 How are these brands building their own identity? How do they become meaningful to a consumer? How do consumers feel like that should be what we like to call them love marks, right? We all have love marks in every product category, whether it's your computer, your shoes, your shirt, your hat, your watch. In cannabis, those love marks haven't been developed. To get in the consumer's minds, and again, it's not rocket science, but marketing does work if it's done well, it's a true strategy, right? And again, what you do in Southern California isn't going to work in Oklahoma. Right? If you're a multi-state operator. Or what you do in Southern California, you're not going to even work in Northern California. I mean, it's saying, so you've got to think about adapting to market conditions, to household incomes, to ethnicities. I mean, it can get costly, but there's ways to do it that you can do repeatable assets that add a little bit of local flavor. It's a brand based on trusting quality, on education, on holding new consumers' hand, on curating experiences for them. I would say our platform, FlowerTown.com, is kind of our long game. Someone's opinion may contradict yours. Where's my friend, Alan? It's all about your perspective. Who are we, and what is the nature of this reality? Five, four, three, two... What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. We are on site at the beautiful New West Summit, the Cannabis Tech Conference. We are now going to be talking to Dean Waters. Hi, Dean. How are you, Alan? Thank you so much for coming on our show. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Super pumped for this. Dean's background, for those that don't know, he's been executing successful media and marketing strategies for a variety of Fortune 500 companies for over the last 30 years, and most recently he's founded FlowerTown, Platform and FlowerTown Agency, to educate new consumers entering the marketplace and also give cannabis brands the proper marketing tools for normalization. Dean, I'm so pumped to jump in. All right. So, first, on the strategies for successful media and marketing that you've been doing the last 30 years, and also how that has bled into FlowerTown and what you're doing now. Yeah. Well, you can imagine that media marketing strategies have changed over the last 30 years, because there was a time where there was a cable box, and that's where you consumed media, and that's how you watch television, rating points were kind of decent. And now you're dealing with like massive fragmentation, right? So media and accountability is greater than it's ever been. I worked in the cable industry for, gosh, well I started my career as a media buyer in like 89, 90, was super young, I didn't go to college, I was going to go to a college, and then I decided he was either trying to make some money, just super aggressive as a young person, or go away to school, and I took the option of going to make some money. I was fortunate enough to work for a mentor at that young age, and then from there I parlayed that experience and worked in the cable industry. I worked for the first cable interconnect in the country, which was the first time a cable company would consolidate a marketplace to compete with the broadcast stations. So that was coming called AdLink, joined AdLink in 1991, and it was the first interconnect in the country that would consolidate a marketplace like the LA Media Market, which is five counties, which is 65 cable systems with a single feed to compete with broadcast stations. Groundbreaking at the time, and every market now has an interconnect, but again, viewing has changed over the years. After that, I left my corporate job, I was there for roughly 14 years, and it was a part of a start-up called Local Television Network, LTN, modeled after CityTV from Canada. I was there for roughly two years, I was a part of the team launching this, it was super interesting, it failed for all the wrong reasons, but it bit me as an entrepreneur. So from there, I decided not to ever go back to my corporate job, I proved myself and to others that I could actually, that short-sint those two years at Local Television Network was actually really impactful for me personally, but also showed me a path of doing things with big, big brands without needing to be selling MTV. So I started my own company called Vimbi. I spent the first year working in the office of my mentor who was my first job in media, and I was there for about a year, building my deck, building my business model, started hiring a couple people personally, I self-funded the company for about three years, roughly two and a half years. And from there, I had a transit, it was a time where like Mani and RIPE TV and VBS, which was Vice now, but VBS back then, everybody was imploding, they just, you know, video in the web wasn't happening, brands weren't sponsoring, and then I met Mark Burnett, and Mark Burnett was fascinated by the business model that I was building. And Burnett, you know Mark Burnett, the voice survivor, the apprentice. Burnett met me, and he was fascinated and enamored by my business model of like he could never pull off these types of productions and be a foyer into culture in America at the time, Vimbi was a destination website for lifestyle. So we were huge in action sports and music, you know, indie rock, hip-hop, street art, car culture, super interesting, fun, a lot of my passions growing up in Los Angeles. And we would do even a million views in a couple hours, but it wasn't happening on Vimbi, it was happening in Myspace and every blogger, but I couldn't run ads, and it was, you know, it was a tough, tough time to try and build a platform. Long story short, I met Mark Burnett, within nine weeks I became the Mark Burnett content studio, and literally overnight we became this crazy brand studio. I abandoned Vimbi as a destination, which in hindsight was a mistake. I should have kept with it based on where, you know, Vice is today and some of these other competitors that have built content companies. But regardless, I had this crazy run with Burnett for about nine years. I learned a ton. I literally became the gold standard for content and digital and series at the time and really kind of working with some of the biggest brands in the world. We just had an incredible run. And then December of 16, Mark Burnett got purchased by MGM. MGM made us an offer, quite wasn't where we thought our valuation was. We made them an offer, we brought our equity back. And it freed me up to go after cannabis. And I had started exploring cannabis a year prior and had some ends with some friends that were consulting big, big brands and, you know, got enough information, enough knowledge to kind of do my own thing, kind of be dangerous. There's people I met that I just, we didn't align as far as just what I needed to do what I wanted to do. And it wasn't about, for me, it wasn't about money. It was about insight and connections in the industry. So I went off and I kind of recruited my own team. I'm some of the best creatives and strategists that I've known in the industry. And at the time, VinB, which is my core company, still in existence, I completely stepped out. I raised some money and a hard new team. And I put some new executives in place at VinB so that I could, again, step out and do my own thing. So in December of 18, or excuse me, January of 18, we went out and raised some money. And I recruited my team. Everybody came on board. And March of 18, everybody quit their jobs and we started Flower Town. Flower Town is a brand that took 12 months to build. The first 12 months was really about building the brand, building kind of what we're going to stand for. Our mission didn't come until eight months later, as far as where we ended up. It's a brand based on trusting quality and education and holding new consumers hand and curating experiences for them. I would say our platform, FlowerTown.com, is kind of our long game. There's all sorts of opportunities that we're getting along the way. I should take a step back. In June of this year, I solidified my next round with Kohn Resnick, who's my new partner, who is one of the largest professional services in the country. They're forward-facing in cannabis. They, you know, cannabis is their, you know, it's massive growth for them, but they have some, you know, sustainable energy, affordable housing, some really, really big categories for them. Cannabis is new, but their growth trajectory is amazing. And they're doing business with over 160 plant-touching brands. So it creates a really interesting opportunity for us to collaborate with them. Some of the brands they're working with and kind of mine some marketing opportunities with some of those players. So we, you know, in March of this year, we went consumer-facing in FlowerTown.com. It's, again, it's a marathon. It's building a platform that's not easy. We also launched our creative services and some things that have really gone into effect May of this year, bleeding into June. And so we're working with brands. We kind of built this toolkit to help brands reach new consumers. We're also, you know, so within the FlowerTown.com platform, we've launched a product directory, which is products that we endorse and brands that we endorse that we like. The next phase of that is brands coming in and subscribing to our brand pages. Right now there's a bunch of product pages. Now it's kind of bringing a really kind of, you know, informational approach to the new consumer to empower them with knowledge about these brands. And then we have a dispensary directory which will be launching in the fourth quarter, which right now there is one on FlowerTown. The new one's launching, it'll look more like Zaggot. Not Yelp, a little bit more premium and a really good experience for the consumer. And, you know, we social media obviously shoots for everybody. We launch an influencer network. We aligned with a company called Open Influence that has the engine that we need for, you know, for post mortem data for clients, delivering all the data they would need, all the analytics that they need. And we can give guarantees, which is exciting. And the industry hasn't been used to that to date. And we've kind of created a consumer journey that's safe for influencers to get involved with Canada's brands through education. So FlowerTown comes in as an educational component. Influencers would say, oh my God, I discovered this topical. It's amazing from Elsa Recovery. I found it on flowertown.com. Check it out, swipe up. You arrive in a story about this topical based on fitness. And so if you want to shop, you can click and then you'll go to that product page where you can find a dispensary to purchase that product or you can say learn more and go to another page on FlowerTown to learn more about that product. It's super interesting. We kind of cracked a code. The issue is it's a $30,000 minimum for the industry, which for a lot of brands is a lot of money right now, right? But we are discovering brands that do have bigger budgets, a lot of multi-state operators that want to do things differently that, you know, we're starting to have more bigger conversations about that. You know, we're working with brands on creative development through our creative agency, which is flowertownagency.com. And that's been kind of our low hanging fruit right now, just based on our expertise, knowing consumer markets, helping them with strategy, helping them with campaign ideas, you know, doing, you know, brand stories, founder stories, storytelling, you know, the biggest, most important thing right now for brands is to let consumers understand who they are and tell stories that are authentic and sincere and things that they can connect with through kind of on their own time. Yeah. Yeah. Whoa. Sorry, that was long ago. It's such a cool journey, though. Yeah. Wow. I'm really interested in learning about a couple things here. Let's start with some of those strategies. When you were doing these, you know, these big deals with brands and you were figuring out the marketing and the strategies for them. And then you, where did, where did your vision, so tell us about that and then also where did the vision of the emerging cannabis market, how did that, how did the bug bite you of that? When did it do that? And yes, it tells us about that. But again, you know, whether it's media strategy or content strategy, all that happened at certain kind of points in my career. You know, when I launched VINB and we, you know, became partisan Mark Burnett, it became about content strategies, content marketing, not advertising, but content marketing, reality-based stories to help brands connect with consumers through sincerity marketing and just stories that were important to consumers that would allow us into their single page feed, you know, called Facebook Grants, whatever it might be and programming those screens accordingly. And then there were authentic stories that were, that were passing content along to consumers that was helping them connect with those brands. Well, it was, it was helping brands connect with some, with consumers through authentic storytelling and stories that weren't hard hitting, that it wasn't advertising, it was stuff that actually they were interested in. And then whether it was paid for by or we could integrate a product into a story, we would always put creative first. Yes. And with that had a tremendous impact. Yes. So there's this, in a sense, it goes brand authenticity to the customer, brand wants to distribute authenticity to the customer and then have the customer go, I trust that brand, I'm going to pass along that brand. I'm going to try to share it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, I like it. I like that. That's so and that's actually a, that's probably the core part of the future of content is exactly. Well, that's, I mean, it's, you know, hey, at the end of the day, advertising doesn't work, right, especially young savvy people, and even people that are, you know, you know, I guess millennials that you know, the top of like 35, and Gen Z, they're just, they're smart, right? They, they've figured out a way to kind of create their own network, whether it's Netflix or Amazon or whatever they're doing and kind of curate their own network. And therefore, you know, if you're, if you're delivering ads to them or content marketing that's meaningful that fits their lifestyle becomes acceptable, right? So that was the key was how do, how do we do things in a way to let a big box retailer or let, you know, a large CPG company kind of tell stories that are, you know, speaking to her or him based on kind of their likes and their interest. And it's, you know, you get good over time, right? You start figuring out what that looks like in stories that work and things that really move the needle. But, you know, it's just some process. And then prior to that, as far as media, in the cable industry was just, you know, we were competing against broadcast stations. You had to put together media plans and things that were impactful and can deliver on par with, you know, some of the big broadcasters. Yet we were, we were selling qualitative, you know, initiatives and doing things differently than having quantitative ratings. Because back then the cable industry didn't do well with rating points. And with cannabis, what led me to cannabis was a life long, you know, love for the plant, a lot of personal stories, things that I've encountered along the way and obviously living in California, which has had some sort of medical recreational for over 20 years. Right? You're kind of in it. It's actually very immature. And you get exposed to a lot of information. And it just came a time in my career that as a CEO, I'm more of a visionary. I'm not so much the operations guy. I'm people that goes, I go out and I look for that opportunity based on my instincts. And, you know, cannabis became clear to me what was happening. And yet it was the adults hadn't entered the room not to put down the industry. And the core of the industry has done incredible work to get everybody where they are today. But there's, you know, marketing sophistication. There's understanding of consumer marketing. There's an approach for consumers' best practices that haven't been embraced. You know, that is important to really, I mean, there's no science. I mean, there's a science behind marketing, but it's not rocket science, right? There's things in every consumer market that happen in that work and good marketing sells things. So, you know, we came into this industry saying, you know what, it's just, you know, with love for the plant, my career, everything that I've done, and rolling it into cannabis as well as some of the people that I love the most in this industry that wanted to join and do this with me, has been like, you know, we're having the most fun. I didn't have to interview people, right? I knew who I wanted to work with, and thank God they all wanted to, you know, work with me. And we never worked together because it was a new venture. And now we're, you know, getting people that want to join us because they see our vision and what we're doing and the work that we're putting out. So it's really exciting. OK, so let's hit on, you have this 30 years of experience that is also then being, then now translated into the cannabis industry. You are then being able to help provide all these unique insights on the content strategy, on brands being authentic to customers in this new emerging market of cannabis. And there's a lot of people that want to know exactly how to do that. And so what is going on, you gave us a little bit of this earlier, what exactly is going on that so many people aren't aware of yet? And what is Flower Town doing to help address that? Well, I mean, it all comes in the money, right? And every, I would say, most brands in California are in a fundraise, right? They're just, they're trying to survive. They're out raising money, they're trying to get to the next level, whether it's going to another state, whether it's upgrading their cultivation center, the manufacturing, whatever it might be. Marketing is not a primary goal, but yet you've got commoditization that's happening, right? There's thousands of brands, and you've got these retail stores that have limited shelf space, right? So a lot of these brands are just trying to make it through, where we always say at Flower Town that if these brands started working with us 12 months ago, granted, we weren't really consumer facing at the time, their worlds would be much different. But it also takes real money to do that, even though we've adjusted our thinking and our budget parameters based on this industry being so nascent and kind of people just getting their feet with marketing. But we always say like a month in cannabis is six months anywhere else. Even in the last month, we've seen massive changes, right? Consolidation's happening. MSOs are buying everything. MSOs, again. Multistate operators. Multistate operators. They're just, they're becoming big quick, right? They're in an acquisition mode, they're just, you know, and they're all vertically in it. Which conglomerates that are vertically integrated? Yeah, which ones? Which MSOs? Well, I mean, you know, the acreage, the Crescos, the GTIs, the grassroots, I mean, they're just, they're big. You know, they're brands, you know, retail, cultivation, manufacturing. I mean, some of them are 12 plus states. You know, it's impressive what they're doing, you know. So when we looked at what VIMBY represents a company that I built with local infrastructure and local expertise of market understanding. And we look at our team that we brought in through Flourtown, which are experts on group spending models. You know, whether it's dealer associations or strategists that work for large CPG companies that, you know, are just some of the most brilliant people in the country when it comes to strategy. And we start looking at some of these brands that are emerging that are operating in multiple states, but yet they can't do anything nationally because of the federal government. So they have to market state by state. But local's really important, right? So the next phase for Flourtown is localization of her platform. So Flourtown, Chicago, Flourtown, Detroit, right? Because local's really important. People identify with it. And you've got to look at each state individually because there's no national platform, right? You can't do anything nationally. But then you look at the NSOs, the multi-state operators, and they also need to be relevant to local markets, right? Once they look at their marketing strategy, it's, well, how do we do this affordably? But yet, you know, we need to identify with these markets because people are sensitive, whether it's skin color accents, household income, you know, city versus rural, whatever it might be, that there's dynamics that you can't assume one size fits all. So it's a complicated balancing act that we all kind of grew up in the industry doing. So we know how to do it. And now it's about educating brands and letting them understand our capabilities because it's pretty unique for the industry and things that we can do on the creative agency side as well as the platform side. So you have to know what the different cycle and demographics are of people across different states. You have to know what different brands want at just a $10,000 budget for a marketing product or at $100,000 or a $1,000,000 budget. You have to know how to create. You said there's components of Flower Town. Again, let's go through the components of Flower Town again. So we have our platform, FlowerTem.com, which is a consumer-based platform. And it's guiding that new consumer from story discovery all the way through their first transaction. And this means if I have, is this everywhere from if I've never experienced an edible or something all the way to educating me on stuff like that, here are some good things. We don't use certain words. We don't say weed. We say cannabis. We don't say joint. We say pre-roll. We'll never show partaking. We feel that as things normalize as in the spirits business, you don't show partaking. I think there's ways consumption on video or in pictures. So we focus on images and story lines and titles that are approachable to that new consumer. We're not going to show dabbing on FlowerTem. It's intimidating. It's a device with a blow torch that new consumers are like, whoa, that seems extreme. So we make stories approachable. But our approach with FlowerTem.com is a cannabis and approach always, whether it's lifestyle-based, whether it's educational-based, there's always a cannabis component. And then the lifestyle. Yeah, whatever it might be. But we focus on education, discovery. We always recommend products. Then we link the product pages on the platform. From there, we'll help you find the dispensary locally that we can buy these products. And then we kind of start our retention or loyalty programs. OK, so I'm on FlowerTem because of really, again, it's based on this brand, that when I go to FlowerTem, I know that I'm getting a cannabis and experience, that there's something around lifestyle or something around education that I'm learning about this process. Or we might even do a feature on a retail store that we really like. They really like that. That's a really cool experience. Because not every retail store makes it on FlowerTem. One, you have to be legal. But two, you've got to have an experience that we deem premium. There's still some retail stores that you walk in through their lobby, and you feel like you're waiting to see your kid in jail. There's some guys that are doing it well, and those will always endorse. So it's a balancing act, and we have a filter for products and retail that we deem kind of good for the new consumer. That makes sense. You don't want someone that's first approaching cannabis to walk into one of these, like you said, it does kind of, it's crazy, just being behind a piece of glass with a little slot underneath to dislike it, something that you can't even see at all behind it. Versus big, beautiful, experience design that is friendly and will bring it out to you, will open it up, will let you play and look at it, talk to you about it. And retail experiences that don't have tinted windows. When you drive by, you can see in the store. That's what you're expecting, any retail experience. I think people have been hiding in the shadows or just being quiet based on the vulnerability of security and different things that I think that the tide's starting to turn. So it's like revealing the veil on the emerging market, like making it more and more publicly facing as it progresses, we're moving the veil. So that's kind of what you guys in a sense are doing. We're trying to, but at the same time, and I was saying, some of our early revenues are coming from helping brands through our creative agency and helping them with strategy and helping them with brand stories and helping them kind of discover an interesting scalable path of assets that are repeatable and things that are attainable based on cost, but yet we can add volume and thought and things that help them connect with new consumers. Because a lot of what's happening in the industry today is a lot of brands are focused on the retail store. They're focused on the bud tender. I mean, even they should, because that bud tender needs to talk about their product. They're focused on that last kind of step before purchase versus, well, how do I create marketing strategies outside the dispensary? How do I get consumers, when they walk in the dispensary to ask for my brand versus being told about my brand, right? And sometimes bud tender is based on who's taking care of them might skew a certain product because whether they have an interest or not and hopefully they don't, but certain people have certain taste, right? But if some people, because all of our bodies react differently to products, need to discover stuff and get knowledgeable and smart outside the dispensary. And with that comes a cost, right? And Flower Town will always do that based on not skewing any opinions based on who's spending money with us, so brands need to market on their own. But it's just brands finding that balancing act as things are being commoditized and it's now it's time for brands to emerge that I think some of them are starting to realize that. Some of them are just trying to make it through and get purchased and some of them it's become as a sprint and we're kind of in it for the marathon because it's not a short game. It's definitely a long game. And it's, you know. Yeah. What do you recommend for brands trying to communicate authentic content to customers in this massive attention economy? Even in the space at large, like even cannabis of course, like, you know, taking really high quality pictures, uploading those to your Instagram and engaging with the people that are commenting, you know, using the right tags, right? Starting to post videos on TikTok, you know, stuff like this. So yeah, so tell us about. Well, I mean, I think there's a massive issue in the industry of recycling the core, right? Everybody's chasing the core, whether it's publishers, whether it's brands, they're in the dispensary, they're within their feeds, they're taking nice, beautiful colored pictures of that really sweet, you know, bud or whatever it might be, but how many buds do you want to look at? You know, how are these brands building their own identity? How do they become meaningful to a consumer? How do consumers feel like that should be what we like to call them love marks, right? We all have love marks in every product category, whether it's your computer, your shoes, your shirt, your hat, your watch, you know, in cannabis, those love marks haven't been developed because there's no real consumer. And that's the opportunity for brands that get it and realize I'm going into, I'm going to start marketing the consumers. I want to reach that new consumer. I'm going to define my marketplace. I'm going to define my pricing structure. I'm going to define who I am as a brand. I'm going to define, you know, my package. I'm going to, you know. What does a love mark, yeah, look like then? Like, give it to you. It's just brand recall, right? Brand recall. Like I can, oh, like when you see the swoosh like Apple's your love mark. Like that's your computer. Your phone is an Apple too. That's, that's, you're a Mac guy. Pixel, but pretty much, yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, but no, but I'm saying, you know, you're wearing Nike's, might have Adidas too, but those are shoes you can identify with, right? That's, that's your persona, your car. So this is the brand recall, like go back to get your pair of shoes when you go back to get your next cannabis experience. We've done a lot of man on the street, right? Cause we've got this unique infrastructure of filmmakers all over the country. And we've done just man on the street on brand recall. Like, hey, like, tell us about your favorite retail store, like, you know, people can't get it out of their mouth fast enough. Tell us about your shoes or, you know, tell us about cannabis. What's your favorite product? God, it's like, wah, wah. Like people just date their, the brand recall is very low. I like that. Brand recall is then the key. Did you talk to people about- That's like a show too. What's your favorite interview show? Wah, wah, like if they can pick and be like, oh, I love watching this interview show, then you're doing a good job because people are being captivated by your- But that, you know, to get in the consumer's minds, and again, it's not rocket science, but marketing does work if it's done well. It's a true strategy, right? And it's targeting, and again, you can't, what you do in Southern California isn't gonna work in Oklahoma, right? If you're a multi-state operator. Or what you do in Southern California, might not even work in Northern California. I mean, same, so you gotta think about adapting to market conditions, to household incomes, to ethnicities. I mean, it can get costly, but there's ways to do it that you can do repeatable assets that add a little bit of local flavor. But you know, localism, but you know, beyond, before you get to the content strategy, or I would say developing content, there's a whole brand strategy of building that brand and that identity. That is important that even if you were at the dispensary level and a brand had 10 ambassadors, you know, if you asked each one of those ambassadors, give us the brand story. Without a true brand book or a mission statement, would you get the same story? Probably not, right? And so you've got a bunch of things floating in the marketplace that are confusing. Even the founder themselves, if they have elevator pitches with different people, are selling the story differently, usually, yeah. So it's a lot of basics that are, but then you have cannabis brands that are, you know, if it's a 10 step process to actually selling a product, and they're like, I have momentum, I'm at step five. I'm not gonna start over. So we'll recommend, we get it, we'll step in, but we should parallel path, building some fundamentals as you go outside dispensaries and you start reaching new consumers. You know, when you reach them in their terms, the thought process is different. You're dealing with a massive stigma, right? You're dealing with shit that is, you know, is just real. I mean, it's real. And then you're dealing with people too that would take something from you or you, but they're still not willing to walk into a dispensary to make that first purchase. Well, how do you get them comfortable with that? Right? It's all, I mean, we're huge about education. The industry, I mean, California legalized marijuana and there's no educational campaign, right? There's nothing that's speaking to the public. I mean, the state did release a budget, it's very small. It's not gonna be effective, it's almost invisible based on how expensive California media is, but you know, that's one of the biggest things, it's just education. And we're believers in Flower Town that, you know, education is marketing. You can take an educational idea and make a marketing campaign out of it, and it's not gonna seem lame. And then it provides value to people. Yeah, and you become that. Do a brand recall. That thought leader of like, wow, that guy's holding my hand. That brand is, you know, then there's the element of like using Flower Town as a filter to reach a new consumer and brand's getting behind us because our voice is a voice for the consumer. We're not plant touching without a retailer. We're there to be the arbiter of quality control and safety and trust. So there's an interesting play of brands coming to our world and reaching the marketplace that way of, you know, there's an oil brand that we're gonna do with the vaping crisis and we're kind of just putting ourselves right in the middle of it right now. And we're gonna do a mini doc on, from the plant all the way to the fielding cartridge and what a legal process looks like, right? But the brand's like, we don't wanna release it on our own. We wanna release it through Flower Town, because it'll be more meaningful. It's not gonna be an advertisement. It's actually gonna be, you know, an educational piece of content coming from Flower Town, which is that educational platform. This is big. The idea is like, can you disseminate content to people that brings them education and value that is not trying to sell your own agenda, but rather just in a sense, you're not trying to feed them your own products. You're getting in the heads of the consumer, right? You're becoming that resource, that brand that's responsible. Yeah, you're doing the educational part. So that way they themselves become more educated through you, you become the brand that they trust and then you can then work entrusted with other brands and deliver content that they think, okay, I trust this brand now, so I'll trust this recommendation. And I'll let them into my social feed, right? Cause I like the stories they're telling me, and I'm connecting with them. And they seem like they're actually have my best interest. I like how you say I let them into the social feed. Cause that's what it is when you follow or subscribe or whatever it's guarding you. People are curating their own media experiences. Media's never been like this ever, right? People are curating their own media experiences. My kids never watch live. I mean, they might watch an award show or a sporting event, but my kids watch Netflix. They watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it. When they want to watch it. And they don't see ads. And partly there's some nuance there because the supercomputers pointed at their face but of the two billion psychometric profiles that's been trained on. So there's some nuance there, your little avatar on the server that is Dean Waters. They get woken up when you log into your Twitter feed or whatever. So Dean, this has been very interesting. We ask a question at least on the way out of every show. The question is, what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? What do I think is the most beautiful thing in the world? Well, God, I'd be remiss if I didn't say my kids, right? Cause they're beautiful and it's one of the biggest gifts. Hi, you know what man? When I vacation, I go to beaches and I go up surfing my whole life. And that's where I prefer to put myself is on an island somewhere on a beach and enjoying my friends and my family and kind of doing that. And the day I retire, that's where I'll spend my time doing that cause I can fill my days up. But to me, that's the most beautiful thing in the world. I mean, aside from my kids. Thank you, Dean. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. And thank you everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below in the episode list as you're thinking. Also check out the links in the bio to Dean's work into Flower Town. Check those out, share them more with your friends, families, corvus, people online. Go support New West Summit as well. Their links are below. Support us and the other artists and entrepreneurs in your community. Support them, help them grow. And go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you soon. Thanks, Allen. Thank you, Dean. Thank you. Thank you. Cool. That's it. We're good.