The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Charles Warner, CEO at IPW Editor-in-Chief Innovation & Tech Today, Residential Tech Today, Cannabis & Tech Today

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Charles Warner, CEO at IPW Editor-in-Chief Innovation & Tech Today, Residential Tech Today, Cannabis & Tech Today [powerpress_playlist]

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Let's get ready to podcast. I don't know, trying to stick with that new opening line. So what do you think? Let me know. Hey guys, welcome. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

We've got a most excellent guest and a very old friend of mine on the show, and he's going to talk a lot about some different things on starting his business and some of the ideas, entrepreneur stuff. So we're going to get into that. We're going to find out some wonderful things about his different properties and what he does in the business world of magazines, events, etc., etc. So we'll get into that, but be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Go to thecvpn.com. That's chrismosspodcastnetwork.com. etc etc so uh we'll get into that but be sure to refer the show your friends neighbors relatives

go to the cvpn.com that's chrisbosspodcastnetwork.com there's nine holy crap nine podcasts to consume there you're stuck in quarantine or if you're at work and you just don't want to do the work your boss is giving you or you're just trying to ignore your wife family and kids or vice versa you can listen to nine podcasts, and you can learn stuff. And we put a lot of stuff on there for entrepreneurs, future entrepreneurs. We know people are out of work, so this is a great time to maybe start a new career, starting your own business, get some ideas, figure out a way to survive in this economy. Also, go to youtube.com for just Chris Voss, hit that bell notification and subscribe

to all the videos because you see a lot of that stuff up here. And of course, you can go through 300 old podcasts through iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, everything else. You can hear all the wonderful book author interviews and everything that we've done. So the gentleman we have on today, gentleman might be a strong word, but no, he's a great guy, is Charles Warner. Charles is the CEO at IPW, editor-in-chief, Innovation and Tech Today, Residential Tech Today, Cannabis and Tech Today, and some investments in cannabis companies that he takes and does. He is a veteran-owned media company headquartered in Denver with offices around the country. At IPW, Warner is responsible for overseeing companies in many areas of specialization, including custom publishing, sponsorship sales, and on-site activation, audience development,

and sales training, and media placement. So welcome to the show, Charles. How you doing, buddy? Thanks, man. That was a long list of fake accomplishments. I had to cut it off too. You've got a whole lot more going on there, but no, those sound pretty real, man. Yeah. You know, when you're an entrepreneur, you kind of got to do a lot of different, wear a lot of different hats. Yeah. And you got to do it all, man. I mean, that's, that's, that's the real thing. I think at one point I had 21 different corporate entities that we were invested in and operating. We had like three core ones. Yeah. I know the craziness and heckness of wearing those balances stuff. So we're going to talk today and help educate our

audience a little bit on how you built it, how you did it, what you're doing today, and all that good stuff. So you have three magazines, if I understand correctly. Tell us about them. Yeah. So a little over five years ago, we launched Innovation in Tech Today. It was initially just going to be a one-off, and we didn't have anything to do afterwards. So we made it quarterly, kind of built that up. And then two years ago, we got a have anything to do afterwards. So we made it quarterly, kind of built that up. And then two years ago, we got a crazy idea to do a couple of spinoffs. And that's when we launched Residential Tech Today and Cannabis and Tech Today. So next thing you know, we had three print magazines, digital, all the social, all the

email marketing, everything to handle instead of just one. So it became a lot more work, but it also opened up a lot more opportunities. You know, we have more inventory, big different niche audiences, and it was actually a good decision to do it back then, you know, looking at when we spun them off. But at the time, I was not excited to do it because it just seemed like a lot more work and, you know, it was already a lot of work. So looking back, I'm glad I did it. You know, it's like when you go to the gym and you don't want to afterwards, you're like, I'm glad I did that. That's, that's how it was. It's interesting how life takes us down those roads. Now you got your

start in the military. I know I've seen the great photos of you out. What, what portion of the military were you in? Yeah, I was a, uh, uh, so when I got out of high school, I didn't know how I was going to pay for college. I played football in high school, but I wasn't very good. Uh, and so I talked to the army recruiter and he was like, dude, we'll give you 40,000 for college and you get to jump out of helicopters, shoot things, play Rambo. And I was like, why doesn't everybody do this? So I went in the light infantry in a rapid deployment force. And yeah, I was carrying a 32-pound air-cooled, belt-fed machine gun around my neck

walking through the jungles and deserts for three years. And then I decided I got to go to college because that was a hard job. But it was good. Made a lot of really good friends. And you probably built some pretty good character. I mean, I remember I had one friend who was in the army and he,

he made me wear his, uh, his, his pack that you guys wear. And he's like, I'm going to hold this because if I give you the full weight of this, when I put it on your back, you're going to hit the floor and I don't want to hurt you. So I'm just gonna, I'm just going to hold it and slowly let you weigh into it uh when you put it on and holy crap and he goes now and i was i was like almost on the floor with just him stabilizing it for me and of course i'm an old man but i don't know if i was even able to do that when i was 20 but uh he was like he was like, imagine running through a rock at 140 degrees for five, 20 miles in this thing. And I'm just like, man, you guys are he men.

You guys are. Yeah, we used to do a thing whenever we'd get to stop because we were light infantry. And I didn't know what that meant when I joined. It just sounded cool. Light infantry. What light infantry means is there is no vehicular support at all. So everything you need for the mission, you carry on your back. Yeah, there's no, no Humvees. There's no helicopter. I mean, every once in a while they drop us some crap,

but really it was, you carried it on your back. And, um, I mean, no kidding between the Kevlar, you know, your flak vest, your rucksack, your weapon, your ammo, your night vision goggles, your, I mean, everything, your, your chemical gear, it was about 110 pounds. And, and I had that 30 pound machine gun around my neck. So, uh, my back will probably give out here pretty soon or something. I don't know. I'll be going to the VA, but no, I was young. And, uh, I'll tell you when you talk about, um, you know, what you learn, I'll never forget the first time that we went and we, uh, uh, we headed out on a really long march. Because, again, it's light infantry.

And we put our packs on and we all went out. And I remember the pack was hurting. It was digging in my back. And it was, you know, I'm 18. I'm an EIOU1. I just got here. I'm with all these veteran guys. And we're marching and the pack is digging into my back.

And I'm stopping. I'm trying to fix it. And my squad leader, he was like a little guy, like, like five, 10, you know, 170 pounds, Sergeant Duke and Sergeant Duke comes up and goes, what's going on, Bubba? And I was like, I can't Sergeant this pack. It's, it's not, it doesn't work like that. And he goes, let me see. He took my pack and put it on top of his pack. So it was up over like this and goes, let's go. I was the only guy in the platoon out of 40 guys, not carrying a pack for the next like five miles. And we find, and he's a little guy and we finally get there. You know, I just felt like a, like a dirt bag. Yeah.

And, and, and, uh, after I realized, you know what, it's, it's all in your head. If this little guy can carry two packs, there's no reason me, you know, kind of a, a, a big size dude, 18 shouldn't be able to do it. And, uh, the one lesson I learned was you can do a lot more than you think you can. So that was, that was, that was one good thing I got out of it. Now, fast forward to later on in my military career, I got to where we'd be going up a hill, you know, and we'd be climbing up like, like billy goats up this hill, because we always had to go to the top of the hill. I don't know why we always had to go to the top of the mountain. And we would climb up there. And I would see people doing the dead

cockroach along the way, you know, they're laying on their back, their feet are up in the air. And I would go down and scoop up their gear. And my buddy, Chuck, we were Chuck and Chuck would do the same thing. And we get to the top, you know, put their gear down and put up their gear. And my buddy Chuck, we were Chuck and Chuck, would do the same thing. And we'd get to the top, put their gear down, and put a dip in. And it was just funny to transition from me being the weakest link to all of a sudden saying, okay. And when you flip that switch in your mind, now all of a sudden you're grabbing other people's gear. And it was, yeah, I think it took the Army to teach me that. So you segued right into the next question I had set up for you. I mean,

what different lessons did you learn in the military that you took into business that helped shape you? There's always a way. I think that's the biggest thing, right? Is entrepreneurs and business owners, we're going to get hit with an assortment of things that we couldn't even possibly plan for. And you can't plan for everything, but you can plan to be resourceful. And that was the one thing is that there's always a way, you know, you can try 30 things. They don't work that 31st time. You're going to feel really good because you figured out a way around that

problem. I think I learned that in the military that, you know, there's always a way just keep trying and you'll figure it out. And I love that because that's the same mentality I had in my business and some of the things I'm talking about in my book. My attitude was there's always a way to improve something and then the way to improve that from there. You can never stop innovating, which, of course, is one of the names of your magazine.

There's always a way we just have to find i used to sit around with my board and my partners and go look here's the issue we need to solve you know we're bleeding money over here whatever there's always a way what's the right way let's let's find out what this is and i never took the objective that well i created the way so i don't know why it's not working because it's my way. I was always like, okay, it doesn't matter who has the ideas. There's always a better way. We've got to find it.

It's out there somewhere. I know it is. We've just got to, like you say, we either got to run the numbers of pushing buttons, formulating, trying different sequences, you know. And it's kind of like a Rubik's cube where you got to sit there and go, okay, well that didn't work. Okay. We'll go this way. And that didn't work. And you, and you've got to, you know, I, I became a real tinker, uh, in owning my own

business. And I'm sure you did too, because you're, you're like trying to, you're like, okay, we'll press this sequence of buttons and see if that works. And, and it's almost like a video game sometimes. I mean, I, I used to think of it kind of a video game. But so you took those lessons, and then what made you want to do the magazine? Now, I appeared, I think, in your first magazine with Steve Jobs, I think. Yeah, yeah. So our first magazine was the Legacy series. We just wanted to do a magazine to honor the contributions that

Steve jobs had made, you know, through all the different, uh, parts of technology, even though he didn't work in, you know, automobiles, there were apps in automobiles and even, you know, like there was just the stuff that he and Apple brought out at the time. And I know he gets a lot of credit for, you know, probably a lot of his engineers work. We, we know some of those people. Um, but he, you know, he really did apps and things like that. You know, the smartphone really being, you know, even the iPod, you know, that those are all pretty big things. So it was just a tech magazine and it was a one-off. What motivated you to do that? Like what, what got you down that road?

I just thought at the time he was, he was pretty iconic. You know, he died from pancreatic cancer, uh, you know, and, and you always think that when you're, you're super rich and you're famous and stuff, you know, you can, you can last forever. So it was, it was kind of, um, it was odd or it was just different that you had somebody taken, you know, uh, from us that was at the apex of their career and technology and everything, you know, him and Bill Gates were like this and now it's just Bill Gates. But to me, I just, I just thought it was a really inspirational, cool story. And I thought that if we covered what he did, maybe that would inspire other people and new technologies, kind of a,

you know, whatever you celebrate, you get. So how'd you put it together? Did you go to investors or bootstrapping or? Yeah, that's a good question. So we, we came up with the concept and the idea, the distribution, you know, we, we decided we would launch it at Mac world, big tie in with, with Apple fans. We, we got newsstand distribution. We basically worked out the details of it before we had the money. And, and then, and then we got on the phones and we started selling the advertising you know it was it was completely self-funded and bootstrapped and so

in the beginning it was just like me and one other person sitting on folding metal chairs staring at each other all day long with whiteboards around us like hey this is really gonna happen isn't it so you guys were selling advertising to a magazine you'd never published yeah and it was going out to an event i mean this is this is actually pretty inspiring like right now i'd have my wheels cooking if i was sitting at home and i was newly unemployed or uh it currently being you know uh set off and going hey i mean this is i mean what a great way i mean you know a lot of people when they start a business you they either have to self-fund they got to go find investors. You guys figure out a way to pay for it. Yeah. And, and, and I, and to be fair, you know, I had, I had a little bit of money in my 401k.

So I was able to have some, you know, something to, you know, get an office and get some phones and, you know, things like that. But, um, you know, there was no secretary. There was me and one sales guy and this poor guy, it was like his first sales job. And how hard must it be to sell advertising in a magazine that doesn't exist? You've never even been asked. How many issues do you guys have? Can you send me a copy? This is going to be our first.

Oh, your first time. Click. Dude, this is like when I started my, I started a lot of small companies and they just never really clicked. My first company, 18, clicked, but it was in construction. And after about a year or two of that, I was like, this is hard. Yeah. Working in the snow on your knees and doing stucco is hard.

And it was cool. It gave me the entrepreneur drug and once you get it you can't go to work for anyone else and and so uh when i started her you know i'd work for some ceos i've been an entrepreneur we used to what used to be my title one of my last companies i worked at and uh the ceo friend taught me how to innovate taught me how to think out of the box taught me a lot of great lessons and uh and when i started our first company i was just going out and using everything i'd prepped and learned for uh and i was going out in my suit and and uh you know i would have people say to me they go they go so let me get this straight you want us to quit the career company we're using that's been around for years and we want you to go us to go with you but you're new and yeah and so i'd have to sell them

on the concept of the idea and really i would have to sell them on me and that's what they bought they bought me um i don't think my partner investors after that or boards ever appreciate anything i did um i mean i think they did appreciate it but you know what i mean i don't think they ever appreciated they wouldn't have shit if i hadn't gone out and sold me and and that's what the people bought they went you know what i don't know who this fucking chris voss is and i don't know you know whatever but he's got the gumption and he's motivated and he talks like he knows what he's doing it was it was a fake it till you make it sort of experience like what you guys did and uh and fortunately with the power of my personality at the time i was much

better looking probably than i was. But they just went, holy shit, this guy fucking walks and talks. But I spent a lot of years preparing for it too. That molded me. I used to read Harvard business review and you know, every business book I could get my hands on cause I never went to college. But so this is interesting.

So you, you launched the, you launched the thing. You think it's just going to be a one off. You're like, okay, there you go. Then he was just to get it done, like get it out.

This was an aggressive project. We had to get editorial. We had to get distribution. We had to get a printer. We had to sell ads because it was all 100% advertising, you know, revenue-driven. And, yeah, we were not looking two years down the road. We were looking like, okay, we got to get this book out for Mac world. You know, that was it. We had a hard stop

because we knew, you know, if we had a booth there, people would go gaga for it with, with Steve jobs on the cover. But we also knew too, it couldn't just be about jobs. So, uh, we got Mark Cuban and we got, uh, Oh my gosh, what did we get? We got the, uh, from GE, uh, Beth Comstock. We got, um, you know, I mean, Oh, we got the guy who wrote the book. Uh, Oh, his name is anyways, we actually got a hodgepodge of business and entrepreneurial minded, uh, influencers at the time. And somehow, some way, you know, uh, with an editor and, you know, some writers and designers, we, we put this sucker together and we, we got it out. And, uh, I'll never forget the first ad we sold. Cause you know, we, you don't make any money if you don't sell

any ads. So you're one weekend, you're two weeks in, you're three weeks in, and I'm going home to my girlfriend every day. And she's like, did you get a deal and i'm like no and then like you know and we've got a short time timeline to turn this around or it's going to fail but i'm too stubborn to quit i've already put it out in the universe and told people i'm going to do this i'm too stubborn to quit and too dumb probably too and uh i we sold our first ad it was to invent help you know those people on, the invent help people, they're like with George Foreman, do you have a great idea? Would you like somebody to steal that idea from you? Call invent help. Now we can help you get that. Yeah. Because I was like,

Steve job was like the, the, the, we were going to do a piece on the greatest inventors of all time brought to you by invent help. And, uh, we ended up, that was our first deal. I think it was like, you know, like three grand or something. It wasn't a very big deal, but it was a deal. It was proof of concept. Yeah. And now all of a sudden we had some belief and that sales guy saw me do it in front of him. And he was like, I guess guess this is possible and i just looked at him like i don't even know how i did that i don't know it just they said yes well if it's it's a numbers game but it sounds like you use the same sort of concept that you use in war it's it's you don't win a war you win battles and really when you think about it you guys were just trying to get

to the top of that hill that first little hill and then you go to the next hill and you go next hill and the hills keep getting bigger and just keep on chewing up some yardage yeah avoid the uh avoid the bombs three hills and you got you got the uh charlie shooting at you from the from the little bunkers there it's all like vietnam sort of, tramping through the jungle. I mean, I used to tell my business partners and my people that the one thing I liked about being a CEO was I always felt like whenever I started a new little business, because I was starting these little side businesses, I'd get bored. And we had three core businesses, and I'd either jump into other businesses or start them up just to kind of see what would click and I get bored and so I used to always equate myself to those the you know that Vietnam sort of thing where you take some army rangers and you're like hey man we're just gonna drop you into the fucking jungle and you're gonna cut a fucking path and a fucking landing spot and we're gonna bring

into gear later but it's your job to go down there and just land in the fucking overgrowth and fucking kill off all the little enemies and shit and just cut away for us to turn this into a whole camp and shit. Like Tropic Thunder. Yeah, Tropic Thunder. Just drop me into the thing. It was probably just as comedic as the thing. But I used to love that.

I used to love the creation of it, the making of it. Well, building things is fun. Yeah. Right? Like to me, building things, taking an idea, and everybody's got ideas, right? You know, ideas, a dime a dozen, right? Good ideas come along all the time. But to take an idea and actually turn it into a thing, like a tangible

thing or whatever, to me, that's super exciting. And then bringing some people along on the way, you know, hire and I'm getting them excited for your project is cool. What is not cool for me is once you get that thing going and it's, and it's, you know, making money and everything like that, now you've got to manage it and you've got to manage people. And you've got like, you know, like there's 30 people at one time, you know, and it's a 30 attitudes and problems and, you know, people back and forth. And that managing thing is not the most fun for me. The building is. So if I was a smart guy, I'd build a company, you know, get a real CEO to run it and then, and then, you know, move on to the next thing. Cause you know, building is fun, but managing day to day can be a freaking nightmare. It definitely can. I was really lucky in my first, uh, uh, my first big foray into business,

uh, where I had a lifetime friend and business partner and he was good at, at just, at just the mouse work, the, um, the spinning of the wheel work, the accounting sort of, he didn't do the accounting actually, but he, he, he was good at like, you know, that day-to-day managing the mundane part. That's the word I'm looking for. Uh, he was good at, you know, doing the books and groundwork, you know, all the groundwork. And he was good at that. But if you came to him and said, like, there were times when I said, Hey, you know, we got to fix an area of the company that we got to get under control

because it's bleeding out a little bit, some cash or, you know, things aren't working as sharply as we could fine tune them to. You know, I'd say, hey, man, I'm going to take my yellow pad and go home this weekend and I'm going to come with all these ideas.

We're going to come back and have a meeting. So take your yellow pad home this weekend. and I'm going to come with all these ideas. We're going to come back and have a meeting. So take your yellow pad home this weekend. Write down everything you think of, just anything and everything. There's no right answer. Just write it down. We're going to come back. We're going to have a meeting on Monday. 1,000% of the time, he would come back, and I'd be like,

do you got anything on your yellow pad? No, I couldn't think of anything. If you held a gun to his fucking head and said, innovate something motherfucker, or your brains get blown all over, you know, the yellow pad. Yeah.

You couldn't do it, but he was a great guy and I could trust him at the time. And, uh, for about 13 years and, uh, and he would do that mundane stuff. And so we need a great team.

I could be the visionary, the dreamer, the creator, and everything else, and then I could create something, and I could go, here's a widget, have fun with it. Yeah, and you need an execution guy. You need someone to take that idea and turn it into, absolutely, it's perfect. It's like the yin and the yang. If you get two idea people together, you're screwed. You're just going around in circles with your ideas.

Nobody doing shit. And after that, I got two executive secretaries. And so they handled the HR crap and, you know, the hiring, firing stuff. Although I like firing people. Only if they deserve it. Let me make that point clear. I don't like firing people if they don't deserve it. I hate that.

That makes me cry. But I love firing you if you deserve it. And usually you've got a employee or someone who's not getting the job done, um, instead of just going and, you know, letting them go, I would like, let it drag out and drag out and drag, you know, and I just like shun them and you know, then, then they like quit or whatever. It's the worst way to go about running a business. And I'll tell you why. Because when you let them quit, they control the narrative. See, when you let them quit, they're like, yeah, I left that place. That place sucked.

Yeah, that place was terrible. That place was horrible, right? If you fire them because you know they're not a good fit and you say, hey, listen, man, it's just not going to work. Really appreciate your efforts. You know, tell whoever you go to the next place to give me a call, give you a good reference. And you get them out there. They can't say, yeah, Chuck sucked. I quit. You know what I mean? Like, so if someone is not a good fit, I truly believe instead of dragging it out, letting them stay for an extra few weeks or something like that, just eat that frog. Just go in there and a little advice.

If they're not a good fit, they're probably not going to be a good fit in a couple weeks or in another month or two months. Sometimes you keep people for three months or six months and you're like, I hope that guy will quit. They never quit, man. They dig in. No, man. They'll be in there forever, man.

Yeah. And they'll bitch and they'll complain while they're there and they'll grumble. They'll be a grumbler, so they'll get other people grumbling. It's really important if they're not a good fit, just go ahead and let them go because otherwise yeah, it's

bad because they control the narrative. And by the way, fire them on a Friday. It's always the best day. Fire them on the Friday. have their desks boxed up and ready to go as soon as they walk in the door you grab me take them to your office sit them down someone's either cleaned out their desk or is cleaning out their desk at that point in time so there's no reason to go there and uh you have your hr walk them out to their car and uh that's the way we found to do it because otherwise they're you know they're yelling and screaming

and then they got to go take five hours to go through their fucking desk and make it. And there's just, there's a power move to it. The kind of, it just safely cements it. And everybody said like, Hey man, uh, whatever. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm polite. I'm nice when I fire people most times. Um, um, but I mean, I've had some people really, I mean, I've had a lot of salespeople

and salespeople can pull some real shit. They can steal from you. Oh, yeah. We were in the mortgage business in one of our companies. And so we'd have guys that, you know, they'd find some other mortgage company that would take their side deals.

And they were basically, you know, taking our business and getting paid more by shifting our leads that we paid for and built with our telemarketing department, you know, over to this other company that would pay them more of a split. And, you know, I'd find out later from some company, they'd be like, hey, your mortgage, I know you, your mortgage loan officer was sending deals to us. Did he split that money with you? I'm like, you fucking ass. So, but we would find out about it and then we get ugly but you know i mean there was always lawsuits going on sales people sales

people it was funny they would uh in the mortgage business at least with our mortgage business 50 percent of what you would write wouldn't close so i mean sales that's how it works you have all these leads and you have these people to talk to to, but they don't all turn into money. It was a small claims court for 100% of the orders they'd written, even though a lot of them, you know, and usually if they were bad salespeople, you know, they're running shitty orders anyway. So they weren't going to close. They were just trying to show the numbers that they were doing some work

on Chris Voss' quota board. You know, I turned in 10 deals this month, Chris, so don't fire me. Give me my draw check. But, you know, that's the thing. But I really think that when people go into business, they should do what we just got in talking about, looking at what their strengths are as their character, because there are some people that are CEOs that are just good managers. Um,

I ran into a company recently that we both know of that I won't name. And they come from a very nerdy tech background and they're really good at building, uh, different TV stuff that, uh, is really good for nerdy. And they,

they worked on the back of, of techno for, I think worked on the back of techno for I think a couple other sort of TV sort of based oriented units. But being a CEO and understanding the customer service aspect of it and everything else, I was just blown away by it. I'm just like, this really is not the job for you. And so I think a lot of people need to, need to, um, take in, take in, look at their strengths, look at their partner's strengths or their board

strengths or people they're doing business with, or at least who you're hiring to work under you. Uh, and, and try and figure out where that balance is the yin and the yang. You've got to, you've got to have that person who spins the plates. And then you've also got to have that creative visionary type. So, well, and, and you bring up a good point, Chris, because when I first started, um, I had that kind of military mentality of, you know, and remember like they had to break me, right. I had to break in the military and then they could build me up into this. You know, I ended up winning, you know, several awards as a soldier and stuff like that. I was soldier of the quarter, soldier of the quarter for battalion. They pulled me up to HHC to work with like, you know, really big wigs. Cause I shined because I let them break me. I was, I stopped fighting it. Right. And I said,

if I'm going to be here for three years, I can fight it the whole time. I'm going to be miserable or I can just play GI Joe, just go all in. Right. And so I went all in and I knew that everybody that was in charge of me, if I listened to him and I did it and I didn't fight back or whatever, that I was going to be a better soldier. I'd be better part of a team. So when I got out and started my companies, I had that kind of Steve jobs mentality. You know, Steve jobs had a reputation speaking of you know our first magazine he was he was he was an asshole to work for he was he was a prick um but he also had a reputation for getting shit done so there's that fine line between are you a nice guy or are you a dick but you get stuff done and. And, and, uh, when I started out, I was kind of like,

look, it's my way or the highway. And I was kind of that Steve jobs type, uh, military type, you know, football coach type, um, where I cared about my people very much, but I also was just very to the point and matter of fact, I didn't sugarcoat things and I expected, yeah, I expect, I was a drill sergeant in the reserves. Yes, literally, I was a drill sergeant. So that didn't work for very long. It only worked for a little bit. And then it stopped working. And I realized.

Did some people start going AWOL on you? Yeah, they start, you know what I mean? Chuck's a dick, you know, everything like that. And, you know, I kind of was. And I've since worked on changing my leadership style to be a lot more – because millennials are different. Millennials are different people to hire and to work with. And I think that – me, I'm Generation X. So I figure we just shut up and we get it done, right?

But millennials, if you say something to them in a way that they perceive as being shitty, they will lose the message and be pissed off because of the way you talk to them. And I realized that you have to have a different management style nowadays. You know, you can't say you can't joke like you used to, you can't, you know, I mean, everything is different and I'm not saying, you know you can't say you can't joke like you used to you can't you know i mean everything is different and i'm not saying you know better or worse because you know if you've seen a movie like uh wolf of wall street you know i've been on sales floors kind of like that okay like just craziness sales people you know big deals big commissions craziness debauchery yes yes right debauchery and and now you fast forward to now and leadership styles,

you know, people are working from home. People, you know what I mean? It's a lot different. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I learned to change my style instead of just saying this is the way it is and blah, blah, blah. Because if you do that, you're not going to have anybody that wants to work for you. And I couldn't have got where I am today. And not that where I am is anything really that special or that great. We've got a media company. We've got magazines. You've got three magazines.

Holy shit. I've got three magazines. Yeah. But it's all on the backs of all the people that worked with me. And I cannot not give credit to, you know, when we, we started selling that first issue, um, and I couldn't, you know, I had one sales guy, poor guy, and he eventually left and, and, uh, you know, it was hard to get someone to come in, to do this particular type of sale. I reached back to guys I'd worked with in the past. It was kind of like the A team.

We just started pulling them in. You know, one guy was working on a fishing boat and one guy I reached back to guys I'd worked with in the past. It was kind of like the A-team. We just started pulling them in. You know, one guy was working on a fishing boat, and one guy was selling cars, and one guy was – and we pulled them all together and was like, guys, we've got six weeks to go. We've got to sell this much in advertising. Are you in? And they were like, let's go, you know?

And so it was the A-team. Did you get the van? We had the van. We had the crazy guy, Hannibal. You know what I mean? And we got it done. So you really do have to have good people. And we learned a lot going through the business growing and stuff like that.

Car sales guys are the best to move into any other industry if you can get them to stay in it. Really? Especially used car sales. I would say timeshare salespeople. Those guys are beasts. If you can sell timeshares over the phone, you can sell like salt to a snail, you know? Yeah, pretty much.

But then you see they have the biggest issues where they'll call you and be like, yeah, I'm in a limo right now with some hookers and an eight ball. Yeah. It's fucking time. And you're like, hey, well, can you show up at the office someday and do some work? Yeah, man.

All right, dude. The, you know, they're easy. I've bailed a lot of sales guys out of jail. Out of jail. I was just going to that next level. One, we almost one we almost paid for him to go to mexico we were like he's going away for five years we're like dude we could set you up down there he's like no i'm gonna do this is true uh i i used to have a lot of that

where you you get that you're like oh there's the county jail number okay looks like chris is getting up in the middle of the night going downtown and bailing out salesman number one because he's worth you know several hundred into the company yeah takes in about 50 grand a month i guess i'm getting out of bed but it's not that different than like a sports team you know if you've got a great player on your team and he's now listen if he's the last guy on the team, the bottom of the bench, and he goes out and he gets in trouble, that guy's gone. Right. But if he's like your best player or something like that,

you're going to give them a little bit of leniency, you know, when they have a county jail call and you're like, Oh, what? Oh, it's Bob. Hey, you're breaking up, man. Yeah. I think that's that. What? Hey, where are you at? I don't care what you did. Yeah, whatever. Hang on, let me call you back. Yeah, hang on. He's going, you can't call me back.

I'm at the jail. I'll call you. Yeah. Those are the days. So the adventures of starting a new business. So you guys launched Innovation Tech today. Now, is it a monthly now quarterly quarterly now, which ironically enough ended up being smart back at the time.

Everyone's like, you can't do a quarterly. You can't do a quarterly. You can't do a quarterly. And then before I had worked in sports, we did annuals. I was like, why can't you do a quarterly?

Now, if you see these magazines that are coming out and there actually are magazines still coming out, I know it's weird, but they're quarterly, you know, because it's not that breakneck pace of doing a weekly or a monthly. Those guys are dead. But quarterly, you can put it out, make it a nice coffee table magazine,

and that's what we decided to do. You can really probably fill it with ads. You know, the thing I've seen you guys have had, name some of the other people you guys have had in the magazines over the years. You, you've had, I guess it's really cool people on the cover. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had Scarlett Johansson. We had Kevin Hart. We had James Cameron, the director. We had Olivia Munn. We've had Bear Grylls. We've had, oh, well, all the sharks from Shark Tank.

You know, we've had just about everylls. We've had, oh, all the sharks from Shark Tank. You know, we've had just about every one of them except for Barbara. We have Mishi Okaku, the scientist. We've had, I mean, behind me, we've got our boy, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos, you know. And a lot of times we have tie-ins with TV shows or movies that are coming out or whatever. So we do a story about that. And, you know, they're doing a press tour. But yeah, no, man, we've had big names. In fact, we've got a list of probably like 100

that you would look at and go, wow, like we've gotten them. You know what I mean? I can look with my daughter and there's a person on a show and I'm like, yeah, we got them. We got them, which is interesting because we're not Sports Illustrated or Time or Wire Magazine. We are innovation and tech today. Well, even now, there's a lot of opportunity now.

People that are watching the show can come up with their own entrepreneurial ideas. Even right now, I realize that we needed to go more into the podcast, make more podcasts, and invite more high-profile guests on. And probably the same for you. All these movie stars and shit are just sitting around you know they're doing stupid zoom appearances everywhere they're on twitter getting into twitter battles there's no there's no filming going on there's nothing going on and these people you know they're used to having some attention and no conferences no expos no

awards shows there is literally nothing but them at home and probably their kids driving them crazy yeah i mean we've got a new podcast the resistance radio podcast that we flipped over from chris foss's podcast on politics i just like the name better and so it's still kind of a new political podcast and so i started reaching out to like you know local politicians that are running for office coming in november trying to support the uh of course the blue wave uh obviously it's called the resistance radio yeah and um they're kind of like well you know uh what who are you and what are you doing i'm like hey man we're getting you exposure because right now all your stupid

candidates are sitting at home i don't mean stupid but you know all your candidates just sitting at home uh not getting exposure they can't go out and and shake hands and kiss babies uh the last thing you do is kiss babies right now probably uh so they can't do any of that so yeah you've got a you've got to get these people exposure and of course when you appear on any of the chris fosh show properties on on the on the network you know you get like i mean every show has got like i don't know 20 freaking syndication sites so you're on spotify and everything else and just floods it i'm like let's get an exposure and they're like okay cool man so i think we have like the attorney i think we have the governor nominate nominate for Utah coming on next week. It's going to be good. But this is a great time to take advantage of some of this media. It's an incredible time. And if people are listening and thinking of starting a podcast, we had this magazine, Innovation in Tech Today. And then a couple years ago, we did a couple of spinoffs. We did a residential tech magazine and we did a cannabis tech magazine,

same format quarterly, you know, print digital tied in with events, new stand distribution, same kind of deal. We figured we would just kind of like duplicate it or whatever, but we did know that we needed to have a podcast. And so about a year ago at one of the big cannabis events, I got one of those little tiny mics i i got three people that said hey man you want you want to be on our podcast and we hadn't even again here we are we had no podcast the podcast was not real that we i just had a microphone

and some people and we sat it down in a little on podcast row and i started cranking out uh interviews and you know giving them to my guy and he edited them up and then he created the accounts and he got them out there. So we're about 30 episodes later. Um, and we've had great guests. I mean, really good guests and I've gotten a lot better, you know, I was one of them. Yes, yes you were. Uh, and I look back on it now and I, and to the people listening, just do it. Just crank out the content in the beginning. Even if you suck, it's okay. If you talk to anybody that's a standup comedian, they'll tell you, look, you have to suck before you can get good. You don't just start out being, you know,

Jerry Seinfeld or Kevin Hart or something. You have to suck to get good. And the same thing, podcasts, the same thing, being a business owner, you're going to take some lumps in the beginning, just stick with it and go and don't listen to the, uh, to the noise. And one day you'll look back. We just got an award today,

uh, for our, our podcasts on the cannabis magazine, cannabis tech talks, which was surprising because we just made that up in the beginning. And those first episodes are probably not very good, but we have gotten better. And so it,

yeah, it's, it's worth it to just get out there and make that content. And, and you're right. You can get anybody right now during the pandemic. Everybody's at home. There's a lot of opportunity.

Like that's what we've been talking about in the Chris Foss show for a while now is some of the different ideas that are born out of it. My first company was successful. We started with $2,000 and a lot of sweat equity. The year and a half later, we started a second company on top of the first company because I was bored and I wanted to get into white collar instead of blue collar. And I started a mortgage company with $4,000 that we were supposed to pay taxes with. And I'm like, I bet you that I can turn this $4,000 around,

be able to pay my taxes on time and create a new business with the money. And you know, we had like a quarter to do it and I did it. Um, both companies were profitable within the first three months because they were so, uh, cheaply funded and most of it was sweat equity using our own cars, our own stuff, um, working from home. And so there was a lot of overhead. And so all the profits that we made just went right back into building the company. And we were able to grow exponentially and build them into super companies. And, you know, you bring up a good point that I try and teach a lot of people.

I would always see these people in business. They're like, I'm going to start my own business. And you're like, well, why have you started? And you're like, well, I'm working on the business plan. You're like, you've been working on that business plan for a fucking two years now. I've never had a business plan. It's on my to-do list. I swear to God, Chris.

It's been on my list for six years. Do the business plan. You and I are like 30 years into business, and we're just like, you know, I should write one down. You really need a business plan. You know, I mean, most of it's in my head, and it's really not that complicated. I mean, I remember. Bring in more than you spend.

I remember, and this is really true, and this goes to the point that you brought in earlier, so hopefully that goes to the segue here. But you brought in earlier about how you just got to do it. You just got to go for it. And I remember we started our first company and it was regulated at the time. This is before Clinton deregulated the trucking industry. And so at the time, the courier business that we got into was regulated by a local department commission for the state of utah

and and they regulated trucking couriers and airlines and so you had to create what was called a tariff which was this giant book and you see like you know if you've ever seen the schedules that the airline puts out and they have these books they have to publish them um but you would have to submit to the commission this giant fucking tariff thing. And it had to be in, if you've ever seen legal pros for legal pleadings that you have to submit to a court, like they have their own pain in the ass way that those have to be presented and typed out. The commission took it to like the whole new level because these guys were just guys sitting around going, we've got to figure out a way to validate our fucking job so they can never fire us and so you had to write this thing and put like a

hash down the whole side of the page if you didn't have the hash down inside the page and have the shit spaced out right you know 20 spaces i mean the format was fucking insane dude it was like a scientific fucking formula and if you turn in a tariff that wasn't like totally spaced and tip-top tip-top perfected the way they want it you know oh you didn't put the date on the right fucking line then that thing would get kicked back and then you'd have to go retype the motherfucking things to resubmit it it was a nightmare and we used to go into their offices and you'd see like stacks this tall of the airline's their tariffs the airline tariffs that they put forth for their schedule and pricing. And so we would do all this shit.

And I remember we were trying to get our application. And they'd be like, okay, to get your application approved for your license, you've got to give us a 12-month cash flow of what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. So we were starting out from scratch. So I wrote this thing and I said, hey, we're using our own cars. So, you know, we're not buying trucks. We're doing everything from home. And, you know, we're totally, you know, totally, you know,

we're doing this from bootstrap. So they had never seen that. You know, they were used to couriers like Wells Fargo and these big companies that come in, Pony Express that come in, you know, they're funded by big corporations, you know they were used to couriers like wells fargo and and these big companies that come in pony express that come in you know they're funded by big corporations you know fedex they buy a bunch of trucks and shit and they're just like what and so i wrote the i wrote the front page and then i submitted this really cheap boilerplate uh not boilerplate but this this budget of bootstrap it was like okay we're gonna take this two thousand dollars and then we're gonna turn it there and i i just kind of gave a conservative estimate because that's how i am because i'm not gonna like sell a bunch of bullshit like yeah we're gonna make

like 10 million dollars in the first year or something so we submitted it to them and they rejected it and they said this was the i still have the letter framed it's somewhere around my office or one of my boxes i still have the letter framed. It's somewhere around my office or one of my boxes. I still have the letter framed. And they literally wrote me back and said, this is like the biggest joke application we've ever seen. Like, you can't even be serious. This thing will never fucking work.

And they just shit all over in this letter. And that's why it's still framed, because it actually became a 13-year joke. And they said, it'll never fly. you know, all that sort of shit. I think it was like the IBM Watson guy who said, CEO, who said, there's no way that anyone would need personal computers in the world. No. They just need supercomputers. They don't need personal computers.

It's stupid. So it was like that. So I went down down to their office and i sat down with the guy and i said look and i and i use my personality and i learned use my power of of selling and i sold him on the idea and i said look here's how it's going to i gave him the whole vision i wanted to tear his throat out but i fortunately didn't do that and so i said i said so here so what can I do? He goes, here's what I want you to do. I just want you to go make this bullshit PNL of like,

you're going to make like all this money. He goes, I have to have you make an pretend that you're going to have to make enough money for us to justify to give you the license. And so I basically had to go lie and just be like we're gonna make 10 000 the first month at 20 and 30 and we're gonna make 4 million by the end of the year and it's gonna be like all this profit coming out our ass we're gonna buy these cars and like i just had to like just like make up all this bullshit was the total lie and i knew after all the businesses i started and and business that i helped there there was no way that that sort of exponential growth would happen, not without a huge capital influx. And, and, uh, but yeah,

fake it till you make it, uh, get to the top of the hill. And, uh, yeah, after that they gave us a license, but man, if we'd sat around and said, Oh God, we got to put a, uh, we got to put a master plan together. Uh, you know, and, and I see, I see so many people that are like, I'm starting a business, you know, like you've been saying that for three years. Well, I'm just getting, I'm just getting ready. Yeah. It's, it's afraid of making a mistake when here's the kicker. Okay. And now this is, this is my turn to bring up something that's going to make me look a little tiny bit smart. There's a book out there, and it's called The Talent Code.

And the idea behind The Talent Code, I don't remember who wrote it, but you look it up. It's a great book. The idea behind it is it's impossible to reach a level of mastery, to be really, really good, to be outstanding at something without failing. So you want to fail. And it sounds crazy because a lot of people that want to start a business that, like you just said, you know, they've been three years, five years, you know, I've got, I've owned a domain name for seven years talking about this idea I'm going to do that. I haven't done anything with that. I'm going to start next week. Um, and it's that same thing. It's that fear of doing it wrong or not doing it right or whatever. That is, that is, that will kill you as an entrepreneur, as a business person,

as an idea person, whatever you have to basically do, you know, uh, uh, it's, it's like ready firing, you know, you've got to just do it. And, and that talent code, you know, that whole thing is you have to fail and learn from those fails a lot of times. But then what happens is your brain starts rewiring. And all of a sudden, you now have got those threads going back and forth. And now you're pretty good. And now you've got confidence. And now you can start reaching that level of mastery where you can be great, whatever it is, your business, your podcast, you know, selling, advertising, whatever it is. But you have to go through that and you have to embrace the suck because there's going to be times that suck. And you have to just, as a military term, embrace the suck.

You know it's going to suck. Charles, this should be your book when you come out with a book this should be the title embracing the suck with charles because it's coming you know don't pretend it's like if you run the hurdles in high school and track you don't get surprised when you come around the corner and there's a big hurdle in front of you you're like where did that come from no it's it's part of the the event i think you got a fourth business magazine there. Remember in the 80s, they used to have Success Magazine.

Forbes was big. Forbes was like, I don't know, half an inch thick or an inch thick. There's all these crazy business magazines that are coming out every week. I think this is your fourth magazine, Embrace the Suck magazine. That's a great idea.

Of course, Embracing the Suck could probably also work as a motto for your cannabis. Right? That's a pretty good pun there. Embracing the Bond Suck. But yeah, so The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Greatness isn't born, it's grown. Here's how. And yeah, it's Tom Peters, actually.

And I read a lot of Tom Peters and preparing to start my own companies. Um, but he, it looks like he gave it a plug. Uh, but yeah, I mean, people just realize it's, it's just one of those things. It's almost kind of like being a parent. I mean, yeah, you can prepare as much as you want for being a parent, but nothing's going to fucking prepare you for when the first time you see that baby come out and then, you know, you're not sleeping for the next five years. Yeah.

You got diapers and pee and poop coming at you and vomit. Well, and oh man, yeah. Projectile vomit and things you'd never seen a human come out of a human. But I will tell you this. I also was kind of obsessed and you'll hear that a lot of people that are, you know, eventually get to a very high level of their field or whatever. It's not just a job. It becomes, you become obsessed. I was obsessed with entrepreneur minded. Like I started listening to like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy,

subscribing to newsletters, reading the books. I was taught by my sales managers, everybody needs a personal development library. And if you don't have a, I had freaking tapes, Chris. Okay. I had a collection of Brian Tracy, the psychology of sales. And I would listen to that shit. And I, I created my own little library of personal development stuff. And I would listen to that shit. And I created my own little library of personal development stuff. And I'm telling you that stuff works because you're going to need something to get you through from one pitfall to the next. And I think that that is just enough. You know, you still got to do the work. You still got to have good strategy. Like Tony Robbins would say, you know, you got to have strategy. You've got to be in a good state. Uh, but you also have to, you have to have something that can, can be an, uh, inspiration

or a role model to keep you going. Because I didn't have those role models in my life. My parents weren't entrepreneurs. My grandparent, you know, my grandpa was in the national guard. My dad, he was a really hardworking guy, but he was like a service manager at an auto shop, you know, they weren't entrepreneurs. So it was these tapes and these books and that gave me the belief and sports and the army that gave me that belief that, okay, you can do a lot more than you think you can. And so I think a lot of people don't start a business because there's that little, that little voice, you know, in their head, that little person on their shoulder who's going, but what if you fail?

But what if you fail? What if it doesn't work? Well, who gives a shit, right? If it doesn't work, you don't know if you don't try. And you learn a lot from your failures. And hopefully people are smart and they learn a lot from our failures. And that's what we used to do. I mean, we used to go, okay, well, that didn't work.

And I even had a few great CEOs that taught me some real things about retesting stuff to see if it still doesn't work. Um, and how to tinker and how to, you know, and sometimes it's just a combo. It's like a, it's like cracking a safe. Sometimes you got to sit there and go, okay, a four segment. No, no, that's not going to pull the lever. Okay. Let's use this combo. It's like a science experiment. Did you ever do one where, you know, you mix this with this and you just want to see what happens.

And then you're like, Oh, that's cool. Like it's kind of fun. That's sort of like taking your ideas and taking the resources you have, putting them together and being like, is this thing going to work? You know, it's, it's kind of like a real life experiment. And when it works, it's very it's kind of like a real life experiment and when it works, it's very, um, awesome. Yeah. It feels really good because a lot of times too, while you're doing this, people are telling you it's never going to work. You're never going to make it. I remember when I left, when I left my first job to start my, my own company in 2002, uh, you know, I was making

well over six figures. I was one of the top guys. I was, I was, they were grooming me. You know, I was a Lieutenant. They were grooming me to come up very high in the organization. I'd done really well. And I left to start this thing. And they said, I heard when I left, they were like, yeah, he'll be back. He's going to end up making minimum wage out there. He'll be back. And when I heard that all of a sudden I was like, oh, oh, it's going to be like that. And those competitive juices were going, there's no way I was going to come slinking back. And to this day, we've got great relationships. My old boss, I owe him a ton of, he taught me, he mentored me.

And so I owed him a lot, but I also eventually had to leave and start my own thing. And there were a lot of people on the sideline, you know, with their, with their arms crossed going, Oh, they'll never make it. Those guys are going to fail. So it felt extra special good to do it. When people tell you that you can't, you can use that as, as fuel, you know, like right now, the last dance with Michael Jordan is, is really big right now because we have no sports. But when you go back and look at, and I don't even, I didn't even like the bowls, but you go back and look at Michael Jordan and how much he overcame and how much, unlike any other person he could, he would make up a reason to get pissed at someone so he could go out and drop 50. And that was his mentality, you know, like, uh, and I think for entrepreneurs,

you got to have that same kind of thing. You got to be able to motivate yourself on those days that you don't feel like going into the office all alone, making those calls. You got nothing on the board. You got to find something to light a fire under your ass. And it helps if you have haters, because that will, that might push you through on one day when you think about quitting. I remember, I remember there was a story about when Michael Jordan played in the Olympics. And there was some story game where he did, by halftime, he had done like 45 points. By halftime.

And they go in, and the coach at the time is like, what the fuck do you say to Michael Jordan to get him to go to the next level? Like, he just did 45 points in half a game. He's like, I don't remember what it was exactly, but he's like, what do you say to him at that point? Like, well, you know, thanks, you pretty much got the game for us. But, you know, he ended up saying something to Michael Jordan to fire him up again. He said something like, you need to rebound more and pass the ball or something and he's something to get Michael fired up

so why do you why do you think that uh and that's a really good point um my favorite player was was Magic Johnson of all time my favorite player like I'm a Son fan. So I love Gary Payton and Sean camp. And you know, the, uh, the Sonics were great. RIP the Sonics. Um, but, but when I was growing up, Magic Johnson was the best player because he made everybody around him better. He was showtime. He could pass, he could rebound, he could score. I mean, I thought he was amazing, but Magic Johnson was not a good coach. Michael Jordan, that he tried he was a coach for like a year or something like that right michael jordan i think i could be wrong uh whoever's listening they can google it i think did he try to coach or something i don't know if he coached i know he owned didn't he own the washington he was a part owner yeah and he was like an owner

player or whatever but you know if you look at great players larry bird i think coached for a minute and and all of these greats like like incredible players they were shitty coaches because it's like they would be like hey just crank it up to this level like i did as a player and those players were like i don't know how to get to that level. That's something special that, you know, these great iconic players have that they just go, well, do what I did. And players don't – it seems like great coaches, especially in baseball, a lot of times were like backup journeyman type players who had to learn everything about the game to just make it and stick. And so they end up becoming good managers you know good good managers or good coaches

but superstars it's very rare that you see a superstar become a great coach how do you coach someone yeah how do you do that i learned with salespeople in my business too if you have a great salesman you don't make them a sales manager you will ruin them they'll suck at being a sales manager and then they can never go back and then yeah, you know, cause they're like, I'm a manager now. I'm no longer that sales dude. And, but you, you leave that sales dude and they're just monsters.

So what they do, they're great salespeople. Um, so you've got the cannabis today. I feel you. I think we started, you started cannabis today. Uh,

the magazine about the same time. Cannabis and tech today. Cannabis and tech today. And then I, I started pop biz podcast because I could see that we were starting to have people on the show and the Chris Voss show. They were coming and talking about investing in pot, the burgeoning stock market for stock that was out there.

Uh, Canada, you know, went huge where they, uh, legalize pot. Um, you know, I'm not a big pot. You've got to stop calling it pot.

Yeah, okay, marijuana. We don't like pot. We like cannabis. Cannabis, all right. Yeah, yeah, pot and marijuana are kind of like those slangs that, you know, back in Reefer Madness and stuff like that. Cannabis. I had to call it Pot Biz Podcast because I had to get the Twitter to fit.

Yeah, limited number of characters. And plus, you know, you had to get the Twitter to fit the 13 limited characters. Plus, you had to have something catchy for the people to remember. I don't even think half the people who smoke cannabis can spell it. That's just a joke. It's a hard one to spell. I'm not even sure I can spell it. Marijuana?

Where's the J? I can't even spell calendar. That messes me up all the time. C-A-L-E-N? No, it's Calander. Calander, yeah. I think so. I could be wrong, though. We could be like everyone in the audience is laughing at us right now.

These two dipshits saying, no, it's called calendar. Do you know what's funny is we had Innovation in Tech today, and I'm here in Denver, right? I'm right now. I've been in Denver about 10 years, and we're here with Innovation in Tech today and I'm here in Denver, right? I'm right now. I've been in Denver about 10 years and we're here with innovation in tech today. We wanted to spin off a cannabis tech magazine, but we couldn't come up with the name and we were just fumbling it. Like we were, you know, and we, we, we used beer, we used cannabis, we used everything we could to inspire greatness.

We'd write things down. We'd have, you know, brainstorming sessions. And for like months, we couldn't come up with the name. And then one moment it just hit me. We have innovation and tech today. I was like, cannabis and tech today. And I like texted everyone. It just was it. It was the thing. And then residential tech today, all of a sudden the names kind of fit in. Yeah, it was a family. And why were we making it so hard? Like, oh my God, we were like you, you know, we were like, oh, cannabis business magazine, you know, what the hell are we going to call this? It was right there in front of us the whole time. You know, I just had to look. And there's some people that do that

with their business too. They'll spend years trying to come up with the perfect name. And I remember a couple of companies that we had, I had the business model in my head so i knew we were going to do and uh we had the money from our other companies to go start it and i literally have the office paid for uh the phones coming in i'd have everything set up to to do the business uh and we didn't have a name and i'd literally be be like, I don't, you, I'd tell my board, I'm like, you guys are going to need to come up with a fucking name because I can't come up with one. I'm going to name it Shit Show Incorporated. But tomorrow I'm going down.

This happened like, I remember twice. I go, I'm going down to the Department of Corporations to file the paper and get the stamp on this damn thing. And I'm leaving blank the name because we don't have one. But I am forming this damn company and I need a name by morning because at 9 a.m. I will be at the window at the Department of Corporations for the stamp. And I'll name it anything at that point. I don't give a shit.

And I remember there was one company that i named uh and within 30 days we renamed it because people just gave me blowback on the name and and they just were like no this really doesn't work for this market and so we flipped the name but we had the business going and we had it running and you know we're moving the top of the hill you know we weren't we weren't trying to figure out well should we clear the weeds before we go to the top of the hill a lot a lot of the experts now that you listen to will tell you the name isn't shit you know i remember gary v saying look it's tim freaking hortons okay it's tim hortons okay the name doesn't mean what does that mean yeah uh but i will say this get get the opinion of a lot of people around you bounce some things off you

know you've got your circle I remember me and my friends before we were doing tech we did sports programs so I did the programs for major college bowl games the World Series League Championships NASCAR PGA golf right we did those same kind of deal just it was sports programs instead of tech magazines. And we were getting ready to start our own business. And we were going, we were like, let's call it ISM inter sports marketing. You know, we were like playing around with these names, trying to figure out, you know, these really cool. And when my girlfriend at the time, she goes, why do you want to pigeonhole yourself in sports? Why don't you call it something like mainstream media? And I was like, mainstream media international.

So we started MMI. It was a multimillion dollar company doing sports programs and, you know, working with the really, really big events. Like we did the official program for the orange bowl or for the, uh, the Fiesta bowl or for whatever. Um, and we got to go to the games and we sold it. It was a lot of fun, but she was right. Mainstream Media International, MMI, you could apply yourself to anything. It wasn't just sports. And so, yeah, I don't know how important a name is, but get something that you can really sink your teeth into because that's going to be your identity when you don't have a real business and real legacy or anything like that. You do kind of just make it up in your head and start speaking it into existence. Yeah.

And keeping it general. I mean, you names used to be kind of important back when you used to have to buy yellow pages and everyone would try to be, you know, a hard bark plumbing, you know, hard bark.

You gotta be that first guy on the fucking line there in the yellow pages book. Yeah. But now that doesn't matter anymore. And, and really it's about your brand. You know, you bring up a good thing on naming the thing. Years ago, in 2009, we were coming up with the Chris Voss Show concept, and everyone's like, you know, you've got to start a social media company and marketing and consulting and all this sort of stuff, agency. What are you going to call it?

I'm like, call it social media this social media that you know by then everyone scooped everything up um and uh i'm like well fuck man what am i gonna call this social media marketing and now 10 years later in where a lot of social media is kind of second hat and so i'm so glad i didn't name it social media anything um but uh i finally just one day saw some people and i was like should i call it the chris voss show and then i got thinking about i'm like the chris voss show because i one of my qualms was like i don't know that i want to be talking about social media for 10 years because to me social media is really simple it's media that's social it's not like

i've seen like all these people and there's brilliant people that turn into a science and stuff but really when it fucking comes down to it it's just media that's social that's it you don't have to you know it's not an algebra problem um it's marketing social media um and so you know i had people say well well, you just got in early. No, I didn't. I come from a marketing sales background. I marketed my companies, I built companies. All I did was go, oh, it's a different form of advertising. Yeah. There's a lot of people that came in when you did and they have 2000 followers today. You know, it's not just that you came in early. There's a little mix that's got to go, you know,

into this. And if you leave one element out, it's like a recipe. You know what it's not just that you came in early. There's a little mix that's got to go, you know, into this. And if you leave one element out, it's like a recipe. You know what I mean? You might have all the ingredients in there, but if you put it in the oven for too long, you're going to screw it up. Or if you put it in the oven at the wrong temperature, even though you had the right ingredients, you can, you know.

So then it hit upon me. I was like, if I call it the Chris Voss show, I can change it in five years or i can change it in 10 years i can it's because the chris voss show is what the fuck chris voss wants to show about i think it's great name whatever chris wants to talk about well i think so too but it sounds authoritative you've got chris voss show it's one syllable one cell is it's nice yeah i think you did all right it's a long the only problem is people get the s's mixed up i don't know why it is people love to write me and they love you can see the name right here

people will take and put two s's on the chris and one s on the vos like you're chris angel like yeah like who the maybe it was chris angel who does he have two s's for me i think he does i think you're right he has chris but but i have these people like and chris angel's probably the only guy in the fucking world who's got two s's at the end of chris like i've known five trillion chris's we all have the same spelling right here except there might be like a k if you're a girl or something like k-r-i-s or you know something like that we're not chris is pretty standard yeah and also i have people write write me and they must be dyslexic because they just take the S from the

Voss part and they flip it to the double S. They're just Criss Angel fans. Maybe I should start pulling them. People butcher the name of our magazine all the time. People are like, yeah, he's with Innovative Tech Magazine. They're like, he's with Innovation Technology Tomorrow. They're like,

he's with Cannabis Technology. They're like, he's with cannabis technology. And they just butcher it. Like it's so butchered. And I just go along with it. And you know, what's funny is we named the magazine too, right? Because our first issue that you were in was the legacy series, you know, Steve Jobs, whatever. It was like a commemorative one-off, you know, no big deal. We had to come up with a name that would work a quarter after quarter. And what were we going to cover? It's funny. I got an old shirt back here. That's got my advertisers from back then. And we put like, we finally named it innovation and tech today. Cause we figured if someone sees that name on a magazine, they will know exactly what the hell's in it, right? It's innovation and tech today.

You're going to know what's in there. And people all the time are just like, so what's the magazine about? And I'm like, it's innovation and tech today. And there was one girl one time, she's like, you know what? You should name the magazine. And we've already been out for a couple of years.

And I just was like, yeah, what? Tell me, because people love to help you. She's like, you should name the magazine and we've already been out for a couple years and i just was like oh yeah what tell me because people love to help you uh she's like you should name it innovation and tech tomorrow and i was like isn't the innovation though the tomorrow part technically when you think about it yeah it's the innovation is the tomorrow, the tech today. Right? We're bringing you tomorrow's tech today. Like cannabis and tech today. Like I literally tried to spell it out.

So if you were walking along and you saw it, you'd be able to. And no, it was still people are just like, so what's that about? Or people are like, so tell me. And they always say it like this too. They think they're going to stump me. They're like, so tell me. And they always say it like this too. They think they've, they've, they're going to stump me. They're like, so tell me what does technology have to do with cannabis? I'm like,

I'm like, Ooh, you are a smart, look at the big brain on Brad. Look at the big brain on Brad. Yeah. I have that with the pot biz podcast. Like people will be like, cause you know,

we've done the, we've done the pot, uh, the cannabis, uh, shows like you have. And I forget the one that was just last year. about financial investments and they were investment advisors and one of their big portfolios was pot company investments and I started realizing that just like the stock market just like Nasdaq in fact I believe now there there are cannabis companies on the stock market exchange they're listed the the whole thing was turning into a business genre of you know just like everything else it was just like you know plastics and and orange juice and everything else it's it's you know the newest thing you remember the dot coms that's what it's a lot like the the dot com era the dot com era and uh then we started getting into the science of it and you know i mean these people are putting out uh a cannabis on a scale.

And so they have to totally industrialize it to a point of manufacturing, factory floors. And they've got to have different ways of just making it in mass and then packaging, shipping. And all the problems that any other product producer has, whether it's bread or meat or anything of that you know you've got to have the factory and you've got to have the ability to to to do all the right chemical cooking and cleaning and all that sort of stuff and process and when you go to these cannabis shows it's not just a bunch of people sitting around smoking it it's there's all these different services especially for manufacturing they're like you know they make the boxing things. So, you know, packaging companies, yeah. And seals it up, right. And puts it in the box. Staffing. They got cannabis staffing. Yeah. It's all this stuff. And, you know, and then one of the,

one of the issues with the cannabis industry, at least in America is you can't use banks. So you've got, you know, you've got a real cash problem. And so you've got to deal with those sort of issues. And, and, uh, you know, there's, there's a lot of stuff. And then of course you've got regulations you've got to hop through because you can, you can be making a lot of money in California, Oregon and Washington, Nevada, where it's legal. And then, you know, you got to be careful about interstate transportation. And I remember when I first, uh, just before I came up to Utah to write this book, one of the cannabis trucks was going through Utah and it got pulled over. They busted the driver and stuff, but it was a legal entity and it was part of the, I don't know if it's the farm bill, but there's some sort of federal law that allows them to transport this stuff. If they're licensed, if they're legal, you know, and they're moving between the factories and stuff, and, you know, it's part of the thing that they're allowed to do.

And so they had to go, oh, okay, our bad, you know, state of use, our bad, whoops, yeah, okay, we violated that whole thing. But, you know, this is one of the things they have to worry about. So they've got to do all this stuff, and there's all these companies to consult and help with that and thing. But, you know, this is one of the things they have to worry about. So they've got to do all the stuff, and there's all these companies to consult and help with that and stuff. And so it's funny, all people say to me, they'll be like, what is Pot Biz podcast about? And I'll be like, it says

Pot Biz. Like, what the fuck? It's not like how to become a... Maybe people think it's how to become a cartel member in Mexico. Yeah, it's how to learn Bulgarian folk dancing. That's what you're going to get. How to fly in under the radar of the FAA, 40 pounds, 40 kilos. Origami.

It's mostly origami. How to dig holes underneath the wall. No, man, it's pot biz, podcast. But I think a lot of people are slowly adapting to it. They're understanding that now it's becoming a real business and everything else. Well, here's something. You're absolutely right. And during COVID right now, what has been a really big breakthrough in the cannabis industry is the fact that it's been deemed essential in most of the states where

the governors get to decide what stays open and not. And I'm not just talking about dispensaries, but I'm talking about manufacturing. I'm talking about cultivation. I mean, so it's gone from something that was underground that, you know, people are still in jail for today for cannabis, right? For weed, whatever, marijuana, devil's lettuce, they're, they're gone while people are making millions of dollars. Entrepreneurs are out here hustling for every aspect of the business, like you just said. Um, and, but, but during this time, the cannabis industry was deemed essential. And, uh, not only did they do that, but they stepped up and just like a lot of businesses, they converted and started making PPE.

They started making hand sanitizer. They actually can use their labs that they test weed so that you know what you're getting, what strain it is. Those PCR tests can be used to test for corona. That's right. And so all of a sudden, you have an underground industry that's decided to step up like all the mainstream businesses and do its part during a pandemic. It's kind of cool to see that maturation because, you know, it wasn't that long ago that it was completely underground.

And all the cannabis businesses were cut out from those federal loans and the money that went out to the businesses, the excluded cannabis businesses and cannabis businesses cannot declare bankruptcy. Did you know that? I did not know that. Of course not because they can't bank. So cannabis, if you screw up in your cannabis business,

you're passing that on to your kids. You're passing it on to your kids. I wonder if you can make a mass out of hemp. You probably can. Yeah. You can make everything out of hemp. Yeah I wonder if you can make a mass out of hemp. You probably can. Yeah. You can make everything out of hemp. Yeah. Hemp then is going to be used to make a lot of stuff.

Yeah. And, and so it's interesting how the world changes. And so hopefully this gives some people on some different ideas on, on how to be successful. Just do it legally folks. That's the main thing. Always follow the law.

Always pay your people. And, um, always have a good, have a good bookkeeper, have a really good CPA. There you go. Right. That's, that's what you gotta do. And have a good attorney on speed dial to run your, run your stuff through. Um, but, uh, uh, you know, so a lot of different things you learned in the business. Uh, the one thing I'm kind of curious about, because I used to, I've never been a big pot person.

And when it became legal in Vegas and my body was just like, you're not drinking anymore, man. You're just not doing it. And I could just, I started tuning in my body more. And I think I just reached an age where I could just tell if I drank for like three or four days, it would just be with me. It would dehydrate me. I'd just be dragging. I just would not be, you know, popping.

And I'm just like, man, a couple hours of fun hitting the bottle just is going to ruin my life for the next three days. It just wasn't worth it anymore. And so when Vegas became legal, I started getting edibles cause I can't deal with the smoking. I mean, I get people do so knock yourself out. But, uh, so I would take the edibles and they would really help me out with my inflammation and my joint pains, you know, I'm 52 now. So, you know know everything hurts all the time like and so um and it really started helping with a lot of different pain problems that i was having and i don't i didn't take it

very often but anytime i was in pain i'd pop it and it would be just amazing at how much it really worked for inflammation like i would hear people talk about it really works for my inflammation and my pain i'm just like yeah sure dude so does my vodka and uh but then i was like holy shit and there was a couple nights where i hit the vodka bottle a little hard and my kidney and liver swelled up the size of a small elephant my body and you're just like oh wow man okay i get it you don't like me anymore you want a divorce you know my kidney's like kicking it's like get us the fuck out of here this dude man we're sick as shit and and so i would take some uh edibles and the edibles would take the inflammation down and and get everything calmed down and so i'm kind of curious because

one of the problems with coronavirus is the body inflames in in the way that it does to fight off the virus and the inflammation is stuff that's really killing people. The blood clotting and even in the kids, we're seeing this Kawasaki's disease where it's showing up on the skin. Yeah, do you see the feet? Like Corona toe or something like that? They get all puffy. There's some kids that it's all over their body.

What is that called where people have the, they're born with the blood spots on their face or body somewhere what's that called um and it's permanent for life yeah but but it's gorbachev had one yeah gorbachev's disease he had like italy or something right there yeah um and angia was pangaea was a p pangea it's right there on the thing and uh i mean at least you always knew who he was you're like hey you're that guy um i mean he was leader russia you weren't gonna fuck with him because you're gonna have a gulag in fucking siberia uh what'd you do i made fun of gorbachev little tear down that wall agonia um and so and so uh i'm curious if they started using um because evidently one evidently a couple of the drugs they're using now is to calm down the inflammation, to get the body to quit overreacting and damage, because it's damaging the organs, the livers and kidneys with its inflammation.

And so now some of the medicines are giving her for anti-inflammation. So I'd be curious to know, like if, if, if that helps because, well, I can tell you as a guy who publishes a cannabis tech magazine and has had a lot of people on my podcast, they are, they're very early. So it's anecdotal, but they're already starting to test. And there's some other places that have been ahead of us. Like, you know, uh, Israel way ahead of us when it comes to testing with cannabis and stuff like that. They've got some, some tip top scientists and doctors over there. But yeah, they've, they've, there's early

signs is there may be some promising developments. Cause one thing you got to remember is it was just the 1990s when they discovered the endocannabinoid system. The fact that every human on earth has an endocannabinoid system within them. It was the nineties that it was discovered. And also your dogs have an endocannabinoid system. My cat has an endocannabinoid system, right? And basically that thing, when it's tip top, when it's topped off, kind of like your fluids in your car, when it's topped off, everything is optimal. So, so mood, uh, inflammation, you know, things like that, just all kind of regulate. It sort of regulates everything inside your body when that's out of whack, when it's out of kilter, that's when things start to

flare up and act up. So it's interesting that you bring that up, that they are just scratching the surface on, on researching cannabis, because unlike other drugs out there, um, everybody's body's different and our genetics are different. So a certain strain might make me hyper. It might make you sleepy, same exact strain, but we're wired different and stuff. So it's really going to be fascinating to see in the next 10, you know, 20 years, what they can do with cannabis and all the different terpenes and all next 10, you know, 20 years, what they can do with cannabis and all the different terpenes and all the different, you know, everything that comes from the cannabis plant and the hemp plant, which is of the cannabis is going to be fascinating when they are going to see that

it isn't just a dirt bag, you know, drug in the back alley, you know, a reefer madness. This is some really good stuff that has been right under our nose pun intended for a long time and they treated it like it was the the worst thing on the planet well i never you know i i just uh all my friends would be like you know this is they they make it illegal because uh blah blah because you know the big companies and i never really got it but then when in when i was living in vegas and i started taking it a lot um and back then i was still like drinking. So I would use it to reset my body and take the information down from the drinking. So it was kind of like a,

it's kind of bring me back down drug or bring me back. It was the Elvis technique. It was. Yeah, basically. And then finally I'm like, why am I doing this to myself? I don't, I don't have to deal with it. You know? And, and I'm overweight. So sometimes, you know, I've reached that age where the bowels the stomach don't always start want to work together and some you know i lots of dehydration and so i found it just taking it and it's like i i would you know i wouldn't take it

to get high like in the middle of the day i could take like half a tab of like five milligrams and i wouldn't get like super high uh I get a little relaxed and focused, but you would feel like the muscles in your body. So it'd be interesting if I would get coronavirus, I might, and it's bad. I might run to Vegas and I don't know, go stay down there and consume a bunch of stuff. So I don't over whatever, because what happens is, and I learned this from my chiropractor years ago, is it pinches.

Once it pinches those nerves and those blood vessels, the blood can't get through. And so your system, it just gets more as it goes. Hey, moving on, we'll be able to, this gives us enough content to put this on the pop biz podcast.

So this will show up in a few different places. There you go. Um, so you built these three companies. Uh, how many years are you in now? So we, we're celebrating our five year anniversary for innovation and tech today.

Congratulations. And so, but, you know, all told, we're probably like about, you know, six, six and a half in. You know, those first year and a half was a little slow. But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to build it. And then it just scales and it just becomes this volition where you wake up one day and you're just like holy shit and that's you know we were talking about earlier just get into it and whatever

your cat's uh stealing your background there your cat's bombing your dude he came by earlier he was like this is so he sleeps all day long this is this is his life right he sleeps all day long and then at night he's just an aggressive panhandler. He literally is in the kitchen. Every time I go in the kitchen, he's there and he's vocal and loud. He's an aggressive panhandler. And I have to give him something or he will not leave me alone. But during the day, dude, he's sleeping.

Sometimes I have to poke him to make sure he's still alive to see if he's got a pulse my dog is in the same spot oh my god i'll like watch my dogs and i'm like are they breathing yeah yeah i better check on them god is what they ate today right but uh yeah he's just he's just taking over so anything more we want to cover on what you guys are doing and everything you guys built with uh all the different magazines and ipw no i just I just think that one thing is, you know, everybody will tell you that print is dead and print is declining. More eyeballs and revenue is going towards digital. It's an absolute fact.

But if you're going to do print, then do the best print in the world. You know, we have $10 coffee table quality magazines. You know, if you're going to, and and by the way there's tech companies that are launching print magazines right now uh airbnb has a print magazine netflix just launched a quarterly print magazine yeah to raise their it's not for consumers it's for the people that vote in hollywood and that vote on TV show. Yeah. Because Netflix had all that original content that wasn't winning any awards. So they created a print magazine that people could grab when they go to the

premieres, just like that, take home with them to create that emotional connection with the voters so that they could start winning awards. So I would just say that, you know, if you're going to do something, even in an area where, you know, they might say like, you know, don't be in print or don't, you know, whatever, be the best that you can at that, but also be open to pivot. Because

I'll tell you what, Corona, it made us have to stay home, made us have to crank out more digital content, made us have to get out of our comfort zone because we had no events anymore. We had no newsstands, right? And so sometimes life will kind of nudge you in the right direction, but be open to pivot, but stay true to what you do. And whatever you're going to do, always do it to be the best. You know, if you're going to be a dishwasher, be the best damn dishwasher in the world. If you're going to do something, then freaking leave it all on the field and, and, you know, it'll sort itself out. But, um, yeah, I mean, we've got now print, uh, digital websites, webinars, you know, email marketing, all those things. And it all started around a print magazine

and nobody starts a magazine to get rich. It's just, you just don't. And you know, this all goes right back to the beginning of your first issue and ties in Steve jobs. When he first forayed into phones and was talking about doing phones, everyone's like, dude,

Blackberry owns the market. Like you're never going to beat Blackberry. They own the market. And he's like, he was like what you said, we're going to make a phone. It's's gonna be the best damn phone ever yeah and we're friends with people who worked on the team and uh you know they they threw everything into that phone fax machine phone you know printer calculator calculator everything went in that phone microphone you know speakers you know just like i mean you

you look at i think there's some pictures out there some memes on the internet that show everything they put in the phone yeah and it was just like put it in the phone and did you have an iphone when it first came out uh i didn't have it when it first came out i think i got into the 3g or 2g okay uh the two the two part of the three part um it took me a while because i was at first i was like 500 for a phone that seems a little much my friends like but it does like everything i was aggressive of them pricing it like and i'm like i don't know i like my little nokia flip phone yeah um and you know that was kind of revolutionary but blackberry owned the market they had it all they had all the enterprise tied up all the companies that contracts with them all the go yeah yeah they're telling steve jobs man you know you're never gonna crack

that nut no yeah blackberry owns it and blackberry you know you don't even hear them i don't think they make phones dude when we did this first magazine innovation and tech today i was always calling on blackberry and i was gonna be like listen you guys need to advertise here because you're not doing good you know and uh and i could never get hold of them but yeah um well they rode that train right into the sand i mean they rode it right into the lake they're just like we're still number one we still got plenty of contracts and just like funny to think about the phones you had going back i had a i had a trio trio it was the one that had the stencil and it had a keyboard on it i had the next tell push to talk remember you had

the flip and you could be like and it would just like make noise on your buddy's hip or whoever you were connected with that next tell a flip phone was pretty awesome i had uh i think oh god i had a pager you remember having to do business with a pager you know we all had pagers in fact our first phone for our courier company couldn't even talk brick phone was the brick phone and we bought the extra large battery for it so you can murder somebody with that brick phone yeah and it was heavy you can like feel the radio like the side of your head would get a suntan get a suntan for the radiation out that motherfucking thing you're just like i don't really know about this you know that's probably why i have it doesn't cause cancer well there's like a leg growing off your head. You're fine.

Cool phone, dude. It was a cool phone. But you were like, hey, if I ever get into a fight, I have a weapon. So I got that going for me. The thing came with a kickstand. Yeah, I think it was like, it was cost us like $1,200 a fucking month. Of course, we had our career service. But I don't remember what it was. It was like $8 a minute or some goddamn thing back then. just but we had to have it for a career company because people call come come

pick this shit up and and and we couldn't have a career company without it we could have pagers but my god we would spend half our day stopping at a pay phone you know back in the day and every now and then you would do that with a break phone because you're like i can either talk to these people for five minutes or i can go to pay phone. Remember, remember it would just pop up the number, right? So if you got paged by someone,

it would be like, and you'd recognize the number, but sometimes they would put nine one one after the number. That meant it was serious, man. You had to call them back right away. And if there was a nine one one on there that you had to find a phone booth, you had to have some change and you had to call them back right away. And if there was a 911 on there, you had to find a phone booth, you had to have some change, and you had to call them back because it was urgent.

Yeah, you had to kick Superman out. Change someplace else, man. There's another one down. I got a 911 on my pager. Right now, millennials are going, what's this phone booth shit you're talking about? I'll fax you. So awesome. So give us the plug so everyone can look up,

subscribe to your magazine and everything, Charles. Yeah, yeah. So it's pretty simple. It's InnoTech Today, Canatech Today, ResTech Today. That's on all the social media. So we made it kind of the same across there. And it's innovation and tech today. If you like gaming, if you like entertainment,

if you like just like broad technology, cybersecurity, you know things like that that's innovation and tech today if you are into cannabis and tech this is an award-winning magazine it is really turned out nicely that's cannabis and tech today and if you are are deep in uh if you're an audio visual smart home technology uh an integrator installer dealer anything like that. Residential tech today is incredible. We've got Jeremy Glowacki is our editor, and that's residential tech today. So we've got all the social, we've got the hardbound magazines,

we've got the digital. Give it a look. We've got some specials right now since everybody's at home. We make it easy for them to become a subscriber. And what's funny is companies need advertising more now than ever because they don't, you know, it's not, it's, it's harder now and everyone needs to reach out and do their marketing. And it's very different because there's different ways people can consume it. So, you know, I had one company that we do a lot of review products for their great company, but I called them up and said, do you have any new units to send us?

And they go, we're cutting our marketing overhead. And we're probably not going to send out as many reviews and i'm like are you fucking kidding me this is the time to send the shit because number one you're gonna have shit sitting on shelves that you can send to me to review yeah we can get people to buy and number two this is the not the time to cut your marketing i mean if anything like we talked about earlier i think we talked about this pre-show uber laid off a bunch of people now they're buying grubhub um you know they're they're finding ways to change their marketing up and change their business models up and expand their reach so they can make money from as many different places so i implore my audience i've known i've known charles for a million years now and uh like i say i was honored i've written him a couple uh

i think i've done a few two different segments yeah you've been featured a couple different times in the uh in the mag yeah and uh and all that good stuff so be sure to check him out go to you know tech today.com you can also see these links on the chris fosh show website and this will be featured on about three or four of our different podcasts that uh and do it. It's reztectoday.com. And the last one is canatechtoday.com. So anyway, thanks to my audience for tuning in. Thanks for Charles for coming and sharing all his wonderful knowledge and helping people. And hopefully we can get some people that are unemployed working, give them some concepts and ideas they can do to start their own business. And go to thecvpn.com or chrisfastpodcastnetwork.com.

Subscribe to all nine podcasts. You can learn so much. And right now is a great time because you want to use this time to utilize if you're being laid off or if you're just being furloughed. Use this to go start a new company and change your life, get a new career, and then you don't have to worry about getting fired ever again there you go that's what I did so the only person who can fire me

and Charles is us basically it's a great place to be it's pretty nice anyway guys we certainly appreciate you tuning in be safe wear your mask keep your distance remember it's not about you it's about everyone else in the world to be a good human being in the in the citizen of the world.

Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We'll see you next time.