TrueLife - Gregory Frye Unfiltered: Building Brands with Grit and Authenticity

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Meet the unapologetic Gregory Frye—your frontline general in the battle for brand relevance. Armed with deep experience as a storyteller in Branding & Marketing, he’s the strategist you want when conquering the digital frontier. This guy doesn’t deal in illusions; he crafts real strategies that bring real results.What's in Gregory’s arsenal? He's got Content Marketing, Copywriting, Brand Storytelling, Marketing Automation, and Email Strategy, all wrapped up in a straight-shooting, no-BS approach. These aren’t tricks; they're the building blocks of sustainable brand growth.But wait, there’s more. As a Board Member of the Association of Cannabinoid Specialists, Gregory has taken his long involvement in cannabis to the next level. He's not just blowing smoke; he's helping shape the conversation and deepen the understanding of cannabinoids.If you’re tired of marketing gurus who only peddle catchphrases and fluff, you've found your antidote. Gregory Frye is the down-to-earth strategist who's been in the trenches, challenging the status quo every step of the way.Gregory isn’t just another marketer; he’s your unfair advantage in a crowded marketplace. So tune in and get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about branding and marketing.https://www.thegregoryfrye.com One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. The Puris through ruins maze lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Oh, everybody's having a beautiful day. I have a tremendous show for you today. A tremendous guest. I would like everyone listening right now to meet the unapologetic Gregory Fry.

Your frontline general in the battle for brand relevance, armed with deep experience as a storyteller in branding and marketing. He's the strategist you want when conquering the digital frontier. This guy doesn't deal in illusions. He craps real strategies that bring real results. What's in Gregory's arsenal, you ask? He's got content marketing, copywriting, brand storytelling, marketing, automation, and email strategy all wrapped up in a straight shooting no BS approach they're not tricks there's the building blocks of sustainable brand growth but wait there's more as a board member of the association of

cannabinoid specialist gregory has taken his long involvement in cannabis to the next level he's not just blowing smoke he's helping shape the conversation and deepen the understanding of cannabinoids if you're tired of marketing gurus who will peddle catchphrases and fluff you found your antidote gregory Fry is the down-to-earth strategist who's been in the trenches challenging the status quo every step of the way. He's not just another marketer. He's your unfair advantage in a crowded marketplace. So tune in and get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about branding and marketing. Gregory Fry, thank you so much for being here today. How are you, my friend? Hey, George, great. Thank you for having me.

The pleasure's all mine. Before we got started, you and I were sharing a little bit about our love of language and the world we're living in. And I kind of got one I want to open with here, just kind of set the tone a little bit. How does language shape our perception of reality and how in turn does this influence the strategies we employ in our lives? Wow.

What an interesting question. Wow. I'm coming out hard. You know, I think it all comes back to storytelling, like everything with me. storytelling is as important as language itself. Storytelling is how we make sense of the world around us. It's how we choose what to say yes to, what to say no to.

And I think they should teach it in schools, frankly. And it's amazing how we're talking about branding and marketing here. There's some excellent storytellers in the space, depending on which industry you're looking at. But it boggles my mind of how many marketers are in the space who, and frankly, it's not just marketers. It's, you could apply this to any aspect of business, people who take storytelling for granted.

Just like they, you know, that's akin to taking communication for granted, taking language for granted. Imagine trying to run your business without communication. You won't get very far. It's the same thing with storytelling. I don't know if that answers your question, but for me, it always comes back to storytelling,

which is it's the one thing that unites that everybody's humans. We all love a good story. And if the story's boring or confusing, we tune out. We say no, we reject, we go somewhere else, or we ask questions and try to dive deeper.

But usually people prefer stories that are compelling. Yeah, it's well said. It's a great answer. I'd like to start off with a question sometimes to get people thinking about it. But as we talk about stories and interesting ways in which we arrive at destinations or the truth, maybe you could share with people how you arrived where you are today. Maybe give us a little bit of a backstory about you. Wow. Thanks for asking. Yeah, of course. Yeah, let's go back to 2008. I was a journalist for a newspaper, an Army newspaper called the Fort Campbell Courier. I was crushing it, winning awards. I got offered a job with the government to be basically like PR for the military. It would have been like an internship at the Pentagon, all sorts of crazy stuff.

I turned it all down. I rejected it. I gave away all my stuff. I sold my car. and I moved to Athens, Greece to focus on writing novels and screenplays. It's all I cared about. And, you know, I was interested in exploring this budding relationship with a young lady here who became my wife. And I thought I'd only be here for a year, but it turned into 15 years.

I'm still here. But I, so I was here writing novels, writing screenplays. Moonlighting is an English teacher in the evenings. That was mixed results. That's a whole other experience. But after my first child was born, I realized, wow, I got to pay some bills. I can't just sit around here writing novels

and screenplays like this. So I quickly discovered that all this storytelling I cultivated, we're talking big picture thinking, pattern recognition, pattern disruption, connecting dots. problem solving, problem finding. All this stuff is a great match for the business world, like we were talking about before. And so in 2015, I joined the founding team of a company called Greenflower Media.

Now it's just Greenflower. Became part of the founding team, a founding executive online editor. We can dive into that experience if you want. but absolutely um now it's one of the biggest cannabis education and training platforms out there uh but after five years of that i i i parted ways with green flower and uh a publication called the bluntness snatched me up to do their executive editing so i helped build i helped build their online presence um their their editorial presence we did a lot of great work there I got a little bored with that after a couple of years,

and so I parted ways with the bluntness at the beginning of this year. It's been an interesting journey ever since. I learned the hard way that the cannabis industry is struggling with purchasing power and is totally burned out on ineffective marketing efforts to the point where they've, a lot of them have completely lost faith in marketing just because they've been burned by opportunists coming in with outdated marketing tactics. So you see very little demand generation going on in cannabis. There's no storytelling hardly.

After legalization, all the storytelling stops, which is mind-blowing to me. A lot we could say about the cannabis industry, but I've spent the past year a lot of and refining. I've just launched my new consulting platform, Gregory Frye, consulting. We're focused on working with brands and enterprises to get the storytelling, get the brand story dialed in, get the marketing storytelling, the marketing communication, automation dialed in to a point where the ROI is there. Your marketing is doing what it's supposed to be doing. you're out you're not just posting glamour shots of your product on Instagram you're you're you're you're out there reaching a well-defined

target audience you know and I think that you know with cannabis storytelling you know this effort to change hearts and minds is really important even after legalization because for every one person who loves cannabis, there's countless of others who don't have a plot point with cannabis in their lives yet, or they haven't embraced it or figured it out for themselves. I don't see anybody going for that. They're too hung up on all the restrictions and razor-thin margins, but it wouldn't take much to reach some of these people. And I've actually pitched some very, what's the word? some very courageous strategies to a few operators, not many, you know, I've got ideas about how we can,

for example, start to convert, you know, conservative Christian groups to embrace cannabis, for example. Just one example. Like, I don't see anybody talking about these guys, yet there's a really easy path to engaging them and it goes back to health and wellness and medical cannabis and you know when you're when you're trying to tell a story when you're trying to inspire action uh to a specific audience in this case whether it's b to b to c you need to have this emotional draw you need to influence your audience emotionally of course you can't do that if you don't know your audience or if you're trying to just market to everybody you can't do that you have to know your

audience with cannabis so it's it's so easy to to go for that emotional core uh on the medical side yeah and but the you know the conversations around medical it's they sort of dissipate after a state embraces adult use and again it's just it's mind-blowing to me that so many people are overlooking that. And whenever I do find a brand that is focused on reaching that health and wellness audience, my ears perk up because, wow, that's a nice comment. My ears perk up at that because that's why I got into the cannabis industry to add value to other people's lives. You know, I'm not here to get rich. I'm here because I believe that everybody deserves safe access to this plant.

Everybody deserves, you know, guidance. And I believe there's a cannabis product for everybody, whether it's a topical or putting like THCA on your salad. If I'm running marketing ops for like a retailer or a brand, my job's not done until we've converted everybody in the county to some kind of. cannabis product because there's really easy ways to, you have your primary target audience and you have secondary target audiences. There's very simple frameworks we've developed where you can, it's easy to experiment with

these secondary target audiences to see what happens and decide whether you want to double down there or further experiment or try a different secondary target audience. And I'm rambling now, but you got me excited about all this, George. Well, right back at you, I think it's an incredible, on some level, I think the story is changing in the lives that we live. And if you look at the way in which we'll take cannabis, for example, the story used to be about the name of the plant, the white widow or the Maui, wow, there was this incredible story. And you had characters like Chi Chang and Chong. And, you know, this was this story that fed the people's imagination of what is possible. And as we've grown up with our relationship, and I think it's transfers to other things as well,

is that, hey, now all of a sudden I can turn this label and there's a, there's what the Terps are. And there's these different parameters in which we are measuring the success or we're changing the imagination of it. So the story is maturing. And that may mean that the way in which we have monitoring. monetized it has to change as well. Because, like, you're right, the, the, the legacy marketing, the legacy marketing, it seems to me, has, has decided that the only way we can do it is through the medical container. You know, and then that, maybe that's where the grants are. Maybe that's where the heartstrings are.

But it's such a narrow part of the story. I'm not saying it's not a good part of the story. Clearly, there's some really compelling stories there. But it's like a snapshot. You know, when you start talking about salad dressing or when I think of Christians, I think of the burning bush, like, whoa, there you go. How about the story in the Bible? Like, that's already right over there for somebody, you know?

But yeah, is there something that's happening in the world where we're moving on to a new part of the story? Is this a bigger part of the picture? Maybe you can run with that for a moment. Well, I think my sense is I've been talking to a lot of cannabis. founders lately. I've been talking to people in the finance side of things. My sense is that people are starting to realize they need to go deep, not wide. You know, there's this tendency for investors to come in and push for that top line revenue immediately, which I think is part of the reason why we see so many brands out there just targeting everybody that smokes weed and they think

the product will sell itself. And there's other, I think there's other nuances to that. But, you know, when you don't give these operators time and support to help them fully optimize their business model before going after the top line revenue, it's a very shallow approach. and Scott Jennings out in California, he's got a really interesting setup. He spent a few years optimizing his business. But it's people like him who are well positioned to create long-term success because, man, I'm losing my train of thought.

Scott Jennings optimizing top line revenue. Some of the marketers coming in today are not really allowing for that. Yes. I think that the investors, in a way, they're setting up these operators for failure by not better understanding the market and some of these harder-to-reach opportunities. Yes, it can seem harder to reach like a target demographic, like we said before, like conservative Christians, for example. which by the way country music has way more drug references in it

than any other genre of music I don't think people realize that but it's a total side note but so I again I think people are starting to realize now that's a mistake and they realize they need to go deeper they're realizing they need a well-defined target audience

and at the same time they've got all these restrictions and hurdles. They've got they've got tight margins because of it in industry that's frankly over-regulated in a lot of ways. And they allow themselves to get hung up on the marketing restrictions as well. And so you see very little out-of-the-box thinking. And that's what we need when you have when you have restrictions like that. And there's a lot of different directions we can take that. Just the whole story-touching. piece is like it's very dynamic and it can spin off into all sorts of ways. Yeah, I agree.

You know, when you reference out-of-the-box thinking, you, in our conversation so far in reading some of your posts and getting to hear some of your backstory, it seems that you have a history of out-of-the-box thinking. Like, where did that come from? Is that something, did you grow up in a unique way? Did you see things differently? Or did you have a mean big sister? Or, you know, like, what was it that kind of got you to see the world a little bit different than other people?

Well, that's, thanks for asking about that. I've definitely had a peculiar trajectory, you know, having left the States 15 years ago, when you assimilate yourself into another country. it's almost like you develop two brains. It's extremely powerful experience, and it gives you a lot of objective insights on culture and humanity. And at the same time, I'm an artist. I've always looked at the world differently.

And I had a hard time in high school because of that. but the more I the more I learned how to be myself and go forth and with confidence and courage and you know I was talking to a friend Brad Bogus

who in New York we were in New York for MJ unpacked and we had a really nice stroll in Central Park we stopped and talked and you know he was talking about the same thing how he realized he was trying to do what everybody else was doing and it wasn't working for him so he just he embraced who he was and he and that's when things started to work out and he's a he's a big punk rock fan and i don't listen to punk but i appreciate

like sort of the punk rock values and i've come to embrace that as well you know keeping this these sort of punk rock values in your heart, which is a story in of itself, of course. To me, it sounds like authenticity. You know, and a lot of the times, if you don't conform, you get the hammer. People make funny. People, oh, you're a dummy, or, you know,

that'll never work. And when I think of authenticity, I also think of fear because it's scary to go against the grain. It's scary to not fit in. And rightfully so. When you don't fit in, you get left behind. You get left there. But sometimes it's that ability.

I'll call it courage. The courage to go against the grain. And I don't mean just willy-nilly. I mean taking real time to think about your decision and being like, I'm going to leave everything I've ever known. I'm going to sell all my stuff. I'm going to pack into two black bags. I'm going to go to a place I've never been.

before. Like there's real growth that happens there. And I think about a lot of people I know who learn a second language or if you know people who speak multiple languages, they usually have unique perspectives because like you said, they're thinking in different ways. And if we look at culture as a language and you submerse yourself in another culture, it really allows you to help unfold the story in a way people that are monoculture wouldn't see because they've been conditioned that way. You know, and it's really interesting to take it back to the idea of the story, authenticity, and maybe evolving out of the hero's journey. That's kind of a lot, man, but what do you think? What's the question here, George? My question to you is authenticity. What role does that

play in creating a engaging story? I think it's everything now. I know it's everything now. Look at LinkedIn, for example. I spent a fair amount of time on LinkedIn because, well, I think it's my favorite social media platform. And that's where most of the cannabis industry has gravitated towards. But now, like, over the past couple of years

and other people have been talking about this, I was just commenting on it today how, like, LinkedIn has become this barrage of posts where people are trying to grow their audience so they're doing what's worked for others, what they've learned from others. And you've got people just trying to play

expert and just dropping, trying to sound smart, trying to add value, but you know, either it's like, who, I don't, I'm not sure I care about this or I don't understand what they're saying. But it's just a barrage of people playing expert. and I don't maybe they're in some cases their intention is authentic but you know when I think

about authenticity I think about sitting back and looking at what's going on on LinkedIn this is just an example and okay everybody's zgging how can I zagged what can I get in and do on LinkedIn that that it will be authentic for me and help me achieve whatever goals I'm going for. And whether that's just showing up with a story instead of some, you know, random advice that nobody asked for or engaging with people in the comments section. I don't know where I'm going with.

Maybe I think there's better examples we could get into, but, you know, authenticity, I think, is, you want to apply this to branding. I think it's impossible for a brand to really be authentic if they don't know what they're really about or who their audience is. You know, if they don't, if they're not super clear on their, on their mission method and message, how, how can you be authentic if you're having an identity crisis, basically? and yeah most of them don't even realize that that's what's going on and they wonder why their

marketing campaigns aren't resonating or there's a lot there's a lot of other aspects to that for sure but does that answer your question i feel like there's a lot more we could say about authenticity i think it it does require vulnerability vulnerability and there's this new movement at least i've noticed at the past couple of years called Building in Public. Yes. Which I really like. And I think that's a great example of authenticity. And you want your storytelling to be transparent to a degree.

And I think that, yeah, the idea of building in public has all sorts of merits that we could potentially unpack. Again, it's just another example. but you can't be authentic if you don't know who you are. And if you don't know who you are, then you've got to be transparent about that. And it's the only way to figure it out. I love reading the stories about people who have on some level failed

and they talk about it. You know, there's some real, especially if you find yourself aligned with the story with which they're telling. It's like they're leaving you a guidepost of, wow, I fell off the cliff right here and it hurt. Not because it was a far drop, but because these rocks have a bunch of thorny bushes and I hit my face on them.

You know what I mean? So it's like they're telling you, watch out here, not because it's dangerous, but because here's what I did and here's how I fixed it. And I'm still recovering from it. And I think that speaks to the vulnerability,

you know, that just a few years ago, it seemed that it was taboo to talk about your failures. It was taboo to be like, let people know, know that you were not Superman. You know, and I think it speaks volumes of building online and, and how people can identify with those stories.

What are some other things about building online that are unique and that you gravitate towards that you enjoy looking at when you see people doing it? Yeah, that's another great question. Thank you. Authenticity, like we talked about, is huge. and of course storytelling and like we've also talked about knowing your audience

you know that's I think those are the biggest things like knowing your brand knowing your audience having the storytelling dialed in and being able to reach people across all mediums like if you're just doing

pictures or on Instagram or you're just doing video or just blog posts or it's a shame because people have different content consumption preferences.

So like we're doing a podcast right now which you repurpose is audio and video and if you wanted to you could turn this into probably several blog posts a newsletter you can get a lot of pieces of content

out of one thing or let's say in operators you know they decide they want to do blog posts you can repurpose each blog post as a newsletter you can turn into a video

which can also be a podcast so there's very low-hanging fruit ways to reach all all the different mediums. But you know what I have a hard time getting into and maybe it's just, I think what's definitely just me and I don't know if it's an age thing or not,

but I've never really been interested in Instagram. I've never really been interested in TikTok. Like I recognize the power of those platforms, but for me that they're, there's no there's no meat in any of that it's all a lot of it a lot of it's very superficial and i don't see it adding value and um yeah i'm kind of going off the rails i need to have a dose of sulla here yeah it's it's beautiful i i couldn't agree more and i i think it speaks to the idea of the fragmentation of the story you know i i found in my life

and I think that this happens on LinkedIn and other socials is that it gives you like a reader perspective, like a third person point of view. Like when you can look at your work and see yourself as the main character in that work, that opens up other avenues to be like, well, what do I want this character to do? And that's easier than sitting back in my chair

and be like, what the hell am I doing wrong? Those are two different questions. What do I want my character to be and where do I want them to end up? I think that helps people come to the answer of who am I? Well, maybe you're the character, maybe you're Donkey Hodi and you're hanging out with Rosenante over here. You know, maybe you're putting the toilet bowl on your head right about now. And like, okay, that's funny.

And, you know, maybe you can equate that to a mistake that you've made. But what do you think about the platforms being a way for? for us to see ourselves as a third person. And it could be an individual or a brand. You mentioned the hero's journey earlier. I'm really big on that. I think if you're marketing a brand or trying to get any message across

whether it's B2B or B2C, your target audience always needs to be the hero of every message, you need to position your target audience as a hero and your brander service as the guide because like you said, they've got to be able to see themselves

in that story and that message, however short or long it is. What's the number one thing most people are concerned about? Themselves. I mean, that's probably the primary interest of every human. Nothing's more interesting to you than you yourself.

So when you see a message, it feels like it was made exactly for you. In fact, that's how I got into cannabis. I'll tell you in a second after I drink some water. Absolutely. So 2015, I was looking for a new project to plug into, and I decided to write a cannabis book about all the ways I had found that cannabis. could benefit my life and my work. I actually started researching cannabis online

for the very first time, despite having, you know, I had had it in my life for years and never thought to really research it online. And I came across a video series called Coming Out Green. And it was this collection of emotionally poignant, videos of everyday people

coming on camera. A lot of them were black and white video, getting in front of the camera and getting vulnerable about their cannabis story and how cannabis added value to their lives. And the

project moved me so much because I saw myself in all of those people. I made my wife watch all the videos with me. I was writing for vice at the time. So I I go and I interview the founder of this company, which was Max Simon. It was Greenflower Media.

And, you know, we hit it off. And I, I joined the team. But I, again, I just blows my mind that we don't see more of that. Because, yeah, there are a lot of people have a lot of different types of relationships with cannabis. There's a lot of different interest points that, you could tap into as a brand and the hero's journey. But health and wellness is the biggest, the biggest. This is the area where people have the most,

almost everybody has their own health and wellness concerns, whether it's optimizing their health or dealing with an issue. You know, if you can get cannabis on their radar in a way that's relevant to them and, you know, leads them to a, you know, an opportunity to try this out, you're going to, and it doesn't all have to happen online. In fact, I think there's a great point about, you know, especially these people who aren't into cannabis yet, it's going to take a very powerful storytelling in general to, convert these people into figuring out a, you know, cannabis product for them. And guidance, of course.

But so, yeah, it could be something like coming out green, but we can't underestimate the, the power of in-person storytelling, finding ways to engage with the community and getting these stories out there. I mean, there's, I'll stop there. I have a tendency to to just talk and talk until my brain, you know, seizes up. So let me throw it back to you. It's fascinating. And I, it's, it's what I, I love learning that.

I think that when people begin getting into their ideas, that it's contagious. And so if you feel like, if you feel like you're talking, man, just just keep rolling with it because it's fascinating. And I want to encourage it. I another thing that I think about too in the world of storytelling that we see kind of evolving right now and you touch on it a little bit with like Instagram and TikTok is the power of the image you know we have these AI models now where you could text to image and a lot of times on TikTok sometimes it will just be a few words and an image or it'll be an image and the person talks and the image of the word comes up like that that seems to be.

a new modality to me. And maybe you could talk about the relationship between language and images in brand. Yeah, that's a really great question. And I come from an editorial background. So whenever I get to work with graphic, graphic designers, video producers, this is such a treat for me for sure. I think Kevin R. Kevin Rap is doing some amazing things with this.

I'm not in cannabis, but in general. Check him out on LinkedIn. But anyways, look, successful marketing is all about pattern disruption and digital marketing, getting people to stop scrolling and pay attention to something. And it's more challenging than ever for marketers. imagery is a huge part of that.

It's a critical part of that. But there has to be, it can't just be an image. There has to be something below, that leads further down the funnel. Whether it's a quick video or an interesting image, if it captures the attention of your target audience, great. But then what? you know, this is one thing that I talk about a lot.

This top of funnel content, I think, well, with Instagram and with things like Instagram and TikTok, it really needs to be more about reminding your fans that you're around and just staying on their radar. You know, those platforms aren't going to do much in terms of lead generation or demand generation. Okay, they're, and wherever you're grabbing people with your imagery, you've got to lead people into some sort of story-driven funnel,

something that nurtures, nurtures them along the customer awareness levels into the desired action. Images alone won't cut it. I mean, what's happening after that image? That's the first place my mind goes to. But imagery, you know, another, you know, if you're publishing videos on YouTube and your thumbnail socks, people probably aren't going to click on it. That thumbnail is really important. Just like the title beneath the thumbnail is equally as important.

Oh, Stephanie's watching. Hey, Stephanie. You know, in some ways, I see this as the evolution of, language because you're right it used to be you could have a used to be sex cells you could have the pretty smile and people are there all day on some levels there's these underlying phenomenon still work on the human psyche but i think it's evolving like now you need to have the language the story the and the imagery like people are expecting more from from the story you know and it seems like an evolution of language

language in some ways. Like, you know, you can really tell a deeper story with more modalities. You know, if you have a brilliant thumbnail, you have a great conversation and you have a good title. It's like you have the Triton right there. You know what I mean? And what could this be that, okay, here's a theory that I have. It's that words are but a fragment of language. And it's seems to me for the last 100 years, we've been using language. But now all of a sudden, we're given a new part of language. Like we've had all these consonants. Now we're given vowels. Now we can start putting real words together that are more meaningful. And when you stack words, language with words, with language with imagery, now I can really begin to communicate

meaning to you. And maybe that's why marketing is stuck right now because there's only a few people like you that are beginning to understand, hey, there's, there's so much here. There's so much more happening. It's almost like we're beginning to practice a new language with these different modalities. Is that too far out there? I think it's an interesting point. And I think it, this, it requires more creativity and better storytelling than ever in order to kind of bring all this together into some form of alchemy. Yeah. And for me, it, it, obviously, it's really helpful if you make sure you have all your

foundational stuff dialed in on the marketing and branding level. Like we said, you know your mission, your method and your message. You have a well-defined target audience. And only then can you start to, take it to the level that we're talking about. Yeah. And then, you know, this is something else that Kevin Rapp talks about, which I love. He talks about the importance of creating content systems, which is basically like you,

instead of reinventing the wheel every time you want to publish a piece of content or launch a campaign or whatever, getting a system together where you're you're capturing all this content in a specific way and you're creating a pool or a well to draw from whether it's content you can repurpose or like a ton of different video segments that you can play around with creating content systems instead of trying to start from scratch every time is crucial Because another part about this is this demand on content is quality is more important than ever. The quality storytelling, quality visuals, it can take a lot of energy and resources to keep generating this content. So if you have systems in place that help you maintain quality and volume,

you're able to obviously take your resources a lot further, which you need to because a lot of this is also about experimenting and AB test and understanding what works best. Experiening is a huge part of that. And being able to go back and look at the metrics, of course, and understanding what they're telling you and where you, need to either reiterate or double down. Apparently a lot of marketers struggle with that too, which I found surprising when I

discovered that. But that's another form of storytelling is the metrics and the data. Do you think that there's a generational shift happening? You know, it seems that with such a large portion of the media seeming to be, the heads of the media seem to be, and this is just limited knowledge that I have, but it seems like the boomer generation has driven the narrative for so long. And they've, they've had tons of success. And they did great things with media and narrative and propaganda and things like this. Can it, is it possible that what we're seeing right now is a kind of a passing of the baton?

And maybe that's why it's an experimental stage. Like there's a new, there's a new wave coming through. And things are changing. There's the same way that generation. see the world differently, are we beginning to see that in the stories we're telling? And is that moving towards marketing and branding? Yeah, your question, I was thinking about mainstream media during the first part of your question. And I think, you know, all the media, we're so inundated with people trying to grab our attention. And I think it really goes back to authenticity. Yeah.

And people are going to go with what. resonates with them. And so knowing your audience is crucial. You can't be everything to everyone. And it, for me, and I think people are more sensitive to that now than ever, because the media is so fragmented

before it was like, you know, like three TV channels. And, you know, so, yeah, it was a lot easier to, to control the

narrative. And now there's, yeah, there's a lot of propaganda and narrative controls in place that are extremely complex and widespread. And it's a whole other conversation. I don't know if we want to get into, but as far as the branding and marketing side, it really goes back to authenticity and not being afraid to be authentic, to get vulnerable, to celebrate those values. or, you know, if you're developing a personal brand, you know, don't be afraid to call things out or ask questions or get curious or, yeah, a lot of ways, a lot of different ways we could take that. But let me throw it back to you, George. Yeah. In your opinion, is storytelling the ultimate strategic tool for influencing human,

behavior? And if so, how do we use it ethically and effectively? It is the ultimate tool. Because you can't persuade without it. And it's not, even if you're, even if you're giving out free samples of like a food item in the supermarket, you know, you're trying to trigger that that very human element of repris reprispros... How do you...

Bresoposity? Yeah. I'm not even going to try to say it right now. It's at 9 p.m. where I'm at almost. But anyways, you know, and usually what happens is even if the person doesn't like the sample, they're a lot more likely to buy it anyways

just because they feel like returning a favor. This was a gift of some kind. But even that's a form of storytelling. It's not, you're not engaging in a story as we normally think of it, but there's a very real story going on in the consumer's mind. And I, I forgot your question. We were just talking about storytelling being the ultimate strategic tool. Yes.

Name a, you know, name a, okay, let's look at, this is good. You remember Sanjay Gupta's CNN documentary Weeds and he interviewed this he did this documentary on the late Charlotte Fiji

and all of a sudden everybody not everybody but there was this huge firestorm about CBD they saw how this family was using it to ease this child's seizures a lot of buzz around

CBD came up and this created a fire under the policymakers to do something about it. The same thing happened with Alfie Dingley in the UK. The message got out, the story got out about how cannabis had really made an impact on this boy's life and his family. Of course, lawmakers kind of made a mess of things after. but that grassroots level storytelling, this is just an example,

is how you can achieve real policy change. Getting the voters excited about an issue, having them press their politicians, their local elected officials, that's all storytelling. I'm getting, a little tired because of the time here, so I feel like I'm starting to lose my train of thought more and more, but I want to keep talking, George.

You're crushing it, man. This is all, you're being way too hard on yourself. It's fascinating. And you have a really unique view, and that's why I'm loving the stories that we're talking about. And I, you know, there's a, I feel that human behavior and stories and experience. answer. They're all fascinating. They've been with us for so long. You know, when I think about the way in which we used to disseminate information, it used to be all verbal. Like when you look

back to like, you know, the ancient Homeric verses, it would be a guy would come and tell a story. And then that gave people a way to imagine the story in their own mind and kind of created in their own way. You know, I'm wondering, in your opinion, how does the digital age with its rapid dissemination of information in stories impact the way we construct meaning. Like it seems, you know what I mean by that? Let me try to make it a little bit better of a question. It seems that we've gone from storytelling, the spoken word, into a more robust, direct way, like media. Maybe the, the imagery no longer allows for the interpretation of the story.

Like imagery is so good now. We've already spoken about how Instagram can use words. words and imagery to put the idea right in your head. Do you think that that's a different way of thinking than the older way of storytelling where I would interpret the story through verbal communication? You know, what I see happening,

this isn't happening to everybody, but we mentioned how fragmented the media landscape is now, and what I see happening is the AI-powered algorithms of these platforms, are driving a lot of this where people get sucked deeper and deeper into specific narratives that they subscribe to, they identify with, and it goes so deep to the point where they can't

accept any other possible narrative. Their thinking patterns become very rigid and very sensitive, which is extremely binary thinking when they you know they you know they think their way is correct and everything else is wrong and I think that's

less to do with the visuals although they're part of that but more like I said more to do with these algorithms that are just consistently reinforcing and turning up more and more of the same stuff and your feed based on what you're

already doing. And so a lot of people got really excited about AI when ChadGBT made it first made it splash. And they didn't fully appreciate the AI has already been influencing our lives daily for a few years now, whether it's through Google search results or like we said, the algorithms on these social media platforms. That's AI at work there. And so I think that's the bigger storytelling question now.

I was reading a book on the, I can't remember who wrote, it was actually a few people who worked on this book together, including Eric Schmidt and Kissinger, Henry Kissinger was also involved in a few other people. and they were talking about how, you know, one, we all have a responsibility to kind of actively learn everything we can about AI and understand what's going on so we can make informed decisions about how to integrate it in ways that they resonate with our values. But also a really interesting point, you know, talking about perception and people clinging on to different narratives, you know, know what happens when you have like entire countries for example that are feeding off of a

different AI systems right so they're they're developing completely different views of the world based on whatever they're getting out of their AI system and this is happening on the individual level too um but it i think it creates uh I think it creates really important rifts in society and civilization that we have to be sensitive to. We have to figure out ways to bridge somehow. Because there's all sorts of different ways that it could manifest itself, whether we're talking about somebody who goes on their own rabbit hole with chat GPT, focused on a specific direction with their business or their mission or whatever based on however they've been training their own their own chat GPT experience versus like we said like

entire countries and how they're interacting and understanding reality compared to other countries and of course there are obviously already big sort of mismatches and perception, which is why we have so much conflict, the storytelling just keeps coming back to me is, you know, the, it can be something that divides people or something that unites people, depending on how you use it. It's such a powerful tool. I have my friend Andreas says that storytelling ought to be taught in schools.

Which I agree with, but I'm also a bit reluctant because I know how powerful it is. You know, when I went to a Jesuit school in Kansas City called Rockhurst, and the education is so powerful that they required us to take ethics classes, so we didn't use the education for evil. And I think that's, yeah, storytelling's right up there. If you know your storytelling, and this is the crazy thing about how, universities, the education system in general is starting to cut back on humanities, the humanities, which is, that's also mind-boggling because that's,

what's that going to do to somebody's ability, not only engage in storytelling, but, you know, scrutinize storytelling. And being able to scrutinize storytelling, understand if somebody's trying to manipulate you in a negative way or not is, you know, that's an important conversation for sure. Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. You know, in some ways you could argue that the storytelling that takes place in a lot of schools is the history they teach. You know, depending on where you live, you have a different history.

You start thinking about what's true, you know, and that's a whole other rabbit hole in itself is like, what is the story of what is true? And then you start thinking to yourself like, man, you got to go back to Socrates. Is that true? You know, and then we're back with, we're back with the ancient Greece, which may have had it the right way. The way you teach is you sit down with someone and you just ask questions. You know, maybe that's an interesting way, a way to begin forming your own story. You know, here's an interesting one I've been thinking about. I've been working a lot with psychedelics lately.

And it seems to me that cannabis shares this same attribute. and it's that it really allows for another perspective. You know, and have you seen that as a selling point or a narrative in the world of cannabis is the fact that it allows you to see things different? Might that be something worth research? Yeah, I think that's an important question, important factor for psychedelics and cannabis. And we can talk about psychedelics too. but my friend Sebastian Marincolo

based in Berlin is a consciousness researcher and in a way a cannabis philosopher that he's come up with at first it was 10 but now it's like 15 distinct cognitive effects of cannabis. 15. different cognitive effects. Everything from like mind racing,

episodic memory recall, which Carl Sagan wrote about as Mr. X. I got some Carl Sagan stories. Nice. To, dang it, hyperfocus. There's 15. I could look them up if we wanted to dive deeper into those sometime. But, you know, the point is that it takes a lot of experience to be able to consciously,

one, to understand those 15 different effects and to be able to consciously tap into those and know how to get there. But before that, you know, comes desire and understanding the importance of being able to gain perspective from these altered states. There's a lot of stigma around this, and I think that that's a really interesting story challenge, storytelling challenge for cannabis and psychedelics. You know, the psychedelics side,

I was talking to Dr. Sunil Agarwal about, he's the one that was part of this lawsuit. He's a physician out of, I think he's based in Washington State, He was part of this lawsuit against the DEA for not letting him try psilocybin with his terminal patients. Washington State has a right to try law. If you're a terminal patient, you're allowed to try any drug you want. I don't know all the nuances of that law, but they tested it with the DEA. The DEA rejected them.

and so there's this lawsuit going on. But Dr. Agarwal, a lot of respect for him, he was talking about how this vision of like, you know, imagine being able to like, no matter what religion,

whether you're Baptist or Catholic or whatever, being able to go to your priest and for a guided psychedelic experience. Like, it's like, it's someone who's experienced psychedelics myself, who's also spiritual, I think that stuff like whether it's a priest or a therapist or whatever,

I think this is critical for the healing of the world because it's the only way we're talking about these rigid mindsets. We've got to get out of that type of thinking. We need, the world needs open-minded thinking. It needs curiosity, compassion more than ever. And for me personally, cannabis definitely has helped me with that as a professional in many ways, as a human being. You know, creativity, problem solving, just being able to step back and get perspective on things. And of course, that's, you don't get that if you're using cannabis constantly.

If you're just dosing throughout the day and you're totally stoned out of your gourd, you don't have that element of contrast. And there's also a point of diminishing returns when somebody's taking too much of anything. And yeah, psychedelics are, I think, you know, let me give you just a quick story. Yeah, please. I was in Greece for my first three years here. I couldn't really find any good cannabis, and it was really hard. I finally found some through somebody who became a dear mentor of mine.

It was an artist, had a very interesting career on Madison Avenue and all that. So I go to his studio for the first time. we have a smoke and my mind is just full of ideas and I love that mind racing but the first you know epiphany I had that was like holy smokes I've been drinking too much lately I need to cut that back like I don't think I would have had that that revelation if it weren't for cannabis there's been a lot of times where cannabis has given me epiphanies that have changed my life forever that I've acted on and it's I think my challenge is a creative is wanting to experience that that sort of epiphate state of epiphany and creative ecstasy all the time yeah which

it's not not sustainable probably not from lack of trying madman you know you got to yeah i agree it's it's nice to you can go to the mountaintop but you can't stay there and it's important to remember like you're up here to get a view where you were at where you're going but eventually you got to go back down and start and start hiking again but it's sure nice to be up there man it's like oh okay i get it now that's what i'm doing for okay you know in in in in your consulting you talk about magnetizing messaging maybe you could break that down for it what does that mean exactly what we've been talking about, George, like understanding your mission,

your method, and your message and getting the right message to the right audience, if you're able to deliver messaging that resonates with them, whether it's a, I don't care what it is,

whether it's like a video campaign or a, you know, an article you post somewhere, whatever. an ad if it if it can truly resonate with your audience

and their pain points and their desires in a clear way it's going to act like a magnet it's going to gravitate this target audience towards you that's why the target audience

needs to be very well defined okay only then can you speak a language that makes sense for this specific audience. You don't want to go too general, which is hard. I struggle with that myself and, you know, marketing my consulting because I, you know, I love to play in all sorts of areas. So, you know, that's up to me to set up different messaging sequences

and funnels and outreach depending, it's nuanced for that target. audience. It has to be nuanced. But magnetizing them, you know, at the top of the funnel, we call it, is just the first step of this. You've got to keep that nurturing process going. Like if you, let's say you do a Facebook ad campaign or some kind of online ad campaign, the tendency is to funnel traffic from this ad straight to your offering, which you can do that, but, you know, is that how you would try to sell someone at a party? Like, you show up to the party and you're like, hey, check out this cool message.

Oh, and you want to buy this thing? you've got to have I advise brands to take that online ad campaign and advertise something that's free where you can collect their email and by the way email your email list is the most powerful marketing asset that you can cultivate, extremely valuable for any business, anything you're doing in social media, it's all rented space. Being able to get people in their email

or being able, you know, whether it's sending the messages on their phone, however they prefer, you've got to have these nurturing sequence set up to keep that magnetized effect going. Like if you're doing an email sequence, You need to have like four nurture emails where you're adding value with each one, soft sale and a PS at the end, and then a hard sell email.

Right. And because you're adding value and you're resonating with them, you're going to convert more of this target audience into loyal customers, assuming that what you've got is great. Yeah, when I read that, like, there's a lot of things, when I just, when I came across magnetizing messaging, I think it speaks volumes of the way you think. Like, there's so much there. It's an alliteration. It's two words that have not quite a rhyme to them, but they definitely have a relationship towards each other. And I think that you can, you know, it's magnetizing in a way. In some ways, I'm like, this guy's thought a lot about how to get a message across in a short amount of ways. It's very attractive.

It's amazing how you can see that in some words. Or is that the same way in which you create larger campaigns? Do you put that same type of thought into them? Maybe you could talk a little bit more about your thought process there. Like it's fascinating to me. Like are you like, okay, I'm going to make it an alliteration, and I'm going to choose these two words, and I'm going to go to the dictionary to find this one that matches with that. Like, how do you find the harmony in the campaign?

Like, is that something unique to you or does that come from traveling? Or can you expand on that a little bit? You know, I think that working with language is important. and being able to play as a copywriter, word choice, and of course you can A-B-Test everything. But, you know, Greg Hahn of Mischief USA, who, by the way, is one of my favorite advertising agencies. He told me something I'll never forget.

They do these, they win advertising agency of the year every year. They're shaking up corporate vibes. they're doing all sorts of cool stuff. And he said their process is simple. One, we think about what do we want to say? And two, how do we want to say it? And, you know, there's all sorts of ways you can play with copywriting now. I use, I love playing with chat GPT, not as a copy and paste.

although I've got it to a point where I can get stuff out of there that I can easily copy and paste if I wanted to but using chat GPT has been great as a way to just start with some ideation and give me some things to start playing with versus working from a total blank canvas another part of word choice goes back to really knowing your audience well and being able to actually talk to your customers, talk to people,

record the language they're using, is that those language choices are, that's what's going to resonate with the people you're trying to reach. So incorporating that kind of input is crucial. It's crazy how many brands don't talk to their audience, which is a huge marketing. I won't work on a marketing campaign if there's no clarity on audience. You know, we need to go back to ground zero, get the foundational stuff in order. Like I keep saying, understanding your mission, your method, and your message, only then can you start playing with language in a meaningful way. Yeah, it's, it's, um, I, As a strategist who challenges the status quo, what advice would you give to businesses looking to challenge conventional marketing, wisdom, and stand out in their industry?

I think that that's a really good question. And I think a lot of the conventional stuff still works. And status quo that, when I say that, I mean, I'm talking about, like we've talked about, you know, marketing funnels, great copywriting, clear message, knowing your audience. This is marketing 101, but a lot of people are forgetting this. Or they're afraid to be vulnerable. They're afraid to shake up corporate vibes. Those are the types of status quoes that I like to break up.

I like to come in and work with brands and they realize that something's not working with their marketing. The messaging is not resonating. You go in and you see that like most CMOs don't have a documented process in place for their marketing automation, which blows my mind. We don't want to get too carried away with processes.

I mean, that's another, maybe another point about processes versus strategies and playbooks and all that. But back to the original question, challenging the status quo in my mind really, that means coming back and, you know, pausing to address what you're doing internally and with your target audience

and understanding when something's not working or when it's working or understanding when you need to iterate or reiterate on something, you know, being able to change how you're doing things if something's not working. And it's crazy how you see a lot of brands are just kind of on autopilot with their marketing. It's not really working. They don't understand it. Or maybe they're getting like results in one area. But it's not translating into any sort of notable.

ROI. They're not getting any impact on their bottom line because, for example, maybe they're, yeah, they're crushing it on SEO, but they don't have any funnels set up to really capture the traffic. Just an example. I think another thing that comes in mind about challenging the status quo, like we were talking about earlier, look at what everybody else is doing. You know, they're zinging. If you want to stand out, you've got a zag. And I think in my mind, you know, the best way you can zag is, you know, authenticity, being vulnerable with your storytelling.

And like we said, you can't do any of that if you don't, if you're having identity crisis as a brand or you don't know you're selling to. So I think it's a mix of breaking up the status quo and learning how to better make the conventional proven tactics work in your favor. There's a lot of talk right now with like the creator economy. And I've heard people talk about everyone's their own brand right now. Do you have any thoughts on like personal branding and how that might be developing? Or is that a thing? I think it's a yeah and personal brand is I think it's important to have a personal brand these days

and at the same time I think that there's a lot of misconceptions about the value of the personal brand or maybe not misconceptions but like a lot of people just want to raise their personal brand so they can sell online courses and, you know, basically monetize, which is fine. But, you know, this goes back to another thing we're talking about earlier. Like on LinkedIn, there's this sort of wave of people just trying to build their personal brand and they're all just sort of playing expert. And it's like a deluge of mediocre storytelling. oftentimes by people who maybe they mean well.

I've got a lot of interesting people in my feed, but there's a lot of stuff in there where you can see that these, I think Twitter is really bad about this. Everybody's just sort of mimicking what they learned from somebody who came before them and had a successful experience with personal branding and turned it into an online course

and that's become its own status quo. And I think it's important for people to really assess what a personal brand means to them and why they want to build a personal brand. I'll tell you, in my experience, I spent a lot of time sort of going in circles this past year trying to develop my consulting, platform. I was calling it story gurus. And I had this epiphany a few weeks ago that Gregory Frye consulting was a much better branding for this because one, trust. Trust is critical and it's a lot easier to establish trust with somebody who is out there operating under their own name versus

some mysterious brand that you don't know what this brand is. And so there's a lot of, you know, I didn't want to be bothered with all the nurturing of a story gurus brand. I want to help other people grow their brands. And so I realized that story gurus was a total destruction. to my goals. So Gregory Frye consulting, it's become. And things have really changed since then.

A lot more momentum, a lot more interesting projects in the pipeline now that I got this distraction out of the way. There's all sorts of value a personal brand can add. if that's of interest to you. And I think that if you're going to grow a personal brand, it needs to be authentic. It needs to be, it needs to be what you're really about.

It needs to be in line with your values. If you're just doing it to make money, I think people will see through that. And like any messaging, really. And so I think that, There's that's a big part of the deluge. It's people that just, they want to work for themselves and make money

and they're trying their best. But especially younger people doing this, I think that Gary Vaynerchuk really inspired a lot of people in this way. A lot of young people got this sort of, you mentioned the creator economy, and some people call it solopreneurship in this, you know, I think it's extremely important

and I think that's where things are going and it's important that if you feel like you can innovate in this area, you should go for it for sure. It's much better if you can figure out a way to add value to people or businesses

instead of just working for somebody else. There's all sorts of value you can add, all sorts of interesting things you can get into. But my advice to young people in this case, you realize that you've got to climb mountains. You've got to climb mountains to really get that experience that's going to add value in the right way. I'm going to be 40 in a couple weeks. I'm still climbing mountains. This past year has been totally transformational for me,

even the past few months, just navigating and learning and, you know, figuring out big challenges. And that's, that's been, all that is wrapped up. And, you know, what I'm developing is my personal brand and Gregory Frye Consulting. And, you know, I'm growing my own business for the first time. And, you know, after working on different startups and other different projects over the past, several years. So realize that you've got to climb mountains and you're, you're, you're, if you're young, you know, I'd be more hungry for experience than a paycheck. I would, who was it? It was like Warren Buffett when he was in his youth, he offered to work for his hero for

free, this business hero. He offered a work for him for free and the guy looked at him and said, you're too expensive because he knew that all the training and, you know, education that would be required. And Buffett knew that as well. And that's what he was hungry for. So, and, but I think at any, no matter what age you're, you're in, um, curiosity and listening and, and trying to, like we talked about earlier, just embracing that student ethos is critical and you can't always be an expert or pretend to be an expert.

Again, authenticity comes up again. Yeah, it's wonderful advice. You know, I heard when you think about climbing mountains, I forgot who it was, but they were asking him someone that was a mountain climber or something. And they're like, how come you were unable to climb this last mountain? Was the mountain too hard?

And he goes, it's never the mountain that's too hard. It's the rock in your shoe. You know what it is? Like I thought that was such salient advice. I'm like, it is. It's that little thing that like, ow, it hurt. Oh, it hurts. Okay, I can't do it.

You know, but it's not the giant mountain. It's like this one damn thing that just is constantly picking at you, you know? And it's, I really love it. Gregory, this conversation has exceeded all my expectations, man. This is one of my favorite marketing and branding podcasts that I've done. It's a fantastic conversation. And I think that you have a very unique way of looking at the world. And I love learning from you, man.

Thank you very much for it. It's been fun. We're going to have to do more of them because I think we just scratched the surface. And I think there's a lot of different directions we could go. but before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Before we go there, George, I wanted to respond really quick about the rock and the shoe. Okay, please.

You know, when you were talking about that, I thought of, you know, another metaphor, a pebble in the hose. I don't know this one. And so for a lot of people that rock in the shoe or the pebble in the hose is a mindset issue. It could also be an integrity issue, which I think those two kind of work together in a lot of ways. But mindset is critical. And there's storytelling happening there as well. And that's the stories we tell ourselves. Yes.

And the stories, the narratives that we're receiving from the media we consume or the people we surround ourselves with. So I think it's crucial to always be sensitive of that. And everything comes back to the mindset and how we approach the day-to-day life and our struggles and our successes mindset. So I just wanted to, I felt compelled to share that. But yeah, people will go ahead. Go ahead, George. So that brings up another idea, as you're saying that.

Like, in your opinion, do you think that our inner dialogue is a reflection of the stories that we live out in our life? And does that play a role in the way in which we help other people see their life? Like maybe that's a giant component of why you're good at what you do is that your inner dialogue. It's the stories you tell yourself internally that translate in the ability for other. other people to see things. I think what makes me good at what I do is not so much the story in my head, but the desire to get curious about the story

in other people's heads. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like the desire to see the story in other people's head. Like what does that mean? Yeah. So like when I was a kid, like sixth grade, we moved to a small town in Kansas and almost every day

there was a couple blocks from me there was an old woman who lived by herself and she was always sitting out on her front porch I'm six years old every time I saw her sitting on her porch I would stop I would sit with her and I would listen and get as many stories out of her as I could same thing when I'm around my grandparents

I'm always peppering them for stories, and I've always been like that. And no matter who it is, I, if I'm not actively learning from them or teaching them, I'm bored. It's this insatiable, maybe, I think it's part of my ADHD. I'm always so curious about new things and always, it's easy for me to get super,

excited about learning new things. Like for me, now it's finance. I'm like diversifying into finance and getting ready to work with mergers and acquisitions, advisors, and serve them with storytelling, which is huge. But again, it's about, it's always getting curious about not the story in my head, but the story in their head and how can I work my magic is as a storyteller to create a compelling message that is engaging to whether it's to read or watch or whatever is a merger's an acquisition story like Jonah in the whale like a story of consumption or is it a story of a romantic love affair coming together 90% of mergers and acquisitions and in failure.

That's because there's very little soft diligence that happens. And there's very little awareness around the storytelling that needs to happen at the cultural level. When you're essentially merging two company cultures together. Or what if you're trying to sell a company? yeah you could have your investment analyst to put together all the numbers and you know that's usually the way to do it pretty dry but these are the numbers this is what you need to know they're crazy for thinking that's really going to move the needle compared to it it does but imagine the success rate if you could weave those numbers into a compelling story that catches the other person's attention.

You know, as marketers, we have to peak people's curiosity. That's like the number one like frontline job of any marketer. And if you're trying to sell a business or merge businesses or whatever, there's marketing there, whether it's internal marketing or external marketing.

So I'm just now, I'm just now like really getting into the M&A space and talking to M&A people and it's exciting for sure. Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for spirituality there because on some level, it seems to me one of the problems there would be

that a lot of times murders and acquisitions mean the loss of jobs for people, but that could easily be turned into a transformation story about a death and a rebirth because in some ways it is. Like you're getting rid and you're, you know, with death is like a season. You know, you have the end when winter comes.

It's like a death, but that death is necessary so that there can be a spring. You know, it's, but I think that's, and I think that for far too long, spirituality has been neglected in the world of business, in the world of science even on some level. The subjective nature of spirituality is something that a lot of people, regardless of your faith, is grounded in. And people are thirsty for that. I mean, it's got to be done ethically.

I'm not saying people who should weave some story about a Jones Town. You know, you don't want to go too far on that level, but there's some real truth in there. That's funny. You're not going to drink the company Kool-Aid? I was forced to drink it too many times. It's way too bitter. And for me, I refuse the last round, and I was excommunicated. I refuse to put on the purple Nikes, man.

I'm not wearing them. I'm not going to do it. You know, that, it's a really interesting point. And look, there's four elements of human health. It's physical, mental, spiritual, and social. And they all interconnect with each other. If one is compromised, it's going to affect the others. and yet

so this is really important for companies companies cultures that are want to support in their employees and their teams as much as possible so they're all thriving

and those are excellent company cultures to work in and that spirituality thing is interesting because it's a very sensitive nuanced topic that a lot of people feel very close-minded about, other people feel very open-minded about it. And one of the things that comes to my mind about maybe a way to approach that indirectly

is there's lots of ways, but shaking up those corporate vibes, and embracing, finding ways to embrace the human factor within a company and, you know, with that company's external messaging, like embracing the human factor. Again, that brings us right back to storytelling and understanding the, what's the narrative happening, you know, at the team level. I'm losing my train of thought again. I'm going to stop there. I lose it.

I lose my... It reminds me. I was talking to a gentleman Lloyd Lobo a while back, and he was talking about the story of NASA. I forgot the names of the people, but paraphrasing the story, it was something like these,

the rocket scientists go into the NASA building at like three in the morning. And there's the janitor. You know, he's meticulous. cleaning like the feet of the chair. And they're like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm putting a man on the moon. You know, and it just goes to show you when everyone at the corporation and everyone

realized how important their job is, now you have a business worth having. Now you have people that are, that realize they're an integral part of the situation. And like that that just makes for a better environment, a better place and a way better story. We just got to tell ourselves better stories so that everyone has a part. And regardless, if you got to walk on part in the war, it's better than a lead role in a cage, right? Thank you, Pink Floyd.

Oh, man. The Pink Floyd reference is a, that's a good, I think that's a good segue way to wrap up here. Okay. I need a bio break. But I'm, yeah, it's late here. I hear you, man. I feel like we could talk.

I know. All day, George. This has been so awesome engaging with you. Yeah, and you ask where people can find me online. I hang out on LinkedIn a lot. My website, the gregoryfri.com. Check it out. I'm still adding stuff to that.

But it's some interesting projects in the pipeline, and nothing I want to disclose yet. but I'm very excited about the next few months and the next year and a lot of interesting things happening for sure. I'm excited too. I really enjoyed this conversation. It's really engaging and fun and we'll have more of them because I learned a lot and I got a lot of great comments here and I really, really enjoyed it.

So hang on briefly. I'll talk you briefly afterwards. But ladies and gentlemen, check him out. There's a reason why he's on the podcast. podcast, there's a reason why he's doing the things he's doing, and there's a gargantuan reason why he has so many projects in the pipeline. He has a unique view, and it's worth engaging with. It's beautiful. So that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Aloha.