He’ll Teach You to Sell ANYTHING - In Just 51 Minutes! | Ron Lynch

My criteria for any business being successful is an innovation. I have a hard time selling commodities because the commodities sell on price. Innovation sells on life changing opportunity. So innovation is key to me. Then there's got to be an audience for it. You can have an innovation. If you don't have an audience, you've got nothing. Then you have to have margin. There's a lot of people that can make products but they don't know how to get their retail price. I very much like to anchor at the highest possible retail price I can find so that I have margin. Because if I'm going to build a brand through direct response, the audience is actually paying for the marketing and I know if I do a great job of that, it ends up in Walmart and I just lost 50% of the retail price in wholesale goods cost to Walmart. The last piece is what I provide and that story. So when I leave I have all of their data hopefully and their research and how does this work best? And give me your CAD drawings and all of the technical pieces like the CEO gets for the company and then I walk away and I rebuild a suite of marketing products for them based upon the problem they're trying to solve and their audiences and then specify audience for creative Ron Lynch Ron is a.

Unique creative force in the marketing industry. He's a prominent direct response television producer, screenwriter, director, inventor, author, investor and philanthropist. He has brought in $5.5 billion in DRTV direct response TV orders. He teaches marketing through his four star gold rated course the Marketing Mercenary. This teaches both young marketers and experience how to think about wealth, money and ethical sales from an audience perspective. It is a Guide that over 200 people have used to launch businesses over the past three years. On March 14, 2020, the first day of COVID he launched the global feeding network charity IntelliHelp. Utilizing tech to connect people in need and givers. This Uber meets the Red Cross model connecting over 100,000 members internationally in a matter of weeks. A background in retail operations as a grocery Operations Director. He has a CEO level understanding as supply chain labor and P&LS. Most often associated as the creative strategist for GoPro and 70 other brands including Rug Dr. Orange Glow and OxiClean, Samsung, JJ SC Johnson brands. He has several patents, has had a hand in over a dozen films and produced a library of over 400 television commercials. He's on the board of several tech and food oriented startups as well including all 33 and the back strong chair. He has authored five books Freaking Lazy guy and currently has a dozen technology patents in play for three web 3.0 products. Ron has a passion for ethically bringing world changing innovations to consumers that solve real problems as a key to brand building. He's happy to offer counsel and perspective to open minds and hearts. Thank you, thank you for being here. And I do have to give credit to Laura Cattella here because she had her Diamond Day event where we were both at and that's where we had a chance to get to know each other and talk and it was, it was awesome. And one of the things I kind of wanted. So thank you very much, Laura.

Thank you.

And what I would. I love this one conversation we had about you have a thing where you do a thousand dollar cup of coffee.

Yeah.

So I'd love for you to explain this concept to everybody because I think they will find that valuable, useful thing.

Yeah. If you're an entrepreneur you probably get the question a lot. Can I pick your brain? And don't like my brain picked. I like my brain what the size it currently is. And so I like to challenge the person to see if they really believe in their idea. And I say absolutely. I have a thousand dollar cup of coffee. I'll sit down with you for $1,000 for an hour or two and we'll talk about whatever you want to talk about and I'll give you what insights I can give you about it. And that right there knocks out about 80% of the people that are going to because they actually don't believe in their idea. So the ones that do sit down amazingly start to take you seriously, start to take themselves seriously. And then I can feed them back a document that is only one or two pages long. It's really my notes from the meeting that gives them a clear perspective, kind of in short form of what they think they're doing, where they think they want to go. So I have some, you know, some watermarks in business that I have learned over the years. It's a great tool to one direct somebody towards another vendor that can help them get them to take themselves seriously and their business seriously or get me to evaluate if I want to work with them. Because evaluation to me is one of the most important things that we skip over in business and in relationships. And I love upfront direct evaluative tools.

Well, I'm going to stick with this whole theme here and just ask you how you go about evaluating someone's idea and then determining either a, it's a crappy idea in its current form or you need to Fill in these blanks or. Okay, this is awesome. Here's what we do. Before I do that, one of the.

Things you even said to me when.

We were talking is if they're not willing to spend $1,000 to sit down for a cup of coffee with me, they're never going to pay me any real money anyway. Right. And so I think that's just a great filtering process to begin with. And what are some of the.

I hear laughter. You've done this. You've been there.

Speaking of the bike too, she's furiously riding. My running joke was I was just gonna put Free consultant on a business card and hand it to anyone that would. Because that's all. After I sold my company, that's all I did for two years was free consulting.

Yeah.

Here's what's funny. He sells his company for millions of dollars and then becomes Free Consult. I had someone run up to me at one of your annual meetings and with tears in their eye and I, I didn't remember who it was. Tears in their eyes. He's like, I did everything you told me to do. Last year. When we had lunch, he was three days away from doing a deal with private equity. He's like, I did everything he said. They said what you said they were going to say. Then I said what you told me to say and I got 5 million extra dollars and cut my non compete from 2 years to 6 months. And I was like, literally, I felt terrible. I didn't remember who it was. It was a 30 minute conversation. It turned into $5 million. Probably would have paid $1,000 instead to.

Sit there and do that. I like the process because it does your vetting things and you're seeing who's serious about themselves. It also gives me exposure to good ideas. I'm all about implementation. If I charge someone a thousand dollars to sit with me for an hour or two, they're probably going to implement what I said.

Yeah, they'll take it way more seriously.

Then it'll probably work. Then what happens to my intellectual stock with them? There's people that I won't charge. Like all of you now in this room, I feel like I have a certain understanding and cadence with. If you called me, I wouldn't say, oh, it's a. And I'm not a person of a trade show floor walking up. Right. That's, that's the kind of the key differences. Known quantities are completely different than unknown quantities. But that's how you kind of separate the unknown quantities.

There's so much of that say if they don't pay, they don't pay attention. And there's a lot to be said about that. And so I've learned that painfully over the years because my propensity is to try to just want to help everyone. And it's one of these things to where it is a protector of your time, but it's also a respecter of your time. And it's one thing to protect your time, but a lot of people, they just don't respect it. And that's, that's one of the challenges. You know, my friend Dave Keckish would always say the value of any service you provide diminishes rapidly once it's provided. So protect your compensation up front. And so let's go to the assessment part and then I'll open this up for Q and A because I can ask him questions all day long. But I want you guys to be able to ask Ron, Dave Kecich K.

E K I C H Kekich Credos.

And if you type in Kekich credos online, he wrote 100 Rules of Life and business. Do we have enough to hand out to everyone here, Eunice? Are we kind of running low on those? But the other thing, let's just email them to everyone. Then they can have them. We can just email them a link so they can have all the. They're amazing. So when you're talking with someone and you're. I often say this about copywriters too people, they'll get sticker shock when they hear like a world class copywriter, how much one's going to pay. And they think that someone's sitting down writing a letter. They don't realize the amount of research, they don't realize the amount of detective work one has to do to evaluate and assess something in order to even build strategy and stuff around it. So I'd love to hear your model.

Oh, so yeah, that's the next kind of step. So there's a cup of coffee that's thousand dollars to see if they've got an idea, then if I agree and they agree that, hey, this needs a second date, there's two second dates. Typically with a corporation it's a $25,000 date or two where I go in and I do the evaluative process and deliver back a document that's 20 to 40 pages long. And I'll tell you what's in that, what the criteria are, or it's a $5,000 consult on something very simple. Like if somebody's already Got it. I just did a consult for a company. They won't care. That said, it's a company called Circle. It's a beverage company. They have a water bottle that's got a valve and a thing you put in it that's got flavor in it. So you're utilizing water, you're adding the cartridge and it's got 50 or 60 flavors. So 50 or 60 flavors goes from replacing Gatorade to replacing Starbucks cold coffee. There's all this weird stuff that's going in it. It's very difficult to market a clear message to that. And everybody's selling flavored water in the world, but we all know we need to drink more water. So when I went in, I just repositioned the company as water, it's finally your favorite beverage because we all know we should drink more water, but we hate it because it tastes like water. So I just took that. So that could be the anchor for the company. Now you can plug in all the fit flavor cartridges and it opened itself up at the top to the broadest consumer segment that could let us play in all the flavor profiles underneath. Whether you were an athletic person or a Starbucks person or a fitness person or all of that stuff. So that's like a $5,000 day in a $25,000 day. I actually go in and do research and they provide me the research. I just know how to log it. So I go in and I go, what's your problem? What's your olution? What's your USP? And they go, what's a USP? So there's a little bit of education in the day. What are the features? What are the benefits? Who are your audiences? And my criteria for any business being successful is you have to have in my mind an innovation. I have a hard time selling commodities because the commodities sell on price. Innovation sells on life changing opportunity. So innovation is key to me and there's got to be an audience for it. You have innovation. If you don't have an audience, you've got nothing. Then you have to have margin.

There's a lot of people that can.

Make products, but they don't know how to get their retail price. I very much like to anchor at the highest possible retail price I can find so that I have margin. Because if I'm going to build a brand through direct response, the audience is actually paying for the marketing. And I know if I do a great job of that, it ends up in Walmart. And I just lost 50% of the retail price. Wholesale goods cost to Walmart make sense. So the last piece is what I provide and that story. So when I leave, I have all of their data, hopefully and their research. And how does this work best? Give me your CAD drawings and all of the technical pieces like the CEO gets for the company and then I walk away. I rebuild a suite of marketing products for them based upon the problem they're trying to solve and their audiences and then specify audience per creative. With GoPro, that was one of the things we did. We actually matched creatives to television stations. So you saw car racing on the Velocity network and skiing on the ski network. Because I would rather have 20 really efficient producing commercial people pieces of content that were pointed at a vertical than one $35 million campaign that's pointed at nothing.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So how did you learn all this? Let's go back to the beginning of what were the things that allowed you to really understand and then first off comprehend marketing, but then structure it into creating campaigns that work. Most people that I know that are world class direct response people have just spent so much time in you studying.

And learning and writing.

In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing.

Yeah, first of all, I agree with that. I believe everything's an experiment. Everything. My marriage is still an experiment. 32 years into it. It's all an experiment. So I came to this differently than most people did. I was a kid who was going to college. I thought I was going to to be a lawyer. I wanted to skip school. One day my college roommate said, hey, let's go. I got an audition in a movie. So I went and auditioned for a movie just to skip school. And I got a lead role in a movie that Robert Altman directed. So I was in Seattle and suddenly I had a sad card. And it was the late 80s, mid-80s and they were making a lot of movies in Seattle. So there was me and Brendan Fraser and Tom Skerritt's son, Matt Scarrick. We were like the three guys in Seattle was some movies were rolling through town and we were getting in every single movie. And when I got in a movie, I get a thousand dollars or something for Being a day player, saying a few words. I asked to stay on as a PA because I didn't want to go back to my job at the grocery store. And so I'd stay on for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days as a PA and I learned how films were made and how sets operated, production system like, I'll get your water. I'll get you a chair, like. But they treated me nicer because I was in the movie. Like, it was kind of a nice position to be in. So I did that for a long time. And I was sitting in the Union Station waiting to film a scene with Jeff Bridges, the dude. And I didn't know him. I stand next to him. He's kind of tall. He's about six two, I think Jeff knows him. Really nice guy. And I said, hey, how do I get to be in your chair? Because I have visions of being a movie star now. They said, it's super easy.

I'm like, really?

He's like, yeah. Make sure your dad's Floyd Bridges. Your dad's Lloyd Bridges.

That's actually pretty damn funny.

Is there any other rich, you know, he goes, write if you can learn to write. Writers are always at work in Hollywood. I hated writing. Like, it was the thing I hated the most, but I listened to him. But this is one of the lessons I've learned, is do the work first and then the universe rewards you. I do not hope for anything. I do the work first and then the thing shows up. So this is truly how this happened. Went home, wrote two movies on a typewriter. We were not a computer. Landed that point. I was in college writing a typewriter still, and I worked in the grocery store. And this lady used to come through my store every day, and she was a top show host on the local Seattle afternoon talk show. Her name was Dana Middleton. And, you know, they talked about the soaps and whoever had a new book out or whatever, it's coming in from Seattle. So she came through my line one day, and I said, hey, Dana, I don't mean to bug you, but do you know anybody who. I've written a couple movies. You know anybody in Hollywood? She goes, as a matter of fact, I do. She goes, bring me your movies. So I went to King Co's and made some copies, put them in a plastic bag and kept them under my grocery store check stand on the express line for a couple weeks. She popped in. I was like, dude, I got that. I walked over with this plastic bag with these two scripts, and she goes, wow, you really did you wrote these? I didn't pull them out. Most people in Hollywood, they just, they say they've written the movie, but it's really an idea for a movie they didn't actually write. She goes, well, I'll take these and read them. Do you mind if I give them to my sister? Like, no. She goes, well, I assume that's why you asked me. I'm like, no, who's your sister? She goes, my sister's Kathleen Kennedy. I'm like, this is pre Internet days. Who's that? She's Steven Spielberg's partner. She's produced all of his movies. Like, like, okay. Two weeks later, I get a call from Kathleen Kennedy. I'm living in my shitty basement apartment where I just got married and Kathleen Kennedy's on the phone and I'm looking at my wife and it's like four in the afternoon. Like, my wife is like, I don't know who the fuck it is, just kind of impressed at all. So she says, how do you do this? The dialogue's really good. It's very unusual to have people sound like different people. Most writers when they do this, when they're young, every character sounds like the same person. I said, I just see it and I take dictation and I see another character come in and I just write the voice. So they liked what I'd written and said, hey, we're thinking about enrolling you in this thing we have called the Chesterfield Film Company. So it's a writing program. So that kind of moved along. And I had this decision whether to move to Hollywood, pursue this, or here I was married to this gal and we were just starting out and we had our families in Seattle. And I chickened out, gun was to my head and I backed off and I went to the grocery business and I ended up being a store operator, grocery store manager. And then I was building new grocery stores. Like, I accelerated that. I found mentors in the grocery business because it's very hungry. And I've learned how to operate retail grocery stores and build new stores. One of the aspects of what we were doing was taking stores in gentrified neighborhoods and training them from crappy stores into designer high end whole food style stores. So I went to Austin and I learned from Lex Alexander and I looked John Mackey and I went to these stores and toured and I really learned how to be a retail gourmet grocer. One of the features of the store were we had these cooking kiosks where we taught the audience in the store to buy better Food. So these were people that were buying macaroni and cheese for 35 cents a box. And we had a French chef from a local restaurant who was very cool. He'd come in and cook at the kiosk and he'd make brilla pasta with Asiago cheese and tomatoes. And, you know, there was nine dollar choice instead of the 35 cent choice. And we taught the audience to do that. I said, chef Jacques, this is. This is delicious. This is fantastic. And he goes, it's fucking macalonia cheese. But that was a very important thing for me to learn was I could take something that was the same thing and reposition was just macaroni and cheese repositioned as French macaroni and cheese. And now if you're seeing 10 million people through a grocery store a year and you get $7 more out of all of those people. So now I'm learning about offers. And this kiosk is infomercial. So my friend calls me, says, hey, Sam Perlmutter is coming to town. He's George Foreman's agent. Want to meet him? Sure. Should I go dinner with Sam Perlmutter. Turns out he produces all these Shawn Claude Van Damme movies. Dinner. I can't help myself. Like, I wrote a movie. He's like, oh, really? Thanks for thinking of Sean. Thanks for teaching. Thanks. I bring this guy Sean. He goes, well, and of course, I got a bag. But you read it. He's like, I'll read it on the plane. So I wrote a movie called the Real Vanessa, which was a. I was telling you about this last night. It was a sex comedy that I positioned around Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley. He called me last the next day and he said, I just got off the plane and people on the plane were looking at me because I was laughing so hard. I was crying because I have no idea why I'm doing this, but I'm going to option this film from a grocery dude. So my friend called me and he said, hey, I heard you sold a script to Sam Perlmutter's agent, George Foreman's agent. I said, yeah, so mind if we come in the store and shoot some George Foreman girl spots in the store you're more than welcome to? So we arranged a deal that came in and they used the kiosk because they were doing man on the Streets and commercials. You've seen this. How does it taste? How does it cook? So the guy again said, hey, how did that work out with Sam Perlmeyer? I said, oh, so far, pretty good. We're Negotiating. I think I'm going to sell this because you think you could write an infomercial? I said, absolutely. What's an infomercial? And then I realized an infomercial was a cooking demonstration. So the very first commercial I wrote, I wrote short form for space bags. The bags put your lug and your clothes in and suck the air out. Historic. And that. I worked with John Johns at Space Bag on that. Like, he was my first client that I ever faced. Then the second one was for a group out of LA called Silmark, and they had a product called the Ultimate Chopper, which was a food processor. Processor. I still can't say that I sold a bunch of them, but I can't say that word. And I quit my job at the grocery store, went and became the creative director of this agency. And my first infomercial did $80 million in the first six months. My second one did $100 million. My third one did $100 million. Boom, boom, boom. Changed my whole life. And then fourth, fifth, and sixth did nothing. Nothing.

You think you lost your edge of what happened there?

I think that I thought I was so smart and so cool. What I hadn't realized that the people were giving me products, were very well versed in what they were doing. And they knew exactly how to pick horses. And I did not know how to pick horses. I was picking me. My head was so full of me that I couldn't do any wrong. Pop. God comes along and goes, oh, trip. So then I got real concerned about that. But I learned how to pick. So picking is one of the most important things you do in life. So that's why I qualify. I have tests. If you want to be my friend, there's a test. Not kidding you. If you want to be my client, there's a test. Like, I qualify people to appear in my life on the basis of ethics, morals, values. There's a process to it. And then I'm like, if you can sign up for me, this is who I am. I see who you are, and they go, yeah, okay. And I make agreements right up front with people about who we are and who we're going to be in integrity moving forward. And I hold them to it, and they hold me to it. That's really cool.

I like that.

Questions? So when I came to hang out with you at your house in Austin a few years ago, and we, like, drank a lot and then did karaoke in your smoky garage, was that the test? Same with you. You should see this guy doing karaoke in a Smoke filled garage. It was amazing at that house we had a pretty sexy garage. No, you actually we did the test earlier that day. You probably don't even realize that we did it. I probably not. So I'm curious. I'll tell you guys what it is because one of my very first mentors taught it to me. Do you want to do it? Yes, absolutely. Would someone take notes for us? It's very simple notes. Just going to after I don't take them. Thank you. So Joe, tell me three people living or dead. So no fictional characters. You can't pick Tom Soiree. But you can't pick Mark Twain if you've known him or not known him. Three people that you strongly admire. Don't tell me why. Just give me three people.

George Carwin, George Carlin. Even though there's of part I don't admire.

Jesus Christ and it doesn't necessarily have.

To be the God version that people have. Just the human and what it represents.

And.

Abraham Wickham.

Some of those people have been on my list for the years. Some. So let's start with George Carlin. What are three character traits of George Carlin that made him pop to mind now? Not results. Character traits.

He said what he wanted to say.

What kind of person does that?

Someone that has conviction and confidence.

Conviction and confidence. Saying what you want to say is the outcome of the character trait. Conviction and confidence. Okay. Second, he can say things in a.

Way to where he could. Other people just couldn't say it. I mean if today it would be very hard for George Carlin to say the things in a certain culture. But I've seen him live four different times. Even some of the stuff I was like, I cannot believe this shit is coming out of his mouth. Someone else would get killed if it wasn't him. Just so his ability to be able to push intensity right to the edge but not over.

What's the trait?

Oh boy. That trait is courage.

Courage. And I know we have three already but let's since first two are kind.

Of bubbling together and this funny dishumor he brought. He could package it up in humor and wanted to make people laugh.

Okay, let's go to the JC at Nazareth. Three character traits of him.

Caring, caring, compassionate. Compassionate and willing to die for what you believe in.

What type of people are willing to die for what they believe in?

Courageous people that are willing to suffer for the advancement of humanity.

What type of people are willing to suffer? Suffer is a behavior.

Right.

So it's the thing that leads to someone being willing to suffer. Belief. Third person. And faith. Faith, too.

Abraham Lincoln. You know, I admire him because he had tremendous mental illness and so many struggles and adversity, and he still just wanted to lead. He was, for one, his ability to overcome failure and adversity. I mean, he failed numerous times.

What's the ability?

Yeah. Resilience. Thank you. Yeah, I was searching for that.

He.

Had an incredible ability to bring people that hated him and could not get along together and he could create collaborations. He literally, you know, team arrivals. He would bring together, you know, the book about Lincoln, Team Arrivals. He would bring rivals together and get them to work together for the betterment of, you know, his belief in the country, United States.

So what's the thing behind that? That's the behavior. Person that can do that is he's a collaborator.

Collaborative and incredibly effective communicator.

So articulate communication. Yeah, yeah.

Orator. Communicate. Right.

Okay, now I want you to go someplace dark for a second. Okay. We don't need to pick the person. I mean, you need to pick the person. We're not going to say the name. I want you to pick the antithesis of that. A person that. That if they walked in the room right now, you'd say, hey, Veronica, stop the interview for a second. Right. Or you'd go, I'm leaving, because can't be in the room with them. Can you picture such a person? Yeah. Okay, can you give me three character traits of that person?

Evil. Anthony Fauci would come to mind. Evil, Manipulative.

Self serving.

Narcissistic. Sociopathic. Psychopathic.

I noticed that math wasn't on your first list.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Okay, so we got that.

Unethical. Okay.

Yep. Got like attracts like. We're very similar in a lot of ways. So let's go to yet another place. What does the word integrity mean to you? Being consistent with what you say you're.

Going to do and doing it.

Keeping your word.

Honoring other people. Ethical. Not just doing things right, but doing the right thing.

And what's the word honesty mean to you? Truthful.

Congruent.

So it's very difficult when you first get to know a person, who they are. We can get into business relationships or marriages or things that go on for years and years and years. And then we discover that that person was not who we thought we were dating the entire time. This is a very fast shortcut because it's very hard for Joe to sit down at the first meeting and say, this is who I am. That positive list of people read his positive List the first, please. Oh, no, no. The. The character traits. I don't even care who the people are. Okay.

Conviction, confidence, courage, humor, caring, compassionate. Belief, resilience, collaborative, articulate.

Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Joe. Polish tip right to a T. I know exactly who I'm dealing with. Now you're thinking, oh, the dark side. We've got Joe's dark side. We've exposed Joe's dark side. No, we haven't. What we've exposed is the things that Joe has been hurt by in the past or the things that really are the thorns to him, that should he pick up the bottle one day, which he doesn't do, but let's say he had that night and went off the rails the next morning. He would look in the mirror and go, you were. That would be on the list. Those things would all be on his list. You get dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. That's why it's such radar too, for other people. So my list. Well, I'll tell you the next is I ask integrity before honesty. Integrity and honesty are my two core values because those get us to everything else in life. Integrity means that I do what I say I'm going to do and I don't do what I say I'm not going to do. Most people forget the second half. You have to announce your can dos and your don't do's. And if I know that for you, that we've got that agreement that we decide that's what integrity is, and you can live with my definition. I now can trust you in the voxhole. I can leave Boston, away from the company, and I know exactly what's going to happen because Joe's told me the list of the things he's going to do, things he's not going to do. He can be my assistant, he can be my line producer, he can be my boss, he can be my friend. That's honesty. The reason I asked that before, honesty, by the way, is so I know for a person who thought about the work, I hear a lot of crazy answers to that question. I hear a lot of it means just follow your heart, whatever's good for you. I hear that all the time. Integrity, it just means you're true to yourself. Just look. No, it's not what it means. I hope that this is a tool that you all implement going forward. I really do, because this woke me. A huge shortcut in life to getting the else from the right. Honesty is you tell the truth. That's why he said truthful and I was simulating to stop him, but don't say anything else. Joe, please, just leave it there. It's telling the truth with tact, because you have to tell bad truths. You have to tell the ugly side from time to time. You have to have the courage to do it. You can't sit in silence when the truth needs to be said. You have to step forward to go, hey, I gotta tell you this. I don't want to tell you this. It's not gonna land real great. But it's gotta be said, that test I've done with probably 2,600 employees in the grocery industry, which is what made me adequate CEO in that industry. I've done it with every employee. I've done it with every one of my friends. We did that on the deck that night, right? Now, in retrospect, you're like, oh, yeah, that's right. That was the second glass of whiskey.

You know, it's interesting about that too, because I've often thought about the honesty thing. We actually have. At least a senior Genius network member gave a talk. This was several years ago. If you love me, lie to me. That was the title of her 10 minute talk. All of you can watch it on the membership site if you want. And she works in a. She's literally a designer. And a lot of her work has.

Been in assisted living homes.

And if someone's like losing their memory, they have dementia, and you tell them certain things, you know, it's. It's like. It was a very. It was really interesting watching how the audience responded because it made people question, like, are you talking about lying? Or, you know, lying by omission, not telling something. Right. And it's one of those things where in 12 steps, making amends. It's like, you know, you make amends to others, except when to do so would injure them or others. Right? You tell the truth, you make amends, except if you do so, it would injure someone. So I will pause often on honesty. It's like, you know, the Germans are knocking at the door. You hiding anyone yet? No one's here. No. You know, it's like, at what point do you lie? And I've always had that sort of. And I say this because when I was a young. When I was. Even before high school, I had older people that taught me to shoplift, and they taught me how to do drugs and they taught me how to sell drugs, and I was a criminal, basically. And there came a point where I was like, as crazy as it sounds, it was a New Year's resolution. I will not steal. I will not sell drugs. I just can't do this anymore. And literally, overnight, if, you know, the rest of my life, it's like whoever profits from the crime is guilty of it. And honesty and integrity to me is don't take advantage. Don't take advantage of others.