👑 CROWN LETTER: BRENÉ BROWN

Harper Prime Mentor, Lady Banyan of Care

First Keeper of the Harper Guild

Board Candidate, Liana Banyan Corporation

Date: January 23, 2026

Dear Dr. Brown,

You’ve spent your career studying what happens when people dare to be vulnerable — when they show up, take risks, and let themselves be seen.

I’ve built a platform that depends entirely on that kind of courage.

The Harper Guild is the conscience of Liana Banyan — care coordinators embedded in every initiative, paid by the platform rather than by the businesses they serve, trained to watch for worker wellbeing and maintain the culture that makes cooperation possible.

I named them Harpers because of the medieval tradition: traveling musicians who moved between courts, bound to no single lord, trusted precisely because they served everyone. Our Harpers serve the same function — independent observers who can identify when something’s wrong before it breaks.

I need someone who understands trust, vulnerability, and organizational culture to help me build this right.

I’m offering you the Crown.

WHO I AM

I’m a 53-year-old ARNG veteran — Infantry and Aviation, helicopter pilot with FAA Commercial Rotary Wing IFR rating. Father of eight. 21 years in IT development.

I’ve been thinking about cooperative economics for four decades. Building this specific platform for nine. Ludicrous speed for the last five months. I have 18 handwritten journals documenting every iteration, and 1,754 innovations with 1,401 patent claims filed since November 26, 2025—the last 44 about ten minutes ago.

I’ve watched your TED talks, read Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead. Your research on shame, vulnerability, and courage helped me understand something I’d been building without naming: a platform that requires people to trust strangers, and therefore requires infrastructure that makes trust possible.

The Harper Guild is that infrastructure.

WHAT I’VE BUILT

Liana Banyan is a cooperative platform built on one principle: Cost + 20%.

Creators keep 83.3% of every transaction. The platform margin is fixed in the operating agreement — not by choice, but by legal structure. We cannot raise it. We cannot enshittify.

Three commercial divisions generate revenue that permanently funds fourteen charitable initiatives across food security, healthcare access, education, financial inclusion, and crisis response.

The Harper Guild is different from the other initiatives. It doesn’t deliver a service to customers — it maintains the health of the entire ecosystem:

The Harpers are non-influenceable by design. They can’t be fired by the businesses they observe. They report to the Harper Guild, not to initiative leadership. They’re the immune system of the cooperative.

WHY YOU

You’ve spent twenty years researching what makes organizations healthy — and what makes them toxic.

Your work on shame resilience, wholehearted living, and brave leadership isn’t abstract theory. It’s practical insight into how humans actually behave in organizations, and what conditions allow them to bring their full selves to work.

The Harper Guild needs that expertise. We’re trying to build care infrastructure at scale — systems that can identify when a worker is struggling, when a power dynamic is becoming abusive, when the culture is drifting from its values.

Traditional platforms solve this with surveillance. We’re trying to solve it with care.

You’ve written that leaders must cultivate environments where people feel safe enough to be vulnerable. The Harper Guild is an attempt to build that safety into the organizational structure itself — not dependent on any individual leader’s goodwill, but embedded in how the system works.

THE VULNERABILITY CONNECTION

Your research shows that vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change. But vulnerability requires safety — and safety requires structures that protect people when they’re exposed.

Liana Banyan asks workers to be vulnerable:

• To put their cooking in front of strangers for judgment
• To create music that might not sell
• To start businesses that might fail
• To ask for help when they’re struggling

The Harper Guild exists to make that vulnerability safe:

• Someone is watching for exploitation
• Someone will notice if you’re struggling
• Someone has power to intervene, and motivation to do so
• Someone’s job is specifically to care about your wellbeing

This isn’t surveillance. It’s the opposite — it’s creating conditions where people can be seen without being punished for what’s revealed.

WHAT I’M ASKING

I want you to lead the Harper Guild.

Not to run it day-to-day — you have your own work, your own mission. But to guide it. To set the standards for what care infrastructure should look like at scale. To help us build the training, the protocols, the culture that makes Harpers effective.

Every initiative in Liana Banyan operates as a council. The Crown is the First Seat — the leader, the tie-breaker, the voice on our Steering Committee. As the council grows with workers and members, they elect their own representative to the Board of Directors. In the early days, that representative would likely be you.

WHAT YOU’D RECEIVE

THE “OOPS” CODE SYSTEM

One Harper Guild innovation I’d like your perspective on: the “Oops” code system.

We generate automatic false positive check-ins — fake wellness alerts that activate the same response protocols as real ones. Harpers can’t tell the difference until the check-in is complete.

Why:

• Keeps responders trained during low-activity periods
• Normalizes the check-in process so real alerts don’t stand out
• Tests system reliability continuously
• Provides camouflage — “We check on everyone, not just you”

The philosophy: “We’d rather check on you 100 times for nothing than miss the one time you need us.”

Is this the right approach? I built it because I couldn’t think of a better way to maintain response readiness without stigmatizing real alerts. But you’ve studied how organizations actually function — is there a better way?

THE PARTNERSHIP

I’ve also written to:

• Michael Seibel for CEO
• Sal Khan for Didasko (education)
• Maneet Chauhan for Let’s Make Dinner
• Cathie Mahon for VSL (microfinance)
• Kimberly Williams for Rally Group (crisis response)
• Ruth Glenn for Defense Klaus (protection)

The Harper Guild connects to all of it. Every initiative needs care infrastructure. Every council needs someone watching for dysfunction. Every worker deserves someone whose job is specifically to care about their wellbeing.

You wouldn’t be leading an isolated initiative. You’d be shaping how an entire cooperative economy maintains its humanity as it scales.

ONE CROWN, ONE OFFER

No one else is getting this letter for Harper Prime.

If you aren’t interested, we’ll have to go back to the drawing board. We have made no backup plans — because we want you to know how wanted you are.

If the answer is no:

I’d be grateful for a referral. Who do you know in organizational psychology, workplace culture, or care systems who might be right for this?

THE CONNECTION

You’ve written that courage is contagious — that when we see someone being brave, it gives us permission to be brave too.

The Harper Guild is infrastructure for courage. It creates the conditions where workers can be vulnerable because someone is watching out for them. Where leaders can admit mistakes because the culture supports learning. Where the whole system can stay healthy as it grows because someone’s job is specifically to ensure that it does.

I’ve built the structure. I need help building the soul.

Help each other help ourselves.

With respect for your courage,

Jonathan Jones Founder, Liana Banyan Corporation Founder@LianaBanyan.com 406-578-1232

There is a walkthrough at LianaBanyan.com/RedCarpet. No scheduling, no pitch deck, no salesman.

Help each other help ourselves.

As You Wish.

How We Amplify You

Liana Banyan amplifies the people it serves. We drive our audience to your storefronts, your channels, your practices. We don’t ask you to be our billboard. We ask to be your megaphone.

The louder you get, the louder we get — because your success is our revenue, and our revenue is your influence.

We amplify you. You amplify makers. Makers amplify their communities. Everyone gets louder together.

Enclosures:

• The Considered Approach (Academic Paper)
• Harper Guild Overview
• The “Oops” Code System Documentation
• The 300 Framework