I DON'T DO INSPIRATIONAL. I DO WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Addiction and recovery, food systems, habit formation, and fungi-driven innovation — told by someone who lived the story, built the business, and won’t oversell either.
Keynote
30–60 min. The full arc — story, science, and what to do Monday morning.
Panel
Psychedelic regulation, food systems, the mushroomindustry. I’ll disagree politely.
Workshop
Half or full day. Hands-on — cultivation, habit systems, or both.
Fireside
Moderated conversation. The format where the honest stuff comes out.
01
FOUR TALKS I CAN GIVE TOMORROW.
01
I WOKE UP ON THE FLOOR
Fifteen years a fitness coach. A back injury, a prescription, a dependency — and one night with a handful of mushrooms that ended the wanting. The story without the polish, and the honest account of what the medicine did and didn’t do.
best for
recovery – health – general
lenght
30-60m keynote
leaves them with
permission to look at it
02
FROM A GARAGE TO 50,000 SQUARE FEET
How a garage lab became one of the Midwest’s largest indoor farms — the closed-loop systems, the rooms I killed, the substrate decision that cost me, and what actually scales in an industry full of people who’ve never grown anything.
best for
business – ag – foudners
lenght
30-60min + q&A
leaves them with
a real cost of learning
03
FUNGI AND THE FUTURE OF FOOD
Mycelium as infrastructure — feeding people, cleaning waste streams, regenerating soil. 3,000 lbs of mushroom marinara into Chicago schools is a small story that explains a very large one.
best for
sustainability – policy – food
lenght
30-60min
leaves them with
a systems view
04
THE ART OF NOT BETRAYING YOURSELF
Why willpower fails and systems don’t. The five pillars, the neuroscience of the window, and why the experience is twenty percent and what you do with it is the other eighty. The talk behind Micro Discipline.
best for
leadership – teams – wellness
lenght
45-60min
leave them with
a system, not mood
02
WHO I'M USEFUL TO.
01
FOUNDERS & OPERATORS
People building something in food, ag, or wellness who want the unglamorous version of how it goes.
02
HEALTH & RECOVERY
Conferences and organisations working on addiction, mental health, and psychedelic-assisted care.
03
TEAMS & LEADERSHIP
Companies who want discipline talked about honestly — not as a motivational poster.
03
PREVIOUS ENGAGEMENTS.
"
HE DIDN'T SELL THE ROOM ANYTHING. HE JUST TOLD THE TRUTH AND THE ROOM DID THE REST.
[ N A M E · R O L E · C O M P A N Y ]
needs real attribution — an unnamed quote reads as invented
04
WHAT I NEED FROM YOU.
Tell me the room, not the topic.
Who’s in the seats, what they’re walking in worried about, and what you want different when they walk out. I’ll shape the talk around that — every one of the four above bends to the audience.
I travel from Chicago and speak remotely. Custom talks welcome if the fit is real.
One thing I won’t do: promise psilocybin as a cure. If that’s the talk, I’m the wrong speaker.
- EVENT NAME, DATE & LOCATION
- AUDIENCE — WHO & HOW MANY
- FORMAT — KEYNOTE, PANEL, WORKSHOP
- LENGTH & SESSION TIMELENGTH & SESSION TIME
- WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO LEAVE WITH
- BUDGET RANGE
book john
Send the room and the date. If I’m not right for it, I’ll tell you — and usually I know who is.
the art of not betraying yourself