Justin Foster: Conscious Branding, Virtue-Led Business & the Poetry of Marketing with Soul | Ep35

Justin Foster is the co-founder of Massive Change, an advisory firm helping non-profit leaders and entrepreneurs build just, equitable brands. Raised on a cattle ranch in Oregon, Justin brings a no-bullshit approach to leadership and business. Now based in Austin, he has spent two decades delivering heretical brand coaching, distilling complex ideas into potent, high-impact messaging. A master of language, he’s the author of four books and a prolific writer of essays, poetry, and songs. At his core, Justin is a poet, agitator, and strategist—fiercely challenging entrenched power and questioning the narratives that uphold the status quo.

Brand strategist, poet, and co-founder of Massive Change, Justin Foster shares a radical and deeply grounded approach to branding rooted in virtue, authenticity, and consciousness. With over two decades of experience helping mission-driven leaders build brands that challenge the status quo, Justin redefines marketing—not as manipulation, but as spiritual expression.

Raised on a ranch in Oregon and now based in Austin, Justin blends poetry, complexity science, and leadership strategy to guide spiritual entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders toward deeper impact and soul-aligned success. In this episode, he uncovers the dark history of modern advertising, explains why traditional branding is broken, and offers a compelling new framework based on truth, value, and emotional resonance.

If you’re tired of hollow marketing tactics and want to build a brand that feels as good as it performs, this conversation is for you. Justin also shares his take on AI, the collapse of corporate feudalism, and why love is the most disruptive force in business today.

Connect with Justin Foster:

Visit: massivechange.co

Read Foster Thinking on Substack: https://fosterthinking.substack.com

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinfoster

Follow Justin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fosterthinking/

Core Themes

• Poetry as a Framework for Branding
• Conscious Marketing vs. Propaganda
• The Virtue–Impact–Monetization Triangle
• Branding as a Spiritual Practice
• The Fall of Corporate Feudalism
• Creator Economies & Ethical Entrepreneurship
• AI as a Tool for Expansion (Not Extraction)
• Building Brands That Feel Like Love
• Leading with Philosophy, Not Just Tactics
• The Role of Spiritual Entrepreneurs in Cultural Evolution

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Transcript

Christian
What's up beautiful people. This is Christian from the Successful Spiritualpreneur podcast. And today I'm super excited because we have another guest on the show. His name is Justin Foster and he's the co-founder of Massive Change, an advisory firm that is helping nonprofit leaders and entrepreneurs build just and equitable brands. Raised in the Kettle Ranch in Oregon, Justin brings a no bullshit approach to leadership and business.

Now based in Austin, he has spent two decades delivering heretical brand coaching, distilling complex ideas into potent high impact messaging. And he is a master of language. He's an author of four books and a prolific writer of essays, poetry and songs. At his core, Justin is a poet, agitator and strategist, fiercely challenging entrenched power in questioning the narratives that uphold the status quo. Welcome to the show, Justin.

Justin Foster
Thank you, Christian. It's an honor to be on.

Christian
Love it. So tell me how do you combine being a poet and business?

Justin Foster
Well, I think the main thing of that is it's poetry is a mindset more than an output. And my framework for sort of being in the world is a mixture of, or kind of a blending of consciousness and complexity. You can say science and spirituality too, but it's really, really, it boils down to that. So poetry is the bridge between those two things.

Poetry takes complex things and makes them easier to understand. But in order to be a poet, you have to have consciousness. And also, the poet sits in the middle of change, of evolution. Sometimes they're the agitator of change, sometimes they're the explainer of change. And so for me, when I apply my other skills to it, it...

It is then delivered to the world as being a fractional CMO or a brand strategist or brand coach. And so not everybody that practice consciousness and complexity ends up being those things. But I think everybody in that space, in that crease is a poet.

Christian
Beautiful, I love that. so how do you, let's say for other people out there, like how can we apply this concept of poetry or this philosophy of poetry into building a brand? how would you guide someone? Let's say I'm new, I kind of know what I want to become interested into, let's say tea. How can I apply it to that concept and build a brand around that topic?

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

So as I said, the essence of poetry is distilling complexity down into something that can be understood. That also is what messaging is supposed to do. Messaging is not supposed to be a blunt force weapon. It became that. I give a keynote called Blame It on Ed. And it's about the history of marketing and branding from Edwin Bartel, who was

Freud's nephew who took his teachings and studies of psychology and applied it to what became, that's why Barthel is called the godfather of propaganda. And most people don't realize this is that that all happened in the 1920s. It was sadly adopted by Nazi Germany. Then it was adopted by Mao Tse-Tung and then it was adopted by Madison Avenue and it became common in advertising.

to justify gaslighting of people, to manipulate people into buying things that they don't want to, don't want to buy, don't need, all based off of agitating their inner fears and there's a term in sales called FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt. It's all a mental or emotional abuse. Well, poetry doesn't do any of that. Poetry makes you...

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
makes you think poetry makes, expands your mind, not contracts it. Poetry helps you see things that you wouldn't otherwise see. Well, that's all the same job as a marketer is supposed to have. you know, you can't, poetry doesn't make something boring interesting, which a lot of times in marketing, that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to something that's soulless or

useless, you know, and they're trying to turn a poop sandwich into an ice cream cone. And it's, it's, that's not the purpose of marketing either, but it's so normally, it's so normal. And it's been normalized and justified to do that. If you think like a poet, you have to work with real material. If you think like a poet, it has to produce value. And most of all, it has to produce feeling. If it doesn't produce feeling, didn't, you're not doing marketing. You're just spending money.

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
And when it works, it works because you're usually playing off of people's fears or you're just lucky. And so I don't say start with poetry. When I'm coaching someone on their brand, I have them start with their philosophy. What kind of poet, if you want to put it into that language, what is your core philosophy? Which includes your core beliefs, your virtues of how you live in the world, your...

natural gifts and your learned skills. It's all of this intrinsic stuff. And then it becomes poetry when you put it out into the world. Like how do you write copy? How do you explain what you do? How does your bio read? You know, it should all of it should be poetry. And I love to point out that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, most of the ad copy

Christian
Hmm.

Yeah.

Justin Foster
that was written by rising authors before they were famous, Ernest Hemingway or Louis Lamour. You go down the list, there's a bunch of them. And that's why it's so compelling. They were trying to tell a story. There was no mass media. It was just trying to tell a story. Go back and read a Stetson ad or a Red Wing Boot ad. They're amazing.

little stories. Nike was, Nike's always been good at this, but they were kind of the exception.

Christian
Yeah, that's so fascinating. I love that concept. And I feel part of, you know, what we do at Love Pixel, you know, because of an agency called Love Pixel Agency. you know, we build websites, funnels, brands, systems for people in the personal branding space. And our secret sauce, our poetry is love. Like, and, you know, a little bit more concrete. The mission is to make love tangible. Right. So every step of the way,

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Christian
when you look at your product, your brand, your website, like you want to give people the feeling of like, wow, this is amazing, right? And if we achieve that, then goal achieved, you know?

Justin Foster
Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And it, is why intention matters so much is you can't bullshit the heart. You know, like the energy is real. And it's actually, when I say energy, I mean spiritual energy, but I also mean like, there's a word for this actually in brain science called neuro coupling, which is sort of a fancy word for trust. And so they've done these

These studies where when someone loves a brand and it really is part of their identity and there's a virtues alignment, simpatico, it lights up the same part of the brain as it does when you see like puppies or your kids or, know, it's not maybe divine love, but it's definitely painting something in the brain that isn't obedience or submission or...

because I have no choice or impulsivity or any of the other things that much of modern marketing is based off of. that's one of the reasons I wanted to be on here with you is because we're speaking the same language. It's like Meister Eichert, the old German mystic from a thousand years ago said, is all mystics speak the same language. So, yeah.

Christian
I love that. Yeah, I love I I can't tell he's It's so cool. Yeah, I really I love this podcast I love this times that we're living in because like people like you and I are I Don't want to say finally Getting a voice but our voice is getting louder Because Start paying less attention to their fears

Justin Foster
Yeah, it's certainly needed more. Yeah.

Christian
I mean, it's still out there. Of course, it's a fear, such as part of our lives and decision making subconscious and blah, blah. But like, I feel people are up leveling. Like everybody's just expanding their consciousness, however slowly. And we're going to buy less into the bullshit, you know, like in the coming 20 years, you can manipulate human behavior. I mean, you will always be able to manipulate your behavior.

Justin Foster
Yeah.

Sure

sure

Christian
But

the voice of consciousness, the voice of love is getting bigger. And I'm so excited to see that out there because I, just like you, probably, you know, grew up in a world where we saw a lot of like, not love. And it's like, what's this all about? You know, so like, that's why I made this my mission. You know, I made love my mission because I saw the people I grew up with didn't experience this like,

Justin Foster
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Christian
ineffable value and and just inexplainable intangible thing that's called love or care or the yes experience it to some degree but i think enough you know what mean more we can share that with others just like you know you do with your work it's it's it's it's changing people you know

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

Right. Yeah. And I think that we are in a world of very painful evolution right now, with the, I'll call it what it is, a political crisis in the United States where, and now it's affecting the world. And it's, it's an interesting sort of trifurcation of society of you've got eight, let's from an audience archetype standpoint, you got MAGA.

And you got the apathetic and then you got everyone else. And what's interesting in society is you've always sort of had the dark side. It's always been there. And I'm a history nerd and I think one of the great disservices, and it's actually to me a sign of privilege when people don't know history, it's privilege. It's like, well, of course you don't know history. If you're a white dude with money, you don't need to know history.

But everybody else knows history. And so getting into that history, that dark side has always been there, kind of the ego side of the collective narcissism or the collective ego. It just takes different forms. In the United States, it's taken the form of white supremacy and Christian nationalism since our inception, but it wasn't the only force. Then you got the apathetic. During the American Revolution, only 30 % of the people supported the revolution. And there were like 10 % or 20 % that are loyalists to the

to England and the rest were sort of, I don't know, whatever. Whatever the price of eggs are, that's the side I'm gonna go on, you know, metaphorically. And there's apathy and sadly, but to our benefit, you and I as entrepreneurs and what we're doing, the apathetic, and this is maybe a very dark statement, but the apathetic, if you're gonna sell to them, require some level of manipulation because they are kind of just.

like box almost. They just don't give a shit. Yeah. And so you're to make them care. And when people are sort of apathetic, the thing that they care about is just themselves. And that's why the messaging from collective narcissism, which could be a political movement or it could be a prestigious brand, it's the same thing. It's just collective narcissism branding to the app that you're trying to extract from them.

Christian
Yeah, Florida.

Justin Foster
The beautiful thing that I've noticed at 54, been in branding for 20 plus years, is watching that other go up and up and up. There's more and more. And it's very encouraging, especially when you see how much turmoil there is in the world right now, is that there is an elevation of consciousness happening. I'm absolutely certain of it.

Christian
Yeah, yeah, it's special times, you know, and you can people can feel it, you know, this it is exciting. know, a lot of stuff happens happening, you know, the last 10 years and it's like, same old, same old. I guess it's going to be another war or be another thing. It's just like things are people are starting to really wake up and be like, no, we don't want this or that anymore. know, and yeah.

I'm very excited for the times that we live in because there is movement, know, people are really ready to change things within, right?

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah,

enough people. need like, you know, because it is a it's it's evolution is painful. That's what makes it evolution. And for some people, this is very painful. And especially people that look a lot like me is what I call a swam, which is a straight white American male that it's it's the the

If you do the work of consciousness, you can't look away from things that aren't right. So that there's an awakening that is very, very painful that I've noticed with other people that are shams as well, straight white American men is that those that are awakening, it's like, holy shit, how did I not see this before? Like, well, that's the pain of awakening. There's a reason they called Jesus the man of sorrows, you know?

Christian
Hmm, I love that. So what is your, let's switch gears a little bit. What is your definition of a spiritual entrepreneur or successful spiritual entrepreneur?

Justin Foster
I love that question. And I think it is, I'm going to use a Spanish word that is called consequente. And there's no real translation for this in English. That's why I like this word as a, a, as a linguist. Consequente as it relates to your question means that your

virtues or values the things that are intrinsic to you so not your identity that you've adopted or what who you were told to be but the but what Jung Carl Jung called the core self the soul let's that that is aligned with how you are monetizing your skills and experiences and gifts and it's creating an impact in the world so there's a triangulation there and

It may not be the perfectly shaped triangle because life is messy, but the happiest entrepreneurs I know are the ones that have done that triangulation. And it's the thing about it is that the monetization of it is often the last thing that happens because you're breaking away from old systems and you're, you're showing the word who you truly are. So I have whole list of branding mantras and one of them is make the world react to you.

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
Well, that sounds like super like, you know, like something you put on Instagram, you know, meme or something on the surface. But the last word is the most important one. You. So you don't make the world react to your hologram that you created, which most branding is just basically creating holograms. Make the world react to you, who you really are. And that's consequent to that. When those things are balanced and not balanced, but when those things

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
are triangulated, eventually balance out into this beautiful thing. No coincidence that the triangle is a symbol of change. The triangle is the strongest shape, for weight-bearing shape is the triangle. There's a lot of not surprising correlations to the fact that it's a triangle.

Christian
Yeah, so cool. what are at the corners of those triangles? What are the three?

Justin Foster
So yeah, the corners are, I refer to the first corner, the inner corner is virtue, using a stoic word, a word from stoicism or Buddhism. So that's your core self, you're rooted in your core self, not who you're pretending to be. The second one is impact in the world. And the third one is monetization.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that most spiritual entrepreneurs I know come from marginalized groups. They're members of the LGBTQ community. They are women of color. They are immigrants. you know, I don't run into a lot of other swams that are spiritual entrepreneurs. And it's because they don't have to. That's number one. They don't have to do it. Number two is who they are.

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
is a complete construct. And you can tell this in their marketing. There's nothing there. And there's a game that I play with my clients, especially my corporate clients is I simply call it bullshit bingo. So they take all of the words from their industry and put it on a little and literally I have a grit, you know, a bingo card and they fill it in. they, you know, I'm doing a, like an executive retreat with the leadership team to work on their brand and they fill it all in. They said, it's funny, you know, and they

Christian
Have

a good

Justin Foster
And they fill it all in and then we pull up their website. And there's like, no. And so the first, the first person, the way I've done this before, the first person at the El Bingo has to buy drinks when we go out later. You know, so I'm having fun with it. I'm gamifying it, but it's not all that funny to be, sameness is the opposite of branding. so, and so there's, those are those components that are

Christian
sorry.

that's so funny.

Justin Foster
You can master monetization, especially if you start off with money. You know, the illusion of Musk, for example, as a self-made billionaire, he's not like Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban started with nothing. Musk didn't start with nothing. you can also tell there's a difference with their level of consciousness too, by where money comes from. And then you have your impact without that connection to your soul.

And that's the martyrs. Often in nonprofits, there's a sense of martyrdom, and not all, of course, nonprofits, but there's a sense of martyrdom within nonprofits that we're doing good work, and you're just greedy capitalists. I'm like, yeah, but you're not connected to your soul and you're making any money. Because money is power. It's energy. It's not evil unto itself.

Christian
Yeah, bitch.

Justin Foster
You know, no

money, no impact really, honestly, in modern society.

Christian
Yeah, yeah, it's very true. Yeah, it's really cool. mean, I think a lot of people are at that point where they're either realizing that I have to do something that I am spiritually excited about or passionate to leave out the spiritual part. And then there's others that already are going. They're like, finally, this thing is working, you know?

Justin Foster
Yes.

Christian
Because people are waking up and engaging. For example, my wife, she's a Course Miracles teacher, which I'm sure you know the book. And not many people do. So that's good. I love that. So for people who don't know, it's a spiritual text that basically talks about non-duality and how to shift your mindset from fear to love in any given moment. And one of the big premises is that everything else in this world is an illusion, because it's created by

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That's right, yes.

Christian
us humans, right?

Justin Foster
Right.

Christian
But not to diverge too far from the topic. Like her, like she's been teaching and talking about this book and her interpretation of that, of those teachings for 15 years. Started her Instagram account eight years ago. This year was the first time she actually is monetizing it very well. You know, it's a multitude of factors like

Justin Foster
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Christian
Before she didn't really know how to get the audience from like, this superhero pretty much, like from like, I'm just engaging with this account, let me get something free. You know, it's, course there's other learning curves, like in terms of like mechanisms that need to be on social, you know? But it's also, she's feeling that the audience is really like, there's more, like people want it, you know?

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Sure. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting what you're saying there, Christian, is that example of something I teach my clients all the time is it's almost the reverse of everything you're taught about marketing is your marketing is not your audience is not who you're looking for. Your audience is who's looking for you. And this is why I start with the school of philosophy, your school of philosophy, because you're adopting

or adapting and there's a sort of a spiritual genealogy, if you will, or like a handing down of tradition in a good way. And one of those is when the student is willing, the teacher appears. Another one is know thyself, the oldest, you know, motivational quote in the world. A lot of stuff was first written down in the Daode Qing. And so what

What I remind people is...

Christian
Which is funny because sorry to interject there. Like I had someone on the show like a week ago and he's a Taoist expert, you know, all kinds of things. And he said the first sentence in the Tao, which, you know, not that many people have, you might know because you're such an erudite person, is Tao Ke Dao, Se Chang Dao, which means the Dao that can be put into words is not the Dao, which ties back into like poetry.

Justin Foster
That's okay.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah.

Yes.

Christian
love, all these concepts. As soon as you start talking about it, you probably love already 30 % of it, you know what mean? Because it's so ineffable. And that, think that is where the human magic is, you know?

Justin Foster
Yes, exactly. Right.

Yes.

That's right.

Yes.

Right.

Yes, it is. And that's what I love about what I do is when you participate in someone's elevation of their consciousness, it then goes to the next thing, which is, how do I put this out into the world? And to me, that's what entrepreneurism is. I point this out a lot.

Christian
Hmm

Justin Foster
that feudalism in Europe, European feudalism, was not ended by, lot of people don't realize this from the history, it was ended by two things. And we're going to have to end this version of corporate feudalism the same way. Number one is entrepreneurism. It was the crafters and that, you know, it was the invention of the printing press. Feudalism is what you would see like in the middle ages from basically feudalism happened from in Europe from early, from, from, um,

Christian
What's feudalism? Sorry to interrupt.

Justin Foster
the countries that were not occupied by the Romans, they had feudalistic models. And then after Europe was Christianized, the kings became like the anointed ones. And then you had the, like if you watch Game of Thrones or Vikings or any movie or show about that era, you can see feudalism, which is, we would call it like a caste system. And it's like, your job is to extract

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Justin Foster
is to be, God has decided that your lot in life is to be extracted from because you were not born into royalty. And.

Christian
understand in how it's

translated into like today's corporate feudalism like

Justin Foster
Well,

so corporate feudalism, actually spell it jokingly, so I'll spell it two ways. It's feudalism like the system from the middle ages and also feudalism like it doesn't like, know, trying to find meaning in a corporate job is basically impossible. I'm not, if you're a spiritual person, it depends on the company, but generally it's pretty hard. so,

So corporate feudalism is based off of the distribution or the distribution of power. We can apply it to something where we look at like Citizens United, which was a court case that decided that corporations were people too, even though they don't get taxed. Corporations don't really get taxed in the U.S. The people in them do, but the corporations don't. But Citizens United said they could give unlimited money to political action committees. And they did that. And then it's produced this sort of

over last 50 years in particular has produced kind of a ruling class. And so you take someone, for example, like Musk, who is going around with his chainsaw and talking about getting rid of government waste, yet he makes, he's made billions of dollars off of government contracts that really have not benefited the American people. They've benefited him and made him the richest man on earth, but what do we get out of it?

by giving him those tax credits or those literal government contracts for SpaceX. Those type of things are, in my view, corporate feudalism. So we go back to it from a historical standpoint, there were the two things. There was entrepreneurism, the original French word for entrepreneur, which is basically the creators. So you can look at the artists, you can look at the manufacturers and makers, and then you look at the printing press. And it started to break apart this, it's like, wait a minute, and this is

The most, one of the most beautiful moments in history is when the person that was not born into status realized they could make something that other people wanted to make money at it. That's when feudalism began to end. And the same thing happens here. We do have, there's a difference between corporate feudalism and free market. And I love to look at it this way. If you were to take Etsy's revenue, global revenue of the Etsy makers, it would be the seventh or eighth largest economy in the world.

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
Not Etsy's revenue, but the money produced by Etsy makers. That's a remarkable thing. And this is why I spend a lot of time arguing with economic progressives too. And especially as a business person. But the other thing Christian that we need, we already touched on this, but there's historical context here is the second part that ended feudalism in the middle ages was enlightenment. It was Martin Luther.

taking on the Catholic Church. It was the enlightenment of science of Newton and Newtonian science was a kind of enlightenment. And if we were as entrepreneurs, as spiritual entrepreneurs in particular, we're out making shit that didn't exist before. And we're teaching other people to do the same thing. And we are living enlightenment and we're encouraging people to go inward. The same thing is gonna happen. It's gonna break up this

this monopoly on attention that these large corporations have. And that's exciting to me. Because we don't, imagine not needing at all Amazon. Wouldn't it be cool? Now, technically we don't, but you know, it's easy. Or imagine that you're gonna go get your food from a locally

Christian
Yeah.

Justin Foster
source place, know, the literal farm to table or grow it yourself. Imagine that. mean, all these things and it's not for everybody, but it is an imagination of a future different than the one that we were told is happening now. That's our job as branders and marketers.

Christian
that. Tell me about the impact of AI and your projection and your, I guess, take on it. Well, however, whichever direction.

Justin Foster
Well, I look at

AI again through the lens of history. As Bill Gates said, AI is the greatest invention of all time, greater than the Gutenberg press, greater than the internet. And so, you know, he would kind of know, I guess. And so I am not a doomsdayer about AI. For one thing is AI will never replace spirituality, true spirituality.

it can't, AI will never produce choice. Cause it can't, it's all still zeros and ones. And it could be generative intelligence, which a lot of humans are. When I talk about the apathetic and they feel like bots, that's, that makes you replaceable. If you, if you think you're a bot, you're going to get replaced by a bot that's cheaper. Well, AI is going to be like that for a lot of people. It's going to cause a lot of suffering related to certain jobs. That is true.

But it's also going to be liberating too. Just as you can, my son, Kayden, is a dad, dad promoter shout out at reluctant hobo on Instagram as a full-time artists because of Instagram. he can make a living off of Instagram. That's amazing as a, as a full-time commercial artist, you know? and so AI. Well,

I'll give you a snippet of a conversation with my my stepson Andre. I don't like the word stepson, but my son Andre is who's 15 as he said. I asked him, I said, what do you think this generation is going to happen to your generation because of things like AI and tick tock and all that? And I don't know if I can say the F word, but can I say the F word or no? I can't. What's your OK? All right. So because I want to quote him, he said, we're fucked. And I said.

Christian
Yeah, dude.

Justin Foster
I said, really, why? And he told me, and I said, he goes, but not all of us. Because if you're smart, you're going to be okay. It's the people that are not smart that are absorbed by, I'm translating into this sort of adult spiritual language, but they're the ones that are really in trouble. And some of that was AI is going to make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber, is his sort of summation of it. And I don't disagree with that.

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Justin Foster
Not that people are dumb and I'm not judging people's intelligence level. I'm judging their, if I'm judging anything, I'm judging their level of self-awareness.

Christian
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's a very accurate assessment, you know, and I believe, you know, if you just like, you know, if we listen to our kids, you know, imagine that the kids being the teachers versus us being the students, parents, I'm the student of my child, like he's my master, he's my Yoda, you know, imagine kids like, the more that we get older,

Justin Foster
Yeah, yes.

Yes, right.

Yes.

Christian
other people that are older than us are gonna die. And you and I are gonna sit here and be like, what do we want this world to be like with all the money and things like And we have a different level of consciousness. And at some point, imagine those kids teaching us the ways versus top down as it is now.

Justin Foster
Right.

Right.

Right. Yeah, I

love that. And it goes back to what we were talking about with corporate feudalism is that this millennials, it started with millennials and it really is happening with Gen Zers down to now Gen Alpha is what I taught. My sons are older, know, in the early 30s, late 20s and my older sons are my grown ones. The ones I made help make. But I never...

went with what I call the good path. Get good grades, you can go to a good school and get a good job, and meet a good partner, live in a good neighborhood, and have some good kids, and a good career, and a good retirement, a good funeral. Good, a good life. It's like, nah, no, no, have a meaningful life. And to do that, you have to know what your thing is. You imagine this, Christian, imagine if...

Christian
Good luck.

Yeah.

Justin Foster
that a huge part of school, and this is kind of what the baccalaureate model is outside of the US, is to find out what you're here to do, not what job to go get. That alone by itself with a little bit of consciousness would be, it would be impact with huge. And it's, that it's unnecessary to participate in a system or a structure that doesn't feed your soul. And, you know,

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Justin Foster
I think that's a beautiful thing, but it needs, they still need branding and they still need wisdom and they still need a counsel. there's all those things, these same tools are still important. They're just going to be used in a different way.

Christian
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's going to be curious to see how future generations deal with values that were a little bit more inherent to our or your generation, which is like just patience. Things are slower, you know? Like everything in like 10 years is going to be so fast. Hey, Neil, Brian, you want to start this? Cool. It's done in 10 minutes. But is that the thing you really want to do? Because you know what I mean?

Justin Foster
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Christian
I've started multiple businesses. The only ones I stuck around so far is LovePixar Agency, because I have a passion for making love tenders on the web. And then my tea brand, which is one with tea on Amazon, because I love tea and everything that it does for people. like, do I want to start a tea brand? You know what I mean? It's like, you have to sit down because it's going to be very easy in the future to like start anything, right? But what can your...

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Christian
what can your frequency and energetic level support for that brand to grow for things, you know what mean? Because yeah, that's kind of interesting to see that people are just going to be stay in the center and be able to long term support the project versus we just do this for a year, didn't work, do the next thing for a year, didn't work. You you are going to be forced back into like, what do really want to do with life? know?

Justin Foster
Yeah.

Yes, right. And to being a creator, know, like a real creator. I think it's amazing that there are people like Mr. Beast, you know, he's going to be, or if he's not already, the first YouTube billionaire or whatever, you know. But the amount of good, you talk about impact, the amount of good he's done in the world is amazing. Or people that can, you know, I think of young Pueblo, the...

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Justin Foster
you know, the poet that was basically discovered on Instagram 10 years ago, you know, or so many creatives, like true creators, that because of modern tools, they're able to make a living. My current favorite one is Substack. You know, there's people that now that are writers that really are dedicated to it, and that have been able to quit their jobs and write full time. We're right on the cusp

of that moment in the dark ages. We look around, we look at the headlines, we all the shit going on in the world, it feels like the dark ages. If you look at it from a historical perspective and we see this little ray of light on the horizon, it's the same little kind of crack that was happening around the time that the Gutenberg Press was invented. And I think AI is going to be far more a tool of...

Christian
Hmm.

liberation

Justin Foster
a tool of expansion, then it is

a tool of contraction or, let's put it this way, it's going to be a tool of expansion, not a tool of extraction like so many tools are.

Christian
Yeah, I totally agree. And not to forget that the US has its Pluto return, which I'm not huge into astrology, but I do follow it a little bit. It only happens every 300 years. It was last time that Pluto return happened in the US when we had the revolution.

Justin Foster
That's right.

Yes, exactly. I saw that too. Yeah. And I

don't know what it means. You know, as the saying goes, all systems are flawed. Some are useful. You know, there's that. There's also, Christian, this wheel that can be, you can see it in the patterns in history from order to corruption to chaos. And this is why it's so important to be connected to our own inner feminine, because the word chaos, originally in the symbol of a dragon, as an example, they were

Christian
Yeah.

Mm.

Justin Foster
symbols of feminism or the divine feminine, and they were suppressed or rebranded by the church states that are bad things because chaos was threatening to order. Chaos is not threatening to order. Chaos is threatening to corruption. And this is why we as all humans need to tap into their feminine, the creator, the creator, you know, that part of them, but also women.

as the gender of women and as a need to be like, put women in charge of everything we can possibly, because that's what we need right now, because there's there's a, there's an iterative energy that comes out of that. Things like that. And I think that

Christian
Yeah.

Justin Foster
I think that that's where it always comes back to is what's, if you tell me what's going on inside of you, I will tell you how you are experiencing the world.

And it's not, you see this like, it's one of my criticisms of what I call the consciousness industry, because it's an industry now. You know, people shilling stuff, you know, and sort of culty anti-science side of the wellness industry or the consciousness industry. And that is if your consciousness is not inspiring you to go out and create impact in the world, is it really consciousness?

Or is it something else? And you know, it's like, it's because it is a great temptation to be insular now. So I'm gonna stand here, because this is peaceful and safe. And it's what I say a lot of people feel like they have blessing when it's really just privilege.

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
And that's the people I'm poking at constantly in my writings, know, not really directly to branding, but sometimes because there's an overlap with a lot of privacy white dudes on LinkedIn that don't like me.

Christian
I love that. Yeah, it's very courageous to get out there and know that you're creating, you know, people who think, like you just create this, you make people think, you know, it's not just, yeah, I agree, he's great and rosy and you're so fantastic. but actually, you know, you're thought provoking, you know.

Justin Foster
Yeah, and that's my goal. And

it goes to love. mean, my definition of love is just not looking away.

Christian
Hmm

Justin Foster
You know, don't look away. Like if you see something that troubles you and your impulse is to look away, look closer. To put it in the Jesus parable, look at the man in the ditch. And the story of the good Samaritan. And there's many other spiritual masters have their own versions of that. you can't see the person in the ditch. You know, I give a talk called Namaste Branding.

And it's basically the divine. If you don't see the divine in yourself, you will see your audience as targets and you will treat them as targets and they will treat you as a transaction. If you see the divine in yourself, you will brand it differently. You will communicate differently and you can use all the same stuff, websites, digital, Google ads, flat tunnels and all that. But if you're doing it because you're trying to connect with them, you're trying to invite them to something as opposed to.

manipulate or interrupt or any of those things. That's the difference, is your level of consciousness.

Christian
Hmm.

Beautiful. That is a big, big point, you know, for us to like create from that space.

Justin Foster
Yes.

Christian
So we're coming towards the end of the episode and I want to ask you a couple, you know, personal questions. So let me start with this one. Who or what inspires you the most currently on your spiritual or entrepreneurial journey?

Justin Foster
Well, my partner, Virginia, been, we've been together for almost five years and she's been, she is my chief muse in a lot of ways, especially related to social consciousness. As I told her recently, frequently, she's made me a dangerous man because I understand things systemically now. Her background is a complexity scientist and as an activist growing up.

in the revolution in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 80s. So she comes from very, very different background than the gringo from the ranch. And so her, my friends, to name names, like one of my dearest friends, Juan Kingsbury in Phoenix is the muse to me. And we both, wrestle with these things. Or my beautiful friend, Dan Dauman in the UK, another escapee from high control religion.

My sons, all three of them, are very inspiring. My sons and my daughter's in law, too. They feel like my daughter's, too, but my son's partner's. My grandkids inspire me spiritually, too. it sounds funny. I don't know where the meme comes from, but it's a speech where it gets up there. think it's somebody that says, first of I'd to thank me. Have you seen that?

Christian
Yeah.

Yeah.

Justin Foster
It's like, I don't remember

who it is. I think it's Snoop Dogg, but I don't know who the voice is, but it shows up in memes a lot, know, on reels and stuff. But I inspire me, you know, in the sense that I don't, I'm not saying that from an arrogant standpoint, I'm saying I've come such a long fucking way from the broken...

You know, like my whole life up until about five years ago was basically like trauma buffering from my childhood and dopamine chasing because of ADHD and underneath it, this growing seed of a soul. And it's not that I don't need dopamine and it's not that I don't sometimes have like still PTSD, but I'm proud of, I'm proud of me. And especially when I look around in society. And again, there's just not a lot of guys that look like me, you know, 54 year old white dudes.

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Justin Foster
rural, no college degree. I did a funny little thing. I asked Chow GPT to analyze my writings and give me a describer, describe me as a writer. And I gave it a bunch of poems and things and it comes back and I said, who do I remind you of poetry wise? And it says, are a redneck, you're an enlightened redneck.

That's what Chet CPD told me. And I'm like, damn, that's so true. know, because I still, I mean, I'm a hunted in a while, but I would or fishing or camping or proper gun ownership and outdoors and ranch life and dirt and grit and pick up trucks. And that's all still me. And anyway, that was encouraging.

Christian
I love that.

Beautiful. Next question. What are the three words you want people to know you for after you leave this physical plane?

Justin Foster
fridge.

sincerity.

and leader.

Christian
Beautiful. Thanks. Thanks for that. And then the last part of episode, I always like to give over to the guests of the episode and just like do a little vision exercise. So like, what are you looking to call in? What are you looking to, yeah, just like, do you go through your brand or, you know, like for your company? What are you looking to call in in the coming years?

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I just did this on Sunday, so good timing. We are in July, we're moving to Mexico City for at least three years. Because that's Andre, we want him to be able to finish high school there.

But our family, my family on the foster side, they all live in Portland now, Portland, Oregon. And I want to find, manifest, find, attract two high dollar enough clients in the Portland, Seattle area that Massive, the company in Virginia I own, can serve. is an executive coach in leadership development and me as a branch, know, fractional CMO, brand strategist.

and finding a B Corp or a social impact private equity firm that needs support for their portfolio founders. And that's what I want.

Christian
Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I think, you know, just the fact that you put it out there, you're starting to attract that more and more. I think if people, companies are not doing that sort of, you know, that sort of mind shift change now, then, you know, it's needed. This is what I'm trying to say. I think you're going to be very successful. think you just need to.

Justin Foster
Yes, right. Yeah.

Christian
get yourself a little bit more visible. Because I think a lot of people look for that. They don't really get that that's what could completely change their culture or company. So that's huge.

Justin Foster
Yeah.

Yeah.

So

I also have a podcast and so when I'm a guest, I feel honored to be a guest. And so I always ask the host a question, if I may ask you a question. Is how can I reciprocate?

Christian
Of course.

Justin Foster
You can tell me later if you don't know now, but it's just from one creator to another is you invited me on stage with you for a public jam session and I want to reciprocate in some way.

Christian
Yeah. Yeah. Reciprocation in terms of this podcast is always appreciated, of course, in sharing the message, sharing the posts that we will share with you that are coming up and then keeping us in mind for any type of branding website. Like we're more on the execution side. I feel like you're a lot more strategy shifting and then we actually do the stuff. You know what mean? And so...

Justin Foster
Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.

Right?

Christian
Yeah, just keep us in mind if you ever come across anyone who's, yeah, I know the guy who's like, lives where he lives and he has a great agency, you know, that is always.

Justin Foster
Yeah. All right.

All right, I'll

talk to you about that when we're not recording.

Christian
Okay, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for asking too. You know, it's like your level of consciousness like, okay, that's fine. He's a creator. I know where you're at. You know, it's like, let me get this back, you know, so I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. And then last, last any closing words? Like what are words you want to leave the audience with? And then where can people find you?

Justin Foster
You're welcome.

Yep. Yeah. You're welcome. Thank you.

Yeah, always is three things I always tell people. Make shit you can't Google. Make, make, make. Number two is when you don't know what to do, go inward. Don't hire a consultant. Go inward. You hire a coach, but you have the answers. And the third is make the world react to you. And if you do those three things, then nothing but good will happen. And

Christian
Hmm.

Justin Foster
I'm super findable. Two main platforms would be our website, massivechange.co. And my other main platform lately in the last couple of months is Substack. So you just go look for Justin Foster. My publication is called Foster Thinking. And of course, the socials, except for X, I'm not on there anymore.

Christian
Cool. Well, thanks so much for being part of the show. It's been an honor having you on. I love the philosophical depth, the knowledge, everything that you bring. It's very cool to have those type of deep conversation in any direction. I feel like you know so much about everything and it's like history, this, that, about this. Very cool. So thanks for coming on.

Justin Foster
You're right.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Christian.