Friends get mad when they see the mountains in Italy and assume we are on vacation. We were working. Europe with Dennis Yu. Las Vegas the same week: conferences, deals, trampoline dunks, a Cirque show where an acrobat ended upside down a foot from Dylan’s face. Sam and I lost it. Dylan did not.

The lie is that you either grind 100 hours in a basement for ten years or you rent a Lambo for the gram. We are not those guys. We work, we ship, and we keep the people. Productivity went up when the fun was in the same week as the stage — not instead of it.

What were we actually doing in those rooms?

Teaching personal brand and AI tools so a local operator can become an entity Google trusts. Same factory as the hallway recap: Content Factory at DigiMarCon. Dylan and Dennis share trampoline dunking as a meeting origin story. That is a real detail, not a bit.

If you want the “who is this for” filter after the travel reel, read who High Rise is not for.

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Carson Munch has been my best friend since third grade. His dad, Dr. Clint Munch, has treated me like family for years. This video is a thank-you, not a pitch. Influence is also the people who let you be embarrassing in their backyard and still drove you home.

We talked pool parties, hiking, Aruba, a sombrero tube nobody should buy, cornrows we all regretted, and the trips that are the real résumé when you are a kid. I would not be the person who can walk into a Boostability office or a DigiMarCon hallway without that house.

Why is a thank-you video on a business site?

Because the origin story is incomplete if it is only cameras at church and Dennis. Friends and surrogate family are part of the public record I actually lived. The Minnesota interview is still the career film: From Pastor’s Kid to Founder.

If you want the travel-and-work version with the High Rise guys, that is the young-entrepreneur reality clip.

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This is the working session where we named the company. Influence is a high-rise you construct, not a vibe you post. Dennis and I walked the metaphor out loud: audit before blueprint, blueprint before construction, construction before you brag about the penthouse.

Most people start pouring concrete. That is why their content is a mess. Phase zero is the fit conversation — do you have ingredients, or are we pretending? Then the architect draws. Then we white-label the four-stage Content Factory inside that building.

What are the three dimensions of influence?

Who you know. What you have actually done. Where it was shared. Your client is trying to convince their client you are the choice. If those three do not match, Google and the buyer both feel the lie.

Dennis’s write-up of the same blueprint, in his voice, is here: Building High Rise Influence, step by step. This page is mine. I run High Rise Influence. He handles more of the technical factory. I handle more of the relationships. The building still needs both crews.

Why not a second Knowledge Panel URL?

The panel is an outcome of the building, not a product we bolt on the roof. How we teach that on a DigiMarCon stage is this article. Do not confuse the castle film for a second panel page.

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I was 19 on this show. The host asked how I became the relationships person around Caleb Guilliams and BetterWealth. The answer is still the same: ask the right person the right question, then stay humble enough to take the no.

I did not know Caleb. I liked that he was young, a communicator, and a networker. I had just finished Army National Guard aviation intelligence training. Twelve days later I was in Nashville saying I would fly down and we would invent the seat if we had to. Head of relation operations is a wordy title. The job was partnerships.

What about rejection?

Scrolling is safe. Nobody rejects you on TikTok. The Salt Lake salespeople who spent two years getting doors closed are not magically extroverted. They just used up the fear. Worst case you hear no. Introverts are not doomed. Charisma is practiced. Fail in public on purpose.

AI will write the email. It will not sit at the table. That is why this work does not die. The longer article Dennis wrote from the same idea is here: high-value strategic relationships at any age.

How does this connect to Boostability?

Utah, a webinar we did not buy, street tacos — that is the grown-up version of the same muscle: relationships that compound authority. Start at 19 by asking. Keep going by publishing proof so the intro is not empty.

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The million-jobs mission is Dennis Yu’s. He says it in this video the way he has said it for years: create jobs for young adults, pay back the mentors who opened rooms when he was the kid, live a little vicariously through people like Dylan and me. I do not get to steal that sentence.

What I get to do is run the factory that makes the next kid employable. I thank him on camera for the year he poured in. Then I pay it forward — Knowledge Panel help for friends in my niche, YouTube breadcrumbs, the same recipe on a local account.

Why did AI change the timeline?

Dennis’s line: thirty years ago a mentor at American Airlines opened doors. The tools to run a repeatable Content Factory on a plumber or a dentist at apprentice wages did not exist until the models and the ad networks matured. This is not “college is fake.” Certifications still need schools. Marketing now has a documented recipe, and the parent already wanted to spend serious money on the kid’s future.

We want every apprentice to train the next one. Document what you did. Leave the trail. That is how thousands of jobs become a million — not a slogan on my homepage.

Where does High Rise sit?

High Rise Influence is the academy seat. Local Service Spotlight is the client work. Dennis is still Thursday coaching. The program page is here. This video is the why underneath the syllabus.

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Henry Holm was one of our first AI apprentices. He came in with almost no work experience. We put him on a live dentist in Atlanta — not a fake homework brand — and he had to talk to the actual client.

What he loved first was the obvious part: he can work from home or the cabin if the internet is up. I told him the same month Dennis and I were in eight countries and still shipped. The point is not travel. The point is output that does not die when the office is empty.

What did Henry actually do?

Repurpose. The dentist produces the original video. Henry turns it into posts, long form, short form, YouTube, Facebook, the site. Then he learned to talk to the AI instead of treating it like a search box — fewer words from older operators, more context from him.

Follow-through is the skill he named without dressing it up: communicate, finish what you said you would finish, on time. That is the whole program. The tools transfer. A plumber gets the same factory with different nouns. Descript and prompts make the cut faster. GCT still has to be right or you publish junk at speed.

Why publish Henry’s interview?

Because a syllabus without a named person is a brochure. Henry is the proof. The operating manual is still the apprentice overview. If you are the parent, watch the belief problem next.

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Dylan Haugen and I recorded this because 17-year-olds get told to pick retail or the drive-through. Dylan had dunks, travel, and a calendar that would not survive a closing shift. He needed work that bent around the life he was already building — and paid him to learn skills that still exist after the job ends.

My line in the video is the title: most jobs extract value from you. Get a job you extract value from. Soft skills, client delivery, a weekly report. Those travel to the next company, the next relationship, the agency you might found later.

What did I actually do after high school?

In the two and a half years after I graduated I built and ran businesses, worked around a private-equity seat, and taught applied digital marketing in rooms like Johns Hopkins. That is not a flex. It is the proof that you can break the mold if you will deliver for a real client first — usually a parent or a friend’s company — before you try to scale an agency.

Dylan met Dennis Yu in January, saw the apprentice factory, and qualified. Same door I came through, different sports.

College or this?

You can do both. A degree is one bet. This work is transferable even if you change industries. The AI Apprentice overview is the operating manual. This video is the career advice underneath it.

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Dennis Yu and I recorded this for Pure Green franchise partners. The ask is simple: pick a young adult — a son, a daughter, or someone in your city who is loyal to your store — and we coach them to run the Content Factory on your business.

You can keep your agency. You can replace your agency. Either way you still need a human who lives your brand, lives in your market, and only works your stuff. Central marketing does not replace that person. This package trains them.

What do they actually get?

Weekly office hours. Bring the analytics, the ads, the site, the question. Facebook group all week. The same playbooks Dennis used with national brands and with thousands of local operators — I lead the young-adult coaching inside High Rise. Think trade-school tuition for digital marketing, one year, one-time fee, not a forever retainers-for-theory product.

The founders’ version of “is this too good to be true?” is a separate clip. Sam, Luke, Dylan, and I say the same thing in our own lives: school, dunk contests, still in class, still shipping client work. Watch that here:

How does this sit next to the Growth Summit talk?

The day we taught Pure Green on stage is its own article: teaching the Content Factory at the Growth Summit. This page is the operator package for the young adult you designate. Same factory. Different seat.

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If you do not want to do the thing, do not join. I will not talk you into it. High Rise is not babysitting, and it is not a Tuesday class your parents signed you up for so you could sit there.

We teach Metrics, Analysis, Action. If every weekly report is the same screenshot and you never ship the video, the ad, or the page, you are getting paid to do nothing. That is the first disqualifier.

Who actually fails?

People who cannot follow through. We have seen 14-year-olds with incredible follow-through. We have seen adults three times that age who need a question answered before every click and a new excuse every week. Age is not the filter. Doing the hour is the filter. It does not have to be the same hour every day. It has to happen.

Communication is the second filter. If you are stuck, ask. If it is simple, delegate or delete. ChatGPT will do a lot of the grunt work. We are here when you are truly stuck — after you tried.

What does “inner drive” mean?

It can be basketball. It can be a founder you admire. It does not have to be “I love SEO.” It has to be enough that you send the weekly status so we have something real to coach. More action means more feedback on how the video, the ad, and the landing page actually performed — not a hypothetical about what you might post someday.

If that sounds like you, start with the program overview: AI Apprentice with Dennis Yu. If it sounds like a lecture you intend to skip, stay out. That is the kindest version of this video.

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I used to hit Reply instead of Reply All on a thread with twenty people. Nobody teaches that in school. You learn it when you are actually on a team. That is the whole point of this clip: we got paid to learn business instead of paying a campus to simulate one.

Sam, Dylan Haugen, and I recorded this on the High Rise channel. The work was Local Service Spotlight client work — Knowledge Panels, weekly reports, the ugly parts of equity and who gets paid. I learned more about vesting, shares, and client relations in a few months than I had in my whole life before that.

What did school never cover?

Cameras-off Zoom in middle school is not a client call. We sat with founders who already had brands and asked us to make the public record match the work. One of those calls was a home-service owner other businesses already look to. Sam and I were 20 and 22. The skill is not “impress a billionaire.” The skill is show up, own the mistake, and deliver so the fee is an investment, not an expense.

That is the same factory we later taught on stage: Produce, Process, Post, Promote. You do not wait until you feel ready. You get on the call.

Why is this different from tuition?

Dylan said it in the video: it is better to get paid to learn business than to pay to learn business. High Rise is how we productized that for other young adults. The syllabus lives in the AI Apprentice Program. This article is the origin of the lesson — Reply All, ownership, and a Knowledge Panel call you would never get in a lecture hall.

Dennis Yu put us in those rooms. I run High Rise Influence so the next kid does not have to invent the job in the dark.

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