Challenge: Compliment a stranger today. Eat a skittle. Do something that makes you feel something. Speaking of feeling something, shoutout to being alive. That said, shoutout to gaining perspective, a vital part of being alive. Give this post a gander and we promise it’ll change yours, maybe just a bit, to give you a little more oopmh this week.

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13.8 billion years ago: the big bang

Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery, all started with this bad boy. The entirety of all matter and energy in the universe, packed into a singular point. Then it explodes! KAPLOW! Well, as the theory goes, BANG!

13 billion years ago: the first stars are born

Massive plasma filled behemoths generating more heat than a snakes belly on a Georgia blacktop. These suckers are creating the building blocks of everything.

12.5 billion years ago: the stars die, violently

Those stars kick the bucket. Supernovas! They explode violently, scattering carbon, oxygen, iron, calcium, all the essentials, across the void.

Which begs the question: where were you while we were getting high?

4.6 billion years ago: dust becomes earth, life shows up

All that dust coalesces and you got the friggin Earth, man. A billion years later, life shows up. Single-celled organisms hanging in the water. No brain. No eyes. No ambitions. No Bitcoin. No money in the market. No NFTs. Lock in organisms.

600 million years ago: things get wicked

Aforementioned organisms get more complex. Brains develop. Predators and prey start doing their thing. Epic duels begin. Questions emerge that will stump mankind for millenniums to come, like “Will Wile E. Coyote ever catch the Road Runner?”

6 Million Years Ago: we dial it in

Humans veer off. Hop up on two feet, start being bipedaling bosses. For millions of years, we’re dinner. Predators are having their way. But then language evolves, abstract thought kicks in. We develop the ability to imagine things that don’t exist yet. And we even say screw it and build them. We go from running from the hunter to becoming the architects of our own reality. Go humanity!

And now, it’s 2026. And we’re

listening to Clark from accounting tell us about how his sciatica is flaring up by the water cooler, while dressed in business casual only to sit at our desks alone all day, and booking a conference room 2 weeks in advance for a 15 minute converastion.

14 billion big ones leading to us getting told by other grown ups when we can and can’t eat lunch. If that’s up your alley, well then power to you. If not, well, you’ve come to the right spot.

We believe in people, and we believe that no matter how convincing your middle manager Janet is that her meeting couldn’t have been an email, the human spirit emerges, and you still manage to have killer ideas. The type that give you that flaming ball of energy that you have to act on it immediately, that just have to explode into a supernova to make your universe. Yet, we get really good at supressing those ideas, which is supernofun.

We make up such elaborate, sophisticated stories that we tell ourselves as to why we can’t or shouldn’t capitalize on our own human genius. And we believe these fear negotiating stories like they’re our gospel, and we don’t act on our ideas.

You know, Nike’s got a pretty good saying on what you should do, in regards to it. And we couldn’t agree more.

You know what your thing is. That whisper, that pull, that intuition calling you to go somewhere. We reckon you pick up the phone. It knows what it’s talking about.

Life’s too short to ignore the genius in you, and that AI thing might just mess around and leave you no choice but to. Chase your ideas like Mr. Coyote himself chases around that shifty little bastard. You may not catch him, but at least you’ll be the one doing the chasing.

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At Giard & Co, we picked up the phone, and we’re chasing ours. Road Runner bests us a lot of the time, but we share what’s worked thats helped us catch him. We write to give you the tools so you can chase your Road Runner. Meep Meep!

You might’ve had another Leonardo on the mind after the Oscar’s last night, but Fibonacci is such a stud that maybe DiCaprio should think about playing him. He’s the father of the Fibonacci sequence, an infinite sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding. Very simple rule, with infinite depth. You think it’s a fib? It’s not, g. Check it:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...

0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8... you get it.

(And then there’s there’s the DiCaprio sequence, where the girlfriends ages stay the same, but he keeps adding years.)

And when you graph this sequence, it creates this super cool looking spiral. It was so elegant that mathematicians decided to call it the golden ratio. And nature happens to be obsessed with this formula as well. Sunflower seeds spiral in Fibonacci patterns. Galaxies spiral. Hurricanes spiral. Pinecones spiral. So many things use this sequence for survival.

To a lot of folks, mathematics sounds a lot like order. It sounds predictable and clean, with rational straight lines. That’s not really the world’s style though. Instead, nature is designed with curvature, imperfection and spirals.

To us, that further emphasizes that life is non-linear. It’s imperfectly perfect. And honestly? What a sigh of relief.

As humans, we think linearly. Get an education. Get a job. Climb. Retire. Repeat the formula. It’s stable, enjoyable, predictable. Thing is though, when things are straight in nature, they’re brittle.

A tree that grows perfectly vertical snaps in a storm. A bone with no curves shatters under pressure. But when you stumble across something like a pincone and get to examining it, you’ll find it spirals. Each scale sits at exactly 137.5 degrees from the one before it. Rain doesn’t funnel to the seeds, it distributes across the surface. The pressure spreads instead of concenctrates. And when you try to crush it, it bends instead of snaps.

Spirals are resilient.

So here’s our question for you: What if the best way to live wasn’t in a straight line, but in a spiral? What if doing things a little out of order, a little imperfectly, was actually the most efficient path to where you’re going?

What if every failure was simply adding more curves to your lines, making you more resilient?

It’s easy to get frustrated when plans go awry. But how boring would it be if everything went according to plan? A linear path is solid. It’s bronze. Maybe silver. But the golden ratio? That only comes from spiraling. From being wrong. From trying again. From letting each failure feed the next attempt.

So this week, chase that golden ratio. Go do something imperfect. Take the unplanned turn. Build your spiral.

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At Giard & Co, we’re building our spiral, and doing so out loud. We made the first episode of our youtube series dedicated to this, check it:

Happy Monday!

Shout out to swimming upstream.

What did that little blue fish from that one movie always say about swimming? I forget, it’ll come to me.

In case you were wondering where the NICU is in salmon world, it’s in a local stream, so now you know. And after a baby salmon hatches, it hangs out for a few years. Learns its ABCs, stakes its territory, takes its first crack at hunting a fly.

Then it hits the road jack. Takes nothing but hunger and instinct and it heads to the ocean. There it spends its years eating, growing and getting strong.

And one day, something inside that soon to be sushi roll drops everything, and ya know where it heads? Back to that stream. But last time, it coasted down it, lazy river style. This time, it’s swimming upstream. Now the river’s ambitious.

And it swims up that river with its body decomposing, jumping over waterfalls, bobbing and weaving around grizzly bear paws.

Until it finally arrives, tosses on some Marvin Gaye, lays its eggs in the gravel, then it rolls over and dies. Its entire lifecycle designed to feed the whole.

Intense, right? Nature’s metal.

And you know what we like to think? We like to think that that salmon is grinning ear to ear swimming up that stream. Because how lucky is it to play its part?

Luckily, when we swim upstream, instead of jumping over waterfalls, we jump over explaining what you do to your uncle at the Christmas party, and the bear paws are every voice clawing at you to turn around.

Luckily, we have the ability to pause and think about our stream. We get to choose which one we want to swim up. A whole lot of folks out there are swimming through tsunamis compared to our streams.

Because when it comes to serving the whole, salmon are willing to die for it. So, not that I’m asking what you’re willing to die for, but what are you willing to die for? What stream are you willing to swim up? And most importantly - swim up while showing all 32 of those pearly whites of yours?

Because if not, then what’s the point? Because if we get to choose our stream, might as well choose an epic one.

And if you get a few folks around you aligned on swimming to the same spot with the same mission? Well, you guys might just go out and change the whole ocean.

Just keep swimming, that’s what it was.

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At Giard and Co, we partner with brands that further human potential, and help them swim up their stream. We’d love to help you swim up yours, if you want to be in a slack channel with our team to see what goes into it, fill out this survey to see if you’d be a good fit.

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Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

And a big ol’ shoutout to conversing.
We’re talking chats. Dialogues. Heart to hearts. Catchups. Mustards.

Because where would we be without them? Better question, where would anything be without them?

Go outside and take a gander at your local woodlands. Triple dog dare you. What you’ll lay those sight spheres of yours upon is one long, ongoing conversation. Trees passing nitrogen through underground root networks. Squirrels warning about hawks overhead. Bees swapping nectar and pollen in their own honeycombed stock market. The S&Bee is soaring today!

We’re just stopping by and eavesdropping. And wow, is nature chatty.

Nonetheless, we think this concept will help you attack this week like a rabid dog. Or more of a stoic sloth, whatever boats your float. It goes a little something like this:

Echolocation

Dolphins, bats, even some blind humans are sending out high frequency pulses of sound. That sound travels. Hits something. Bounces back.

From the echo alone, they measure distance, density, direction and even texture. A bat can detect something as thin as a human hair in complete darkness. Is that bat $%@! or what!

So instead of seeing the world, they hear its shape.

And if you have socks on, I’d hold them tightly because what you’re about to hear runs the risk of them being knocked off.

When a bat locks onto prey, it speeds up its clicks into what scientists call a “terminal buzz.” The closer it gets to making a move, the more it listens. What a funky little juxtaposition. It’s not louder, but it’s more precise.

Because if they keep screaming, they can’t hear the echo.

We checked a bat’s Spotify Wrapped, and this song topped their list:

We’re supposedly the advanced species because we’ve got language and opinions and think pieces and advertisements. We can broadcast, but broadcasting isn’t intelligence.

In nature, the critters that survive operate in feedback loops.

Signal → Silence → Echo → Adjust.

Meanwhile, some of us send our pulse and immediately start rehearsing our reply before the echo even comes back, because we have the luxury of not having to wait. You ever talk to someone who’s just waiting to jump back in?

Don’t be that person.

Because real conversations operate just like echolocation.

When you try something new, pause. Watch who leans in. See what breaks.

When you plant something, you can’t talk it into growing.

Coffee dates, sales meetings, meditating, marketing campaigns. The fundamentals of conversating are astonishingly similar, listening to reality is key.

And the cool part is, reality is a pretty sharp conversational partner. It’s got answers if you’re willing to zip those lips and throw away the keys.

And maybe you’ll get crickets, but maybe you’ll get roars. Coos, moos or chirps, it’s data.

So this week, attack it like Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. Strictly the silence aspect, please refrain from any of the other stuff.

Assumptions are cute little ideas until reality replies. And you better be prepared to listen. Bring your notepad and sit front row, because reality’s one hell of a teacher.

Speak last in a meeting. Let silence last a few seconds longer than feels comfortable. Ship something and study the echo.

Go hear the shape of your world.

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At Giard & Co, we’re building a multimillion dollar marketing firm and media brand, and we’re looking to study the echo. If you’ve got something you’re building and want sharper echoes, fill out this survey and tell us what you’re wrestling with.

Help Us Help You

Happy Monday. Shoutout to birds, man.

What a curveball from Mother Nature, eh?

Not one under par, not Larry, I’m talking about those feathered nomads with stretched skin and hollow bone where their arms should be. The ones that rock in the treetops all a day long, hoppin and a boppin and singin their song.

Watch a bird fly this week. That flight shtick of theirs is pretty insane. We didn’t figure that out until the Wright Brothers. Nature had to limit their powers and made them blind to glass, if not they’d be running the show.

And here’s the thing about birds: they migrate. Robins, terns, warblers, geese, all of them. External circumstances hit (no food, too cold, whatever it may be), and something inside says go. So, after they get done singing their sweet song on your doorstep, they pack their bird bags and boogie. Multiple times a year, they take matters into their own talons and fly to where they can survive, thrive, and belong.

We’re similar in that way.

When life gets hard or the going gets rough, we have a premonition that pulls us toward a solution. Sometimes that’s a person. Sometimes that’s a community. Sometimes it’s a product or service that solves what we’re facing. It’s human nature baby. We seek.

But, nature is vicious.

A bird migrating at night sees bright lights on the horizon. Its instinct fires up: warmth, shelter, food, everything we need. It flies toward them, running on fumes. Lands.

It’s just a city.

No food, shelter, or salvation. Just artificial light, concrete, and maybe some golden arches they can build a nest in if they’re lucky. Other times, they’ll show up to a place that should be warm and blooming with food, but the climate shifted. The plants haven’t grown yet. After flying thousands of miles, there’s nothing to eat.

Trust dies on arrival. I’m pretty sure this is how Angry Birds came to be. I’d be furious too. I hope they get some royalites from the game at least.

Here’s what separates us from birds: we’re storytellers.

We have the power to use language to shape narratives, to sell visions and to promise things. Birds operate by reading nature. Wind, temperature, light. They respond to what is, not what they wish were true. But we can talk around reality. We can be one thing and say we’re another. That’s our superpower and our curse.

But because we can communicate, we have a responsibility.

Say exactly what you mean. Say it consistently. In every conversation, in every promise. If not, thats how things can get sticky. But most importanly, deliver it when the birds make it.

Trust can compound or collapse in the follow-through. Marketing is no different from any relationship.

When you communicate with enough clarity and consistency, something wild happens. The right birds naturally find you. And they don’t just come once, they keep coming back. Year after year. Because they experienced what was promised. They felt the warmth.

Now, you could try the other route. Flashy signals. Gimmicks. Blow whatever bird whistle needs blowing. It works for a bit, you’ll get the attention. Maybe you flip a few bucks. But for the birds that arrive and find nothing, they tell the whole flock. And word of beak is strong my friend, it is strong.

Once trust is broken, no amount of flashy signals will bring them back. You’ve burned through the only currency that truly matters.

That’s how relationships work. That’s how brands work. That’s how everything works, actually.

This week, pick one thing you’re building or one relationship you’re tending. Communicate with honesty. Follow through with consistency. Then watch what happens when people realize they can trust what you say.

Watch them migrate.

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The Giard & Co. Migration Test

• Is your message clear, or are you saying different things in different places?

• Does what you deliver match what you promised?

• Are you doing this consistently, or just when it’s convenient?

• Would the right people choose you again?

Storytelling is a superpower. Used well, it builds trust. Used poorly, it burns it.
At Giard & Co, we help brands use it well. Let’s chat!

But when one ant leaves a trail to food, it fades in 2 minutes. When 10 ants reinforce it, it lasts hours and feeds thousands.

Happy Monday. Shout out to colonies.

Shout out to the thing humans and ants share: we’re pretty stupid on our own.

Ants have outlasted dinosaurs, ice ages, and every world-ending threat nature could throw at them. They even have a nemesis whose name is predicated on their demise. If there was an animal called a humaneater roaming around, I’m not sure how well we’d handle it.

So how do these dummies keep winning?

Same way humans do: leaning on each other.

Here’s how they eat: An ant wanders around until it finds food. Crumb, dead bug, whatever nature cooked that day. On the way back to the colony, it drags its abdomen along the ground, releasing pheromones from glands that leave an invisible breadcrumb trail.

Other ants pick up the scent with their antennae. They follow the trail, find the food, and on their way back, they lay down their own pheromone trails. Now you’ve got multiple ants reinforcing the same path. The trail gets stronger. More ants smell it. More ants follow. More ants reinforce.

The colony mobilizes. Suddenly forty ants are marching in formation to the same food source, all because one ant didn’t keep the discovery to itself.

They’re essentially farting for their friends to notify them to come get something to eat. Pretty metal.

But one ant solo is nature’s Roomba. Wandering around aimlessly, stumbling upon a meal from time to time. Not nearly as epic as the nihlist penguin.

I’m sure a wiser animal would look at humans sometimes and wonder why we’re not leaving fart trails for each other.

We find or receive something, a strategy, a tool, an opportunity, and we keep it to ourselves. For what?

Self-optimization is great, but so is helping those around us. Drop breadcrumbs. Share what’s working. Build trails others can follow. The colony eats better when you signal where the food is.

This week, drop some pheromones. Whether it’s your work, your city, your house, whatever your anthill is, let’s use each other. Ants are onto something.

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At Giard & Co, we’re building brands that further human potential while sharing every trail we find. Check out some breadcrumbs here.

Happy Monday. Shout out to being human.

Shout out to the miracle of evolution that gave us less.

Mantis shrimp have up to 16 photoreceptors. We have 3. They’re detecting parts of the spectrum of light that our lousy human brains can’t fathom. They’re seeing ultraviolet, polarized light, the works. They hatch with this ability and immediately start using all 16 receptors to scan their world.

Now humans, humans don’t start with the answers. A child points at grass and asks if it’s red. Someone corrects them, their brain adjusts.

See something red → guess → get feedback → update the model.

That loop is everything. That’s how our brains map red to orange to pink, how we learn that red looks different in sunlight vs. shadow.

A mantis shrimp skips all that. It hatches with its system largely locked in, with little room for refinement or feedback. It already gets the gist. How boring!

It recognizes color instantly, but it never understands it.

If you’re reading, safe to assume you’re the knowledge seeking type, always scouting inputs. Books. Podcasts. AI. You name it. Infinite knowledge at our fingertips.

And what a great and powerful gift it all is, if we do something with it.

The trap is collecting information mantis shrimp–style: tons of input, but no pressure testing it. Reading all the books, scrolling all the feeds, asking for all the advice, but no facing the music.

Freakishly easy trap to fall into. Probably why this shrimp was having an existential crisis.

Action, my friend, is the feedback loop.

Understanding comes from the humility of testing what you think you know. From being a screw-up. From reality pushing back and your brain adjusting.

The only way to get smart is to be dumb enough to test what you think you know.

So this week, embrace the beauty of being wrong. Go be wrong about something and let reality check you. That’s where the magic happens.

Action is how we learn and grow. Leave the stagnation to the shrimp.

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At Giard & Co, we’re testing what we think we know about building brands. Testing ideas, failing forward, sharing the lessons. If that sounds interesting, subscribe below.

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Check out our resources here, and join our portfolio here.

But every night, they enter torpor, their heart rate drops from 1,200 to 50, body temperature plummets, and they go completely still. They look dead. They have to die a little every night to survive the next day’s burn.

Happy Monday, and shout out to the doers. The lunatics who operate at the human equivalent of 1,200 heartbeats per minute. The ones who can’t die without knowing how fast their wings will flap.

I’ll go out on a limb (hummingbird style) and say you’re reading for one of two reasons: either you’re collecting nectar because survival depends on it, or you’re chasing legacy, self-actualization, and feeling alive. The lesson’s the same. You can burn this hot. You just can’t do it without going cold.

So no need to slow down, find balance, be sustainable. That’s for chickens.

Hummingbirds are extremists that don’t believe in moderation. They hum at maximum output and maximum shutdown.

If you’re reading this, you’ve been Icarus before. Flew at hummingbird speed without the torpor. The sun melted your wings because you never learned to land.

So go work as hard as your heart desires. Strive for 1,200 bpm. Man, go 2,400 if that’s what it takes. Chase what you’re chasing with every feather you’ve got.

But make sure you enter torpor too, whatever yours may be. Get that heart rate to 50, and do it with the same intensity that you work at.

Moderation’s lame. Work hard, play hard, rest just as hard.

So go be a lunatic this week. Just make sure you go cold when it counts.

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At Giard & Co, we’re building brands at 1,200 bpm. If you’re doing the same, we’re sharing every tool, framework, and screwup we make along the way. Check out our resources here, and join our portfolio here.

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And for your next torpor, we can’t recommend this hummingbird documentary narrated by David Attenborough enough.