Mark Corona

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to the Tron podcast. I have a really special guest today that I'm really excited to get a chance to spend his time and my time with him. Chief Mark Corona of Slow Javenstein, ladies and gentlemen. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Yes, sir. [00:00:15] Speaker A: What's up, boss man? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you so much for your time. So you have created something that a lot of people, I think, when their kids can only imagine of actually creating, right? I want to create. I want to have fun. I want people to have fun with me, and I want to create things and make a lot of fun around it and just cultivate a very positive and welcoming environment. [00:00:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Tell me about your story, man. Tell me about your story. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Concocted Slow Jamistan, really out of silliness. My best friend and I, he actually plays the sultan of Slow Jamistan and a little bit of history. Yeah, him and I, back and forth. Like, we've been friends, dude, since we were like, 18 years old. And we have done dumb things, stupid things, illegal things. So his dream, his goal was to travel the world, right? He wanted to travel all 193 countries, so he got to do that. So before his last country, he calls me up one day and he's like, dude, I want to start my own country. And I remember the first time I heard that, I go, well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So I sit there and I'm like, right, dude, man, let's do it. You want to start your own country? I say we do it. So we started thinking about it. We just kind of started putting things together. And the more we thought about it, the more ridiculous it was getting. And to be honest, I didn't know where this was going at all. We just knew we were doing some country stuff. There's no roadmap for this. We're just kind of going for it. What really changed everything was when CNN broke the news. Once CNN broke the news and they put us on the worldwide map, that's when everything really started to change. And when people started coming to the website and the website was breaking down, we couldn't figure out why. And we realized the reason why this was happening. We really had to go into overdrive and figure out what the heck we're going to do. And then that's where things started coming through. We started putting the silly laws together. Like, you know, we're known for the ban on crocs. We do not allow crocs and slow jam withstanders. [00:02:08] Speaker A: I saw that. [00:02:09] Speaker B: My job as a border patrol agent is to make sure that no crocs come into our country. And if I catch crocs, I will forcibly remove it and I will beat you over the head with it. And if you still don't get it, we also have the Slow Jmistan crockade. It's one of those where we put both arms inside the, this big piece of wood and your head kind of goes in the middle. And I will force you to remove that dirty croc and slap you across the face. And if you still, still don't get it, we do have 1/3 method and that's the Slow Gemma Stand re education program. And it does have a 100 success rate, my friend. The minute you walk out of there, three things are going to happen. One, you'll never want to think about a croc. Two, you'll never want to see a croc. And three, you're never going to want to say the word croc, my friend. So I always tell people, including yourself, you are welcome to come to Slow Jamistan, just don't wear any Crocs. [00:02:57] Speaker A: Okay, so from my understanding, this is Southern California that you're in, right? [00:03:01] Speaker B: That is correct, yes. The Slojamistan is 90 miles south of Palm Springs, California. So that would be in between, actually El Centro, California. And in Palm Springs kind of, most people know the Salton Sea. Of course we are trying to change that into the Sultan Sea to kind of fit. [00:03:18] Speaker A: Right, right, right. Did you have any issues with local authorities? Like as far as like I, I gotta know about that because on paper this is such a great idea. But then, you know, you always have somebody behind a desk that's gonna be like, well, you know, this is the bureaucracy behind it. Right? Sure. [00:03:33] Speaker B: We've had. [00:03:34] Speaker A: How did this work itself? [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah, Caltrans is not a big fan of Slow Jamistan, that's for sure. So they made us kind of remove our signs, but we were able to put them back and we moved them back a few feet. Really the run ins with law enforcement isn't even so much with the country itself. It's more the fact that we have a police car, a real police car. And then my truck, border patrol truck, this is what happened. I know, the border patrol truck. Dude, it's been so much fun, man. But I also get at the beginning, I was getting in a lot of trouble. And I'll give you the short clip. One in Riverside, California, police officer seized my truck. He pulls me over, we get to this taco shop which is kind of ironic. It just happened to be the place that he stopped at. And luckily they had cameras, so everything was captured on video. They stopped me, they asked me about what I'm doing. Why am I imitating a Border Patrol officer? And I'm trying to tell the guy I'm not imitating a Border Patrol officer. If you read it, it says Border Patrol. It doesn't say Border Patrol. Well, this guy was a jerk, right? He just kept going and going. So he takes me out of the car, puts me in handcuffs, throws me in the back of their car, and they're about to take me to jail, right? His chief shows up. Chief comes over, sees my truck, goes to his officer, he goes, dude, I know these guys. They have a country in, like, Southern California. Goes, get him out of the vehicle right now. Come on, man. His chief came up and told me, get me out of the vehicle, dude. Well, here's what happened. [00:04:57] Speaker A: Wow. [00:04:59] Speaker B: The reason he stopped me, it's just sometimes you're at the wrong place at the right. At the right time. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Right, right, right. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Reason he stopped me was because he was training a rookie officer. So he used my situation as an example of what happens when somebody's imitating the law enforcement officer. That's the whole reason why I was. The whole thing went down. But we have video on that. If you ever want to use it, let me know and I'd be happy to send it to you. [00:05:26] Speaker A: I saw the picture still of it when I was doing, you know, some of my homework on you, and I thought that I just had to start laughing, right? Cause I'm like, why isn't this guy on, like, Comedy Central? Right? Like. Cause, you know, just the first thing I thought of, right? I'm like, what's the. What's the. What's the funny cop movies they've made? [00:05:43] Speaker B: 3-911-Or. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that. Like that, Right, right. First thing I thought of, and it's. [00:05:51] Speaker B: Funny you say that. What's incredible is that we have been told that so many times. And we did meet with one of the major agencies in. In la, nothing to fruition, but we had. We have had a lot of different people approach us about TV shows. We kind of start the talks and then they kind of fall through. So we're not. We're not, Right, right. I think we'll get there at some point. But, yeah, right now we're not. We're not really. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I just thought that, you know. You know, and what's crazy, what I liked about what you created for people that we'll talk about where to make sure we can. People can find you. I saw that people are even. They're virtual citizens. You got people from Bangladesh and global, you know, that are reaching out to you. And I like the part where you said you were really sensitive of the fact that people may think that this is where they're trying to come from a worse situation. Like, no, ladies and gentlemen, this is for fun. This is, you know, totally, you know, removal from everyday life. So I really like how you put that for people to let, you know, like, don't move your family, so to speak. Right. [00:06:42] Speaker B: You know, it's unfortunate because the ones who get it, they get it, right? They get that it's satire. They get the funniness out of it. I do feel bad for. For Bangladesh. I think that's where we got a lot. Like, that's where the satire didn't really. It didn't really connect. The satire didn't really connect with the Bangladeshis. We get so many emails and messages that they want to move here, get a passport, and we try to explain, this is not a real country, man. This is satire. You know, I'm sorry for your situation. I totally get it. But it's not a country you can actually move to. So we are very sensitive to that simply because the only country that didn't really connect. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Got it. And, you know, I don't. I certainly couldn't speak enough about their background. You know, make that as getting the detail as to why that was. But I thought that was really good that you put that on your website now. So how did. You said you guys were always creative. What made you segue into corporate events, too? Because obviously Slow Jamistan is fantastic. But there's more to you than that. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Correct. [00:07:43] Speaker A: And I thought that was really good that you do corporate events, team building and things like that. And that was. That was something that I saw as well, too. [00:07:49] Speaker B: So the first thing I want to say before I even jump into that for, you know, your listeners and viewers that are checking out this podcast right now is, you know, I am speaking in an American accent right now. I actually have a slojamistani real accent. You know, my friend, this is the. This is actually my real accent right here, my friend. This is the way I actually talk in the land of Sloyamastan. This is exactly the way. So I'm working very hard on the American accent right now, my friend. So I apologize if I do not get the words correct or I do not understand the Questioning, but let's get back to the American accent. So anyway, yeah, so corporate events and team building. So what happened was, you know, as a result of Slow Jamistan, people started finding that it was a really good story, a really good story to tell and also a good connection with corporate events. And there's kind of a twofold here. So people said, you know, you really should be talking to corporations who are trying to either do customer retention, employee retention, goal setting, you know, kind of topics, because you can take this lojama sense story and apply it, you know, to their, to their company and you know, whether it's the CEOs or their employees or whatever, can really benefit from speeches coming from you. So I said, that's a great idea. So I kind of jumped into the world of speaking and, and I've been doing speaking engagements now for a few months. Just going out and talking about this legend story, but then connecting it to your business. You know, how this can, what we did, how this can benefit you as well. And the other side of that, we started another partner of mine, we started the world's only TV style trivia game show. In other words, it's like a game show on tv but it's for bars, restaurants and corporate clients. And we're the only ones in the world doing this. [00:09:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:26] Speaker B: So I'm the host of that show. [00:09:28] Speaker A: That's crazy. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's on TV monitors. When you say you walk into a bar, sounds like a joke. You walk into a bar. So you walk into a bar and a sports bar, right? You've got like 20 TVs out there and it's trivia night. You get to see me on all 20 TVs up there. I'm going to start the show, Energize music. You're going to get the app and you're going to see me on the show. You're going to start answering questions when things at the end, it's very high energy and a lot of fun. So we do some of that work for corporate clients as well. And that's more for engagement, for employee engagement, customer engagement. [00:10:01] Speaker A: Well, it's funny you mentioned that because I think, you know, speeches and getting behind a microphone. You mentioned that, you know, in your about you section, people tend to doze off. They start text messaging the wife, like what's for dinner, groceries, etc, when the kid's gonna, you know, when am I picking the kid up for what's their event? Tonight? Right. It gets kind of like, okay, well get to, you know, they're already Planning the time with the time, you're stopping before you've even started. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:25] Speaker A: But when you make people laugh and you make people get involved and you do trivia, I mean that immediately it gets their heart pumping a little bit and you see a different fun side to people. Yeah. Like when doing this show, I've always, I try to match the tone of who's on the show. So I've had people who have had serious life altering events. I'm not gonna be laughing a lot. Right. It's not gonna be laughing a lot, Right. But this was like, oh man. Like, this is crazy. This is so much fun. I appreciate, I appreciate what, what's like the first kind of what. Do you have any specific corporate clients or is it just anybody who wants to be, you know, are they, are they having a decline in something? Are they seeing something that's not positive? [00:11:07] Speaker B: So a couple of way that it works and we'll talk about the trivia side of things. First, the couple of things that, the ways that it works is you have some corporate clients are literally just looking for entertainment, right. They just want to have this trivia game show for whatever reason they want to have it for, which is fine. And that's more of like what I consider more of my general side of, of corporate clients. But then you have other corporate clients who are literally looking for a solution to either their customer retention or their employee retention or some kind of engagement. And what I love about what we do with, with our version of trivia is that, you know, you kind of nailed it a little bit here earlier is it brings people together that normally would not work together. Say that you work in different departments. Right. Maybe you see each other, hey, what's up, John? What's up, Rick? You know, and that's about as far as engagement goes. When you do trivia and you bring these people into a different atmosphere. High energy, fun music. And now they're getting to know each other right now. It's like Rick and John are now actually getting to know each other because now they're having to work together, figure out the answer to these questions together. And now they're building a relationship they otherwise would not have built. So that's where my corporate clients really get the benefit is when it comes to employee engagement. [00:12:18] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:18] Speaker B: And when it comes to retention. [00:12:21] Speaker A: And I think you hit the nail on the head because I mean, now that we live in this digital era of you can just, you know, either WhatsApp somebody, text message somebody, email somebody, et cetera, there's A void of actual, like, human contact. Because then somebody just becomes just their username or their email address. And then it, you know, I mean, it's. It's. So I think by getting people to interact and then you'll find out there's some commonalities that when those trivia games, like, hey, man, how did that guy know that? How did that woman know that? [00:12:50] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:12:51] Speaker A: Right? You didn't know that they knew what they knew. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:12:54] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:12:55] Speaker B: And that's the beauty of it. You start finding out the things that people know. You're like, really? You knew that. It just creates even more conversation as a result. That's a commodity that these events that we do create for these companies. That's why the companies benefit from it. Right. That's why I figure I kind of market more on the retention side of things. Entertainment is great. It always is. Entertainment, obviously, is very valuable. But when you need a solution, that's when we come in with a solution. Right? But Slow Jamistan, it's kind of the same thing, you know, you go back to Slow Jamistan, right? And you're giving speeches based on what we've done with the country. I mean, look, dude, we went to NATO. Listen, we went to NATO. [00:13:31] Speaker A: I know. I think about that. Like, I'm not. I hate to cut you off, but I'd like, I saw that Bold. And I'm like, nah, man, that maybe that's part of the parody, right? I'm like, you know, he saw. [00:13:39] Speaker B: Right? [00:13:39] Speaker A: I see fox, I see cnn. I saw Yahoo. I'm like, why would he put NATO there if that was like part of a pair? I'm like, no, he really did do that. [00:13:48] Speaker B: Did you really go to NATO? I'm like, no, no, no. We. Honestly, I know we do a lot of funny things and we're satire. We really did go to NATO. And dude, I gotta be honest, the clearance to get in there is ridiculous. It took us a year all the way. It took the full year. [00:14:00] Speaker A: Are you serious? [00:14:01] Speaker B: Oh, dude, we finally get approved. Almost at the last minute, we didn't know if we were going to still, you know, get on that plane and go. We're like, is this going to happen? And we finally get approved. We're like, oh, my gosh, we're going. And it just happened to be that. That situation where, you know, you meet people, you. And. And we're talking about Slow Jamistan. They knew about Slow Jamistan. They thought it was hilarious. And they gave me a few minutes on the stage and talk about it. So that's kind of where I started. The whole speaking thing was really at NATO. Dude, think about it. How many speakers or how many people can say they were part of NATO? [00:14:34] Speaker A: I literally was about to stop you in your tracks. I'm like, you know, people can say they spoke at a university, a community college, you know, a church, a synagogue, a mosque, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That doesn't happen. That you don't just go up and just shoot an email and they're like, hey, see you in a month. Thanks for talking to our president of our university. You know what I'm saying? Like this, you know, And I think one of the keys too, by you being up there. I mean, I'll have to actually watch your speech because I was reading about it is I think it gives citizens of a country showing that the leaders can laugh at themselves a little. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Yes, right. Yes, right. I think it was. [00:15:07] Speaker A: I think that probably was a very important thing, you know, it was. Because if you think, no, I apologize, you're fine. [00:15:13] Speaker B: If you think about it, you know, NATO's a serious, you know, it's a serious thing. They're talking about important, you know, world events. They're talking about, you know, climate change, you know, they're talking about military tactics. Tactics, AI, you know, just really important things. All the people giving speeches up there, right. You know, they're talking about, you know, you've got ambassadors, you've got dignitaries, you have generals who are giving out speeches. And then I walk up and I'm talking about string cheese and no Crocs allowed and no speeding and slow jam withstand. But here's the thing. It's exactly what was needed at the moment. It's that right funny, right? That funny element that was needed in a sea of seriousness. You know what I mean? So it was absolutely the perfect moment, man. It was just a perfect moment. [00:15:53] Speaker A: So. So I gotta ask you, when people, I saw you have your own kind of border patrol team and I saw that there's a process that. Not too deep of a process, people be members of the community, etc, like that. Do you guys have like tours that people can go on, like with visitors who just want to do like day pass? How does that work when it comes to like visiting the town and the infrastructure of it all? [00:16:14] Speaker B: Well, you know, we don't have real walls, you know, in Slow Jamistan. You know, they're. They're symbolism. It's really symbolism more than anything else. We do have a Gardashak, you know, there. We do have the arm for the G shack, of course, you can always go around it. We, we don't advise it because we do have our landmines. They're, you know, activated. So we say, listen, let me know you're going there so I can deactivate the landmines. I don't want anybody getting hurt with confetti and Mexican candy because that's what, what, that's what will explode if you step on one of our landmines. Suddenly Mexican candy everywhere, dude. Confetti all over the place. And it's a, it's a big mess. So we want to make sure that you call us first. We can deactivate the, the landmines. We do require a passport though. Like, just like any country, right? You have to have a passport. [00:16:51] Speaker A: I saw people getting stuff stamped and. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Everything, man, I stamped your passport. The best time, honestly, the best time to go to Slow Jamistan is when we have our events and we have several a year. The most famous one right now is the no Crocktober. Obviously once a year in October, no Crocktober, you know, we become big time croc blockers. So we invite people to come out and join us. So, you know, it's the best time to come out to Slow Jamistan. Now shot. If you want to go out there anytime, feel free to go, man. Let me know you're coming down. You know, we do have cameras out there so we can see who's, who's, you know, coming in and out. But people do come from all over the world to check out Slojamistan, just to kind of get the experience, to walk on the land, get pictures, you know, that sort of thing. But it's always best if you come during our events because that's when a lot of people show up and it's just a lot more fun. We bring out the fire truck, we bring out the border patrol truck, the police car, and everybody gets involved. And dude, listen, at the end of the day, it's unity. It's what it is, man, it's inclusivity. Everyone is welcome. There's no political stance. We are a dictatorship, you know, so what we say goes and that's, you know, at the end of the day sometimes we might let you get in the boat or two, but the Sultan, you know, rules with an iron fist. [00:17:56] Speaker A: What's crazy is like the popularity of something like that because, you know, people are, they get very, very caught in their day to day activities, right? So everything becomes structured, everything becomes routine, you know, and people tend to follow patterns Etc and the one benefit that I saw to that was just like, you got to throw all that out the window. Right, right. And it was crazy because it's, it's almost like, you know, when one of my kids have three daughters build like a fort inside of my house. Right, right. [00:18:25] Speaker B: It's. [00:18:25] Speaker A: And you just built a fort inside of like your state, right? [00:18:28] Speaker B: And it's like, look at that, right. [00:18:33] Speaker A: You know, like, yeah, I got a five year old daughter, right. And you know, she'll say, this is the door to go into. It's nothing but blankets and chairs. Everybody who's had kids knows that, right? You were kids who had to find our entertainment. But it's like, yo, he just took the little kid version of that. So ain't nothing wrong that man, you know, and so, you know, and the fact that you got people flying in, it's such a separation from their normal activities. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah. [00:18:55] Speaker A: I'm sure you've got input from a lot of other people that you've probably added that people you probably added or didn't think of yourself. [00:19:01] Speaker B: There's always, yeah, there's always things that people, you know, will bring up. Hey, you know, have you thought about doing this? And we'll think about it. Be like, oh my gosh, it's actually, it's actually not a bad idea. So I'll give you an example. Like one thing that it was from one of the. And it was, it was such an easy suggestion that I almost feel dumb. I didn't really think about it. The suggestion was, you know, you don't get to see a lot of these people because they're from all over the world. You know, have you ever thought about communicating with them on a regular basis? You know, maybe starting a Facebook page or something like that. And that's when I came up with an idea. I'm like, you know, that's great. And I came up with this thing called pvm. Positive video messages. What I do is, honestly, Sean, it's just about connecting with, with this legend standings. I'm not selling anything, I'm not promoting or marketing anything. I will literally just get on my phone, send a video and simply say, hey, thank you so much for, you know, being a part of our country. I, I hope you're having a great day today. You know, if I can smile today, man, that was my goal. And dude, that's it. You know, it's about 30 seconds and we're done for sure. That has created such an impact because, dude, sometimes I get goosebumps. You Know saying this because it's happened more than once. But, dude, I've hit people when they were feeling so down and they got my. My video message, dude, I get responses to go, oh my God, I was crying today because of X amount of things that happened or whatever. Your video really made my day. I get so many of those back. And I knew, right? That's how I knew the key. That was the ingredient. I'm like, you got to stay connected with the people like that. You got to stay connected. [00:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:33] Speaker B: Positive video message, you know, and it's right. [00:20:36] Speaker A: And you know, I think that one of the reasons that you were so successful at this was because people could connect to you and they could relate to that out of box moment that they've wanted to have because it's a level of happiness that they didn't have in their own personal lives. And that's amazing when you think about it, because technology, even though people, you know, you could say you have 112, 1200, Facebook friends, etc, 2000, whatever. How many of those people are your actual friends? [00:21:03] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:21:03] Speaker A: Right? [00:21:04] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:21:04] Speaker A: How many of those people can you actually have a conversation with and not just say, cool picture. [00:21:09] Speaker B: That's right. [00:21:10] Speaker A: Just keep it real. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know it. So it's. It goes a little bit deeper. I do have to, I have to ask, what's with the crocs and string cheese? Like those two specifically, what was that? Like, how did that happen? [00:21:22] Speaker B: So before we restarted the country, my best friend and I, the sultan, Randy Williams, we, we were not a fan of Crocs. Dude, this is way before we even even thought about the country, man. I remember one day we were together and we saw the shoes and either he made the comment or I made the comment. And it was somewhere along the lines of like, my God, those are terrible shoes. Whether it was him or I immediately, we both agreed. We're like, dude, yes, those are terrible shoes. Like, why would people. Okay, why are people buying those? That's kind of where that started. So when we started the country and we were making up our laws, we thought, dude, you and I hate Crocs. Why don't we make Crocs a thing? You know, we'll ban Crocs at Slow Jamistan. Again, dude. Just trying to be funny. We had no idea the impact that was going to make that. The croc is really what's made all the impact. That's really what we're known for. The other. The other laws are funny, dude. But if you have somebody who Cites laws, the first thing they're going to say is, no Crocs allowed. It's the first thing. It just resonated with people. So we're like, you know, we got something here. Let's roll with it. And we ran with it. We ran with that. The string cheese. Let's be honest, man. How do you eat the string cheese? [00:22:33] Speaker A: My daughters eat them. I don't really eat them. So, you know, I mean, I'd like to think they, like, peel it, man. They, like, really want to enjoy, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'll be like, yo, I don't. I've had just like maybe one or two, but I don't recall peeling it, my friend. [00:22:47] Speaker B: Listen, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. But, you know, you peel it gently, lovingly, my friend, you don't chomp it like a barbarian, all right? We live in a civilized society. You gotta peel it. String cheese. Not chomp on my cheese, you know, so you really. [00:23:01] Speaker A: Right. That's true. [00:23:02] Speaker B: Peel it lovingly, man. But it's one of those things where we put people to the test. We went to a thing called MicroCon. And it's, you know, other countries, but they're not like ours. They're more like online countries and things like that. And we put people to the test, you know, take out the string cheese. We didn't tell them what we were doing. Go ahead and eat the string cheese. And we wanted to see how many people peeled it, how many people bit it. I'm actually surprised that more people peeled it, but we did have some biters. We're like, okay, we're gonna have to put these people in the reeducation program. [00:23:29] Speaker A: Right, right, right, right. Time for the indoctrination. Right? 1884, right? [00:23:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. Also, I don't know if you know that we also don't allow speeding in Slojamistan. I know most countries don't allow speeding, but we don't allow speeding unless. Unless you got tacos in the car. Because, man, let's be honest, dude. What's fun about soggy tacos? [00:23:48] Speaker A: That's true. That's true. I do love a good taco. [00:23:52] Speaker B: The only time speed. [00:23:53] Speaker A: You know, there's so many questions that I could ask, like, how did you. Did people like CNN and FOX and Yahoo, did they reach out to you when they were like, yo, man, like, what is this? How did you make this? Like, who reached out to you? [00:24:07] Speaker B: You know, there was a. There was a couple of writers on it, but it was really the CNN piece that kind of changed everything. Yes, they reached out to us, they came out to us. They wanted to do these interviews and find out more about the country. I don't even know, to be honest with you. And I'd have to ask the Sultan this. I don't even know how they found out about us, because I can tell you, the very beginning, when we first started, we put out, you know how those big signs you see on the freeway, those big green signs you see on the freeway. [00:24:31] Speaker A: Okay, right. [00:24:32] Speaker B: We put two of those signs out on this desolate road in the middle of the desert. Okay. There's really hardly anything going, you know, through there. Unless it's like a season where there's a bunch of, what is the off roaders and you know, people like that. Right, right, right. And that's the only thing that we had out there. So all of a sudden, you know, people are talking about Slow Jamistan and we have the website on there. And I think that's how everything started. I think the word spread so fast that people started hearing about it because law enforcement was coming over, they were trying to figure out what is going on over here. Dude. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, what choice there. [00:25:08] Speaker B: It started making noise on its own. We didn't have to say. [00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, because here's the thing, and I say this very respectfully, they have to make sure it's not like a Jim Jones or David Koresh kind of situation. Like, you know, where a billboard's telling people to come here. I'm not judging, but I'm saying, hey man, let's, let's validate this, you know, are we gonna find a bunch of, you know, X, Y and Z taking place here that we have to shut down? But then when they find out, okay, this is cool, right? [00:25:30] Speaker B: So, well, listen, we do invite people to come out and drink the Kool Aid, that's for sure. Yeah, of course. Our koolaid is actually real Kool Aid though. You know, there's nothing in it other than the flavor. [00:25:38] Speaker A: You're killing me, man. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Drink the Kool Aid. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Right, so I gotta ask, has there been, has there been spread to other town cities of similar. Like, do you plan on bringing a Slow Jamistan to other other states? Because I think this could be beneficial, man. [00:25:53] Speaker B: You know, I haven't, I'll be honest. We've been asked. I, I haven't considered it. We've been asked. We've. We've kind of tossed the idea back and forth of having like ambassadors that, you know, maybe represent you know, those states, you know, we do have some of that right now, but it's not really in depth. But, you know, we've been asked several times, hey, can I represent Slow Jamistan in my town? And. And I think that might even go through our membership program where you can, you know, represent. We do have people that do their own consulate, though. We. We have a guy now, right. He's really, really into Slow Jamistan. He's in Oregon, and he's got the consulate, you know, in Oregon. He does all of his own marketing. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [00:26:26] Speaker B: All of his own stuff. He does a really good job with it. We have a few people that do do that, but it's not something we go, hey, you know, if you want to do this, you know, I. I feel like I'd rather attract things than do. Than to chase. When you chase them, it's a lot harder. Rather attract those things and go, listen, if this is something you want to do and you approached us, it probably means you're going to do a better job than if we were to. [00:26:47] Speaker A: Exactly, yeah. [00:26:48] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [00:26:49] Speaker A: Instead of visiting, you know, 49 other states and trying to. So, you know, the thing that I think, and I say this very, very respectfully for all anybody who's watching, as well as people who do podcasts. Do you do. It seems. Have you noticed, like, in, like, the last, like, 20 years, it's kind of been like, the nerds have, like, been the cool people right now, like, if you'd like to do stuff like this when you were growing up, like, the people that played sports and I played sports. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:12] Speaker A: You know, there was always, like, that sneering attitude towards, like, the geek stuff. And now, like, as technology has come and a lot of this stuff is making a lot of money, all of a sudden, people like, yo, man, this geek stuff is dope. You know what I mean? Like, it's just weird. [00:27:26] Speaker B: Like, you know, dude, if I had, you know, I play sports as well, and if I had started this back when I was in high school, I probably would have gotten my butt kicked and been like, you're an idiot. Yeah. Never worked. [00:27:39] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying, right? No, no, no, no. I mean, you know, not happening. Not. You know, you can't be, you know, you. You know, if you're 16, 17 years old, football, hockey, track, basketball, baseball, and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna go create this fictitious country in my backyard, smacked. [00:27:54] Speaker B: Around and be like, you're dumb and whatever, even today, you know, we have some. Some not a list celebrities that you're always gonna have haters, which is funny because they're the ones that don't get it, which makes it even funnier because they actually don't get it. But you even have minor celebrities, you know, who. Who know about the country, you know, who think it's a. You know, who love it. It's a great idea. You know, they've reached out to us just to say, hey, this is. You know, this is fun. This is a great idea. You know, they don't put their. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Their. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Their image or anything. You know, they were trying to get them to. We have a couple that are actually citizens, and they do have their pictures, you know, on there. Yeah, Outside of that, you know, it's. It's. It's. It's a fun, fun thing that really is. It's really for positivity, man, more than anything else. It's all. We promote all the divisiveness in the world, man. This brings people together, you know? [00:28:38] Speaker A: I'm telling you, when I saw your profile, I literally was like, is he real? Like, I'm like. He caught me. Like, I said, you know, what chief is he from? I'm like. I'm, like, scrolling. I'm like, now I get it. Right? You know what I mean? Like, me, like, 30 seconds to, like, kind of, like, absorb. He's doing a really good satire moment, and it totally caught me off guard. Well, tell people what's what. I like. No, no, no. Absolutely not. Never. And that's what. See, that's what attracted, like, the Tron podcast. And I know, you know, your time is valuable. You got a lot of things that you're doing, but, you know, I would never have got a chance to talk to you and what you were doing without us having something in common that we both wanted to share. [00:29:16] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:29:17] Speaker A: And that. And that's so valuable. So you have your corporate clients, you have your own country. You have. I saw some of your videos at the Capitol steps talking to people. That was so funny. Yeah, like the flamethrower and like, you know, slow jam. Oh, my God. First. [00:29:33] Speaker B: First event we had under 10, 000 people show up, man. It was awesome. [00:29:37] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Well, you know, I probably you enough, man. I don't think I've laughed as much in quite some time. Did you have any questions for me before we. Before I give you back your time? [00:29:46] Speaker B: I just want to thank you. Personality, man. Got a lot of energy. So I really enjoy doing this interview with you, man. It's awesome. And I. But by all means, I can't wait to put this on my site. [00:29:56] Speaker A: I can't wait for it either, man. It's been a pleasure, brother. So you take care and thank you, my friend. Make sure everybody keeps drinking the Kool Aid, okay? Absolutely. Always. [00:30:03] Speaker B: Come get koolaid. [00:30:05] Speaker A: Thanks, brother.