JP Laqueur, Principal and Chief Connector, BrandFoundations
Throughout his career JP has been creating understanding and connections between people and brands, buyers and sellers, companies and employees. He began his career at MCI, marketing some of the world’s very first Internet services, and seeing first-hand how a powerful brand – and a committed culture – could disrupt a 100-year old monopoly and change the world.
Over the next twenty years, JP held senior tech industry marketing positions and founded a series of marketing and brand agencies – continuously honing his skills as a creative wordsmith, passionate storyteller, and student of human communications, branding, and corporate culture.
Today, his firm BrandFoundations helps organizations unlock the value of their two biggest intangible assets: brand and culture. Sought out by private equity sponsors and purpose-driven CEOs – especially those rapidly pivoting, growing or transforming as a result of M&A – BrandFoundations develops powerful brand stories that energize a company's culture, create competitive separation, and enhance exit valuation.
JP holds a BA in Political Science from Hobart College, is a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and can be found skiing, biking or hiking when not integrating brands and cultures.
BrandFoundations has partnered with Jane Lauterback from PurposeWorks.com to offer the Cannabis and Hemp industries a way to assess and strengthen their internal cultures in the face of hyper-growth. Using a combination of cultural assessments strategies and purposeful communications models, BrandFoundations and PurposeWorks can help cannabis and hemp companies build operating cultures that will stand the test of time.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to thinking outside the bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policy makers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt
[00:00:31] Welcome everyone. This is thinking outside the bud. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host and we have a special episode today we have two guests. So first let me introduce J.P. Laqueur from brand foundations. And then we have Jane Lauterback from PurposeWorks.com. And we'll let them each kind of introduce themselves but we're going to talk a little bit about the importance of brand not only externally as your company figures out how to position itself in the market but really from an internal point of view this market is high growth a lot of change a lot of sort of dynamic markets dynamic businesses and we're going to talk about why brand is actually just as important if not more important from an informal internal point of view. So why don't we start with the J-P what do you give us a sense of your background and tell us why we're here today why are we talking to our candidates and then we can handle over.
[00:01:22] Absolutely. Thanks. Pleasure to be here again J.P. liqueur. My company is called Brand foundations dot USA if you want. You are all we are. We're really sort of a brand agency that operates at the intersection of brand and culture. We recognize that those are the two biggest intangibles that drive evaluation and companies. And so we really try to use purpose and narrative to weave together a brand a companies internal and external brand message and story so that what they communicate to the outside world is backed up by what they talk about internally as well and the culture and those are the most successful companies and most valuable companies the ones who live the brand truly and so that's sort of what what my company does. I came to the cannabis space. I've been drawn to really fast moving disruptive agencies or industries.
[00:02:04] Ever since I began my career which was in the telecom space the dawn of the Internet and even when I left the industry and went out on my own as an agency to build my own agency one of the first things we did is got into the CEO Space which was very disruptive in terms of marketing. And today with the work that we do a brand Foundation is kind of rethinking what brand is all about and working this notion of culture into it. So it has been sort of drawn to these disruptive notions in an industry and I look at the cannabis and hemp space and I think this is a huge disruptive industry and just going to have the potential to change everything from healthcare and entertainment or even the financial you know underpinnings of the country and so I'm a big fan of it. I want to see it succeed and that's part of what we want to talk about today and that's going to require a heavier.
[00:02:51] Tell us a little bit about your background and how we got here. What is your relationship to cannabis and this space.
[00:02:58] Well thanks very much for having both J.P. and I join you today. My background is in business development and brand strategy and I've ran a global business is based here as well. It's been a number of years overseas in Asia and working in a lot of more considered decision kinds of industries. So I've gone into technology way back and actually I've been involved in things like artificial intelligence and putting technology together. Organizations like Apple before Apple so Parken those things inside gravitated to Canopus because I actually see them in the same way as these burgeoning categories like technology was needed. And like the transformation that's going on in financial services and how do you make sense of these as they begin to really blossom had you make sure that you're establishing a really strong organization because that's the organization not so much the strategy that drives growth. And so when I started the purpose works and clearly you can tell from ARDE what we're all about. It's not that we didn't need to do so much work on the outside that we were really interested in the inside organization just because they're right outside my window. You know we did need to make JP Morgan Chase bigger fatter bank and we do. I don't want to destroy that that we need strong economic engines which is the other reason why J.P. and are doing this when we really want to make sure that those in the cannabis business are really making sure that they have the right infrastructure for growth. But all that growth really happens a lot on the inside. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that I'm sure as we move on this discussion today but that's what brings us here.
[00:04:32] Yeah. Excellent. And I love this idea that thinking about brand from an internal point of view. I think we've we've had a lot of conversation around external branding and positioning and the importance of that as this industry matures and you know as we're kind of moving into new market segments that are not you know have a long history with cannabis you know how do we explain all these things to him. But I think this idea of shifting to the internal side of branding is an important one to think about now. My guess is most companies have not thought about that right. Most companies are thinking about how to raise money or where they're going to get their next supply. All those things. So talk to us why why you sort of what you saw or what you see right now inside these companies and why it's important from a internal brand point of view.
[00:05:16] Sure. Well there's a number of perspectives right. The first one is well the context the outside part. There's also the content which is the inside part. And so the context part is think of all your competition. Think of all your competition outside of the cannabis business in terms of everyone's trying to go after the best of the best in terms of talent. And now with this inflection point right where we've got to bring in people that only know about the cannabis business but also know how to drive and scale organizations. And so part of this was really understanding and that of course we have in future work that's here now. Right. There's no future. You see it right multigenerational mostly cultural. We have the gig economy how do we bring in that piece that context into making sure that we're actually building organizations have real strength only now so that we get the importance of quick hits and that gap but that's going to take us more long term as well. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:16] In addition to the the recruiting challenge I think that the industry is going to have which stands talking about you know there are a couple others. One is this is an industry that's growing really quickly through Emmonak and we know mergers and acquisitions are very disruptive to companies they create all sorts of political infighting. Oftentimes most leaders in companies aren't taking a real hard look at the culture as they approach a merger. They're really focused on the bottom line and you know how it's going to scale the product or the production. We've seen some big deals this summer Aurora and relief is probably the biggest and the stated rationale was to scale up production from thirty two thousand kilograms a year to 570000 kilograms a year. And they're very different companies and different characters and personalities. And I think that's going to create a lot of challenges for the industry. And I also think there's just the nature of the industry because of its history and its unique legal status. I'll just refer to it that way. You know you see a lot of really challenging cultural things happening you have the workforce to a large degree that is kind of emerging from the shadows. Some of them have operating illegally. Now they have to make this culture shift into doing things by the book. You have investor class and professional management leadership coming into this space for the first time it is generationally of a different time frame has a lot of different attitudes and that's creating a tremendous amount of of cultural differences. You know within these organizations I have talked to some people I know there are in that older class of investors and leaders who literally are Fertel out of the employees as the kids. And you know that's not a healthy necessarily way to look at it right. They have to kind of find their common threads so this is where I think the conversation around your internal brand your culture and what you stand for is going to be super super important to the health of the industry as it goes forward.
[00:07:56] Yeah. So let's just recap couple of those because I think there's a couple of points in there that I'd like to kind of dig into a little bit.
[00:08:02] So yeah it seems like on one hand there's this one AMIC of that the industry is growing so quickly that there's just not enough people right. Those are the people that have been working in cannabis for underserved. The current talent need. So you know that means somehow you're going to have to get these people like where are these people come from and clearly there's a fairly large segment that's coming out of the medical. You know the nursing and the medical side of things that are moving into the space mainly focused I think around the care you know people that are into patient care or caring for people and see the kind of opportunity with cannabis as a medicinal tool. Yeah people from pharma that are coming in that are seeing this as well as we're dealing with the production process you know very similar to pharmaceutical. But each of those has a very different kind of cultural underpinnings history kind of core values priorities as a profession. How do you begin to stitch those together. Like when you're dealing with a business or you're dealing with industry that's pulling talent from these these areas to be able to fill its needs. What gets created and how do you start to identify and resolve some of the things that deal with that one for us all.
[00:09:08] It's a statistic where I think it's something like a hundred and fifty percent increase in the talent that needs to go into the cannabis business over the next two years in order to be able to keep pace with what they're projecting is going to be the growth. And so that's is astronomical and we all know hiring to people what that dynamic is like. Now multiply that right. So it is significant issue. You know one of the things that brings people together and we've seen this as we work with leadership teams are this incredible. It's one is really great a great CTO and someone who's a really great CFO. But they're coming from different perspectives are ones that the organization for well-beloved certainly need to bring in this level of talent. Right. Part of the problem is it's not the quality of the expertise that they bring. It's how we work together. Yeah and I know it sounds pretty simple but how do we think about it and who's responsible. What are our priorities how do we all make sure that we're all responsible for the outcomes and the direction of a company and how does that get cascaded to everybody because we need everybody right because everyone needs to be. Everybody has a role to play as J-P pointed out. What are the rules. They're not written down. It's sort of in the air. You know how to behave. Or at Starbucks you have to behave they met through their issues in Philadelphia and they took an under control and everyone knows the yeah let it go. Right. It was disruptive to the momentum of the business in any way is they had a culture you know.
[00:10:38] And it was rooted in a really strong sense of purpose. And I think that's the you know the Starbucks case is an example. Understood their purpose as a business the reason they existed was to create that third place. Right it wasn't work it wasn't a tiny bit about a cup of coffee right. The brand has never been about the cup of coffee to have met at the place you went to to connect to meet with other people. And when they threw those guys out because they weren't buying something that was an absolute affront to their sense of purpose. And it allowed them to act react really quickly know exactly what to do. And really that's I think one of the key lessons in the reason that Jane and I can together is because purpose is a big piece of both of our businesses helping companies figure out what is that higher purpose that bigger reason that we exist beyond making money that allows you to create that North Star to guide employees allows you to attract people of backgrounds because you know it's not just about whether it came from pharma or whether I'm a caregiver and I care you know. It's what is that bigger sense of purpose and I think that's the thing that aligns people and certainly one of the answers you know that we hold forth for a way to break down some of these challenges.
[00:11:37] Yeah right Ted in the aha moment for me and my company. It's about trusts and ultimately it's about to trust you that as we work together that you're going to do. You say you are going to do. Do I trust you as a brand that you're going to sell the values and behaviors that you promised me to do. And so your purpose and culture around those emotional Okon it's because there's the way that we're wired and neuroscience tells us that if we make decisions based on emotion and we have that mistrust we're in it. We probably will never go back it's going to take us a long time. That's why the Starbucks story is a great one. We allow them to college trip a little bit make a little bit of a mistake that they trusted them that they were going to fix it. So maybe we'll a trust works to share that you know.
[00:12:30] But I think ultimately that point though your purpose your trust. If it's clear what your purpose is and it's high enough you become trusted. These are universal things right. I mean someone's purpose is not way down in the weeds it's big and universal and they're things that all human beings can connect with and relate to that that helps to generate that trust.
[00:12:49] And I think you know certainly one of the challenges or one of the dynamics in the town of MySpace right now is these companies are growing so quickly.
[00:12:57] You know when you're at a you know 10 15 20 people a lot of that is fairly intuitive or is communicated in very kind of unstructured ways. But as these companies are bigger Unitus are getting 50 100 200 500 people how do you deal with the identification and the communication sort of the indoctrination of the sort of that idea of purpose. It's on the company and then and then how do you deal with the growth so I've got new people coming on that they need be very different backgrounds I'm expanding my business I'm I'm I'm dealing with new parts of my business that require different types of talent that are coming from different backgrounds. How do I do that. Like what are some of the principles of maintaining clarity of purpose as you grow and as you expand.
[00:13:42] Right. So what are the frameworks that we like to rely on. Is about understanding kind of the character of the culture and that of the people that you have within an organization. So we rely on archetypes which is a tool called Culture talk as a survey instrument that we can use within an organization understand what are the dominant archetypes within a culture and are archetypes. Remember back high school psychology were sort of birthed by Carl Young right in his theory that there were these deeply seeded characters in all of our psyche. Tens of thousands of years of storytelling. Now we all recognize the hero the magician and right the caregiver. So that is one of the ways I think it's a shorthand to kind of understand what do we really have here in terms of our culture what are the the character of the people here and what are the dominant archetypes. The other thing is that it allows once you could see that you can learn a lot about people and how to manage them. But more importantly it gives us a tool to create a narrative because each of them has a purpose and sort of an ideal that they strive for you know caregivers want to serve and they want to alleviate pain and those kinds of things whereas you know magicians want to while people they want to amaze people. And so the key is once you know what you have you can kind of find a common story that you can create that aligns everybody together and it can also be used as a lens through which you decide who do we add to the organization going forward. You know and so that's one idea of a framework or a tool set that you can use to get your hands around that and think about what purpose will resonate with those people.
[00:15:02] Yeah I think you'll begin to see how are our core sense and what purpose is why we come together we looked like I've interviewed over 35 seasons across the variety of different industries and global organizations as well as we work with hundreds of people in any kind of transformation. And the thing is when people ask that question if they're interviewing what's the culture of the company. No one can really answer. Right. What they can't answer is how do you make decisions. How do you treat each other. Are we all going to eat pizza together on Thursday. And it's not. If you're 20 people or 200 people you just know it's like you know House sending a kind of feel something when you walk in you feel that when you walk in an organization so it's the actions and the behaviors of gamble to Starbucks actions and behaviors demonstration of that and someone needs to own it. It's not something that you can pass up to someone. Oh I've seen it out. So the game plan and now there are purposes that were done. I call that purpose bypassed and that's what I'm saying. Right. So I think it is someone really needs to understand its its importance in the numbers and the stats that J.P. and I have in that we can share but we've seen the numbers and they all show that when you in the organization that's or is based your revenue and you're playing age even everyday it's just goes up exponentially. It's almost like really numbers are so Starlee but the numbers are some significant organizations you know. Ian why Gallup Deloitte a lot of people are getting into the purpose world because they know that it actually does work and the numbers demonstrate and I guess what happens mechanically like to as you focus on get clarity around align line around your purpose.
[00:16:51] What are the things that end up happening that create that value. Do you have a sense of how that translates down into the day to day.
[00:16:58] Yeah I mean I think let's just use a merger or acquisition scenarios as an example I think the natural reaction that people have in the answer to that takes place in a merger is you know sort of protecting their own turf right. You begin to immediately go it's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs we go right to the bottom and we surf worried about what's ours. Protecting our current. And you know so absent any bigger thing that takes you up that pyramid a little higher right. That's where we're going to focus your energy and attention whereas if you at the outset of that process allow everybody in the two organizations to kind of come together and say and participate in a process where they can help define what is going to be our shared purpose going forward and what is going to be our shared culture. You give them a voice in that conversation they want to have. They'd much rather be involved in that than you know the bit where a budget money is going to go. And you know who's going to get what headcount. So that empowers them. So they're more engaged now and they have a stake in the future of it and it's just you know keeping them focused on that bigger picture. Why did we do this deal. What is the bigger impact that we're going to have on the world. How are we going to make things better for all of us as a result of that. That's how you keep them focused on that big picture. They're less likely to devolve down into the traditional negative stuff. It's not going to solve everything but you've got to have that there to give them something to aspire to and look forward to that just like within an Amadei environment that there's one place I think it could happen more you know less disruption that happens during that process more buying and engagement.
[00:18:18] Can you elaborate on that just because you register a really important point and I think that the conversation around how do we want to work together who's really good at what we say that out it and then when a conversation is what actually people begin to have a conversation you have one thing over here you're great on distribution you're really great on product development. That seems to be a really good set where you are in some regions of the country and among others. But the other piece of the conversation really needs to be around how do we want to work together what are our shared values. Right. And that's a conversation that needs to happen in that process. We want to be able to come in and kind of work with you either in that process or as you form together to make sure that someone needs to help navigate and kind of the sort of the inside knowledge with the outside perspective to be able to kind of move that along because many times I'm really worried about all the things I need to worry about getting the organization into that environment. So having that conversation initially so you know where the see it is and then to begin to kind of figure out what it stands within those two entities become a third entity. Right. And then you execute on that.
[00:19:29] And I think that's a lot of times where these mergers acquisition is going to fall down. As I look at some level I think it needs to be part of the evaluation process. Look if I've got one company who's highly competitive and another one who is highly collaborative like you need to make a decision like am I going to be able to extract the strategic value out of this deal if I'm dealing with such different cultures like what does it going to cost me.
[00:19:50] But certainly then through the actual acquisition and the merging planning process like what does it look like over the next six months next 12 months what do we need to do and I know that going in I can have a framework I can have a process I can have your attention around actually building a combined you know cultural framework for resolving those things.
[00:20:09] And that's where I think the architecture really good shorthand for that because they don't are very intuitive. You know you have a culture of Saige people that are very detail oriented and you know kind of innocent idealistic you know there are going to be driven by emotion and those are going to be too. You know you can make it work right. Kirk and Spock way work together but very different personalities and they had to find their their group and I think the problem is both leaders should still take the time they don't they can't get their hands around Kultury. It's a difficult thing to measure and quantify which is part of why I like that fact that archetypal model because it does keep its databasing get your kind of sink your teeth into it and it's intuitive clotted leaders just they don't wanna be there don't they can't conceptualize it or they're afraid they don't want to know. And let's face it in Nemanja environment and especially in this industry which is you have a lot of money and you have a lot of drive to push these deals to happen fast. They don't want anything to mess up the deal. And how they're left after the fact. Transonic yes. And so really culture should be one of those things that is front center at every point in the MFA process from you know before you even go out to look to acquire a company or merge. Who are we. Clear on that and then you having some way to assess who are the guys we're talking to. But then like you said even after the deal is done and you don't understand what are we going to do to bring these two companies together where are the potential disconnects. And then after the fact you know what are the things we have to do to take the best from both of these companies and bring them together and I think creating a storyline a narrative of why we did this and which draws from both is really is very important.
[00:21:34] That's the beauty of the art sites because there is distinction and know and there are distinctions across organizations. So let's come to use the coffee analogy since we're on that red Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts which is different from piece which is different from your local. Right now they all do coffee right but there's a cultural purpose distinction between all that just sort of you know if you seal it right in the end that's the beauty what the art types do and that helped distinguish that. And the other piece of those that's great. You're not laid up. Yeah right there through the richness of what the company is all about as it could come in kind of hate someone's this thing over here so we're going to make you bet because that somebody already owns the other one it doesn't work that way. It's through the anatomy and physiology of the organization. Now those distinctions are are surfaced.
[00:22:28] Yeah. Yeah. The archetypes and the models are my my line on that. What is that. All models are wrong. Some of them are useful. You don't often get them these arguments. Or it right. And you know statistically valid is like. But the point is not too much that is. Is it useful in helping us resolve those problems.
[00:22:48] Exactly and so it's not that the models are wrong it's like it's people say I don't have enough time is just on the right priority. Right. It's executing on the model. That's the limitation of our lives.
[00:23:00] So it really is going into it with some sense of what you're dealing with kind of some way to kind of quantify it. It doesn't have to be perfect. You could serve a company two different times you're going to get slightly different variations in what the archetypes and the are just like in any person right. We have them all and inside of us because that was young theory it was like tens of thousands of years of storytelling it wasn't genetically encoded. We recognize them all they all show up just a matter which ones are stronger. And you have to dig into the organization and test it against the conversations that you hear and what you what you see and how people behave. But generally I've found that it's that rings very true. And you know we could turn around and give people statements the things that we heard in workshops or interviews were like oh look we're you guys are being the hero. And they're like wow that's totally awesome. At least it gives you a framework to have a conversation around this stuff that I think is often lacking and is part of the reason that people don't pay more attention to it.
[00:23:51] It may seem to some that these feel like clouds or I can't really kind of touch them. And you can that the other piece that we both focused on quite a bit is the metrics.
[00:24:02] Yes I was talking about that because my my thing was how do we how do we turn this from this kind of squishy squishy conversation of values into like what is what is the things that we can measure and actually see results against good.
[00:24:13] And so that is you know working with the elements that are within organizations. We're not here to be completely destructive let's use the things that are good. And so how are you currently measuring your business right. Is that by revenue growth. Is it by a number of clients by regions that you're scaling to is about you know how how well you're engaging your audience. Are people leaving. This is a revolving door or are people really excited to come to your business. How long do they stay. You know they give them opportunities. So what are the ways that you want to decide what are important milestones you like. I do think it is about the business side of that as well as the organization side of it. And so we build dasht for it so that we can do this easily but do it so that's not like every year because if you're waiting for the year when you don't care that much and you can't do much about it because as we all know the world moves so quickly that we so found that we need to be able to look at things from some perspectives and be able to evolve as things are evolving so that the networks piece of this is is the foundation as much as it is the art types and look positioning that we are constructing.
[00:25:31] Absolutely. And I think there's a lot of tools out there that people can put into place their third party off the shelf that are doing surveys of people internally that are measuring things like peer to peer recognition and interaction and there's a ton of stuff that you can go draw from. You know to create individual metrics. And then there's also just the stuff that you know people are already measuring like you know how long does it take to compose a deal. Right. How you know full is the funnel. How long does it take to recruit somebody how tenure are they. I mean there's tons of stuff both on the H.R. and then the marketing and sales side that people can measure. Now it's hard to tie all of it back to you know your brand and your culture. But I think over a long period of time if you look at you know how did these things perform before you know some kind of a rebranding or Repulsor initiation and then maybe in the year afterwards you can start to see where things change. And we we close ranks faster on on you know open heads we have higher degrees of engagement from our employees we get more referrals in to new hires from employees. You know 10 years longer you know there's a ton of stuff you can measure. It's hard to tie anyone's presuming magic back to you know your brand or your culture. But collectively if you step back and look at this stuff it's not hard to build the case that this is driving the business forward and this is the place we're seeing it.
[00:26:49] So let's talk to the the founder the CEO the leader inside the company that's dealing with a high growth situation. What are some best practices in terms of when do I start to think about this you know in terms of you know at what point in terms of number of people do I need to be more proactive and strategic around my internal kind of brand of my culture and what are kind of initial steps and then what things do you do later. Give us a little bit of a map for for folks that are struggling or see this is becoming an issue for them.
[00:27:23] I'd say now it's looking good. It is now. And that's because no matter how big your company is it's not even so much about attracting talent. What is it cost. You know there are a few thousand students in New York City. Why are so more popular than outguess. Well part of it is the content quality. Right. Where was the ambulance for the neighborhood or. And it's that reason that you're going to continue to go back. As I mentioned like I interview CEOs around purpose use the one thing that they all say not the arrogance in any way. They all say so I can work in any industry and they can it's about what got me interested in strategy other than anything this is understanding people don't engage people to be inspired in that they're in the right place doing the things that they feel are going to be good for them in terms of their own professional growth that are aligned to the direction of the company. So at the heart of what that means is that the owners of the company the leadership team all need to take responsibility for it and not just the CEO but someone really needs to them it is the head and the heart. But usually it's the CEO who is responsible for delivering on the direction and the vision of the company which is you know are you an influencer or a collaborator and then the CEO usually the influencer driving an organization. How is he behaving because you know we all know everyone's watching them. I was watching the leadership team with youth and realized what I want to mirror them or a bad role model is a good role model I don't want to watch. And you don't have to do anything expensive or you know grandiose to get started either. Is that right.
[00:29:12] Jp Yeah and I think there's some natural sort of inflection points where it makes sense for the leadership to take a deeper look at the culture of the brand of what they stand for and this whole messaging framework if you will clearly at the outset of the companies you know starting if you're a founder you need to have a clear purpose behind the business and how you're going to operate and what you stand for beyond making money and because it's getting what's going to track customers and the best people I think at some point and that's going to usually be driven by the founder as the company grows you know once you get to that 50 100 employee kind of number it starts to be something where it's bigger than just that founder. And they really need to start thinking about I can talk till I'm blue in the face about what we're all about and what I think we stand for. But at the end of the day you people have to deliver on it right. And I can't do that anymore and so that means they either have to really be bought into it or they have to have a voice in it. And so at that point you might go through a process where you could take a look at this and you say you know how do you guys want this culture and brand to be.
[00:30:11] Because I'll champion it and that's the role of her. So it's a big letting go. It's not easy for found to go through that kind of thing. But if you want it to last you there have to be messianic about it like a Steve Jobs was. Everybody just follows on. Or you have to start to turn it over a little bit to the rest of the organization and then clearly I think there are in a company's growth or history that are either going to be major pivots where they've reached a point where they got to move into a different market. They make a significant acquisition or there's a change of leadership or a change of ownership private equity. These are all really important times when there's a lot of change going on for the people in the company to be able to go through process and feel like they can almost hit the reset button on who they are and what they are all about and participate in it. And you know that's part of our belief is that every part every employee needs to have a voice in this. And so while you don't go through it all the time it's like an annual thing. But at these sort of major inflection points in the company's history I think good leadership need to step up and initiate something like that.
[00:31:08] There's no other Amadei going on in the way in any industry that's developing and we saw this in you know technology. We continue to see their thin tank and all that that there are these incredible growth companies. And then you have the big guys. Right. And so what why do people choose to work in those companies. Why do clients choose to work in. It's not necessarily that big anymore. For fraud. It's about who you want to align yourself with who feels more like me. And so as this industry continues its incredible development and we all see the other guys come in and help out. How do you keep it for yourselves. Well against all of these other organizations that are pretty hefty in terms of scale and scope and resources and location and all that sort of stuff. So that gives you an ability to fight the good fight and be successful.
[00:32:12] Excellent and we're going to have time here so and I know you guys have some upcoming events and things if people want to find out more about the two of you the work that you do what you're doing together what's the best way to get that information.
[00:32:26] Sure. So we are going to be doing a webinars later in November I think on the 14th around this topic and how the industry can Cannabis hemp industries can grow more purposefully and how purpose can help overcome some of these challenges. People want to register for that. Now we're taking names they can go to be F as in brand Foundation's Web and our dot com. And I'll take you to the registration page on if you just want or more about brand foundations you can go to brand foundations dot us and Jane Jane your euro.
[00:32:53] Yeah. It's not the purpose sports.com credit at all.
[00:32:57] I'll make sure all of those links are in the show notes so that people can click through. Jane J-P this has been a pleasure.
[00:33:04] Thank you so much for taking some time thank.
[00:33:08] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.