BRIAN HOLLER / THE ARCHIVE
Brian’s POV
Reporting, observations, and practical ideas from business, cannabis, media, culture, and the places they meet.
Who Do People Actually Trust?
A survey of 1,023 U.S. cannabis consumers found dispensary staff are the most trusted source for general cannabis information. The more interesting story is why trust moves with…
AI Can Produce More. It Cannot Decide What Deserves to Exist.
AI can make the pile bigger. The durable advantage is human judgment: deciding what is worth making, publishing, funding and putting your name behind.
What Happens to Your Marketing When One Channel Goes Quiet?
Stress-test marketing continuity by removing your strongest channel, checking the destination and handoffs, testing an alternate route and protecting the assets needed to keep operating.
The Human Premium: What Gets More Valuable as AI Gets Better
As AI makes competent production cheaper and more abundant, value moves toward scarcer human advantages: judgment, taste, context, accountability, relationships and lived experience.
What the Skydance Warner Deal Means for Wrestling Media: WWE, AEW and the New Rights Landscape
Wrestling shows why modern media distribution is no longer one deal: live rights, highlights, discovery, archives and direct audience are separate assets that need useful handoffs.
What Should You Measure in Marketing Besides Reach and Impressions?
Measure marketing beyond reach by tracking second actions, audience migration, qualified response, return behavior and the business outcome the campaign is meant to influence.
How Should Companies Use AI Without Losing Their Voice?
A practical company AI workflow: start with proprietary context, separate generation from approval, define real editorial standards and keep accountability human.
What Cannabis Can Teach Every Business About Operating Under Constraints
Operating under constraints means putting regulation, capital, distribution and other real limits inside the strategy—then building economics, systems and optionality around them.
What Cannabis Taught Me About Building in Restricted Markets
Cannabis taught me to own more of the customer relationship, put consequential constraints upstream, treat education and relationships as infrastructure and build for disciplined adaptation.
The Relationship Economy: Why Trust Compounds Faster Than Reach
Reach creates possibility. Trust moves reputation through a network, turning context into introductions, referrals, partnerships and repeat work.
The Business Case for Consumer Education
Customer education reduces decision friction, improves the quality of sales and onboarding conversations, and can become reusable operating infrastructure across teams.
Showing Up Is Still a Competitive Advantage
Showing up creates context and surface area for serendipity. In an automated world, physical presence and reliable follow-through can still create an advantage.
Your Archive Is an Asset, Not a Graveyard
A useful archive preserves provenance, reveals how thinking changed, supports retrieval and adaptation, and becomes intellectual infrastructure when it is actively maintained.
The Difference Between Attention and Influence
Attention measures exposure. Influence leaves downstream evidence in behavior, recall, recommendations and decisions—the things that happen because somebody noticed.
Why I Still Believe “Yes, You Can”
“Yes, You Can” is not a promise that constraints disappear. It is a belief in agency: understand reality, build a usable path, adjust to evidence and do not…
I Was Trying to Build This Media System in 2018
A 2018 media plan still holds up: start with substantial source material, give each channel a job, preserve the archive and use modern tools to reduce production friction…
The Metric Is Not the Thing
Metrics are proxies, not outcomes. Define what a number is standing in for, what decision it should improve and where the proxy can rise while reality gets worse.
The Handoff Is Where the Strategy Becomes Real
Execution usually breaks at the seams. A strong handoff moves context, ownership, accountability and feedback along with the work.
At Some Point the High Road Becomes Volunteering for Disrespect
Good leaders can stay composed without becoming passive. Set a few consequential boundaries, separate compassion for the person from tolerance of the pattern, and follow through when standards…
Revenue Is a System, Not a Department
Growth depends on how marketing, sales, partnerships, delivery, retention and leadership work together — not how well each department performs in isolation.
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