitting on this pile of dirt, like a six foot pile of dirt staring into this hole, and the question hit me, and this is the question that ultimately resulted in the superhero questions when layered against my experience in Hollywood.

Like a bunch of things came together and I'm sitting looking into that hole and I'm like, why should someone shop at your dispensary? And ultimately, like the most fundamental branding question, just to expand it out to cover everything is why should anybody choose you? And if you ask that question to most business owners, they can't answer it.

They can't answer it coherently. They can't answer it in an elevator pitch. I have the best product at the best price point is not an answer that is not a brand. So I'm sitting on that dirt pile and I'm really thinking about it. And then I go look at every single dispensary will be competing against. And we were right on the transition from medical to recreational.

So at that point in time, every single other dispensary was branded medically, which means they had a green cross on the door. They were painted with muted colors. They were trying to hide and not stand out because prop 215 was gray market. So they were always at risk. They focused on sick people because they were treating patients.

So it was a very like unglamorous,

not fun, not cool, shady, weird kind of thing. And I was like, that's not really weed, is it? That's not why anybody started. Some weed was all about enhancing experiences. It's all about getting high and going to a concert, or going to the movies, or partying with your friends or having a good time. So I came up with this idea for to answer the question of why should anybody choose you?

I came up with the name Tropicana and I sort of merged like Old Havana Club Tropicana, like retro style with a Miami Beach day club with Southern California beach culture. I did a whole pink and green building, and our logo was a flamingo, and we got rid of the waiting room and we threw a ton of special Events and parties, and we make shopping for.

We'd feel like a trip to a Miami Beach day club. Extraordinary. Like white glove customer service, you know, accepted returns of products, no questions asked. I mean, nobody did that in this space. We literally, like I did, made the decision to do cannabis retail in a way that no one was doing cannabis retail.

And within eight months we were $20 million a year shop, and we took every one of those customers from one of those muted, medically branded places with a waiting room, you know? And yeah, we did SEO. Yeah, we did, you know, we did traditional marketing. But like, you know, you think about SEO and marketing and like what does it do.

Well, it's it's this really a visibility play right. So that's great. You need a visibility play. You need people to be able to find you. You know, if you can be. Top three Google Business Profile in the Google three pack, if you can be, you know, top three search result absolutely beneficial. But then what?

Okay. The customer clicks. They click on your Google Business profile, they click on your website. Well, what do they see there? What's the experience on that page? You know that's where you're making your argument. Why should anybody choose you and that you know. I mean, to go through the superhero questions.

The superhero questions are designed to answer that question because it's a hard question to answer. And it's now seven questions instead of six because I added Kryptonite to it. I thought that was important. But, you know, I mean, what is your what is your logo look like? What are the colors? What's your US experience?

What are you what you're about me section look like. What does your menu look like? How easy is it to find what you need? I mean all these questions go into brand, go into experience and are going to drive a decision because that person's probably looking at 3 or 4 websites. And and so your brand is ultimately like what's going to make you stick out there.

And then to take that a step further, what's the experience when they get to the store, because one of the things that almost no one talks about in branding is ops, but ops is brand. I don't care what you say about your store and how good your SEO is. If you deliver a shitty shopping experience, you're not long for this world.

People are going to come in and go, wow, that was awful. So branding is deep. You know, it's not just the logo and the color. You know, one of my questions is ethos. Like, why do you do what you do? One of my questions is origin story. Who are you and where did you come from and how does that inform you? Know what you do?

How do you serve the unique needs of your community? And now I kind of want to walk it back the way that I got to all that was in Hollywood. I was in Hollywood for the superhero movie revolution,

right when Marvel and Stanley and they all started. It just became this thing. And I was in Hollywood to watch how it moved from

being a story driven business to a marketing or brand driven business.

And if you look at like the multiplex today, if you just go on like, you know, whatever, whatever city you're from, look at what's playing in theaters. It's going to be almost all sequels, prequels, remakes, or adaptations.

Almost everything you're going to see in the theater is based on some form of preexisting material. And why? Because they're all brands that people already know about, and that simplifies the marketing job and makes it easy to drive people to seats.

That makes so much sense, because the the heavy lifting of the brand and the awareness and the understanding and even some of the loyalty has already been already been done. They've invested in all of that. So why start from the ground up and try to rebuild something.

That's why you see 15 Spider-Man's, because everybody gets what Spider-Man is. And this is why, like, superheroes are the greatest brands on Earth. They literally are. They do, if you think about it like, okay, they're original. They have super powers. No, but they do something better than everyone else.

They have an ethos or reason for doing what they're doing, which is interesting. They have an interesting origin story that gets you invested in them, that makes you want to know more about them and believe in them. You know they serve the unique needs of their community. Their name is always evocative of who and what they are.

Their logo is unmistakable or anything other than who they are. Like every single one of those, like, if you want to build a brand in any category on earth and be good, you need to do all those things. So now like tie like a knot around it, like I'm sitting in that hole in the floor. Asking the basic question why should anybody choose?

You and Tropicana came out of that, and I talked about why that worked. But when I left Tropicana, I went to become CMO of a digital agency. So now I'm talking to like 50 shops

over the span of a couple of years, and none of them know what their brand is. And none of them know how to talk about brand. And I'm trying to communicate and I can't find a common dialog. I can't get anyone to understand, like look brand before marketing. And, you know, all marketing is, is tight. It's a delivery system.

That's all it is. And the pipe doesn't matter. A monkey can run the pipe. For the most part, what you put in that pipe is your brand and your messaging. And that's what's going to answer the question. Why you eventually talk to so many companies that can't talk about brand. I got frustrated. Like legitimately.

Like, what the fuck am I doing? This is ridiculous. These people were cutting $20,000 checks for marketing and they don't have anything to say.

And in cannabis, it's a really unique problem that this is different than other industries in this way. It's like because it opened for licensing and that's what created the market. You had a ton of people just rush into that business because they could. Right? Because all of a sudden it was legal, and I can get a license and I can be first to market and make money.

People weren't rushing into that industry because they had a really great idea. Right. I mean, tomorrow, if you wanted to start a sneaker company, right, you recognize that I'm going to be competing against, you know, against Nike and everybody else. And I better have a really good idea. Jeans. I better have a really, you know, but cannabis.

It's like people just thought they were going to get a license and open the door and start minting cash. They didn't even put any thought into it. And so I'm trying to help these companies, and I'm looking at all this awful copy and I'm like, how do we do this? And I started thinking about superheroes and ultimately like, wrote an article about it.

And that slowly evolved into the rules. And then, you know, I left the agency because they don't really care about brand. And I really wanted to. I mean, this may sound a little, I don't know, egotistical or a little, like, grand, but I really feel like the superhero questions have a great potential to democratize branding for everyone.

The point that you make about the rewrites of the movie, it's the ROI on marketing, is multiplied because the heavy lifting is already done. So if they're going to spend the same amount of money on marketing for brand new movie with no brand or an established brands, they know that they're going to get multiples more by investing the same amount of money into something with a brand at the at the like, at the foundation.

It kind of proves the thesis of what you're saying. Like it's it's brand before marketing and then like you poor marketing and amplifies what you have. To the point about SEO. SEO can get you seen. But if what people see is commoditized shit, then it doesn't. You haven't actually done anything. In fact, you might hurt yourself by broadcasting.

I'm average to everybody. If I do it, do it really well, and I and I get seen by everybody. And now they've all seen I'm just like everybody else. Like that's I.

Should add this too, because it'll make a little more sense on how I got here. Like, you know, the writers strike hit and the business changed and I my stock in trade in Hollywood was selling original material on pitch. And when I came back from the strike, the appetite for original material. Was that because everything had turned to sequel, prequel, remake.

So that actually that change in how Hollywood did business had a direct impact on my business in Hollywood, which was an object lesson in the importance of brand and how serious brand is. And then ultimately that, you know, when I landed in retail, I was able to take, you know, after a certain amount of time that lesson and apply it to the problem I was looking at in cannabis.

And it even goes even deeper. I mean, you know, these studios, you know, they make ten Spider-Man movies. I mean, that's brand equity, and it's brand equity in the studio, and that's a library they own and that's IP. And like e-commerce and cannabis is kind of a mess because of federal law, right? So there are third party e-comm platforms that you can use.

So if you go on my if I want to take the easy route, you can go on my website and go to my menu. When you go click on my menu, it'll route you to weed maps, and weed maps will be my e-commerce solution and my menu will sit on weed maps. But here's the prayer. And that's.

Really what's your website, what's.

On whatever website, tropicana.com or any just any. I'm just saying any hypothetical.

Okay.

On this website you can use these e-commerce solutions. But I looked at that and I was like, well, hold on. Now we've maps, owns my customer, read maps, is getting all my data. Like this is a terrible solution and I'm not building any equity in my brand. So it's one of the things that I try to do with cannabis companies is go like, you know, everybody wants to spend as little as possible on their website, and everybody wants to spend as little as possible on their branded copy, and nobody wants to pay a writer, and everybody just wants to dump a bunch of keywords into ChatGPT and call that a home page, and then look at that and going, you don't understand your website.

Is your brand spending money on it so that it's a top shelf brand so that it's a difference maker, so that it's an experience is what makes you the choice. And that money is building brand equity and your marketing spend instead of sending it to a third party platform. And by the way, that includes social media.

Social media should only be a tool to get people off of social media and onto your website, because your website is the property you own. You want to drive all customer traffic there, and anything you do outside of that is a tool to just get them there. I'll even take it farther. I don't believe in running ads for conversion.

Google ads, meta ads, whatever. No email capture, conversion conversions, a one time sale, and you're probably never going to see him again.

Dedicate that spend to getting the email so you can retarget that consumer over and over and over again. That's brand equity. You now own that consumer. And it's and it's proven out. It generates more revenue over time. So brand and investing in brand is a way to create something that's worth something.

And that's again is a Hollywood lesson, right? It's IP. Ideas are worth something. This is not just brick and mortar. It's not just we make X and we sell it for Y. Brand is an idea, right? This idea as worth if you execute on that premise.

Well, one of my questions about brands in general is how much of brand is a proactive, idea driven intuition? Like, I'm I have it in my head and I'm going to turn that brain into something versus I'm going to go do some market research on the customers. I'm going to go I'm going to start doing business myself and maybe ask our customers what they think.

And it becomes kind of more of a reactive. Let me formalize what we've become and refine it, you know. Or is it you on like kind of on the, the, the mound of dirt going. No, I have I'm going to dream this up and I'm going to create a proactive versus reactive like what's, how do you think about brand like that?

Um, again, I very much an iconoclast in this regard, and it's probably because I'm a creative at heart. I just am, you know, you'll see a lot of posts on LinkedIn from cannabis people about doing market research. And, you know, when you build a brand, you start with a customer and what they want. But then you go listen to a guy like Steve Jobs that says, fuck that,

I'm a creative. I tell the people what they want before they even know they want it. My opinion? I don't think any great brand was ever created in focus group. All focus groups do, and I think the same is true for Hollywood. It's why Hollywood movies are so shitty right now, because they focus group the shit out of everything, and the only thing you get when you do that is the lowest common denominator.

You get the least objectionable answer. Yes, it's a it's the lowest risk strategy, right. Because you're not doing anything objectionable. So the probability of you failing and making money or going upside down is remote, but you're never going to get anything great. Answer the superhero questions like beer.

And we're human beings. We have experiences like, yeah, I know not everyone's a creative, but even if you're not a creative like you've had to have had life experiences, you have to have a point of view. There has to be like something you believe in or something that you care about. And only the superhero questions are designed to sort of like, get that out of founders, right?

Like, who are you? What are you saying?

The superhero questions. Those are designed to walk a business owner or whoever, like the brand strategist through the process of discovering or creating their brand, like having their own light bulb.

Yeah. I want to talk to the founder. I want to talk to the founder. I don't want to talk to their director of marketing. Disruptive marketing is not someone who decided to create that business. And I know the founder is not going to have all the answers and he might not quite understand, but I think like from just a jumping off point.

I want raw imagination. I want to get to know that human being. I want to feel that creative energy. I want to understand their vision. Like what's your origin story? Like we talk a little bit about mine, and mine's really wild and wrapped on all these things. And that's how I've learned what I've learned and why I am where I am.

But I know you have one, you know, I know Bob has told me about your for years. And I know you guys, you know, were together at the chamber and he played kind of a mentor role. And you were in politics and now you've gone on to this thing, you know, I know your origin story. And so I feel like I, I know Ray green a little bit and I can invest in, in Ray green because I like his story.

But then I'll say in response to proactive versus reactive, you're going to have experiences every day while you're operating that are going to inform what you're doing and you're going to see, I got, oh, I got some things wrong here. And some of my vision doesn't stack up to reality and you're going to shift.

And so, you know, you're going to start here. But eventually a brand really does kind of if if you're attentive, it does take on a life of its own sort of becomes an an organic thing and as a, as a founder or a creator, you know, you've got to sort of evolve as people are reacting to what you're doing. I mean, one of the things I got really, really wrong and this is interesting and I think it's changing now, but I made Tropicana a very, um, female friendly business because females were really, uh, underserved.

They didn't go to dispensaries a lot. They used delivery more. And I saw that as a as a way that I could attract a market that most dispensaries weren't appealing to. And it was a good growth strategy. And then I saw a lot of really interesting like, like microdosing products that would be really good for new users.

And I thought because it was legal, there would be a lot of new users. So that was sort of some of my foundational strategy. What I ended up finding out, at least for Tropicana, was that the vast majority of our business were stoners. They were people that had smoked weed for years. They weren't new users.

Um, I made a lot of efforts to attract female consumers from women on Wednesday, promotions to special events. Rice, you know, sponsored women only brands. And I could only incrementally improve my percentage of female customers. And eventually we realized that the party aspect of the Tropicana brand was catering to people who use cannabis to get high, to have fun.

And those were the brands, and that was the market we focused on. And that was a huge lesson. And I, I still see it, I think, you know, cannabis is new. And I think those markets that I was interested in are evolving and getting bigger. Now we're starting to see a little bit more of that happened. But I was wrong.

That wasn't that wasn't the growth strategy. The growth strategy was catering to this audience that was already there. And this is what they wanted. They wanted fire, Reed. They wanted fire concentrate. You know, they wanted cool vapes and great flavors and hip bands and edge and, you know, um, and we were able to, you know, shift and meet that.

So I'm picturing like a, an in IT business owner. Right. Like I work with a lot of IT companies and I'm picturing someone go, yeah, like this is weeb like, this is not this isn't my business. How is this relate to me? And I think it is so similar because or any professional service right to to weed because you're, you have people that want to get high.

They can get high at that store. They get high at that store, and they get high at that store. And at some point you either make a choice to commodities and just try to try to win on efficiency, costs, locations, something or you you intentionally develop a brand to stand out, to differentiate, to be the choice that I go to.

Because the same thing for an IT business owner. All the IT needs are kind of fundamentally the same the IT packages. Generally speaking, I mean, most, most most of them will tell you I mean, there's some marginal difference in there are certainly some better service providers than other service providers.

But from a customer standpoint, it's very difficult if I'm shopping, if I'm googling around and I'm looking for, you know, the, the, the IT provider around here to know the difference when I'm bouncing around websites, unless you have intentionally cultivated a brand or a voice or a look or a feel or a personality or something that says, hey, I kind of like that IT company, like, otherwise you're just a utility.

And so I as we're talking about this, the reason I make the point is just to connect this to every other business that deals with the exact same issues that you were dealing with.

It's every business has to answer the question, why should someone choose you? And if you want to take the easy road and say price point and efficiency, you can do that. But that is a race to the bottom that is not a brand. I start there. I it just doesn't make any sense to me. Why am I going to start, you know, tell a story, give people a reason.

Who's the founder? Why should I care? Make me care. How did this person decide to do what they want to do, by the way? What do they do better than anyone else? What's their specialty? I mean, you know, you can call. There's all different kinds of things you can call out in it, but like pick a niche, you know, say, I do this better than anybody else, or I do this better than anybody else, or here's what, here's what separates us from all these other, you know, and then, you know, we have customer testimonials that speak to that.

Do you know, get case studies that, that, that back that up. Tell that story or about me section on your website is, you know, is really, really important. Um, I mean logo and colors are important too, but all they really are is the universal symbol for the deeper brand values. You know, integrity is a huge one, you know, and especially with like IT companies and these like businesses where it's like SEO and it

um, the regular person doesn't understand what these companies do at all. And it's never going to understand what those companies do at all, because it's deeply technical piece of knowledge that's beyond their comprehension. And they probably don't care, and they probably don't want to invest in it.

But if you have one of these companies that invests in

making a founder or principal easily. Understand what it is that you do and why you're the choice. Like if you, for lack of a better term, you know, personalize it.

That's going to make a huge difference. Like, oh, this is the this is the bunch of geeks that I can actually talk to,

you know, who are personable, who can give me answers to questions that I don't feel like I'm, you know, talking to Albert Einstein about the theory of relativity, and I can't get my head around it. This is why this is difficult. So I want to walk it back to the superhero questions like right now, right. We're stuck in it.

We're stuck in an abstract discussion. And this is where it always fails. We're talking in an abstract terms about what these companies might or might not be able to do to distinguish themselves.

The superhero questions are going to break this all up. They're not going to. They don't ever ask you. Really? Why are you different? I mean, I do ask what your superpower. Right? Which arguably is why you're different, but they're going to take you on a journey of self-discovery that are going to answer these questions without ever asking them specifically.

Like when I sit down with Ray Greene and I say, what's your origin story? We're going to start to discover things that, like, you probably haven't thought about in years, that will make them a material difference to

why someone should choose you over another option. I'll give you an example. When I made the decision that the way that I was going to prove my theory, because you got to realize, like I came up with this super question idea, everybody. Nobody understood it. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Fucking superhero question.

You know, it was nothing. Just an idea. So then I realized, like, well, okay, I have to have proof of concept. Well, how am I going to do that? Because no clients are going to pay me to do this because nobody knows what it is. So I'm like, here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to start doing breakdowns of real brands live on LinkedIn and put them up so people can see what I'm doing.

And I'm going to start talking about them. First one I did was for a guy who's a retention specialist. His name's Steve. He's got a company called Tack Firm. He specializes in loyalty and retention for dispensaries. And I know him and I've done some business with him, so I'm like, hey, I want to do a superhero question breakdown of your brand.

You know, are you cool with that? He's like, yeah, I'm cool with that. So I did the breakdown and then I sent it to him just so he could look at it and make sure that nothing I said was objectionable or. But it's really important for me to do it, to base it only on publicly available information that I can easily find online, because that is the face of your brand.

So I don't do off book interviews. I don't ask questions. I just use like website and social. Pretty much. It's not a website or social. It's not part of your brand. Then one of the things I found out about him that wasn't anywhere as I was like, why did you? I don't get like you were this guy. And all of a sudden you're a retention guy in Michigan, and then you moved to California.

I'm like, what made you want to do this at all? And you said, oh, I was living in Michigan and I had a one of my best friends had a dispensary, and he was having a terrible time keeping his customers. His customer attention was terrible, like most of his shoppers were just one and done, and he was going to lose his business.

And I was like, there's a guy. And he was like, there's got to be a way to fix this. So this guy's like a whole origin story, because I have a very good personal friend who's about to lose his business because he can't hold on to his customers, and that motivated me to create a business that shows dispensaries and helps dispensaries keep their customers.

Like, what a great story. I want to do business with that guy. And the reason I want to do business with that guy is I know he's not a motherfucker. He's doing the right thing for the right reasons, and his heart and his head is in the right place. So what is he established as a result of his origin story? He says he's established trust.

Trust is the foundation of loyalty. Loyalty is repeat business. So that's like that little nugget came out of dragging him through all those questions. And that made a material business to why a material difference to why someone should choose him. So it really is like the whole point of the superior questions is, let's not talk about this in the abstract.

Let's take the journey of going through and answering all these questions, and then I'll take the founders answers. Or, you know, if the founder is just not going to do it and they're going to give it to the director of marketing or the CEO or whatever, fine. But then I'll look at it and then I'll start to apply.

You know what I'll call my unique creative genius to their answers. Right. Like I've got to now. I've given them a sort of like a let's compare it to getting a physical or like you getting your heart looked at. Right. And you get all that data and now you've got to go. Okay, here are all these answers. Well, now what does this mean to brand.

And then ultimately like from there I'll create the narratives. And then from the narratives I'll blow it out and do a set of brand new, like a more traditional brand guidelines that they'll have, you know, the whole thing. But but ultimately, like, I prefer to write the coffee and just see the how how.

Many questions are there? How many questions are there?

Seven now I just and this is kind of funny.

Like what are they though.

So origin story.

Ethos Kryptonite is a new one that I had left off, but I think it's really important. Every superhero has Kryptonite. Every brand has a Kryptonite. How are you visually and distinguish or distinguishable from everything else? How does your name tell people who and what you are, and how do you serve the unique needs needs of your community?

Picture of your average business owner that is knows not much about about branding, but buys into the argument and says, okay, I, I think I get this. I think I can recognize that I, I have a tendency to buy on brands too. So I'm, I'm somewhat sold on that. And so one option is, is obviously call JP and and have him help them do this.

But as they as they start to work through this, how effective are people, how effective can you be at working through your own branding versus having somebody like like an objective set of eyes on it. Meaning? You know, you Tropicana. You dreamed up on a dirt mound. 18 months later, you've got a $20 million business, and it's.

And it is the brands, right? Visually. And everything that you had in mind. And you, you brought that to life. I, I imagine there's also there are some blockers though, when we're trying to look at this ourselves, so to speak. Does that do you ever see that or what do you think?

Yeah. Well, look, you know, not everyone's a creative and not everyone can tell a great story. And some people are very are not very self-aware or may not even understand their own reasons. And all those things are true. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way at all. Like we're all we all have, you know, different attributes, particularly with IT companies and people who are more sort of technically oriented.

You know, they tend to not lean in to storytelling or things like ethos or, you know, why they you know why? I mean, look, there's the what you do, right? Which is really important. But why you do it is arguably more important. You know, that's what the example I just gave you. But what I really want is where I really want to start.

I don't care if the founder or the CEO or the director of marketing or whoever it was like, really struggles with the questions and can't really answer them. I'll make myself available to them if you want. If you want me to consult through the answers, I'll do that. But what I really, really want to try to get at is because I believe this.

I want to try to authentically get to as much of their unique point of view as I can. And to do that, I need everybody to stay out of the way.

Let that person sit with that piece of paper and try to enter. Sit with that file on the computer and at least make an effort To answer those questions themselves, because I really believe in in my heart of hearts that we as human beings are all incredibly unique, and we've all had incredibly unique experiences that have shaped us into who and what we are and have motivated our decisions and our and not only our what's do we do, but our why's do we do it?

And if you want to create a brand, especially from a founder,

like there's no better way to try to get to. You know, I mean, I can sit in a room by myself and give you 50 reasons why you're unique. Just because I have imagination. And I've been doing this a long time. But I'd love it if I got the thing that I got from Steve. That one little kernel of information.

Now, now I've got an and I've got a Y and an ethos and a whole like theory that makes him different than anyone else. And if I can just get that little bit from the founder, that really is the, the, the foundation of, of unique why of a unique answer to why.

Right. Like yours is going to be different than mine is going to be different than Bob's. And then, you know, then it's my. Yeah. That is I mean that's sort of it that in, in in the beauty of it is I'm not asking them like again, the abstract question that no one can answer. Why your brand, what makes your brand great?

Why should anybody choose your brand by the I don't know. What's your origin story? How did you end up here? What are the things that happened to you along the way? Who made you who you are? What your ethos? What do you believe in? Why do you do what you do? Why is that important? What's your superpower? What do you think you do better than anyone else.

That makes you special. What are the things or things like? How do you serve the unique needs of your community? Do you care? I mean, are you someone as your dues? Do you? Do you give away products? Do you do sponsor food drives? I mean, I, Elizabeth, maybe are not great answers, but like how you know is it is is your service so unique?

You know, what's what do you call your. What do you call your brand? You know, I mean, in your case, it's your name, right? I mean, you made a decision and. But you're very conscious with it. Like I watch you. I see your stuff. You're very intentional with your persona in photographs and posts and the way you talk about information and how that evolves.

Like, the Ray green brand is very distinct. Like, you are a brand and you're very, very good at it. Even how you weave Mexico into it. When the tank top and fitness and family. And when you talk about your wife and then and then the whole Staying like you're very intentional. There's no there's not another you out there.

You know, what's funny is I had one. I saw one of those prompts, um, people say like, hey, go ask your AI of choice, you know, hey, what are some interesting things that you that you may know about me from the way that I communicate, that I may not, that I may not know about myself. And one of the things that came back with I asked Claude, I said, hey, so where are some things that I may not know?

And it said, your presentation of yourself as a not polished tank top, not corporate. All that is actually very polished, refined, intentional and and purposeful, right? It was like it was like basically the persona that you've created, which is which is me. I mean, but it's not artificial like it is me, but it's it's it is in many ways, like, hey, I'm selective about what goes up and what doesn't go up in what, what tone we're going to do and what we're going to talk about.

Like, I have plenty of opinions I don't share on social media, like what goes in and what what doesn't. And it does. It is it is intentional and I but I have a question on this because I, I've personally like I've straddled the personal brand company branding for, for a while. Right. Like for, for a big part of when I, when I went out on my own, it was just Ray.

Right. Like, I was just doing my own consulting the SAT. And what I found is as I started to build a business with a team that kind of had its own own audience, this and that, I fell into. I felt trapped in some ways by the business brands and what I could do. Like, there's plenty of stuff that I want to talk about that I want to do, that I want to share about because I like writing.

I'm a creative, too. I mean, hell, like half of this conversation isn't doesn't fit into my my, my specific market. I want to create stuff that I want to create. So there's like Ray as a founder, and then there's the business and the business brand in the business needs to get leads, right. And so when you're working with a founder, how

how important is the personal brand to the. Does the founder need to be part of that brand. And or can they establish their own brand independent of the business? Or how do you think about that? I want to.

Just hit two things about you, because I even though Claude said what they said, I want to be really clear that even though your image is polished, it never comes off as inauthentic. And that's a really, really important distinction. Like, it doesn't come off like an ad, like you're not playing Ray green, you are Ray green.

And yes, it is intentional and is thoughtful. And you do, you know, there's energy put into that, but it feels like you're authentically like who you are. And even, you know, on the front of your LinkedIn page when you say operate or not, guru great resonates. So here's the thing. No, I don't think that I work with lots of brands that aren't the Operators faced.

You know, I was CMO of Deep Roots Partners, which was not. It was Deep Roots Partners. It wasn't the the operators. But operator does not need to be front and center. It can be a company name, but nothing changes in terms of I still want that founders unique point of view. It just becomes the point of view of the company with maybe the founders, you know, founder driven content.

And becoming a thought leader is really important in B2B marketing. And, you know, you can do that, but I don't think you have to. There's a large POS company that I was talking to about doing some helping them with, with B2B. And one of my critiques of the company was they were publishing most of their high value content through the company LinkedIn page that had 18,000 followers.

There's their their founder and CEO, who's incredibly bright and incredibly articulate and incredibly photogenic and has this amazing story. The saying almost nothing about his company, he's just reposting his company posts, and then he sort of has a right hand man like,

you know, director of growth or whatever who talks a lot about the company as well. And I was talking to him and I'm like, look, man, I've known you for a long time. Like you're doing this backwards.

All this content should be coming out of your mouth, and you should be the guy with 18,000 people in front of you. Because honestly, like, the reason I chose you as my POS system back in the day was because of you. I identified you as a human being who I used to be an operator, and b that I could trust and rely on if something wasn't working right.

You made a material difference to my decision, so person doesn't have to be out in front. But I still want the point of view. And at the end of the day, they don't want to be out in front of their company. That's fine. We still have to build the branch, you know? And in the superhero question sold true for Chevrolet or Coca-Cola or,

you know, Boone's Farm or, you know, Marlboro cigarettes. Like, the questions are the questions, does it, you know, and it can be a founder out in front like you, or it can be just a product, but you still got to answer the questions. It's still ultimately, why are you the choice? And ultimately, the seven questions are the path to getting a coherent answer that doesn't get stuck in the weeds.

And does the like in a case like that, where the founder is going to start being the face of the company, because I know a lot of companies who are doing this because I, I, I've there was me before there was a company. Right. I was talking about stuff all along before. But if somebody if somebody's going to do that is the personal brand cultivated the same way, like the same type of questions.

Is it related integrated into the to the company or there are two different. Is there like hey, there's the founder brand and there's the company brand or like how do you. Do they go through the same exercise?

I guess I would say that if the, the, the founder

is speaking on behalf of the corporation and the values need to align, right. You can't have two identities there. So the founder identity is the brand identity. You know, they're unified. The founder is not out in front. Then he's not talking. And it sort of doesn't matter. Right. If they had made the decision that they're not going to comment on their company or be a spokesperson, and we're not really worried about their personal brand so much.

So I think it kind of kind of becomes less of an issue. But yeah, in a synergy, you know, you can't have a personal brand that's in conflict with the company identity. You know, that's just going to create a huge disconnect for people. It's also going to make it also raises a really interesting question of like, why?

Let me see this a lot in my industry. Like, look, there's a lot of people out there that are just doing it, doing something because they found a niche or they saw an opportunity and they're just trying to make money and they don't really care,

right? Like, they're not doing it. Any sort of appreciation or passion or place of, you know, wow, I really care about this thing. And I guess if we're honest, you know, if you're not entrepreneur or you don't own a business, it's probably most people have just settled for

whatever it is they think they can do to get, you know, to get through the debt. But you don't want a founder like that. I mean, that's just to forget it. You're dead. I don't want to hire anybody who doesn't love what they do, and it doesn't believe in it. And it doesn't have some really great reasons for why they're doing it and isn't motivated to be the best they can possibly be at it.

I mean, all that stuff is vital.

I mean, there's probably something to that. And that may that may be one of the prerequisites. Like, listen, if this is just a transactional thing, it's going to be difficult to to build a bridge because it's not going to be authentic. You're not going to there's no there's there's no there there. Right.

Like under.

Yeah. I mean, then you're just back to like, creating, you know, Coca Cola or whatever. And then. No, I'm not trying to shit on Coca Cola, but you know, now you're like, okay, you're a founder. This is just a business opportunity for you. You don't really care. You saw a niche. You want to exploit it. So let's just you can just go over here and run the company.

And now we'll engage in a, in a superhero questioning branding exercise. And I guess if it's me that needs to answer the questions, then I'll answer the questions. Ultimately, that's not the kind of business that I really want to do. I thankfully I've never been put in that situation. But you know, for me, I think, you know, you've told I've told enough of my story where, you know, authenticity really, really matters to me, you know?

I need to feel authentic in what I'm doing every day. I just I can't. I'm constitutionally incapable of

not following my heart. And in doing the things that I want to do that I believe in, that I'm passionate about. And as a result, I find it really difficult to interface or work with people who aren't wired the same way. Thankfully, I'm almost always working with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs for a reason.

They've made a much harder choice to live a much harder life, to do things that have not been done and create something out of nothing. And you don't get to be that person, I think unless you really, really believe in what you're doing and you're willing to take extraordinary risks to make that happen.

Well, if you don't have some degree of energy or passion or some some why? I mean, even if it's even if it is just the success itself, then your. You won't make it. Like there's too much bullshit that you have to deal with in business to it. There are easier ways to to make some some money. You know what I mean?

You sent me an article the other day on, uh. On storytelling. Like the demand for storytellers. I think it was in the in the Wall Street Journal that the demand for storytellers was increasing. Like, they're they're searching for a really high pay. Like, I think it was Wall Street and fintech, like some of these other industries.

And what is. Yeah, like 300 grand for for a storyteller in a corporate role. Um, why is that? I mean, isn't it easier to tell a story today with AI? I mean, like, shouldn't shouldn't you?

No no no, no. But

look, I'll tell you a story about. And I use AI, right? So I'm not going to go off on some ridiculous anti AI tangent. But here are some truths. AI can only work with what's existing and what you give it as a prompt. So it is by its very nature, it's not creative, it's plagiarism. It's a it's a remanufacturing what's already been done.

So it can't be original. You've got everybody

on earth leaning into AI to answer questions, to be creative, to do all this work. I'll give you an example. An SEO. Every SEO agency on earth in cannabis are using AI to tell them what keywords matter, using AI to create their website content, right? And then they're publishing it. Well, what's going to happen?

What's going to happen is every single web page is going to be the same. You're going to be stuck in a sea of mediocre sameness. That's all AI can do. I mean, I'll even go a step further. And this is a little crazy. There's so much bad information out there, right? An AI can't really tell the difference between the truth and a lie.

It doesn't know. This is a real problem in cannabis, right? Where not a lot of people know about it. There aren't a lot of books about it. There aren't a lot of research about it. I see false facts every day on cannabis. You just keep republishing the same. I mean, there's already more AI content on social platforms and already more AI content and bots than there are people.

I mean, at some point, when does AI eat itself or is it just become all trash because it's republished so much trash, that's all it has to publish anymore. Trash becomes dominant, human content becomes obsolete. Now you've just got a sea of garbage. I mean, nobody talks about that, but there's a very potentially real outcome.

Because it's using its own information.

Yeah. It's using it's not just right.

The next article. Right.

There's no breaks. If you think like okay, from a marketing standpoint, from an SEO standpoint. And this go, I'm going to walk this right back to the superhero questions. Do you want to stand out. Do you want to be the choice. Then here's what you can't do. You can't shove a bunch of AI selected keywords into ChatGPT with a prompt, and get a home page that's going to make you a choice or make a material difference to your rankings, because it's the exact same thing that every single one of your competitors are doing.

And as a consequence, it can't stand out. So the Wall Street Journal article is really like, okay, look, here's the here's this kind of I love this. This is fantastic. And let me give it a ton of people that don't agree with me, but this is the ground that I'm staking for myself is I want more and more and more people to shut off their brains and stop being creative and lean into AI and just count on it to do everything for you.

Count on it to create your brand, count on it to create your content. And guess what? You're gonna wake up one day, and you're going to be in a world of shit because you're no different than anyone else. There's nothing interesting about you at all. And then you're going to call me.

Hey,

can I see those superhero questions? Because, boy, it seems like now would be a really good time to have something different to say so that somebody has a reason to choose me. So I did a little experiment down here. You might appreciate this. Like, hey, I search results are different, right? And AI has a preference towards storytelling in a way that Blue Links doesn't.

And you know, I watched this little gem on my roof here and I haven't even built the website yet. I just have a Google business profile and social. But because I wrote my Google Business profile on a very provocative and original way. And I talk about being in the, you know, the most decorated athlete down here in my black belt.

And well done. I'm the number one AI search result for jiu jitsu and hakko. And there are two academies. I've been here for one for over 20 years and one for over ten. And I'm number one in AI because I wrote an original story.

And you didn't write it with AI?

No. So here's the thing with my superhero questions like, I've done so many of them now and I do them AI assisted it knows those questions and it knows me. And it knows my answer is like, really, really, really well. Now I have to do a lot of revisions. Like if it takes me, you know, no, not much time to do the prompt, but like, I'll do a go do I'll do a bunch of research, I'll dump it in, I'll give it the prompt, do my I'll do my LinkedIn post superhero question style.

Da da da da da da. It's going to spit it out. I'll have to spend at least an, you know, minimum of an hour doing a serious edit,

but it knows my voice pretty well by now. But that our edit and on. By the way, I'm a I'm a writer, right? So I'm like, cause I don't want to be sound like an egotistical jerk, but I'm as good as it gets, right? And there's a professional screenwriter in Hollywood for 15 years that's like playing in the NBA as a writer, you know?

Um, so I'm good. So, yeah, I can do some editing. I can, you know, I'm good with prompts. I get it. Like, I can probably work through that stuff much more quickly than most people, but I still have to do it. I still have to make it original. There's no way I could publish what that machine gives me in a million years, and I know better to do it.

And also, there are a lot of towels. There are a lot of things that, like, I see so many posts on LinkedIn that look really good, that are just like, I know because I know the AI tells. I know the way they crafted for it's not this, it's that. It's not A, it's B, it's forget about womp womp womp womp womp womp. And it's like it's got this, this rhythm to it and you can just smell it.

Yeah, you can almost get down to the point. If you use it enough, you can almost tell which LM is being used, like, oh, hey, that's like a, that's a quad style or that's a GP. And I'm like, I'm a very, very heavy user of AI. And not to turn this into like a full on AI, but I, I'm on both ends of the extreme right now because I'm, I'm as early of an adopter as you can be.

Like I, I mean I fucking I wear a AI device like all day, right? Like it's recording and it helps, like, so I'm, I'm a heavy, heavy user of AI, use it in the business frequently, but I'm also at the same time, I'm very much against how I see the the way that I'll say it this way, the way that I'm teaching my kids AI is that AI is not meant to be a tool to to be lazy, right?

And I just I see so many people using AI as, as a tool to, to be lazy. Like, I had a I was working with a writer, helping me with content at one point, and I got this batch of content you know, and I have a ton of content out there like to to train my voice. Right. I remember this shit. And I get the, I get the, the batch.

And I was like, dude. And I spent I spent 30 minutes, uh, I went to Claude. I took all my own shit, my public information like. And I dumped it in and I said, and I built a skill and I said, write me a post about this, and I shit you not. JP it was the exact same hook. It was the exact same digit, like all the way down, like it was the exact same product that I got.

And it was because somebody had said, hey, I'm just going to phone it in. I'm just going to, you know, I'm going to sell the I'm going to sell the old product as if it's the new thing. And I said, dude, I think you're using AI wrong. Like, there's so many better ways to leverage this than like, like to your point about dumping shit into to AI like to to get the answers for something like this.

For example, like if, if you gave me the superhero questions and I go to AI and say, hey, help me answer these questions real quick and I send that back to you. Like, what I'm going to get is by definition the mean the average of anything, which is the opposite of what you're trying to do.

Yeah. People don't I don't think they do that. And this is like and as a creative and I know you're a creative and a writer and I remember you posted about that. And I know I even remember another post you wrote about how you, you were changing your business again because you got so focused on efficiency. You got away from being creative and doing some of the things that you like to do.

And I had a strong identification with that post because or like, I'm that guy, like, I don't want to give the writing to someone else, but writing is my favorite thing. Like, that's why I get up in the morning. I write every day whether I need to or not. I just love it. Fiction posts like morning pages, like whatever.

I just just doesn't stop. But when people don't understand, it's like point of view and breaking story. Point of view is something that's unique to you. It's the way that you perceive the world. It's your unique outlook. And you have one and I have one. And so as a jumping off point, like anything that you're putting into AI, you have to build in your point of view or your perspective is part of the direction, right?

Or you're not going to get that. But then also it's like breaking story, right? And by breaking story, I mean like, what's your unique

way in? Like I put up a post today basically my, you know, my unique view was to

basically craft a post around brand controversy being positive. And here are my. And then here are all my different views or thoughts on that. And and I had to work with it a lot to get it right. But you have to tell it what story you want to tell. See. So the the lowest common Denominator is chat. You know, give me a post about, you know,

why AI

doesn't have a point of view

and you're just going to get some bullshit. But if you go, you know, here's who I am and here's what I think. And here are my 3 or 4 observations about that based on these experiences. And there was a couple of things I've read. And can you synthesize all of that into something coherent. And now you've got something right?

I mean, because you started with a bunch of original material that have breaking story and coming from your point of view, and you're basically just asking chat to organize it and give you a first draft, not too heavy lift. The heaviest lift is breaking story, right? The heaviest lift is having an idea worth writing about and that I don't think you can ever get from chat.

Second heaviest lifter is how do you structure that information and what makes it interesting. Okay, well once I just get it out and I can let chat, structure it, then I edit it and I'm okay. But most people just they just go write this or write that, or do this or do that and they don't have a point of view.

It's kind of funny though. You if we full circle back to the beginning of the conversation, we were talking about brands being proactive versus reactive. Do you go to a research group and hear what they say and take kind of the average take the mean and or your insights from research and that becomes your brand, or do you have a point of view like do you have a is there something proactively that you're going to drive?

And I think the way that you described the research groups sounded very much like AI to me. Like what you're going to get is you're going to you're going to ask a bunch of questions. You're going to find the safe answer, like the one that doesn't cause too much controversy, like you're going to use that research, and that's how it's usually incorporated, which is by almost by definition, exactly what AI is.

It's it's out there. It's finding all the stuff and mean.

Right. But unless this is why I say you have to start with the point of view. Point of view is the brake on that car. I'm saying this is the way that I want you to talk about it, right? I'm approaching it with a really strong point of view, like this is my point of view. This is what I'm trying to get across. Here are the pieces of information that I'm going to give you as a foundation.

Now execute. I'm not asking it to answer the question or obviously I'm giving it that. And I think that's why it works differently. That's in my mind why I'm able to create use that tool to create, to do at least part of the lift for high level original content is I'm front loading it with a strong perspective and information that supports that perspective.

And I'm saying do that.

What does it help you with most? Because you are because you are a writer. So you have the point of view, you know, structure. What does it help you with the most?

First drafts are brutal, and first drafts also don't matter, right? Every any like professional writer will tell you. Like, there's nothing more difficult than staring at the empty page. And I've spent years of my life doing that. And that's hard. That's as hard a job as it is on planet Earth. Staring at an empty page and filling it up with interesting shit that people want to read is a rough road.

So it's super fun and rewarding and I love it. But it's a hard job, man. Being smart all day long on the page. Not easy. And a lot of it's drudgery like first draft is drudgery. You know, writers will say, you know, if you're doing your first draft, just get it all out. Spit it all out. Diarrhea. Don't edit sentences.

Don't worry about structure. Don't worry about order. Don't worry about any of it. Just write it. What A.I. does for me is I can do that now really easily. Like that. That garbage first draft, right? Just that verbal diary. Here's my point of view. Here's what.

La la la la la la la la la la la.

That's my prompt. And then I give it a direction. Refine that into this post from my point of view. So it will take that my point of view, that verbal diarrhea, that writer's first draft that that just getting the idea out because writing is rewriting, right. And it will rework that into something with some order structure and coherency.

So it's going to take me, it'll take me a quantum leap for my regurgitation of my point of view and a bunch of facts and maybe some articles and

maybe some photographs, I don't know, and it will just order it for me and then I'm going to. It is really weird. It's like very helpful in that way because like then I can see like, okay, here's my ideas. I don't like where it went here. It didn't really get it, but it kind of put the stuff in order and I can see it more clearly.

And now it's like easier for me to work with and even make it more original and get closer to my point of view. And maybe, if I'm lucky, it gives me a couple insights that I think are really good that I didn't get. Like, you know, there's a back and forth, like there's an exchange. It's not just static. It's like I say, oh, whoa, Charlie Brown likes baseball.

And he's. And then he's, you know, and he just so he when I'm on that with chat. You know, it's like I, I'm bringing it all this shit and then it gives me something back. And then I look. At what it says and then that there's a whole nother iteration. But again the most important. Thing I think is like, what do you start with?

What do you feed it? Because that's going. To dictate the quality of the answer and the uniqueness of the answer. And I think that's where people fail because that's the heavy lift. That's where you have to have a point of view. That's where you kind of need to know what you're doing. That's, you know, the essence of being a creative.

And then of course, the, you know, the editing process is equally important, right? Because you don't, you know, you can't rush that. And and so it's it's what you do on the front end and what you do on the back end. And that just compresses that time frame to completion. Maybe it maybe it it doubles my efficiency.

And I'll say this too.

There's a lot of kinds of writing I don't use it for at all. Like I don't use it for creative writing because it's just not it's not writing at the same level. I don't use it for screenwriting if I'm writing a movie or a TV show. No, it doesn't. It doesn't come into play at all. I'm not letting it touch.

Doesn't it doesn't have enough data to be good at it. Even if it even if.

It wasn't good.

Right?

You know, if you're trying to make a point on social media or get an idea across or communicate something, you know, and that's pretty simple and direct and or simple direct sentences and it's short and, you know, it can do that pretty well in email or something. And the emails don't really matter. You know, I mean, they need to communicate directly and compassionately and not say anything stupid.

But, you know, you're not writing War and Peace.

I mean, I love dumping like a, um, you know, ten Minute Boy smelt into into something and, you know, getting an output of like, here's a refined, streamlined version of your own point back to you. Right? Like, so I can take my rambling. I'm, I'm going to think out loud here for a few minutes and, like, help me get to my point, you know, and it's like having a thought partner to like in the same way.

This is a different way of saying what I just said. I think, you know, you're just doing it verbally with a recorder. You're getting out your unique point of view and your thoughts, and they're disordered and you're rambling and then it's helping you synthesize them. I mean, the other way for you to do all the way to do that.

And a lot of writers did this. They spoke into a tape recorder. Right. And then we had machines that would transcribe your words, you know, into exactly what you said into type. But you've got a little advancement on that, which I think works because it is your unique perspective and point of view. And at the end of the day, that's really like, you know, everybody is leaning so hard into this technology.

And I think it should go here because, you know, the super real question is really in branding. You know, AI creates problems there. And if people are like marketing, look, you know, Bob said it himself like AI is eating marketing agencies, right? Everybody thinks they can be a marketer now. Well guess what?

Everybody's in for a rude awakening. Yeah, it eliminates risk. Yes, you can get to the lowest common denominator that much quickly, that much more quickly. But why is that the goal? If your goal is the lowest common denominator or average, why are you even doing what you're doing?

Yeah. If everybody in the industry uses the same thing to get to to differentiate, nobody's different.

Yeah. And that's it. That's just see us saying this and I see it already, I see it LinkedIn content. I see it in website content. It's already having that impact. And it's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse. Which takes you back to that saying it was a little Wall Street Journal article about, you know, storytelling.

The job posting first, a $300,000 storyteller is basically, hey, we need a we need a marketer that's not using AI, that still has creative, you know, still has a creative bone, not not using AI, but you know what I mean?

Like, it wouldn't surprise me if they don't interview a lot of screenwriters. I mean, I'm gonna throw this out here and I don't really know if this is true or not, but it's kind of a wild story and it's totally unrelated to anything. But, you know, I was in Hollywood during nine over 11, and there was a rumor going around that DOJ went to William Morris or Endeavor or whatever and said, give me your top six screenwriters.

And they put him in a room. And they asked these screenwriters to come up with every potential terrorist doomsday scenario. There's some screenwriters to do this. Sit in a room all day and they think about crazy shit.

Right. And then they write a story about it. And so like if the Wall Street Journal is looking for, you know, look, when I was, you know, doing pretty well, it was a writer. I was banging probably half a mill, three quarters of a mill a year. And so, you know, $300,000 corporate story writer. Yeah, I could do that.

I don't know if I want to, but I I'm definitely a fit. If anybody out there is listening, you know, you're looking for $3,000 writer.

Speaking of storytelling, you're working on a book right now to write.

It's working on a book like loosely based on my life, sort of semi-autobiographical, because it's sort of interesting. But, um, you know, there's another idea that came out of the superhero questions. Um, and this is pretty personal and interesting as I was working with, you know, I have my personal story, right?

You know, I've done all the different things I've done in my life. But, you know, the shit I went through with my heart was light, was life altering, you know? I mean, I sat and held hands with death for two years, and then I went away, and I it was just like three or like deep inward gaze. And I did yoga teacher training and I drank ayahuasca, and I talked to shaman and I, and I really was like, why am I hearing what am I doing?

Because this could end in any second, and I don't really like the result I've gotten thus far. Not that I'd wasted my time. I haven't wasted any time. I've done everything I've ever set out to do in my entire life and been successful at it. But here's the rub for whatever, for whatever reason, it wasn't enough.

Every time I reached the top of a mountain, I'm like, there's three minutes. Oh wow, that's cool. And then it's like, what's next? Then nothing's ever good enough. I can't be that guy anymore. I just want some peace. So then I start working with people on these superhero questions, and we're starting to get into origin, story and ethos and why people do what they do.

And I started to hear these stories from people that are, you know, a lot of them are tragic and difficult. People made decisions to go certain directions because, you know, their way of the way their life went. And I had this sort of second idea,

um, for something called, uh, The Superhero Rules. And it's a book sort of along the lines of, uh, what is it, the four engagements or what's the name of that book, the four or. No. Or anyway, people have been in difficult situations like you going through what you've gone going through with your heart, and that's serious.

And I went through what I went through, and I've heard people say this over and over and over again, like people who are down on their luck, people who are struggling, people who are things like aren't working for them anymore, like be the superhero in your life.

I don't know if you've ever heard anyone say that, but be your own superhero. Sounds really good. Yeah, be your superhero until you're like, what the fuck does that mean? Does that mean I get a cape? Does that mean I learn how to fly? Does that mean I get a belt like Batman? Like I don't I don't have any of those attributes.

Like, how can I possibly be the superhero in my life? I started to look at that through the prism of the superhero questions and started thinking about origin story. You know who you are and how you got to where you are. Ethos. What do you love? What do you believe in? Superpowers. Like what are you unique at?

Service, you know? How do you help people? And I was like, this is also a really, really compelling tool for human discovery and for like, maybe really figuring out who you are as a person and what makes you special and maybe what you really want to do with your life. And that comes from me facing that question, you know, in a very profound way over the last four years.

So

that's the premise,

um, of the book. I've also got a another script that I want to develop, and of course, I'm publishing content every day. And, you know, in writing. So it's, you know, for me, the the writing time is is hard. And I'm constantly moving my schedule around and trying to find windows where I can just be quiet and sit and get a few uninterrupted hours.

But, you know, the superheroes. The Four Agreements is the book that I was thinking of. I would like to do, uh, a sort of,

for lack of a better term, a journey of self-discovery novella with for the four of the superhero questions called The Superhero Rules, and create some programing around that and make that available to people. So journey of self-discovery. When people are having a hard time and things aren't working and they don't know who they are because I really, you know, I hope that you don't go through that with your heart, and I hope it resolves itself in a positive way.

We brought a lot of trauma. Um, but, you know, I had a couple years there where I felt like I didn't even know who I was anymore. I had no idea. Like what? What have I done? Where am I going? What do I want to do? Holy shit. This could all end tomorrow. What have I been doing with my time? Like what? I'm not happy. What?

I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Why aren't you happy? Where's the money?

You know, all over the place and just. You know that. That, like, feeling that it's almost indescribable. Like, you know, I was supposed to get a routine ablation on a Friday.

A routine, uh, radiofrequency ablation, right? Where they just. So I had these three different kinds of arrhythmia, and it's an outpatient procedure where they just go into your heart through the arteries, in your legs, and they cauterize or freeze sections of the heart material that are causing the arrhythmia, and that cures the arrhythmia.

It's not a big deal. It doesn't kill you. It fixes you in a day. And the day before I'm supposed to get that done, I get a call from my cardiology team at, like, seven in the morning and you're like, hey, you need to come in right now and you can't drive. Basically, like, they didn't know how I was alive.

Like, if you weren't an elite athlete, like, they got pictures of my heart and I by coach by the Arctic valve was almost closed. Enosis was so bad. And it was just like on a phone call. And I went from, like, the guy with this little arrhythmia problem to a dead man. And I stayed that way for a couple of years. I wish I could take that experience and put it inside everyone because it, it it just makes you think about life differently.

When you say when you say you stayed that way for a couple of years, what do you what do you.

Mean? You know, you can't just get right into open heart surgery, right? Because these especially these these high level guys. You know, they're booked for years. So I got lucky with Doctor Pretorius and I got an opening, but I'm not sure how much time, but there was a period of time before I could see him where I had three different kinds of arrhythmia, and I was on two different anti arrhythmia medications and blood thinners and was still having supraventricular tachycardia and all these.

And I just like, you know, you could go like you know like they can't fix this until I go on surgery and I could any one of these incidents could take me out. So you're kind of like dead man walking, you know? And then they do the surgery, and that shit happen with the Dilaudid. And that came like.

I mean, like, literally, I was breathing like that as they're draining all the water from me and telling me like, like. And then when all that was done, I still had the arrhythmia. Is today the day I'm going to stroke out like ASM recover it and couple that with. I left a ten year relationship and I left my company.

It was like not only was I in this situation, but my whole life is sort of, you know, kind of burned ash around that, and it just left me with a real

sort of desire to kind of

reexamine everything in a very, um, serious and difficult path of, of, of reinvention that I love and that I don't regret at all, but that, you know, I mean, the decision to come to Costa Rica was really like, it's always been my favorite place. I've been coming here for 25 years. And I started to look at and I know you'll appreciate this because you write, you write about it.

It's like, why do we spend 70 years of our lives

working 60 or 80 hours a week?

So what? We can make a pile of money that we can't spend and retire when we're too old to do anything to enjoy it. Like, what is this, like, the biggest sucker bet on planet Earth?

Just fucking dumb, right? I mean, you look at it like

you look at everybody does it. Everybody. It's what the culture tells us we're supposed to do. And I don't want to get political, but, you know, like, I feel like I got conned. I don't know.

I sort of regained my sanity because I almost died. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing that anymore. I might not wake up in the morning. I'm not waiting. I gave up tons of money to come down here and just do what I want, and that's what I do every day. It's like, yeah, I'm a motivated guy and I love the things I do, and I like building things and I love creating, and I there's more than I can ever get.

I have more interesting things than I can ever do in a day, but none of them are things I don't want to do. And it's all 100% on my terms. I don't miss a sunrise, ever. Every sunrise I am out with my dog on the beach. I don't miss a sunset. Ever. Every sunset. I'm out on the dog with my beach. I have a gem on the roof of my place.

I have my own company. I take clients I like, I don't take clients I don't. I really believe in the superhero questions, both in their like efficacy for doing what they're doing and helping people discover what their brand is, but also on a larger extent as a way to really, again, democratize branding. Like, I really have this like sort of long vision of them being able to like create a world where everyone, anyone can tell.

I think it should be taught at universities, you know, in lieu of how they're talking about brands. Now, I think Bob would agree.

The shit they don't teach in the university is is wild. I mean, particularly as it relates to to what really moves a business forward or anything like that. And I, I agree, I mean, you. You're in Costa Rica. I mean, I'm in Cabo, and, you know, it's. Sometimes it takes an event like that, but I. You know, as much content as I.

As I put out there, I challenged people to to rethink what's required. You know, like so because so many people that I talk to, especially early on when we when we first did this, people, it was kind of like you. Well, that's not going to work. Like you can't do that. We can't do it with kids. We can't do it. There's always like this.

You can't do it until you have money. You can't do it until you. And it's like, you know, if you just reimagine the rules, like, and and just throw the rule book out. And now we move here. There's obviously there's selection bias. But like all of my neighbors are very much the same, same mindset. You know what I mean?

And um, and I, I hope it for, for anybody that's listening, I hope it doesn't have to take, you know, like the event, like you're in your case with the, you know, with the heart thing. But the last fucking thing I wanted to do was wake up when I was 85 years old and be like, fuck, it's gone. Like why? Why? Why wait?

Why wait until I'm 70? You know, like so. And it's kind of a and it's a, it's a con job anyway because depending on who you are. But I'm statistically I'm least likely to be able to enjoy that much stuff when I'm, when I'm 70, as when I'm 35. When I'm 40. Right. 45. You know what I mean? Like.

This is my brain. It's like, I'm not gonna. I'm not getting any younger like this. I can still do things right. And that was almost taken away. But I think also like one of my favorite lines is the only limit is imagination. And I believe that with 100% of my being,

that is a guiding principle. So I don't believe anything is impossible. I just don't buy it. The only limit is imagination. The only things that are impossible are the things that we haven't imagined the solution to. So in my life and my decision making, like no, never enters the equation. And I'll go back to being a little bit crazy.

And when I have done all the things that I've done. I never for a minute doubted that I would be successful in any of the things I tried, whether it was winning the Pan Americans twice as a black belt or launching a cannabis dispensary, never having done cannabis retail before, or being a cultivator from square one, and not to quitting being a lawyer and becoming a screenwriter, none of it.

I was like, I can do this. Why not? Somebody does it. Just go. Just try it. Take your cut, step up, swing. Swing hard. Live, take risks. Jump off the fucking cliff. Just go. Motherfucker! What? What are we here for?

Well, fuck, man, there's no better note to end this on. I just fucking go like goddamn.

No.

And build a brand. Like, be different. Like the.

Superhero questions? Call me fuck.

Don't. Don't fall into the sea of sameness. Where can people. Where can people find you, JP?

Oh, LinkedIn's great Stoned Ape is my company, and I should probably touch on that a little bit because, uh, if we have time. You know Stone. You know stone. Dave theory. Are you familiar with it? No, no. So Paul Stamets is the foremost. Uh, no. He's one of the most brilliant minds on psychedelic mushrooms and other kinds of mushrooms.

And he has a theory called stoned ape theory, where it's, uh, the way that I apes evolved into humans is they ate psychedelic mushrooms and that evolved their consciousness. And that's how human beings came out of primates. So my company is stoned Ape and its awareness evolved. But what that really means is I'm trying to drive, evolve awareness of brand and get people to think about brand differently and create this common language that democratizes brand, so we can all understand it and have meaningful conversations and build great brands.

That's this present jump into the abyss. and I just launched the company four months ago, so we'll. You know, we're still very much in it's in its infancy, but I think people are really connecting with the idea. And, um, once they run through the questions, they can really see the sort of the, the simple genius in it and how it moves us from sort of branding bullshit to brass tacks.

Well, the messaging that you have on, on LinkedIn lately has just been it's been so on point, and I like to thank you and post after post that for post, I was like, dude, this is so it is so incredibly relevant for so many industries, B2B industries, B2C industries, like certainly a lot of IT companies, the the aspect of branding and the kind of the flavor you bring to it, I think is really solid.

So go find JP on LinkedIn, go check out Stoned Ape and

we'll catch you later. Adios, brother.

All right. Well thank you Rick.