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Stacey Mulvey: Cannabis, Yoga, and Community Building

Stacey Mulvey is the founder of Marijuasana, a company that has her traveling between major cities around the country — from Anchorage, Alaska to Boston, Massachusetts and everywhere in between — to teach cannabis- and hemp CBD-infused yoga classes.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, Stacey joins our host TG Branfalt to talk about the intersection of cannabis and mindful movement exercise, what a typical cannabis yoga class looks like and how they help bring people together to reinforce the cannabis community, and the legality of social cannabis use in places where the plant has been legalized. They also discuss the educational side of these classes, how cannabis and CBD can help one achieve a more internal perspective while exercising, and more!

Listen to the interview via the player below or scroll further down to read a full transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.


Listen to the interview:


Read the transcript:

TG: Hey there. I’m your host, TG Branfalt and you are listening to the ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of Ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Stacey Mulvey, she’s the founder of Marijuasana? Which offers hemp and cannabis-infused yoga classes in Denver, Colorado, Washington D.C., Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Anchorage, Alaska, and the fabulous Las Vegas. How are you doing this morning, Stacey?

Stacey Mulvey: I’m doing well, TG. And it’s actually it’s Marijuasana, but you’re not the only person-

TG Branfalt: Ah, I knew I’d botch it.

Stacey Mulvey: Yeah, you’re not the only person that has that issue, so I’m happy to correct.

TG Branfalt: So, aside from me botching the name of your company, tell me about yourself. First of all, how’d you end up founding this company, and what’s your background with yoga?

Stacey Mulvey: I have a background in teaching movement through Pilates and yoga for the past five years. I actually came to teaching mindful movements after working in IT for a long time, and just working in various corporate jobs and realizing that I hated … First of all I hated my job, but realizing I wasn’t being … that I really needed to pay more attention to my body. And then once I was, I was a lot happier and more … just a healthier human in general. And at a certain point decided like, “You know what? I’m tired of buying into the notion that in order to be happy and successful you have to just throw your life away in this mindless corporate job, and do what you don’t like just so you can earn money. And I said, “Okay, I’m gonna be a teacher of this practice that I’ve discovered that’s really benefiting me.”

I went into training to be a Pilates teacher, and it was amazing, and that just kind of set me off on this path of taking trainings in Pilates, and yoga, pole dance, and other mindful movements. And realizing that this was really my passion, and I felt like it was my calling. The whole time prior to my teacher training during my career, if you will, as an IT professional I had always been a cannabis consumer. It was just like part of my identity almost, but of course it was a hidden identity. It was like my true identity that my friends knew, but it wasn’t something that I put out in the world, if you will. It was just like, “Oh, I just do this in the shadows when I’m off of work with the people that really know me, know that I really enjoy cannabis.” Being in Colorado as cannabis legalized there, and starting to work within the cannabis industry simultaneously …

As a Pilates teacher, you’re really your own boss. You know, you’re working for yourself, you’re getting your own clients, you’re working at different studios. My jobs most of the time were part-time in different locations. It was like, “Okay, work out at this studio Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then I work at this other studio Mondays and Thursdays.” And then in the meantime I was doing social media and marketing for a couple companies within the cannabis industry, and it became after while … You know I couldn’t say exactly when it hit, but it was like, “This is something that I should just start to do as a business. I should start to combine these two things and start putting it out there.”

It’s kind of scary at first because there’s the professional reputation that you have, you’re sort of putting on the line as like, “Hey, I have this reputation that I’ve built up as a teacher, and here’s my credibility, and here’s my resume, if you will. And what I’m gonna do is also add to the end of this resume, like at the end of my name, cannabis entrepreneur, Ganjapreneur.” Just stepping out and doing that, it took a little bit of kicking around in my brain, and kind of kicking around with like, “Okay, am I really ready to do this?” And like kind of put this idea out there. But once I did I was really happy that I did, and it really seemed to … It was really well received, I’ll just say that.

TG Branfalt: When’d you decide to use cannabis and hemp in your yoga classes? And if you could describe to me kind of what you started with and what you’re using now?

Stacey Mulvey: Sure. As far as the classes, I mean when I decided to use them in my classes it was once I started as … Once I started Marijuasana, when I said, “Okay, not only will I just do it in my own practice,” because that’s really where it started was me, myself, realizing in my own practice that cannabis and hemp made a huge difference in my experience when I did Pilates and yoga. Because my identity as a teacher, as someone who wants to teach others how to improve their experience in their own body, for a long time I had that knowledge, if you will, that, “Okay. I know that this will make a difference because it makes a difference for me, and I would love to impart this to other people.” I never did it within the professional space because it just wasn’t appropriate. It wasn’t acceptable to say like, “Hey, you know what you should really do is start maybe looking into some CBD oil, or hell you know, just start getting high before you come into this lesson because it would really make a difference, you know?” You just don’t do that.

It was really about a year and a half ago that I started becoming more confident in revealing to my clients that I was in the cannabis industry. It was always kind of in hushed tones, like, “Okay this is my other job. I work in the cannabis industry.” And the ones that were like, “Oh.” You know? It’s like this little kind of flag that you’re like sort of waving. Like your freak flag a little bit. Like, “Hey, I’m into this.” And then they would say, “Hey, oh yeah.” We’d start to share some sort of conversation like, “Oh yeah my husband and I went to a dispensary.” Then we’d feel more inclined to start speaking with each other, and start being more open.

Once that started, I started realizing okay a lot of my clients are in this space and would probably be receptive to something like this, and I’m gonna start teaching classes. It was really important to me that CBD be the focus of what I taught, and that I brought out into the world because everybody has access to CBD, whether or not they realize that it’s legal right now. Everybody has access to it, but not everybody has legal access to cannabis containing THC. I didn’t want to neglect people in other states, or in other markets, that felt like, “Well, that’s not really for me then if you guys are just gonna get high and do yoga. I can’t do that in Nebraska.”

I wanted to focus on CBD because it … Besides the legality of it, it really is a crucial cannabinoid for everybody. For humanity, for wellness. For me it’s about more than just getting high, and I don’t mean just getting high. I don’t mean to degrade that, but including phytocannabinoids in our daily consumption is extremely important to me because I feel like our bodies have been basically starved due to prohibition. We’ve been kept away from a really essential part of our nutrition in phytocannabinoids. Hemp provides CBD and the whole gamut of cannabinoids besides THC, and it was really important to me that people became aware of that, and that my company brought awareness to that.

TG Branfalt: How do you use the CBD in those classes? Do you use a tincture? Do you use a rub?

Stacey Mulvey: We use an oil. We use an oil that we just ingest prior to doing yoga, and then I also serve tea, hemp seed tea. The CBD that you’re getting from the tea is pretty minimal. You’re not getting like a dose of CBD, but it’s another method for … Well, it serves two purposes, that you’re receiving CBD in whatever form, it’s a minimal dose, or a trace amount. And then it also serves as a social lubricant, if you will, that we get to … We’re taking tea, there’s a tea bar, we’re drinking tea together, we’re starting to get to know each other a little bit. It breaks the ice, and it’s a chance for some education to take place. People can ask questions and we can get checked in and settled.

Most yoga classes you get checked in at a front desk and then you go into your studio, you set up your mat, and then everybody sits there looking straight ahead at themselves in the mirror until the teacher comes in and starts to teach the class. With Marijuasana and the tea bar, and the chance to have it be a little more informal, there’s this opportunity for people to get to know each other or feel at least a little more like it’s a community. Even if they’re at that first part not very inclined to speak to each other, they feel inclined to speak to me a little bit and then it takes down the barriers of like, “This is really weird. What’s this class gonna be like? We’re just gonna get high and then we’re gonna do what? How is this gonna go down?”

But yeah, at the beginning of class we’ll drink some tea, take some oil, and then at that point, too, that’s when I start letting people know like, “Hey, if you brought cannabis you’re welcome to start consuming. I have some that I’ll share with you, or if anybody wants to share you’re welcome to.” That’s when everybody starts to consume whatever they choose to. There are some people that do not actually consume cannabis that gets you high. They’ll just take the oil and the tea and that’s it.

TG Branfalt: This sounds like a lot of fun.

Stacey Mulvey: It is so much fun. It really is. It really is, and that’s something I’m poking at, but I haven’t explicitly said yet. But what is really fun about it besides the physical activity is the community aspect. And that’s really important to me that the people do feel like they’re coming together in community because we don’t have that opportunity as cannabis consumers. We don’t have this venue where we can get together and be like, “Hey, I smoke weed, too, and here’s what I use it for.” Some people are just like, “I just do it for fun.” But the vast majority of people that I talk to that come to class have a reason beyond the fun recreational aspect. They do it for some level of pain that they’re experiencing. Whether it’s emotional or physical, or they found some way that it helps them in their life in a wellness aspect, and so they consume cannabis.

Which is usually what brings them out to a yoga class as well, the wellness aspect, but it’s like, “Okay, now that we’re here we can get to know each other and realize that we really are a community, and that there’s not one specific type of person that’s in this class.” We’re very different, there’s a lot of diversity, and we can get to know each other. I’m the only one that’s usually not the local, but it’s like, “Look around the room and realize that all these people live here. You guys are all part of the same city, and you’re all cannabis consumers. Did you know that?” I’ve seen friendships begin from my classes where people start to talk and realize like, “We should be friends,” or, “We should network.” I love to see that because that’s really important to me, the community aspects.

TG Branfalt: I want to dig in with you about some of the social use aspect of yoga and cannabis, but before we do that I gotta take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, here with Stacey Mulvey, found of Marijuasana? Did I get that right?

Stacey Mulvey: Marijuasana. Yeah.

TG Branfalt: Marijuasana. I have it written down phonetically three different ways apparently. And she goes around the country and utilizes cannabis and hemp in yoga classes. Before the break you were talking about how in addition to the physical wellness, there’s also the opportunity for people who attend your classes to meet each other, network, and get to know each other. Whenever I write about social use policy, the Denver … There’s a lot of talk about it happening in Maine, and Massachusetts, and Alaska … Yoga classes are really always mentioned as potential social use licensees. They talk about having cannabis clubs, but ultimately you always get yoga studios would be able to get these licenses. Why do you think this is? Why do you think they specifically talk about yoga classes?

Stacey Mulvey: Yeah, I find that really interesting, too, that that gets brought up as an example. I don’t … Part of me thinks it might be because they know that the yoga classes are happening, and so they’re sort of primed for that. That they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Yoga studios.” But also I think it’s because it’s a great model of a business where people do gather that is not necessarily a bar. It’s not a movie theater, or … Any other type of communal space that I’m trying to think of, it’s a way … It’s a business where people do gather and partake in an activity where cannabis works really well.

Obviously I believe that it’s beyond just the community aspect where it’s like, “Oh, yeah.” It fits really well on top of that, the social use license. The yoga itself, and the activity that you’re partaking in when you’re going to yoga, it works so well with cannabis. Like I’ve said, it’s like the chocolate and peanut butter of wellness. It’s just cannabis and yoga really do work together because it’s this mind-body experience that you’re moving your body in this mindful way, and cannabis is just meant to be with yoga.

TG Branfalt: What states, you do this in Colorado, and D.C., and Massachusetts, and Oregon, and Alaska, Nevada, what states are you seeing the most interest in your classes? And who’s coming? What age groups?

Stacey Mulvey: By far I’ve seen the most interest in Massachusetts. Something about the Boston community, they took to it immediately. It was like this complete resonance in Boston. What’s so cool is there’s not one specific type of person, and I love that. I’ve seen all age groups, I’ve seen all colors of people, so people of color. White, Black, Brown, what have you, also students. I’ve seen career professionals, I’ve seen … I don’t know. Not just a specific career either, all types of people end up showing up. It’s beautiful to see, like I was saying before, that’s when people start to get to know each other. It’s not a thing where we’re gonna hang out after the class, it’s pretty brief, but it does make a difference for people to see that it’s like, “Hey, I saw someone who wasn’t exactly like me in this class and we were together. We went through this experience together, and we gained the same benefit. We had the same idea about cannabis and yoga, and yet we’re different people.”

That might be, too, why you see that in connection with social use. It might just be this unconscious thing that people are realizing. Everybody can do yoga, and it’s this emerging sector in the wellness industry. Yoga’s been around for a long time, but it’s just getting bigger and bigger, and they’re realizing cannabis fits really well onto that. It’s something that brings people together and everybody tends to go for it. It’s an experience that really can foster a lot of community, and an education, and it does feed into wellness. Which is something that cannabis, I feel like there’s this wave that’s happening already, but there’s still a lot of momentum behind it for cannabis to transition from being something that, “Yeah, we’re legislating it and we’re considering it as a substance that people use to …”

They’re altering their consciousness, but they’re not thinking of it as altering their consciousness. They’re thinking of it as getting mindless almost. I’ve gotten that criticism from somebody before where they were like, “Yoga’s not about being mindless.” Because they think of cannabis as like drinking a six pack of beer or something. It’s like, “You’re just using it to kill your brain cells.” Anyone who would say that obviously doesn’t … They probably don’t use cannabis. Or they did once and they had a bad experience. But there’s this wave with cannabis where it really is about wellness, and it’s about altering consciousness, but not in a suppressing way, in this very expansive way.

I think the more that we start to speak to that as a cannabis industry, and … We’re stuck in a spot where we do have to say, “It’s just as, in quotes, harmful as alcohol. It’s not more harmful.” We have to bring that out into the world, and use that to legalize it, but it’s not that it’s harmful, it’s that it’s actually very beneficial. That’s the second piece, that it’s like we can’t use that as our argument as far as legalization, but once the legalization is there, I think we really do need to start speaking to it as it actually is good for you. It’s not that it’s harmful, it can be very, very good for you, and promote health, and promote wellness.

TG Branfalt: I’ve also interviewed a couple of … the founder of the 420 games on this show, and talked to quite a few people about the role that cannabis could play in a workout regimen. Either in the cooling down process as a tool to help the body heal. In your experience as somebody who’s worked in this health and wellness industry for a long time, what might be some other wellness sectors that could draw on cannabis as a tool? Holistically or as a, I don’t want to say performance enhancer, but as something to help with physical activity workouts? That sort of thing.

Stacey Mulvey: I’ve started to think of it … Yes, there’s the physiological aspects, and is it Jim McAlpine? The-

TG Branfalt: Yes. Yep.

Stacey Mulvey: Yeah, so Jim … There are a couple of other experts in the field that really do speak to the physiological aspects, that it helps with recovery, it helps with endurance and that type of thing, and all of that is true. My interest comes from the mind-body aspect because I’m the woo-woo chick of Pilates and yoga where I really do see it from a secular point of view. But at the same time I’m like, “No, the mind-body experience, that’s my spirituality.” I’m not trying to put anything higher on it other than being in touch with your own body, and your experience within your own body is one of the most propound experiences you can have in your own consciousness. That aside-

TG Branfalt: It’s interesting to me that you’ve got a guy like Ricky Williams who is a big-time NFL football player who uses both yoga and cannabis, post-football career, as a wellness tool. To your point, there’s gotta be a connection there.

Stacey Mulvey: There really is. Your somatic experience, and that’s the type of movement that I like to focus on is what it feels like within your own body. A lot of exercise is taught from the vantage point of … almost like from this external vantage. What does it look like from the outside? Are your legs in the right spot? Are you mirroring whatever you’re being told to do with your body? You’re seeing yourself from the outside. The somatic experience is what you feel within your own structure. What is your experience as you move? What does it feel like as you’re moving your hips, or when you’re positioning your body in such a way? Then when you’re moving into this other position, it’s taking that reference point from being external to internal. There’s an intrinsic value with that. It’s extremely moving for an individual to experience. Once you get into it and you start to experience it from the inside versus the outside, it becomes almost addictive. It becomes its own motivator. It’s like, “I want to keep experiencing that.”

Cannabis helps you switch from that external viewpoint to your internal viewpoint, I believe, and in my own experience I feel like I’ve been able to facilitate other people getting that experience. An athlete like Ricky Williams, I don’t know I haven’t spoken to him, but I would bet if we did speak to him about that and say, “Hey, what was it like when you were doing football?” When you were a professional athlete did cannabis help you be able to transition from like, “Hey, this is me doing stuff and I’m doing stuff from the outside.” Did you notice that you were able to internalize what you were doing with your own body once you started incorporating cannabis and really contemplating what you were actually doing with your own body? That you inhabit that body and like oh my God isn’t that crazy?

It’s this whole philosophical thing, but to answer your question you were saying what other aspects of wellness could cannabis facilitate? Because I see it as a mind-body experience, and mind-body tool, I feel like beyond the physical health there’s also a lot of aspects of holistic health that cannabis could help in terms of community wellness. Things like creative pursuits. Things like painting and creative writing, those are other events that I put on that aren’t necessarily related to yoga, but I see the correlation because, again, it’s cannabis working with helping you make different associations. Different associations with parts of your body when you’re moving your body, but also different associations in a creative way. Being able to open yourself up to painting and to writing.

I feel like any sort of therapeutic endeavor, like art therapy or group therapy. I’m not a therapist, so I don’t know how that would work in terms of administering cannabis to a group, but just getting people together and actually talking. I’ve conducted these writing classes that weirdly enough it turns into a group therapy session because people are … they just start to want to talk. People want to start to open up and connect with each other, and connect with themselves. There’s that with group therapy, and maybe work with the elderly, and work with social groups that I feel like cannabis could really help.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit deeper about education, but before we do that we’ve got to take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


At Ganjapreneur we have heard from dozens of cannabis business owners who have encountered the issue of canna-bias, which is when a mainstream business, whether a landlord, bank, or some other provider of vital business services, refuses to do business with them simply because of their association with cannabis. We have even heard stories of businesses being unable to provide health and life insurance for their employees because the insurance providers were too afraid to work with them. We believe that this fear is totally unreasonable and that cannabis business owners deserve access to the same services and resources that other businesses are afforded. That they should be able to hire consultation to help them follow the letter of the law in their business endeavors, and that they should be able to provide employee benefits without needing to compromise on the quality of coverage they can offer.

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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Stacey Mulvey, founder of Marijuasana?

Stacey Mulvey: Yay. You did it.

TG Branfalt: I did it. Which offers hemp and cannabis infused yoga classes throughout the country. Even Alaska, which I haven’t talked to a lot of people who actually have gone there yet. What I want to talk to you about now is how much education is involved in your business? And do you tend to interact with many skeptics who come to these classes?

Stacey Mulvey: I’ll answer the second part first. No, not a lot of skeptics come to my classes. If they’re skeptical, they tend to just not come. The skeptics that I’ve encountered usually are on social media, and there’s usually some little comment somewhere, either on Twitter or in a post somewhere. There aren’t a lot of skeptics that actually confront me. I sort of wish that there were, in a way. I would really love to speak with them, in a healthy adult way, just because there’s so much that I would like to say and to answer. Also, their skepticism is valid. Everybody’s viewpoint is valid, and whether or not I agree with it, it would be nice to see like, “Well, why do you think that? Why are you skeptical?” Because that’s out there.

But as far as education in the class, I try to keep it light because people are there to move their bodies. The last thing you want to do is hear somebody talk at you for an extended period of time. I try to sprinkle as we’re moving, like, “Hey, this is why you’ll feel better after class because cannabis increases your circulation, and what we’re doing, the activity that we’re doing is feeding blood to various tissues in your body that may not be receiving great circulation. The fact that you’re getting more circulation, it’ll increase the soreness, but the cannabis will help alleviate that.” That type of thing.

I try to layer it into the class as far as education. People do receive a bit, and then my hope is that if they get curious with that, if they’re like, “Hey, I didn’t know that. Whatever she was talking about.” That it’ll prompt some curiosity, or they’ll want to either ask me more, or maybe they’ll investigate on their own. But it is important to me that I’m bringing some sort of education to every class because it is, like I’ve said many times already, it is about more … To me, it’s about more than just, “We’re just gonna get high and do yoga.” Yeah, that is awesome, and that’s what I do a lot, but I’d like to elevate it past that, past that mindset. It’s like, yeah just getting high and doing yoga, it is quite a bit actually. There’s a lot to that that we should start bringing our awareness to.

TG Branfalt: Finally, what advice would you have for other entrepreneurs? Maybe not necessarily entrepreneurs looking to enter the cannabis space, but maybe those listening who might be considering more on the wellness side? You have a very interesting business model, and you travel around a lot meeting people who might end up considering doing something similar to what you’re doing. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs?

Stacey Mulvey: That’s a good question. I like how you segmented it to those interested in the wellness aspect. The advice I would have for them is to arm yourself with information. Get as much information as you can about the science … Yeah I guess just about the science with cannabis, and also in movement. Or whatever wellness activity you’re doing. I say movement because that’s my focus, but never stop learning and arming yourself with information on the importance of both of those, and what those are even. Something that I’ve noticed with other movement teachers, especially in yoga, and this might get me in trouble, but often with yoga teachers they take a brief teacher training program and then that’s almost it.

I’ve been in yoga classes where I can tell that they’re understanding of anatomy and movement is lacking because they only went so far in memorizing a sequence of yoga poses and then they were done. Keep educating yourself, keep getting training, keep finding more information, doing your own research, doing your own work. Because we really need to have a unified front on the factual basis of the wellness aspect of cannabis. That it’s not just a frufruey thing that we’re making up. Jeff Sessions was saying that it’s over-hyped, the medicinal properties of cannabis were over-hyped. I think that’s an exact quote, and it’s not. It’s like, Jeff, if you’re listening, it is not over-hyped. It is absolutely true, and unfortunately-

TG Branfalt: If Jeff Sessions is listening to this, the world is literally coming to its end.

Stacey Mulvey: Well, someone write him a letter. I’ll write him a letter and say, “This is what I said to you, damn it.” But yeah it’s not over-hyped, and it needs to be more than just like … Unfortunately, anecdotal and firsthand experience isn’t good enough for those that are gonna be skeptical, so we need to continually provide them with information beyond the research that they won’t allow to happen, and keep doing our own research, and keep making our own case that cannabis is an integral part of wellness. That is an integral part of cannabis, it’s not just the recreational like, “Let’s get fucked up” side. That would be my advice.

TG Branfalt: Finally, where can people keep track of you? Keep track of your classes? Get to know more about the Marijuasana, Mari-wa-sana …

Stacey Mulvey: On my website, marijuasana.com, and just to speak really quick if you don’t mind, TG. The marijuana and asana are where the name come from. Marijuana, obviously, we know what marijuana is. Asana is the Sanskrit word for “pose” in yoga, and so all yoga poses end with asana. That’s where the name for my company came from is marijuana and asana, and I just put the two words together. It’s Marijuasana. That’s M-A-R-I-J-U-A-S-A-N-A.com. That handle works through all the social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Marijuasana. If you go to my website or social media, I’ve got the list of events that I’ve got coming up, and I’ve got some coming up in Portland. Also in Oakland in February, and then I’m gonna be back in Boston in March.

TG Branfalt: Well, this has been super lovely conversation. You’ve been super patient with me botching your company name several times. I really appreciate it-

Stacey Mulvey: No, my pleasure.

TG Branfalt: My impediment does not allow me to say that word, apparently. And-

Stacey Mulvey: You’re not the only one.

TG Branfalt: Makes me feel better. Congratulations on your success thus far, and traveling as much as you do, and bringing this practice, and bringing these two things together to people who can really benefit from what you do.

Stacey Mulvey: Thank you.

TG Branfalt: Thanks for your time. It’s been really lovely.

Stacey Mulvey: Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s been great to talk to you, and thank you so much for the opportunity.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of ganjapreneur.com, and in the Apple iTunes store. On the ganjapreneur.com website you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End


Michael Brubeck: How to Identify a Winning Cannabis Investment

Michael Brubeck is the founder and CEO of Centuria Foods and author of Tipping the Scales, a book about cannabis industry financing that helps canna-curious investors identify characteristics of a successful venture.

For this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode, Michael joined our host TG Branfalt for an interview that covers his early time in the industry — where he encountered the very real threat of federal enforcement and a lengthy prison sentence — to today, where he has grown his company into a multinational and powerhouse provider of high-quality CBD hemp oil. The two also talk about Tipping the Scales, seeking to clarify some of the book’s more controversial points.

You can listen to the interview in full below or scroll further down to read a complete transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.


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TG Branfalt: Hey there. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and you’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Michael Brubeck, he’s the Founder of Centuria, and author of “Tipping The Scales.” A really, really great read. I had the opportunity, it was a quick read, too, which is great. You synthesize everything really well in that book. Congratulations, first of all, for actually publishing something. That’s an incredible accomplishment.

Michael Brubeck: Well, thank you, Tim.

TG Branfalt: Before we get into that book, though, I want to talk about you, get to know you a little bit, get our listeners to get to know you a little bit. What’s your background, my man? How’d you end up in this space?

Michael Brubeck: Well, I started actually in 2005. First walked in to a dispensary owned by a friend of mine in California. By 2006, I was helping him out with his own business, and a handful of other startups and turnarounds inside the industry, primarily retail locations.

By 2007 had spanned the entire state, and then fast forward to 2009 with the Ogden memo, which was when the Obama Administration stated they would not use federal funds to circumvent state laws, and made the pivot out of retail, and into manufacturing/cultivation.

TG Branfalt: So your first company was in the space, that was Delta Allied Growers?

Michael Brubeck: I think technically that was number 14 or 15.

TG Branfalt: When you’re talking 12 years, you get quite a few. But I want to talk to you about Delta Allied Growers. You go into detail about that company in the book. Why don’t you tell the listeners the story of Delta and how that transitioned into Centuria?

Michael Brubeck: Well, in 2009, as soon as the Ogden memo was released, that was the starting point for where I felt there was regulatory structure in which you could have an industrial scale cultivation facility in the United States. As the administration pointed out, as long as you were compliant with state law, then you are compliant with federal policy. So, I exited retail positions and really doubled down on a 44 acre nursery site in California.

TG Branfalt: What ultimately was the … What happened to that company?

Michael Brubeck: Well, it was the opinion of myself and my attorneys that we were clearly in compliance with state law. The Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris, came out in favor of our company, but the Department of Justice and the DEA didn’t quite feel the same way, so they sent us a cease and desist letter at the same time, in 2011, that about eight governors were passing cannabis legislation in their state were getting targeted.

TG Branfalt: At what point did you shut that down, and at what point did you transition to Centuria?

Michael Brubeck: Well, we shut that company down as soon as Ben Wagner, who’s the Regional Attorney General in California, told me that we were probably looking at … I was looking at 20 to life in prison for continuing operations. I met with my advisors shortly after and they said, “Michael, you can continue operating, but the only rule is that you cannot violate US federal law.” So, what we just naturally did was pivoted to outside the US and continued cultivating and operating where we had permits to do so.

TG Branfalt: How did you successfully turn the shutting down of Delta Allied Growers into a positive?

Michael Brubeck: I’m really glad you asked that question, ’cause I can tell you that April of 2011, that was hands down the worst day of my life. It was also the best day of my life. It was the worst day of my life, in that everything I’d worked for in my entire adult life was gone. Just vanished. Every plant that was grown was 35 feet underground, all the personnel that I’d hired were now out of a job. The capital I’d raised had gone also, so that was a pretty daunting moment in my life, but it was hands down the best day of my life, and without that closure, if all things happened perfectly over the last seven years, I’d still be stuck in that small town on 44 acres.

Whereas now, we’re in a handful of different countries, three different continents. We have access to over 13,000 acres in Europe, and over 100,000 acres in Canada, so much happier the way that things turned out this way.

TG Branfalt: And internationally, it’s a far better climate than here in the United States, especially right now. But I’ve got to talk to you about this book, man. Why’d you decide to write it and what’s been the feedback so far?

Michael Brubeck: I decided to write this book because I was getting three to five phone calls every single week from friends and friends of friends that were having questions about PPMs, private placement memorandums, or investment decks that they were getting. Every single person that called me was absolutely clueless.

I kept seeing the same features in every business model. That was that there was this common assumption that the consumer market is going to remain static and the current margins are sustainable, and those are simply not true.

TG Branfalt: What was the feedback when you sat down and you wrote it, and then you sent it off to publishers, and it gets published — did your friends all read it? Did you say, “I’m done answering your calls. Here’s the book, read it, and then we’ll talk?”

Michael Brubeck: That’s definitely something that I lead with now. I think everyone that was on my list of people to talk to about cannabis investments, I definitely gave them some chapters to read. I think the overall feedback has been very positive from investors, and very negative from people that are already operating in the industry for the most part.

TG Branfalt: So you bring up the negative. Let’s just start, let’s get it out of the way. Let’s talk about some of the more unpopular opinions in this book, the potential monopolies, and consolidation. There was one report out of Canada that you were going to see something like 70% consolidation in the nation within 10 years. You talk a lot about companies that are riding high on the hog now, but just can’t scale, potentially them going out of business because they can’t hit these price points.

So, what’s your first reaction when somebody comes to you and says, “Look, this isn’t what’s going to happen,” who challenges these unpopular opinions?

Michael Brubeck: My first thing that I say is some of these things in the book aren’t predictions. I’m not saying that companies are going to develop technology to manufacture cannabis for a penny a gram. Because my company broke that in 2016. Companies already have the technology to do it, and so I think that a lot of my economic predictions actually aren’t really an opinion at all, popular or unpopular.

But I think they’re very commonsensical for people that are outside of the echo chamber of the cannabis industry.

TG Branfalt: So you’re already seeing CannaRoyalty making some moves into California. You’re already starting to see these consolidations. What are you seeing on the ground as legalization‘s starting to make its way through the legislative process? Are you seeing more consolidations, deals, or are you seeing more companies pop up?

Michael Brubeck: We’re actually seeing both. Canada’s a great template for us to … We ask ourselves, “What’s going to happen in California? What’s Colorado going to be like in five years?” I think we look at a federalized market like Canada, the most recent RAND study came out, the potential 8.8 billion dollar market there, which is roughly the size of California.

It gives us a really great map on where this industry’s going. You have three companies that have raised over two and a half billion dollars in the last 24 months, and what are they doing with that money? They’re not investing it in R&D as much as I’d like to see. They’re actually using it to cannibalize smaller companies, and will we see that happen in the United States? Absolutely.

As soon as the chains are removed from Wall Street and the institutional investors, investing directly in cannabis cultivation/manufacturing, and sales, I think there’s going to be a massive consolidation happening very quickly.

TG Branfalt: So in your book, you talk a lot about the importance of research and development, and here in the United States, private companies are the only ones that really can do that in legal states. Federally, it’s almost impossible, and what they do do is ditch weed in Mississippi. So, why do you think that companies aren’t focusing as much on R&D?

Michael Brubeck: Well, the short answer to that is they don’t have to. You still have retail cannabis prices in California, Colorado, even Canada, astronomically high. 200, 300, $350 per ounce. So, at this point, there’s really no need for radical innovation. There’s no pressing need to identify how to first of all, increase your total output by 10x inside of six months, and there’s no need to bring your cost out by 10x or 100x inside any near term window. I think that it’s just invention’s the mother of necessity, I believe.

TG Branfalt: In your book, you also say that automation is king in this industry. You’re proving that with a penny a gram. That’s an insane figure, right? But at the same time, jobs are one of the side effects of legalization. Many activists tout this as one of the reasons that we need legalization, and in your book, you point to providing jobs to a job-starved region. So, what trends do you see in the industry with regard to jobs? What do these jobs become as automation becomes more prolific?

Michael Brubeck: I think a great example that we can look to is the agricultural revolution. You had 93% of the United States working in some form of agriculture, and now, it’s below 3%. I think if we look back at that movement happening, was that a good or a bad thing for the United States? It was absolutely a great thing. So, what does the cannabis revolution that we’re looking at in the next 5 or 10 years mean for this industry and for the consumer?

I think it’s a lot of positive things. I think for the consumer they’re looking at prices going down and quality going up. I think it’s a great thing, especially ’cause I feel that cannabis is far too expensive right now.

I think for cannabis businesses, you’re moving a lot of jobs that were currently done maybe South of the border, maybe somewhere around British Columbia if you know what I mean, and a lot of those jobs are now moving internally to taxable positions where people are getting benefits and pretty good quality of life. So, as this market increases state by state, inside the United States, I think it’s very positive for the industry as a whole.

TG Branfalt: I want to touch base with you a lot more about some of the points you make in your book. But before we do that, we’ve got to take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt. I’m here with Michael Brubeck, Founder of Centuria, author of “Tipping The Scales.” We’re talking a lot about your book. Perhaps the boldest claim that I think that you make in the book is that 90% of investors are going to lose their cannabis industry investment, so in your opinion, where are those 10% of investments that won’t fail?

Michael Brubeck: The number one indicator that I look for is mechanization of processes. If you look at the average acre of canopy, how many hands do you have touching your plants? If someone comes back to me and says, “Hey, would you like to invest in a one acre, indoor nursery? We’re going to have 200 lights, and we’re going to have 135 employees,” I would consider that likely be a failure, simply due to being a top heavy organization with too much labor.

If someone says, “Well, we’ve developed a method of aquaponics that is highly automated and only requires four people an acre,” that’s something that I would love to get more into. I think it’s the companies that are doing things the old way that are very labor intensive, and they’re also not suitable for very large scale growth, that’s where the highest attrition rate is going to be.

Whereas, I think that people that are creating enterprises that are utilizing technology, using other areas of agriculture, or just new technology in general, inside this industry, are going to be the ones that can grow, grow rapidly, and they can be the easy companies to acquire market shares as interstate commerce opens up.

TG Branfalt: You also point out that small cottage producers, they’re going to have to change their business models due to their inability to scale, the presence of larger cultivators. Do you see a place for craft cannabis in a mature, legal cannabis market?

Michael Brubeck: Yeah, I think that’s like, I think we look at craft beer, we look at wine. We see a place where you’ve got these huge titans of manufacturing that are producing extremely large volumes of their products, and doing very well with their market segment. Then you have very small wineries or craft brewers that are also ultra successful based on their style of manufacturing. The same thing will exist in cannabis. You will see a polarization of I think large scale cultivation and small scale cultivation, but what small scale cultivators have to understand is that consumer pricing is going to be affected by those large scale cultivators.

TG Branfalt: So personally, right, I’m married to terpenes. I mean, my oil, my wax, my flower, that’s what I go for, right? The high is almost, the effect is almost secondary at this point. I’ve been consuming for 16 years or something like that. So, is that one of the ways that these smaller producers will be able to maintain a presence in this mature market?

Michael Brubeck: I think you pointed out a very great fact right there. The reason that you smoke cannabis is unique to you, and a lot of people have that same reason. A lot of different people have different reasons, and each market segment will gravitate to where they find the most value.

I think that the biggest advantage of small scale cultivators, or cottage cultivators, is they can pivot quickly. They understand the market better than any suit in a boardroom, three states away, can never understand. I think that’s going to be the major advantage moving forward for the next decade.

TG Branfalt: You mentioned a suit in a couple of states away. One of the things that you talk about in your book that I thought was really cool was how this industry has the ability to pull talent from non-cannabis industries. Can you tell me about your experience working with people from outside of the sector, and how you’ve built these relationships with these non-cannabis industry types?

Michael Brubeck: Well, ever since 2009 when I focused on manufacturing, the first person I hired was the Head of the Plant Science Department for UC Davis, which as you know, is the largest Plant Science Department in the United States. His specialty was in ornamental horticulture. Couldn’t have been a better fit. Getting that individual to sign on was very, very difficult. He was someone that felt he could be shunned academically for his participation with a marijuana company.

Whereas now, there’s probably monthly meetings at UC Davis about how that department is going to get involved in this industry, all inside of seven years.

TG Branfalt: What other industries are you seeing people coming from? On the podcast I see a lot of people coming from real estate, so what’s your experience as a CEO?

Michael Brubeck: I actually see people coming from every industry. I see people coming from pharmaceutical. I had a great conversation with someone from Genentech last week. I think one of the first California permits that were issued, that was issued to HERBL Distribution, a distributor in California. Well, the owner of that Michael Beaudry, he comes out of UNFI, which is a Fortune 500 company that he was the President of. You have a president of a company that did eight billion dollars last year, creating the same business model that UNFI has, which is about 27 distribution locations nationwide, and 36,000 skews.

His goal for next year is to have 5000 skews. Now, he’s going to be operating at roughly a 6% gross margin, and how does that affect the cannabis industry in California? Every middler that he is displacing, that’s used to maybe a 20% or a 30% margin for driving from the Emerald Circle down to Southern California now is getting edged out by some truck drivers that have a centralized processing facility in Northern California.

TG Branfalt: And so now you’re bringing up this idea that cannabis and you say this in the book, is going to, “Revolutionize every industry that it touches.” Man, what are some of those industries? We know that Scotts is buying up greenhouse and lighting companies, so big business is already recognizing some of the ancillary markets that are going to be revolutionized by the cannabis industry. What do you think some of these industries are going to be?

Michael Brubeck: Well, I think the big ones are intoxicants, so tobacco and alcohol are going to be adversely affected, as we saw in Colorado since we started collecting data after legalization in 2012, that yeah, alcohol consumption went down, nominally. I think if you look at the pharmaceutical industry, the moment that you reschedule cannabis from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 substance, you’re going to see an explosion of new drugs hitting the market, roughly 7-10 years later.

I think that every cannabis consumer is very well aware of the myriad health benefits that each cannabinoid has, and the fact there’s so many cannabinoids that haven’t been isolated and even tested on the human body yet is mind blowing.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you about another big claim that you make in this book, but before you do that, we’ve got to take a break. This is Ganjapreneur.com Podcast.


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TG Branfalt: Hey welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt. I’m here with Michael Brubeck, the Founder of Centuria, author of “Tipping The Scales.” So, in your book, you say when regulation falls, free market reigns. That statement assumes that in the US it will be descheduled, not rescheduled, which would likely put it in the hands, cannabis in the hands of Big Pharma and Big Ag. Even in Canada, we are seeing state control, provincial control. The liquor board’s going to be running everything from distribution to sales.

In Uruguay, they only allow two products, no marketing, strict controls, fingerprints. This isn’t a free market. The legal cannabis industry in the United States isn’t a free market, Canada’s proposal isn’t a free market. Do you think the industry will get to that free market status? And by then, won’t the market already be cornered by monopolies which again, impedes the free market? I mean, I know it’s a very loaded thought here, but how do we say that regulation falls, free market reigns, but then we regulate the hell of it?

Michael Brubeck: Well, I think we’re definitely dipping a toe in the water with regulations. I think you saw the infighting amongst canopy sites in California. In Canada, as legalization comes this summer, I think that’s going to be one of the biggest tipping points we’ve probably seen in the history of this industry. With one of the major industrialized nations in the world, member of the United Nations, going against the single convention on narcotics, and legalizing cannabis for recreational use, I think we’re going to see a lot of interesting business models pop up in that country.

Then, I think the next step that the US is going to see, and I think a lot of it has to do with what’s happening in Canada, is that we should see state’s rights be recognized regarding both medical and recreational cannabis. Now, the next step after that is potentially for interstate commerce, and then for international imports to be allowed under the commerce clause.

So, if we’re talking about that all happening in three to five years, now you have Canadian companies that are very well funded, that are extremely efficient large scale, being able to export to distributors in California and Colorado, and a handful of other states. I think that you’re going to see US regulators see that US market share is getting eroded by foreign imports. So, what will that prompt the United States to do? It’s my belief that we’ll see an opening or a loosening of regulations.

TG Branfalt: So you’ve said a couple of times, three to five years. We’re edging in on 2018, so you think that we’ll see a significant policy change in the United States by 2021 to 2023?

Michael Brubeck: I think when you look at something as simple as 280E, I think we’re less than a year away from seeing that fall. That to me is an extremely significant change at the federal level. To get the IRS to recognize that businesses in these legal states should be able to write off legitimate expenses for operating their cannabis business is a huge first step. So, going from that to rescheduling, I think yes we are inside of 3-5 years.

TG Branfalt: So one of my concerns, honestly, with the US, is that they’re not going to deschedule, that they’re going to reschedule. If they reschedule, it’s likely going to put cannabis in the hands of Big Pharma and Big Ag. Are you concerned about that as well? Or am I just being paranoid, big government, 1984, big brother is watching us?

Michael Brubeck: Well, the biggest advantage to a rescheduling of cannabis is it removes the federal government’s ability, like our Attorney General right now I think is a bit frightening to some people in the business, but it removes their ability to put … Cannabis operators are following state laws and regulations, in jail for 5 to 20 years, and I think removing that is massive. I think removing … penalties for possessions or for possession of cannabis in general needs to be eliminated.

TG Branfalt: Does it worry you as an operator, the potential of the US government playing crony capitalism with this industry? Because they’re allowing on one hand, they’re allowing companies to … The FDA is allowing synthesized THC products, fast-tracking them, but on the other side, they’re threatening crackdowns. Is there a concern from you, who seems to have a pretty good finger on the pulse, that the government could just play crony capitalism with this, license just a bunch of their friends, and not allow small producers or independent producers into this industry?

Michael Brubeck: I don’t think you can put the genie back in the bottle. I mean, that’s the one problem the federal government would have if they tried to play out that scenario. Can you close the 2800 businesses in Colorado because three pharmaceutical companies now have the patent on specific classifications of cannabis or cannabis processing? I just don’t ever see that happening.

Do I see that pharmaceutical industries are going to have a much larger footprint with cannabis based products? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing for the cannabis industry? I don’t think so. The reason I’ve remained sane in the last 12-13 years in this business, is I really don’t try and speculate. I definitely look at very near term happenings inside the industry, both regionally and nationally. Not just the United States, but other countries. And then strategize accordingly for those changes that are about to occur.

TG Branfalt: So with all this being said, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs considering entering this space?

Michael Brubeck: If you currently aren’t operating a business inside the cannabis space, do not try and recreate something that someone else is already doing really well. Yeah, you may be an incredible chocolatier, but for you to go out and purchase let’s say trim or a base ingredient in oil, from a wholesaler, and then use that ingredient in creating your chocolates. If THC or cannabinoids are 65% of your product costs, you’re competing against every other individual in the marketplace, so do you have a competitive edge in that space? Absolutely not. You’re playing catch up with companies that are more experienced, that are better capitalized than you, so just don’t do it.

Same thing when I hear about growers that are trying to raise six million dollars for a 10,000 square foot indoor nursery in California. I think it’s an absurd thing to do. If you’re spending money on electricity to create photosynthetic activity in your plants, you’re missing the bigger picture here.

So, focus your resources, both time and money, on things that are going to be valuable in three to five years, that you may not be able to be profitable inside of two or three years. So, business models could be people that start building greenhouses and collectivizing indoor nurseries to pivot into greenhouse spaces. I think that’s going to be one of the biggest areas of growth for investors and business owners.

By coordinating collectivization efforts, by getting 10 growers or 20 growers in the same place, if that pays your rent as a cultivator yourself, that’s a smarter way to approach I think, entering as a cultivator, as a product manufacturer.

TG Branfalt: That’s really interesting, the idea that collectives of sorts are the model that you see as attractive. So, when you sent me this book, in the front cover you write, “I hope you learn something.” I definitely did. I think that people who are turned off by the book, as you said, are probably going to be current operators, but as somebody who covers this industry … I really appreciate the honesty that’s in the book. You go through your own journey as well as the journey of your companies, so where can people find out more about you, buy the book?

Michael Brubeck: Well, you can find the book on Amazon, both in paperback and Kindle format.

TG Branfalt: And where can they learn more about you and Centuria?

Michael Brubeck: You can go on our website, CenturiaFoods.com, to learn more about myself and the company.

TG Branfalt: Well, I want to thank you for being on the show. I hope you write another book, honestly, because it’s very succinct. It’s very well written. It’s an easy read and I think that if people pick it up and they can immerse themselves in it and really get some expert opinion.

Michael Brubeck: Well, thank you, Tim. I’m actually already starting on it, and it’s actually focusing on historical market consolidation in other industries, and how they historically affected companies inside those industries, and then how that correlates to the cannabis industry moving forward.

TG Branfalt: Well, I reckon that after you’re done with that, we’ll have to have another conversation, huh?

Michael Brubeck: Yeah, looking forward to it.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com, and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.com you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs, updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End


Jesse Peters: Responsible Cannabis Business Practices

Jesse Peters is the owner and CEO of Eco Firma Farms and is a founding member of the Oregon Cannabis Association.

In this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode, Jesse joins our host TG Branfalt to talk about Eco Firma’s longterm goal of becoming 100% carbon neutral, some green energy solutions that other cannabis companies can consider to follow in their footsteps, how the cannabis industry needs to take responsibility in lobbying for better regulations and working more closely with regulators and lawmakers, and more!

You can listen to the interview via the media player below, or scroll further down to read through a complete transcript of the episode.


Listen to the podcast:


Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey, there, I’m your host, TG Branfalt, and you’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders.

Today, I’m delighted. I’m joined by Jesse Peters, he’s the CEO of Eco Firma Farms, and he’s a founding member of the Oregon Cannabis Association. How are you doing this afternoon, Jesse?

Jesse Peters: Good, good, how are you doing, Tim?

TG Branfalt: I’m all right, man, as I said, I’m thrilled to have you on the show, we’ve got a lot to talk about, but first, I want to talk about you. You have an interesting background, you are a 22-year Marine Corps vet, 10 years as a professional firefighter. How did you end up from those two sectors into the cannabis space?

Jesse Peters: Honestly, I didn’t really come from those two sectors in the cannabis space. I’ve always been on the cannabis space, and went into those two sectors in life. To an extent, I was born into this industry. My mom took the misdemeanor, and my dad took the felony for the five pounds that were under my crib when they brought me home from the hospital. That’s where our established in 1974 comes from. It was just always a piece of my life. I’ve always been a part of cannabis in a real small way, and then, as I got older, I just lived in both worlds.

I went to school, I went to college, I joined the Marine Corps, I got a job as a firefighter, and I also was in the cannabis space doing cannabis things that most cannabis people have done for a very long time. Years ago we started figuring out that it was going to be legal in our lifetime, and we needed to make a decision on which route we wanted to take with it, and taking the route of developing a company, and trying to participate heavily in the end of prohibition, and still be a successful business was the route we chose.

TG Branfalt: How long ago was it that you started Eco Firma?

Jesse Peters: Eco Firma was registered as a company in, I want to say 2013. We started Eco Firma as brand back in about 2011, 2010 actually, up in Seattle, when it just … It was one of those things where you start going into dispensaries, and you realize that it’s still really raw, it’s just random people coming through the door with Ziploc bags, or sandwich bags, or garbage bags full of cannabis. To me, the only to stand out there was to start to represent something.

We decided, you know, we’re going to create a business name, and we’re going to actually start giving test results, and doing terpene profiles as soon as they came online and we were allowed to do with no requirements. We wanted to be presentable and just have that leg up on the competition that I was facing in the dispensaries. As we did that and started getting really specific with strains and really specific with branding and trying to offer more to drive traffic to your dispensary made things appropriate for us to start to function like a business, and to be able to earn that business of that dispensary. If you’re going to turn it into a business, then you’ve got to turn it into a business, so what’s what we did.

TG Branfalt: One of the principles of your farm is this idea of total carbon neutrality. Can you just describe to the listeners what that is first, and why you decided to bring your farm in this direction, and why it was important to you?

Jesse Peters: Yes. Total carbon neutrality is the ability to say that we put absolutely no extra carbon into the atmosphere. Any CO2 emission, the power that we use creates CO2, recycling, garbage, we want to create zero CO2. We want to leave the planet better than we found it. We want to leave our property better than we found it. We want to be neutral balance with how the planet should function. It started with we looked into green energy and actually have the ability to take on 100 percent wind power, which totally blanked our power for carbon neutral. We took the first 90 percent out right then, the ability to go carbon neutral. We were, as far as I can tell, the first company in Oregon to actually get an award from Portland General Electric as a cannabis company for our efforts. We get fact sheets every year that show the equivalency of how many cars we’ve taken off the road and how many trees that we’ve planted.

Once we hit that, it’s when it occurred to me, you know, I want to be 100 percent clean, so what else can we do? How do we get better? How do we tidy up that last 10 percent? That last 10 percent is a big hurdle. There’s a lot of pieces to go down that rabbit hole with. If we produce any garbage, where does that garbage go? There’s a truck that shows up here that picks that garbage up that burns fuel, so how do we get rid of all our garbage? How do we do only recycling? How do we get rid of if we use an electric forklift instead of a gas forklift that’s charging off of our carbon neutral power? I think you can rapidly see how fast that last 10 percent is a big endeavor, and so we’re trying to bite it off in appropriate stages and chunks, but being able to get rid of our power was a big deal. The next step is that we’re actually going to put a solar array up and start trying to feed back.

TG Branfalt: In addition to those couple of ways that you mentioned, what are some, I guess, more simpler ways that operators in this space can work to reduce their own carbon footprints?

Jesse Peters: You know, I would say, for one, look into green energy. That is, by far, the biggest. A lot of states have an option for you on your power bill that you can just call the phone number and ask, “Hey, I really want to look into green energy options.” That’s a big step. It doesn’t cost that much more capital to be able to do it. Every company in every state is a little different, and some have the option and some don’t. Fortunately, here in Oregon we have a great option. If you don’t have that option, then you’ve got to start looking towards all the little things. Start small. Set up a really good recycling program, maybe some incentives for your employees. Make it really easy to recycling, separating the glass, putting out containers, all the small pieces. Look into don’t use bottled water. Make sure that if you do have people that bring in bottled water, that you have a recycling receptacle there for the bottles. Buy your staff water and put it in the facility. Buy them containers that they can carry their water in. Look around your office at the things that you’re throwing away that you waste and see what could be replaced. You can start that small and then just build on it.

TG Branfalt: That’s really great to hear that from somebody who has a big operation and is so active in eliminating the carbon footprint. I know that as California comes online, there’s a lot of sort of chatter about the water use and the energy use in a state that’s already sort of strained in that regard.

I want to talk to you a bit about the Oregon Cannabis Association and your role with that. When did you realize that the time was right for a dedicated industry association, and how difficult was it for you to get, now you have more than 100 businesses on board?

Jesse Peters: Really, the credit for that realization goes to Amy Margolis. Amy Margolis was an attorney in the space early on. I think we’re approaching … She’s been in this space for a very long time. For the Cannabis Association, early on three or four years ago, it occurred to Amy that we needed an association, that there were a lot of us out there that were still in that world of being very reclusive. It’s the world we came from. Being that she knew all of us and many of us used her as our legal advice, she brought up to a group of about eight of us that we should all come together as the Cannabis Association. She actually had reached out to Matt and Meagan Wallstater, who own a dispensary called Pure Green here in Oregon. Matt and Meagan, it was also a dispensary that we marketed to, and so they approached me and said, “Hey, we’re putting together this group.”

At the time, we didn’t really know what it was. It was just let’s put eight of us in a room, and nine of us, and 12 of us, and let’s talk. I’m not going to lie to you, there’s a lot of ego that comes out in those first talks, a lot of posturing that was really interesting. There was some really entertaining conversations that went down, and then everybody really fast got comfortable with each other and you can start to see a divide. There’s staunch competitors that view everyone as their competition, and then there’s those of us that are in cooperat-ition. We’re stronger, as a whole, especially as such a young industry that does not have those heavy corporate influences quite yet. If we band together, we might be able to sustain and create rules and create and industry where we do have staunch pesticide regulation and staunch mitigation for things like water usage and things like power usage. We can set up an industry that doesn’t look as much like our food industry.

As we kind of went down that path, we looked towards legislation and how do we lobby for free market space so that small businesses can attempt to thrive? How do we try to make sure the medical program doesn’t die? You start realizing that as the association grows and more and more members join, that you have to start separating things out. You form a board and you bring on a separate wing that is just the political action committee. Slowly, but surely it has been morphing and growing into, at least here in Oregon, a movement that I hope to see progress throughout the country.

TG Branfalt: When you mentioned the lobby, you mentioned the Oregon Cannabis PAC, the political action committee. When did you decide the time was right for that project?

Jesse Peters: Once again, definitely not me deciding. This was a … That room, that group of eight, that turned to 12, that turned to 50 and Amy Margolis and all of the members within it, all of us discussing the fact that we should go to DC and lobby for things like the big ticket items, like banking reform and tax reform. There’s a lot of pieces to bite off here. There’s a lot of prohibition. There are people still going to prison for long periods of time. How do we … In a state where we can dedicate some of our resources, financially, into a lobbying effort to help states that still need to get past that, how do we participate? How do we use those resources in a way that benefits the industry as a whole throughout the country? That’s really where it was born from, and we’ve just kind of been going from there, winging it, for lack of a better term.

TG Branfalt: Are you guys seeing donations from companies outside of the cannabis industry, with regard to the PAC, yet?

Jesse Peters: Not quite. We’re getting just a little bit here and there. We’re starting to see ancillary companies come in and we’re just starting to reach out to those ancillary companies, because, to be honest, it takes a lot of revenue being generated in a legal market before you start to see companies that supply CO2 or make the equipment that goes into extraction equipment that sees a large enough market share that they are willing to put some capital into it to help support that revenue stream for their company. It needs to obviously hit a specific number for their ROI to be justified. Once again, in a legal state, as you see these things come online and that revenue stream becomes appropriate, you kind of need a group to hit them up, otherwise they’ll skate along and us, as cannabis companies, will continue to fund our own events to try to get our names out there until we can get to a point where it is not financially responsible as company for me to advertise to a bunch of other companies in my same space that already know who I am.

Why don’t we reach out to companies that make nutrients or companies that make lights, Gavita, Advanced Nutrients, Biobizz, start reaching out to them that are still in the space, but in a larger capacity, and then slowly but surely, we reach beyond that into companies that provide signage and banners, or companies that do printing, or companies that provide CO2 or gasses to the industry. I think that, from there, you can start to span wider and wider to try to bring that capital in to support our cause.

TG Branfalt: What’s your relationship like with the lawmakers in your state specifically?

Jesse Peters: It’s been good. The hardest part, I would say, for the lawmakers, and for us, is that they have a very fractionated voice coming at them from many different associations, many different organizations, many of their constituents that all have their own pieces that they want. Of course, outside of that, you’ve got some very self-motivated interest groups that can put capital into this space and lobby for their own specific purpose. If you’re a legislator, it gets murky. If you’re a rulemaker, it gets murky because who has got a hidden agenda? What agenda do I want to follow? What benefits my constituents the best?

For us, fortunately, here in Oregon, we’ve got lawmakers that are, for the most part, really supportive of this industry, but they’re also very new to it. I would say to California and other states as they come online, you’re going to see a lot of rules that don’t make sense. My advice is definitely don’t attack your legislator. You want to work with them, because they want to work with you. It’s just a really difficult job. But when the rules first come online, comprehend that they’re going to be the hardest, most likely, that they’ll ever be, because they’ve got to cast a wide net and then, slowly but surely, a good organization, with a good mission statement, can slowly start to narrow that reach and make legislation and help work with legislators to make rules that are beneficial to companies and allow for a thriving market.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about your lobby efforts in DC, but before we do that, we’ve got to take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, here with Jesse Peters, CEO of Eco Firma Farms. In June, members of the OCA went to lobby in DC and came away with four takeaways: the Trump administration has bigger fish to fry, GOP freshmen realize that the War on Drugs is lost, the industry needed more representation from both lawmakers and from operators, and Congress is not “just blowing smoke” when it comes to diversion of product and recognizing the benefits of a taxed and regulated industry. That’s a lot of stuff that you guys sort of came back with in your sort of report. What’s your game plan for addressing some of these issues? Are operators in your state actively prepping for any sort of federal crackdown?

Jesse Peters: To answer the last part, prepping for a federal crackdown, to be honest, until it’s federally descheduled, you should always be prepping for a crackdown. You never really know, but I think those of us that have been in this space a long time comprehend that it’s the risk of doing business, and there’s a benefit to it as well. That risk keeps a lot of the big corporations out and gives us the opportunity to get a head start, to set up and thrive. If you’re risk adverse, this isn’t the space for you. That being said, to be prepared for a crackdown is nothing more than to say, “I comprehend that someone might kick my door in tomorrow.” Other than that, on the larger scale, it’s like shooting a BB gun at a freight train. At this stage, and especially with California coming online, it’s not at the forefront of our concern.

When it comes to kind of the large agenda facing at least the OCA at this stage in the game, looking towards Capitol Hill, there’s good and bad with it. This new administration is definitely not our friend. Jeff Sessions has been extremely vocal about his intent over the years. We could go really far down the rabbit hole politically with this if we wanted to, but on the optimistic side, there is a grumbling here that requires action from our representatives in the Senate and in the House. It was really nice, for the eight years of Obama, to pretty much feel like we’re status quo and we don’t have to really worry, but on the same hand, we were at the bottom of their agenda list. Now that we have an administration that has come out to basically actively pursue negative regulation in our realm, it is forcing a lot of our Congressional leaders to stand up and start actually making laws to prevent that.

In the boomerang effect with this administration, there’s potential for us to still get a little benefit there. It’s definitely not a reason to stop fighting. It’s by far not a reason to stick your head in the sand. Now is the time that, in a country where more Americans approve of cannabis than apple pie, we’ve got the numbers behind us. We just need to get that voice directed towards our leadership, because the midterms are coming and there are a lot of people that are spooked for their jobs, so they’re listening. It’s on us to take advantage of that.

TG Branfalt: So let me ask you this. What is stopping the … What is the driving force behind the prohibitionists in your sort of experience as somebody who has went to DC, who has lobbied, who has these military ties? What is the issue here? What is your sense about what is stopping them from just allowing it to become legal in their state, or pressing for federal deschedulization or reschedulization. I’m a deschedule guy. What is your sense about all this?

Jesse Peters: Yeah, I’m a deschedule guy as well, by far. You know, honestly, I think, for me, it’s the squeaky wheel gets the grease. When we go all the way down to things at the county level, when we go to a county meeting to actively pursue things like processing or extraction on EFU land, when you show up, you’ve got two or three or five people from the cannabis industry that are trying to speak in an educated manner about how the revenue and the tax model and the regulation can benefit the society, and then you’ve got 50 anti-cannabis people who tend to be in more of a retired age of life and have the time to come down to this and print banners and print signs and be very loud and lobby very heavily against any cannabis descheduling or against beneficial regulation.

If you’re sitting there as a councilman or as a Congressman, and you’ve had 300 phone calls against and three phone calls for, it seems to you as though this is not as popular an issue as you think. Well, the reason you only get three phone calls for is because most of us are working to build a business and don’t have the time to attack this from every angle. I think it’s a perception issue, honestly. It’s a perception at the legislative level where you have a louder voice from a smaller group, and that changes your perception of what is really going on in the country.

TG Branfalt: You mentioned a louder voice from a smaller group. I want to talk to you quickly about some of these veterans access issues. You’re a veteran yourself. The VFW has come out and they have supported medical cannabis access for veterans. There’s not a legal state that a veteran can walk into their VA, even if it’s legal in their state, and say, “Hey, we need to explore medical cannabis for my chronic pain, my PTSD or what have you.” Can you tell me a bit more about, from a veteran’s point of view, how important this issue is or is going to become as the market matures and as we get more research?

Jesse Peters: Yeah, I think it is a tough nut to crack, and it’s also, to me, one of the most ridiculous arguments out there. You’ve got groups like Grow for Vets and Weed for Warriors that are really working extremely hard on these issues. The fact that you can go out and be shot at for your country, that you can come home a different human being, and yet you’re not responsible enough to consume cannabis, yet you can become addicted to a host of medications that are freely given out is ridiculous. It’s a conversation that shouldn’t even be a question. It’s a no vote out of a Congressman or a Representative that should be staunchly … It should be … How do I say that? It should be looked at very seriously, because it’s not an issue that should be swept under the rug or pushed off to the side.

That being said, medical research is … No matter what we do, obviously as this industry grows, medical research is going to grow with it. In what direction … Is Pfizer looking for their next big moneymaker? Do you want to go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy and addiction and how do we manipulate that, as a drug company, for profit? I think everybody has a statement they can make there. I think it’s the base issue. I think it’s really easy to cloud, and I think it’s the base issue. There are veterans that need access, or prefer access to cannabis, rather than access to narcotics or anti-depressants. There is absolutely no reason why that should be denied whatsoever. End of story. Everything else is just noise.

TG Branfalt: You’re very passionate when you speak about that, and I really appreciate your candor in addressing that issue. I want to talk to you a bit more about Oregon and some new rules that took effect there, but before we do that, we’ve got to take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Jesse Peters, CEO of Eco Firma Farms and one of the founding members of the Oregon Cannabis Association. In Oregon, you guys face rule changes all of the time. How does your company deal with this evolving regulatory structure?

Jesse Peters: Yeah, I would advise anyone who is coming in to a recreational market or even coming into a medical market, you need to get very seriously involved with the legislature and the rulemaking authority. Start making friends, start being well known, because you’re going to see a system get set up and they’re going to create rules for the entire year leading up to it, like California has been doing, and then it’s going to come online and all of those complaints from the city, from the municipal, from the county, from the state, from the testing labs, all those lobby groups, all those special interest groups, they’re all going to jump in and they’re going to want to change rules.

To be honest with you, sometimes those rules wind up going backwards. We’ve dealt with it here where we’ve had testing regulation come in and go in a direction that made testing so difficult that it coffin-nailed our industry for about four months. Then you see the legislature realize that and the rulemaking authority realize that and then they come back and change them again. The hard part about that is those rule changes, for small businesses, mean you have to throw away $25,000 worth of packaging because you had it made for one set of rules and now it’s made for another set of rules. You have to change your strategy for your lean flow at your facility. You need to add $50,000 worth of security system. It’s an ongoing methodology to refine rules. As I said, it’s the worst it is when it comes online and it’s only going to get better, but that graph is not linear. That graph goes up and down. As that regulation gets easier, there are peaks and valleys there that make things better or worse as you go. If you are not there advocating appropriately, with support, your life is going to be very difficult.

TG Branfalt: Are things stabilizing as far as regulations go?

Jesse Peters: They are, actually. You know, we’ve kind of reached a point right now where we’ve hit regulation that everyone can live with for now. It’s almost like a regulatory exhaustion where you get to a certain point where everyone, from the legislature to the governing bodies to the companies, say, “Okay, give me five minutes to just operate as we are and let’s reevaluate and let’s attack some of these small issues first and just let’s make this a little easier.” The constant ebb and flow on a large scale is exhausting, and so we have hit a set of regulation that we can, for the most part, live with for just a minute before we come back at it and try to make it better again. Some of the hardest parts are states that have medical and recreational programs, because the medical programs take a real heavy beating.

For some of those issues, it’s understandable for the state. They have a new administration. They need to meet Cole Memorandum regulation. They need to be able to show to the Attorney General that they are putting forth rules to help the diversion of cannabis out of state so that they can keep their rec program moving and keep the industry moving. Conversely, you need to work in a system that still benefits patients and doesn’t block them out from the medication that they have lived on for so long and the producers that are good players acting within that regulation appropriately to take care of those patients. It’s a very … They’re very muddy waters and it is a very slippery slope, and dealing with this administration within that is extremely difficult.

Like I said, trying to think of all these issues in the big picture for the greater good of the industry, medical and rec, is going to suit you best with a really well formulated plan of how to address these issues. Don’t leave it in the hands of your legislators to figure it out, because they’re not from this space, they don’t know. They need your help, but they need it in a very articulate, well thought out manner that addresses those issues, and we’re the ones that know that, so help them.

TG Branfalt: I want to move on a bit. I watched your Toke Talk in April. During that, you sort of pleaded with your audience to get off of social media if you’re in the cannabis space. Personally, I’m a reporter in this space. My Facebook is private and guarded, I don’t have Twitter, I don’t have Instagram, and people shout at me about my brand, or whatever. Is this what you’re advocating, for people to just get off of these social media platforms, or are you more saying hire someone to manage your social media so you can focus on your business?

Jesse Peters: A little bit of both. Yes, as a business, do not … Social media is your friend. Definitely if you can afford it, and even for your own mental health, hire someone to handle your social media and engage with it appropriately, but it’s kind of that adage, if you do an article, don’t go read the comments. You’ve got to stay away from it. It’s hard when you’re a small, struggling business to then jump onto Facebook and Instagram and you see all the other companies that are doing their marketing on social media. It makes you feel very small. It makes you feel like you’re not making it. I’m not making it. I’m not there. I’m not progressing. It can get really consuming. There’s proven fact for serotonin and social media and instant gratification and dopamine and you then add in your business structure, your personal business structure, and you’re watching these other companies that are touting to be what they want to be, that they’re living their company on social media the way a lot of people live their life on social media. It’s exhausting. Eyes on your own paper. Social media is great for advertising and you need to use it appropriately, but do not let it consume you and depress you as you move forward and work to build a business, because it will do exactly that.

TG Branfalt: So in your state, do you guys have a lot of advertising options? I know in lots of medical states there’s no advertising, such as New York. I know for a lot of people that’s all they have, really, is social media, internet ad buys. Do you guys have a lot of these sort of more traditional options in Oregon?

Jesse Peters: We do. We’re allowed print ads. We’re allowed billboards.

TG Branfalt: Do you find these effective, the traditional ways?

Jesse Peters: To an extent, yes. The ROI is a little difficult to track right now in some aspects, so some of it is just more brand recognition and your marketing strategy for how well you want that brand recognition, but it’s twofold. You need the brand recognition for the B-to-B, but you need the brand recognition for the B-to-C so the C goes into the dispensaries and asks specifically for your product. In a market that is as young as the market we’re in, that is a really difficult thing to track. You know, the most success in small market marketing, like the cannabis industry, especially if you’re a smaller company, is that guerrilla marketing, that person-to-person, on the ground, sticker placement on the drive-through at Taco Bell, the giving away of stickers in the right scenarios. There’s a million guerrilla marketing tactics you can use that are extremely inexpensive that can help get your name out there. At the end of the day, the reality of it is it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of creative time and a lot of work and you’ve just got to put your head down and get to it if you want your name out there and that’s all there is to it.

TG Branfalt: I love the idea of guerrilla marketing. I saw a lot of that, actually, in Michigan where they had a gray market and very limited, in terms of … The businesses, the dispensaries weren’t even licensed, but when I went to Cannabis Cup, they were just handing out stickers left and right and then a couple of days later, I see those same stickers all over Detroit. It wasn’t for dispensaries, it was for brands to your point. What is next for Eco Firma? You guys are … You’ve been doing this since 1976. What’s next for you guys?

Jesse Peters: Yeah. Making sure that everything is just clear out there, ’74 is the year I was born, so it just kind of goes more around the anecdotal story. We’ve been doing this for a very long time, but not since I was a baby. I don’t want to mislead anybody.

What’s next for us? You know, just like everybody else in this space, expansion. We want to go down that whole large scale vertical integration track. We want to coordinate and bring together the companies that are the best of the best. We want to potentially consolidate with those that make really good partners here and in other states that maybe need a little help, and maybe they’re the right player. There’s an unknown quantity — a large unknown quantity of businesses out there that I think probably are really good operators, but no one has heard of and may not, if they don’t get the right boost. We’re going to look down the track at those opportunities to build as a brand, to build as a company. We’re bicoastal now. We’re here. We’re in Maine. We want to span out to California. We want to span out to Nevada and Arizona. We have a lot of opportunities on our very short horizon that we’re looking at.

We, like everyone else, we want to make a real big dent. We want to be really well known on a national level. I think it’s an appropriate goal and we want to do it right. We want to be clean. We want to be good partners. We want to be good neighbors. We want to be good humans. I had a good friend from TJ Gardens say to me one day, on a plane, “I don’t want $100 million. I want to make 100 millionaires.” I like that theory. I want to do that.

TG Branfalt: So what’s your advice for entrepreneurs, people who might not be in this space yet, or just people who are looking to make their own dent?

Jesse Peters: Run. This is a great space to be in. It is an extremely difficult space to be in. Do not come into this lighthearted. Do not come into this halfway. Do not come into this thinking that you’re going to jump up out of nowhere and take four plants in your basement or a couple of lights and just go find someone to hand you a million dollars. This is a really, really tough space, and if you’re going to come into it, you need to come into it full bore, guns blazing and ready to work long days, long hours, very little vacation. It’s hard work, but it’s gratifying work, because as you expand, you get to bring people into your fold and employ people and partner with people that their goals, their life, their career hinges on your company’s success. It’s really gratifying to be able build a really big, well functioning team and work within that space. If you are risk adverse, lighthearted or not ready to work that hard, this might not be the space for you. If you are and you are just starting out, or you’ve been doing this a while, but you’re ready to come at it, don’t hold back. You need to come at this full force. That would definitely be my advice.

TG Branfalt: That’s really, really great advice. I hear that echoed a lot where a lot of people enter this space thinking they’re going to be a millionaire in six months and that’s just not the case. You’ve echoed what I’ve been hearing, as a guy who has never grown a plant in his life, from other guests and other interviews I’ve done. Where can people find out more about you and more about your company?

Jesse Peters: You can find us, obviously, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Eco Firma Farms. You can find us on our website at EcoFirmaFarms.com. You obviously can find information on the Oregon Cannabis Association at ORCannabisAssociation.org. We’re also members of the Craft Cannabis Alliance. You can reach us through any of those avenues. You can email us at info@EcoFirmaFarms.com. And you can listen to our podcast and search us on the Googler.

TG Branfalt: Well, Jesse, I really appreciate you taking the time out. I know you’re a super, super busy guy, and this has really been a fun conversation. You have a lot of experience that I haven’t had on this show before, so I really appreciate you taking the time.

Jesse Peters: I greatly appreciate you giving me the time. I really respect what you guys do out there. I appreciate it, Tim.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes Store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End


Large plastic bags of trimmed cannabis product.

Per-Pound Cannabis Prices Drop in First Month of 2018

According to Cannabis Benchmark’s U.S. Spot Index, the price-per-pound of cannabis has fallen 3.5 percent from Jan. 12 to Jan. 19, to $1,292, representing a spot price-per-gram of $2.85, with a simple average price of $3.20.

The report indicates that the drop “was driven primarily by significant week-over-week decline in wholesale rates in Oregon, though most of the major Western markets saw decreases in their composite prices, with Colorado the only exception.”

In Washington, prices fell to $1,004 per pound – the lowest price Cannabis Benchmarks has found in three years tracking industry price trends. Indoor-grown products remained the highest priced at $1,571 per pound, followed by greenhouse-grown ($1,216), and outdoor ($948). Last week, the firm reported an 11 percent decline in per-pound prices “due both to decreases in the volume-weighted average rates for indoor and greenhouse product, as well as the fact that low-priced outdoor flower, despite experiencing a small week-over-week price rise, constituted a larger proportion of the total volume that was reported to be traded nationwide.”

In an interview with The Cannabist, report author Adam Koh indicated that the recent decision by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to rescind the Cole Memo has not led to “any sort of material alteration to supply and demand.”

“The way it could possibly affect the market is if businesses were actually raided or shut down. Then you might have people unwilling to trade wholesale. Obviously a dispensary wouldn’t to want to take in inventory if there was a credible threat of being raided with significant amounts of cannabis on hand.” – Koh, to the Cannabist

Koh suggested that prices could continue to decline throughout the first quarter of this year.

End


A cannabis worker wearing white rubber gloves sorts through recently trimmed cannabis buds.

Drug Policy Alliance Report Espouses Social Benefits of Legalization

According to a Drug Policy Alliance report, “From Prohibition to Progress: A Status Report on Marijuana Legalization,” arrests have plummeted in states that have legalized cannabis for adults, youth use has remained stable, rates of opioid-related harm have been reduced, highway safety has not decreased, the industry is creating jobs, and tax revenues derived from legal sales are going toward social programs.

Arrests are down. According to the report, Washington has seen the highest reduction – 98 percent – in low-level cannabis-related court filings between 2011 and 2015; in Oregon, arrests are down 96 percent from 2013 to 2016; Alaska experienced a 93 percent decrease in arrests between 2013 and 2015; in Washington D.C., possession arrests are down 98.6 percent, and cannabis-related arrests have fallen 76 percent from 2013 to 2016; and possession charges in Colorado are down 88 percent while cannabis-related court-filings are down 81 percent between 2012 and 2015.

Cannabis-derived revenues are funding schools and substance abuse programs. From 2015 to 2017, Colorado distributed $230 million to the state Department of Education; Oregon has allocated $34 million to its state school fund since legalization; Alaska officials expect to spend $12 million annually from cannabis sales to fund substance abuse programs; while Nevada expects about $56 million over the next two years in state school funding from cannabis sales.

The report estimates that the legal cannabis industry could create 165,000 to 230,000 full and part-time jobs in legal markets. In Colorado, 18,005 jobs were created in 2015 alone, the report says.

Nine states plus Washington D.C. have, so far, legalized cannabis for adult use. Michigan voters will likely decide whether to legalize recreational cannabis in November. Adult-use legalization legislation has been introduced in New Jersey, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for a legislative study on potential adult-use reforms.

End


The Vermont Capitol Building in Montpelier, Vermont — VT is the first state to legalize cannabis via the legislature.

Vermont Gov. Signs Cannabis Legalization Bill into Law

Vermont Governor Phil Scott (R) has signed the state’s cannabis legalization bill into law, making Vermont the ninth state to legalize adult-use cannabis and the first to do so without a ballot initiative.

Vermont’s legalization plan will allow adults 21 and older to grow and possess cannabis, but stops short of a full “tax and regulate” system — the commercial sale of any cannabis products is still illegal, as is consumption in public spaces. Adults will be allowed up to possess up to an ounce of cannabis and will be allowed to have two mature and four immature plants at home.

The law takes effect on July 1. 

This is the second legalization bill to successfully pass through both of Vermont’s legislative bodies, but the first effort was vetoed by Gov. Scott, citing public safety concerns, last May.

“After more than 15 years of hard work by MPP and our allies in the state, adults in Vermont no longer need to fear being fined or criminalized for low-level marijuana possession and cultivation. This is a great step forward for the state and the whole region. Responsible adults will soon have the freedom to enjoy a safer option legally, and law enforcement will be free to concentrate on serious crimes with actual victims.” — Matt Simon, New England political director for the Marijuana Policy Project, in a statement.

A survey by the Marijuana Policy Project recently found that 57 percent of Vermonters support cannabis legalization, while a Gallup poll from last November found that 64 percent of Americans — including a GOP majority — would support such reforms.

“The majority of Vermonters, like the majority of the American public, desire to live in a community where responsible adults who choose to consume cannabis are no longer criminalized or stigmatized. Governor Scott should be recognized for helping to provide Vermonters with a path forward at a time when many elected officials elsewhere are clinging to the failed policies of the past.” — NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano in a statement.

Vermont will join the ranks of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, and Washington D.C. in ending the prohibition of cannabis.

Governor’s statement

In a statement submitted to the General Assembly after signing the bill, Gov. Scott said:

Today, with mixed emotions, I have signed H. 511.

As I said when I vetoed S. 22 in May, I personally believe that what adults do behind closed doors and on private property is their choice, so long as it does not negatively impact the health and safety of others, especially children. In this context, it is very important to understand what H. 511 does and does not do.

While this legislation eliminates penalties for adult (age 21 and up) possession of no more than one ounce, and cultivation of no more than two mature plants on their private property, marijuana remains a controlled substance in Vermont and its sale is prohibited. Also, consumption of marijuana in public places is prohibited. Consumption of marijuana by operators and passengers in a motor vehicle is prohibited. And schools, employers, municipalities and landlords are also empowered to adopt policies and ordinances further restricting the cultivation and use.

The governor also suggested that before he will even “begin to consider … implementing a commercial ‘tax and regulate’ system for an adult marijuana market,” he will need to see “comprehensive and convincing plans” to address education issues and strategies for prevention and highway safety — otherwise, activists and lawmakers can expect him to veto any legislation that seeks a regulated cannabis marketplace.

End


The U.S. flag flying in front of domed top of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

19 Attorney Generals Send Letter to Congress Asking for Cannabis Banking Protection Legislation

Attorney generals from 17 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam have sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to “advance legislation that would allow states that have legalized medical or recreational use of marijuana to bring that commerce into the banking system” following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ move to rescind the Cole Memo protections.

“Despite the contradictions between federal and state law, the marijuana industry continues to grow rapidly. Industry analysts report that sales grew by 30 [percent] to $6.7 billion in 2016 and expect those totals to exceed $20 billion by 2021. Yet those revenues often exist outside of the regular baking space. Businesses are forced to operate on a cash basis. The grey market makes it most difficult to track revenues for taxation purposes, contributed to a public safety threat as cash intensive businesses are often targets for criminal activity, and prevents proper tracking of large swaths of finances across the nation.” – Attorney Generals’ banking letter to Congress

Data from the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) show that, as of September 2017, more than 300 banks and nearly 100 credit unions were offering services to the federally-prohibited cannabis sector. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Sessions did not inform the agency about the policy change; however, FinCEN spokesman Stephen Hudack has indicated that the agency’s 2014 guidance – which allows banks to deal with state-approved canna-businessesremains in place.

Signatories on the letter include attorney generals from Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Guam, and Washington D.C.

End


Amazing view of a corporate skyscraper from the bottom.

Report: FinCEN Not Consulted on Sessions’ Cannabis Policy Change

According to a report from Reuters, regulators at the federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) were not informed about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ cannabis policy change but FinCEN spokesperson Stephen Hudack said the agency’s 2014 guidance “remains in place.”

According to September 2017 data from FinCEN more than 300 banks and nearly 100 credit unions are currently providing banking services to cannabis industry operators under the agency’s guidance. The 2014 FinCEN guidance was developed with input from Justice Department officials at that time; however, it also relied on the protection offered by the now-invalid Cole Memo.

Representatives Dennis Heck (D-WA) and Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) told Reuters that they will be sending a letter to FinCEN this week asking them not to rescind their guidance – which could “inject uncertainty into financial markets.”

In October 2016, FinCEN reported that 318 cannabis businesses were allowed access to banking services and that figure jumped to 400 at the end of August 2017, where it remained in September. The number of institutions dealing with the cannabis industry has been steadily increasing since the second quarter of 2014 – the quarter after the FinCen policy changes.

End


The Vermont Capitol Building in Montpelier, Vermont photographed on a colorful, autumn afternoon.

Vermont Legalizes Cannabis For Adults; No Tax-and-Reg

Vermont has become the first state to legalize cannabis via the legislature for the second time today in a voice vote, rather than a debate and roll call vote. The approval will allow adults 21-and-older to possess up to 1 ounce of flower, 5 grams of concentrate, and grow up to two mature plants beginning on July 1.

The landmark legislation still needs to be signed by Republican Gov. Phil Scott – who famously vetoed similar legislation last May citing drugged driving and public safety concerns. The House passed the measure 81-63 last Thursday.

Tax-and-regulate not included. The governor has convened a commission on the issue which forced the House to amend the bill to remove same-as provisions. Another amendment included in the bill requires would-be cultivators to obtain written permission from the landowner, or landlord, before growing cannabis for personal use.

A recent Public Policy Polling survey found 57-39 percent support for allowing adult use and possession; support dropped to 54-40 percent for a taxed-and-regulated regime.

Eli Harrington, co-founder of Heady Vermont, called the passage an important first step for advocates, patients, and the burgeoning cannabis and hemp industries in the state.

“We’ve taken the most important step of recognizing that in Vermont we believe adults have the right to responsibly consume and cultivate cannabis. Through this process the legislature has spent a lot of time educating themselves and deserve credit for listening to their constituents and learning about and issue many probably didn’t anticipate being so significant. This is the first step in a thousand-mile journey, and it is an important one, but this is the beginning not the end of cannabis reform in Vermont including focusing on updating out medical program.” – Harrington, to Ganjapreneur

Matt Simon, Marijuana Policy Project’s New England political director, said, “Vermonters should be proud” of their legislators.

“This will be an important milestone for the legalization movement. When Gov. Scott signs this legislation, Vermont will become the first state in the country to end marijuana prohibition through legislative action. MPP is proud to have helped lead the Vermont effort, just as we led the legalization ballot initiative campaigns in Maine and Massachusetts in 2016. In the past two years, we’ve seen incredible progress on marijuana policy across New England. Now that yet another state has rejected marijuana prohibition, there is even more pressure for Congress to take action to prevent any federal interference from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It’s time for the federal government to respect the authority of states to determine their own marijuana policies.” – Matthew Schweich, MPP interim executive director, in a statement

Scott has indicated he would sign the bill if it made it to his desk this session, and once signed, Vermont will be the ninth state to legalize cannabis for adults, along with Washington, D.C. Vermont decriminalized cannabis possession in 2013.

End


Russ Hudson: Debunking Cannabis Lies through Literature

Russ Hudson is a cannabis consultant and author of the children’s book What’s That Weed?, which helps parents provide a normalized perspective of cannabis to their children, and the autobiography Weed Deeds: From Seed to Sage.

Russ recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt in his Burlington, Vermont studio for an interview that covers the inspiration behind his books, the state of cannabis policy in his home state of Maine (and his other home in Barcelona, Spain), why strain names aren’t the best way to categorize cannabis, which subjects we can expect his future books to tackle, and more!

You can listen to the interview via the player below or scroll down to read a complete transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.


Listen to the interview:


Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there. I’m your host, TG Branfalt and you are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m here with Russ Hudson. He’s a cannabis consultant and author of the children’s book What’s That Weed? and autobiography Weed Deeds: From Seed to Sage. We’ve been hanging out for a little while, man. How are you doing? It’s nice to see you.

Russ Hudson: Thanks for having me, Tim. It’s really good to be here in Burlington.

TG Branfalt: Yeah. You’re only my second guest that has been actually in my studio, so welcome.

Russ Hudson: Cool. Thanks.

TG Branfalt: Let’s get right into it, man. First, tell me about yourself. You have a very interesting background. It’s really cool to get to know you. Tell the listeners about yourself and how you ended up in this space, man.

Russ Hudson: Well, basically I spent 20 years in the black market side of cannabis. I was a street kid. Ran away from an adoptive home when I was about 11 years old and went on the streets and started surviving. And one of the ways that I found that was easy to survive and fairly safe was selling weed as a street-level dealer. Over the years, that blossomed into trafficking of all different sizes, smuggling, growing, special projects, brokering. And then about seven years ago when the legal movement really started to gain ground, I started doing some legitimate writing work in the cannabis space and eventually that blossomed into a consultancy, where I could provide advice on lots of different areas related to cannabis.

TG Branfalt: So you’re really open about your past, which is a little surprising, I think for maybe a lot of people, to even hear you say that. Why are you able to talk so freely about the illicit dealings before you became legitimate?

Russ Hudson: I don’t really see that there’s any risk to me now. I mean, in my book, Weed Deeds, I detailed quite a few things that are obviously highly illegal, interstate smuggling, but I checked with attorneys and it’s not illegal to say that you did these things, but there’s no evidence or no crime that was ever actually committed in the eyes of law enforcement. They have nothing to prosecute me on. So it was a risk in the sense that I faced some alienation from people who don’t work in the industry, or people who are not supportive of cannabis legalization, but I was looking to cut them loose anyway.

TG Branfalt: Now that you’re legit and have been for quite some time, you’re a cannabis consultant. So explain what you exactly do.

Russ Hudson: A lot. A cannabis consultant is a general term, and I think most cannabis consultants do specialize in certain areas, especially those who specialize in areas of the law, those who specialize in setting up new canna-businesses, and I do a little bit of both of those. But I also advise small, medium, and large grow operations, cannabis clubs, on how to produce better quality marijuana, how to produce better quality members, and marketing, bringing new cannabis products to different international markets. So there’s a lot to it. And I also offer a fixer service for the media and I write my own content for my own websites, so cannabis consultant is a very general sort of term.

TG Branfalt: Of the many hats that you wear, most sort of recently, you’ve been wearing that author’s hat. Your first book was … When did you write your first book?

Russ Hudson: This summer.

TG Branfalt: The Weed Deeds.

Russ Hudson: Yes.

TG Branfalt: Going into that with your sort of history, when’d you sit down and decide, A, that you were going to write the book, and B, what you were going to actually include in that work?

Russ Hudson: It all progressed over the years. My exact position now was an accident that developed through evolution of my life. I’m sorry. Can you narrow the question just a little bit?

TG Branfalt: When was it that you decided to sit down and write the autobiography and tell your story?

Russ Hudson: After the VICE documentary. There was a documentary about me by VICE Media came out. I started getting thousands of emails from people, and most of those emails, the content was positive. They were supportive of what I did, but more importantly, they wanted to know how they could do that too. And I didn’t have any easy answers for them, because for me to do my job took the use and learning of a lot of different skills over a long period of time and thinking of clever was to utilize those skills to make something happen. It wasn’t an easy message where I could just say to people, “You need to go to school and get a degree in cannabis medicine,” because also that doesn’t exist.

I had always wanted to be an author and I’ve been writing for a long time. And I discuss in Weed Deeds how I used to write essays for people, which of course, as we know, is very illegal and wrong. But I always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books. When I realized that the biggest question that people had for me is: How did I become a cannabis consultant? That’s when I realized that I can’t give them a straight answer. I need to give them a long answer, and here it is. It’s a 263 word book.

TG Branfalt: Page book.

Russ Hudson: Yes. 263-page book. Excuse me.

TG Branfalt: Then recently you’ve written this children’s book, What’s That Weed? And you feature your daughter in the book. It’s definitely a far cry from an autobiography. Right? You didn’t follow up your autobiography with a, “you want to be a cannabis consultant” book. Right? You followed up with this children’s book. How does that transition happen, man?

Russ Hudson: I don’t know how that happened. I’m working on other books. I’m working on a book right now about terpenes and I’m working on a book about the history of the Spanish social club model, which is a really fascinating story. So there’s going to be a factual history text coming from me. There’s going to be a research text coming from me, and possibly some other things. But the reason the kids’ book came now is because my daughter is six years old. She can read now. She couldn’t read before. Now I can give her a permanent record of anti-cannabis lies. All children up until this point have basically been fed a bowl of lies about cannabis and marijuana, and this is my chance to set the record straight. This is a permanent record now. She has this forever. And other parents who want to help set the record straight have this tool that they can use to do that. If I waited a few more years as my daughter gets older, it’s not quite as appealing to her, so I think now was the most logical time. And she was begging me to write a kids’ book.

TG Branfalt: So you have read this with your daughter.

Russ Hudson: Yes.

TG Branfalt: Did she ask you questions afterward? If you mind telling me sort of about that interaction.

Russ Hudson: The reality is, this book didn’t discuss anything that she didn’t already know. I’ve been honest with my daughter since the day that she was born. I’ve never lied to her about anything, including Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and all that stuff. When she asks me a question, I tell her the truth. And so she’s already seen me working in the industry. She’s seen me growing. We eat weed leaves in our salad. And she’s seen me help very sick cancer patients figure out how to treat themselves, and she’s there with us when we have these conversations. I don’t exclude her from anything, so she’s always been a part of it. She’s always known that cannabis is not a bad thing and it’s very useful. And her only real question to me has been: Why do other people think that it’s wrong? So that has been the focus of our conversation, why other people think it’s wrong. And this was our fun way of doing a daddy, daughter thing together. She’s the star of this book, and hopefully other parents and kids will get that message that it’s okay to use cannabis for all the different things that it’s used for.

TG Branfalt: How does she feel about being the star of the book?

Russ Hudson: She loves it. The artist of the book actually has never met her, but he did a really good job portraying her, and she’s a very fun, free spirited, super intelligent girl, so she likes it. On the first book tour that we did, she went with me as we went to libraries giving the books away to libraries in Maine, and she really liked that too.

TG Branfalt: When you take this into retail outlets, or to sell, what’s the reaction of the people that you show it to?

Russ Hudson: If they’re cannabis related, the reaction is invariably good. In fact, most people where I’ve gone into retail establishments, they have agreed to start selling the book in their establishment, including here in Burlington. Outside of the cannabis industry, the reaction is slightly different. In Maine, at most of the libraries that I went to, they were very enthusiastic about accepting the book and stocking it on the shelves for people to read in the children’s section. A couple of libraries were very cold and resistant, and I don’t expect to hear back from them about stocking it. But I understand it’s a sensitive issue and I just hope that anybody who is considering it actually takes the time to read it and see what it’s about before they pass a judgment.

TG Branfalt: A lot of what you’ve done is worked to normalize cannabis and even sort of people who might’ve been on the other side of it. Right? Not of the legal industry and the illicit market. Why has this sort of fueled you? What is it about the normalization aspect of it that appeals to you so much?

Russ Hudson: Because I just want to live a normal life. I want to raise my daughter. I want to be a good human being. I want to contribute to society and not have the fear that I’m going to go to jail because I don’t like to drink beer. I like to smoke a joint. And I can maintain myself and function and be a responsible member of society and not be ostracized or in threat of law enforcement for that. So it’s important to me for this to be normalized because I’m sick and tired of worrying about it. Also, I feel sick and tired for other people that they have to worry about it.

I’m fortunate, I live in Barcelona. I live in Maine. It’s legal in both places. I’m fairly free. But for instance, this summer when I traveled down to Georgia and New Mexico and some other places in the South, I was scared because it’s not accepted there. They would never entertain the idea of a children’s book about cannabis because they can’t understand the first thing about cannabis, that it has many different uses. And the one use that they’re worried about, getting high, is totally okay and doesn’t cause any problems, really for anybody. And that’s the message that is important to me because cannabis is a huge part of my life. If I have to hide and lie about it to everybody all the time, I’m just going to go to my grave early dealing with stress, because I smoke weed all day.

TG Branfalt: It’s interesting because we’re both in … We’re in Vermont, which is decriminalized, and you’re in Maine. But you go a couple of hours, you end up in the Adirondack Mountains in New York and they’ll arrest you and they’ll give you a misdemeanor charge. I just want to say how frustrating that is living on the East Coast.

Russ Hudson: It is. Yeah.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you more about … You mentioned Barcelona. You mentioned the VICE documentary. I want to talk to you definitely about that. Before we do that, we’ve got to take a short break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast.


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TG Branfalt: Hey. Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, here with Russ Hudson, a cannabis consultant and author of the children’s book, What’s The Weed? and autobiography, Weed Deeds: From Seed to Sage. And also according to VICE, the guy who gets paid to smoke weed. When I found out I was interviewing you when we touched base a while back, I started looking at a variety of things that you’ve done, which is a lot. Obviously, the VICE documentary is something that sort of stuck out because of the narrative and the catchy sort of title. And when I saw that I was like, “Oh. Well, this will be interesting.” This is like the most interesting guy in the world on weed. Right? Tell me about how that came about. How did you end up the subject of this VICE documentary?

Russ Hudson: Well, I was doing a lot of work in Barcelona and making a name for myself. I’d earned a lot of trust from the industry there, and a lot of positions of trust amongst various cannabis clubs and their related grows and transport operations.

TG Branfalt: Briefly, can you just sort of inform people about what the deal is in Barcelona to who might not know?

Russ Hudson: Okay. Yes. In Spain and particularly in Barcelona, cannabis is legal through liberal privacy laws and through a constitutional right to association, so there are cannabis clubs all over the country. There’s around 200 in the Barcelona area alone, and in general it’s a fairly accepted and pretty well-entrenched industry.

So I was working in this industry and one club in particular, La Mesa, was considered the best club in Catalonia, and possibly in all of Spain. VICE  producers were talking with the club about what’s going on in the industry. And what’s a really interesting story that we could do? And the president of La Mesa said, “You should talk to Russ Hudson. He’s sitting right over there,” because I spent a lot of time in the club working and playing chess and hanging out. And that conversation with VICE took course over about a year and a half, different angles that we could approach on different types of content. And in the end, through talking to me sort of in a fixer, a media fixer capacity, they decided that they wanted to do a feature specifically about me and my work. And that’s how that came about.

TG Branfalt: Are you the guy who gets paid to smoke weed?

Russ Hudson: I mean, that’s like saying you’re a guy who gets paid to eat because you work a job and you get money, and then you buy food and you eat it. I was a little disappointed to see that VICE had produced certain versions of that documentary with the title Meet the Guy Who Gets Paid to Smoke Weed, because it’s really not true. I do evaluate strains. I’ve evaluated strains for my own website. I’ve evaluated strains and products for clients, so the clients pay me for my professional opinion and experience. Sometimes part of my function includes smoking the actual product that they have developed, but I’m not getting paid to smoke weed.

TG Branfalt: But still, it’s pretty awesome what you do.

Russ Hudson: Agreed.

TG Branfalt: Can you tell me? Can you pinpoint the best strain that you’ve ever smoked or one that particularly stands out to you?

Russ Hudson: I mean, that’s such a loaded question. There’s so many strains. They have so many different purposes and smells and types. It depends on what I want. If I want to be intellectual and social and kick your ass in a game of chess, I’m probably going to go with a Haze, Super Lemon Haze, Super Silver Haze, Neville’s Haze, Amnesia Haze, anything along those lines. If I want to kick back with my wife at the end of the night and get really deep into a movie, I’ll go for an indica like Zombie Kush, is probably my favorite indica. OG Kush and Tahoe OG and all those heavy hitting Kushes I also like for those same more chilling kind of purposes. But to say what’s the best strain, it depends on who you are and who you are at that particular moment.

TG Branfalt: You have a five-step process for reviewing strains.

Russ Hudson: I did.

TG Branfalt: You did?

Russ Hudson: Yes.

TG Branfalt: What was that process?

Russ Hudson: The process was basically to evaluate the cannabis from the outside first. Looking at it under the microscope to see if I could detect any contaminants, mites, or mold, dirt, anything like that, fibers, clothing fibers. And then from there to continue breaking into the bud, examining the smell of exterior, the smell of the interior, how it feels in your hands when you break it up, whether it’s cured properly, and really examining all of the pieces of information that you can get about looking at a piece of weed before you actually smoke it.

And then of course, the reviews have progressed to smoking the cannabis, usually in a water bong, and then evaluating the effects that I felt from that strain in a set timeframe, and doing this repeatedly with a particular strain for a period of about five days to seven days.

But I don’t publish cannabis strain reviews anymore. I also own the site cannabastard.com. My most recent post talked about how marijuana strains don’t really mean anything. And so I’m no longer doing reviews because I never really know whether the strain that I think I have is the strain that it’s being marketed as, or if scientifically that’s even really a discernible thing, which we’re not 100% clear on that yet. So I’m no longer doing the five step process and I’m working on looking at a scientific analytical process that combines the reporting of the effects and I’m not there yet.

TG Branfalt: That’s really interesting that you sort of don’t believe that strains… The way that they sort of, from state to state, you see something in California. You see something in Colorado. They’re called the same thing, but a lot of times there’s variances.

Russ Hudson: That’s right.

TG Branfalt: Whenever I get some trees, I basically … I don’t care, as long as it smells good, as long as it tastes good, it does what I want it to do at that time. And people, they’ll ask the name, just like I asked you the name a bit earlier. At the end of the day, did it really matter?

Russ Hudson: No. The other thing, and this is the ultimate bottom line about strain reviews. I believe a title of my article was Why Marijuana Strain Reviews Are Worthless, and the reason is, Tim, if I give you right now Amnesia Haze seeds from Sensi Seeds, a very established reputable grower, and I take some of those same exact seeds for myself. And you go and grow them, and I go and grow them, we are going to produce two radically different finished products. And all of the variables along the way, from lighting, nutrients, air quality, knowledge, skill level, utilities used, curing methods, all of that has a massive impact on the finished product that you’re smoking. So why does my review of some weed that I got in Michigan, called Bubba Kush, have any bearing on Bubba Kush that you might get down in Florida? Could be totally different plants. And then you have different varieties and phenotypes. There’s so many reasons why strain reviews right now are definitely worthless.

TG Branfalt: If we were to sort of change the culture, if there was the opportunity to like, all right, let’s get rid of this strain idea. Would you move it more towards having the percentage of THC, THCA, et cetera, et cetera, and a terpene profile?

Russ Hudson: Exactly. Exactly. The best way to say definitively what a strain is and what it’s going to do for you is by listing it according to the top three terps. I discussed this on the CannaBastards site as well, my some rough ideas for that sort of taxonomy, and I think that’s the way that we need to go. The packaging could still say, if people really insist, things like, Durban Poison and Amnesia Haze, but ultimately there needs to be a classification that tells somebody more at a glance. And I think, I hope, that’s the direction that will go in.

TG Branfalt: Because the market is still so nascent. It would be something that we’d probably have to implement soon before the wave sort of crests, and then we have to basically, sort of train an entire consumer base, which would be a massive undertaking.

Russ Hudson: Yeah. I think that’s what’s going to happen. We’re there with cannabis. We’re there with gay rights. We’re there with electric vehicles. We have entire classes of people that need radical reeducation in order to make this work, and hopefully it will still happen despite the resistance that we’re seeing right now.

TG Branfalt: I want to actually talk to you about the resistance that you guys are getting in Maine right now from Mr. Paul LePage. Every time I say his name, a little piece of me dies. But before we do that, we’ve got to take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast.


At Ganjapreneur, we have heard from dozens of cannabis business owners who have encountered the issue of canna-bias, which is when a mainstream business, whether a landlord, bank, or some other provider of vital business services, refuses to do business with them simply because of their association with cannabis. We have even heard stories of business being unable to provide health and life insurance for their employees because the insurance providers were too afraid to work with them. We believe that this fear is totally unreasonable and that cannabis business owners deserve access to the same services and resources that other businesses are afforded, that they should be able to hire consultation to help them follow the letter of the law in their business endeavors, and that they should be able to provide employee benefits without needing to compromise on the quality of coverage they can offer.

This is why we created the Ganjapreneur.com business service directory, a resource for cannabis professionals to find and connect with service providers who are cannabis friendly and who are actively seeking cannabis industry clients. If you are considering hiring a business consultant, lawyer, accountant, web designer, or any other ancillary service for your business, go to Ganjapreneur.com/businesses to browse hundreds of agencies, firms, and organizations who support cannabis legalization and who want to help you grow your business. With so many options to choose from in each service category, you will be able to browse company profiles and do research on multiple companies in advance, so you can find the provider who is the best fit for your particular need.

Our business service directory is intended to be a useful and well maintained resource, which is why we individually vet each listing that is submitted. If you are a business service provider who wants to work with cannabis clients, you may be a good fit for our service directory. Go to Ganjapreneur.com/ businesses to create your profile and start connecting with cannabis entrepreneurs today.


TG Branfalt: Hey. Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast. I’m your host, TG Branfalt, here with Russ Hudson, cannabis consultant and author of the children’s book, What’s That Weed? And autobiography Weed Deeds: From Seed to Sage. Pretty cool guy. So you live in Maine. Liberty, Maine.

Russ Hudson: Right.

TG Branfalt: It’s a place that sounds pretty dope from what you’ve-

Russ Hudson: Its name is apt.

TG Branfalt: You guys passed voter ballot initiative, passed ballot initiative. First, you get a moratorium. It gets pushed back six months to July 2018. And then the legislature, they have at it and they pass their amendments, their sort of rules, and that sort of thing. And then you get Governor Paul LePage, who vetoes the whole thing a couple of months before it was originally supposed to start. Right? So the moratorium kind of helps a little bit, I guess. But you guys got some things. You have possession now. You have the home grow, so some of the stuff went into effect.

Russ Hudson: Right.

TG Branfalt: Just sort of, as a guy who’s working in the state, as a guy who I’m sure is pretty clued in with what’s going on there, what the hell is going on there?

Russ Hudson: Well, basically the will of the people has been subverted again. We had this happen in Portland years ago, and now we’re having it happen at the statewide level. Our Governor has basically said, “I don’t feel that we’re ready to proceed with recreational cannabis sales, commercial sales, or social cannabis clubs.” He’s basing that decision, in my opinion, on a complete lack of accurate information. And so now we’re over a year away. Basically we can sit and wring our hands for another year and try to bring another bill and try to work out the kinks and the details until we get it to a position that somebody is going to pass through. Where that’s going to end up, we don’t really know right now.

But Maine is still a great place to be. We’ve decriminalized. The medical program in the state is great and there’s ample caregivers to provide for patients. And of course, possession of a couple ounces is still not a crime. So Maine is a good place to be, but from a business standpoint, we have been stymied.

TG Branfalt: A lot of producers, I’m sure they were chomping at the bit when the bill passes. What has this obstruction done to the business owners that you’re talking to in Maine?

Russ Hudson: Right now we have millions of dollars that have been invested into various properties and facilities and processes and technology and research, and all of that is sort of in a holding pattern now. For some people, that’s good. We have a big problem in Maine where we can process hemp, but we don’t have the infrastructure or the know how to do it. So in some respects, a little bit more time is good for some people. But what they’ve done is, they’ve really just blanketed the whole issue for commercial operations that are not caregivers, and the six licensed dispensaries. We basically have not seen any forward movement, even though it has now been a year since the Maine people voted to make recreational marijuana legal to adults.

TG Branfalt: Do you think that this is going to play out past LePage? Do you think that the will of the people is going to stay subverted until Paul LePage is out of the Governor’s seat?

Russ Hudson: I think that he would like to see that happen.

TG Branfalt: Interesting.

Russ Hudson: I think that as long as he has some type of control … Let’s be real here. LePage is Chris Christie, is Jeff Sessions, they’re all the same guy. And as long as they have control over the way we do our cannabis operations, we’re not going to have the freedom to do it the right way.

TG Branfalt: Is it sort of a double-edged sword for you, though, in terms of you still … You can grow. And the caregiver network is really extensive. Are the patients in Maine and are sort of the average consumer in Maine, are they being held back by the slowness of legalization?

Russ Hudson: Yes. Of course, they are. And this is, for me, one of the biggest initiatives that I want to see in the state is cannabis social clubs. I believe that we should be starting there. Without having culture and some type of education and way for people to be educated and to learn, we’re still living sort of in the shadows. And even the thousands of people that use cannabis in Maine still have very little actual knowledge about why they use it and how to use it and how it could better benefit them. Or maybe they’re not doing themselves a service by using cannabis if they have some type of chronic lung condition. What you have now is mostly regular Joes, caregivers who are growing for local patients and this veto by LePage is a big problem because it’s going to set everybody back. We need the culture. We need the society. We need the education. And the only way to make that happen is to liberize-

TG Branfalt: Liberate.

Russ Hudson: Liberate, from a commercial standpoint and possibly talk about some education in schools. I know in schools they’re educating kids about alcohol and drugs, and as of now I assume they’re still just lumping cannabis in there as an evil weed.

TG Branfalt: And then going back, they have a tool now. If you show that to a kindergarten, first grade, in schools, but imagine that backlash, man. Wow. It just sort of hit me like exactly what would happen if a first grade, or second-grade teacher, or even kindergarten teacher would bring that book into their classroom. And that’s not a world, man.

Russ Hudson: Even for me, it’s difficult to imagine that happening, and it is a sort of specialty subject. It doesn’t necessarily need to be taught in schools, but certainly carried in libraries and available to parents like a normal book, when they, as a cannabis user, want to teach their kids about cannabis. Or maybe they’re not a cannabis user, but they’re a hemp fan. And maybe they own a textile business and they understand the value of hemp, and so they want to teach their child that this lie that we’ve been sold, that it’s just people getting high in their basements is a big lie. And there’s many more lies than that, as you well know.

TG Branfalt: You’re not going to see a children’s book of somebody … Basically an alcohol-based children’s book, where people are falling down and there’s probably fights. And that’s an accurate representation of … If I had children, which I don’t. I do have a niece and nephew, though, so bring that to them. Anyway man, before we go, I’ve got to ask. You’re a consultant. That’s what you do. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs, people entering this industry, maybe not in Maine, but just in any sort of legal market?

Russ Hudson: Well, if the market is legal, then they really have to figure out what their talent is and they need to specialize in that talent because what’s happening right now in the cannabis industry is, it’s literally growing every day. In fact, I was just having a conversation with the folks down here in Burlington at Full Tank about how virtually every shop that I go into, I learn about a new product, a new technology, new types of events, and so there’s going to be a lot of need for specialist cannabis business entrepreneurs and employees, specialists who work in curing, who work in technology and ventilation. So I would say to anybody in a legal industry, figure out what your skill is. What are you really good at that you like to do? And then apply that to cannabis because chances are, almost anything that you’re into can be applied to cannabis in some way.

TG Branfalt: And finally, where can people find out more about you? Where can they get What’s That Weed? Where can they get your autobiography? Just how do they find you?

Russ Hudson: Well, What’s the Weed? the children’s book is available on Amazon and Kindle, paperback and hard copy. Weed Deeds, my autobiography, is also available on Amazon, although only in paperback and Kindle. People can learn more about me on marijuanagames.org, cannabizconsultant.com.

TG Branfalt: With a Z.

Russ Hudson: That’s right. Cannabiz with a Z consultant.com or they can check out cannabastard.com, which is where I call the cannabis industry out on its crap.

TG Branfalt: Really a pleasure to meet you. It’s really cool to hang out with you and sort of … You get to see Burlington, which is a cool as hell city. Man, I hope to see you again. It’s really been a good time. I appreciate it.

Russ Hudson: Cool. Thanks, Tim. I had fun.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes stores. On the Ganjapreneur.com website you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily, along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app at iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.

End


A cropped panorama photo of Denver, Colorado.

Colorado Regulators Suspend Denver, Colorado Cannabis Licensee; Police Arrest 12 Over Alleged Illegal Sales

Eight Sweet Leaf stores in Colorado have had their licenses suspended and 12 people have been arrested as part of a yearlong investigation by local law enforcement not federal – into illegal cannabis sales, according to a Cannabist report.

All 10 Sweet Leaf shops in Denver and one in Aurora were closed on Thursday; however, the shop in Portland, Oregon remained open, according to the report.

According to a press release from the Denver Department of Public Safety, “the alleged criminal actions are related to the allowable [one-ounce] amounts established by Amendment 64.”

Sweet Leaf representatives told the Cannabist that they were “cooperating with the authorities to resolve this issue and hope to have all of their stores back in operation as soon as possible.”

“It is unclear at this point exactly what actions, if any, Sweet Leaf took to cause the city to issue this order.” – Sweet Leaf, in an email to the Cannabist

According to the suspension order, regulators can suspend a license “when the director has reasonable grounds to believe that a licensee has engaged in deliberate and willful violation of any applicable law or regulation.”  

A hearing is expected within 30 days.

End


MassRoots Founder Resumes Control Following Shakeup

Isaac Dietrich is back in as MassRoots CEO following his ouster in October by the Board of Directors.

What happened? On Oct. 16, board members voted to remove Dietrich and install then-Vice President Scott Kveton following MassRoots’ deal to acquire CannaRegs – a technology platform that tracks federal and municipal cannabis regulations. Kveton and other board members believed the $12 million price was too steep. CannaRegs President Amanda Ostrowitz voided the deal two days after it was announced the board had voted to remove Dietrich.

On Nov. 14, MassRoots filed a lawsuit against the founder, alleging that Dietrich had paid himself and others without authorization amounts totaling $250,000; and committed “serious misconduct,” including “illegal drug use at the workplace,” and sexual misconduct, according to a Cannabist report, citing the complaint.

All the while, Dietrich remained the company’s largest shareholder and had threatened to hold a shareholder proxy vote to reinstate him; instead, on Dec. 12, three board members, Ean Seeb, Vincent Keber, and Terence Fitch, resigned from the company’s board, and Kveton resigned as CEO and left the company the following day, according to a Thursday 8-K filing. As part of the separation agreement, the board members received an undisclosed stock-and-cash package while Kveton received a $45,000 severance package and his 1.5 million-plus stock shares were “accelerated and vest immediately upon his resignation.”

“My slate of directors was appointed, Scott Kveton resigned today, and I was reappointed CEO. So it achieved everything the proxy aimed to achieve, but it was done much more rapidly and at a much lower cost.” – Dietrich to MJBizDaily

Charles Blum, former president and CEO of QS Energy; Cecil Kyte, Rightscorp CEO; and Nathan Shelton, former director of QS Energy, were named to the MassRoots board. The lawsuit has been dropped.

End


Pennsylvania Hemp Cultivation Could Reach 5,000 Acres in 2018

Pennsylvania hemp production is expected to increase from just 50 acres this year to possibly more than 5,000 in 2018, according to National Public Radio station 90.5 WESA. State Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said that research at Penn State showed hemp crops could increase the productivity of existing farmland.

“Research … at Penn State [showed] that you can actually use industrial hemp as a double crop, behind wheat. I think if that plays out to be real, that is a game changer. You immediately change what options farmers have and you open up new markets.” – Agriculture Secretary Redding

The report comes less than a month after Vote Hemp released its U.S. Hemp Crop Report which found acreage of hemp crops more than doubled from 9,770 in 2016 to 23,346 this year. According to that report, just four states had lower hemp production than Pennsylvania last year – Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, and West Virginia. Pennsylvania did not grow a single hemp crop in 2016, the Hemp Crop Report indicates, but if hemp cultivation reaches 5,000 acres next year, they will outproduce every state’s 2017 output save for Colorado.

The deadline for individual growers and higher education institutions to apply to cultivate hemp in the state is Jan. 19.   

End


James Yagielo: Cannabis Industry Staffing and Recruitment

James Yagielo is the CEO of HempStaff, a cannabis industry staffing agency that offers recruitment services to cannabis companies and educational courses to prospective cannabis employees.

In this episode of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, James joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss the cannabis education and training courses that HempStaff has made available across the country and how recruitment services benefit both employers and potential employees. Their interview covers which jobs in the cannabis industry are the most popular vs. the most difficult to fill, which upcoming cannabis markets are expected to make the biggest splash (and when), which cannabis industry positions tend to earn the highest salaries, and more!

Tune in via the player below, or keep scrolling down to read along with a full transcript of this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.


Listen to the podcast:


Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and you’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com Podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by James Yagielo, he is the CEO of HempStaff. How you doing today?

James Yagielo: Very good, how about yourself, Tim?

TG Branfalt: I’m doing great. I’m doing great. I’m really excited to have you on the show. The employment issue is really a big topic that we haven’t really discussed. The industry’s expected to create 250,000 jobs by 2020 and you’re on the front lines training some of these prospective employees. But before we get into that, I want to know more about you man. How’d you end up in the cannabis space?

James Yagielo: Sure, we actually are a Florida based company so we started back in 2014 when it looked like Florida was going to pass medical marijuana the first time. I originally, like everyone else, wanted to get in and touch the plank in cultivation or dispensing and realized with Florida’s laws that really wasn’t going to be possible. So I looked at what other aspects I had done in previous jobs and I’d been involved in staffing and recruiting since 1999 so it seemed logical to go out there and see if there was any interest. I started networking with several people that were already in the industry and looking get into Florida and they seemed really very intuitive about recruiting and then later came training. First we started discussing with them what type of people they were looking for and we realized that the budtenders didn’t have the experience that these people from out of state wanted. They wanted someone like they were used to that had known what cannabinoids and terpenes were. Out of that came our training which we started later on in 2014.

TG Branfalt: How long was it until you came up with the idea of HempStaff, until you had your first placement?

James Yagielo: It was about five months in after talking to people then people started to want to get their application ready for Florida if it passed and they wanted us to hook them up with a master grower or master extractor for another state that was willing to relocate. It did take a few months and around that same time we also started the training class to start training Florida people. Once Florida didn’t pass, we already had these connections nationwide so we took both our recruiting services and our training services to a nationwide level in late 2014.

TG Branfalt: Describe to the audience what it is exactly that HempStaff does.

James Yagielo: We have two facets. Our first facet is a typical recruiting staffing company. Clients come to us for either employees they can’t find because they’re very specialized like a master extractor or a master grower with five years experience or if they just don’t have the time to go through 200 resumes to find their entry level people they may come to us for that. We basically prescreen everyone, we have recruiters in every medical marijuana state who have contacts so they discuss with their contacts where this job is, who’s willing to relocate if relocation needs to be done and then we basically send the resumes to the client so that they get a handful of very qualified resumes and don’t have to spend the time going through hundreds of resumes to narrow it down themselves.

On the other side, we train dispensary agents. We take those people looking to get in the industry but don’t really know how and we train them what needs to be known in a dispensary. The cannabinoids, the terpenes, we cover two dozen products of cannabis, not including the common ones like flower and wax and oils. We go into more of the top levels. The patches, suppositories, the inhalers and you tell them which are best for medical ailments. When they go to an interview, hopefully they can speak intelligently and greatly increase their chances of obtaining a job in a cannabis industry.

TG Branfalt: What are some of the common issues or misconceptions that you see among those who actually attend your courses?

James Yagielo: A lot of times they think it’s a lot simpler than it is. They know indica, they know sativa so they think they’re pretty good and they’re quickly blown away about how many products there are especially in these new states where people have never stepped inside a dispensary before. A lot of times that definitely overwhelms them when they come to our class, especially like I said, in the eastern states. Another thing is that they think because they’ve tried stuff that it’s going to work the same for everyone else which isn’t the case, everyone’s body is different. Just because you can eat an edible and go out and work all day doesn’t mean the patient can eat an edible and go out and work all day.

TG Branfalt: How long are your training courses?

James Yagielo: Our training courses are four hours. We do them on a Saturday afternoon. We have an eight AM class and 1:30 PM class so they can choose morning or afternoon. It’s four hours long and at the end of that four hours we give a certification test, just a HempStaff certification to show that you’re actually paying attention in class.

TG Branfalt: What are some of the challenges that you and your company has faced in the training process?

James Yagielo: Lot of challenges, like I said, the people coming in thinking they already know everything so they don’t really pay attention in class. You have the rare cases where people come to class too stoned to learn, unfortunately. That’s getting less and less but it does still happen. Other challenges are we’re starting to get a lot more people that are over the age of 50 and have never really tried cannabis or if they did it was many, many years ago and they don’t know anything so you pretty much gotta teach them from the ground up ’cause they don’t even know indica or sativa.

TG Branfalt: With this older population, these are older people looking to enter the industry as an employee?

James Yagielo: Correct. Lot of people that come to our class are looking to get into a new industry. They’ve worked different industries in the past and now they’re looking for a change and they’ve heard that the cannabis industry is just going to keep growing so they’re very eager to learn more about it and they take our class sometimes to make that decision if they’re going to switch industries or not.

TG Branfalt: That’s really, really interesting. I had no idea that that was something that companies such as yours or really the industry was seeing. What are some of the non-cannabis professional backgrounds that you see most often represented by the people attending your courses?

James Yagielo: A lot of nurses, physical therapists, even masseuses seem to come to class and they all have the same story where they had a patient that was trying medical marijuana and they saw notable differences in this patient’s improvement as a medical professional dealing with them so they had seen first hand the effects of cannabis and now they want to come to our class and learn more and possibly switch into a better industry because as some people know, nursing is not always the best industry depending on where you’re working. On top of that, we also get a lot of security professionals. A lot of ex-vets, ex-security or police officers looking to get into the industry in the same type of field of security.

TG Branfalt: It’s becoming apparent to me that your course could also double as an entry point for basically anybody to come and learn, get a deeper understanding of the cannabis plant.

James Yagielo: Absolutely. We basically start at the very beginning of the history of cannabis and then slowly work the way up in the course. We quickly go through the growing stages and then we get right into the indica, sativa and then the cannabinoids and terpenes. Even though it’s only a four hour class, we cover all the basic points and it’s pretty fast paced ’cause we do go in detail. A lot of people have taken our course and they’ve gone on to work in other industries, not just the dispensary. We’ve had many people take our course and because they listed our course on their resume, the owner at a cultivation center sees that this person has passion and they took the initiative to take our course so they get an interview and then they realize they know what this person’s talking about from the knowledge they gained and they get hired at a cultivation center. This course definitely helps with figuring out if you want to get into the industry and then actually getting an interview to get into the industry and speaking well at that interview.

TG Branfalt: Was that by design? When you were going about developing this course, did you anticipate a byproduct of it being this entry for a lot of people?

James Yagielo: Not originally, no. We started to really experience that when we got heavy into the Illinois market as that was the first market we really entered at the beginning and saw that these people, a lot of owners were actually telling us they take shortcuts when they get resumes now and they look for people that have taken our training and they put those in one pile as the people to call for interviews. After interviewing people that took our training and didn’t took our training, they really noticed a big difference. So word got out that was a quick way to, pardon the pun, but weed out the resumes.

TG Branfalt: We get a lot of puns on this show. I like it very much. You had mentioned Illinois was the first state that you had really got in from the get go. How do you keep up with the seemingly constant regulatory changes in each individual states? And at the same time how do you prepare to enter a nascent market?

James Yagielo: We keep up, we have two people that they’re pretty much their full-time job is to just go over news stories every day and if it’s marijuana related, especially law related, they send it to our director of legal affairs. Our director of legal affairs and president then also scour over these articles and go through the government website the week before our courses, before the manual is printed so that they can make any adjustments to the manual.

TG Branfalt: You update them every single week?

James Yagielo: Every class. We only come back to an area every three to four months. We have classes all across the nation right now on pretty much a every other week basis. But every time we go to a new city we update that book so we are updating a book pretty much biweekly at this point.

TG Branfalt: I want to get at the meat of what else your firm does. This is all really, really eye-opening to me. But before we do that we gotta take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey there, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m your host TG Branfalt here with James Yagielo, CEO of HempStaff. On your guys’ website, you say you guys specialize in finding management level employees. How do you find them in such a nascent industry? Especially you had mentioned Illinois and you got there on the ground floor, so how do you identify these management level candidates?

James Yagielo: In the cannabis industry, five years experience you’re a management level veteran at this point. There are several markets like Colorado, Maine, Washington even now Arizona, Rhode Island, Oregon that have been working at this for five years so we have recruiters in all these states that have contacts and when we get a client who’s looking for someone to relocate to one of these newer states which happens quite often when a new state comes on board, we then contact the recruiters to reach out to all the people that have these three to five years experience and see who’s interested to relocating to that state. And then we go from there and prescreen them to see if they meet the rest of the qualifications.

TG Branfalt: You had said that the experience but what else do companies typically look for in a management level employee?

James Yagielo: Experience is the big thing. You have to prove it. You have to give them who you’ve been working for, what their license number is with the state and everything. They really want people that are going to be able to speak to the DEA, speak to the regulators, hire employees, train employees and do everything ’cause a lot of these owners have never been in the cannabis industry, they just are money people. They’re looking for a manager who’s going to teach them what needs to be done to properly run a cannabis company.

TG Branfalt: I gotta ask you, how easy is it to get somebody to leave a place like Denver or California for say Massachusetts?

James Yagielo: It’s actually a little easier than you’d think. A lot of people left their home state to go out west for the green rush. You do find these people who originally are from Massachusetts or originally from Maryland and now they can go back home and do this. They’re more than willing to do that. On the other side, the east coast states have realized it’s a little harder so they’ve upped their wages. Every state they seem to up their wage a little more for these management level people. A 20, $30,000 increase starts to get people to consider to moving to another state.

TG Branfalt: So you had said at the start of this interview that you had worked in recruiting before in traditional industry. What are the wages like in the cannabis space compared to more traditional manufacturing jobs?

James Yagielo: The management levels are pretty high paying. We’ve seen master growers from 120 to $150,000 salary currently. That’s pretty high up there. Besides your master grower, your master extractors are in the six figures as well. After that it does drop off pretty dramatically. Your dispensary manager’s probably making about the same as your retail manager, between 40 and 60,000.

TG Branfalt: What do, we talked about what companies look for in management level employees. What are they looking for in say an entry level employee?

James Yagielo: A lot of it is passion and compassion. Passion for the cannabis plant and compassion for people or if you’re in a cultivation center, for learning their specific methods. A lot of cultivation centers will only hire a master grower with experience and then pretty much hire everybody else entry level so they can be trained specifically on how they want to grow. They don’t want someone coming in there thinking they know how to do it better. They really look for the person that’s eager to learn.

TG Branfalt: Are there things similar to internships or some sort of program where a master grower will take on somebody who may be an entry level employee to groom them to become a master grower themselves? Is that something that you connect people with? Does it even exist in this industry that you know of?

James Yagielo: It doesn’t really exist in an internship per se. Most states don’t allow that type of thing they have to be an employee. What generally does happen in cultivation centers is they hire a couple assistant growers and a master grower and pretty much a bunch of site workers and trimmers. After couple months they realize out of the site workers and trimmers who’s good at what and who really can move up quick and then they really promote those people quickly. We’ve seen people go from a trimmer to an assistant master grower in under two years.

TG Branfalt: The promotion process seems to happen pretty quickly.

James Yagielo: Absolutely. Yeah, in this industry it happens real quickly.

TG Branfalt: What are some of the hardest positions for you to find qualified candidates for?

James Yagielo: Right now I’d have to say master extractor. Extraction hasn’t really been around in the large scene for that many years. It’s hard to find someone with more than three years experience especially now a lot of states are realizing butane’s not really the best way to go so they’re only looking for those with experience in CO2 or resin press extracting which really limits the number of people out there.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about your advice for people who might be looking to get into the industry or maybe are already here but before we do that we gotta take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.


At Ganjapreneur we have heard from dozens of cannabis business owners who have encountered the issue of cannabias, which is when a mainstream business, whether a landlord, bank, or some other provider of vital business services refuses to do business with them simply because of their association with cannabis.

We have even heard stories of businesses being unable to provide health and life insurance for their employees because the insurance providers were too afraid to work with them. We believe that this fear is totally unreasonable and that cannabis business owners deserve access to the same services and resources that other businesses are afforded, that they should be able to hire consultation to help them follow the letter of the law in their business endeavors and that they should be able to provide employee benefits without needing to compromise on the quality of coverage they can offer.

This is why we created the Ganjapreneur.com Business Service Directory, a resource for cannabis professionals to find and connect with service providers who are cannabis friendly and who are actively seeking cannabis industry clients. If you are considering hiring a business consultant, lawyer, accountant, web designer, or any other ancillary service for your business, go to ganjapreneuer.com/businesses to browse hundreds of agencies, firms and organizations who support cannabis legalization and who want to help you grow your business. With so many options to choose from in each service category, you will be able to browse company profiles and do research on multiple companies in advance so you can find the provider who is the best fit for your particular need.

Our Business Service Directory is intended to be a useful and well-maintained resource, which is why we individually vet each listing that is submitted. If you are a business service provider who wants to work with cannabis clients, you may be a good fit for our service directory. Go to ganjapreneur.com/businesses to create your profile and start connecting with cannabis entrepreneurs today.


TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with James Yagielo, CEO of HempStaff. What’s some advice that you would have for job seekers? For people who aren’t yet in the industry but may be looking to get involved, the people that would essentially attend your training courses?

James Yagielo: The biggest things that we can recommend is one, get some type of training even if it’s not necessarily our training, get some type of training so you can put it on your resume. It helps in a couple different ways. One, if you don’t have any type of training or any type of experience, the odds of you getting called for a job are pretty slim. Even if you worked at McDonald’s or you’ve worked in IT for 20 years, if you don’t have any type of cannabis related item on your resume, it’s not probably going to be looked at very seriously.

On top of that, we would say, make sure to go out there and do some networking. Meet people. A lot of people don’t get jobs by finding the posting online. They find it because they went to a networking event and knows someone who knows someone who’s hiring. Get out there and get your name out there. Another thing, don’t just blindly send out resumes. You see an application for master grower, it says three to five years experience in the industry, don’t send your resume if you’ve never worked in the industry. They’re just never going to look at it and if they remember your name and you do apply for a job that you were qualified for, they might throw it out ’cause they’re like, this guy applies for everything. We do recommend only apply for jobs that you actually are qualified for.

TG Branfalt: You had mentioned networking events. Here in Vermont, we don’t actually have that many of them. The medical community’s very small, there’s only a few operators. Is that something that you’re seeing more and more in Florida and the other states that you operate?

James Yagielo: Yeah, if you look there’s a lot of events just around the country. You may have to travel a little bit for but up there you may have to go to Boston or Maine or Rhode Island to some of these networking events. In Florida around the  state there’s a couple but you also have your local normal events that they just may meet at a local restaurant or something and that’s a good place to network as well.

TG Branfalt: You had just briefly mentioned the emerging markets, in your role, finding employees and operating in so many states, where are you seeing the emerging markets right now?

James Yagielo: Right now Pennsylvania and Maryland are the two that are about to explode. Both Maryland is just basically waiting for product. They have some plants in the ground but they’re still a few months away from product and all their dispensaries are going through final inspection now. They have 109 dispensaries that are approved to open once they get the final inspection. That’s quite a large number. Pennsylvania also has already licensed and they want people up and running shortly too and they’ve approved 52 dispensaries. Both those markets should be online in early 2018 and we expect them to be hiring heavily come late this year.

TG Branfalt: Are you operating in both of those states?

James Yagielo: Yes, we do operate in both those states.

TG Branfalt: What’s your courses thus far? Have you seen a lot of interest in those two states to go along with what you anticipate to be an exploding market?

James Yagielo: Absolutely. We’ve had several classes in the Baltimore area and the Silver Spring area down by DC and Maryland. We’ve actually been conducting classes there for every six months for about two years waiting for the program to get started. They had a few delays along the way. Pennsylvania we’ve probably had three classes there with quite a good turnout already in the past year as well. People are definitely very interested and as we get closer and closer to the opening, obviously, people are getting more and more interested because the news is covering it more and more.

TG Branfalt: What advice do you have for companies trying to find employees?

James Yagielo: What we found is a lot of the owners have never used a staffing and recruiting service so they’re a little bit hesitant in contacting us. My advice is don’t be afraid to use a recruiting company. It doesn’t cost anything to use our company or any recruiting company unless you find that qualified candidate. If we send you five resumes, you find someone else on your own, you don’t owe us a dime. We’re just giving you additional resumes to look at to make sure you’re hiring the right person.

TG Branfalt: You were in the recruiting space for a while, now you’re in this space, you’re probably interacting with a lot of people with an entrepreneurial spirit, what’s your advice for other entrepreneurs looking to get into this space or that might just be starting out?

James Yagielo: A lot of people, just like we did at first, they look straight at cultivation/dispensary right away but there’s so much more to this industry than that. The pick and shovel side of ancillary businesses is really growing faster than the cultivation and dispensary because ancillary businesses aren’t restricted by cannabis state licensing. I would recommend think about, like we did, think about what you have experience in, what you like to do, what you’re good and then figure out how that can be applied to the cannabis industry. Whether it’s starting your own or maybe trying to find someone to partner with or even working for an established company already doing something you love. The industry’s young enough where there’s plenty of room for more companies to start and get into the industry especially with an idea that hasn’t been done yet. That window is closing but at this point in time, just think of what you like to do and try to apply it to the cannabis industry.

TG Branfalt: Where can people find out more about you, your service, HempStaff? Where can people find out more about that?

James Yagielo: Our website is www.hempstaff.com. All the information is there. If you click on the training tab you’ll see all the different cities we have trainings lined up for in the next few months. You can register for free on the site to be emailed if we have a job openings or training in your area or if you’re a business owner we also have a registration form where you can contact us and we can send you more information on our recruiting services. We also have a Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn page so you can also find us there under HempStaff.

TG Branfalt: I really want to congratulate you on your success, operating in a lot of states is a really impressive feat. You reached out early and are really leading this charge in this ancillary side of the cannabis industry. I really want to thank you for your time today. Really insightful conversation and I can’t wait to see what you guys do and how the industry grows.

James Yagielo: Thank you very much. We’re here to help. We want to make sure employees are assets and not liabilities to the owners.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

End


Montana MMJ Draft Rules Released

The Montana Department of Health and Human Services has proposed draft rules for the medical cannabis program under the expanded regime approved by voters last year. The rules put the state program in line with others throughout the U.S., requiring product testing, and seed-to-sale tracking.

Under the plan, providers with more than 10 registered patients would need to pay the state $5,000 per year in licensing fees, while smaller providers would pay $1,000. Testing labs would pay $2,000 per year. Currently, there are four testing labs in the state operating under temporary licenses.

The new rules also require cannabis industry employees to obtain a permit prior to working, but individuals convicted of a prior drug offense will not be eligible. The permit runs $50.

The proposed measure also increases the fee paid by patients from $5 to $30.

According to October figures from the health department, there were 21,120 patients registered with the state, along with 610 providers. The patient enrollment represents a 1,305 patient increase over September figures, while the provider counts remained the same.

The Department of Health and Human Services will hold a public hearing on the rules proposal on Nov. 30.

End


New Hampshire House Committee Rejects Adult-Use Cannabis Bill

The New Hampshire House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee has rejected a bill to legalize cannabis for adult-use, citing conflicts with federal law and public health consequences, the Concord Monitor reports. The bill failed to pass out of the committee 13-7, with member of both parties voting not to recommend the bill move to the house.

Committee members who supported the measure argued that a tax-and-regulate system would put the state in line with its border states – Maine and Massachusetts – help reduce crime rates and keep people out of the criminal justice system, and help keep people off of opioids.

Republican Rep. Larry Gagne said legalization allows citizens to exercise their free will.

“It’s a choice of an individual to decide to do it,” he said in the report. “If the education comes from the household in the proper way, then the kids won’t do it.”

Rep. Renny Cushing, a Democrat, said that he supported the legislation because many lawmakers have realized that “the war on marijuana has been a failure” and the state should be handling cannabis use as a “public health matter” rather than a “criminal justice matter.”

In July, Gov. Chris Sununu signed a cannabis decriminalization measure, making possession up to three-quarters of an ounce and up to five grams of “hashish” by adults 18-and-older a violation rather than a misdemeanor. The law took effect on Sept. 16.

End


Eli Harrington: Embracing a Small-Business Cannabis Landscape

Eli Harrington is the co-founder and managing editor of Heady Vermont, a cannabis news outlet dedicated to Vermont’s medical cannabis industry and culture, and host of the Vermontijuana Podcast.

In this Ganjapreneur.com podcast interview, Eli joins our host TG Branfalt — who is currently a Vermont resident, as well — to discuss cannabis’ entrepreneurial culture in Vermont and throughout the North Eastern states. The two also discuss Eli’s organization efforts for Vermont’s recent HempFest (and the event’s many successes), talk about the endless possibilities of the industrial hemp revolution, swap stories about being cannabis journalists, and much more!

Listen to the full interview below, or scroll further down to read the full transcript.


Listen to the podcast:


Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and you’re listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I am joined by Eli Harrington. He is the co-founder and managing editor of Heady Vermont. I’ve worked with this guy a lot. I’m super thrilled to talk to him and share sort of the Heady Vermont and his sort of story with the listeners. How you doing today?

Eli Harrington: I am doing great and I’m equally pumped to be involved because I have been listening to the Ganjapreneur podcast and a subscriber for a couple years now, before we actually knew each other in person up here in Burlington, Vermont. So it’s cool, everything coming full circle and getting to talk about what’s happening up here in Vermont and the North East in general with the cannabis scene. It’s always excellent.

TG Branfalt: So let’s sort of start with, you know, we know each other, but people don’t necessarily know you. You really like, if you’re in the cannabis scene out here, people know who you are. They’ve seen you. You’ve been at the capital pushing for certain legislation, that sort of thing, but tell me your background man. How did you end up this sort of, I don’t want to call you a character, but character out here?

Eli Harrington: No, I think character is probably fair. For me it all started with a family connection to a guy named Mark Tucci who was one of the original advocates and activists and patients here in Vermont and coming up in high school even, I remember 2003, 2004, I was always interested in Vermont politics and seeing Tucci, whose going through MS, work with a legislature, do advocacy, educating everybody about medical marijuana. This is 14 years ago, it was very different times right? Even up here in Vermont. So that was my background and then I went to college. Brandeis, very liberal place. I did a fair amount of experimenting and it was really a few years ago, I moved back to Vermont after spending seven years in the world of non profit and international relations.

I have a background in diplomacy, which I think helps a lot in the cannabis space frankly. I think about that all the time. And yeah, a few years ago, sort of saw a need for a resource for information and that Vermont had a cannabis community, I was familiar with it, we had a cannabis culture and tradition that goes back a long time and as things started becoming more serious publicly with legislation being proposed, with trade groups forming up, I said “You know, there are a lot of people out there who are like me.” You know. I’m 29, I’m interested in this subject in a lot of different ways, who have a different attitude about cannabis, who know what’s happening around the country, who are interested and beyond that, the roots community.

All the people in Vermont who have been working hard, advocating, risking their freedom, frankly, for a long time. Being connected with them and knowing they don’t really access to the political process. Even here in Vermont which is very small, very transparent, and very accessible. If you’re not used to dealing with politics and working in the state house and doing effective advocacy and lobbying and you know, frankly, diplomacy. Everybody who knows cultivators knows that you, especially the OG’s, there’s a certain ethos and they tend to be a bit more independent, vocal and so we kind of started with this approach of just this social one, is that we want to be the resource for the people that know the most, the people that care the most and really try to be a part of building something for the future here in Vermont and in the north east because whatever your personal opinion is on cannabis, this is a historic time we’re living through right now as far as transition.

The way that technology has democratized the world, anybody can start a blog, get involved, be out there advocating, find other advocates, and sort of build something, which is where we’re approaching with Heady Vermont and Monica Donivan, our publisher, co-founder, co-organizer of the Vermont Hempfest. She’s awesome. We’re so fortunate to have such a great partnership and to share the vision and really just be building this network which has come through individual connections. Like you said Vermont’s a small town, it’s what we like to joke around with. The population, you know from being here, everybody knows each other. It’s like not Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon, it’s like two degrees. Right?

TG Branfalt: For sure.

Eli Harrington: So it is a cool place as far as being apart of this community and seeing how it’s transitioning. More people who are coming out, who are advocating, and sort of watching the way things go and trying to be a part of shaping that process and …

TG Branfalt: So, we’re three days, four days, five days, whatever it is, removed from HempFest which was really, really a rad event. There was just so many different business ideas there and stuff that I hadn’t seen just coming here and the sheer amount of people that showed up to that to, you know, to Burke Mountain, which if people aren’t familiar, you really gotta be going with a purpose like you said yesterday.

Eli Harrington: You need intention. You need that intention like Mike talked about.

TG Branfalt: And it was brilliant. Mike Lewis was incredible. Joel Bedard was, he has his presence you know and these are people, Mike’s from Kentucky and Joel’s really kind of a big, another real big character in the scene out here. But what I want to ask you is, tell me about getting that whole thing together. That whole process of HempFest and how you guys sort of came up with and then just pulling it off, just give some advice to people who might be considering getting involved and would prefer sort of a festival than maybe something at the capital right? Because both are a show of force.

Eli Harrington: Yes. Yeah and thinking about different events, right, I mean that’s kind of been my own experience. I’ve learned so much from going to different events. A lot of them here regionally in New England. Gotta give a shout out to NeCann, which is a regional show that we’re gonna bring up here to Burlington in May for the first time. We’re stoked about that. So you know, that was the first step for me, for Heady Vermont which is becoming a membership organization or an advocacy platform, but we’re also a publishing company and our online, putting out original content, investing in bringing stories to Vermonters and stories of Vermonters. That’s always been sort of an idea, is what we’re gonna do with events.

And to be honest we’ve experimented with a lot of different things on smaller scales. Everything from being part of the Vermont Cannabis Week to doing our own anniversary parties, having panel discussions. In the event space it’s tough because you kind of want to be everything to everybody and especially in a place like Vermont where it’s so nascent and this is probably the situation in a lot of other states, where you feel like things are just starting to happen. For us the experience was the more we can present at one single event, the more people we can appeal to, right, so that we wanted to get everybody in an interest … If you’re doing a smaller event, let’s say a meet up at a coffee shop or a bar, putting together a panel where you say “What’s going on with the politics?” Because people are gonna want to know how they can get involved.

“What’s going on with business?” Somebody whose in the game, maybe “What’s going on with medical?” If that’s something that’s happening in your state. So our journey was really, there’s no short cut. You have to do a lot of these things. I put on an event a few years ago that myself and the DJ were the only ones who showed up. When I was just doing this Vermontijuana blog and that was an educational experience and figuring out who your audience is and who are the people that are gonna come to those events. If we didn’t have such a great readership with Heady Vermont, who are not only people that follow on Facebook and click the links, but people that we know and people who’ve come out to events and people who know us.

Being out there and advocating is such an important way to not only make the change that we all want to see as far as different reforms and really opening things up in a lot of ways, but it’s how you network and it’s how you get known and if you’re trying to have an event and people don’t know your name, they’ve never seen your face, why are they gonna shell out the money to sponsor something? So if we didn’t have a track record of putting on some successful events on smaller scales, we probably wouldn’t have tackled this and taken it on. The opportunity with HempFest is really unique to Vermont and probably some other states as well where hemp is allowed to be cultivated.

So in Vermont we don’t have adult use. We have decriminalization. We can talk about all the politics, we’re ramping up for that, but what we do have is we have industrial hemp at the state wide level. So you have a lot of people growing CBD right now and a lot of people producing CBD products. People are looking at other industrial hemp. We have some people who are actually building custom combines to harvest hemp at a more industrial scale which is so cool to see happening.

TG Branfalt: That’s what the industry needs nationwide.

Eli Harrington: Yeah.

TG Branfalt: Every hemp industry, everyone I talk to says we need infrastructure.

Eli Harrington: Yep. Processing, processing capacity, building up those networks, cooperative so. To kind of set the scene, hemp is really big in Vermont. It has been for the last year or two. A lot of that, I think, is driven by the fact there is not adult use and that our medical system is very closed. We’re gonna announce our fifth dispensary license very shortly. Each of them is gonna have a satellite. So we’re gonna have 10 dispensary physical locations probably by the end of next year, but it’s still a very closed system. It’s tough to get a card. So I think a lot of that pent up energy of people who want to be in the adult use game, people who want to be in the medical, who want to be making those value added products, I mean in Vermont that’s so huge. I mean beer, cheese, honey, cider, all of these things. You know maple syrup. So right now I think a lot of people, especially in the CBD side, they’re really learning kind the cannabis industry in that way. And there are unique things to CBD that we really wanted to highlight with HempFest.

TG Branfalt: So one of the unique things that I’ve noticed is the fact that everyone who’s doing these sort of cottage CBD programs or what have you, they’re infusing their stuff that they’ve produced or they’re partnering with other non-cannabis businesses. People who make tea, all these different things, and so the CBD is, pardon the pun, infusing itself within the local economy.

Eli Harrington: To be sure. And here in Vermont, part of what drove the success of HempFest was good timing. A year ago there was a hemp beer out and people really didn’t pay attention. This year a CBD beer came out and it was huge, it was national news, I read about it on Ganjapreneur. So I think consumer consciousness is a huge thing, but to sort of pull back a little bit, when you’re thinking about putting together an event, thinking about who is your audience, what do they need to know or what do you want them to take away from it and sort of what elements do you need to need to have to make that happen?

One, for us was an awesome host. Burke Mountain, these guys, like you said, they’re up in the north east kingdom part of Vermont. I have some local connections there which are young, but are sincere so I really wanted to do an event in that part of the state which is rural, which does have a lot of fallow land, which does have a lot of land owners and former farmers who want to be doing something with their productive, organic Vermont-branded acreage. So that was a big part for us, was being able to do it there and having a great host. We talked the rules very frankly before and they said “We’re gonna be open for business. So is there gonna be paraphernalia there? Are people going to be consuming out there on the back patio right by all the mountain bikers and the scenic chairlift rides.”

And we talked through all that, we had a plan and we knew that we could trust the people to show up and very validating that the cannabis community, you don’t have to tell people how to act. I mean we’re all responsible citizens for the most part or at least in proportion to the rest of society right? So for us, really, thinking with intent about “What do we want people to get when they come to our event?” We want you to be able to learn, go from zero to at least some understanding of a lot of different topics. So that’s why we decided to have back to back sessions instead of concurrent because I don’t want to make someone choose between the land owners session and the CBD 101 session. I want you to stay throughout the entire day and go from “What are the rules for cultivating? How do I find seeds or cuttings or clones? What’s the processing?” And then through the rest of it.

So we kind of, we addressed all that. We talked about what CBD from a pharmaceutical and pharmacological level. We talked about a lot of the products that were out there and I think that was a huge part, was show casing not only national brands, I mean you had Mary’s and CW there represented with Siri’s natural remedies and telling people about trans-thermal patches and the everyday oils and then you also had people who were doing it themselves. I mean my guy Kyle from Creek Valley Cannabidiol, he was one of the stars of the conference. A guy whose up there in the north east kingdom growing a thousand plants, learning this by himself, all organic, no till, processing on site, and making kombucha, making his own vape pens and really sort of showing that you can do all of it yourself.

And that, the cannabis game just like the event game, there is no short cut. Spoiler alert, you just bust your ass, you stay up till 3 o’clock in the morning sending out emails, network with people, go to other events and be able to make sincere connections and then have some, have a lot of faith.

TG Branfalt: So I want to talk to you a bit more about some of the connections that you made before HempFest and getting all set up, but before we do that, we gotta take a break. This is the Ganjapreneur.com podcast with TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Eli Harrington, co-founder, managing editor of Heady Vermont. I have doctor next to your name for some reason I almost called you Dr. Eli Harrington.

Eli Harrington: I’ve been called a lot of different things. Not that one yet.

TG Branfalt: So, again I want to go back to this, one of the things that really stood about to me about HempFest was the Tara Lynn Bridal, the Simmering Bone who won the pitch competition, the Purple Fox Pitch Competition. How’d you come across these sort of real industrious, real small businesses? How’d you find, maybe not these particular, but some of the smaller operators for HempFest?

Eli Harrington: I think that was really part of the beauty and the magic of it. And going back to think about sort of the intent, accessibility was something that was really important. So if we make a booth too expensive, then that little person, that little guy whose just starting up is not going to be able to afford to come to your show and for us, we’d rather have 36 different booths with a lot of different people making connections themselves than have 10 booths and charge three times the price.

So the price point was definitely a factor. We also talk to people and said “Hey, we’ll work with you. If you want to donate items for a gift basket or come up with some barter.” The way that we structured it was that we didn’t want to have to press vendors to get out because you get those people out, they’re gonna bring their fans and their supporters, they’re gonna make connections. And I mean people were selling stuff, probably making some pretty good cash at their tables just by the sheer volume of like 500 people coming through and checking out all these products, but it goes back to having a network of real people. And that’s the kind of thing that, that’s what I love about the cannabis industry and the culture in general is that people can smell fakes and they know if you’re real, they know if you’re not. And that doesn’t mean that you’ve got the most calloused hands or the knottiest dreads.

It means that you’re somebody whose authentic and sincere and you walk the walk and stand up for what you believe in. So people who see you out there genuinely networking, talking to people, writing commentaries, sharing your stuff on Facebook even. Those are the way that you grow connections and then when it’s time to put on an event, you think deliberately about pricing and think about that guy that I met at that event who I want to come to my event. $20 ticket might be too much, but maybe we can offer a patient discount. We offered a locals discount for people in the north east kingdom because we really wanted to get local people who are land owners to come out and check it out and that was one of the coolest parts, is having an 80 year old dairy farmer with the thickest accent you’ve ever heard talking about being interested in hemp, sincerely.

And so if we can get those people out, that to me, the diversity in a crowd and the engagement, that was the measure of success and we did spend money on advertising. Not a ton because we’re our own publishing company so that something that killed me.

TG Branfalt: There’s a flyer. There’s a flyer right out on a telephone pole in front of my house.

Eli Harrington: Yeah, well thank you very much and again, there’s no short cuts to, there’s a reason that you …

TG Branfalt: I didn’t put that there. I don’t know how that got there.

Eli Harrington: That’s right. Well the same thing, like there’s a reason you have street teams. Anybody whose up in the north eastern part of the state who saw a poster, it’s because I drove my ass around to every single country store and gas station and put one up and talked to people and gave out stickers and hyped it up. Again, there’s no secret formula and you can buy all the advertising you want on social media and elsewhere, but if people don’t identify that brand or that logo to an actual person, they’re not gonna come out and I think that’s especially true with cannabis events where people have to kind of see that it’s cool, you can show up to this event. There is no stigma to come here and be educated.

It depends how your event is presented. If you’re trying to do, if you’re having a smoke out, like that’s cool, you’re gonna attract those hardcore people who want to come and have a smoke out. If you want to get more mainstream audience, people who are canna-curious instead of experts, then you have to think about the way you design and promote the show and for us having the University of Vermont agricultural extension. They where the first people that we called because we said if people know we’re serious about this, we’re sincere, we want to have information for land owners. We want agronomic experts, we want agriculturalist so we’re gonna get the university extension who have been growing test crops for the last four years and are doing the actual science and research. We’re gonna get them first and if we can’t get them onboard, then people aren’t gonna know that it’s legit.

Then same thing the Vermont Hemp Company and having people who are experts and have been planting and working with farmers, who are agronomist, who are doing a ton of stuff. I mean they came out with this tea this weekend that was so cool. So, again, thinking about what we’re gonna be able to bring to people and how you want to frame it and for us to go to other sponsors and other vendors and say “Hey look, the university is onboard” and I know that, disclaimer, the University of Vermont does not support things as a whole. The people don’t necessarily represent the entire university, but this extension, which is doing this really cutting edge, awesome research, they’re the ones who are gonna go to your field and talk to you as the farmer, so they’re the ones we wanted at the events to cover that.

And then same thing with having a retail partner like Siri’s. Having Phyto Science Institute who do testing, who do extraction, who do processing and Siri’s doing that as well. Having Humble Roots Horticulture which is like, these guys took a college business plan and now they’ve got an acre of hemp in the ground, which is so cool to see as some young cats that are out there getting their name out, learning a ton, and building the network. So what happened at HempFest was awesome, what’s gonna happen afterwards is what’s really exciting and that’s how we’ll know, is like when we have those 10 other businesses that start next year and buy tables because they got their connections at HempFest and we hear from people that “Hey I started growing because I met Joel at the Vermont Hemp Company.” Or “I’m somebody who has a, I’m making a Vermont granola and I started putting CBD honey in it because I met the Loose Farm people and now I have whole other product and revenue stream.”

So that’s what’s really gonna be rad, to see what comes after all of this because we’re really at that stage where we’re all just like planting seeds and we’re not even into …

TG Branfalt: It’s a lot, it’s research. Everyone’s just doing research. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk to you about, we can talk about HempFest all day, but I do want to talk to you just a little bit about the biggest story once I got here especially, was what happened with … The legislature passed it, it wasn’t a full rec tax-and-rack, but you know, I don’t if that’s even the best model, but it was a landmark. This has never happened in Vermont and this is in part due to the tireless advocacy that happened and you did a lot in that capacity. So now they’ve convened another commission. What number commission is this?

Eli Harrington: I mean, it’s not, I think it was 2014 when they paid the RAND Corporation, not a ton of money, but I think like $25,000 to write a 110 page report. So we’ve had this report that we’ve paid for for a couple years hanging out and then the old adage in politics, if you don’t want to do something, you create a commission, right, or if you want to delay something, but to back track here, I would say that, you know, I’m a millennial, so I’m impatient and I want instant gratification and I know that I’m right and we just gotta convince all these old people that they’re view point is outdated. So I’m joking, but the fact is that it takes time and I’m really proud to see how far things have come even in, I’ve been in this like the last three years, maybe, full-time.

I mean I’ve always been advocating in other ways and supportive, but really being out there, I think, for the last three years. Like there’re people who are, who’ve been in jail for longer than three years for simple possession. It’s important to keep things in context, I think, when ever you’re talking about advocacy and understanding that, especially, when you’re talking with other cannabis people and industry people that the demographics are changing. Public opinion is changing, but in some places it’s not as fast as others. And I think here in the north east, one thing that’s really slowed a lot of things down is not having those things you can see.

So like Colorado, people go out west and take special trips and maybe you have a relative out there, you do a ski trip or you send one of your legislative panels out there two years ago, which we did already to go do a study tour. And they come back, it’s whatever, but it’s a different thing if you can go actually see it on vacation and New England’s so small that once people see, I mean already, Maine and Mass which are right now, personal possession and cultivation, they’re waiting to get the regulated structures set up and I think the policy makers have really sped things up seeing what the demand is and seeing all that tax revenue that’s out there.

So I think that that’s gonna change a lot and I wish Vermont was gonna be the first state in New England to do it because there is gonna be a huge advantage to that. I mean all of this stuff, bringing a cannabis industry online and just bringing it from an illegal, underground culture to something above board, that takes a monumental sea change. Not only culturally, but talking about policies and where businesses are cited, how they’re operated. And it takes a few years to figure out. The states out west, they’re constantly reforming and I think people like, I mean me, I look to Oregon because it seems like they’ve done the best job of adopting these lessons from their neighboring states. Nevada, which has made changes pretty quickly, all these states, like we look out there and those of us that research the policy and look at it a lot say “You know, we share these articles and we write stories and say look here’s why we need to do this because in every state that goes adult use, there’s a supply shortage. So let’s start getting our underground growers selling to our dispensaries.

We talk about small business in Vermont, what I want to see happen this year and what we’re gonna push for among other things, let’s have a small cultivator license. Let’s start opening up that supply. Right now they only have five dispensaries to sell to. Those are the only people who can dispense medical marijuana in the state and hopefully that will change and open up as well. I mean more competition, the better and the more supply and the more diversity, the better products at lower prices. This is just basic economics things, shout to Brandeis University. Econ 101. But I think that we are gonna see things open up and that, like I said, this small cultivator license, that can be a way to kind of prepare for bigger things where we say alright, let’s get people licensed, testing product, best practices, ideally not over-regulated. If you want that craft scale, just like our lessons from the festival, you can’t price out all the people who’d be involved.

So you have to keep it accessible, but let’s get another 50 growers signed up and working the dispensaries. Let’s expand our caregiver laws to something like Maine has where people can have their own small businesses.

TG Branfalt: Well another point is too, that I think has been sort of, I don’t know if it’s been lost or just not a talking point that I’ve noticed here in the state is that young people aren’t buying farms. Farms are closing throughout the north east because young people don’t want to farm and this might be a tool to get some of those farms operational again. Even if you just allow personal cultivation.

Eli Harrington: Yeah. I think everybody can agree that the more people that are planting things and growing things, the better society is. The more people involved in agriculture and you do see some occasions and a lot of has happened in the north east kingdom in Vermont where you do see sort of the new generation of farmers who are learning that you can’t just do a commodity, you have to have a product at the end cycle and a lot of people really are interested in hemp and in cannabis and that is a gateway, I think, to more working landscapes and it’s something that in Vermont, you’re right, it is very acute because so many small family farms, dairy farming, there’s a crisis going on nationally with the price of milk, that affects a lot of folks here in Vermont. The cooperative system has advantages and disadvantages, but you have a lot of fallow, organic land, you have a lot of brand appeal with Vermont products, and with CBD and hemp you have a national market.

The rest of it, I mean Vermont is tourism-based economy. Vermont already has a reputation. Like you probably tell people about Vermont and they say “Oh, I thought it was already legal?”

TG Branfalt: Oh, yeah.

Eli Harrington: Number one reaction. All the time. People are shocked. So culturally we’re already branded that way and we might as well take advantage and from a rural, economic development standpoint, it’s great that you have politicians who get this and it’s a way to talk about cannabis that crosses party lines. And you can have a conversation with someone who might be more conservative and represent a rural district and say “Look, we got 80 people who took applications for the hemp registry at our event. 80 people are going to theoretically apply for licenses and put some sort of acreage into production that wasn’t before, create jobs …

TG Branfalt: You had a state senator …

Eli Harrington: Pay taxes, we had a state senator there. I mean Senator John Rodgers

TG Branfalt: … who grew hemp.

Eli Harrington: Who was doing just that. Because he’s breaking his back being a stone mason and wants to put his land back to use. His family got sort of caught up and priced out of farming, he became a mason, and he wants to go back and do hemp. So the more we can share those stories and those conversations and say okay, if you can appreciate this with a cannabis plant that .2% THC as legally defined as industrial hemp, then what about cannabis that has 10% TCH and is defined as marijuana, but is grown in the same way in the same conditions on that same fallow land, but with some, I won’t even put a number on it, exponentially more value, dollar per acre price, with the leaded stuff.

So I think that that’s, it’s a way to bridge that gap. I know that CBD and industrial hemp help open the doors to that conversation a lot of the time and Vermont is historically and culturally an agricultural state. We’re not large, but we have great soil, we have amazing farmers and agriculturalists, and, again, we have that brand. I mean how much more is exciting Vermont cheese than New York cheese. I mean and I’m not talking the strain, someday both of those, because there are some great Cheese growers in Vermont, shout out to them. So I think we’ll see it here in this next session, personal possession and home cultivation, can’t be putting in jail for possessing. You can’t be giving people $200 fines. Decriminalization has led to more enforcement not less, it’s just it’s easier to write a civil fine than put somebody in jail.

So we’re gonna be pushing for that to be sure. Ideally have that happen quickly. This commission is strategically designed to not give a report until 2018 in December after we have our next election for governor because we have two-year terms here. As a reminder, our governor is the person who is individually responsible for vetoing this bill, the historic legalization bill that passed. It was very conservative. It was like one ounce and two plants.

TG Branfalt: Better than …

Eli Harrington: And it wouldn’t have gone into effect until July next year anyways. So nothing would have changed today as we record this in September, but his commission is designed to not address, two thirds of the commission is highway safety and education prevention, one third of the commission is tax and regulate. You look at Massachusetts right now, they just appointed a five person full time panel who are being paid to do this. They have their foot on the gas pedal, but they’ve been sort of slow playing for a while, as long as they could, but you see the kind of resources that it takes to figure out these policies and no matter what policies you put into effect and what you can learn from other states, some of it is gonna just happen from trial.

Ideally not too much error, but when you see what the issues are with regulating cannabis in Vermont, you will adjust and you’ll shape it so that you’re addressing those when they happen. So that’s why we advocate get the process going. Impairment on the highways has not been a huge issue in states that have come online. Massachusetts does not have cars flying into each other on the highway every time you go through. Boston hasn’t gotten better at driving. You still gotta drive in Boston and with people from Massachusetts, but things like that, as we see more of that, ideally we can skip passed those reefer madness type discussions and talk more about serious policy points.

So at the end of the day, the commission is gonna have recommendations and the governor might see that as a reason to delay things, but the legislature are the ones who pass the bills and this veto was very unpopular, the governor is taking a lot of heat for it and rightfully so. He owns that decision and we’ll see what happens ideally early in the session where we can go back with, again, just home cultivation, personal possession, not putting people in jail or giving them fines that have an impact on their life for possessing this plant. So we start there. We’re gonna work with the legislature and really give them credit.

No other legislative body has passed this through both the house and the senate. So kudos to all of those people who did take the time to educate themselves and this year they’re miles ahead. It’s like some of the people that he’s appointing to his commission, we’ve been doing this. I’ve been there in every single one of those rooms. We’ve literally got hundreds of hours of testimony that these folks have heard. So many different draft bills, so many different committees that have heard testimony that it does build on itself. And at some point it becomes politically untenable to threaten to veto something that 70% of Vermonters support, which is the legalization, personal possession, home cultivation. So that, continuing to work on our medical program, right now if you’re a patient in Vermont you can only buy two ounces a month. Your plant counts are really low.

So there’s a lot we need to do to work on the medical program as well because a lot of the interest in adult use, I think, is helping people realize just how conservative our medical program has been and a lot of patients who are advocating for adult use are also helping us advocate more for the medical part of things. So that’s really important to keep in mind as well because that’s such a big feeder into how people understand cannabis in your state in general, is through the medical system usually.

TG Branfalt: So I, just before we go I want to ask your advice for other entrepreneurs. Before we do that, we gotta take a break. Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Hey, welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast. I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Eli Harrington, co-founder, managing editor at Heady Vermont. So you wear a lot of hats man. I’ve known you for couple months now and it’s really a pleasure getting to know you guys and the Heady Vermont crew and just through meeting you one time, I’ve met almost dozens of CBD producers, growers, and so as somebody who was in New York for awhile and it’s a very secretive program and no one wants to talk to you and no one want to let alone show you their plants, medical or not and then in Detroit where gray market, really nobody wants to talk to you because the DEA can come in and basically at any point kick down their doors.

So Vermont’s community has been very welcoming and very open.

Eli Harrington: People are, their minds are always blown by how friendly Vermonters are.

TG Branfalt: Dude …

Eli Harrington: It is really true. It’s like one of the number one things you read on like Reddit when people come visit Vermont. They’re like “Vermonters are so friendly.” It’s like, yeah man, look around. This place is beautiful.

TG Branfalt: The first time that I came here, I came here for an Offspring/Bad Religion/Pennywise whose at the Waterfront and I remember, we were all parked across the street and it was one car and then the next and they were actually taking turns letting people out and I was like “I need to live here.” I don’t want to kill anyone trying to get out of this concert. So what’s, when you’re talking to the young kids like the guys from Humble Roots and you’re young yourself, what is your advice for people looking to operate in Vermont’s space?

Eli Harrington: I think that when I thought about this a few years ago and I was like, I’m gonna stop wearing a shirt and tie to work. Basically leave the world of, I was non profit executive director and I did some video production stuff, but when I got into it I thought “Worse case, Ontario.” Like I’m gonna do something for a cause that I believe in. I’ll be able to be proud of the work that I do and if we do it the right way and have faith and work hard, then hopefully we can turn it into something that’s a business. I wasn’t sure what that business was going to be. This has all been an evolution and everybody whose in the cannabis industry, you have to build it as you go along unless you’re in some established state that has a few years of over adult use market.

Getting involved. That’s also the exciting part, not only as an entrepreneur, but as an activist and just as a citizen, is that cannabis policy is being shaped right now and that you can pick up the phone and call a representative. You can go to a meeting, you can start a blog. You can write for HeadyVermont.com and send us a commentary piece if you’re someone that lives in Vermont and beyond. You can have a social gathering in a public place and invite a speaker. So you have the agency to control things right now in the cannabis industry that you don’t in a lot of other places. So you should be able to take advantage of that and really, like I said, be willing to educate people. Appreciate that even within the industry, there are people who come at their understanding from a different way.

It might be from someones experience growing for 20 years. It might be because you’re somebody whose a policy wonk and it might because you’re somebody whose a tech nerd whose smoking at night or a college student, whatever it is. So I think being sincere with respect to the community and I think about all the people who have put me on and talked to me. I had a chance to go to Jamaica a few years ago. Not only meet Rastas, but meet some of the High Times folks and some of their competitors. People like Maya from Whoopi and Maya.

I mean just the amount of information that’s out there and being able to go to events because cannabis people, it seems, are more likely to share, and we’re not talking trade secrets here, but share techniques, share connections, share contacts, and those are the networks that matter. Those grass root ones, not just the people who are gonna like your stuff on Facebook, but the people who are gonna show up in person and who you know if you call them and ask “Hey, can you make a call to your representative because this vote’s coming up and they’re on a committee.” Who are actually gonna do it.

So I think just being sincere, if you’re sincere coming at this with good intentions, it doesn’t matter if you’re not the most knowledgeable person, if you don’t have 20 years of growing experience. You come at it with respect and humility, people will put you on. They’ll share information. They’ll give you opportunities to come to events and meet up with people and I think kind of just keep that going culturally and that’s why I think you see a lot of things about this industry that are more conscious then a lot of other industries. Is that everybody whose involved and most people who are successful have to be acting with intention and sincerity.

So I mean I think that’s all of it. There’s nothing stopping you except for how you spend your time and if you want to do it like I worked last summer at an airport cooking breakfast from 4 am to noon so I could have the afternoons to blog and the evenings to go to events and still went totally broke and screwed up a lot of … And made a lot of sacrifices to learn that lesson the hard way and still out there scrapping. So figure out what you’re willing to risk and what assets you have. If you don’t have funding, you don’t have those hard skills like growing or processing or botany, then you need to be the most informed person in the room and you can send your time reading HeadyVermont.com, Ganjapreneur, there’s so much great information that’s out there for free so educate yourselves and get involved.

I mean that’s really it. There’s no secret to hard work and up here in New England, we’ve got a lot of hard working Yankees who are out there busting their butts. Vermont is beautiful, but we’ve got another maybe month and then it’s like stick season and crappy skiing season until probably mid January at least so, yeah that’s it man. There’s no secret.

TG Branfalt: So where can people hear your podcast, find out more about who you are, here’s your chance to plug some stuff man.

Eli Harrington: Yeah, well. I mean, we’ve been, so like all of this. I’ve been experimenting a lot and learning from experience. I started a podcast called Vermontijuana because I just wanted to learn about the podcasting game. I listen to a lot of podcast. This one being my favorite, which I listen to on a weekly basis, although I actually know what TG looks like so it’s a different experience for me, getting to listen to it myself. The Vermontijuana podcast is something I’ve been developing, we’re still getting better. I’m about 20 episodes in, but I encourage people to check that out on iTunes. We do talk about more than just Vermont. I’m working right now on developing some video content and talking to some people in New England and also folks out west because I want to do video, I’ve got background in that. It’s such a good, efficient way to present a lot of information at once and we’re a digital media outlet with Heady Vermont.

So I’m really excited with that, but I mean, Heady Vermont. We have just turned into a membership based organization, which again, part of our own evolution as entrepreneurs, figuring out what models make sense for us. So doing membership where we have members only events that’ll be coming up, that are private, where we’ll be able to transition and have that membership who support us and help sustain us, who also get benefits from our business partners and our advertisers. We’re kind of constantly evolving with Heady Vermont and then personally, I’m out there advocating a lot. I mean if you’re paying attention in Vermont cannabis and if you want to get involved, I encourage people to reach out. If you’re somebody nationally and wants to know what’s up in Vermont, I’m always happy to talk about it.

The more that we share information, good information, accurate information, the better for everybody. So I’m not a believer in, I say don’t hide it, divide it when it comes to all of this. So, yeah. I encourage people to reach out. Eli@HeadyVermont.com. And a huge shout out to Monica. I’m the one talking here today, but if it’s not, if she and I don’t get involved working together, this thing is nothing and she makes it all look great with Kind Consulting. She does the graphics, the visuals, the branding, the photography. She’s awesome. So hit up Monica, hit up Kind Consulting if you want to see why our stuff looks so good. Tune in to HeadyVermont.com and stayed tuned because we’re just getting started and New England’s a small place and we got a lot of friends out there so we’re going regional. We’re gonna be doing more and hitting more regional events. Bringing Nican up here to Burlington in May and in the mean time I’ll be at Nican in Portland and Maine. Nican in Rhode Island and Providence and then in Boston in March.

So catch me at Nican.

TG Branfalt: Dude it’s, we talk all the time, but like normally our conversations are more me rambling about nonsense and you sort of being nice about it, so thanks for showing up and having this conversation and letting me get to know you a little bit while also letting people really get an idea of who you are and you work your ass off man. You and Monica both. So …

Eli Harrington: Well thank you for sharing the platform too man. I mean, you too. When we learned that you were coming to Burlington, we got a chance to link up, like I’ve been reading your stuff for a long time. And a big shout out to Ganjapreneur and their sponsors because it’s such an awesome resource especially for people on the east coast who want to get that inside information. Love what you guys are doing man, I love the podcast. An honor to be involved, so thank you very much.

TG Branfalt: Thanks man. Well we’ll probably have you back on here pretty soon. You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and then the Apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcriptions of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

End


Spark the Conversation: Molly Peckler, Highly Devoted

Molly Peckler is the creator of Highly Devoted, a matchmaking service for cannabis professionals.

In this episode of the Spark the Conversation podcast, Molly joins podcast host Bianca Green for a conversation at the 2017 Emerald Exchange in August. In this interview, Molly and Bianca discuss the founding of Highly Devoted — which began as a matchmaking service for cannabis professionals — and how it has evolved over time from a romantic matchmaking service to include corporate matchmaking, design consulting, and more for the cannabis space. They also discuss the importance of prioritizing social responsibility in the industry, the dwindling cannabis stigma, how education helps spread the normalization process, and more!

Listen to the interview through the player below, or continue scrolling down for a full transcript of this Spark the Conversation podcast episode.


Listen to the podcast:


Read the transcript:

Bianca Green: Hi, this is Bianca Green, the host of the Spark the Conversation podcast sponsored by Ganjapreneur. I’m here today at the Emerald Exchange in Thousand Oaks, California, with my girlfriend Molly Peckler of Highly Devoted. Molly and I met through a girlfriend of mine in DC named Gail who is a official badass and a really good friend and a cannabis warrior who has a son who suffers from seizures. She came out of the closet in Maine long before other people did.

She felt I had to know Molly, because Molly was relocating from Chicago to Los Angeles. We met and her career has just been taking off. We’re going to sit down today and talk about where she’s at with Highly Devoted, which originally was an opportunity for couples to meet through cannabis and now it’s turned into an HR situation. I’m really excited to get this conversation happening.

Molly, thank you so much for being here in the House of Green sparking the conversation with me. How are you?

Molly Peckler: I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me here Bianca. I am always happy to hang out with you and chat with you about all things cannabis. I love the Emerald Exchange. It’s one of my favorite events. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

Bianca Green: A lot of people have. I think it’s a really great mix of northern and southern cultures. The vibes are really cool.

Molly Peckler: It is. I think it’s also a great event because it’s not a massive amount of people. There’s a ton of people here and some really incredible entrepreneurs and influencers within cannabis, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not like it’s wall to wall people. Sometimes when I’m in a large space with a lot of people I get a little anxious and I don’t get that feeling at all here.

Bianca Green: It’s really great. I’m really excited about where the direction of your business is going. I know when I originally met you that you were super focused on relationships and couples and it’s evolved. Why don’t you tell our listeners how you got into the cannabis industry and where you started and where you’ve evolved to with Highly Devoted?

Molly Peckler: Absolutely.

Bianca Green: After taking a hit.

Molly Peckler: After I take my hit. I originally got into the cannabis industry in 2014. I started working for a consulting firm that helped people get licenses in emerging markets. Before I did that I was a millionaire matchmaker. I helped very wealthy individuals find love. That was something that I really excelled at and got a lot of people married and there are lots of babies out there.

It was very fulfilling in a lot of ways, but I was dying to get in the cannabis industry because it’s always been a huge part of my life and a huge part of my relationship with my husband. He’s my inspiration for literally everything I do with my business because we’ve been in love for 12 years now. The first time I met him he was smoking a bong. We really connected at first over cannabis before we even kissed. We would spend hours just smoking and talking and getting to know each other, laying that foundation.

I noticed that there was a lot of stigma associated with cannabis. Like you, people don’t look at me necessarily and say, “This girl, she smokes a lot of weed.” I’m not your prototypical stoner. I’m motivated and smart and I present myself I think in a professional way. Cannabis is my substance of choice. It really allows me to be the best version of myself. I know how powerful it is for connecting with people. That’s where I came up with the idea for Highly Devoted, which is my business.

Bianca Green: It’s a really fantastic concept because I do know that people connect with cannabis that don’t otherwise vibrate in the same circles let’s say. Cannabis brings so many unique types of people together.

Molly Peckler: It does. It’s that feeling that you get when you meet someone and you have a smoke sesh with them and automatically you’re comfortable. There’s that bond that’s there and it’s very easy.

Bianca Green: Did we just become best friends?

Molly Peckler: I know, we might.

Bianca Green: It’s totally like stepbrothers, always, when we share a joint with somebody. It’s great.

Molly Peckler: It is. There’s no other substance that is like that. You look at alcohol, I think when people drink a lot it can have a really negative effect on your life. Obviously, alcohol can literally poison your body. People die from alcohol every day. No one has ever died from cannabis. You can’t overdose on it. Obviously everything in moderation. You have to do what’s right for you. You don’t want cannabis to take away from whatever you’re trying to achieve in your life, but as long as it-

Bianca Green: That can happen with anything.

Molly Peckler: Anything, any substance.

Bianca Green: It happens all the time with medications.

Molly Peckler: Yeah. I think it’s something that if you are mindful about it and you do it with intention then it really can have a positive effect on your life. With Highly Devoted, I focus on helping people to not only find love with another cannabis consumer, because it is challenging when you’re dating because that makes your dating search even more complicated because for a lot of people who don’t know cannabis it can be a deal breaker.

They say, “I don’t want to date a stoner.” They think that everyone who smokes weed sits on the couch and just eats Doritos, whereas I understand that there are a lot of incredible smart passionate people out there who use cannabis. They want that to be reflected in their relationship and they don’t want to feel like they have to hide that from someone.

I am a matchmaker. I have a database of white collar cannabis consumers from around the country and around the world. When I work with a client we focus on figuring out exactly what they’re looking for in a partner, getting down to your granular details of what are their core values and what’s your ideal relationship dynamic and what are your shared passions and how do you want cannabis to be reflected in your relationship. Then I find clients an ideal partner, whether that’s in my database or I’ll go out and ask my network or go recruit for a specific client’s match.

Bianca Green: That’s really time-consuming. It’s such a valuable service that you’re offering people.

Molly Peckler: Especially for people who are burnt out on the dating apps and online dating where you meet a lot of people and you waste a lot of time and money and energy. I’m actually there to do the due diligence for you. I interview and meet with everyone who I’m going to potentially introduce to my clients. I see if, I think, in my expert opinion, are they a good fit in terms of all the parameters of the search. I’ve expanded my services now to include coaching for people who are interested in getting involved in the cannabis industry.

Bianca Green: That is a huge service that is needed. That’s amazing.

Molly Peckler: It’s something where I’ve been able to, on a very small budget, make myself an influencer in this community and a respected voice who people come to. That has just been through building relationships and networking in the right way and going to the right events and finding the right partners.

I educate people who are interested in getting into this industry. It’s the fastest growing industry in the country. It’s incredibly lucrative, it’s the green rush. Helping people, not the people who are just like, “I want to make money.” I work with people who are really focused on making a difference, because yes, we can all make money and do great things, but it’s all about moving this movement forward and allowing everyone who needs it to get access to this plant.

Bianca Green: Are you finding a lot of people that are making that a priority? I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that are coming in that have all different types of reasons for wanting to get into the industry. Is it easier or more difficult for you to find people who really have intentions and are putting their money where their mouth is, with social responsibility and making a difference?

Molly Peckler: It can be a bit challenging to find those people, but the way that they have come out of the woodwork for me is by me telling my story, by me opening up and sharing why I’m in this industry and why it means so much to me. A lot of times that resonates with people. They see, “I’m really interested in getting involved in this. I’m passionate about cannabis, but I just don’t know where to start.”

I give people that very basic education and figuring out, “If you want to focus on a particular vertical how do you differentiate yourself from everyone else? Are you looking to do fundraising? I can introduce you to people who can help with that. Which conference should you go to? How should you be branding yourself? How can you-“

Bianca Green: You’re doing consulting too?

Molly Peckler: Yeah.

Bianca Green: Which is a valuable service.

Molly Peckler: I feel like I have a very unique point of view. This is something that I live and breathe. I wake up every morning and I jump out of bed so excited to get this message across and change hearts and minds. I’m totally inspired by people like you who have been in the trenches on the front line. I certainly am nowhere near where you are, but I still think that what I’m bringing to the table is a different perspective that people haven’t really focused on much yet.

Bianca Green: It’s not any one person that can do anything. I think that every person that’s in this industry, every consumer that uses cannabis and benefits from it needs to be responsible for the freedom of the plant. It’s novel, it’s wonderful, it’s a big idea, that you are putting it in your mission, essentially, that you work with people that are consistent with making sure that they’re in alignment with the wellness of this industry.

Because it is, there are all different types of people coming in. It’s hard to tell who’s here for the right reasons. I feel like the plant is discerning. It’s not going to just let anybody. I also feel like access to it, the more access people have we will raise the vibrations. It’ll go from there. Every step we take, it goes here …

It starts somewhere and it takes steps forward, but we can also take a lot of steps back if the people that are in the industry currently aren’t being more, advocating more for it. For you to have that in your mission is a really important thing. Tell me what that’s like? What are those people that you are working with, how are they in the entrepreneurial space?

Molly Peckler: I work with a lot of people who, they have a day job in a mainstream industry, but they’re just starting to dip their toe into everything that the cannabis industry has to offer. Maybe they’ve been to a couple events or they have some products that have changed their life or they have a family member who was sick and was healed by cannabis. They’re like, “This really is a great-“

Bianca Green: They’re compelled.

Molly Peckler: “It’s a great opportunity.” I work with people like that who are just small scale and they want to bootstrap their business, but then I recently started talking to some venture capitalists who are actually very, very focused on all of the positive effects of cannabis and not just about their bottom line.

Helping people to figure out what are the best aspects of this industry to explore. There’s a lot of oversaturation for many different things. Really figuring out what hasn’t been taken care of. That’s what I did. I was like, “I have this skillset. No one is utilizing this in the cannabis space.” Really helping people to focus on what are the things that make them happiest in life, what do they enjoy doing, what revs their engines and really moves them? Then how can we figure out a way that cannabis can be a part of that and hopefully move your idea, your business forward.

Bianca Green: That’s great. Congratulations on making that into a business that services a lot of people. Where is your biggest market? Is it California?

Molly Peckler: California is my biggest market, but actually have a lot of people that I work with in New York, in the east coast. Because New York is an interesting market. They have medical in New York, but it’s a very strict program. There’s no flower. It’s all concentrates or edibles and it’s very difficult to get a card. It’s still very black market in New York.

Bianca Green: When you say work with … I’m sorry, I’m just wanting to get a little bit deeper here. When you say that you talk to venture capitalists that are excited or you talk to people in New York, how is it that your services facilitate? Are you helping people find investment that you think has longevity? Are you getting them HR and finding them staff? Go deeper for me.

Molly Peckler: Absolutely. I don’t specifically go and find them staff, but I have connections with great recruiters, great attorneys, people who want to make investments in the industry and people who have a lot of experience in marketing. I have this great professional network in the industry. I will make strategic introductions, almost like professional matchmaking, based upon whatever the goals of my clients are.

It’s fun for me because that allows me to get creative. I love being able to think outside of the box and strategize and cannabis is a huge part of that for me. It’s a big part of my process. I just like finding new ways that I can help other people to explore this industry as a way to support themselves, but also help the world. There’s so much power that comes from cannabis. I want more people to be able to experience that.

Bianca Green: And putting the right energies together is so important and valuable. It’s really hard to put together a team. I’ve had so many different people working with me on Spark. Finding the right people to execute vision, it can be really time to consume and in an advocacy perspective, when you don’t have time … A lot of these businesses I feel like people are coming in and taking their time to figure out what the law is. I’m like, “The law’s in our hands.”

Molly Peckler: Now’s the time.

Bianca Green: We have to be responsible for advocating for what is needed, because access, access, access. I’m repetitive and daunting with that, but that’s my mission. It excites me that you have that same concept and that you’re working with professionals who are heading in that direction also.

Molly Peckler: There are a lot of people who are still in the green closet. That’s one of the things that I help people with as well.

Bianca Green: Which is so surprising to me in California because we’re in a bubble.

Molly Peckler: It’s just not like this, even in California I come across so many people who face that stigma and face that judgment and can’t be open and honest with the people in their lives, especially if they’re dating and meeting new people. They just don’t know where to start. I help people to figure out how do they communicate about cannabis confidently so that they can spark the conversation and change hearts and minds and get people to understand where they’re coming from.

Really understanding what it does for them and why it’s important to them and also helping them get the historical context of what prohibition is really about as opposed to actually trying to protect the citizens of the United States.

Bianca Green: No more Reefer Madness.

Molly Peckler: No, we don’t need that. It’s been proven wrong.

Bianca Green: Even Gail, I remember, I think I was telling you this. She was petrified to come out and I was like … I preach this all the time, it is absolutely the only way to create change. Is for us to be able to be open, because this conversation is mainstream. It used to not be mainstream. Now it’s mainstream and there is no … It’s not illegal to have a conversation. You have to start questioning things, especially if you take any pharmaceuticals. You have to start questioning things.

I believe industry drives policy because the more products that come and create education for people then the more it will be de-stigmatized. The fact that you’re putting together people that can make that happen, it’s a really, really valuable piece to this puzzle.

Molly Peckler: I think it’s something that’s been missing. One of the next things that I’m focusing on is actually creating an educational platform for people who are curious, but haven’t really explored it at all or maybe they’re still in the green closet and they want to learn whether it’s just about the plant itself and how your body processes it, what it actually does to the opportunities in this industry, to thrive and grow.

Bianca Green: That’s huge. Will it be like a media platform, online?

Molly Peckler: Yeah, it’s going to be an online, basically set up like a master class. It’s called Heightened University and I’m really, really excited about that, because again, it’s all about education and getting people to understand the real story. Once they know that then it’s a lot harder for them to stick to the same old stigmas and judgments that they’ve been comfortable with for so long.

Bianca Green: Mazel tov.

Molly Peckler: Thank you.

Bianca Green: Good job, I’m really proud of you, because you hustle, girl. I see you out there connecting all the time. That is a really valuable asset to a lot of people, especially people who consume cannabis regularly. Having someone be able to do due diligence and find and trust people. I don’t want to go out and try to find a housekeeper for example or if I had kids, there’s nannies that have helpers that will get them to the right families. Matchmaking is extremely important part of success.

Molly Peckler: Yeah. It really is in all facets of your life.

Bianca Green: Personal and … It can be hard, especially if people work really hard.

Molly Peckler: They don’t make it a priority. I help people to actually say, “This is my intent. I want to find my right partner. This is what I need. I’m not going to settle for less.” That’s almost more powerful than me introducing them to someone. It really changes their perspective. When you focus on it, it’s like any other goal. You create a strategy and then you achieve it. You can’t just wish for the best and just let it go to the background.

Bianca Green: That’s so great. Tell our audience where they can find you?

Molly Peckler: They can find me at HighlyDevoted.com or @HighlyDevoted on Instagram. Definitely follow me or send me a message. I’d love to chat with you. They can actually sign up on my website to be part of my free database. It’s for personal and professional connections. If you’re interested in setting up a coaching or matchmaking consultation with me you can schedule that right on the website as well.

Bianca Green: Do you do Skypes and Facetimes and …

Molly Peckler: Yeah, I do it over Skype. It doesn’t matter where you are. I’ve worked with clients in Europe. It does not matter whether it’s legal in your state or not. I’m just there to help my clients. One of the things that I’m really excited about is I’m actually releasing my first product.

Bianca Green: Is it a cannabis product?

Molly Peckler: It’s a cannabis product.

Bianca Green: Big.

Molly Peckler: The launch is happening next week. It’s called the Lit Kit for Love.

Bianca Green: I love it, that’s great.

Molly Peckler: It’s a collaboration with Kush Queen Cannabis which is an amazing brand. It’s basically a curated cannabis experience in a box for a couple to share to enhance sex and intimacy and pleasure and all of those things.

Bianca Green: What’s in it?

Molly Peckler: It’s a 1:1 CBD and THC bath balm that has all these essential oils that’ll get you in the mood. Then there’s a pre-roll of one of a few strains that are known to be aphrodisiacs. Then there is a brand new type of cannabis lube that is water soluble, so you can actually use it with a condom. Most of the cannabis lube out there is made with coconut oil, so you can’t use it with that. It also uses nanotechnology, so it can get you high.

Bianca Green: Wow.

Molly Peckler: That’s the Lit Kit for Love. I’m super excited about that. That will be available in dispensaries around California. You can also check out KushQueenCannabis.com.

Bianca Green: Get me a kit.

Molly Peckler: I will. You will have a Lit Kit for sure.

Bianca Green: Thanks Molly, I love you.

Molly Peckler: Thanks for having me, I love you.

Bianca Green: Spark the Conversation is really excited to do this partnership with Ganjapreneur.com creating these podcasts. It’s a resource for cannabis professionals, advocates, patients, business owners, anyone really who’s in favor of responsible growth. Visit Ganjapreneur.com for daily cannabis news, career openings, company profiles and of course, more episodes of this podcast. We’re thankful to them and the partnership that we have with them. We appreciate the fact that they spark the conversation and help Ganjapreneurs grow.

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A black and white photograph of people milling down a street in a group.

Eventbrite Pulling Some Cannabis-Related Events, Suspending Organizer Accounts

Eventbrite, an event board and ticket processor is pulling some cannabis-related events and often suspending the host accounts after years of allowing such events to be hosted on the site, according to a report from Forbes. Eventbrite claims that the events violate “laws surrounding a federally regulated substance” and are asking the event hosts to “agree to only publish events” that comply with the law, the merchant agreement, and the site’s terms of use before unlocking the account.

Michael Zaytsev, the organizer of the New York Cannabis Film Festival, told Forbes that his account was suspended and the event pulled from the site despite him using Eventbrite to sell tickets for cannabis-related events, such as High NY networking events, for the past three years. Zaytsev said that he thinks the suspension of the film festival event could be due to the reference of CBD-infused popcorn.

James Jordan, an organizer for the Southern California Cannabis Business and Investment Group, said his account was frozen after listing a finance panel featuring cannabis investment firm executives, adding that he tried to contact Eventbrite about the action but couldn’t access the URL to file a complaint because his account was locked.

“This is a ridiculous way to do it. I probably lost half of my crowd from the event,” he said in the report. “I’ve had ticket companies calling me trying to get me to be on their platforms, but I like Eventbrite.”

Moreover, Jordan said that he has yet to receive payment for the 11 tickets sold on Eventbrite. Zaytsev, however, did have his account unlocked and Eventbrite had initiated a payout for the film festival tickets – but that only occurred after Forbes published the organizers’ accounts.

“In situations like this, organizers can expect any remaining payout balance from ticket sales made prior to the event being unpublished, to be issued the following week,” an Eventbrite spokesperson said in an email with Forbes. “We cannot permit any event where cannabis is included with the purchase of a ticket or consumption is facilitated.”

Despite the shutdown of the events, and at least two others, other cannabis events – such as a “420-friendly” yoga event in Boston and a Washington, D.C. “cannabis happy hour” which advertises “FREE DABS all night” remained on the site.

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The state flag of California flying on a clear, blue skied day.

California Legislature Joins the Fight to Deschedule Cannabis

For decades, medical cannabis patients and activists have called for the Federal Government to remove cannabis from the Schedule 1 narcotic list — now, the legislatures in California have taken a remarkable step toward validating those claims.

The California Assembly just passed a joint resolution in a 60-10 vote that calls for the federal descheduling of cannabis. Earlier this year, the California Senate passed the same resolution 34 to 2 as part of a request that Congress loosen banking restrictions on the cannabis industry. Removing cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances would significantly improve the environment for cannabis entrepreneurs by opening access to the banking system, and would promote more research into medical cannabis by allowing federally funded institutions to conduct medical cannabis inquiries.

Not needing the Governor’s signature, the joint resolution will now be sent to President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, California’s 2 Senators and California’s 53-member Congressional delegation. The Trump administration has not signaled a willingness to support cannabis reform, but the Senate Appropriations Committee has expressed concerns that the Schedule 1 designation is impeding medical cannabis research.

Consider New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s Marijuana Justice Act, which itself would deschedule cannabis, and there appears to be a groundswell of efforts to finally move cannabis from the Schedule 1 category.

The Controlled Substances Act set up the “scheduling” system in 1972 and sorted narcotics into five schedules. Cannabis was curiously put into the same Schedule 1 category as LSD and heroin, a designation reserved for “highly addictive” substances with “no known medical uses,” where it has remained for 45 years despite a large pool of research showing cannabis to be effective in treating a wide variety of medical conditions.

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A teacher gives a lecture while one student is on their phone during class.

Washington State Think Tank Finds Legalization Has Not Increased Teen Cannabis Use

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has released their second round of reports required under the state’s cannabis legalization law, finding that adolescent cannabis use is not up since legalization and the industry has employed nearly 10,900 people.

The Evaluation and Cost-Benefit Analysis indicates that while legalization has not led to a spike in cannabis use among teenagers, consumption has increased among adults aged 26-and-older. Moreover, the think tank found that since legalization, students in sixth through twelfth grades report that cannabis is harder to obtain, with 90 percent of sixth graders indicating cannabis is “very hard to get,” while the sentiment is shared by about 85 percent of eighth graders, 55 percent of tenth graders, and 40 percent of twelfth graders.

Among adults, binge drinking rates are also down about 2 percent since legalization, although 30-day heavy drinking and heavy cannabis use rates, defined as 20-plus days, have remained stable around 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

The researchers said the findings “represent a snapshot” of their progress to date and “are an intermediate step toward the ultimate benefit-cost analysis” of the legalization initiative.

The Employment and Wage Earnings in Licensed Marijuana Businesses analysis reported that the 10,894 cannabis industry employees are equivalent to 6,227 full-time employees, and the industry has paid $53,250,843 in wages since the launch of legal sales. On average, licensed cannabis companies employed an equivalent of 8.99 full-time employees in the final quarter of 2016, but over one-third of those businesses had fewer than four full-time employees. The average wage for a cannabis industry employee was $16.45 per hour, with a median wage of $13.44 per hour.

“The average wage is higher than the median wage because a few highly paid workers lifted the average above the median,” the report states.

As of April 11, there were 2,020 licensed cannabis businesses in Washington state, the bulk of which, 1,438, were producers or processors. Another 572 licenses were for retail dispensaries, with seven transportation licenses and three tribal compacts.

The researchers note on the employment report that there are “several limitations” to the research and they have “taken a conservative approach to estimation wherever possible.”

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The sun shines through a New England forest, pictured here piercing the foliage just above the trunk of a fallen tree.

Feds Seek MMJ Patient Info from Northeastern States; Massachusetts Complies

Officials in Massachusetts have complied with a medical cannabis patient data request from the White House National Marijuana Initiative, but Gov. Charlie Baker indicated that none of the submitted information can be used to identify patients, CBS Boston reports. The information included the gender, age, and date of cannabis prescription for the state’s 40,000-plus registered patients but not specific medical conditions – which was requested by the federal task force.

The National Marijuana Initiative is a project contained in the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program created by Congress in 1988. According to the report, other states were also sent requests for medical cannabis patient data. The NMI reports directly to the White House and not the Justice Department or Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Baker said officials would not do “anything that is going to violate anybody’s privacy.”

Dan Quigley, deputy coordinator for the NMI, told the Boston Globe the request was part of a project researching whether there was a link between how states regulate medical cannabis and cannabis use among different age groups within the general public.

“There are no black helicopters warming up in the bullpen,” Quigley, a former Colorado police officer and cannabis legalization opponent said in the report. “I have no idea where this is going to take us yet.”

According to the Globe report, other states asked for medical cannabis patient information by the NMI include Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont.

Update 8/28/17: In an email to Ganjapreneur, it was confirmed by Marijuana Program Administrator Lindsey Wells that the Vermont Marijuana Registry also received and complied with the NMI request.

The provided information included the approximate number of medical cannabis applications Vermont has received each year, which has risen from just 566 in 2012 to a whopping 4,310 in 2016. The information also covered the average age of cannabis patients in Vermont, which has risen from approximately 50 in 2013 to 53 years old in 2016, as well as the most popular conditions cited for medical cannabis access — of which, unsurprisingly, chronic pain (1,205 cases) tops the list with cancer (167), Multiple Sclerosis (77), and nausea (46) trailing far behind.

However, Vermont does not track the gender of its medical cannabis patients.

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A leather notepad, pen, and cell phone -- the early tools in an entrepreneurial journey.

‘High Five:’ Branding and Developing Products for All Five Senses

In a transient world with instant access and endless options, it’s more important than ever to create a cannabis brand that connects with your consumer on every level. I’ve taught some of the greatest brands in the world to develop their product in the most impactful way using all five senses.

In my last contribution, we discussed the concept of your brand being alive. But what does that look like in the cannabis industry? It’s our senses that keep us alive — incorporating them in how you promote yourself will keep your brand alive, too.

Let’s look at each sense and how you can incorporate it into your marketing to add value and a deeper connection with your customers.

Sight

Did you know over 80% of the information we retain is from visual interaction? This means how your brand looks is a critical piece in your success. This can go beyond your logo and into other elements of your business.

  • How is your team dressed?
  • What does your package look like when it comes to your customer?
  • What visual messaging are you using on social media?

Let’s look at the visual concepts over at Hi ™:

Friendly cannabis branding that makes you energized, excited, and wanting more. Photo Credit: Bruce Mau Design

Hi ™’s packaging is an excellent example of how a strong visual brand can portray a feeling. Their packaging portrays happiness while helping the consumer easily understand how each of their products can be used in everyday life.

From business cards to billboards, your visuals say volumes about your brand. They also promote thoughts, which turn into feelings, which turn into action. What is your look saying about you?

Smell

Smells have an extraordinary way of connecting us to memories. Take advantage of this sense and use it to connect to your audience.

As an example, the company I founded My Bud Vase ™ incorporates beautiful flower pokers to clean out our pieces. We give these out while vending and we know that it’s a natural instinct to smell a flower, so we decided to scent our flowers with hints of vanilla, sage, and lavender. Not only is this a pleasant surprise to the consumer, but it adds a distinctive differentiation to our product line.

Cannabis is often associated with strong smells, but consumers might be pleasantly surprised to find them incorporated into your branding itself. Photo Credit: Post No Bills

Look at your own business and think beyond the product or service itself. What could your packaging smell like? Don’t always work in the obvious choice of a skunky cannabis smell — get creative.

Sound

If your brand had a soundtrack, what would it be?

What we hear while we shop is proven to impact our mood and purchase choices. The atmosphere you create for your shoppers can be as impactful as the product itself. With that in mind, what is the vibe of your brand?

  • Are you creating a pleasant audible experience for your consumer?
  • What music do you play for phone calls put on hold?
  • What kind of mood do you want your customers to be in when they are in the presence of your brand?

Imagine pitching a new product and, when you open the packaging for the first time, you hear a drumroll in anticipation of the reveal. Light- or voice-activated sound chips are available for purchase and can add so much impact to your branding.

A peek inside of the Chalice Farms dispensary in Portland, Oregon. Photo Credit: Amarett Jans

Taste

This sense obviously ranks high in priority in the edibles industry, but think about how you can incorporate it in other ways.

What is the flavor of the city that your brand comes from? San Francisco evokes sourdough bread, Italy evokes pasta, Maine evokes lobster. Use these instinctual associations to create a unique experience.

If you’re a cannabis brand involving citrus terpenes, perhaps offer have some citrus candies on your store counter or at your tradeshow booth. Figure out how can you create a delicious experience and connect your branding with your audience on a completely different level.

Touch

The impact of touch cannot be underestimated. We are driven by the feel of a product.

Touch denotes the quality and worth of an item and many purchasing decisions are made by how something feels. Your business is an exchange of commerce, and this subtle sense has a major influence in the first impression of your product. From the clothes we wear to the sheets on our bed, to the journal we carry — touch speaks volumes. Many companies overlook how this sense translates into a desire to purchase and adds value to your selling price.

The Green Flower Media strain tracker journal has a unique touch and feel to make the product seem more legitimate and accessible.

Creative packaging is one of the most memorable ways to brand your company. The Green Flower Media strain tracker journal has a buttery leather feel, a feature important to the company because they wanted their users to use it frequently. They took the time to choose the right material that felt best when it was in your hand.

Have you taken the time to think of creative packaging options for your product?

People often say they are not creative, but if you can tap into the five senses, your creativity will soar. The senses drive everything we do. We are turned off or on to things that we process through our senses. It’s natural that we incorporate these in our day-to-day lives. It’s our senses that keep us alive, but we often do not incorporate them into our business life.

This is a whole new way to look at your brand — you can create maximum impact on quite often a minimal budget by incorporating the five senses. Make it your goal to integrate as many senses as possible to your cannabis branding and product development.

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Alex Hoggan: Staying the Course Amid Changing Regulations

Alex Hoggan is the founder of ChemHistory, a cannabis testing lab based outside of Portland, Oregon.

In this episode of the Ganjaprenuer.com podcast, Alex joins our host TG Branfalt to discuss the early days of Oregon’s cannabis testing landscape, the intricacies of pesticide testing under Oregon’s  strict testing rules, the regulatory switch last October that nearly drove the state’s marijuana industry to a grinding halt, and other issues related to entrepreneurship and running a successful and respectable laboratory.

Listen to the interview via the media player below, or keep scrolling down for a full transcript of this Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode.


Listen to the podcast:


Read the transcript:

TG Branfalt: Hey there, I’m your host TG Branfalt and you are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, where we try to bring you actionable information and normalized cannabis through the stories of ganjapreneurs, activists and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Alex Hoggan, he is the founder of ChemHistory, a testing lab out in Oregon, how you doin’ today Alex?

Alex Hoggan: I’m doing well, thanks for having me.

TG Branfalt: Absolutely, I’m thrilled to have you on the show today, discuss something that … I’ve had a couple of interviews here in Michigan with some testing guys, so I got the base, but let’s kick this off with you. What’s your background? How’d you get started in this space?

Alex Hoggan: Well I’m basically an entrepreneur, I had a son that is a scientist, he was working in a lab, then he got a job actually working for Agilent Technologies, who provide equipment to labs, so they sell the mass spectrometers and a little over 3 years ago, my son had been talking about wanting to open a lab and he was looking for different ways and opportunities for that to happen and we had heard about that there was a rule change or actually a law that had passed in Oregon for testing for cannabis and so we saw the opportunity and we’d be on the ground floor with virtually no competition at that time, maybe one or two other labs that had been in the market for maybe just a year or so and we thought “Hey, let’s go for it.”

And that’s basically what we did. That was about … So we are three years in business as of next month, so it’s been a challenge but it’s starting to finally take hold, which is what we’ve been hoping for.

TG Branfalt: Tell me a little bit more about what you guys do. What do you test? What do you test for over there at Chem History?

Alex Hoggan: Okay, so in Oregon, Oregon has the most comprehensive testing regulations on cannabis, I think, pretty much anywhere in the country, if not the world. We basically test for a full panel of pesticides, about 60 of the most commonly used pesticides on cannabis. We obviously test for potency and we test for residual solvents and terpenes. We do test for all the, when we say potency, all the different cannabinoids, such as THCA, CBDA, CBGA, THCV, CBDV, there’s a whole bunch of different cannabinoids that we test for, but mainly the ones for regulation are THCA, which converts to delta nine. We test for delta nine and THCA and then CBDA or CBD, which are the activated components of … Once you basically burn the plant or the compound, it turns into delta nine, or the activated part of the product.

TG Branfalt: So, in your experience thus far in the years that you’ve been in business, have you been asked more often to test for terpenes? That’s becoming kind of a hot thing that consumers want, so have you noticed a more demand for that sort of testing?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, it’s been off and on but definitely, there is a huge movement towards terpenes because the terpene profile is basically the aroma of the plant and that is really the signature of what makes something a skunk verses a sativa or indica or a hybrid. It basically is more of a signature something than you would find in just testing for potency. You don’t really know. There’s only other ways is they have some kits I think that have been developed for figuring out the DNA of the plant, that sort of thing, but ultimately, what makes … There’s really no way of saying “This is a sativa or an indica.” Other than you committing time to a terpene profile. The terpenes — the more and more people find out about it, the more popular they become because they do have medicinal values to ’em and it’s really interesting to see … I’m amazed every day at all the different strains that come into the lab of the different smells. It’s crazy how amazing some of ’em smell and how stinky some of ’em smell too.

TG Branfalt: I do want to back up a little bit. You said that your son’s background is … He’s a scientist and so, what was the process of setting up a lab when you personally didn’t have that background yourself, that knowledge?

Alex Hoggan: It was a learning curve. Like I said, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve come from owning my own business in the past, so it wasn’t like I just jumped into running my own business from nowhere. I’ve had multiple businesses in the last 30 years and so, you go through your due diligence, you write your business plan, you write down your … Your pro-forward all the costs that you’re gonna have to spend, all the equipment, all of this, all of that, and then you decide based on that business plan if it’s viable for you to jump in and at that time, it looked really good but what we found when we first jumped into the market was when you jump into an unregulated market … So there was a law that was passed, but there was no infrastructure from the government to enforce the law and/or to regulate that law.

What you ended up with is you have a whole bunch of people that jumped in at the same time, which is what happened here in Oregon and when we bought our equipment, we bought it based on that law, which says you have to test pesticides at 100 parts per billion, right? You had to go out and buy what they call a triple quad. Most labs that do basic pesticide testing, they have a single quad. In order to get down to that level of detection, you have to have a triple quad for the Oregon law and we were only one of two labs that actually even had that equipment and so what ended up happening was these other labs jumped into the market and they didn’t even have the equipment to even test for pesticides but yet, they were passing everyone when they would come to their lab for a pesticide test, so anyway, it was crazy and it was a really hard time for us because we would see pesticides all the time and we would fail people and they would not be our customer anymore. So they would go somewhere else where they get a pass, right?

We had to adjust to how the market was playing at that time and it was pretty brutal first couple years because when you had labs that weren’t regulated, that weren’t credited, they could literally just rubber stamp stuff, and you hear those stories, I really think a lot of those stories are true. I know they’re true, being here in Oregon for those first couple years, it was kinda brutal with … How can you compete against labs that basically can just shortcut everything and put out a really super cheap test and just kill the guys that are trying to do it right. Luckily voters in Oregon voted the rec law in and then the regulation was funded by the law and so it was about a year of planning through different committees within the government to come up with the laws and they finally kicked in last October, so we became accredited by the state of Oregon through, they call, the T9 standards or they call the Oregon Lab Accreditation Program.

It’s a really tough accreditation to get. It’s even more tough than you would get from a lot of labs that just have what they call the ISO certification, which is like an international certification for labs but you really have to run a tight ship. Anyways, to make a long story short, we were stuck in this market that didn’t appreciate what we were offering at that time because everyone wanted to just basically get the highest number on their test and they wanted to get a pass on their pesticides, so whoever could do that the best basically was winning, but unfortunately, a lot of those dudes didn’t even have the equipment to do it, right?

Now that things have shifted gears, only accredited labs can actually test for the cannabis industry here and we can charge basically a fair price and we can actually make money now where before we, you know, the first two years of business, we lost a lot of money and it really sucked. We thought we were gonna have to go under but luckily we weathered the storm and here we are.

TG Branfalt: With what you initially purchased to set up the lab, was that enough to meet the eventual demand or have you had to expand since you opened your doors?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so the first two years, the first year, it just ended up being me and my chemists and we had an assistant and then we … That was pretty much it. There was about just three of us. Three or four of us that just tried to get out there and make it happen and it was tough, because again, you’re competing against a market that didn’t want to pay for a real test and wasn’t even investing in the infrastructure at all. Yeah, we set up our lab … Our original investment was about $250,000, and again, we bought the equipment that was needed to actually support that particular law that had passed, but unfortunately again, it didn’t go down that way but we have just a standard business and to grow the business, three to four times that original budget, and we’re now finally paying back the original moneys that we borrowed basically to get the lab open.

Not all the money is borrowed, and I wouldn’t suggest people borrowing money to open a business in general, ’cause that’s tough to have that hanging on your back and you have … It takes a couple years to get your feet on the ground and get the business rolling, and a lot of times if you strap yourself upfront with the debt, it’s gonna hurt you, so we were lucky enough that we had a wise enough investor that allowed us to stay in the game without having to try and pay that money back right up front.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about the current industry and testing issues out in Oregon, but before we do that, we’re gonna take our first break, this is Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Alex Hoggan, founder of ChemHistory. Before the break we were talking about some of the struggles that you had getting our business off the ground and congratulations that you didn’t go under, especially how important testing has become in the space. I want to talk to you a bit about the regulations that went into effect earlier this year. By all accounts, those regulations ended up creating product shortages because, as you said, there weren’t enough tests, there weren’t enough testing facilities, so what was your experience like during that period when you were going through the initial steps when they rolled out the new rules?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so ultimately what happened, which was part of the reason why it created the shortages was … So the state of Oregon decided they were gonna allow the Oregon Lab Accreditation … Or the entity that the state uses for all the labs, the environmental labs here in Oregon, to be accredited through, they were gonna have them do the cannabis part. The only problem was is that again, they didn’t fund that program to really be successful, so they didn’t increase the employee loads or anything, so when we were trying to get accredited by the state of Oregon, it was really a, I don’t know how else to say it, it was a shit show because their people that they had working for them were working so hard and so much overtime and the state wouldn’t pay their overtime so when we were supposed to get accredited, one of the lead people called and said “Well, I’m not working today because I’m not getting paid overtime.” And we’re like “Really? Because we’re losing like thousands of dollars every freaking day and the whole industry’s going to crap because you guys can’t get over here and get us audited and get us going.” Right?

It was really really stressful. Actually as of right now, there is a bill that I think just passed yesterday that’s gonna fund the Oregon Lab Accreditation Program so that there can be more oversight for laboratories here in Oregon for cannabis and that’s really what needs to happen on a national level is, if the states are gonna jump in, they really need to have lab oversight because there is a lot of pressure that’s put on the labs, especially in the cannabis industry because everything is driven by that number, right? Everyone wants the highest number they can possibly get, right? 30%, and they get 12%, they can’t sell their stuff very easily, so everyone is just totally driven to make their stuff, their cannabis 20% or more, so the stuff, I’ve worked with so many growers. And they grow all these different prototypes and if they don’t test over 20%, they just basically get rid of them, right?

It’s really driven by that, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of strains that test under 20% that are really nice strains and they have really nice terpene profiles and people that smoke ’em, they love em, but when you’re a dispensary and someone walks in the door, they’re looking for the highest number, right? It’s crazy that way. There’s been talk about ways of maybe curving that number thing where there would be like a low, medium and high kinda thing, it wouldn’t be tied to like 21.2, you know. That is the one thing around the cannabis industry that’s a little stressful is people always think their stuff is higher than it is. “There’s no way it could be 14%.”

Exactly, and there is variances in the labs, in the sense of we’re still not totally standardized, meaning yes we do take a proficiency test twice a year and we have to fall within 20% of what that known value is of the people who provide the proficiency test but ultimately we’re a lot at about 20% variance, so if you had a 20% flower, it could easily be 24% or 16% depending on how well or how not well someone extracted and put it on their instrument and then came up with that number for you. There is that. When it comes to pesticides, that’s a whole nother ball game. Pre-October, those first two years; in order to cheat in the marketplace, we offered an extended pesticide product for all of our growers, there was maybe one or two growers that really felt like it was important, and they did it, right? They went went out, they upgraded, paid the extra money, had the profile but in order to compete in that market that I was telling you about with all those other labs, we had to cut our pesticide list down to almost nothing.

We were only really testing for maybe 10 pesticides because, again, if someone fails, they’re just gonna run over to the other place and get a pass and there were … Now, that’s all stopped. In this market, with the regulated market, everything has to be recorded through metrics, and if you get a fail, you’re done. You basically have to … There is gonna be some chances for people to remediate your products, but ultimately you have to destroy it if it can’t be remediated. It is a game changer and it has worked, so where we would see tons of pesticides pre-October, now the fail rate for flowers is probably about 10%, and then on concentrates, it’s about 26%, where pre-October, if you failed your pesticide test, you would go run and make it into oil, right? And then you’d try a lab that would pass that for you and you get rid of your stuff, but now you can’t do that. You really have to take your grow seriously and you really have to not use those pesticides that are on the list or you’re gonna fail and it’s not gonna feel good and you’ll lose a bunch of money.

TG Branfalt: Does Oregon require the testing of heavy metals?

Alex Hoggan: No, no they don’t.

TG Branfalt: Do you think that’s a problem?

Alex Hoggan: I think it’d be … I don’t see it as a problem but if you’re growing somewhere where there’s a lot of heavy metals in the soil, I guess you might want to do that but I don’t see … A lot of these guys are buying super duper soil and all that kind of stuff. I really don’t see that as a problem.

TG Branfalt: You don’t see a real risk associated with that is what you’re saying?

Alex Hoggan: I don’t see it but, again, it could be out there in different areas of the country where if you’re growing outdoor and you’ve got high levels of arsenic or some other heavy metal in your soil, it could potentially be a problem but generally, I think most people are doing indoor grows and they’re bringing their soil in and they’re bringing their organic stuff, their organic soils and stuff, I don’t see it as a problem.

TG Branfalt: When I toured a lab here in Michigan, one of the things that got the guys there really excited was they had found this strain that had just incredible high levels of CBG, that they had never seen before and so what’s kinda the strangest profile that you’ve seen? Have you seen anything that’s sort of you looked at the number and you’re like “Wow, that’s really different”?

Alex Hoggan: Well, high levels of CBG — the CBG is a precursor for THC, so it could be they harvested the plant too early, and that’s why they’re seeing high levels of CBG, but there are certain strains, obviously there’s the high CBD strains, there are some strains that have high levels of THCV, and they’re still a lot to be learned about THCV. It’s another part of the compound that as more research is done, has some really good medicinal values, there’s the CBDV, which currently has some really good medicinal values as well.

We do see some strains have high levels of that, but generally, there’s quite a few CBD strains that are really good that are producing high levels of CBD like critical mass and there’s a bunch of them out there but what’s happening in Oregon now is they’re allowing the hemp farmers to get rolling so they have a … There’s quite a few strains of hemp that have high levels of CBD and that, I think is gonna be a game changer as well because these guys can grow crap loads of hemp, produce lots of CBD products.

TG Branfalt: And is that gonna have to go through the same testing process?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, so here in Oregon they did do that, just recently they’re making it so that they have testing regulations that are gonna be covered by the cannabis regulations so it’s a little bit tough because again, the pesticide testing is tough because you can’t really use pesticides at all and 90% of the market when you go to the grocery store has pesticides on it, right? But in cannabis in Oregon, you can’t have it on there, otherwise you’re gonna fail.

TG Branfalt: Are you guys preparing yourself for now an influx of another product that you’re gonna have to test?

Alex Hoggan: Yes. Yup, we are. In fact, we’re already testing for … There’s quite a few people that are out there that are doing this so we’re already seeing a quite a bit starting to test, so that’s cool.

TG Branfalt: I want to talk to you a bit more about public policy and testing, but before we do that, take a short break, this is Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m TG Branfalt.


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TG Branfalt: Welcome back to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast, I’m your host TG Branfalt here with Alex Hoggan, founder of ChemHistory out in Oregon. I wanted to ask you. You touched on this a little bit earlier. What, in your opinion, should public policy include in newly legal states with regard to testing? We’ve got Mass coming online, Maine coming online, Nevada coming online. What would you advocate in those states with regard to testing, with your experience having gone through Oregon’s shift and that sort of thing?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, I would definitely look at your most commonly used pesticides on cannabis and I would definitely include those as part of the regimen for testing because when you figure there is … The wholesale value of most strains are around $2000 a pound and retail is $4000 a pound. If you find yourself in trouble when you’re growing and you find all of a sudden you got spiders all over your plants or you got powdery mildew all over, you’re looking really fast and hard for something to use and a lot of times people are just tempted to do it and unfortunately some of that stuff is not so good for consumers.

Example is Myclobutanil, which is Eagle 20. It works really good, you just dip your clone roots in there and you’re not gonna have any fungus problems, you’re not gonna really have any powdery mildew problems but that is one of the ones that when you smoke it, it does turn into a poison and I think it sits really super similar to cyanide, so you really don’t want to be smoking that stuff and that one particular pesticide, we see all the time and it was really super popular before pre-October. People use pesticides and they kill the neurological of the pest. They go after the neurological brain or whatever of the pest, right? You gotta figure if you’re smoking that, it can’t be good, right?

TG Branfalt: Is there anything else that you see a lot of that maybe aren’t included in … Oregon’s really strict, right? Would you suggest that other states follow Oregon’s example or is it too strict?

Alex Hoggan: Well, I definitely think there could be some happy mediums. There are some considered organic type pesticides that could be used that can’t be used. I do feel like there should be some give and take there, meaning there should be the ability for these growers to use some of these pesticides that are considered organic/not harmful. Some of ’em are just basically like bacteria that just basically work on different things on the plant so that it keeps the plant stronger and healthier, but they can’t use ’em so I will applaud Oregon growers because they’ve innovated and they figured it out, right? A lot of these oil companies, they’re doing extractions now or are testing clean oil and that’s not an easy thing to do. They were saying in California they did some samples off the shelves down there they had ’em tested and like 80% of ’em would fail on the Oregon regulation.

It’s easy to grow with pesticides, right? It makes your job way easier. It really takes a seasoned person who knows what they’re doing in order to really get that super duper bud that doesn’t have to have pesticides on it. I think they just need to get the right minds together so that there can be allowed some of these ones that are considered safe and natural so to speak. Pretty much what Oregon growers are using now are good pests, meaning good bugs, and they’re using cinnamon and garlic and different teas that people brew that can, you can spray it on a plant. That kinda thing. There is a lot of nutritional stuff that they feed the plants that help them stay strong. That’s a whole other topic but we see some crazy good bud come through here that you’re just like “How did they grow that?”

TG Branfalt: Do you think that there’s a way that legal states, maybe industry associations, things like that, do you think that there’s a way that they could create a national standard for testing and would you support that sort of action?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, I think that’s actually happening right now, and I forgot the name of the organization who’s doing that but yeah, I think that’s actually happening right now. What would be nice is, for instance, right now we have to use these standards that we buy from basically two different companies and the standards are basically the known amount of THC or CBD, or whatever we’re testing for, but they charge us like … I’m talking about racket, it comes in a one mil vile, which one mil is like nothing, right?

TG Branfalt: Yeah.

Alex Hoggan: That’s 160 bucks and 40% of it is basically methanol, right? It’s like “Are you kidding me?” That’s like $60,000 a gallon. We have to use those every day in order to do the testing. Basically if the government, the federal government would declassify it as this illegal thing, then we could get a more potent/standard that we could use to be more accurate in our testing, and it would be so much cheaper because right now in order for us to get anything better we would have to have a license from the state for controlled substances, so we’d have to go out and get all this extra stuff and it would be crazy and you’d have to go through all this extra thing, and no one’s doing that because it’s just ridiculous. If they could get that part figured out, that would be very helpful for the laboratories.

TG Branfalt: Do you have any insight as to the program that’s being worked on presently?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, it’s a national organization. I’ll have to find who they are. I can’t remember. I can find out though and let you know.

TG Branfalt: Do you know what sort of things are included in that at all?

Alex Hoggan: I think it’s gonna be for potency testing. I’m not so sure about pesticide but potency is the big one, so there’s gonna be standard methodologies that would come about but it is … Most labs, for potency anyway, I know here in Oregon are doing pretty close to the same thing. For pesticides, I don’t really know if everyone’s doing exactly the same thing. I would probably guess no, because we do still see variances between labs on pesticides we’ll do retests for certain labs and they’ll do retests for us. We definitely do come up with different things …

TG Branfalt: Is that a way to keep each other honest?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah. We do it because the growers are allowed. If they get failed, they’re allowed to take it to another lab, but if they get failed twice, they’re done. If they do get a fail, they have to have actually two other labs pass them in order to get a pass.

TG Branfalt: Oh, wow. Well, what advice do you have for cultivators, dispensaries and manufacturers when they are submitting products for testing?

Alex Hoggan: Well, one of the things that we came up with just recently because there was so much pushback from the industry, come October 1, that they were basically gonna gut the Oregon regulations, right? But there has been a lot of public outcry the last two months because they were gonna gut those rules, so what we did in anticipation of that is we created a seal for our product called ChemCheck Approved. It’s a consumers choice seal and we are prepared to offer that in case they gut the law.

We’ve already talked to most of the people we work with now and the reality is consumers want pesticide testing. We’re gonna sell people … In fact, the laws are going to come down tomorrow, so we’re really anxious about tomorrow about what’s gonna happen ’cause they had kept it really tight knit, which is really kind a weird that they would do that when they’re talking about overhauling the whole thing and maybe you could put labs out of business, we don’t really know for sure until tomorrow but that’s one of the things we’ve been kinda stressed out about, that’s why we came up with this program called ChemCheck Approved so we are offering other labs in other states, we can teach them how ’cause it’s not … cannabis is really tough to test pesticides for. It’s such a dirty — I don’t want to say dirty, but it’s such a complex matrix because it’s so sticky that it really messes with the equipment and the instruments and it’s not easy.

That’s why in Oregon, there’s like 20 labs for cannabis but only 6 of us right now are doing pesticide testing because it’s difficult. We spend a lot of money with consultants that do pesticide testing to come help us develop our methods and, like I said, it tweaks the instruments so we’re constantly having to maintain and do maintenance on our instruments because of how dirty the cannabis matrix is, especially for concentrates ’cause you gotta figure concentrates are 10 times more concentrated than flower and it’s that much stickier. It’s so sticky it’s ridiculous. Putting that on your instruments is terrible.

TG Branfalt: This ChemCheck Approved program, can you tell me more about what that is?

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, what we’re gonna do in a lot of the trade magazines like the consumers would find at a dispensary, we will have basically an ad talking about the seal, that they should look for that seal on their product because the bottom line is if you don’t have that seal on your product, there is a good chance you’re smoking stuff that has pesticides on it. If I was a dispensary owner/grower and I was doing it right, I would want that seal to set myself apart from the guys that aren’t doing it right, because especially in these new markets, there’s gonna be a ton of dudes because it just is what it is. They’re gonna jump in, they don’t know what they’re doing, they go somewhere they’re told, that this works, but they’re not told that it has this in it and then they use it, it works good but if someone tested for it, it’d probably have high levels of pesticides in it and then the consumer basically loses, right? And they don’t even know it.

That’s why the ChemCheck Approved would be such a good thing is that if consumers, all they have to do is look for that seal and they have the piece of mind knowing that it’s been tested. Now some of the things that we’ve run into related to that is there’s a trust factor, right? Once you leave that grow site, even now, there’s nothing to say they couldn’t bait and switch the whole product. What we’ve developed is a random shelf test, so we’ll go back in after the fact once or twice a year and buy their product right off the shelf and then test it just to keep people honest.

TG Branfalt: That’s a really really really smart idea.

Alex Hoggan: Yeah. Yup. And it’s what consumers want.

TG Branfalt: Absolutely it is. Finally, can you tell me … What would you tell entrepreneurs interested in getting into the testing side of things in the cannabis industry?

Alex Hoggan: It’s really important to have good employees. That is wow. You really need people that know … Especially the first two years, you need people that are gonna be team players and you need people who are committed that will do it. Like I said, that’s probably your number one deal, right? I don’t know, if I was gonna do it over again, it’s tough because I didn’t have a science background, my son had a science background, so I did have that, but you really gotta get in there and find out what’s going on because you don’t want to be in the dark and you don’t want to have people holding a gun to your head because they know more than you do, right? You just gotta be really careful and really knowing this is what you really want to do and you gotta find the right people ’cause if you don’t have the right people, you have nothing.

TG Branfalt: I really want to thank you for taking time out to join us on this podcast. Really really enlightening stuff and I’m really hoping that the consumer drive for clean product is not curtailed by the legislature with this upcoming vote.

Alex Hoggan: Yeah, me too. We’re praying today.

TG Branfalt: Well thanks again for joining us on the show.

Alex Hoggan: Okay, yeah, well thanks for having me. Good talking with you.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the apple iTunes store. On the Ganjapreneur.com website, you will find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated daily along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google play. This episode was engineered by Jeremy Sebastiano, I’ve been your host TG Branfalt.

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