Fried Friends Tackle Branding, Marijuana and Online Security in One Show

We had a veritable sm?rg?sbord of content on the latest Fried On Business program. All of it providing tasty morsels of information you can use.

Convey your brand

Our good friend and branding guru, Bruce Turkel, brought a friend of his own into the studio to provide a first-hand illustration of the principles he teaches.

Andres Cardona founded Elite Basketball Academy to train kids how to play basketball well, also providing them with a sense of teamwork and accomplishment.

Andres trades his basketball knowledge for money, Bruce explained. But what he “sells” is something far different.

The parents are the real customers, Andres said, and the No. 1 thing they want is deceptively simple: Most of them, by far, want to keep their kids away from the screens – the games, the smartphones, the tablets, the computers.

“So remember what we talked about. What he trades for money is safe, quality basketball training. But what he’s selling is the opportunity for the parents to keep their kids off-screens. For parents to get what they want. And there’s a huge difference there,” Bruce said.

As Bruce says, when everything is important, nothing is important. By selling something very specific and valuable to the parents, Andres is successful.

“Studies continue to prove that multitasking does not work. We all like to say we do it. We all like to say we’re good at it. But it does not work,” he said.

“So if you’re going to build a brand that will build your business, that has a compelling reason why people should interact with you, you need to hone it down to one thing that people can remember and respond to.”

And if that one thing is about you, they’re probably not going to care, Bruce added. But if that one thing is about them, chances are they’re going to care a lot.

This is a must-listen conversation. Click here to enjoy the full interview with Bruce Turkel of Turkel Brandsand Andres Cardona of Elite Basketball Academy.

Medical marijuana update

Next up, Nicole “Nikki” Fried of Igniting Florida LLC and Jake Bergmann of Surterra Wellness came on the air to talk about Surterra’s new medical marijuana dispensary that opened on Miami Beach on April 20.

Jake said Surterra focuses on “effects-driven” products. The emphasis is on consistency. What you buy will be a known quantity and quality.

Now, don’t think you can just waltz into Surterra Wellness and pick up a little something for the weekend. You must have a doctor’s note stating that you are undergoing treatment for a specific condition.

The company’s website – surterra.com – has a list to help you find a doctor qualified to write such a prescription.

Now, the process of obtaining and renewing a medical marijuana card is – how should I say it – “clunky” at best. The industry is well aware of this, Nikki said, and is working to remove the roadblocks.

“This should not be more difficult than our opiates, and it is at this current moment. We need to spent a lot of time in Tallahassee making sure our legislature understands that our patients are in need of these products,” she said.

Jake said Surterra products are available for pickup at the retail stores or through online ordering. Secure delivery is performed by Surterra itself, not by third-party services. The company has 25 delivery vehicles on the road every day, he said.

“We are creating an all-natural, organic alternative to opioids, to Xanax, to Ambien, to a wide range of pharmaceutical products,” he said.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Nikki Fried of Igniting Florida LLC and Jake Bergmann of Surterra Wellness.

Protecting your financial data

To wrap things up, Jim Angleton of AEGIS FinServ Corp. stopped by to refresh our memories about online security.

With the recent revelations about how Facebook is handling the information that we post, I wanted to ask Jim about what steps we can take to protect ourselves.

A good place to start, he said, is your login. The username should be long, and your password should be at least 25 characters. Change the password every month.

Store the username and password information offline, he said. Don’t trust cloud-based services anymore. Keep things on secure flash drives or external hard drives, not just on your main hard drive.

AEGIS has a new program called Cyber Eyes. It handles “social media reconnaissance,” and through it AEGIS has discovered that your personal information is probably on the so-called Dark Web already. Credit card numbers go for $50 each. Driver license info is $100 usually.

People use social media stupidly, Jim said. They post their vacation plans in advance, and then wonder why their house was broken into and how their accounts got compromised.

The best advice is to be proactive, not reactive. Change those passwords. Get your credit report several times a year. Google your name every so often to make sure there’s not a duplicate you out there.

“You have to be really careful today,” he said.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jim Angleton of AEGIS FinServ Corp.