No Jumper - The Josh Kesselman Interview: No Jumper & RAW Collab, Happiness vs Money & More

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

Joss Kesselman is back for a brand new interview to touch on the impact of 2020 on life, business, community, how to keep going, making more cool products to make people smile and how the collab with Kendama happened! https://www.instagram.com/rawkandroll/ ----- CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tesvmDS8h50LkjnSAWMOs?si=j6sJD6DkR4mk5NZZWnlK7g FOLLOW US ON SNAPCHAT FOR THE LATEST NEWS & UPDATES https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz Follow us on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nojumper iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-jumper/id1001659715?mt=2 Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFICIAL http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper. Coolest podcasts on the world. Yes, you all wanted it. You all asked for it. It's Josh Kesselman, part two. My friend. My friend. The first time that we did this, we made like, you know, something that apparently

touched a shitload of people. I got three million views. And we were just talking about it. Like, people come up to you all the time. Yeah. It's definitely one of my most mentioned podcast from time to time. People really loved it. So amazing to have you back.

I'm happy as fuck to be back. And the thing definitely changed my life. And apparently changed a lot of other people's lives, which is even fucking cool. There's amazing to feel what a podcast can do where like if there's a good enough vibe in a podcast that could somehow just scale to millions of people and they could all like and that something could go viral from just having a really good vibe and being inspirational and it's cool to see something go so big like you know when you upload a video about so-and-so shot so-and-so it's like okay

you get some million views I get it but to see the positivity do so good is amazing and not just that it did so good it's that it truly actually impacted people. That's the best fucking part. Right. Because that's, I love doing that. And when they're coming up to me, they're not coming up to me like, oh, hey, I saw you on. It's, I watched that podcast, you and Adam. Right.

And it changed my life. I'm just like, wait, what? Like, I was fucking, you know, the night before we were fucking partying all night long I got two hours of sleep. You and L'OZAN. You was done, yeah, we were fucking thrown down hard. And I was on like two hours of sleep when I came in and we were just like, oh, fuck it.

To me, it was just two dudes talking. And like, maybe because we were so tired or I was so fucked up and whatever that stuff, maybe we were so. I don't know, authentic and real that it just kind of got through. Right. I mean, from my perspective, it was just I very much had questions that I just really wanted to ask you. And that's when I think podcasts are at their best.

When you're going through the motions, which is the case sometimes, because sometimes, you know, there's a crazy story that I want somebody to tell. And, like, in order for me to do a podcast with them, I need to really research the story so that I can get them to also tell me the story. I need to kind of know what I'm asking about. But with you, it's like, I really didn't. know the answers to any of these questions. I was very much like trying to parse your motivation. Like one of my favorite questions when I watched it back that I asked you, I was like,

you know, what is the thing that made this brand? Like you just put such an inordinate amount of energy into it. Is it that you love smoking? Is it that you love just the idea of building a great business? Is it that you want to, you know, just build a community, et cetera? And I like that question because I was really actually trying to figure out like, what the fuck is it that's driving this guy. Yeah. Yeah. And I think community was the primary answer.

In the end, I guess you would, it, it's all of it, man. But yeah, community would be the final, the final piece of what it's really trying to, what I'm trying to do. But I also, I mean, now, in the past two years, so much has changed. Really? That now, and people have gotten so into it, I'm able to talk to people about rolling papers in a way that I never thought in my entire life. I couldn't even imagine that I'd be talking to them. I'm talking about the fucking little details of it, caressy units and shit like this. We're like, if I ever said this to someone else, they'd normally be going to sleep.

And now people actually want to hear about it and talk about it. Right. You know, there's an extent to which it feels like from time to time, it feels like, I bet that Elon Musk could run a really good candy company. Yeah. But he's Elon Musk, so he's going to make electric cars and he's going to go to space. Yeah. That's what I think is so funny about Raw and you from time of time.

the time when I really like, because you send us these packages of the most absurd amount of promotional stuff. And we really will all as an office just be looking at it and passing around just in awe of the amount of things that you've created surrounding the rolling paper, which is really one of the most simple things. And I know that you get deep into the woods on the actual rolling papers. But I mean, it's one of the most simple things you could really imagine. Yes and no, but it should be. It really should be. It looks, it seems... It should be.

It's deceivingly simple, seeming. Yeah. It really fucking should be. I just, I love it, man. I have so much fun making the shit. So when the packages come in, my hope, based upon what you're saying, is that you guys look around and you see some ridiculous fucking contraption we came up with. And you look at them and be like, what the fuck?

And then you fuck with it for a second. You realize, oh, shit. That's fucking cool. Right. And then you understand, oh, my God, he actually made something to, like, one way or another that hopefully improves the smoking process or at least makes you smile and laugh and giggle. Right. I'm going to cut in.

Clips, our editor will cutting clips right here, but the two funniest, craziest things that I think you sent through were the one piece, like, pajama body suit that has a built-in rolling tray flap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can sort of just, bang, just dump it out, and then all of a sudden roll up, close it up again. You got your little crap in there. It's all good. You close it back up. And then also the mask with the flap, and when you open it, there's like a little metal washer that you can hit the joint through. Yeah, yeah. The Tokers mask. I mean, it's just like the ethos of the brand being that everything surrounding smoking should exist. Everything you own should exist to make smoking a little bit easier.

Easier and more fun and better. So, and sometimes there's an interesting story behind it. If you want, I'll tell you the story behind the onesie. Let's go. Okay, it's a beautiful story,

by the way. It really is. All right, so someone, mean-spiritedly made fun of me on social media for wearing a onesie. For my daughter's birthday, I'm wearing a onesy, teenage mutant ninja turtles onesie.

It makes fun of me to the end of, As a dad, nobody should be able to make fun of you for anything that you do because I realize this now having a kid, like the goofiest shit on earth is what's going to make them laugh. So you're doing the goofiest shit. I got my daughter matching one. Right. We had the whole family dressed up in teenage meeting here, but there's a picture of me there holding

a piece of broccoli, right? Really cute. Put it on social media. I get made fun of to the endth degree, right? Really bad. I'm like, oh, fuck. So it hurts when someone does that to you, you know? But rather than retaliate or any of that kind of stuff, I sat with it for a moment, I smoked a lot

And then I thought, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to make the best goddamn onesie for stoners that's ever been made in the history of humanity. Right. And I get my clothing designers on there. And we sit there and we spend a lot of time. I get all my friends involved and we decide we're going to make the ultimate smokers onesie, right? So we make all these stash pockets on it, the poker laces, the way the things come up

and over. It's got the ninja mask where you can slip in a dryer sheet and blow smoke out of it with no odor. And we fucking go all out through this thing, right? the pull-out built-in rolling tray, the little stash things on the side. Everything we could think of. We put in there so many pockets, so much of everything, right? And it's got to be comfy as fuck, too. So we oversized it beyond ridiculous this.

And we put it out. And then what I did once we launched it, and I made a point of saving some, and I sent them to each and every one of the friends I knew that the mean person had. And they fucking loved it, too. And they start putting up pictures of them in onesies. Next thing, we're all fucking wearing onesies. And it was just my beautiful way of getting rid of negativity. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Lean into it. Lean into it. Just like, oh, okay, onezzy, you're going to make fun fun of wearing onesis? Here we go, man. Right. I'm going to get everyone wearing fucking onesies now, and they're going to be incredible. And they are. They're so much fucking fun. I can't imagine somebody trying to make funny you for wearing the one piece or the onesie, because it just seems like

the character that you put forth on social media and in real life is not the kind of guy who is going to give a fuck about being made fun for wearing a onesy. A onesy is very much like within your wheelhouse. You seem like a guy who might have a onesie at his disposal. Yeah,

a lot of them. Hundreds, thousands, even. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah,

and then, okay, so the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, mask is presumably COVID- inspired.

Yeah, just trying to, keep COVID light and funny for all of us. Right. So it was a thing,

like, we kept pulling down our masks, and we were making, we're cutting little holes, hidden holes, so we could smoke through the mask. But it's the thing,

you pull down your mask to smoke, and everyone's staring at me like, evil, you know? So it was like, okay, shit, shit. So we decided, you know what, fuck it. And I saw these straw masks that people had where it had a little hole over there. We tried using that, but then they're smoking off to the side. It doesn't work, you know. Plus it was getting all hot and the shit was melting around it.

So we decided to just take it and fucking make it right. So we made it out of like a heat resistant material, oversized it so I could smoke a supernatural through the hole, like a big footlong cone, you know. And just tried to make it and made it magnetic because when we had Velcro was getting a lot of material stuck in the Velcro. It's like, yeah, it's funny. But like when we were making these, we're testing them. and fucking with them and seeing what happens, what goes right, what goes wrong to try to make it.

So we finally do make it, it's right. Yeah, it's kind of like, take the silliest idea ever, but then make it so good that it might actually be something that you take seriously. Yeah. Yeah. I respect that. There's that thing I told you about the latter theory. If I'm going to bring something, I got to bring it.

You can't just be an also ran. You have to be the guy who fucking, you're not just going to make a onesie. I'll just get an existing onesie and stick my loat. go on there. That'd be easy. Right. But that's not me, man. That's not what this is about. Yeah. This is about trying to bring it to that fucking, the highest level of the highest can possibly be. How much of a pain in the ass is it to make like an inflatable joint that's like 20 feet long? We made 10 footers. We've actually made 20 footers. We made 20 footers for, for concerts.

Okay. So the one we have is probably about a 10. I guess that sounds right. Yeah, it was enormous. Yeah. Where is that now? Oh, okay. The 20s needed to reinforceing. Right. So they ended up costing me like a thousand dollars apiece to make a 20 footer. But the 10 footers are reasonable. So we were able to make a whole bunch of 10 footers. And yeah, they're fun as fuck. Right.

Like how many, I think about the fun that people have had with that. Like, even your staff has fucking fun with it. That was a lot of fun. It's like, it's hard to have a 10 foot joint without having fun. Right. So I did a good thing. Yeah. I uplifted people.

I made people happy and I get more of these happiness points. You know? 100%. That's dope. So, wait, but when we were talking about the mask, I was curious. How did COVID affect your business and what you guys had playing for the year? and all. Oh, yeah. Okay. So from a, I don't want to talk, I'm not going to go into deep negatives, but just the saddest thing for me was simply that I lost my annual trip to Ethiopia and everyone

was waiting for me and the sisters were waiting for me and everything and I had a big thing planned. Right. And that trip obviously didn't happen. I was taking my daughter for the first time to Ethiopia. So it was a big deal for me. So that was the individual, that was the first sad thing that happened because that happened right there in March. My, my real mother passed away due to a complication. So we think it's a complication. We'll never know very recently. So that really sucked. And there we go.

That's enough of that. From a positive standpoint, sure, things went flying down. And we went hard into it. We simply got any of our staff that was willing to work, we're like, hey, whatever you want, what do you want to work here? What would make you comfortable? How can we set this up? So instead of working one shift, we broke it into three shifts

or everyone worked far apart from each other. And everyone worked from home. we could work from home, and we just kept everybody away. Right. And we put in everything you could possibly think of to try to prevent it from coming in, those things in the air system, those space shuttle killer things and all these machines everywhere and all the shit. And it never spread within our entire facility.

Oh, that was awesome. And little by little, the people started to work harder, like come back, and they were working so hard because they were, oh, my God, we want to get everything out. We want to get everything out. And some of them, their, if someone in their family had lost their job, we knew about it. So then we would start paying that person extra to try to make up for it. it and we just started reinvesting in our staff heavily and heavily and bonusing them to the extent that we really could to the point where everyone felt so good that they wanted to work even more.

Right. And we kind of just tried to grow our way out of it and we did. It was a really cool thing in that it brought us all closer together. Like my whole work team. Right. We've never been closer than thanks to COVID. So I try to look at it from a positive thing of the good things that happened. I got to spend four months alone with my daughter.

That was fucking awesome. I never would have had that. She would have been in school. I never would have, you know, barely see her. So that was fucking awesome too. And I want to look at it more from the positives. But the worst thing about COVID, for real, is what it did to the community. Right?

We can't pass to each other anymore. We can't hang out in these smoke circles and sesh with each other the way we used to. I immediately feel horrible about the fact that we do all those things still. But yes, in theory, you should not be doing that. But in general, it broke up the sex. If you're a responsible human being, you should not do. those things. In general, it killed a session. Killed a lot of sessions. And that was something that really hurt me deeply. The bummer is that there's an effect that has been taking place in our world

for, you know, the past 30 years or whatever, where it's like people buy things online, people interact online, people are less prone to get together in real life. And like, that's one thing that if you look back in the 80s or the 90s, it's like, fuck. Like, you know, I yearn for those real life experiences that you had because you didn't need. even know about a good alternative to doing it online now yeah on the good on the positive side i love that i now i've probably done so many goddamn meetings on zoom that went perfectly fine and i just got what needed to be done done and didn't have to sit in two hours of traffic yeah but yeah i mean like it sucks like fastening the the effect of like you know people not going and hanging out in real life

and stuff it's like that's what the internet has been doing to us or even the the the feeling of going into a store. That's what the internet's been taking away from us. But then COVID just ramps it up where no, now you need to not go meet in person because it's irresponsible to do so. Now you need to buy off Amazon because it's your only option. It's not just the most convenient option. Yeah. I agree. And that is a problem. The whole thing of us not, it made, it separated us further from each other. Right. That was the worst thing. You literally don't go talk to anyone. Do you nuts? You can't talk to that person.

You can't connect with them. You can't even see your grandma. You can't see anybody. You see 10 people hanging out in the park and your brain goes to, whoa, what a bunch of dickheads. Yeah. That's like, this is backwards. This is a nasty thing. But it's responsible and I'm glad that we're sort of reaching the end of it.

We are. And you also saw our inability to stay away from each other. If you look at it from that angle, right? Which is like, we could not, we could not stay away from each other. No, you have to stay alone. No, I can't. We have to strive for connection to that point. Right.

And so I'll tell you what happened. So when COVID was first starting, when it was, quarantine was first being an honest. We knew we were going into this, right? In March, here it comes. I'm like, you know what? We're all thinking it's going to be three fucking weeks, right? We're going to do that. Oh, we're going to be locking for three weeks.

I go on Instagram and I'm like, it's okay, guys. I got this. I'm going to entertain the living. Shit out of you, man. I'm going to bring out all the old stoder tricks for my book. It's going to be the fucking, I'm going to, if you don't know how to roll, you will know how to roll. You will know how to roll.

You will know how to teach you fucking everything, man. It's going to be 21 days of pure joy. It's going to be awesome. Don't worry. It's going to be cool. All right. So I start doing my shit. I start bringing out all the old shit.

Teaching them out of smoke out of apples, oranges, fucking mangoes. You name it, man. I was doing all the fun tricks, water bongs, the thing called a gravity bong where you take a giant out the cap, stick a cone in there, light the cone, stab a hole in the bottom of the jug. Water pours out and it fills the whole thing with smoke. Then you pull up the cap and go, take these giant hits, the biggest hits you ever had in your life. Oh, yeah. All fun shit like this for 21.

days and then it kept going. Yeah. And 21 days turned into a year. Right. And I'm still fucking running around trying to entertain people to keep them going through this fucking quarantine. So that was part of what you decided was I'm going to really start going hard with the social media content so I can keep a better connection with the audience.

Yeah, I didn't look, think about it like that. I thought about it more like I'm going to teach them everything. I'm going to help get them through this because this sucks and we're losing each other. But it's okay. We're going to use this as a learning time. I'm going to teach you all the old shit. Anything you ever thought you even possibly wanted to know within the world of rolling papers and funny old shit

that we all used to do together. I'm going to bust it out and teach you. I'm going to teach you how to make a sploof. Nobody makes sploof anymore. What is that? A sploof is what you take, like, an old toilet paper inside of a toilet paper roll. Or you can use the paper towel if you want more room

and you shove in a bunch of, like, dryer sheets. You put one on the outside with a rubber band. And then the trick is, as I learned the hard way, the hard way, is you also want to take some paper towel or tissue paper and put that in right there because otherwise you're snuggle might come up and try to snuggle with your lips and that's never a good thing dryer sheets are gross out of your mouth and then you blow through it and eliminates the smoke I taught him something that I'd read that Keith Richards did where he would take hoses

garden hoses when he was in hotels and he'd shove him down into the toilet and blow the smoke down up into the stack when he was smoking I taught of like everything man I mean like the book I'm still going. Yeah. But it's like, dude, this is supposed to be 21 days. Yeah. You know, I'm getting kind of tired. I'm running out of tricks.

It's only so much. I hear it. Definitely. Did, uh, did Raw's sales get hurt at all? I'm going to assume no. No. Okay. So what actually ended up happening was once everybody stayed home,

maybe I don't know exactly, you know why. I really don't understand it. At first, we went flying down. And then we shot the fuck up. Because at first people can't leave the house. The stores are all closed. But then once they open up, It's like if you're going to go buy anything, it's going to be some stuff to smoke with probably.

Yeah. Yeah. But what we don't understand is the growth was beyond what we could realistically ever. How are you going to handle doubling in a month? Right. It's us. We can only make so much paper. We got to make it right.

I can't like speed up the machines. I can't be done. Doubling in a month. In a month. So it was like, oh shit. And so and we're barely operating. The mayor of the Alcoi had to give a special permission to stay open even because we were supposed to close like everybody else.

So we went to him and explained to him what's happening. Like, can we stay open? Yes. And every other machine could be open. Everyone's staying away from each other. Again, three shifts, everything we do. We're making twice as much paper now and selling twice as much paper as we did right before COVID. And we still are not even close to keeping up with demand.

Wow. So we're like, everybody zoomed in. We're like, no, we're only going to smoke the best. And it, like, holy shit. So it's a great problem, but it's still a problem. And people are yelling at me. Like anyone who's got a store that I know, I'll get a call from them at some point yelling to me, why don't I have your stuff?

My shelves are half empty of your product. I'm like, dude, I'm doing the best I can, man. Like, I really wasn't, we weren't expecting this and it takes a long time to grow. Right. We can't, oh, just make more. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You got to, it's the process. It's got to be made right, you know?

Definitely. Damn. So, yeah, I mean, that's good to know that it hasn't slowed up too much. I wonder what the impulse is for people to, like, smoke so much more during the quarantine. I mean, I guess I get it. I guess we probably have smoked more. But then again, like, Like, you know, like when we were around all those people at the store and stuff, I guess like if my life had stayed the same, then we probably would have started smoking more just because there was like a little bit less to do.

Like for a lot of people being at work for eight hours is really basically just eight hours where you can't smoke weed. Yeah. You know, and so if that goes away and you're able to sit at home and work from home, you're going to smoke more weed because you're not in this like jail cell environment for that eight hours. Yes. And I think by being home, people started getting more. into, okay, I'm going to learn how to fucking roll finally. You know, I'm going to fucking figure this out. The next thing you know, they're enjoying it more,

and they're connecting to it more. Because cones are awesome. I fucking love cones, but there's just something special that one you roll yourself. It's just different, man. It's like you made it. You created it. I can't put words to it,

but I know that every single one that I smoke, that I rolled, that I rolled by hand, it just tastes a little better to me than when I stuff a cone. I feel like I cheated every time I stuff a cone. I love stuffing cones, man, because it's 4 a.m. And I woke up and, oh, God, I can't go bite to sleep. I got nothing on.

I'm going to, no, I'm going to stuff a fucking cone and smoke it. Right. I'm so thankful for that shit. But given the choice, I would prefer to roll. I feel you. When you talk about how much has changed in the past two years, what comes to mind? What are the big ones? Because I know you're always working on some new shit.

And like the stuff that we get to see is the 10 foot inflatable joint, but I'm sure that there's stuff behind the scenes that you're doing that is not as obvious to us. I can't tell. There's so much I would love it. I'll show you some of it. Okay. I can't show you some things because, as I always say, Slugworth is always watching. And if I tell you about it now, oh, my God, quick guys, copy it before you can launch it.

And people will end up with a version that won't be as good as the real thing. Yeah. So, really, man, I would love to open the doors and show you every little mystical thing we're working on. But it's, I got a painfully. But I'll show you some cool shit. For sure. Okay. Ooh.

Okay. Visual AIDS. I like that. This is something I made for my time in New York. I call it the day bag. You know, because you were in New York. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

So you pop out rolling got your rolling tray so that when you're in at Union Square wherever you are You can always be where now you can just smoke all of a sudden which is a real a real crazy change for me to imagine Yeah, I never had that and which is a good thing because one of my next video is I was gonna do was teach you how to eat the roach The trick of eating the roach Yuri Doesn't need any help with that but yeah We saw him wutang a couple of blunts on stream the other day, but you know normally when people do that they wait till it's like that day. Yeah, he's doing it when I was like this big. It has to, well, it's a New York thing we all learn for when they're coming down on you have two choices. Either you fucking eat that or you're going to be worried about dropping the soap

in a few hours. Right. Isn't that the sound like the craziest thing ever that like now that society is starting to move past it. Yeah. In America. I guess we're really lucky because if you live in fucking Dubai, then you're, you know, yeah. If you're in Dubai, you're fucked, man. Yeah, yeah. Even if you have marijuana in your body. Right. So you got to go clean for 30 days before you go to Dubai. I'm not going there. Fuck that shit, man. I can, wait. You give them 30 years, they'll figure it out. Yeah, that's a crazy one. I heard that one. That was painful. Right.

I mean, but I'm talking about like the world is so past that, but I mean, like, literally America is one of the only countries that is legalizing. And Mexico. We've got some great places. But like the whole other side of the world is like, yeah, must be nice. Yeah. One joint. Death, you will get death. Okay.

Okay. So I'm going to show you something cool. All right, well, first of all, this was something we can't, that I don't even show you boring stuff like this. This is a new rolling paper where it's an organic hemp paper or the thinnest organic paper ever made. Plus I made a slow burning, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to fucking sit here and do a pitch with you. I want to show you some cool shit.

Okay. Because this is a great paper, but I don't want to do that. I want to show you something cool. I want to show you things that aren't actually out yet. It's more fun for me. Okay. These. These are coming soon.

Okay. Now this is where we're extracting, and I won't tell you too much about it because, again, can't. We're extracting a certain molecule from a different plant and combining it with turpines in order to make it that when you smoke that with another plant, right? It completely changes the effect. Really? Yeah.

So there's something, is it the stuff that I see sort of sprinkled on here? It's actually mixed into the paper? It's, yes, but it's actually mixed onto the paper. So this is going to be like when you drink and do Coke at the same time, but for weed? Oh, I can't say that. But it's, it completely changes the effect. Okay. In a good way.

And we can alter it. We've learned where we can. have different effects depending on which molecule we use from which plant. So this is like some cutting edge science stuff. You're going to enjoy these. Wow. Where could these even be sold? You're not saying that there's like some type of marijuana thing that's in there.

It can be sold anywhere. It could be sold anywhere. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That's some futuristic shit right there. How does one even begin to think of such a thing? Or like when you say that you made like the thinnest rolling paper you've ever made,

like how does Josh Kesselman say, hey, factory that has been making all this paper for all these years, do it different? make it thinner. Like, how does that calm? Well, it isn't just thinner, because thinner is one thing. That doesn't necessarily matter the most. Right. So you can't just make it thinner is what we learned. I'll explain you to a nutshell.

Right. Paper making is like this. You got a bunch of plant fibers and you create a web. I'm just going to do it in front of you so you can see. So that would be like a web of fibers together. One way or another, we're putting them together and creating our web. Okay, cool. Now, you look at me like this, you can kind of see me through it.

There's a little bit of holes there, you see? That would be like a normal way to do it. The trick is, as it gets thinner and thinner, you end up with bigger and bigger holes. and you end up with really what we call a high caressed unit. All this means is when you go to hit out of it, a high crested unit paper, it's like smoking a joint where there's a tear in it. You know, there's smoke that comes off the front.

It looks like you're getting a hit, but then you're nothing. It's like that. Of course, now it isn't that bad. You'll get some smoke, but you're diluting the smoke by pulling air through the sides of the paper. So we're going to hit out of this.

We go to hit. We're getting some from the, front right here or we're also pulling air from all the sides okay so not all the smoke is making it down to because it's so perforated because it's so perforated and that these are microperations essentially so small that the human eye can't see them but i know they're there i've got testing machines we know they're there so the goal is like a blunt has a crest unit of almost zero right so when we create raw we're trying to mimic that kind of level of smoking of getting it really low you're at 10 we like it around there okay you know maybe 20's fine too that's a balance because if the paper is too

thick, then you're just sucking in a shill out of paper, right? The hard thing is to make it thin and close the web. It can be done, but it costs a lot more to make. To go from a paper that's, let's say, 40 Crest unit, down to 20. Cutting it in half, you're extremely increasing the cost. In complexity

and everything goes through the fucking ceiling and the amount of rejects goes up, everything gets harder and more expensive. But we can do it, so we do it. But do you have to charge like a very different price point for these are much higher higher end? We often don't. I look at it as progression.

Like when a car company comes out with a new car, they don't sit there, oh my God, this one's so much better in the old one, we're going to double the price. No, it's just kind of the logical progression of the product. You just eat it. If you have to charge more, you do.

Maybe it's a little incremental. You have to. But this is not really about money. It's more about, hey, how has the material that Adam's smoking changed compared to 2005 when I created Raw Classic? Right. Well, for you as a business, it makes sense

to have your more regular papers and then you have like the really high-end ones that are act almost as even if you don't make as much profit on it it kind of acts as like a cool way for people who smoke to you know interact with it in different ways and stuff you don't want to just be the guy who's making a product that is the product that you can mass produce that's going to make the most profit because for you guys you know obviously you guys are just trying to dip into all kinds of different shit they have fun we're really like having fun which is a key so like in this case this in order we cause it so thin And because it's so natural, the paper itself, when you use this, you have to be really careful not to get the paper wet.

Especially because it's all hemp, it'll try to reform. So essentially, you could roll it back up. If you roll it between your hands and up, you could almost form it right back into the mash it came from. Really? Yeah. So it's a very difficult paper to roll. It takes a delicate hand, and it's not for the mass market. It's only meant for people who really like this paper are going to take their time in rolling it and enjoy it beyond belief.

because I'm not making this for someone. Oh, cool, I smoke and I don't even think of it. No. Right. This was a pain in the ass to make, man. I want someone who's going to fucking love every sheet and appreciate it as much as we do. Right.

Which is a lot of what I'm trying to do with these lessons and teaching people about every little thing about it, taking them to the factory, showing them the process of making favor, all this kind of stuff. I want them to love it as much as I do. Right. And the weirdest thing for me is that some people do, and I thought I was alone, you know?

You know what's the funny thing, and I think it explains why people enjoyed that first interview so much is that your your overall disposition and the case that you put forth of like this is what I've been doing with my life was very much like a case study and like if you are passionate and energetic and you want it bad enough you can make something out of nothing and like you just really demonstrate that from scratch in the interview and I think that that is the thing that because I think it's very relatable because making rolling papers is such a You know, it could be anything.

Like, you know, if you fucking love whatever, you could really do something if you are so obsessed with that one thing that you're willing to take it to the extreme. And that's clearly, like, what you've done. Because you took a product that nobody ever really, for all these years, nobody thought that anybody would ever have something to offer with this product that would actually, like, be enough to sustain, you know, like, if you would have told me, like, social media for a rolling papers company,

I'm just going to be like, I don't, I don't, fuck. definitely would not have thought of the shit that you do. Yeah. You know? I think it's more than that. I think when I look back on that interview, I think because uranized walls were down and we were just chilling, basically, and at some point we just stopped even talking about anything that was in a normal podcast and was just two people talking, I think that our

authenticity came out. And the people are not used to seeing that as much. So sure, yeah, I'm talking about all this stuff. But in my mind, I like to believe, and I don't care if I'm wrong, that any, that any Anybody who is in my shoes would be doing the same fucking thing. You know, I feel like we're all, yeah, everyone's so different. I feel like we're actually all kind of the same. All human beings essentially are very, very, very, very similar.

And that if someone was brought up in the same way I was and had the same luck and misfortune and fortune and all that shit happened, that they would end up doing the same exact thing as me in the same exact fucking way. Right. Every business, like the person in charge of the business is really like the light that's or that, the energy that drives that business. I saw a crazy-ass example of it the other day. There's a documentary, I think, on Hulu about WeWork, which was, you know, for a time period, they were basically just like, you know, they were basically just renting

businesses, like retail, not retail, but like, you know, renting office space and then renting it out to people and, you know, trying to really create like this community type vibe where all these people were sort of interacting. I think it's a cool idea. But he was such a good. great founder that he convinced the world that this idea was worth like 50 billion dollars and what is it actually worth though probably not anywhere here that much seems to be the conclusion that's what was like yeah with your first brother i don't know i don't think it's a bad idea at all i think like a communal

workspace where that sounds cool people can sort of share resources and stuff like oh you don't have a fucking photocopier or whatever everybody can use the photocopy you don't have a a coffee bar in your office but if you all are working in the area then you could all kind of have this cool coffee bar I think it's a cool idea. But he was such a great founder and had just such energy and vision that he was able to convince Silicon Valley that this was just worth so much more

than it actually really was. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that Raw is like that. I think what you're building is awesome and stuff. It's a lot more honest. I don't see you try to like sell the world. No, I don't have any investors. So there's nobody for me to do that to.

Yeah, definitely. But yeah, the We work thing, it touched me. in a different way where I saw I like that part of it but I was just like how the fuck is this thing worth 50 billion or what the fuck's going on here man come on because like why oversell yourself like you could create a create business but if you're gonna just like constantly like you know try to manipulate your value by just convincing people you're bigger and bigger I mean that's like this sort of like sick Silicon Valley mentality that I just think is but I also got from this okay if you my upbringing was you know you actually it's physical products you know you actually have

to add value. You have to fucking bring it. If you don't, fuck you. And that's what makes your business a very different type of business thing. And I like products like that. When someone brings something with a really truly adding value, there's no question about it. Like, wow, man,

that changed the fucking world. That uplifted people. That helped humanity. That's fucking cool. Not, wow, man, you tricked everybody thinking your shit was worth $50 billion when it wasn't. And maybe you kind of actually heard a whole bunch of people. That's the stuff I don't like.

You know what's interesting about you is that you were born in a different age where you didn't have the internet in the same way that kids do now. So you ended up starting, you know, retail stores and like a physical bit or you know a real physical product that you were going to base a business around. And nowadays and then you're like, well, fuck it. Like the world of social media now, this is we're going to figure out how to use this really effectively to communicate with our audience. If you were born 20 years ago instead of however long ago, I guarantee that you would have been a YouTuber who then figured out a really badass

product, the way that you see these YouTube girls and then they have a makeup palette and they make a billion dollars or whatever. It's like they become famous and then they create the product. You're kind of interesting because you created the product and then we're like, fuck it, I can be a guy who talks on social media. I can spread my shit on there. Why not? Yeah.

Well, it wasn't quite like that. I like social media and I really enjoy being able to do this because it enables me to connect with people and share messages. Right. That I wouldn't normally be able to share if I wasn't on social media. Right. So it isn't, I'm sure you've seen my stuff. I'm never like, hey, buy this. It's $14.99.

It's never like that because I'll show you the coolest thing in the fucking world that I've made and I'll have a lot. I have to have, if I'm not having fun doing it, if I'm not enjoying showing it to you, if I don't think it's a cool. losing the world, I can't show it. And it would come across wrong. I think that I have a, I gotten lucky enough to have the ability to connect with a lot of people and uplift them through the magic of funky smoking fucking products. Right. And our community.

So I want to use that to, not just my advantage, but like to the advantage. Right. To like share messages that are fucking uplifting that to show people, that it isn't all that, it isn't all we work. That's not the way. The way is, come on, man, add value. Come, bring it. Teach the whole fucking world.

Everything you fucking know. Teach me something cool. Teach me something cool. That fucking annoying, fucking plastic cup there. Make me a plastic cup that's fucking eco-friendly that is more insulated, doesn't drip, easier to hold. Uplift us, dude. Come on.

Bring it, bring it, bring it, bring it. That's the message I really try to bring to people overall. Right. I respect that. Um, did you finish with the bag? Oh, God, no. Okay. You already show us anything else with the bag?

Yeah, of course, man. Okay. So this one does not exist. Now, last time I was on the podcast with you, you loved my stoner ring, like the toker ring. So this time, I'm breaking, these do not exist yet. They will, but they do not exist. This is the double barrel world championship smoker ring.

Look at that. I feel like Mr. T. Wow. now you can smoke two at once man my girl's gonna kill me when I come in with this that's hard man yeah but that is only two and you got one and I got one I like it I'm rocking this shit I've never been a ring guy before

but I'm gonna try it out I just want to punch somebody you'll leave the raw on there yeah wonder twins got to do it I like it yeah it's been pretty fascinating working on an actual

collaboration with you guys over the the over the course of the pandemic, which might have slowed it down slightly. But, you know, how do you approach the collab type of thing? Have you worked with a lot of different brands? No. We do it very rarely. It has to be someone we actually like, you know, or else we're not going to do it. Right. There's got to be something that we like working with them and we also like what they're doing. Right. Or else we just, we just very nicely say no. Definitely. I mean, it's a very interesting thing. Like, people probably don't think it's as like intimate in a way because it's just like you have your team of people who work on something or work on your brand and then

to take them and like force them to like intermingle with another brand and like it's just like a very different thing because it's like people get easily not get along not communicate properly not get back to each other you know it's like and we experience that for sure like where you know there would be like an email that somebody thought that somebody was going to respond to it and somebody else thought somebody else was going to respond to it I mean it is like a pretty fascinating relationship when two brands come together. And it can be a really good thing because again, now we're increasing the community. Now my people know your people in an ideal world.

We'd all be smoking and sashing together and coming up with more ideas and then the group gets bigger. And now we got a tribe. Definitely. And that's the fucking, that's the best. Yeah. And like with us with the Kandama thing, it's like that that's the one thing that I've always loved about the Kondama community is that that tribe is the most positive uplifting

community I've ever been around. I'm so used to being around like growing up in the BMX world, skateboard type shit and everything. It's very like sarcastic. Like, oh, you're the little kid trying to get better at the skate park. It's kind of like you're going to get ignored or like maybe somebody's going to tell you get the hell out of the way, whatever. It's just it wasn't, it was a cool community, but it wasn't like in the 90s in particular.

It just wasn't like nice. It wasn't like friendly and uplifting. And like in the condama world these days. And also I think that those communities have gotten better over time with that type of thing where people kind of realize over time that it's not cool to be like elitist or whatever. But in Condama, it's just like, I've seen professional condomac dudes

who are the best in the world just fully stop what they're doing and spend a half hour with like a random 50-year-old lady teaching her how to do a condomac trick for the first time because the whole idea of it is based upon spreading it

and like showing the world that this is a cool-ass thing. Everybody in Condama understands that this is a fringe hobby that people would love if they were introduced to it. So it's kind of like the responsibility of everyone who loves it to evangelize on behalf of it to whatever extent that they can. Yeah, well, now I'm going to be helping. I know. I love that. It's amazing. And also a lot of condominable people smoke a lot of weed. So I just want to throw that. But also the fact that if it's a good community

and we're helping promote it, that's all, that's what we're all fucking about. The whole goal is to uplift and try to help elevate everybody. Definitely. It's, um, you know, speaking everybody. You know, I'll tell you a story. Okay. Um, we love a story. So during, and this is relates back when you're asking me how COVID, in fact, impacted us and the whole quarantine everything, about six months into the quarantine, I get a phone call from someone who, I don't know, I guess I normally really don't like like they're, they're really mean to me. Um, the equivalent of an enemy, you would say that kind of thing. They're not really my enemy, but they'd be equivalent of that hard competitor, all that kind of stuff. Someone who,

Really, I thought really hated me. And I get a call from this person asking for help, right? They're having health problems. They know I've been vegan for 20 years. Wow. And they're like, I tried going vegan. It wouldn't work, Josh. What do I do?

I'm having these problems. They explain to me the problems they were having. And this person just expected that you guys would be able to have a civil conversation about this, even though you apparently were enemies? Basically. See, we weren't really enemies because it was more of a one-way thing where they hated me. I didn't really hate them. And I think they knew that.

Okay. I try not let myself hate anybody, which gets me in trouble. but it's just if you hate one person then you're hitting two then you're hitting three then you're hitting a million it's no good so he calls me up for help

and I paused right because I knew the answer I knew what to say to him but I sat there for a moment thinking oh shit do I share this with him because if I don't he might wither and die and that would be the end of this guy

right but there was this pause you know I'm like oh shit Robert Green and his book would tell me no because you're at enemy. You must crush him at all costs. Do not let a single ember live.

Oh, fuck, that's just not me, though, man. So I don't know if you know this, I was raised more about my grandparents than my parents. Right. And I think back to my grandpa, Joe Kesselman, right? Joe always told me the story, Poppy, I called him. Poppy told me the story of he's there in World War II. He's over in Germany. He's taking over, him and his battalion are taking over or going against a work camp,

forced work camp, one of those kind of awful fucking places. Right. And the people, the Germans, the Nazis, it's not surrender. And Poppy, he was a front-line man. He would sneak up and yell to them. He spoke broken German, Yiddish, to surrender. And normally people would surrender. And these people would not surrender.

In fact, they shot at him. And I think they even winged him. He got shot three times during all this. And he kept trying, oh, you guys, you're not going to make this. There's a thousand of us. Is what, 50 of you or 100 of you? Fucking surrender. Nope, they would not surrender.

He goes back. The battle ensues. A lot of Poppy's men got killed. Most of those nights he got killed except for five. and there they are and now they send Poppy up to go talk to these last five Nazis that have have surrendered. Oh, they were out of bullets

they surrendered? Okay. Yeah, surrendered and they're standing there and now Poppy's seen the camp. He's seen the decimation. He's seen all the dead bodies and these were Romanian girls that were being tortured and killed and raped and there's piles of dead people so you can imagine. And yeah, and Poppy's

Jewish and a lot of these girls were Jewish. He's just obviously not very happy and quite you know, you can imagine what's going through him. Right. And his friends have been killed. And so he comes up and there are these five prisoners and they're shaking. Poppy always tells a story like this. They're shaking with their hands

going back and forth. And Poppy walks up to him because he's the translator and says to them, why in German? You know, why would you do this? You've killed all these people. You've killed my people. We told you to surrender. I told you. Why would you fight me? When we told you what was happening, why would you do this?

And the German soldier with his hands shaking, you know, guy, the guy would have sneezed. Someone would have probably shot. I'm thinking he was signaling somebody. Says to Poppy in German, Um, do you be an American soldier?

I mean, are you an American soldier? Poppy says, Ja'or, yes. And the guy says, I'm a German soldier. That's it. Right. You're standing in a shake.

Poppy put down his weapon for a second. Thought about it. It's like, fuck. Takes the five men and personally escorts them back to Italian headquarters to intelligence. They could be debriefed and make. and make sure that they safely make it back. And this is the fucking guy who raised me.

Right. I'm like, fuck! And I'm always thinking about him all the time. I love him so much. So, of course, the guy asked me for help. I tell him everything. I tell him every little thing he has to do. I teach him about the almond trick

and all the you have to eat almonds between at the end of each meal it lowers their glycemic index food. I like how you're equating, taking mercy on a Nazi with you having this conversation with this guy. It's a mentality. But these Nazis still need to go jail. Of course. But I guess maybe

their own country can, well, no. But no, he brought them back to his battalion. They were prisoners of war. Oh, okay. They're getting processed. I just wanted to make sure they didn't just skate because he was in a good mood. No, no, no, no. He brought them back. He personally escorted them back. Made sure they made it back safely to battalion headquarters where they would be debriefed by intelligence and put into their correct

prisoner camps. It'd be kind of tempting to just blam them right there so you didn't have to deal with them. I'm sure he was. But that's why he had to actually protect them because he was scared to someone else would blame them. Right. Because people were quite upset. Yeah. Especially after seeing what was the decimation and the death in front of them. They were really upset.

And I'm doing my best to not cry right now. Every time I tell a story about Poppy, I just miss him so much. But he had a big impact on you. Yeah, huge. He was a fucking, he was a man. Fuck.

So when you're raised by someone like that, when you're raised by someone like that, it changes you, right? Someone asks you for help. And even if you're, what's the equivalent of your worst enemy, what do you do? You're like, oh, fuck,

I have no choice but to fucking help you. Right. I have to. What would Poppy do? Yeah. Poppy would help you. Well, all right, Poppy. I got to go do this.

Hopefully you'll smile upon me. I know this is going to come back to haunt me. And it did. It did. But this didn't somehow act as a bridge towards you mending things with this person? No. No.

Why not? Not alone? Really. That's interesting. Yeah. You're a little weird these days. There's a big temptation with people to, you know, it used to be that like if you fell out with somebody,

you had a big dramatic argument. Yeah. You know, they just like unfollow you and you just never talk to them again. And then like, they die one. day and you just don't even say anything. It's like kind of weird. Yeah, I just, it is still one big community of all of us, right? Yeah. Like I like to believe that you could take your worst enemy, roll up a couple with a couple cones with the guy, smoke and chill. The next thing you know, they wouldn't be your enemy more. They'd really be your friend. Right. And I want to hold on to that

and that belief. And that's the kind of belief, like it carries me through life. Right. Because if I, otherwise, next thing you know, no, I'm going to hate them for the rest of eternity. Right. No, no, no, no. Life's too short for that, man. I want to enjoy it. I know. And that's why it's kind of tempting when you have somebody that you don't like in this day and age. Like if there's somebody you feel has betrayed you or disrespected you or whatever

that you just don't want anything to do with, it's very tempting to just, I'm just going to ignore you for the rest of my life. There's a fucking couple billion people on this earth. You can ignore them. I guess I'll just hang out with them instead of this one guy. Yeah. Yeah, that that is, I'm completely okay with. It's this, I'm

really into connection. Yeah. Like, I, like, even, I want to undo what COVID did to us. When I say us, you know, I mean us, us. Like, what I've been working on secretly in the past several while now has been a very special thing to try to bring us back together and take back what was taken from us. Really? Yeah. It's really fucking cool.

I hope it, I hope to have it finished by the end of the year. Right. How do you make it not just feel like a music festival? How does it not just become Coachella? It's not going to be a music festival, man. It's not my thing. I just feel like that's the thing that is going to be weird as we leave COVID is that I feel like before COVID, a lot of people felt very burnt out by the amount of options that they were constantly having to socialize. And in particular, because when you look at all these big festivals and stuff, I mean, like, this just didn't exist 10 years ago.

Like there was a handful of festivals, but it wasn't like now where it's a festival every other fucking weekend. And in particular, if you're in L.A., which is a hot market, there's just so many opportunities for people to socialize. that it didn't really feel special to people to a certain extent. I know even myself, you know, I was kind of just starting to dread going to certain events and stuff

because I'd just been to so many. And it just felt kind of burnt out on it. And that's the cool thing is that now when I think about going to a music festival, it does sound kind of exciting. But I just wonder if the schedule of events is going to become so swamped immediately again that people are going to be kind of like,

on the 10th one, they're going to be like, and were we happier when we were just at home a lot? Yeah. Or maybe we want to hang out in smaller groups of people. I don't know. It's like socializing in a lot of ways has been kind of like commodified by these big corporations that want to do so much of these festivals. Yeah.

I feel like in a, there might be like an effect where some of that seems less attractive to people. I completely agree. And you can see it. Like we also, we are the main sponsor of a dog shelter. And we've been basically, a dog comes in, dog goes out. Dog comes in, dog goes out. Dogs come in, dogs go out.

We never had that before. Really? Yeah, we had triple the numbers. People are just dying to get dogs. Yeah, they want to get on cats too. We've sent out so many dogs that it's amazing, which is another success story, right? But what does that tell me? Well, it tells you that people are going to be, are planning on being home with their dogs more.

They're not going to return these dogs in the shelter. We were talking about that. There are going to be a thing where suddenly we're going to get a whole bunch of dogs back. I'm like, well, if we do, I'll find homes for all of them. It'll be okay. Right. But it's, I don't think people are returning their dogs. I think there's a fundamental shift in society that we're not going to undo.

And yes, like you said, earlier, we were going towards this to begin with. We were already being separated from each other. We were already having more non-direct interaction. We were already harder. But now, I was out at dinner at getting fucking vegan pizza with some friends of mine in Phoenix the other day, and we're sitting there. And these are two really good people, two dudes, really good dudes.

The kind of dudes that at the end of a little, we were at a little smoke-related little event, they're the guys that stick around and help break down tents for the people I can't break them down and put them in the cars. They don't even work for the, they just see, oh, the person's having trouble. I'll go help them and I'll put it in their... These are really good people. That is really nice. I would never think to do that.

Yeah, they do. They're always looking, how can they help? How can they be of service, right? Really, and great people. And they're sitting there with me and we're just eating our vegan pizza. And they notice, sitting across the restaurant are two pretty females. Cool, great. And I'm like, guys, go talk to them.

And they're like, no, we can't. And I realized they absolutely can't. COVID made it where now that's an absolutely. fucking impossible. Plus, they were scared of they were going to get, they were going to say the wrong thing. It would be misunderstood. The worst thing in the world is misunderstood. You say something that's not what you meant. The person hears it the wrong way because they're hearing it through their own filter. Next thing you know, what did you say to me? Like, no, I was just trying to offer you a drink. Do you say, I would you call me a clink? Like, no, that's all that's that. You know,

shit. Because it's, um, we've been, we've been being being pushed apart for each other. Yeah. For years now, I feel like. Yeah. And COVID made it much worse. We're now, these guys can literally not go talk to those two girls. And humanity is supposed to be about connection, right? Like you can go talk to whoever, but it just feels like when you have these boundaries in front of you with the mask and then staying six feet apart. And you know that they might,

you might be making them feel uncomfortable by just talking. Which is already a big concern. If you're a guy talking to a girl, because there's a weird power dynamic where it's like you could beat her up. So it's like you don't want her to feel uncomfortable. With the disease, it's so much more amplified. So now how are they supposed to connect? Yeah.

Because in the end, it isn't about sex or any of that. It's about connection. How are human beings supposed to connect with each other? When we're being driven, driven further and further apart, you can't even go to a grocery store to get your grocery, man, you've got to order that shit online. Because there's no chance of you meeting someone in the grocery store. You're not going to make new friends.

What are you supposed to do? It's disconnection. And that is what I feel like we need to reverse. Yeah. And the antidote is community. You mentioned the Kandama community. There's our smoking community. There's the hip-hop community.

The antidote is community. We can fix this just by strengthening our communities. And there's other ways to. But one way or another, this is what we have to undo is that disconnection. And that's going to be the end of all of us. When we are alone, we get lonely, and we get fucking crazy. You get him with that dude in the woods who was the fucking unabomber. You know what I mean?

We can't be isolated. It doesn't work for us humans. We need each other. Definitely. So what do you think the answer is, though? Have you spent a lot of time sort of contemplating what the best version of community is, whether it's in real life or it's online? And like sometimes it just occurs to me that it's like maybe people could like hang out in ways consistently within their community in ways that don't have to be based on commerce or buying like an $80 festival ticket. Yeah.

It's like 100% agreed. Yeah. 100% agreed. The, well, first of all, it would be great if we had more true believers. if I could find more people like that. People who, like, I told you about it, I used to love this stuff. Live Aid, Band-Aid, these fucking festivals

that were non-profits. Like, that kind of shit is great. You can't have too many of those. Might get a little annoying. But at least you know each time you're going. You're giving back. You're not giving to some dude living in the hills. Instead, it's, you're helping.

That's a beautiful thing. I love that stuff. I always do things like that myself. Whenever we go to a festival or anything, what we're doing is we're there to give back. So, like, if I was there with these bags at Coachella and we had our booth there. When someone comes up, they might donate 50 bucks.

They donate 50 bucks. And oh, here's a free bag. I'll even sign it for you if you want. Right. Because I'm trying to get them to connect with giving back and that whole philosophy and feeling of, you realize by giving this $100, you probably just saved another human being, right, man?

That's fucking beautiful. Thank you. And I want them to get that rush from it and that feeling of, wait, really? You're just saying that, right? Right. No, you just saved a human being, dude. Thank you.

Like, what do you mean? I just gave me, we just bought a bag, you know? Like, no, man, you really just did it. You don't realize what you just did. And then especially if it's one of our people where they're smoking and thinking about it. And suddenly they connect with it and they feel better. And maybe, just maybe, they do it again. Not with me, but any which way they want.

And they do it again and again. And that's how we impart change on the world and uplift the community even higher, man. And then if people don't want to get together, that's fine too, right? We're too scared. Your home is 8 p.m. You remember that movie? fuck what was that she damn it he was so good at it

Joaquin was in it and he was um she I think it was her her I don't know I'm not sure I don't think I've seen it the future we have to we have to accept that maybe the future is in technology that maybe we're not going to be

connecting as much as I would like because of course person to person is the ideal so then how do we build an online community where people actually connect with each other more how do we recreate what we used to do. How do we recreate the smoke circle online for real where people are actually comfortable enough to do it and hanging out and get from that circle what they actually miss, what they lost. And my goal is to give it back to them and find a way and I will. It kind of reminds

me of the conversation I was just listening to a podcast about like local news and how local news has just died off to such a crazy extent because like the normal like CNN model of like how you make money off of a website is that you get articles that millions of people are going to want to want to watch and you go to an extreme scale. But what's unfortunate is that like people really want local news and it has to be like incentivized basically for people to find business models that make sense for, you know, a newsletter or a website that has articles about a local community where maybe those articles only get a couple hundred views, but there's still enough money

being made by this business that they can actually have reporters and editors and all that kind of thing. It's like now that we've become so good at decimation. information on a large scale, we need to like use the same technology to figure out how we can have our actual communities communicate. Like when I think about my dad and like the town that I grew up in, if he, he didn't really like need this like newspaper that we paid for for our whole lives that had like, you know, 60% of it was advertising or whatever. Like if he could have spent five bucks a month to get like a really great newsletter of like in-depth reporting on the local community,

then he probably would find that very appealing. I think that that, that, that, business model needs to exist now because local news was so badly served by the mass market news economy. And now I think that in a lot of ways, community is the same problem. Like we're so good at making these 50,000 people events. But how do you get like 80 people who all live in a community to actually like kick it and spend time if they have a shared interest or they just live in the same environment, you know? Yeah, and that, because things like that are part of the solution for sure. And, you know, I noticed something you said several times during the podcast. It's triggering me in a good way, which is too much of this is the problem with it is that so much of it is money-based.

See, I think the goal, if you're going, especially going to the business world, the goal should be able to make enough money that you no longer care about money. Rather than, what are you going to be fucking Scrooge McDuck and die on a giant pile of gold. Right. And who fucking cares? That's not fun. That's not cool at all. So would you rather be like happy or rich if you actually had the choice?

This is the thing we talked about a zillion times. But now, okay, now you're working. You're doing well. Cool. Now would you rather be a happy millionaire or an unhappy billionaire? Right. Does it really, do you really need to be that fucking unhappy billionaire? Would you really rather be that?

You're going to keep, you're making money so you can make more money. If you can make more money? If you can make more money. Who fucking cares? Dude, you're going to be dead in that fucking ground. There's no way out. You're going down there, man. I'm going to be in that same dirt as you.

Go, fuck it. Have some fun. Enjoy life more. Make enough money that you don't care about it anymore. And now you can do some other cool shit. Hey, you care about community. You care about local news. These kinds of things.

Cool. Come on, man. You made a zillion dollars in your fucking CNN thing. Why don't you do some cool local stuff for free where it's not money based so that it can actually work because it doesn't have to be self-sustaining and making profit and oh, now we've got to scale it up and make it bigger. No, we've got to take over the whole state.

Now we're right back to making CNN part two. Right. Okay, I'm going to compare raw to something. I watch a documentary on Amazon, I think, or was HBO or something the other day, about Nickelodeon, which I grew up watching Nickelodeon. I love Nickelodeon. The story of Nickelodeon is pretty fascinating because that really was for a long time. That was a brand that was just very, very progressive in terms of kids stuff. Like, they treated kids like they weren't idiots.

They really thought about, like, what do kids really? want to watch and they came to some like pretty unorthodox conclusions, but they ended up making a ton of classic shit that like generations and generations. Yeah, Nick at night. Fucking hell yeah. But they didn't even touch Nick at all. Because that's like not the kid stuff. Okay, that was fun. That was the best part. Nick and I watched a lot of Mr. Ed was my dad and shit. I watched a lot of shows that like came out like 30 years before I was born. They were like, they were black and white stuff. It was still fucking fun, especially when you're smoked out, man. They were great. But like you know, Nicolode went through like the game show era and then like into like all these

cool scripted series and all these cartoons like rug rats and all running stimpy all this shit but then what happened was that Nickelodeon became such a good big business and they started to have like a some of these certain cartoons that became huge IP plays where you can just make a trillion dollars off of toys and marketing and all this stuff and all of a sudden they weren't like the quirky cool small brand that was trying to like compete with Disney by just doing the coolest shit possible yeah All of a sudden it became like, no, you're within reach of Disney. And now you're a publicly traded company. And now you need to like basically be bigger than Disney.

Once you get to that certain point, it's kind of like, it's hard for a business to get really, really big without trying to be the biggest. Yeah. You're killing me here. When you're talking about these things, you're touching on so many fucking things. Because that's like the risk. That's like the thing that you stop Raw from becoming. Yeah. I'm sure that that's like your worst nightmare is like this.

That's why you're killing me when you're talking about this. You're triggering me. I'm like, no, my God, no, no, no. Because it hurts when you watch that documentary, they'll realize, like, success killed Nickelodeon and made it something that was just way less cool than it was. I can't have investors. People are, why don't you go public? I'm like, oh, my God, fuck, no, dude. You know what that means?

They're going to kick my ass out because I'm not about, I'm not focused on, you know, we could also make this. And, you know, oh, my God, we can make that and we could raise the price of this. And if we use less materials, Josh, you know, your crust units 10 on this paper, that costs twice as much as if you would just let it be 30. Why don't just let it be 30? We're going to make it 30. We did this consumer test panel. and nobody cared, Josh. So, like, fuck you!

All the things that you do, like, not all, but a lot of the things that you do, the community building and all that kind of stuff, would actually be viewed as completely inappropriate for a corporation because you're not, like a corporation's goal is to create profits for the investors. Right, and so maybe it isn't that corporations are evil, right? Because people are, oh, big companies are evil.

But they are incentivized to be evil. They are incentivized to be evil. They truly are. It's not that they are evil, right? Because people tell me, oh, he's a bad person. And I don't let myself go there. There's no such thing as a bad person. There's a person who happens to do bad things.

No good people. Just another human fucking being exactly the same as me. Fucking same DNA pretty much. He happens to do good things. You happen to do bad things. We are the same. Don't matter. I'm not supposed to judge you.

Cool. Try not to you anyway. We're fucking human, man. I'm going to fuck up. But when it comes to things like that, a big tobacco company tried to buy me. And it was a lot of money, man.

And I couldn't sleep for a long time when they talked to me about it. I couldn't sleep because I knew what would happen. if I said yes. It would become Nickelodeon. We would, none of this would exist anymore. I've got other tricks and toys and fucking things in here.

And some of these are not going to be profitable. And I don't fucking care, man. Like, they're cool and they're fun and I want it. I want it. I know my friends want it too. That's all the fucking matters. When I'm developing this shit, I have no concept in my brain

as to what it costs or what I'm going to sell it for. That is long let go. As long as it's, is it going to be reasonable? You know, okay, then fuck it. Because otherwise that clouds, your creative process.

You didn't have Michelangelo up there fucking painting thinking about it much you was spending on paint. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no. You just, you let it out. You do it. You're just being creative. When you are doing a podcast,

you're not thinking about plugging advertisers or background numbers or any of that kind of stuff. You're in the zone. You're really creating it. You're thinking about the moment you're here and you're enjoying it, right? Because I know you love what you do. But if no jumper was like purely about making money, Then I would interview you, but I would not interview Big Sad, who I just interviewed who was like a gangbanger from L.A.

That realistically, you know, has like a couple of videos with like a million views or whatever, but he's not a huge artist yet. But I really believe that like this exists for something bigger. Like this exists to give a young kid who fucking was in prison and has been through hell an opportunity. You know, like that's really, really important to me. And ultimately, if you're, if your business still has even a piece of that, then you're definitely on the right track. So many businesses are completely separated from that over the years. Oh, hell yeah. And the fact, I know that you love what you do.

You emanate it, man. You're just like me. And that's a beautiful fucking thing. And if that goes away, if it becomes the Adam 22 publicly traded corporation, then it's over. The magic's gone. Right. You end up with Steve Jobs being gone.

And now, oh, you will get the exact improvements to your next iPhone that we feel that we need to give you to maximize our profits. Right. And to be fair Apple has done a pretty A pretty reasonable job I think of like you know Not making us all hate them

Because that like when he died that Yeah we're all waiting That was a very plausible outcome Yeah But yeah I mean some of that that magic Magic's gone Those those days are like 2009 And you're looking at the fucking

The update about the iPhone And you're actually invested And you actually give a shit about it Because it felt like one madman's Fever dream Because it was It was fun yeah It really was

That's probably like a lot of people people still feel about like Tesla and stuff. So there's this, this is still a place for that. Yeah, so when Elon goes, then what happens, right?

Then it's just maximize profits on those Tesla. That's our responsibility to our shareholders. They're not only our shareholders. Nothing else. Profit above all. Like, oh, fuck you,

dude. Whatever the next CEO of Tesla is, they just won't have as much leverage as he has to do whatever he wants. You know, I'm sure that, and that's the thing is that when they try to find his successor, they will scour the earth and go to no, you know,

whatever they need to pay, they're going to do it. Or will they? Or are we going to get someone who is the chairman of the board who really is good at numbers, man. That guy's great at numbers. Yeah, he's good. He's good at numbers. Maybe.

I believe in Elon enough that he'll stick with it. He'll design his plan for when he dies to the point where it has to maintain some integrity. I hope so. Hopefully. I hope so. That's the fear, though. Not to make this about Elon Musk. Yes.

And this is why this thing of the big corporations, I believe that's why so many people are down on capitalism and saying, that capitalism is evil and capitalism is a problem. It's all a problem. Every fucking bit of it. Whichever system we use is fucked. We learn that. How do you do it where it's no longer just about making money? Because it's just about making money. We're all fucked.

Right. But how do you feel about capitalism when you run a business, but your business is kind of an outlier in the sense that you are operating off of a different momentum and energy? I'm lucky enough. Everything about capitalism is

pushing you in the office. opposite direction. And you are luckily resisting it, but I mean, capitalism pushes businesses in that direction. I really think that I've gotten lucky enough in life to have some fucked up shit happened to me over the years that made me appreciate life more. You know, if I was born rich or something fucked up, you know, something like that, one is one of those kids, trust fund babies, that kind of thing.

Good luck. You get that. I'll give you five points, man, good luck. But you can't kill me. Let him live. Let him live, let him live. So just rush me out the door. I do that shit all the time.

So if I I didn't get it If I killed the caterpillar the other day I felt kind of bad about that Oh god that can't be so bad It's sort of cute I know they're so cute The furry and shit But it depends some of them you're not supposed to kill

Some of them you are Depends on whether or not it was native or not I've learned this whole thing about casual Let's just crush up some Doritos and make a trail out the door There you go Sugar I've got ideas yeah Okay

So I'll go down a different path Slightly different All right. So let's say a guy named John comes up with the John 23 podcast, right? He scours all your own podcast. He washes each and fucking each one of them. And then he goes to advertisers saying, I'll do the things that Adam won't do. And I'm going to make a podcast. And he gets, he pays some staff, pays them all less, keeps it all for himself and goes on there and basically copies what you do to a lower extent, finding ways to advertise more and make more profit for himself. right and he's extremely profit-diven driven listen to me dude and he goes out there and does his thing i want to believe that the entire world will look at him and smell it and be like fuck you dude right you know this is fucking bullshit what the fuck are you doing there is a portion of people that won't see it and that's sad but they will not see it and they'll be watching him thinking saying oh my god

this is the greatest oh yeah yeah that's is cool cool great great And it'll break your fucking heart. And it breaks mine. And it's actually kind of a detriment to society. Because it's a slug worth. Right. It's a drain. It's not, he's not adding to the community.

He's just taking and taking and taking. How do we get more people to be like you where they understand that a big portion of this, a big portion of the reason that we're put on this fucking planet is to help and give back and uplift. And that in an ideal world, we wouldn't have fucking money. We'd have happiness points, right? You made people happy.

You did a good thing. You helped that over there. You helped that old lady cross the street. You save that person's fucking life. You get more, here's some more happiness points for you, dude. Here's what you're doing good. This is great.

You're uplifting, you're making people happier. That would be fucking cool. And that's kind of how I look at it, right? I'm not going to be judged based on the amount of money I made when I'm gone. You're going to be judged based on how much I helped humanity. Right. Because, I mean, it isn't just that I love people because I fucking do, man. And that's one of the hardest things is COVID is no more disconnection. I can't go do in-store events. I love doing this store events. People come up to me. I get to meet them and talk to them, find out

their smoking story, see what men I'm learning from them, seeing how I can make it better for you, what tricks do I need to do? I've tried to do this virtually, and I've picked up a lot of information for people by asking questions in my Instagram story, simple, simple questions. And they share things back with me. And I'm like, ooh, ooh. So it's similar. Right. Another path of getting to the same thing, which is smoking with you, seeing what you're doing, seeing what you're doing differently than anyone else I've ever smoked with, wondering why you do something a certain way, and then changing the product or making a product to make it easier for you. Right. And then because I did that, yeah, I mean, in our society, cool, now I get rewarded with money.

Cool. Great. That's awesome. If I was rewarded with something else, more food, happiness point, something else, I would still do it. If I was rewarded with nothing, but you let me do it, I would still do it, you know, because I love doing this. Definitely. My question is kind of like how, because I think what's interesting about you is you kind of like created a great business and you're obviously excited about the business. But then at some point through thinking about the business, you thought, well, I think charity is a very important part of this business or any business.

It's just like a way to take, you know, any company that makes money. It's, you know, it's very appealing, I think, to somebody like you who cares about the world. Let's spend some of this money on helping people and let's find the best way to do that. and the coolest way to do that and the way that helps the most people. How did you start to integrate that into your brand? Because I have that instinct as well. I want to figure out how, as this business becomes more successful, how do we not only help more people,

but also use our content-making abilities to, like, show that to the world and get like, you know, scale that positivity so that in theory, like a million people would want to watch a video of people helping. and then those people would be influenced by that and they'd be able to help more people than just us doing it and not telling anybody. Yes, yeah, we do not tell when it's a tree falls.

Yeah, I get that. But so how did you start to integrate into that and when did it occur to you? Like, I need to make this part of what I'm doing. First, I'm going to say cheesy. All right, I am. It's okay to be cheesy on this question. It's kind of required.

Okay, and then I'm going to go, then I'll really talk to you about it because I'd love to talk to you about this. Yes. Okay, first, the answer is, thank you, John Lennon. It's fucking love, right? The answer is love. Now, I'm going to go deeper with this.

It's really about empathy because love, the biggest component of love is empathy and courage and taking down those fucking walls. But let's start with empathy. Right. So I have to bring you back for a moment. When I'm building a product, it's all about empathy, man. As I was explaining to you, when we're looking at something and I'm watching you smoke. I'm really connecting deeply with you as you're smoking. I'm trying to be you.

Like I'm trying to look at and trying to imagine what it's like to be with you. What's going through your mind? what does it like to be Adam? Why is he rolling that way? Why is hitting it that way? How does Adam feel? And then I get this kind of feeling that goes through me. And we all do if you open yourself up enough.

This isn't me, man. This is all, oh, sorry, this is all of us. This is part of our humanity. We have the ability to connect. Remember Einstein talked about, he called it spooky science where we have these electrons that spin in our head when I'm standing here next to you. And you're standing there, these little electrons start spinning.

And we can be separated by a billion miles or a million miles. And still, you'll have a thought. for some reason that little electron fires in my head and spins the same way. There's no signaling between them, but it happens. Why does that happen between us? Doesn't matter why. All that matters is that it does happen. So if I can figure out how to, how you are smoking and why you're smoking that certain way

and really connect with you and understand enough about you to uplift you better by creating a better product for you or changing the way that thing is so that you smoke it better, right? That's empathy. And I'm creating a product through that, which is why the products work and why they actually help people and why they people like them because they're really made like through empathy. Giving back is the same thing. Connecting it's

these people are dying of thirst over here. Of course you're going to want to help them. Man, it's the same thing. These people need help in the Navajo Nation. They need help with water. What do you need? 100 grand. You got it, man. Shit, these people are fucking dying right here in America. Of course I'm going to fucking help you. I'm going to be there as fast as I can. Take more money. What do you need?

Holy shit. How can somebody be fucking dying of thirst or bad water here in America? but they are. Okay, let's fucking help. Let's try to fucking help. It's all the same thing. How do we bring that into business? How do we bring that into your podcast? How do you become a more empathetic podcaster when you're sitting here with your, with your guests? Right. It's just, it's all the same thing. The same thing I'm doing is the same thing you're doing, which is I believe is the same thing that everybody is doing. Just some people don't open themselves up enough to really feel it when you're doing anything. When, and I try to do this with everybody.

So if somebody's bringing me a cup of coffee, if I can, I want to look at them, acknowledge them, and feel them for a moment, you know? Like, this is a human being. They're just as complex as I. They've got that brain going with more synapses than there are stars in the fucking universe right there, and they're giving me a cup of coffee. Yeah. And that can be tough because, like, you as a guy who runs a big business with all these employees, it's like you might have to talk to, you know, 300 people in a day. And it's easy to forget that the guy who brings you a coffee is not necessarily interacting with as many people. he's not as burnt out on communication as you might be in that moment.

And it's like, you know, like, just that moment of connection could definitely, like, mean a lot to somebody, you know. Yeah. Really truly acknowledge them, feel them, see them. And with the podcast, with how to how to get people to watch a podcast of doing work in the Navajo Nation or in Ethiopia where I got some sad stories, if you want to hear them what happened in the past year. But it doesn't matter.

We're going to fix it all. How do we get people to watch that podcast? How do we get people to connect? It's all through empathy. How do we get the listener, the viewer, to feel what's actually happening here, that we're not trying to sell you something, man. I'm not trying to sell you a product. I don't need you to buy my fucking papers.

I'm oversold. You know, if anything, I need you to buy less of my stuff. I can't make enough of it. I got people screaming at me. I did a video saying, try other brands, man, because I can't make enough. I can't. Eventually, maybe a year from now, maybe I'll be caught up if I'm lucky. But in the meantime, I'm not out there selling shit because I'm not.

I don't have shit to sell. I'm out there just trying to uplift people. I'm having fun. I'm making ridiculous shit. And when we're giving back, when we bring them to the Navajo Nation, come with us, feel what it's like here. This is a human being just like you. Come on, man, you feel it? Do you feel that? Look, they're suffering. Do you feel that too? Let's help them together. And not just together, but come on, let's keep helping them. Teach your friends to help too. Bring in your children, bring in everybody. And next thing you know, we're all back together again. Living is more of one big, beautiful community and less of one where you've got resources. I want those resources.

I'm going to take those resources through all means necessary. That's not a path to happiness or to the good of humanity. Boogie Downs Productions had a great fucking album, right? By all means necessary. A great fucking song. But that kind of mentality gets us into the trouble we're in now and we'll continue to. because if it's a situation where I'm John 22

and I'm coming at you, Adam 22, and I'm making the Johnny 22 podcast, and I'm fucking doing everything I can't, by all means necessary, and that kind of thing, and you're out here doing a really beautiful fucking podcast, helping the whole community, and I'm sitting here saying,

I'm going to make myself as much money as possible. There's a lot of John 22s. I'm sure there are. But I very much, like, it's weird seeing people just think that they're going to get, like, recognition and money and shit. like really fast from it and it's like bro you know how long i fucking did this not making jack shit

and was just doing all my own editing and like like yes you can make a business out of it somehow apparently i have but like it's just it's just not for you if that's your goal because it's you don't make that much money off youtube it's a stupid fucking plan if you want to make a bunch of money you know you should sell t-shirts or something but uh yeah no and you know what john should do John 22. Yeah. What he should be doing is figuring out a different way to do it that's actually better and uplift the community.

Maybe he should be doing smaller local stuff in order to bring that back. I see tons of online content that I have a huge amount of respect for. And I love when I see people like inventing their own lane. But you're right that it really does kind of stand out when people are just kind of being generic and boring with it. And just copying. That's the word. That doesn't help society.

It doesn't uplift us. But if you went a different way and made something that was different, even not necessarily better, but some filled a gap or void that needed to be filled, then he deserves to succeed. But if he's copying and just being John 22 and just pretending, no, man. But so, okay, from your perspective, do you have like X amount, X percent of the money that we make in any given year? I want to be basically going back to charity. So we're going to basically because I see you on your story and you'll be saying, you know, if you buy this product, then this amount of money is going to go to this charity and like you just you really go hard on your story

with like trying to get people hyped up about it. Yeah. How does that all kind of like functionally work? Do you just like pick certain products that you're like we're going to make this one the one that if people want to also donate we're going to focus on this product. Like what's the mentality? Sometimes it's silly, right? Like I made a three foot cone. Okay. And I don't want to mass produce a three foot cone because it's a huge pain they have to produce. And I'm losing money on each one that I produce. Right. They're made just for fun because I, because if I, I want to make, someone was trying to make a three-foot cone and they made it wrong. Because you don't want to be the guy like selling like a $300 cone, but.

Yeah, it's like $100 and I don't want to sell this thing. It's just going to look crazy. It's just not, it's no, no, no. And it's too, it's such a niche thing. I'm scared people are going to buy it and fill it wrong and smoke it wrong and have a negative experience. And isn't that they'll be mad at me about it. You think about the long term brand. No, it isn't just brand.

No, no, no. I'm thinking about your experience. Well, yeah, yeah, but the experience all like is part of how people view your brand. Yeah, but it's a three foot cone. I don't want you to, how much it costs a half, it's a half pound to fill this thing. I need you to enjoy it. I need you to really take the time. It's a half a pound.

You're going to be dealing with a very small part of the audience that's going to want to put a half a pound in one day. Correct. And I want them to do it right. So I know that if I put this into the store, it's too many of them are going to go out there from people who don't give a shit. Almost nobody's going to do it right. Okay. On their own. By hold it on to it myself.

Right. And only let people get them through rawfoundation.com where they make a donation of like 100 bucks. And I individually sign each one, which is important. Now I think you're going to take the time to read that thing I put on there telling you how to do it. Maybe you'll watch my video showing you how to do it because you have to plumb it, which is where you roll. It's a whole thing. It's a process. When they get bigger like that, you have to plumb them.

They have to plumb them. They have to plumb a special way too. And I show them in video, look, this is how you do it. Look, and here, now it smokes. I can smoke at myself. They designed it with a sleeve that holds it up like that. So I could hit one fucking arm hits on it and all this kind of shit to avoid the snaking problem I've seen. I'm always trying to make them better.

So I hold on to them and I only let people get them through donating to, wine to water. Donate 100 bucks to wine to water. I'll sign this and send it to you for free, man. No problem. Just read the instructions, please, please, or watch my video here. It's the only way you can get it. And that way I maintain control of it. And I'm sure the greater chance that these people are going to enjoy smoking that fucking half-pound cone, because I want them to have the experience where when they're fucking 90 years old in the old person home and their wheelchair and that kind of shit where they wheel up to their friend Craig and say, hey Craig, during that time, we smoke that three-foot, half-pound cone. And Craig's like, No, I don't, wait, I kind of remember that. I wanted to laugh and giggle and have fucking fun.

Right. That's my job, man. Definitely. You get so excited about like certain stuff that sometimes I'm like, wait, I don't really feel like I got my question answered there. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't remember what the question was. No, just like with the actual business, like how do you just structure that charitable element, you know? Like, it just, I think that's just something I'm like really curious about on a personal level because it's something

I want to focus on more as well as just like, you know, how do you like figure out how to make all that happen? Like, do you ever just like hire someone and be like, help me figure out how to do this charity thing better? Wow. I don't know. I might have to go to that level. We're kind of getting there.

I like, you know, one of the things about coming up from very little, pretty much nothing, is that your mind is still always there, right? If my mind, I'm still in 2,000 square feet and a little tiny thing, packing box of myself and shipping them. So giving back to me, is a very fluid thing. There's no fixed amount. It's, oh, shit, we have a bunch of extra money in the bank account.

Cool, we got to give some of this away. Right. What do we need to help the most? Well, COVID's going on. A lot of my staff is suffering because they were there suddenly became the only breadwinner of the family. So let's give this, let's give this back to the staff. Let's help at home first.

Okay, cool. We also got to give back to, well, we have to wait a moment because some of my projects in Ethiopia got exploded, literally. And some of my people, got shot, one of them got shot his brother got killed. So yeah fucked up shit. And it's okay. We're going to go

back and I'm going to build it even better the next time. I've got, you know, this is the sisters of Mother Teresa. They ask you for help. You always say yes, yes. Just please don't ask you too much. Please don't ask you too much. Because I have to say yes, so please don't ask you too much. That's basically the conversation. Right. And so how much do you need? What do we have to do now?

Okay, got it. No problem. We'll find a way. We have to wait until the fighting subsides. That's to be calm. there, and we'll come back. Do you have that? But you're doing it like this. It's like you're feeling it. How do you feel? You have, you suddenly look at your bank account and there's a lot of extra money in there. You don't need that. The company doesn't need it right now. I've got no projects coming up. So why don't we put this and give this to the staff? Why don't we take this and help the Navajo Nation? And now let's start working on this project over here. We know that we're going to

have to go big when as soon as Ethiopia, as soon as the fighting stops. We know we're going to have to put some serious fucking change into that, probably half a mill. So let's put that aside now and let's start funding towards that so we can go in strong as soon as we're ready to go in, as soon as it's safe for us to go back. Then we'll go in and we'll do it. And you're not doing it like a lot of what I do is like, which fucks people up when they try to ask me questions. I don't want to be a numbers oriented person.

Right. I have that brain. I can do math really, really well. They wanted me to be an accountant when I was growing up. I told you this before. And I don't want that, I don't want that part of me to be the part that. comes out. I want to let go of that and take more of the brain

and focus it more on creativity and beautiful fucking shit and uplifting and going in a different path because numbers are very stagnant and they're very fixed and it's not it's not something that I enjoy. I think a lot of people like you, entrepreneurs or whatever,

there's a moment where there's a time in your life where you're just working 24-7 Yeah. And then there's a moment where you kind of realize, like, I need to achieve some balance. Like, I need to make time for this and I need to, you know, make time for that, make time for myself, etc. Have you ever, have you had to go through that over the years of kind of like, because I could just imagine you easily being the type of person who's going 24-7 because you love what you're doing so much. Yeah, and I've done that. And it's like I said earlier, the goal is to make enough money where you don't care about money.

That's really the goal. Right. But also, you have to love what you do. You know, a really close friend of mine, actually, I won't say his name just to save him. He was diagnosed with stage three or four lung cancer, right? And this is a guy. He owns a chain of stores called Planet K. Really good guy.

And throughout Texas, he was one of the original publishers of the Emperor Wears No Clothes, the Jack Herrer book. I co-published it with him years ago. Okay. Really. And Mike loves what he does. He loves what he does, right? So now he's sitting there on what is Possibly his deathbed right before surgery

And he's laying there in the doctor He's right down your last one on test But all that kind of stuff before he goes in They're going to try to take the whole thing out He might lose his lung You might not come out at all. He's not sure And Mike sits there and laughs And he's laughing because he remembers

How many times people said to him No one ever sat there on their deathbed Wishing they spent more time at the office Right Mike sat there on his deathbed Wishing he had more time at the office Really? Yeah Wow

And I want to be like Mike. You know what I mean? I rarely leave here feeling like I just wasted my time. Yeah. Like I feel like if you get to that point, I can totally understand. But like if you really, and I would hope that I feel like everybody who works for me would probably say the same is that they like what they're doing.

They like what they're part. I don't know if Yassie is going to die feeling like she wished she spent more time and no jumper, but I want to get her to that point. Yeah. I want everyone to be at that point. Imagine if we lived in a fucking world where all of us, one way. or another loved what we did so much that when we were laying there on our deathbed, we were like, shit, I wish I had, I wish I had more time. I wanted to finish that last

project. I wanted to get that done. Fuck. Of course you can miss your family and your loved ones as well, right. But that another thought going through your brain was, damn, I wanted more time in the office, man. Something I didn't care about my whole life when I would hear people talk about, like, oh, you know, like, I just want to spend more time with my kids and like, you know, I work so much, I spend time with my kids. Now I have a kid, I'm like, oh my God, that's such a important conversation because it's like, yes, you would love the idea of like, you know, if you really love what you do, you'd love working your ass off. If you're a comedian and you could be on the road for 20 years doing comedy, that's, that means you're a successful comedian.

But also it's like how that's a tricky balance of like how much of your personal life and your family you're willing to give up to be that crazy entrepreneur. Okay, to say give up, well, I don't know, because if you're loving what you're doing and you're uplifting the world and you're helping people and you're making the world a better fucking place through your podcast through fucking magic of rolling papers, then it's what you're supposed to do. You're not supposed to sit home with your family. Right. As humans, we're supposed to be doing these things.

But you want to sit home with your family, some of them out. Of course. There's a proper ratio. Yeah. It's a proper ratio. It's like rolling a spliff, Josh. Yeah. There's a proper ratio, but it's just like.

And that ratio is going to be changing a lot, I think, throughout the years because it's kind of like when your kid is an infant, like, it might be very time-consuming, but it's also like you being there all the time is maybe not as consequential as when they're more sentient yeah i got a 16 year old man i know and that's the thing about you you've been through this whole wacky ride that i just got on five months ago yes it gets really good at two and a half years really yeah okay because at that point their personality comes out they're talking back to you and suddenly it's an actual human being and you feel it right um in my personal situation um betty my wife was in love with the baby

when it was in the belly. Yeah. I fell in love once once she was two and a half years old and I was joking with her and she turned and joked back. And I was like, huh, there's a human in there?

Wait, but there's actually a person in there. It's not just some poop making machine. This is a human fucking being. And the more her personality came out, the more I fell in love with her. Right. You know? And our relationship is really fucking strong,

maybe too strong. Yeah. We have so much fucking fun together. We really do. and it's just hilarious. Yeah, because I'm at that point of like, I'm really into playing where they're really into getting those smiles out of her.

But also it is. It's like, it's kind of like a one-way street. Yeah, I get anything back too much besides the smiles yet. But it gets so much better. Yeah. It really gets so much better. But it's a tricky thing because you just know, like this is the cutest, most purest time in their life.

And yes, it might be more exciting once they can tell you to shut the fuck up. But it's like you really want to like, savor every bit of them being this tiny little cuteness machine. Yes. Yes. They're so cute. Design that way in order so that we don't, so we keep them.

I never thought of it like that, but yeah, that's true. They make them cute so that you won't just want to leave them alone. All right. So you got to be, oh my God, they're so cute. I got to pick it up. Yeah, it's right there, man. It pulls on our heartstrings and that's cool. Yeah.

So let me ask you a question. Let's do it. So you come out here all the time on this podcast and you're sending messages essentially to the entire fucking world, right? So many people. I'd rather look at it as a whole world, if you don't mind. Through your questions, through what you say, you are saying things to the entire world.

But if you ever wanted to say one real message, one solid message to everybody, what would that message be? Especially given what we've all gone through in the past year. I mean, in terms of the people that I feel like I'm speaking to and stuff, I feel like, you know, the things that are like rushing through my head like that come to mind immediately is just I wish you know they say a youth is wasted on the young it's like I just wish that I could like you know help kids to understand what's important at a young age and so much of that to me goes back to you have absolutely no incentive to be beefing with other people from your exact same location and circumstances like this is the biggest way.

waste of time. And it's one thing that I hate about gangster rap right now is that as much as I like knowing about the conflict side of things, it's the dumbest thing you could ever do with your life to just be so into this like, you know, some people, it's like the gang thing. It's just this the conflict thing in general. It's just like the guy who lives down the street from you that you think is your enemy that is from the exact same circumstances as you is your friend. Like you should be your friend you have nothing you've no reason to like focus and spend so much time on this conflict like it's just it's the other day i watched a hood vlog and there's this guy in the projects in miami and he was talking about his hood his gang whatever and he's like yeah you know like there's this gang on this side

of town this other gang's gang honestly we just get along with all of them and i was like i never fucking hear that but that's such like like that is amazing hearing him say that but why was that so surprising for me to hear. Like, I just hate that this conflict between each other is just considered like a normal way to live. I agree. That's one thing that just goes to my mind a lot. And also just, like, people waste their money on all these crazy material things that I just, I wish people could understand that you wasting all your money on clothes and drugs or cars, God knows what, that that is the thing that's keeping you in the financial situation that you're stuck in. It's the thing that's keeping you from experiencing some level of prosperity.

And I just wish that people could understand the extent to which these corporations are just, they're just selling you on the idea that you need new things all the time because they, but that is the enemy. That's what's standing between you and having something for you and your family, you know? I'm 1,000% with you on that one. So let me,

and I'll tell you what the problem is, what my problem is with it, with exactly what you're saying. I would love to take every fucking person of age in the world and sit them down and be like, guys, listen, I'm so sorry. But you can't, that thing, that car, it's not going to make you happy, man. I tried. I really tried at him.

I made a bunch of fucking money, dude. And I went out and I bought the fucking fancy car and I bought the jewelry and all that shit. And I bought it. And I bought a boat once. And I wanted it to make me happy. I hoped it was going to make me happy. Come on, man. It's supposed to make me happy.

And it didn't make me. make me fucking happy. You don't know the fact. It was all it was with a giant pain in the fucking ass. Oh, good, Josh, nice boat. By the way, now you got to redo this. Now that's broken.

This is broken. Here's this. Oh, yeah. Now that's broken. Oh, you fixed that. But you already fixed that. Oh, yeah, now it broke again. It's just more work.

It was the opposite of happiness. If it was the case that we could work hard, make this stack of bullshit fucking bills that are just paper, right, man? They just, they have some values because you think there were something I think they don't actually mean anything. If we could make the stack of fucking money and then buy something that would make us happy. Imagine what the world would actually be like.

Then you would see a completely different world than the one we actually live in. Buying that fucking Ferrari did not make my ass fucking happy. Right. I wish it did. I feel so lucky, honestly, that I figured that out very early in my life, that there was nothing that I could spend money on that was going to make me happier. And that is honestly, it's like a point of pride to me that it's just not like a thing that I'm just dying to spend money on.

Yeah. Like that means a lot to me. But I only learned it through experience. And fuck this fly. No, I'm leaving the fly alone. I'm going to be zen with the fly. If I can land on me, I'm going to just leave me alone. The fly is an op.

Hopefully he's not a biter. Hopefully he's just going to take my sweat and fly off. So how, but I had to learn it through experience. I wouldn't, I didn't believe that you couldn't buy happiness. Me too, because I bought a grill.

And I wore it two times and then I never wore it again. So, you know, I've made those things. I had to learn the hard way. Of course. And the hardest thing that I think is, I don't think that everyone will believe. I don't think anyone is going to believe me that you can't, that that car is not.

not going to bring you happiness that that whatever it is that nicer house that ball or fucking whatever is not is going to make you happy it just that i don't think we find out until we try and even then you've messed it so much in it that you want to believe it made you happy somehow you know it did and these are like two separate but very important points is that number one i would just way rather see somebody put the money that they work hard for into something like a home like building some sort of like long term financial strength in your life never mind like traveling like the fucking two thousand dollars you spent on that fucking Gucci jacket would definitely be better spent on like you and your girlfriend going to London for a week trust me

that experience is just so much more important yeah than any fucking clothing item or whatever but then also what you're saying is very true too is that really traveling and owning a home and owning a nice car and stuff none of these things are really fundamentally like the thing that's going to make you happy like you and that honestly that is is one thing I'm very thankful for is that experiencing some degree of success has made me realize that like how unrelated money and happiness are because I think that honestly if I hadn't experienced a certain level of success at a certain point that I would have spent the entire rest of my life thinking that I just needed to work harder that I just needed to accomplish more

in order to then I would finally be really happy when I look back at my years living in New York having like $5,000 to my name or whatever. And I was just riding bikes and hanging on my friends. I wish I understood how happy I was then and how great that was. Because it felt awesome. But there's a thing, like youth is wasted on the young. There's an extent to which I just didn't understand how amazing being 22 and living New York City on your own and riding bikes and the best.

Yeah, it was like that was just an amazing time period in my life. And I knew it was awesome, but I didn't know that that was the best, one of the best times in my life too, you know. Yeah. So what I do is I keep a list of things that make me happy in my phone on my notes app. Hmm, I like that. And once in a while I add something to my list.

But it's all this, it's fundamentally the stuff you would think it would be. Spending time with my daughter, goofing off with my friend Eric, back in New York, just fucking joke around, doing stupid shit in video games. We'll make sure we have no ammo and then we just beat each other up on call duty. You know what I mean?

Just stupid shit like that, man. It's things with family. It's really simple shit that makes me happy. Dogs, dogs, maybe happy. I love thanking time with donkey. Donkeys gives you a hug. They're so fucking cute. Donkeys.

I've got a donkey. You remember donkey lips from Salute your shorts? Oh God, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just was thinking about him from the Nickelodeon documentary. That guy just looked like a donkey lips. Yeah, and I was watching him as an adult talking about. He's still, he just, you look, this is the kind of guy that you just look at him and you're like, that's the best name anyone could ever come up with for you.

As long as he's okay with it. Oh, yeah, he seems to, yeah. That's got to suck, yeah. Maybe he doesn't want to be dungulous forever. It's things like that. I try to look at stuff before I do something as Jesus is going to bring me closer to happiness or further from happiness. That's just me.

But it ain't about me, man. Them. And trying to uplift them and trying to help so that when we're, you know, used to be right in our society, what would happen, right? The elders would pass knowledge down upon the younger generation before they perish from the earth. And then that generation, the younger generation would take that, knowledge and then build upon it and this cycle would repeat right and that's how we end up with

these incredible fucking creations inventions all around it's one way besides the mousetrap theory which is also which is actually related but this thing of passing down knowledge now what if instead we treated things we had learned everything we had picked up as a secret that we have to hold on to until death and then we die with it now it's just gone forever right and you didn't really contribute You didn't do your part as a human. It helps me at least to look at human beings just as animals. So then I can let go of many things. When I'm watching my little, I've got quail that I take care of it.

They're not my quail, they're wild quail, but I take care of them my property. And I think of them in my own way as my quail, and I protect the quail from the hawk. Coyle man. Coil man, I have to get a really big quail, man. They're riding around. They're fucking cool. I just like to call you quail man. I take care of these quail.

I love these fucking little quail. When I'm looking at them and you watch them, for a moment, I'll allow myself to judge them as if they were human, right? So you've got two males yelling at each other over fighting over some seed or some, I give them a lot of hemp. I really do. I give them a whole bunch of hemp seed. And they love it. And they'll be fighting over it or someone like chasing each other. Now if we treat it, I look at him as humans, how dare him, he's bullying that one.

And he's treating that one wrong. And all this kind of shit. When I take that away and just look at them as quail, that's all gone. It's just, oh, yeah, that's what they do naturally because they're fighting over a resource and this is how they do it. and it's because of breeding and the stronger want to win because of blah, blah, blah. If we look at humans like that, we can remove judgment as well. Oh, yeah, they're just actually fighting over resources. You shouldn't do it that way.

You should do it this way, because the way he's doing it this way is wrong. I can allow myself to let go more. I know that fly is not bothering me. I can let myself let go of judgment. And I can look at the person more with ideally, and fucking it's me, man, with eyes of love and understanding. Ideally, fucking ideally, dude. You know, these are all saying, I'm fucked up just like the rest of us, dude. I'm a fucking piece of shit.

I fuck up all the time. But I just try to go towards there, you know? But I mean, by paying attention to animals, I think you're right, you can learn a lot about just what it is to exist. Because, you know, like when I first got a cat, I would just look at him and just there's something about that vibe of you wake up and do the same exact thing every day. And the only time you show any sort of excitement is basically when you're eating.

But you're happy. And you exist. And somehow you existing matter. because it makes me happy and it makes everybody else who sees you happy and you don't wake up with this thing in your head

this thing, it's a fucking tumor in my brain that's like you need to accomplish new things you need to make new shit you need to just do more every day you know and I feel like through just being around that cat energy

it helped to like bring me down a little bit and mellow out and be like you don't always have to be striving for more shout out to that cat Shout out to Tony and Olive, who was my first catch. And I'm going to reverse it on you. Yes.

Sorry, dude. The fucking world needs you to put out more fucking good content. You've got to bring in more people that would not normally have a voice. That's true. You have to do this, Adam, because if you don't do it, then they don't have a voice, and they have something really important to say. So, yes, you have to control it. Can't do it all the time.

You've got to be zen with it. And you got to do it, man. And that is what I feel like, and I hate to make this too much about me, but that's what I feel like I've kind of finally latched onto, like the past couple weeks, is I had eight interviews this week. You're number seven. Number eight is tomorrow. Do I seem like I've done eight interviews this week?

No, you see? I don't feel like I've done, you know, like I feel fine. It used to be that like I would stress before the interview, I'd be freaking out. Like, I got to think of what to ask Josh. I'm going to make sure I fucking itemize these questions that I fucking really, you know, know, I just worked myself up into a tizzy because I care so much. Like I just really like want this shit to be good so much that I would drive myself nuts. Like this week I took, you know, and I scheduled it in the week before that I was like,

I just laid out when I was going to have time to really just sit on the computer and watch interviews and listen to music and think about the questions for all the interviews I was going to get. And as a result, I honestly feel like I had no stress this week despite doing the most interviews I are done in my life. And that means it shillow to me because it's like, yes, it's awesome. to be productive and to really like maximize the amount of your output. But at the same time, if it's going to ruin your life, then it's not worth doing. Like you have to be able to enjoy the experience.

And I think honestly, my kid has helped me a lot with that. I just like I need to be present in the moment because if I'm present in the moment for the interview, then nothing matters before the interview and nothing matters after the interview. It's like I have a little bit of anticipation. And then afterwards I get to enjoy reading the comments, like, which is one of my favorite parts about doing interviews is just reading the comments and seeing every little thing that people were affected by. Like, I don't really watch my own interviews. I just see what people thought was notable. And that's like enough for me. I do that same thing with my comments. People are really surprised

how much I answer comments because I'm doing the same thing as you. I want to see what they think or any questions they have. Right. And I want to answer really badly. So let me ask you a question. Did you enjoy sitting here with me? Oh, yeah. It was amazing. So then what's the fuck. But that's what that, my prior mentality just, I was too worked up. It was too much. of a part of my ego that I wanted to do such a good job on every interview. And over time, I feel like I've finally really gotten into the groove of like the only thing that's going to make you better at doing interviews aside from just being prepared, which is important, is to just be in the moment, be yourself, be relaxed, be chill, be laid back, be whatever. Like,

I just notice when I see people like, the people appreciate when I am more in the moment and when I'm, you know, really there for the interview. You know, the worst thing that you could do is do an interview well there's a huge chunk of your brand that's devoted to something else going on your life that's like a non-starter your your interview will suck if you're obsessively thinking about yourself or something that you're going through at the same time it's it's tough to get past that yeah yes i completely agree with you and you know there's a lot of weight that you have to carry going back to what i was saying before because when you are doing these interviews when you are sitting here there are so many people watching and

And you now have the chance to influence a lot of people. And for myself, I believe I have responsibility to influence them in a positive way to try to help them along, to pass down that knowledge that the elders are supposed to pass down onto the younger ones so they can build upon it and do even better and so on and so on. I feel that chain and it puts pressure on me. When I come here to do a podcast with you, I feel like, oh my gosh, I have to get out messages. is I need people to hear these things. I want to share this with them

so that they can take it and build upon it, make it their own, of course. Just like Poppy did for me. Poppy gives him his stories, teaches me everything he learned. I got this stuff now. I take it. And then I want to share it with everyone so that Poppy in a way lives on forever.

And so do you and so do I. Just through this. Eventually, no matter what we do, Adam, we're both in that dirt down there, bro. And what lives on? this podcast, some great grandchild of mine, great, great, great, great, hopefully someday we'll be watching this. And I got two messages.

One, I love you. Two, I hope I got through to you. I hope I helped. I tried. I really gave it, man. And that's it. It's been a tough year. And we as humans have been through this before.

It has all happened before. And it will all happen again. And if you go, oh, that's a negative, that's not a negative. If you realize that this is a continual thing, dude, there was the fucking bubonic plague, the black plague. That shit was taken out like 40 or 70% of the population. Right. That was some real fucked up shit, man.

Like, fucking for everyone's gone. Right. And now we got one that took out a few percent of us and hurt us all. Right. But it's not as bad as it could have been. Mm-hmm. And there will be another one. Right.

And that's, just see it as a cycle. Why not? because otherwise you're looking at it as why did this happen to me? Like, no, no, no, this just happens. Shit doesn't happen to you do. It just fucking happens. And we just deal with it as humans as we always have. And it's going to be okay.

Just got to get through it like we always do. We'll be even better this time. Now we've got social media so we can talk to each other still at least a little bit. The thing that has kind of shocked me about COVID, like I've always heard that in sort of like war-torn areas, that it's shocking the extent to which people who live in those communities will just go about their normal lives. Like they just, there's bombing in your city. Your house could be one of the houses that gets hit, but people are still just going to go to

the market. And, you know, they just, because people just have to do that. Like, and I, my trainer is this Iranian guy. And he used to, he, and I asked him about that. And he told me, he's like, yes, it'll really be like that. Like, motherfuckers really just go about their business. And, I mean, through COVID, I've just seen that, like, in a crazy way where it's like, this shit has been happening all around us, like an amount of death that would have been

unthinkable to us last year. Yeah. And everybody just kept moving. Like, I mean, granted, a lot of people that keeping it moving meant they stayed in their house and worked off Zoom.

A lot of the rappers, I know, just literally kept it moving. Like, literally didn't stay home for two fucking days. They just kept doing whatever the fuck they felt like doing. But I've just, it's like that human spirit of,

and the human spirit is so strong that people invent insane things like, you know, fighting against wearing a mask in a fucking grocery store, like things that are so obviously the bear. minimum of what you could do to be respectful of other people. But that human spirit of like wanting to be free is so strong that humans actually invent stuff like that. It's fascinating. I think it's beyond fascinating. And the fact that we refuse to stay away from each other, even on risk of death. Right. I want to look, I want to look at it like that, that we, we love each other so much.

We need to be together so much. Right. That even if you, even upon risking death, we're still going to go down to the damn thing and see whatever we want to see and connect with each other. It's that important to us. We will risk our lives to connect, which is why it's so important that we connect. Connection. On a personal level, like, I was really, really burnt out on connection in the lead-up to COVID. I had had that store on Melrose for like three years and like the store down down for like two years before that.

I had like basically like gone through the process of like going from a random ass guy to somebody that a huge percentage of people knew and wanted to talk to. And it was just like those three years on Melrose it just got so I don't know. It's like the weight of how heavy going out in public and also like the guys trying to run up on me with guns and stuff. That definitely probably was part of this as well. But you know it's just like I just kind of got to the point where I had been so overly socialized that the year of not being around so many fucking people has been very like healing to my brain in the sense that like I meet a rapper now and he's got like three guys with them and I actually will like talk to those guys and like maybe get to know them and stuff like I was I had met so many people for

all those years that it just kind of I think that all that communication got and connection got me to the point where I was having a really hard time connecting and and you do seem happier now. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's very noticeable. Oh, that's nice to hear. So you brought up a point. Basically, it's the point, it's the celebrity bag, the mixed bag of celebritydom, right? Where it's awesome in some ways and terrible in other ways. It is a loss of freedom.

Right. It is. And it sucks. You can't do the things you did before that happened. You couldn't just, you can't, you can't. You got to be concerned. Yeah. And for me, it's like, in particular what I, for me, it's when I see somebody and they recognize me, I have to give it to them. I have to give them what they're, not what they're expecting, but I have to give it to

them. I have to uplift them. I'm, because I'm genuinely happy to see them. And I have to show them that I'm happy to see them. So even if I'm having a rough day, even if shit's all fucked up, even if I just got a call from some lawyer or accountant guy and being sued again for who no fuck knows what. And then Tommy walks up to me. I'm realizing like, holy shit, I could make Tommy's day right now.

I could make that motherfucker happy. I could give him a great fucking story. Hi, Tommy. I'm going to make your whole fucking day, dude. I didn't think Tommy, that's cool. It's like, Tommy, come here, man. Let's take a picture. I'll put you on my story.

Come here, dude. I want to make him fucking happy. Yeah. Because by making Tommy happy, I'm making myself happy, man. Right. I've talked to a lot of people who say that kind of thing or like a few people who have like, they're such real people and they're so focused on the conversation and the communication and the connection that that is why it becomes really overwhelming for them because

they'll end up in a situation where there's 100 people that want to take photos with them and they really can't give each one of them as much as they want and that ends up weighing on them and in a way like I feel like I was kind of like that and I ended up sort of like just cutting off that part of my brain to the point with that I just sort of threw my hands up

and I was like I'm just not going to be able to connect with anyone Oh I know it's depressing I'm working on it I talked with Kevin Smith about that He actually taught me how to handle it Really? Yeah because he gets it to a stupid extent I'm sure He does.

He was a huge extent and he's such a good guy. I was like, what do you do? And he said, you do what you have to do. You know, you get through as many as you can. You connect with those ones. And if it's too big of a group, you bring them over for the group pick. Yeah. And you tell them the truth.

I don't have time. I want to meet each one of you. I don't have time. Let's take quick picks together. Yeah. And hopefully next time I'll run into you, we can actually really talk. And he would just, just being honest. Yeah.

And so he's got the group pick with a hundred of them. Quick, one other one. One other one. And then we all play along and everyone got their photo. They didn't get to tell him about how he changed their life. I got to tell him how he changed my life. Chasing Amy changed my fucking life. But they still at least got that quick moment.

You give what you can, man. You can't give, you know, 100 people at a restaurant. You can't do it. But you give what you can. It's just so nice to uplift people, dude. It gives me a fucking such a high rush. And it gives them a high rush. And I know I did something good that day.

So if I did something else fucked up, maybe it balanced it. You know, maybe I got into a nice state of balance, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that the thing that's been great about COVID for me is it's let me see the forest from the trees a little bit because, you know, maybe four or five months into COVID. I went to the skate park up north. We did a BMX trip or whatever. We go to the skate park. And, you know, it's reasonable. But I got maybe like 10 kids that want to take photos and want to like tell me that they love the channel and stuff. And I got to like experience that as somebody who wasn't totally burnt out on that, which I had gotten to kind of. through the store and stuff. And it was very much like, wow, like this feels great to be able to like care because it's not as much. And but I'm really looking forward to like the first time I go to a rolling loud or whatever because it's like I just, you know, pent up energy.

I want to have that experience of meeting a bunch of people and getting to communicate with all these people in real life that I haven't, you know, like randomly. Like now with this, it's very much like, yes, I see Josh today, but I knew I was going to see Josh today a week ago and that makes us socializing like a certain type of thing rolling loud is different because your backstage are rolling loud and some guy's going to walk up to you and say I'm so-and-so I do this and it's a total grab bag of it could be anything and that's such a different experience you know yes you're on your toes more you're ready you're like fuck it let's do it tell me you know that kind of thing that's fucking awesome yeah so I I really like what you're saying

and the same way it is for you is the same way it is for me which is the same way it is for them because imagine and this is what I want one of the messages I want to share with the fucking world is yeah it's going to get better no I'm not saying it like that and you've heard it a thousand times but I want you everyone to just imagine man when that first fucking time that you as a fucking person are at rolling loud and they're out there playing again and you don't have to be scared of the person on your left and you don't be scared of the person on your right probably my side's wrong because it's me but you don't have to be scared of us anymore And you're there and the person's playing live again.

And suddenly you feel it. And you'll feel it again as if it was new. And that giant ball of fucking beautiful, fucking energy of everyone in the fucking crowd, feeling it is going to be the most beautiful thing in the fucking world. The first time I feel a thousand people being affected by a piece of music that I also love, that's going to be the weird part.

Because we were so accustomed to that for so long. And I haven't been around that and so long. And that's going to be. No, it's like a spring at it. The fucking energy has been pushed down, push down, push down, push down, and the more you push down that spring, when you finally let go, it's like, boom, dude. This is going to be the greatest fucking year in the history of our lives.

It's going to be incredible as we come out of this. The amount of energy and ingenuity and fucking fun, it's going to be mind-blowing. And I know it, and I'm counting down the fucking moments until we are all fucking partying together again. And like that thing, the last time a party had with a little van, and everyone came down, that's going to be fucking nothing compared to what we are doing next. And not just me, it isn't about me.

I mean, we. And I want everyone to feel that and realize that is the truth. We are going to come out of this and fucking, holy shit. It's going to be amazing. And hopefully we will learn to come to live in balance where we're not doing 50 fucking events in a month. Nope. Because people are not willing to do that anymore, man. We're only going to the good ones.

You better put on a fucking goddamn good one once a month. Not fucking every day because you're trying to get as much money as my wallet as you can. Because you know what? The thing I fear about post-COVID is not the socializing and going to these events. I fear that thing that happens to your brain where there is an event and for whatever reason you decided to take a little mental break and not go to an event that Sunday. But it kind of like it gnaws at your brain a little bit. Like, oh, everybody was doing this and I wasn't doing that. And it makes me, I have the phomo.

I feel like I missed out on it. Like that is what I'm not. looking forward to and I want to very much keep tabs on that impulse because I feel like that is the kind of thing that if you really think about it makes socializing and going out seem like a burden when it shouldn't be like you just don't need to attach that to it like if you go to something and you have fun that is what it is and if there's the same event next week and you don't go that's totally fine no the fucking COVID gave us balance dude yeah look go I really want to look at this from a positive light yeah it's I have to to be me yeah

And I want, I wish everyone would. COVID gave us that. We're going to come out of this in balance. We're going to come out of this fucking, that giant's file, fucking energy and in balance where it isn't going to be. I got to go out in New York City where it's like the city's calling to you every night. Josh, it's Monday night. It's fucking that crazy Arab chic dude is running a bowling thing. Everyone's going to be there.

You got to come. Like, oh, God. It's Tuesday night. It's, you know, Ph.D. up. Oh, God. Eric, don't make me go. I just want to go the fuck to sleep.

No, it's Wednesday, Josh. you got to come. Avenue's reopening. Like, oh, no, no, no, no. We're going to get this in balance. Nah, Wednesday night is dog night, dude. That's the night I rub her ears and we chill the fuck out while watching something fucking stupid.

And I got a, oh, yeah, no, no. Okay, I can go out Thursday, but Friday's Supernatural Night. Yeah, that's when I smoke a supernatural alone and write down my thoughts. Fuck you. Right. You know, you just balance. We, it, you have to move towards happiness.

Right. Is going out on that Tuesday night going to make you happier? Is it really, if it is, then go. It's staying home with your dog and make you happy. Then stay the fuck home with your dog. Right. You've got a daughter, staying home with the daughter going to make you happy. Which one's going to make me happier?

This one. All right, I'm going to do this one. That's when it starts to get messy is because, like, okay, you know when you're going through the Netflix directory. Yeah. And there's like 100 fucking shows on this that you would probably have a good time watch. And there's 100 movies that you could watch that you would realistically enjoy.

But you end up doing this like, you know, which is the one that's going to make you the happiest contest in your brain? That ultimately makes you less satisfied about that. And then once in a while I'll end up in a fucking hotel room. And I'll realize like, oh my God, there's 10 channels on the TV network or on the TV. And we're going to watch a league of their own for some reason just because it's on. And there's like freedom in that. No crying at baseball.

Yeah. And there's something nice about that of like at least like for the last year I've known like, what am I doing Saturday night? I'm sitting on my ass on the couch. And it's like at least I know. I know. But I don't think I could watch super bad enough time. So I'll do it again. Put it on again.

I need it again. One more time. The simplicity of choice is very nice when it is an option. Do you ever feel like that with raw? I wish I could just make one thing. No, but everyone else around me does. If I'd be so bored, man, I wouldn't be doing this anymore.

I know. It's so not you. I wouldn't be doing this. I'd have to do something else. I'd have to keep going because then the creative brain would be kiboshed. I could be doing numbers and crunching. Oh, my God.

I could make a thing of that. Cool, I could make more money. That really means a lot to me. Yeah. That would make me happy. Not. It's just not going to. But making stupid shit, making ridiculous shit.

I got so much shit in here, man. It all makes me happy. Like, okay, remember the shit, because you probably remember this. When we were kids and your mom would make you go out when you were going on the tubing, water, anything. They'd give you that neon thing. Right. And they'd stuff your belonging, a few things in there. Well, of course, I have to take that and I have to fucking recreate it.

Except I added a little, this thing's full of materials. I got to be here. It's um Oh, a cone snuffer. Yeah. It's a, no, it's a filler. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we, oh gosh, Josh, you always do this. Like pre-ground. And it came here with everything. So we come here, we dropped us in here. You put it over here. We put it in here. We drop our cone in. We put it in.

We close it. And then you spin it over your head to central, fugally fill it. Not for any reason other than it's fun. Wow, that's right. And then you've got to fill a cone at the end. And then you still can take it out and use it as that same thing. And, of course, they make it out of plant plastic because it's fucking meat.

I don't want to be a, I am a, I'm a dickhead, but I'm not an asshole. So like, I got at least at a hemp rope. You got to make it as good as it can be. Right. Respect. Yeah. So it's going to be stuff like that. Speaking of making stuff, Josh.

Oh, God. Here we go. This is the fun part. The No Jumper, Raw, collaborative, Kandama slash rolling tray pack kit. This is not a place where you're going to necessarily get the most direct. marketing messaging, but we made some pretty dope stuff to be honest. It's fun fucking shit that we were going to have a lot of fun with.

And that's all the fucking matters. And I guess I just just speak about my motivation. Like when in terms of us doing Kandama is like a big part of what we want to do with Condama like and very much when I got into it, it's like, like I said, a big part of the community is like evangelizing to people and just wanting to spread the word and let people know about it. So we started to kind of have that conversation like what brands or what influencers are people, do I have good relationships with that we could do something cool with to really help

Kandama and when we landed on what about Josh that's one of the most popular interviews you did and he makes shit and he makes really cool shit and it's very much you know in line with what you are doing in terms of the job is fucking love this stuff this is what I live for exactly and I think that you know that to me a stoner is someone who should be able to appreciate the Kandama because the The Kandama is very much like, put your phone down and play with a toy and find meaning and enjoyment through a toy. Do a trick that really will not change the world, will not make anyone a better person besides you, and it will not change the course of history.

But it's like looking at your phone is kind of like, you know, satiating your own ego because you're looking at the stuff about you and the, even on Twitter, you're looking at the news stories that have been curated for you. the thing I like about Kandama is it's just you and you're just only up against yourself to just see what you can do with this thing and I don't know I just gives you an endorphin release when you get it

I know because a few times I actually get it yes it's like I have had you know like like picture like the greatest sexual experience you've ever had in your life I have learned Kandamatrix that have basically like produced the same feeling in my body and I finally got it like

drop to my knees. Like I cannot believe how good that just felt. I know, I know. And it's very weird to be like, I just got that from this little ball and stick. And I don't, I don't feel bad about it. It all. I'm kind of proud of it. Yeah. So, I don't know. It was, it was dope working with you guys because of the fact that I know you care about the aesthetics and the presentation and, and the, just the final product as a whole that it kind of like put the pressure on us of we need to make this as. as cool as the average thing that raw makes. Like that's such a certain bar. Yeah. Yeah.

So like even with the tray, when we're burning in the logo on the inside, the goal is to burn in just enough where you can see it, but not so much that it's going to, that's going to fuck up your material. Yeah. And all the stuff here. So we have to try to do it in a way where it's actually pretty smooth if you feel it. Yeah. Because again, everything is like you're thinking about what is going to, what's the actual

smoke are going to experience it as. Right. And if I burned it in too deep, if I had sharp edges, his material is going to be in there. That whole logo is going to be green. Yeah. Which would be kind of cool, but not really. And I mean, it's like working with you is cool because like this is what you guys do is you guys make physical products and you get it right. And you might have to sample it a bunch of times or whatever.

We do less of that. Yes, we make the gnomahs, but, you know, when you're doing an interview, it's like we turn the camera on and we talk. Yeah, yeah. And that's the product. And it's like, you know, once in a while we have to censor something out. That's about as far as we go to like fine tuning it, you know? And it's like to work with a brand like you guys to on something that I think will be like good for condom. and like make more people exposed to it and everything.

It was it was definitely a dope experience just because like that that is what you guys do. And that's what I want to get better at is like let's have a fucking idea for a product and let's make it perfect. Yeah. And it's okay. By the way, perfection is a mindset. You'll never get there. Right. But if you have the mindset, you just work towards it.

So the first time I made this tray, the magnets weren't strong enough. And people were showing me that if they had a full loaded grinder on it. on here, then they would pick it up and it could fall open and your stuff would go everywhere. So we made a magnet stronger. Then someone else showed me, now when I do this and this, I can, look, if I'm walking with it across the room and I bounce, look, I can still get it to fall off. And I was like, oh, shit, do we go to three magnets? But is this the first time that you've done like a magnet type tray before?

Oh, no. You're talking about previous iterations of this style. Okay. So then I tried going to three, right now there's two magnets that hold it together across it. So then we tried, okay, let's go to three magnets. I went to three magnets and put it out there to enough of my friends. They were like, that's too much now. Now when I try to open it, it's too strong.

And it's like, I'm using so much force that everything on the tray is flying in the fucking air. Right. We're like, okay. So it's got to be too magnus. I just got to increase the strength of them. About another 15% and it should be enough to hold it. And we went that thing, putting it, walking around with a loaded grinder on here and seeing, can I accidentally make it separate? And it doesn't.

It cleared it. Okay, let's increase it a little bit more just to make sure. And then it was perfect. And then no more complaints from people. No more complaints. Everyone good? All right. And then we'll get feedback.

Who do you have doing your like prototypes from? for that kind of thing. Do you have like a local like wood worker who's like doing it or are you waiting for like a sample from China which I assume it's going to take too long in between? No, it's a combination. We have them handmade in Ireland at first and then we figured out which ones were the right ones and then once we have that then we'll go into mass production. We'll keep trying and then even in production, we'll make sure that it's the exact right one. Sometimes somebody might go to a different magnet or if you inset it by an extra millimeter that weakens it. So it's really trying to get it as right as right can be.

And of course we'll never get there. I'm telling you I'm a moment. motherfucking human being. I will fuck up. I'm as human as everyone else. My guys, somehow we will make some mistake or the production will somehow make some mistake somewhere along the line where something will be wrong and once someone brings out to our attention we will fucking fix it.

And again, try to improve it and try to make it better and better and better until it's really as good as it really can be and I have to leave it alone. So yes, we made this trade. Do you find that maddening in a way when you finally get to the final iteration and you're like, I can't think of anything else I could do?

do this? I don't find it maddening. Because then you've got to find something else to do. That's what I do. The next thing is, okay, let's move on to the next one. It's a lot of pressure. Yeah. Okay, let's redo the triple flip.

Let's see if we can make that one better. Let's move on to this one. We can make that one better too. How do I make that one better? What do we have to do? How do we something? I'll tell you a secret. I shouldn't tell you because it's going to get me into fucking a problem.

All feedback that goes through the raw website, idea, the information, like the informal ones. I have a thing where if you want me to pay a million dollars, it just basically goes to somebody else. But if you're just telling me feedback, like something went wrong, or just general shit, I think maybe you should do this to it. You should probably change that. It all goes to me.

Really? Yeah, and I fucking read each and every one of them pretty much. If I can. Yeah. Sometimes maybe it's too many. But if I can, man, the goal is to read each one of those. So I can see. So if somebody's telling me, I bought this triple flip or backflip and the wood split,

then I take it very fucking personally. Like, what do you mean the wood split? Oh, God. Oh, what the fuck? Really? Can you show me a picture of it? Then a person is looking back. This email came from Josh. That's weird. Yeah, sure, Josh. Here's a picture of it. You remember when Steve Jobs used to respond to random?

No, I didn't know that. He used to, like, respond to, like, people who would hit up the Apple email or whatever sometimes. Or I don't know, he would just respond and give people like real-ass answers from time to times. And then it would always be like a whole thing in the news. Like Steve Jobs responded to another fan and they posted it on Twitter. Yeah. You kind of want to be that, that. But let's be real. It works. be an entrepreneur, it would be pretty good to be Steve Jobs. Yeah.

If you could be the Steve Jobs of rolling papers, which I guess I would kind of argue you already are, that's a pretty good thing. It is. Yeah. So then they tell me that the tray split somehow, that I'm freaking the fuck out. What do you mean the tray split? How did my tray split on you? Oh my God, I hope it didn't hurt you too much.

Your shit didn't go flying everywhere, did it? I'm so sorry. Send me pictures of them. Let me see what happened. And then it's Josh onto production, on to everybody. Well, dude, the fucking guy's fucking tray split, dude. It was Saturday night. He was out with his fucking friends.

And the fucking tray split. They're like, oh, God, fuck. And they know they're going to get it from me. So it puts even more pressure on making sure it's right. I take it really personally. I'm imagining that I fucked up your sash. I ruined your night. And I'm trying to elevate you.

And I just fucked your shit up. Right. I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Do where are you? I'll get you another goddamn tray. In fact, I'll send you two of them. Let me sign them for you. I'm so sorry this happened to you.

But it's an interesting thing that you're telling us about yourself because you're running a huge business. Certain parts of the business just have to go to other people. Yeah. You can't handle every warranty. that complaint, well, it's not really a complaint section, right? It's like just a contact section. It is complaints too. But, but for some reason that is the one thing that you really

don't want to give to somebody else and pay them to do that. And I don't know. But I think that that's wise because it's like there's a, there's a level of disconnect that you could potentially get to if you put too much space between you and your customer. Yeah, and I love that customer, man. I mean, I fucking made that goddamn tray for him. I want it to be perfect. I want to, I want to, I want him to enjoy it. I want it to be right. You know, if it's not right, that's on me. I fuck my job up.

I fucking blew it. No way, man. I got to make that thing right. If you're telling me my gum doesn't stick, or are you right to me my gum doesn't stick? I'm going to be all over that shit. Okay, did you do this? Did you lick it and stick it?

Do you run your finger along there? It's a natural gum. I didn't add any weird shit to it. Yeah, some people, they say they use a case of gum. They might add something to help it work better that I don't want to add. I'm trying not to say anything that's going to get me sued for the million times by big tobacco. But it's some, I just want to use just natural occasion gum that you look it and you have to run your finger on it afterwards to make sure it's sealed right. And then you're fine. Did you do that? Here's a video of me. Let me show you how I did it. Does that work for you? No, it still doesn't stick. What do you mean to still doesn't stick? It's interesting too because probably nobody is equipped to answer all these questions besides you. Because you guys make some many different things. It's like there can't be that many employees who really understand everything about all of them, right?

Yeah, they probably come to me with a question anyway. Or they might learn over time, I guess, you know, how to check this. You know, all. QC. Like when these came in, they go through our QC department and then one of them comes to me. And I got to go check it out myself because I'm scared. I want to make sure it's right. The QC department is basically like keeping an eye on everything you guys make to make sure that it's up to a certain standard. Everything, make sure. Things you might not notice by yourself using it or something. Or they ideally they would catch everything. Because like when I find something they missed, then of course I bring it to their attention to

make them better for the next time. But I'm looking at things they wouldn't know. Like they might, they didn't know that I designed this to be a certain way where it's not rough. They didn't understand that point. So they wouldn't know that when it comes in and I feel it. I'm like, I feel a little right where it was to be. Wait a minute. That doesn't look quite right.

That logo doesn't look crisp enough to me. They're not, that's not something. That's intangible. This doesn't feel right to me. The weight of this box doesn't feel right in my hands. There we go. I just realized we haven't actually done the unboxing. You know,

because the craziest function of this, I guess you guys are probably going to have to head over to Instagram. And I'll allow you to do the unboxing. I myself have yet to be able to get this part open. See, if I were you, I would be thinking about this. How do I open that without ever ripping it at all? It could be a little tricky pulling that tab out. Well, that's a different box making method we could use.

Oh, you just got it out cleaner than I ever got it. Well, I open a lot of boxes. So slide it out. There you go. Came out. Okay. Beautiful. Beautiful.

And it comes with this nice sticker pack, which we're pretty enthused about. if you want some rare no jumper raw stickers. And there's also a nice string, which is important. But yeah, aesthetically, I'm very pleased with this. I like the way that the wood, we got like multiple wood tones on the ball, which is very important. And then the most unique thing is that we have the actual hole. Again, you can probably have to go to Instagram to see this demonstrated by somebody.

But I've done it. For a man who truly loves his condama, there is something special. about taking a hit from the joint and sort of tasting the o-poo-gey goodness. Now, I can't necessarily recommend that anyone do that, but when you really breathe that condama wood into your lungs, you feel like you've reached a different level of companionship, I think. You connect it because you're literally putting your lips on it. You're actually kissing the condama.

You taste the wood in a way that you just wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, but it's all about connection. This is the same thing about rolling a joint versus stuffing a cone versus buying a pre-roll. You're going down a path of disqualing. connection where you're just buying something and smoking you mindlessly compared to the fact that you actually stuffed it. You took the time to grind your material and put it in there. Compared to you ground the material and you rolled it up your way with a certain tip in a certain

direction. And now it's like a condama you're playing with compared to a condama that you're literally smoking with and touching with your lips and hitting it, like literally smoking through it. So yeah, of course you're going to have a deeper connection to this candama than any other condom it's just the way it's going to be. And that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. 100%. This is fucking awesome. Yeah, I mean, I'm just hyped to even I mean, that's like the kind of cool thing about doing this too is just to be able to

take Arkandamas and potentially get them out to all of the vendors that you guys work with because you guys obviously have relationships with thousands of awesome, like small. If you think about like local smoke shops and stuff, I mean, these are pretty cool businesses in comparison to like, you know, 90% of people,

a lot of people, not 90%, a lot of people pretty much just go 7-11 for all their tobacco product needs and stuff you know and it's like a lot of those businesses that you guys sell to I really like the doing the right thing in terms of like what we want to see which is like a local small business that people who actually give a shit about the product you know yeah it's checking this out just realizing it you could put a pipe screen in there and use it as a pipe as well oh you guess it becomes almost like a chill this is going to be fucking fun you could definitely do that oh my god we should definitely trip oh that would be so funny with the

fucking nudge right in there yeah we got to do that dude okay we gotta get that B roll later but yeah I mean just like you know I feel like the average stoner the average person that's going to buy a raw paper pack or whatnot I think that they're the type of person that would appreciate what the condama can bring into your life so at least if we can sort of and in my mind like

I would love to just like send those shops condoms that they can just have out just on you know if somebody wants to play with it I don't know to the extent a lot of local smoke shops and want people just hanging out playing with cadammas in their store but you know that that would be dope to me too because for us it's all about like we just want put it in front of many eyeballs as possible you know i'll get in front of a lot of eyeballs i think people really enjoy it it reminds me it has a connection to the past because you know you know how long cadamas have been around oh yeah 17th century japanese skill toy that's why i was up to tell people

and it's um it's similar to like um worry beads and some of the other things that have been around through humanity in different ways it feels like every culture has come up with something similar to a kandama in their own way. The Japanese next leveled it, but there's so much, but this is such a cultural thing of people going around developing a certain skill set by using it. People come up to me all the time. Like Mexican people like from Mexico come up to me all the time and are telling me about like basically their version of it.

And like it's, it's kind of crazy how so many different cultures just have their equivalent of a ball and stick toy that has existed since before there was almost every other technology that we currently interact with. So it kind of makes sense that. certain point that people might be like, maybe we were all right when we just had a ball and stick toy. Yeah. Well, it's still fun.

That's the bottom line. And there's a reason why we did it back then is the same reason we do it now. It just, it, it, it does develop a skill. It also takes you out of your brain for a moment because you're focused on something else and you're, that's why these calm worry beads, because by doing this, you're no, you're no longer worrying. Yeah. By playing with the Kandama, by doing it and getting it right, you're focused on that.

If you're not, you're not going to get it. And the crazy thing about it is that if you're trying a really hard trick, like the best thing that you could do is to just be more present. Because literally like you're the fucking, let me say for a second, like you'll be doing a trick where you know this is blasted through the air, spinning all crazy. And your fucking goal is to on the third time that it comes around to make this go directly into the hole.

Yeah. And that's the only thing that's going to make this trick work. And that is the. kind of thing that like if there's anything else like operating that in your brain that's using up some of your ram it's just going to be so much harder but if you are 100% there it will slow down in your fucking mind in front of you to the point where like it's just something that rewards being present it's meditation which is rare yeah it is it's something where like when i see some of the craziest tricks it's just unthinkable that

they could do that complex of motions that many times. It's clear that you have to be in a flow state to be able to see things so clearly. What is that flow state? I see people go into it. I get into it when I'm creating doing my thing. But what is that? I've read about it a bit. Like, you know, when you think about like a surfer or, you know, like even, you know, someone,

any kind of physical activity where there's a level of competence that you've worked yourself up to. So it's not you're going snowboarding for the first time and you're just worried about surviving getting down to the bottom. But then once you've gotten to the point where you are an expert at this skill and you're blasting down the hill and you're fucking, it requires you to be using all of your resources to be able to do what you're doing, you can't really afford to like daydream. You can't be thinking about your taxes. Like if you want to be able to do the double backflip, you know? And there's just like something about that that like I think is really, really attractive to people is once you find something that you can experience that with. And when I'm at my best with the condominate, it's like that is where you get with it is that it's like I'm only thinking about this and I'm only feeling this. I'm going to share something with you that's related to that.

Yeah. Let's talk about my flow state because it's different than what you think. I was wondering. Yeah. What kind of stuff gives you that feeling? I'll give you something that does that people, it's surprising. And I got to explain it to you to some extent. When I was a kid, I had a really bad stutter.

And they brought me to a speech therapist and all that kind of shit that tried to work on it. And the guy explained to me, well, your brain is actually going faster than your mouth can make words. And there's the disconnect and you end up stuttering. So you need to slow down the way you think in order to make it match your words. Interesting. Okay. So I did that to some extent.

But what I also did was I started fucking as fucking as fast you can fucking imagine. because that was another way to fucking cure it. You just start talking faster. It also connects with it. It allows the brain to go to the way it actually wants to be. Now, I can talk so fast it'll drive people fucking crazy. But it was my solution for stopping stuttering. And to this day, which worked out great because I was raised in New York City,

so everybody talks fast. I could just go just and write with them. In other places, people think I'm nuts when I start going. But then when I start doing my videos, right? It used to be like Instagram gives, it was 15. seconds at first. Yeah. And then they raise it up to a minute.

Yeah. And being an auctioneer is helpful. I became, I got to let that go, man. Where first they gave me a 15 seconds, that was tough to really get anything in there. Then they gave me a minute. I could fucking go nuts, man. People are like, dude, you're channeling Billy Mays Hayes. I'm like, fuck yeah.

Bring me Billy Mays Hayes. Put them in here. I'll let him out. Let's go. Bam. And there comes my video and I'm just fucking going. I'm talking so fucking fast and showing so much shit at once. And that's actually really.

really me, man. Right. That's just a part of me. There's lots, of course. Just like every human being, there's lots of us. But this is actually something in here. And now they cut me down to 30 seconds with reels, right? I got to get this down to 30 seconds.

You can do IGTV. You can do like 20 minutes. I can. But this is more fun for me. This is a challenge, man. I got to show you this new product in 30 seconds or less. I like that challenge too. It's something about like cramp because then you have to actually think what's important

and what's not. Yeah. I could trim a lot of times. It just leads you to important conclusions. like, oh, I can trim these two, three sentences out of it. That's big. That's like a lot of time that I could have been losing the audience's attention. And I like really thinking about making a message as concise as possible as it needs to be.

It's a great chucking challenge. So now I go out there and I fucking turn it on. I'm like, all right, 30 seconds, huh? Let's go. Bam. And I just fucking hit it. And it's so much fun for me. And the brain is going so fast.

And I'm communicating so much. And I'm trying to get it all out there. And when it's done, people are like, dude, what the fuck? You just snort. I'm like, nothing, man. Right. What they don't realize is that whole time, that 30 seconds, that video is going, I am completely in the moment.

I've got nothing but the moment. I'm thinking about nothing but that product and trying to share it with you. And I'm in my own state of fucking flow. So if you want to see Josh in flow state, there's a creative time when I'm doing that, when I'm writing things down or working on a project where I'm there as well. But you'll also see it on a lot of my crazy fucking, holy shit, that's ass fucking Instagram stuff. It's just letting it go.

You're just in that moment. It's such a beautiful thing. When you're in the moment with Kandama, when I'm in a moment with my shit, when everybody's in their moment with whatever they're doing, that's a great place to be. That is Zen.

That is what we're all striving to achieve through meditation. I have a friend when they do yoga, they are in the zone. They're doing the type of yoga moves that I can't believe are possible by a human being. I look at them differently when they're doing it.

I look at them as a superhero because I'm like, you are no longer human to me. You have done something I did not know is possible for a human being to do, and therefore you have elevated yourself in my eyes to the point where you are now there. You know? This, and it's interesting, this podcasting, that's like a big part of why I think I'm drawn to it is because it's something that very much incentivizes you to be in the moment, because, you know, you're going to, I'm going to ask you something, and then you're going to talk for two minutes.

I have to, while paying as close of attention as possible to what you're saying, because I don't want you to say anything important that I'm going to leave on the table. You know, like, my worst nightmare would be if you shared something important and intimate about yourself, and I didn't give it the proper acknowledgement because I'm in my head figuring out what I'm going to say next. And, you know, it's like out of that two-minute response, I want to ask the best follow-up question, but the best way for me to figure out what the next best topic for us, discuss or the best part of the conversation is to just listen and pay attention and just you know just to really be tapped in to what you're telling me while also thinking about what

the next direction is and it's it's kind of like a subconscious thing it's not like I'm really like plotting on what I'm going to say next it's just kind of like running the algorithm in the back of your brain while also being as present as possible and you know it's like that's what the world needs you know just more stuff that's going to make you be in something approaching a flow state, you know? Hell yeah, man. This is all this. Being in that flow state is such a real thing.

You almost wish you could stay there forever. But it's like one of those Star Trek episodes, you can't. Because you really want to do things that you are a beginner at as well. Yeah. Hell yeah. I remember I did like a jiu jih T class for the first time when I was like 28. And it, I felt so uncomfortable like the next one I went to and stuff. And I realized it's because I was only at that time, like, what was I doing?

I was riding my bike, which I was, you know, and filming bike riding stuff. I knew how to do that. I was working on my website at the time and everything. Everything I did I was pretty good at and I knew what I was doing. And then I'm a grown-ass man and I go into a fucking karate class, basically. And I'm like getting whipped around by some random guy and some girls tapping me out. Like just because they want to show me that like she could tap me out because even though she weighs 100 pounds less than me. I mean, all that shit is like, I think that's important though.

Like if anything, I kind of sometimes feel like, fuck, like you're living. life like you've already figured out what you want to do with your life. And that's cool, but that's also kind of scary. Because what if there's other things that are awesome? Don't go into FOMO, man. That you get experienced, no, no, no, no, no. But not like events, but I'm talking like things. Like maybe there's like, maybe I would just be a really, really fucking happy person

if I became a bow and arrow guy. My girlfriend took a bunch of bow and arrow classes like a year or so ago. And I didn't even go and do any of the bow and arrow classes because I was so doing what I'm doing, maybe I missed down something with the bow and arrow shit. Maybe that could have been my fucking flow state for the next couple years before I move around to something else. I don't know.

You're supposed to achieve mastery first of everything you try. That's true. So, yeah, another Robert Green thing. He would want, he would, I think you've achieved mastery with this, but is there another level? Oh, yeah. Then you got to go there. But that's always the decision in life.

It's like, do I want to become a few ticks better at Kandama? or do I want to do a whole new thing that I haven't done yet? Like, just always. Which one's going to make you happier? You kind of don't know because a lot of times you have to go down. Like, there's chaos and there's order.

I know if I stay home and work that I'm going to enjoy this week. If I go to Greece, I don't really, I've been in Greece before. It was probably not a great example. If I go to Cambodia, am I going to have the best fucking week of my life, the most eye-opening crazy week?

Or is the fucking van going to break down on the side? of the road and I'll be stuck on the rain for eight hours. And like, you know, like when you go outside your comfort zone, anything can happen. And that's awesome. But it's also like, you know, like for people like us who have a lot of energy and a lot of like stuff you want to do, sometimes it can be like overwhelming of like there's so many things that I think I would enjoy doing today. I think you should take something you actually really enjoy doing.

And I'll just give you one fucking made up example, right? So I would take Kandama and go to Cambodia to the best fucking place where they do it there, to a club doing it, and learn what they're doing differently and train with them for a moment. Because then it's new and you know you're going to enjoy it and you're next level in yourself. And by doing that, by getting better at it and picking up all that knowledge, you're actually improving all of us. So I would go down that path, path, see, rather than starting a whole bunch of things and not finishing any of them. I think we are better. I've seen this in Russia often.

where for some reason they're better at certain things than us when it comes to the arts. They take ballet so fucking seriously. It's life or fucking death. They are studying it at such a level that when I see them doing ballet, I'm like, holy shit! What the fuck did I just watch?

I can't believe a person can do that. Oh, my God! And it's because of the extent of which they go with it. From an early age, they're having toes surgically changed so they can do better ballet. They're really bringing it, man. And the final result is a level of beauty in art that is otherwise unachievable and blows my fucking mind and blows everybody's mind who ever sees anything like that.

But I wonder is there something about the Russian soul that ballet just is a more logical choice for a Russian in a way because I know that there's always this conversation about like what the true soul of Russia is. Like that's always kind of like a thing. You know, it's a thing in Russia. Like, and like, a thing that comes to mind is like, I'm a big online poker guy. I'm always fascinated by the fact that these fucking Germans just slay. And it makes sense because it's like if you want like the German stereotype is like the also like the description of what a good poker player is. Because it's like studious, logical, unemotional mathematically sound perhaps or whatever. Like like in a lot of these German poker players I watch.

I'm just like, if I had to design a great poker player emotionally from scratch, it would be someone like you that seems like he could, you know, have anything happen and you wouldn't be phased or become illogical, you know? Okay, I'll give you that, but I have to hold it to the, to a cultural thing, not to a human thing, because, you know, the Russians are us, we are them, we are exactly the same Germans, we are, we are, we are exactly the same. Everybody, we are all the same. So it's not in the DNA.

It's just in the culture. The culture, yeah, for sure. That's, I just, I have to say that kind of stuff because I'm always worried that people are going to think, and they are different than us. I want everyone to understand that we're all the same. I think that there's like some stuff like that between different cultures where like, you know, like obviously there's like certain nationalities that just dominate certain sports. But a lot of that is cultural too. So actually, I don't even know. It's very hard to parse the difference.

I want to stay within culture. You know what I mean? It's important to me because then it changes, then it doesn't separate us. This is true. I just want us all to be the counter, man. I really, you know. World peace,

through Condama and smoking weed. And smoking the fuck out! And invincible flies that will never, ever die. I'm taking that fly home with me. I'm going to name him and give him a fucking, give him a little house, like a fly house.

I'm going to feed them. I'm going to raise them as if it's my own. Josh, this has been a great conversation. I think that due to the pressure that my own bladder is exerting right now and the fact that we have a bunch of cool stuff that we want to film.

Hell yeah. It might be time to sort of wrap this, but I'm glad that we had our bi-annual checking. And I think we got into some meaty stuff. Yeah, we definitely did. Quick two and a half hours. I don't know if I've done a podcast. It was two and a half hours in a while. Oh, my God.

Is it really two and a half hours? Yeah. That's the thing. Close state, bro. I can see the clock. You can't. There's a reason for the, well, is there? No, I got no clock.

Okay. You do have a watch for the record. Although I know that nobody who owns a watch uses it to tell time. I don't even. I gave up on that a long time ago. For sure. Anything you want to leave the people with in terms of those? Two things.

One is to thank you so much for having me on this podcast. That means everything to me. It's an honor. I appreciate it for it. Yeah. Same. Same. And second thing is it's just that thing of trying to send positive messages

everyone is watching us, especially during what we've all been through together. And it's important. Everyone recognizes we've all been through this together to different extents. But we've all been through this together. And it's just really, I just want everyone to understand that you've heard, yes, you've heard a thousand, fucking billion fucking people telling you it's going to get better. but it really is. And it's going to be fucking epic.

And I want them to feel that so that that hope that that true belief and understanding of how much better it's going to be as we come out of this resides with them and they allow it to happen. And also stay hydrated. Yeah. Because that's why my one worry is that there's a lot of people

who maybe haven't drank that much alcohol and they're about to go hit the streets and drink a little too much alcohol. Just stay hydrated and take care of yourself and everyone around you. I don't want to see anyone over partying. I did videos. Like literally, I was trying to teach people for the past year.

One of the videos was on how not to pass the fuck out. It literally was, this is how you don't pass the fuck out. And the top thing was stay the fuck hydrated. Yeah. Respect. That's an important one. No, man, I really wanted to give them everything so that I did it. I'm done.

Now I can go retire in peace. And I'm glad that you were able to find a little bit of positivity out of what was otherwise a negative scenario, you know? Yeah. And shit, rest and peace to everybody who was negatively affected by it. I mean, there were moments during COVID where I really thought I was going to lose people close to me. And I made it a little bit especially difficult to deal with some people who didn't want to take it serious or denied the seriousness of it. But overall, you know, I'm just really thankful that, you know, I don't know why your podcast is kind of turning into like, okay, COVID is over conclusion podcast.

But it does kind of feel like that in a way. Because we're past, at least in Arizona, we're past 50% of people that have been vaccinated. Yeah. So we're getting to that. We're getting towards that state. And, you know, it was a tough, like I told you, the hardest thing for me was, it was really losing, losing Linda. She was amazing. She was Trinidadian.

So she's, like, when you see me happy and joyous, that's Linda coming out of me. Wow. So she would respond to any kind of negativity with laughs, big laughs, big positivity. So to lose her is very painful. But it actually makes me want to carry it with me even more. Yeah. rest and peace linda yeah much respect josh kesselman raw pavers no jumper collaborative efforts available in stores now or soon i'm not 100% sure how much these are

going to match up but either way keep an eye on our instagrams you can figure it out no jumper coolest podcast in the world check us out youtube sound cloud iTunes like comment subscribe nojumber com if we want to support and uh i'll see you friday be listening to your music yeah now we're have some fucking fun. That's right. Shout out, Josh. Appreciate you, me.