Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

In this episode, Bryan Fields (Twitter: @bryanfields24) and Kellan Finney (Twitter: @Kellan_Finney) sit down with Dr. John Abrams, The Chairman, and CSO at The Clinical Endocannabinoid System Consortium (CESC), to discuss:

• What and who is The CESC?
• What is the endocannabinoid system?
• Receptors in the human body
• Research that’s currently underway to illuminate how to properly use cannabinoid products
• Introduction to The Dosing Project
• Understanding how cannabis interacts with the human body
• Future studies that The CESC will dive into

About The CESC: The CESC is an experienced committee of scientists who hold the passionate belief that the pursuit of knowledge involves the collaboration of diverse communities.

Website: thecesc.org

Twitter: @TheCESCorg

Facebook: @TheCESCorg

LinkedIn: The Clinical Endocannabinoid System Consortium (CESC)

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The Dime Episode 57 Transcript: The Leading Non-Profit of Cannabis Science Research ft. Dr. John Abrams Chairman of The CESC

Dr_Abrams edited

[00:00:00] Bryan Fields: This is the dime, dive into the cannabis and hemp industry through trends, insights, predictions, and tangent.

[00:00:10] Bryan Fields: What’s up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the dime as always. I’ve got my right hand, man. Tell him Finney here with me. And this week we’ve got a very special guest, Dr. John Abrams, chairman and founder of C E S C.

[00:00:22] Bryan Fields: John. Thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today?

[00:00:25] Dr. Abrams: Oh, I’m great. Thank you for providing the opportunity. I’m looking forward to this discussion.

[00:00:30] Kellan Finney: How are you doing? Just enjoying another sunny day out here in Colorado. Cool.

[00:00:35] Bryan Fields: Ready to dive in. So John, before we get started, Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into the cannabinoid space.

[00:00:44] Dr. Abrams: I have been interested in this field for over 50 years. I’ve come from the bay area. I grew up in Palo Alto and this was starting to become common cannabis use. As I was in late high school. It was one of the experiences that we add [00:01:00] and it has been part of my life ever since I’m a biochemist and I’ve been in biotech and pharma for a good part of my career, the major part of my career.

[00:01:11] Dr. Abrams: And this has been an under a theme or a, you know, in the background until perhaps the last decade, when I decided I would really try and understand. The bases of cannabis science, the cannabinoid industry, and most importantly, how cannabis can unlock the human potential and understand the cannabis mind.

[00:01:38] Bryan Fields: Let’s kind of dive into that and you’ve accomplished many, many things in your career here. So the CSC, what is it?

[00:01:46] Dr. Abrams: Can you start that? So the CSC is an acronym for the clinical endocannabinoid system consortium. It’s a nonprofit, a 5 0 1 C3 type of [00:02:00] corporation that we started about five years ago. My illustrious clinical colleague, Dr.

[00:02:05] Dr. Abrams: Joel tolerant, whom will also be on this podcast at a future point. And I started recognizing that to be in. Healthcare space to be able to get grants donations and all it’s felt best. And the best structure was to be in a non profit format. In choosing the name. We decided that we were focusing on the endocannabinoid system.

[00:02:34] Dr. Abrams: We were taking a medical approach, thereby clinical endocannabinoid system. And because we’re intensely focused on the need for collaboration. And partnership and sharing. We looked at this as a consortium. And so our name says it

[00:02:51] Bryan Fields: all. I know cannabinoid system, for those who are maybe on familiar, can you kind of shed some light on exactly what that is?

[00:02:57] Bryan Fields: It’s a,

[00:02:58] Dr. Abrams: another system, [00:03:00] another physiological system that has been. Recently described and discovered as we, first of all, came to understand the structural and chemical basis of the prime active ingredient in cannabis, namely tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. As, and this discovery was pioneered by race.

[00:03:22] Dr. Abrams: Mushu long back in the seventies. I believe along with that, then a couple years later came in understanding of what receptors that is. If the THC is a key, then the receptor is the lock that, that key fits into to unlock. Physiological signaling. These are components then of a larger system, which has become to be called the endocannabinoid system.

[00:03:51] Dr. Abrams: It has also evolved our understanding to include the natural ligature, the natural compounds that our own [00:04:00] bodies. Right. That trigger and function in this system. The endocannabinoid system is like any other system we might learn in biology, the circulatory system, muscular skeletal system reproductive system.

[00:04:15] Dr. Abrams: It’s a, another collection of ligands Keys and receptors lock and binding entities, binding protein. It’s a whole system that we need to understand and discover, and it is majorly influenced by phytocannabinoids as opposed to our own indogenous logins. Endocannabinoids phytocannabinoids are produced. By the plant, the cannabis plant.

[00:04:43] Dr. Abrams: And that was the entry

[00:04:47] Bryan Fields: from the endocannabinoid system. The majority of people understand those areas. Is this like, can you kind of shed some light on that? Because I feel like we have conversations with some people in the space, and they’re surprised to hear some of this

[00:04:58] Kellan Finney: information [00:05:00] and more people are becoming aware of the endocannabinoid system.

[00:05:03] Kellan Finney: The entourage effect is really prevalent now within kind of the. Popular culture of cannabis, right? People are realizing that if they ingest just the THC molecule, they have a different experience than if they ingest the THC molecule with some of the other phytocannabinoids like turpines and, and other ubiquitous molecules within the cannabis plant.

[00:05:27] Kellan Finney: I would say probably the most well-known aspect of the endocannabinoid system comes in terms of how CBD and THC differ in how they interact with the human body. There’s this CB one receptor and CB two receptor that kind of the general public has grouped into two categories that the CBD molecule interacts with.

[00:05:47] Kellan Finney: Your CB two receptors. And the THC molecule interacts with your CB one receptor and one’s in your brain and one’s not, that’s why one gets you high. And the other doesn’t, I think that’s kind of like the general understanding right now, [00:06:00] which is there is so many more receptors and variables to consider when truly trying to understand how those molecules are interacting with your endocannabinoid system as well.

[00:06:12] Dr. Abrams: And so one of the issues is that perhaps some of the popular knowledge that’s out there. Is maybe not. Absolutely correct. And so I’m not sure I’m comfortable with a dichotomy the way you just described with THC affecting CB one and say CBD affecting CD two, if you will. I think that’s probably not born out by the gamut or scientific literature that’s being created in this.

[00:06:45] Dr. Abrams: It’s probably better to understand that there are multiple different classes of receptors a lot on, in, beyond CB one and CB two. And these important entities are affecting other [00:07:00] classes of receptors. And my own view is that one of the principal roles that CB two is triggering on a, another class of receptors.

[00:07:10] Dr. Abrams: Called the trip channels, TRP channels transient receptor protein channels. And this then fits in with many of the defined effects that these lie Gans that these phytocannabinoids are creating. But I think it’s overly simplistic to simply divide it as well. One hits one kind of receptors. the other login hit CB two.

[00:07:36] Dr. Abrams: I would encourage us not to be going down that pathway. However, it is useful if we looked at how the endocannabinoid system interacts. Other systems in the body. And you mentioned that CB one, the receptor may be predominantly brain or nervous system oriented or localized CB two, [00:08:00] probably a little more general, but it has a much more prevalent localization in cells of the immune system.

[00:08:06] Dr. Abrams: And it makes sense rather to look at the result in biology as effective. Are you turn hearing through CB one or are you triggering through but of course, CAC triggers both CB one and CB two. So it reacts, it works in both. The system is nuanced and then it goes on, there are other receptors in the class that.

[00:08:31] Dr. Abrams: And CB two are in, they all have complicated names and complicated biochemistry associated with it, but the devil’s in the details. And our mission is to deconvolute and explain this as clearly as possible to both the scientific and the light community. So let’s go

[00:08:52] Bryan Fields: back to one of the first things you were saying about different with the way Ellen approach that right.

[00:08:57] Bryan Fields: It seems like we’ve got to understand and laid the groundwork for [00:09:00] understanding exactly how it works. We

[00:09:02] Dr. Abrams: even began well, again, the biochemistry and physiology of this is not novel. Many of the other systems that we study or understand in biochemistry utilize similar mechanisms or similar pathways.

[00:09:20] Dr. Abrams: It’s just an essence, expanding the vocabulary list of what is in the human or what, what is in the organism. To understand how this works. It’s not reinventing, it’s just reapplying or fine tuning or expanding the vocabulary. We add new receptor classes. We have new. Well, again, new keys that interact with that.

[00:09:48] Dr. Abrams: I hope that that’s kind of clear. It’s not, we have to do a lot of heavy lifting for novelty. It’s more, how do you, what we learned in pursuing studies [00:10:00] in the end of cannabinoid system fit into our existing. Understanding of how it works in the first

[00:10:06] Bryan Fields: place is the endocannabinoid system commonly taught in school.

[00:10:11] Dr. Abrams: I think, you know, the answer to that, but unfortunately not. And it has been said that many med students are not even reached in that yet. You know, it’s only a couple of decades old and med school curriculum can often. B you know, going back centuries or so, you know, there’s a large historical record here.

[00:10:31] Dr. Abrams: So a little bit, we’re the victim of novelty in trying to place this into our overarching hierarchy. Like I was just saying. And so part of our mission, I think, is to explain and understand. In the context of what we already know about existing system, but at the end of the day, we do our programs, right.

[00:10:53] Dr. Abrams: And we need our goals. Then the endocannabinoid system will be core curricula in med schools [00:11:00] going forward. What are those goals? Well, there’s trying to develop programs. That can allow us to understand the deconvolute some of the problems or, or puzzles that we’re seeing in this. I mean, and this sounds a little kind of, not so clear, but one of the main issues that we’ve been facing in this is what we call a many to many problems.

[00:11:28] Dr. Abrams: That is the plant. The botanical source, the plant has a lot of different components. That interact is Kellen was referring to entourage effect or synergy or whatever. And we have many different receptors, many different locks that these fit into. And there are many different situations or doses or times of day or whatever.

[00:11:53] Dr. Abrams: So it’s this huge many to many problems. And our job is to try to deconvolute [00:12:00] this and find system systems or systematic taxonomy descriptors that will help us understand and simplify this. So we can clearly understand this has this effect in this context. Another agent or another phytocannabinoid has a second effect in this system together.

[00:12:21] Dr. Abrams: They synergize that is they add the effects together or they compete. They block each other’s effect. All this has to be worked out so that we can understand how optimally to use this product and enjoy it. Whether it’s for lifestyle or for medicinal purposes,

[00:12:41] Bryan Fields: they will sit. And I want to tell them to kind of dive in here from undertaking of what John described.

[00:12:46] Bryan Fields: I mean, the complexity of that challenge is, is, sounds like an uphill battle. Is that the way you hear it? Yeah, I

[00:12:51] Kellan Finney: mean, but anything in the scientific world is an uphill battle and I think that. The CSC, how John described it is the only [00:13:00] way that the human race really tackles these kinds of daunting obstacles, if you will.

[00:13:04] Kellan Finney: Right? These kinds of projects of understanding the physical world around us. Right. It’s not going to be one group that’s, it’s going to be collaborative effort individuals across the globe. Right. And you can even see that we’ve just, we’re on the precipice of kind of a logarithmic curve, in my opinion, associated with scientific research, directed at understanding how this cannabis plant and the chemicals, it produces changes.

[00:13:31] Kellan Finney: Human’s perception on the world, around them, right. In terms of the psychological and the psychedelic experience that people have when they consume the plant. And I mean, the amount of literature that’s published daily now is, is pretty phenomenal, right? If you look at it from even 10, 20 years ago, and it’s only increasing every day, and I think that that’s really what it boils down to.

[00:13:53] Kellan Finney: Is it haunting task to try to understand all how five or 600 different chemicals in one plant. [00:14:00] Affect the human mind. Right. And it’s not going to be accomplished by 5, 6, 10 scientists with some pipe hats and some Erlenmeyer flasks. Right. And the, in a lab, like it’s definitely going to take a collaborative effort and a consortium to be able to push the scientific knowledge associated with this forward.

[00:14:21] Kellan Finney: And the other thing is it’s, you could throw a giant army of people at it, but it’s going to take time. These things aren’t just. Checking the box, achieving the goal. Like it’s, you’re working with the real world it’s messy and you never really know what what’s going to come out of. A lot of the experiments you do.

[00:14:35] Kellan Finney: It’s, it’s going to be guessing and going out into the real world and seeing what happens and then reporting on it. And then a lot of other really, really smart individuals look at what you did, kind of provide them your critiques. And then they’re going to go out and try to build on what you do. You did and that’s science, right?

[00:14:51] Kellan Finney: It’s it’s the only way to kind of move these kinds of projects forward is. Taking that scientific approach, if you will.

[00:14:58] Dr. Abrams: And if I could just follow up [00:15:00] on that, because that’s an excellent narrative there. I think fundamentally our approach in this is to provide some kind of overarching systematics or systematic approach.

[00:15:14] Dr. Abrams: And I would outline that is understanding on the one hand. The chemo type thing, the understanding as well as we can, the list of products that are in this complex, mechanical and making that list understanding what is there that we’re talking about. And then on the other side, being able to quantify effect that we’re studying in a reputable manner, whether it’s physiological effects, mental effects biomarkers, we use that term.

[00:15:48] Dr. Abrams: That’s where a biomarker is a key indicator of a state change. In a biology or in a physiological response. But you have to [00:16:00] approach this systematically. So if you can get your content lexicon established and you can get a series of reputable affects or outcomes on to fight or measure. You just start putting it together and become ballooning as you go and drawing your conclusions.

[00:16:19] Dr. Abrams: And I think fundamentally this is the basis of the CSC approach. We’re trying to develop and bring. That kind of systematic into this

[00:16:31] Kellan Finney: field circle back on one thing you did say and tracking. So you mentioned tracking the effects that individuals have from different chemovars and this is something that the CSC has already embarked upon in terms of the ghosting project.

[00:16:46] Kellan Finney: You want to kind of elaborate a little more about the dosing project and how that has been pivotal in humanity’s effort to try to understand how these different chemovars.

[00:16:58] Dr. Abrams: No, certainly thank you for that [00:17:00] prompt show. The flagship program of the CFC is in fact, the dosing product that Kellen was just alluding to.

[00:17:08] Dr. Abrams: This was a program that grew out of a challenge that my colleague Joel tolerant. Back in 2016, when as a cannabis clinician, he was being challenged by his patients, recommend to them, what should I use? How much should I use? What is best for this indication? And sadly, there was no basis of this. And we came up with the idea that folks that are using these products, this medication.

[00:17:43] Dr. Abrams: Preparations might actually be able to report on their responses and guide these kinds of ads or provide answers and help guide our knowledge in the space. John tolerant is a bit of a rebel, and I really salute [00:18:00] him for his view that rather than clinicians necessarily dictating patients, his approach is let the patient explain to you what is working for them.

[00:18:11] Dr. Abrams: And you keep track and correlate that. So in essence, that was the heart of what we were putting together here. And we decided we, we would likely be able to do this where they crowdsource web based query platforms. And so back in 2016, we put together a proof of concept version of this, where we would be asking folks.

[00:18:34] Dr. Abrams: How much flour. And this was initially limited in scope because we knew this program, this project, or this problem is broad again in systematics. If you need to get started, define your scope, narrow it to the point where you could draw some conclusions. So we concentrated on asking folks about flour, not other processed cannabis products.[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Dr. Abrams: Because they’re just so complex and asking them simply how much they were using by route of administration of inhalation, thereby smoking combusting, blazing cannabis or vaping it, but it was restricted to that mode. It was restricted to flower and it was restricted to the two top indications. That was tolerant.

[00:19:24] Dr. Abrams: We’re seeing in his clinical practice, namely pain and disordered sleep. And so we put out a web-based platform for this, and we were trying to ascertain, could we, based on this kind of crowdsourced. Come up with dosing guidelines for pain and disordered sleep for what people were using. And the answer was a resounding yes, and proof of concept.

[00:19:52] Dr. Abrams: And we’ve presented on this at Amarillo conference in 2018. We’ve written up reports, some of that can be seen [00:20:00] on our website. So it is a very useful and fruitful approach. And now our goals. Is to produce version 2.0, which will be much more, which will be expanded beyond that. It will now include multiple modes of administration.

[00:20:17] Dr. Abrams: It will be expanded to not just flour, but various process forms of cannabis. Well useful for oral and ingested motive administration or topical, the indications will be expanded out and the clinical survey platforms are expanding as well. And the proof of concept phase we simply ask what kind of response on a four category scale, no response, partial response, almost complete or complete response.

[00:20:50] Dr. Abrams: And we coded and analyzed the data that way. Now we’re inserting other survey modules into that, including [00:21:00] mood assessment, psychedelic altered state assessments. These are all standard surveys that are being used in the medical fields or psychology fields. We’ve asked about adverse events, side effects in proof of concept dosing products.

[00:21:18] Dr. Abrams: That will be slightly expanded and modified so that we can come up with what. Negative effects or what bad events may be occurring, but basically this work in proof of concept. And so we’re very excited to be able to expand this. And it is one of our key flagship initiatives under the clinical correlates program with the CSC that we plan to pursue in the near term

[00:21:46] Bryan Fields: for individuals.

[00:21:47] Bryan Fields: Did you need to feel comfortable with that study? And then I have a

[00:21:50] Dr. Abrams: follow-up question. So it’s a great question, Brian. And let me just say that what we’re basically doing is what’s called a [00:22:00] phase. Clinical study, if you will. Clinical drug development typically follows a three phase development program phase one where you’re looking for toxicity in the preparations that you’re administering to people.

[00:22:18] Dr. Abrams: Phase two is looking to try and ascertain what that dose should be. And phase three is looking for efficacy. Am I getting the desired effect? This is a classical paradigm that EU FDA, China, PRC, China, FDA uses. This is very useful drug develop. Once your drug is approved. You do post-marketing surveys and these are typically referred to as phase or where you’re actually looking for what kind of responses beyond what the drug may have been identified for?

[00:22:58] Dr. Abrams: What about [00:23:00] side effects that were not part of the initial studies? So they tend to be broader in our case because of the way. Our models work. We were looking for statistical significance in our models and we could just keep going. Accruing respondents until we hit significance. So it’s not like we had to go in and negotiate with any agency up front that we will put 50 or 60 or a hundred to get those kind of answers.

[00:23:33] Dr. Abrams: But it’s fair to say that for the THC responses that we were trying to measure in smoke flower, as we hit about a hundred respondents, it became real. And so that answers your question it’s at that level. But of course, if you’re trying to find nuances, you’re trying to find what interacts with that. THC, what turkeys or other components [00:24:00] that are present.

[00:24:01] Dr. Abrams: You need more respondents in order to tease out that complexity in order to deconvolute that many to many problems. So I think, I mean, I’m answering your question simply it’s on the order of a hundred or so to get started, but of course our goal is to do much larger data. So that we can begin to deconvolute and understand what either minor cannabinoids or terpenoids or other components, files, esters that are present in.

[00:24:32] Dr. Abrams: In this botanical, how they affect the response,

[00:24:36] Bryan Fields: the reason how many is because obviously everyone handles flour differently may on women, time of day. Wait. And for me personally, every time I consume flower, I’m hungry. And then Sleepy’s. I might not be the best for that, but others might have a different experience.

[00:24:51] Bryan Fields: So I was wondering how you could feel comfortable in, in kind of segmenting all of those data variables and then feeling comfortable with the output you have and understanding that. Okay. Because [00:25:00] we’ve seen enough significant enough difference to go forward with the next

[00:25:03] Dr. Abrams: one. I mean, that’s a great question, Brian, but if your survey methodology specifically is asking about fast and in essence, we are, we’re talking about mood survey.

[00:25:17] Dr. Abrams: And mood surveys specifically can address or do address questions of fatigue, calmness, tension, et cetera, that comes out of the analysis. Doesn’t it? Because you can tell if the bulk of your respondents are reporting that way, then you know, that’s what the response is. If it’s. And I believe it will, or it does.

[00:25:39] Dr. Abrams: You begin to understand how that subsetting occurs and you begin to look at well, what is behind that sub setting? Is it gender? Maybe, maybe, probably not. Is it genotype you might be able to you know, you’re marrying these kind of work with genetic screening that is [00:26:00] increasingly popular. And so you’ve got that parameter.

[00:26:03] Dr. Abrams: You can ask questions or we know about when did you dose How much did you smoke? And most importantly, what did you take it with? And that is another aspect of this that we’re seriously thinking about how to incorporate into this next version or the one after the interaction term with other agents. We know we don’t live in a world where all we’re doing is consuming cannabis in isolation.

[00:26:31] Dr. Abrams: What about with that beer you had? What about those with tobacco? What about other dietary supplements or sleep aids or something like that? And we think that this crowdsourcing approach can help be convolute or understand that, but we just have to ask the questions right. And have it in a form where the data will speak for itself.

[00:26:54] Dr. Abrams: When

[00:26:55] Bryan Fields: you said that I had so many friends that came to mind of just wanting to just sit there and consume [00:27:00] canvas all day for a research study. So that’s what you’re looking for. I’m sure we can put up an announcement. I’m sure we can love the number of applicants for you

[00:27:07] Kellan Finney: do count, huh? No, I’m too. I get bored.

[00:27:11] Kellan Finney: You know what I mean? I’m not a big fan of video games. Like I don’t need to need to find something to keep myself busy while I consumed that kind of cannabis. You know, you started from

[00:27:19] Bryan Fields: a popularity standpoint, I’m sure you can find a couple of people that come to mind that would be interested in participating in such a study.

[00:27:25] Kellan Finney: Oh, we could totally make brochures. It would be sold out. I mean, we could really get a big bonus.

[00:27:31] Dr. Abrams: Well, interestingly for proof of concept phase, we were recruiting through Google ad words because as a nonprofit. We got access to free Google ads or Google supported onwards capability. And so we were experimenting with, can we change the recruitment profiles who are our Google searches or directed Google searches?

[00:27:57] Dr. Abrams: And there’s a whole story [00:28:00] about that concept, how we were able to, for example, channel more respondents into our system. Indication arm when we saw that most respondents. Checking the pain box, but not checking the sleep box. And we wanted to boost that number. And in fact, that’s how you go. If you get significance in your model for pain, because you have enough respondents and you go, oh, well, I don’t have quite enough for sleep.

[00:28:27] Dr. Abrams: I can’t draw any conclusions yet. You try to recruit in sleep and then you start to see, oh, I’m at the same number that we’re responding in pain. And I. Significance in my, my models and I don’t have it and sleep, therefore, either something is not working right. Or it is not so efficacious for sleep, which of course we know is not necessarily the case.

[00:28:52] Dr. Abrams: I’m just kind of quoting an example here. But the point is this approach is dynamic. It’s ongoing. [00:29:00] You don’t have to upfront postulate what your study size is going to be. And then open it and close it. I can keep going. I think that’s one of the advantages of this crowd source web-based phase four approach.

[00:29:14] Dr. Abrams: I hope that’s

[00:29:15] Bryan Fields: clear. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is. And I can only wonder if you use Google ad words to try and attract people to your study. If I would’ve seen a Google ad that said consumed cannabis for sleep study, I would have assumed immediately it was a lie or a trick or some ception technique, because that seems way too good to be true.

[00:29:31] Bryan Fields: And I’m curious in order for them click that. Good for those guys. It was

[00:29:34] Dr. Abrams: more nuanced than that because in those days, Google had inhibitions on what you could use and we were not able to. Those kinds of terms in, so we had the slalom around the Google restrictions, which we did successfully, but there are, you know, of course there’s always ways, I guess, of getting these announcements out, but it worked, it worked, you know, we could, [00:30:00] we could show.

[00:30:00] Dr. Abrams: Increases in responding cohorts, just based on the terminology that we’re using. But now, Brian, it was not quite as blatant as yet smoked cannabis and respond to this study. I don’t think it would have cleared Google back in 26 and 2017.

[00:30:16] Bryan Fields: That would’ve shut down your site because Google would have been like, there’s a lot of clicking going on here.

[00:30:21] Kellan Finney: I want to just elaborate a little bit or they’re on the dosing study. So the survey is one portion of it. Is there any scientific techniques or technology that’s currently utilized to kind of understand what’s going on in the brain? And is that something that the CSC is looking to. To embark on or already has, is you want to kind of elaborate on, on some of the techniques that are used to look inside the skull to see how this is really interacting with you from a biochemical perspective.

[00:30:51] Kellan Finney: No,

[00:30:51] Dr. Abrams: that’s a great, great question. And we are extremely active in this space through a very fruitful collaboration [00:31:00] that started a number of years ago when I was director of Emerald science the Emerald county. And received across the desk. A very interesting abstract from Dr. Jeff Karen clinical psychologist, out of Eugene, Oregon who had proposed and executed a study of smoked cannabis, runnings, and Q E G quantitative EEG measurements.

[00:31:26] Dr. Abrams: So what that is in essence is putting electrodes on the surface of the brain of the surface of the, of the sky. It’s done very routinely. Medical sleep assessments. Cetera. It’s been a part of neurology for many, many years. That’s not invasive, it’s not a problem. And so he approached us at Emerald at the Emerald conference with this great abstract that really piqued my interest, but he had chosen a couple of strains.

[00:31:56] Dr. Abrams: For the study. And my sense was that was [00:32:00] fine, but he was not really surveying the whole kind of versus it will, as it were. And I was interested in seeing if he would be receptive to expanding that initial study, to include strains on the other side. And for those of you who are listeners who understand sprain, he had not included initially was the sour diesel, or what we call the fuel aroma.

[00:32:26] Dr. Abrams: Chemo type side. And so even as receptive, we added that in and produced the study with these three strains reported on it at Emerald 2019. And that presentation is available on Emerald website. It’s also available through CSC website, but the results have been very interesting to deconvolute and study.

[00:32:49] Dr. Abrams: And out of that, we do see a pattern. Of response in cannabis users with these different strains that we can begin to [00:33:00] understand maybe what some of the underlying fundamentals are. So this gives you. A bone, a feed, a biomarker, if you will, on beyond simple survey responses, it’s almost akin to being able to do blood work or something like that.

[00:33:17] Dr. Abrams: It’s a bone of feed, a bio marker. In addition, in this study, he included surveys, which I referred to earlier regarding mood, the standard Bruno mood assessment, and an altered state, such a delicate questionnaire, which is also part of. That field and we’ve been calling correlating and co-leading the responses.

[00:33:39] Dr. Abrams: And trying to map them to brainwave patterns and we are making good progress. So going into the future, one of the clinical correlates initiatives of CSC is to expand that clinical, the clinical trial work, if you will, based on quantitative EEG. [00:34:00] Ingested smoked or ingested cannabinoids or cannabis product.

[00:34:06] Dr. Abrams: We’re going

[00:34:06] Bryan Fields: to dive into prediction students. Before we do that, we ask all of our guests a few final questions. John, if you could sum up your experience into a main takeaway or lesson learned to pass onto the next generation. Oh, would that be?

[00:34:20] Dr. Abrams: Wow. Follow your heart and your interests. It took me many, many decades to get to the point where I could say I am completely involved in kind of the science and understand standing the cannabinoid industry and the underpinnings of the cannabis.

[00:34:40] Dr. Abrams: Mine. It was a process to get there, to throw in. Wholeheartedly in this space I am exceedingly happy and content at the progress we’re making. And so my advice, I guess, to those that come now or afterwards is try to recognize as early as possible what your goals and dreams are [00:35:00] and go do it. I think that’s

[00:35:01] Bryan Fields: perfectly said your personal experience with cannabinoids.

[00:35:05] Dr. Abrams: Well, I don’t think it’s a, you know, it’s a secret that Been a fan of, of the plant, particularly smoked cannabis for over 50 years. I find it very beneficial for numerous reasons. Certainly the calm, calming, and relaxation component, but for me, I find it at least what I hang on the THC component, age, strong associative ability and ability to kind of lay.

[00:35:35] Dr. Abrams: Concepts and disparate ideas to come up with valid hypotheses that can be tested. It’s almost for me like a brain booster. And I guess I might put myself in the realm of what you might and I mean, this is. Not self-aggrandizing but successful stoner. And I think I probably have been, in addition, [00:36:00] I’ve been trying to understand the best way to consume and use CBD or CBDA because of course there’s so much interest in that.

[00:36:08] Dr. Abrams: And one of the approaches that. Pioneer, not pioneer. That’s an old approach. It’s decoction that is boiling botanicals and creating a tea out of it. But in contradistinction to a tea, which is perfusion or infusion here, you’re actively boiling it. And so not only are you extracting components, but you may be changing them advantageous.

[00:36:34] Dr. Abrams: In the case of cannabis, we know that there’s a decarboxylation chemistry. That’s important. That is you have to take off one of me, functional groups, part of the molecule in order to have a certain range of activities. And I’m being a bleak here because we’re a big proponent of non decarboxylated cannabinoids for biological effects.

[00:36:57] Dr. Abrams: But the point is, is that kids a. [00:37:00] Approachable way to get CBD and or CBDA medication in a cheap. And what I believe is an effective way, simply boil hemp or CBD bud and drink it. And I find that that works. Quite well. So we’ve presented on the approach and the content that comes from this at the 2019 ACS American chemical society, Canada subgroup.

[00:37:31] Dr. Abrams: Meeting here that was in San Diego then. And again, details can be seen on presentations that are on our website. Interesting approach on how to acquire CBD or ingest CBD meditation. So I guess I would say between THC cannabis inhalation, and I’m a big vape user at this point and CBD decoction that’s all I get through my day.

[00:37:57] Dr. Abrams: I love the

[00:37:58] Bryan Fields: brain booster technique. That was, [00:38:00] oh, that was one of my favorite ones are likely going to steal that. So let’s go onto prediction time. 10 years from now 2031, John, will we have enough data and research to have personalized cannabis menu?

[00:38:14] Dr. Abrams: Well, I’m going to just answer that by saying, I’m going to drop off the word cannabis medicine and say 10 years from now, what will the stage of personalized medicine be?

[00:38:26] Dr. Abrams: Because we have to move that forward as well, right? I mean, we’re not going to have personalized cannabis medicine without personalized medicine. I’m an optimist. I think we will get there. And I think it is the key. There’s some paradigm changes. Of course. First of all, we have to be able to generate what is the person or generate information on who or what is that person?

[00:38:55] Dr. Abrams: And that’s a heavy lift because it’s expensive to get that. I mean 10 years from [00:39:00] now. I hope we have the resources that more people, not just wealthy elite have access to that kind of personalized diagnostics along side or on the second truck, you have the evolution in cannabis or cannabis science can adenoid industry and cannabinoid medicine.

[00:39:20] Dr. Abrams: And so yeah, there probably will be a marriage sometime in the future for this to be the best. But it’s, it’s still a heavy lift. Brian, I mean, 10 years is that it’s coming fast. I’d like to

[00:39:35] Kellan Finney: believe that it’s there. You know, I mean, 20 years ago we were still in the middle of the human genome project, right.

[00:39:43] Kellan Finney: In 2001. I could be mistaken on my dates, but it costs SWAT $13 billion to analyze the first full human genome. And now. I can go to 21 and me right as a 21 of me and they 50 bucks, they [00:40:00] send me a, a Q-tip. I swab my mouth, put it in there, send it back. And they’re going to give me a pretty decent understanding of my genetics from, for a significantly lower costs.

[00:40:12] Kellan Finney: So I think that. As we continue to improve the techniques associated with understanding biomarkers inside the human body, as well as genetics, that that cost will continue to fall. And as that costs continues to fall more and more of the population will be able to afford that kind of testing. And as more of the population.

[00:40:39] Kellan Finney: Gets tested for their genetics. You created larger data sets and efforts. Like what the CSC is embarking on with the dosing project. It’ll be easy to kind of look at interdisciplinary data to be able to pull these correlations. Right. And so I think in 10 years it may not be like, What you would see in Hollywood as far [00:41:00] as like personalized medicine.

[00:41:01] Kellan Finney: But I think that someone with enough motivation will be able to pull their 21 and me genetics data and put it into probably some sort of free software too. Pull correlations between say the cannabis, they consume their genetics and how they feel about it. And I think that that would be a form of personalized medicine associated with cannabis.

[00:41:23] Kellan Finney: So I know that’s a long-winded answer, but that is my thoughts on it. I mean, Brian coming from a less traditional scientific background. What are your thoughts on cannabis being a personalized medicine in the future? I mean, kind of walk us through that optimistic.

[00:41:40] Bryan Fields: Brian wants to say yes and wants to agree with you guys.

[00:41:43] Bryan Fields: But the other side, Brian, here’s our friend, Dr. Matt Morton says groundbreaking science is expensive and takes time. And I think 10 years is just not going to be enough time to learn everything. We need to learn, to understand all the datasets. There’s a ton of variables and [00:42:00] teams like the CSE. They’re doing incredible, incredible efforts, right?

[00:42:03] Bryan Fields: They need help from outside parties. Like you were saying, John, like your team can do as much as they can, but need participants from outside studies. And I think that involves more people getting involved in contributing to the cause. So while I’d love for that to happen, I think the only way that happens is if more organizations kind of align with the CSC and people like you, and I tell him, continue to contribute toward the car to help raise awareness and to get people out there to contribute whether it’s information or that donate their funds.

[00:42:33] Bryan Fields: I don’t know, I’m going to have to say no, but I think that’s the next line where Don, if people want to get involved with the CSC, Where can they do that?

[00:42:42] Dr. Abrams: Well, I would start by looking at the website and then thinking about what your level of interest in participation might be. We have donation programs, we have sponsorship programs and we have partnership programs depending on.

[00:42:58] Dr. Abrams: What your level [00:43:00] of interest in this is. And I think that’s where, where I would start. We are interested in collaboration. We are interested in consortium building. We are interested in working with top tier folks who really do want to move this forward. This is a huge effort and, you know it takes a lot more than a village.

[00:43:20] Dr. Abrams: And so we have to be open to that. We have to kind of make sure our egos don’t get in the way we have to make sure. While intellectual property protections are very important and that we’re aware of them that they too don’t get in the way to inhibit this. It has to all be pulling in the same direction, nuanced as it is.

[00:43:43] Dr. Abrams: I’m optimistic that we can move this forward 10 years and it’ll be, it’ll be a challenge, but if you don’t start, you don’t get it.

[00:43:53] Bryan Fields: Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, John. We’ll link everything up in the show notes so that people want to get involved in and find the link and [00:44:00] look forward to kind of keeping up to date on what’s going on with CSC and having you back soon.

[00:44:04] Dr. Abrams: But thank you so much for the opportunity. It was a very enjoyable discussion.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Dime . Subscribe or follow us on Seeking Alpha, Libsyn, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher. And we’d really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find our show.

Subscribe to The Dime

Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

In this episode, we answer questions like

• What is the MSO Gang?
• Why did the Governor of Nebraska say what he said?
• Which companies are crucial to moving the needle forward?

and explore
• our favorite cannabis industry leaders.
• the pharmaceuticals vs cannabinoid medicine.
• cannabis and its endless benefits.

All this and more on this week’s episode of The Dime.

Hosted by the founders of Eighth Revolution, LLC. Bryan Fields @Bryanfields24 & Kellan Finney @Kellan_Finney

Follow us on IG (@thedime_8th) and Twitter (@thedime_8th) to submit your listener questions.

Kevin Carrillo is the COO of Cannabinoid Nation, the industry’s premier brokerage and consulting firm, and the host of Cannabinoid Connect, a cannabis podcast about news, policies, tech trends, social justice, investing, cultivation, and the plant’s environmental, economic and medicinal benefits.

Website: https://cannabinoid-connect.com/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/06g2V0Jee6Gp71zhfJzVk5?si=Bnd8e9WnSOewLLC_nZqKTA

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cannabinoid-connect/id1513621707

Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9jYW5uYWJpbm9pZGNvbm5lY3QubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M%3D

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNNoKid-G1uBCHCAxpZVRNA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/canna__connect

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CannabinoidConnect1

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[00:00:00] Bryan Fields : [00:00:00] What’s up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the dime as always. I’ve got my right hand, man, Kellan Finney here with me. And this week we’ve got a very special guest, Kevin Carillo. Kevin, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today?

[00:00:14]Kevin Carillo: [00:00:14] I’m doing well, Bryan, thanks so much for having me on and Kellan what’s up? Good to see you guys.

[00:00:19] Kellan Finney: [00:00:19] Good to be seen, you know

[00:00:21]Bryan Fields : [00:00:21] Absolutely today, we’ve got some special topics, ones that I know the internet waves have been seen for a while. And Kevin, before we hop in, I’d love for you to kind of give a little bit about your backstory, how you got into the space and kind of educate the listeners on the value you bring to the industry.

[00:00:35] Kevin Carillo: [00:00:35] Sure. Yeah. I mean, I won’t go too deep. We might get into that later, but at a high level I started cannabinoid connect podcast back in April, or excuse me, March of 2020 ,  with the central mission to dispel all the lies and stigma that’s associated with cannabis. You know, we live in 2021 now and there are. A number of testimonials, but people that have used CBD and [00:01:00] THC and other minor cannabinoids to improve and enhance their daily lives. So, you know, the mission of the podcast is just to have smart people on from different disciplines that ,  really educate and inform people, you know, about the plants, endless benefits, because there’s a lot of them.

[00:01:15] Bryan Fields : [00:01:15] I love it. And a little bit about your background.

[00:01:19]Kevin Carillo: [00:01:19] Yeah. So my background ,  grew up in the land of enchantment, New Mexico, 30 minutes outside of Albuquerque town called Belen. And it’s actually timely because New Mexico and we can get into this, but they’re actually have less than 24 hours to get their bill passed ,  for, for rec. This legislation season, but ,  any who I grew up in, in Belen. I wrestled all my life, came from a wrestling family. I was recruited to Bucknell in Pennsylvania to wrestle. I wrestled for one year there and after I hung up the shoes ,  that was when, you know, I wanted to live a more kind of fulfilled life and cannabis was part of that lifestyle. So that’s really where I started to become a big consumer of cannabis.

[00:01:59]Bryan Fields : [00:01:59] Just [00:02:00] curious to know how that first eighth of the plant was right after you hung up  the shoes.

[00:02:05] Kevin Carillo: [00:02:05] Yeah. I mean, you know, like we talked about it before we started recording, like wrestling’s a, a grind, it’s a tough sport, right? I mean, there’s so many variables, not only as a D one athlete for all sports, you’re working, you know, working out hard, you got two a days, but then there’s that weight management factor, right. You’re, you’re constantly cutting way, meaning maintaining your diet. And it gets rough when you’re going to class and doing all that. So I really. Give those, those athletes a lot of respect at the college level. So yeah, I mean, after that intense kind of lifestyle, you know, being able to just go to class and, you know, do my studies and then smoke cannabis and, and unwind ,  it was a great, great transition man. And it has to stop, you know, I’m 32 now, so ,  I’ve just been continuing to, to make it part of my lifestyle.

[00:02:53] Bryan Fields : [00:02:53] Awesome. So let’s get into the questions for today as a fellow tribe member of the MSO gang, Kevin. The [00:03:00] people out there that are unfamiliar, what is the ?

[00:03:04] Kevin Carillo: [00:03:04] The MSO gang is a movement,

[00:03:06] Bryan Fields : [00:03:06] in my opinion. You know,

[00:03:08] Kevin Carillo: [00:03:08] if you’re familiar with the Twitter world and you’re, you’re kind of within the financial markets and you’re following different people, Bitcoin’s kind of a big revolution.

[00:03:15] Right. And I see the MSO gang,

[00:03:17]

[00:03:17] Emerging as that same type

[00:03:19] Bryan Fields : [00:03:19] of,

[00:03:19] Kevin Carillo: [00:03:19] of coalition in that group. And so I think what the MSO gang means is it’s it’s awareness around. The,

[00:03:26]Bryan Fields : [00:03:26] The

[00:03:26] Kevin Carillo: [00:03:26] high caliber companies that are currently operating within the United States, you know, on the, on my podcast, we’ve talked a lot about how there was this focus in 2018,

[00:03:37]

[00:03:37] With the Canadian LPs, right?

[00:03:39] Because they were one of the first list within the Canadian exchanges, the Tilray’s

[00:03:43] Bryan Fields : [00:03:43] raise

[00:03:44] Kevin Carillo: [00:03:44] the Aphria is the auroras and,

[00:03:46]

[00:03:46] You know, you didn’t really hear much about the multi-state operators, but you know, now as more States are coming online in the U S with either medical or adult use, these MSO’s are really starting to shine.

[00:03:59] Bryan Fields : [00:03:59] And [00:04:00] so I

[00:04:00] Kevin Carillo: [00:04:00] think that these, the MSO gang is the early adopters that really see the value of these companies. And they see that this is an opportunity for generational wealth and, and we’re all about the mission and the movement to just, you know, make cannabis more accessible to people.

[00:04:14] Bryan Fields : [00:04:14] Yeah, it’s definitely a movement.

[00:04:16] And when you think about it, you got like the Elon Musk is like the die-hards right. The Bitcoiners and the MSO gang. And just seeing the three of those operate on the end of that. Sometimes they all bleed together telling, have you any experience with the MSO gang? Are you a part of that tribe? Well, I’m definitely a part of that tribe.

[00:04:30] I like it because ,  I’m not ,  investing is like a new. New hobby for me, I’m only like two years into it. Right. So I just started like two years ago, but I was always like getting frustrated, trying to like invest in cannabis. Cause I’d like, I’d pick one company and I’d watch it for a month. I’d be like, it’s not doing anything.

[00:04:46] And then I’d like move over to another top company. And I was like, Oh, now that company is doing something. And I’m like playing this back and forth game. And I was like, I wish there was a sweet ETF that I could invest in that gave me exposure to all of them. And then lo and behold, the [00:05:00] MSO. Right. MSLs right.

[00:05:02] Came out and ,  and it was perfect. So I just reallocated all a lot of my cannabis. Assets into MSLs and I’ve been very grateful ever since. So that’s my experience with it. I mean, you probably could speak a little on a higher level about today. Brian, it’s more about an educational movement. I think the biggest, at least in my opinion, the reason MSO gang was formed was because people on Twitter took to  the internet and said, we’re sick of having US leadership on the television and them showing Canadian tickers.

[00:05:32] Something, the massive disconnect. And I think it took that sort of movement for people to be like, okay, like let’s just break it down. The companies that operate in Canada are not US-based companies. How to determine that they’re not MSLs. And I think that’s kind of the MSO gang, and I think it continues to come back to what you do really well on your podcast.

[00:05:52] Kevin is, can do the educational movement, right? If it’s an education moment of kind of opening the eyes to the [00:06:00] rest of society about the fact that differences between us and Canada, and then some differences, the operators in the U S for growing substantially. And I think that starts with understanding from an educational level where we need to go.

[00:06:11] Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Brian. I mean, education is key in so many different facets of this industry, you know ,  you mentioned on the investment side and the education awareness around ,  these multi-state operators, right. That are performing very, very well in States like Florida, you have truly right.

[00:06:29] You’ve got the Cresco labs and curely and ,  terrorists and out of New Jersey. And so it’s so important that that people. Understand and are aware of these, these companies, right? Because ,  there’s a, there’s a window, you know, and we’re kind of in that ,  that opportunistic window where ,  they’re not really heard about and known about.

[00:06:48] And when that time comes, when safe banking happens, institutional investors come in and ultimately these episodes are listing within the NASDAQ exchange. It’s going to be a whole different story. You know, [00:07:00] and, and education, like I said, in, in different facets, you know, also on the stigma side, right.

[00:07:05] And the, the medicinal benefits side, right. There’s been so much misinformation and distance formation over the years due to prohibition that it’s really on, you know, the MSO gang and consumers of cannabis, advocates of cannabis to really step up and, and, you know, be comfortable, get out of that cannabis closet and, and just be part of this movement because it’s inevitable it’s going to happen.

[00:07:29] Yeah, it’s going to really change the world for the better on, on multiple reasons. So continuing on that, my question to you, Kevin is you’ve had a ton of really great guests with guests on your podcast has surprised you the most. I’d say one that really stuck out to me the most was sitting and talking with Len may ,  from endo Canna health.

[00:07:52] And

[00:07:53] Kevin Carillo: [00:07:53] the guy is really articulate and savvy when it comes to like our endocannabinoid [00:08:00] system and how these ,  cannabinoids and secondary compounds like terpenes and flavonoids, how they interact with each of our unique body chemistry. And, you know, being in a state like Texas, where we have a barely a medical program, right.

[00:08:17] It just fascinated me because if you’re, if you’re buying in the illicit market or, or even, you know, if you’re buying CBD at a retail shop, for the most part, like. We still don’t really understand everything what’s in those strains. I mean, like again, the terpene profile, the cannabinoid ratio and we, and then two to add to that, we don’t even really have a clear understanding of our endocannabinoid system and our genetic makeup.

[00:08:43] So we don’t really know, you know, if we’re. Super sensitive when it comes to this cannabinoid or that cannabinoid. So in our conversation, the way he was explaining this stuff was just, it blew my mind and it just really level set me in the way that we still have so much to learn. Not [00:09:00] only about the plant, but also ourselves and how, you know, we both biologically ,  you know, synergistically come together.

[00:09:10] Kellan Finney: [00:09:10] No. I think that was really well said. And I think that that right there is where ,  a lot of excitement, at least in the, in the scientific industry is, is just from, I mean, it’s this brand new opportunity for scientists to come in and just be able to publish low lying fruit. I mean ,  There’s just no fundamental research out there, right.

[00:09:28] Because of prohibition and kind of like the scientific blackout, if you will associated with the prohibition. And so like when I got in the industry, he couldn’t look up the boiling point of THC. Right. And so it’s just insane how far we’ve come. And I mean, there’s just ample opportunity for discovery in terms of the endocannabinoid system.

[00:09:47] Additional cannabinoids. I think they come out with like, they discover new canabinoids like every month now it’s, it’s pretty phenomenal. So like, that’s probably one of the most exciting things from a scientific perspective in terms [00:10:00] of ,  this opportunity right now, how long is it going to take? I figured that out.

[00:10:04] I

[00:10:04] Bryan Fields : [00:10:04] mean, we’re talking about personalized medicine about endocannabinoids. We’re talking about cannabinoids are coming out each month. Well, is that going to take Kellan to, to kind of get the ball rolling on, then us to start kind of putting these pieces of puzzle together?

[00:10:15] Kellan Finney: [00:10:15] I don’t think it’s going to take long, like from a scientific perspective, in terms of like doing the science and developing like the actual conclusions from these experiments.

[00:10:26] What I think is going to take a really long time, it’s going to be the red tape and the regulations and actually getting these. Madison’s into a ,  a channel to be delivered to consumers. That is the federal government’s comfortable with. It’s really where I think is going to be the biggest obstacle.

[00:10:44] But I mean, in the twenties, I mean, just look how fast they came up with a vaccine. You know what I mean? If there’s the resources there. Right. But I mean, if it’s true, though, if the resources are there, we can make in men, stride, scientifically speaking in a [00:11:00] short amount of time.

[00:11:02] Kevin Carillo: [00:11:02] I agree. I mean, if there’s that focus and see, and that’s the thing, right?

[00:11:06] We just need to get people past that point of the stigma. And the misunderstanding of the plant and, and that’s where that education factor comes in. That Brian mentioned of, if we can really start to communicate the benefits, you know, even if they don’t want to be a part of it or have it near them, at least be open to, you know, reform legalization on the legislative.

[00:11:28] Right. You know, side so that we can really start to improve lives and in so many different ways, whether it’s therapeutic or medicinally economically or environmentally, right. Because there, there is just so many benefits, but education is just, you know, it’s, it’s gonna, it’s a central kind of key, you know?

[00:11:45] Bryan Fields : [00:11:45] Right. And I think the first step with that is kind of. Fixing what’s wrong with society with all the people that are obviously in prison for the plan. And then starting to look at the plant from the positive saints, who much of society is like looking at things from a negative standpoint [00:12:00] of you got to take a drug test and it’s like, okay, you had a little THC in it by maybe use it for medical reasons.

[00:12:05] Maybe it doesn’t. He doesn’t have a job anymore. We have to stop the ball that we have to, we have to put the fundamental truth in front of us, which is it is plant helps people. And then from there we can start the building block from an educational standpoint. I don’t know how that’s going to take and yeah.

[00:12:19] Helen. I disagree. I think it’s going to take a long time. And while I wish it’d be fast, because obviously, you know, speed for me is always crucial. They’re not going to operate in warp speed. It’s just impossible. There’s going to be too many legislative hurdles. There’s going to be too many lobbyists, holding things back and big pharma is I think gonna cost more and they’re going to help.

[00:12:39] I think they’re looking to get in and by looking, I mean, they’re jockeying for position as we speak in different areas. And I think that involves them continuing to. Kind of build that moat of patents to protect themselves so that when the green light comes on, they’re not starting at zero they’re 50, 60% into the industry.

[00:12:59] Kellan Finney: [00:12:59] They [00:13:00] want go. I think one of the biggest misnomers about big pharma where I think they’re going to struggle in the cannabis space is there is a law. It’s not law. It’s you just, you can’t patent nature. Right? And so pharma can’t patent THC. Pharma can’t patent CBD, right? GW has a patent on CBD and other plant chemicals and some other formula chemicals that they formulated in there.

[00:13:27] They have a patent on that formulation specifically, but it’s the molecule CBD. That is the ABI within their, their pharmaceutical drug. Right. And so. I think that that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges, which why they haven’t jumped into this right. Is because they can’t patent plants and they can’t patent the natural extracts.

[00:13:45] They can’t plant the actual flower itself. And so there’s not this, there’s not like a free monopoly that they can come grab. Like they can’t in all these other ,  health sectors. Right. And then the other really complicated thing about cannabis and hemp as a [00:14:00] pharmaceutical is. Pharmaceutical companies hate side effects.

[00:14:04] The way that they mitigate all of those side effects is by doing single molecule drugs. Right? So it’s a single molecule, it’s an API, right. And that’s just one specific molecule and then they eliminate everything else. So they know that if something, if some side reaction that’s happening inside this individual, it’s because of this one molecule versus.

[00:14:24] Cannabis is hundreds of molecules, even the extract you’re talking turpines, flavanoids THC CBD, all these other different minors. Right. And like trying to decide, like what is causing a specific side effects through clinical trials with that kind of a cocktail, if you will, is going to be ,  an obstacle that pharma has never tackled before.

[00:14:45] Right. That’s why they do the single molecule API. Right. And this is, this is the staple of big pharma. So I think that those two factors are going to make it really, really challenging for pharma to come in and just wipe the floor [00:15:00] with everyone. You know what I mean? That there will be a big, there’ll be a, a large sector of pharmaceutical related cannabinoids that they, it’s not going to be THC.

[00:15:08] It’ll be like ,  a derivative of THC that nature doesn’t make that. Has a similar interaction. Right. And there’ll be able to patent that and there’ll be, there’ll be a little up a channel for them to kind of ,  own their little lot if you will. But I don’t think that they’re going to come in and mop the floor with all of these other big companies because of those two ,  those two factors.

[00:15:27] I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s just my perspective perspective on it.

[00:15:31] Bryan Fields : [00:15:31] What do you think Kevin.

[00:15:34] Kevin Carillo: [00:15:34] I mean, I don’t know enough about it to like, in that particular area. I know that you’re right. Like when, when Kellen mentioned that ,  GW created that it’s a synthetic, it was just called like Marinol or something with an M.

[00:15:47] Yeah. And it was, it was like for epilepsy, right? It was there. Kind of entrance into the farmer pharmaceutical space with synthetic cannabinoids. So ,  that was interesting. And so, I mean, that makes more sense [00:16:00] when you explain it, that way of why they went that route because ,  they’ll, they’ll always do that, I guess, or ,  but, but when I, when I think about it, Brian, you, which you mentioned, I, I think you’re right in the sense of like they’re playing both sides right now, pharmacy pharmaceuticals.

[00:16:12] There’s the pharmaceutical industry there. They’re playing the one side where they’re beefing up their lobbyists and continuing to distribute the misinformation and the propaganda right. To, to protect their interests. But then I think that on the side, of course, they’re doing their own R and D and, and studies to really see where they can play in this space space once it inevitably becomes about.

[00:16:33] Right. And so ,  I just think it’s interesting. I think that where, where we can kind of step in and really move the needle is like, like doing what we’re doing here. Podcasters really getting the word out. And then groups of people like you’re seeing celebrity brands come out, right? You’ve got Seth, Rogan’s a houseplant.

[00:16:52] You’ve got Jay Z a monogram. So those celebrities, those pro athletes, they have influence, they got people following them. So there’s one way [00:17:00] to remove the stigma. Start to educate on the benefits, but then there’s also, you know, the people that actually need it. So those testimonials that we mentioned earlier, those are super important.

[00:17:10] We need to get those out. How can you argue with someone who’s saying that, you know, what they took makes them feel better as opposed to the other 15 medications that they’re on? You know, and then the last group, I think that could really be a huge voice in proponents. Move the needle forward is women.

[00:17:25] You know, I think that there’s tons of benefits when it comes to women’s health and wellness. When it comes, you know, with, with cannabinoid therapeutics, we’ve seen it in history, play out with queen Elizabeth and others. And so I think that if that group kind of got together and started to raise of what go on, you know, The today’s show and all those accepted mainstream media shows to start to de-stigmatize this, I think that, you know, that that will really start to move the needle and maybe put pressure on the pharmaceutical companies to work with us more, instead of trying to do their own thing, you know?

[00:17:59] The women for [00:18:00] sure. Decision makers, right? That’s the, as a marketer, that is your target demographic. When you want the sweet spot of understanding, who are the power players in the space, they are the decision-makers are the ones that understand exactly. Like I’m going to get this. And then they’re the ones at home and being like, you’re going to take this Brian, like my wife’s like, by the way I saw this, like, you’re, you’re taking this product and it’s like, okay, like this is something I’m definitely interested in taking now.

[00:18:21]And to kind of continue on your first point though, about the pharmaceuticals. No one that I’ve spent some time digging around the patent space. And I can tell you that as a rabbit hole, any rabbit hole, and when you get down into the minor cannabinoids and understanding the direction they’re going, big pharma is already lining up their moat.

[00:18:38] Bryan Fields : [00:18:38] And it’s not that challenging to go find it. It’s just a matter of like, these guys are here and not only are they here, they’re already positioning kind of their fortress of saying like, this is the route we’re going to take. And whether it takes six months, 12 months, two years, We’re here. We’re ready to play.

[00:18:55] We’ve done the research in some aspects. We think this is the direction we want to go. And it’s [00:19:00] exciting to say the least, because obviously you could just be, you know, pre pre studies and kind of taking early steps, but just showing that they’re advancing, it is really, really exciting.

[00:19:11] Yeah. I mean, it just legitimizes everything, right.

[00:19:14] Kevin Carillo: [00:19:14] It starts to really flip the conversation from that’s a schedule, one narcotic it’s bad. It’s illegal too. Wait a second. Wait, what it does, what? And we have an endocannabinoid system and what’s the CB one receptor. What’s the CB two, you know, it starts to open that dialogue. It’s great. Yeah. Awesome.

[00:19:32] Bryan Fields : [00:19:32] So Kevin favorite company in the space and why favorite company in the space?

[00:19:39]Kevin Carillo: [00:19:39] I like, I like cure leaf. I like their recent announcement where like, you know, I, it was new, it was a chain, it was different from what the other episodes are doing, because they’re really, you know, you’re seeing terrorists end, really try to get their foothold in the East coast. You’ve got, you know, Florida hyper-focused with, I mean, truly hyper-focused in Florida ,  gage in Illinois.

[00:20:00] [00:19:59] So I like to cure, leave Bay that announcement about. Purchasing that European medical company. I forget the name of it. Or something like that. Yeah. So it kind of tells me that they’re looking even outside the U S they’re really trying to be, you know, the major player. And so ,  and I liked their, their leadership team, you know?

[00:20:19]I’ve listened to the CEO on their, on their earnings. Yeah. Calls Joseph. I forget his last name starts was a, B. Bear and yes. And then you’ve got Boris, Boris, of course. So yeah, I mean, I liked them and ,  but they’re all great. You know, I mean ,  these are savvy investors that have been in the space for a long time and they’re, you know, they’re, you can tell that their legacy as opposed to some of the other private equity guys that are stepping in ,  cause they just, they know the industry, you know, they, they know it from end to end and that’s what is exciting just to be a part of it as this, as the stakeholder, tell them who’s your favorite.

[00:20:50] Kellan Finney: [00:20:50] I’m a little biased. I like a smaller company called Swazi. Have you heard of them? They ,  I think they’re only strictly focused in Colorado right now, but they’re going [00:21:00] through buying a bunch of ,  Dispensary outlets, the dispenser outlets called Starbucks. And so from the very beginning, Starbucks has been around and like, I just, the way that they run their business from a storefront and the education and just like their branding, I was a big fan of them and I’m a Colorado local, so like support mistake.

[00:21:20] Right. And so that’s the ,  I think they were formerly known as medicine men. Right. And then they went through like a merger and rebranding, and now they’re Swazi. They’re not really as well known. They don’t nearly have as much volume, but they aren’t, they aren’t publicly traded as an OTC. But as far as like one of the bigger players goes, I would say Columbia care, probably just because ,  I’m ,  I think that from a business perspective, they’re, they’re really sound right.

[00:21:46]They’ve, they’ve done a lot of organic growth. The really, really strategic acquisitions ,  the green solution and Colorado, which is probably this, one of the top two, my second favorite ,  dispensary brand in Colorado. Right. And then their [00:22:00] strategic acquisitions out in California, I think that they were very patient and they’re really thoughtful on how they’ve been expanding and kind of growing that ,  footprint.

[00:22:09] And so that’s kind of why I’m a big fan of Columbia care as well. And so those are, those are my two. James, what about you, Brian? I think from a leadership perspective, we’re really spoiled. The top MSO is all have really, really established, strong leadership. They have different skill sets with an understanding strategically on the direction they want to go some focus on operations, someone financing, you can literally pick any of them.

[00:22:32] They’re really good. My favorite is ,  bend from green thumbs. I mean, he, he’s awesome. He’s been killing it. Yeah. He’s been carrying if people on the, like on CNBC, they’re like talking to him, they’re throwing him like. Stupid questions. Like we believe in science and we believe in, we like far facts are hard, right?

[00:22:51] Like new facts, I think you said are like hard to understand. He fucking them. And he, he doesn’t really bend with it. Like they continuously ask [00:23:00] him silly questions and he continues to push really informed of information. And it starts with understanding that the consumer wants more candidates and that.

[00:23:09] Bryan Fields : [00:23:09] The consumer, is it just going to be the one buying flower they might be having the drink can, which can nicely displayed on the media, right. Perfect product placement. And it shows it’s not a, it’s not a replacement for the person consuming flower, it’s replacement for the alcohol industry. And I think once people understand that.

[00:23:27] That they’re going to be competing in multiple product categories. The cannabis industry can go a million different ways and can kind of explode in a million different ways. And it’s an exciting opportunity. It’s not just this vertical. It is like the takeover effect.

[00:23:41] Kevin Carillo: [00:23:41] Yeah, no, no doubt about it. I’m so glad that you called out Ben, because that was awesome, man.

[00:23:46] Like I, and you saw everybody just kind of come to support him because he was just so composed, so articulate and, and, you know, he just came back with facts straight up, like, you know,

[00:23:57] we need to start holding these policymakers [00:24:00] accountable for the statements that they’re making like that the governor from Nebraska,

[00:24:04]

[00:24:04] Ricketts, who, who, you know, basically when, and these are his.

[00:24:07] Verbatim his exact words were, if you legalize marijuana, you will kill your kids

[00:24:12] statements. Like those ,  need to be challenged. And Ben did that. To a T he did a great job. And ,  yeah, I think, I think you’re right, man. The more like you know, of these, of these leaders within the industry that step up, like Ben’s doing, it’s only gonna help because it’s gonna make these policymakers change their, their, their game plan.

[00:24:33] You know, they’re going to start to realize that those ridiculous statements don’t play out in 2021, we’re too savvy as consumers, or even non-consumers to understand that, you know, there’s no addictive properties to cannabis. There’s no recorded death of an overdose of cannabis. Right. So that was, that was awesome for sure.

[00:24:53] Well, why does he say that? Why do you think Kelly’s like, why is he making that sort of outrageous statement?

[00:24:58] It’s such a good [00:25:00] question, because I’ve asked that question too. It’s gotta be one of two things. It’s either he’s ignorant and he’s heard the same rhetoric and has no experience with the plant.

[00:25:10] And so he’s just kind of going off of what he’s heard or he’s protecting interests, right? We know that they’re super PAC money for both of these parties. You know, we know that big tobacco and big pharma play a big part in those super pack, you know ,  efforts. And so I, you know, I could be that also where, you know, he’s, he’s talking to these people, but again, like if it’s that case, then he’s going to need to come up with new material because that shit is not going to work, you know?

[00:25:38] Bryan Fields : [00:25:38] I mean both. Those could definitely be it. I could just imagine he’s like circling something with a Sharpie being like, this is exactly where I think the death spot it. And you’re like, sir, like, I don’t know what you’re doing here. I mean, that’s an outrageous statement though, that he made and the fact that there are no recorded deaths and that Heath of opinions, like pushing against the, the huge momentum, right?

[00:25:58] Like we’re moving, [00:26:00] it’s going forward. We’re going to legalize more and more States, right? We’re going there. And for him to say something that’s so asinine in 2021. Wow.

[00:26:11] Kellan Finney: [00:26:11] Helen, you have thoughts on why he would say something like that? That’s a guess. I would say it’s the latter. I mean, I wish that could play ignorance in that and that it’s rhetoric and all those things.

[00:26:23] But like at the end of the day, like I think that, I mean, he’s politician, he needs money to run for his elections. And like, literally he is pleasing. One of his donors is the only thing that makes any sense. Like we could entertain the other factors, but like, let’s be real. Like, he’s probably just like.

[00:26:42] Doing a favor for his old buddy who wrote him a big check, you know what I mean? Like that’s, that’s how that world works. And so like, it’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just how the world, that’s how that politic world works. You know? So, I mean, especially with something as just audacious as that kind of a comment, you know what I mean?

[00:26:58] Like, just so [00:27:00] out in left field, like your children could die. If we legalize it, like. Well, if we legalize it, like everyone’s going to, we’re going to have militias and ananarchyD anarchy exactly.

[00:27:08] Kevin Carillo: [00:27:08] That’s what I thought. Like, like what kind of like finish your thought when you say that, like, what do you mean? There’s so many different ways you can interpret that statement.

[00:27:15] Kellan Finney: [00:27:15] And he’s like, literally at a press conference. So like everything’s Britain written down. I mean, we live in a world where you tweet something and it, you know, it’s, it’s crazy. I can’t believe he would say it. Yeah. This is how I envision like that scenario in my head. And maybe this is just me taking a dive.

[00:27:29] Is that. He got this piece of paper and it was from his donor. And he’s like, do you want me to say this? He’s like, exactly like that. So he’s like filtering through and he’s like, but I don’t agree. They’re like, you’re going to say that and you’re going to need it. And he’s like, you got it, like get up there.

[00:27:46] And like, he’s like, I know you’ve heard in the news that every state is looking to legalize it because we need tax money. But if we do, you’re dealt and we’ll die and he’s like, thank you for listening. It’s just, it’s wild. Yeah, I [00:28:00] tweeted. I was like, I hope that more politicians say that ridiculous stuff, because it’s only going to help our movement, you know?

[00:28:06] Cause we saw the, they saw the backlash with ,  with governor Ricketts, you know, so it’ll just give us more fuel to the fire. Absolutely. Keep getting that Moscow gang getting louder and louder.

[00:28:17] Bryan Fields : [00:28:17] So I can for you, Kevin, biggest misconception since you started working in the cannabinoid space.

[00:28:25] Kevin Carillo: [00:28:25] Biggest misconception. That’s a good question. I think the misconception, at least in my eyes was ,  the amount of people that are locked up for cannabis, like the real, real harsh reality of, of the social and racial injustice that has been related to cannabis. Cause you kind of talk about it in passing, you know, and, and especially, it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a ,  a bullet point, you know, now that there’s so much momentum for legalization and reform, but.

[00:28:54] Man, it’s an issue like I’ve had core Vancouver on who was recently ,  released on clemency from [00:29:00] president Trump’s administration. And I had Evelyn Chappelle on that last Chappelle, they were you involved in the same ,  cannabis conspiracy and just the unfairness man, like core vein. Had this conspiracy had two knocks against him before.

[00:29:14] So two other strikes that were minor cannabis offenses, and this guy’s live in life three years later after his ,  you know, after his set last charge. And so he’s thought nothing of it, he’s living his life. He’s got kids and the guy who was put in prison off of that cannabis conspiracy. Basically had the right to just one day say, Hey, core vein was involved in this.

[00:29:37] And so was Evelyn. And we, they need to get, come to jail too. And there was no investigation into their, you know, involvement. There was no checking to see evidence of their correspondence through texts of what they really talked about. They literally took that guy’s word that was in jail, who was the accomplice or involved and brought, they brought core vain and Evelyn and gel also.

[00:29:57] And, you know, Evelyn, I think served [00:30:00] was it. I don’t know, I don’t want to butcher that. I know that core vein sort of 10 years and he was sentenced to life. So ,  I was just surprised about how that process of like, once you’re, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re taking in from, for a cannabis offense, how they don’t do their due diligence, even they don’t look at your even track record to see, are you a prior offender?

[00:30:20] Do you have a record? No, it’s just kinda like they treat cannabis just like, you know, heroin or methamphetamine or, you know, And it, it just blew my mind, man. So that’s one thing that when we talk about education and you mentioned it initially that there’s just more focus and effort around that, especially with these big MSLs to make that part of their value proposition, their pillars within their company, to make sure that, that, you know, those injustices are rewritten because it’s a big problem.

[00:30:50] Bryan Fields : [00:30:50] Definitely. Before we wrap, we ask our guests three questions.

[00:30:55] So the Firstone, you could sum up your experience in the cannabinoid space into one main [00:31:00] takeaway or lesson you pass onto the next generation. What would that be?

[00:31:06] Kevin Carillo: [00:31:06] Keep learning. We have a lot to learn still about this plant. And ,  it’s exciting and it’s, it’s a plant that’s supposed to bring people together for, from whatever demographic, whatever background, whatever skin color.

[00:31:23] It’s a plant that brings people together to community and it helps to enhance their life, whether it’s through ,  material goods that can be produced through it, whether it’s therapeutic environmental. So just always keep that front and center that, that this plant is, is just for use for good and to keep learning because we’re barely scratching the surface.

[00:31:43] And it’s just exciting to be a part of this.

[00:31:47] Bryan Fields : [00:31:47] The last time you consumed any cannabinoid product. 20 minutes ,  before this podcast started,

[00:31:56] Kevin Carillo: [00:31:56] I had some slurry cane. All right. We’ll chat [00:32:00] out for them. So prediction time, let’s do two of them. Does New Mexico get it, Don. We are recording on March 19th. This won’t be released until April, so you’ll have a chance to kind of go back. We can record it both ways. If your bike doesn’t get done today. Hey, let’s, let’s bring it back.

[00:32:16] I’m happy to do it. I’ve had a great time. It’s such a good question, Brian. So I’m literally in New Mexico right now. This is my home state, so I have family here. I’m staying with my parents, but I’m here on business because, you know, everybody’s just kind of on their tippy toes waiting to hear what’s going to happen.

[00:32:32] So that the landscape right now is that ,  it’s gone to the Senate floor. And there’s been three amendments to this bill. And just to kind of back up, this has played out two years before, so they’ve, they’ve made this a major, you know, cannabis legalization, a major topic within the legislative session.

[00:32:48]And internally they weren’t able to come up with a resolution of what they agree on for what that bill looks like to get it to the governor’s desk because the governor’s ready to sign it. So they’re in the same [00:33:00] situation down in this legislative session. There’s three amendments that they need to resolve and agree on.

[00:33:04] Once that happens, they need to go to the house to implement those changes, and then they send it to the governor’s desk. So they got less than 24 hours ban. I’m hoping it happens cause it would be great for the state of New Mexico and obviously the consumers of the state. So I, yeah, let’s run it back ,  to, you know, the taco, if it’s, if it happened or it didn’t, you know, but.

[00:33:25]I, I there’s a lot that they have to do, so I’m on the side of being a little more pessimistic, but I hope of course, that it does. Now when you want to guess ,  I think I’ll go the other way. Why not? I think it happens. Optimistic, Brian agreed. I’m going to think it happens a lot. So I think it, with politics, it always comes down to the wire and all of a sudden they’re like, you know what, we’re good with these, sorry for holding it up.

[00:33:47] But life let’s get this done. They need the money for sure. Like every other state does and the job opportunity. So the last question, six months from now, and that’s again, bad here to stay. [00:34:00] And are they taking on the big pointers? The the game stopped Reddit guys and the Bitcoiners. I think that they’re going to be right in that mix, man, for sure.

[00:34:10] For sure. So they’re not going away. We’re going to see, I’ve kind of mentioned, I talked about this in two phases or three phases, so we’re going to see ,  first with safe banking come in whenever that’s going to happen, right. We’re going to see kind of an uptick and a spike, right? Because again, that’s when it’s not going to be just a cash business anymore, we’re going to be able to bank with banks.

[00:34:31] And then that’s when the institutional investors are going to come in at some point, right? The big private banks are going to invest in these companies. That’s going to be huge, eventually the NASDAQ things. So that’s going to kind of bring the elevation, the awareness of MSO gangs ,  at a higher level.

[00:34:44] And then, you know, after that, it’s just going to be, we’re riding the momentum of what we’ve been riding and that’s the States legalizing. You know ,  I see that the States are going to legalize ,  probably faster than the federal government, meaning like there’s going to be more States in the U S that are legal and that’s going to put [00:35:00] pressure on the federal government.

[00:35:01] So that’s going to be another wave, right. And spike where we’re going to get that awareness. And, and ,  and then the last is the, is the eventual federal legalization at that point, you know, that’s where you look at when there’s going to be major consolidation. Right. When we talked earlier about. Big pharma, big tobacco stepping in and buying some of these, these ,  top performing FSOs.

[00:35:22] So, you know, I see a lot of back and forth on Twitter and it’s like, you know, people are scared and they’re seeing the prices drop this day and that day. But I agree with, you know, like you said, all the. The investors and leaders in the space, the Jason Wiles, the ,  the Brady cobs, they’re all saying, this is a long game, Todd Harrison, right?

[00:35:40] Like we’re, we’re in this for the long haul. So if you’re, if you’re every day staring at your, you know, your portfolio and ,  I don’t know, that may not be the right approach because this is going to take time. But if you believe in it, Hey, it’s going to happen. What’s that final words. I couldn’t agree more.

[00:35:58] Yeah. The rap, [00:36:00] like you said, Kevin, like we’re in the bottom of the first and at the end of the day, we’ve got a ton of innings to go and the journey is going to have a bunch of bumps and entered it. Yeah, exactly. Whereas we’re still so early on there, they’re literally building the foundation for how the game is going to be played.

[00:36:17] And it’s a fun thing to walk with the same time he paid him. Right. We’ve had tons of progress, but still in the grand scheme of things still in the first, they’ve got a ton way to go. So. Appreciate your time today, Kevin, for all of our listeners that would love to get in touch with you. And like more obviously we can definitely connect is a great podcast.

[00:36:34] It’s a really educational tool for them. Where else can they get in touch with you? Yeah, no, first and foremost. Thank you guys so much. I had a great time today. You guys are really easy to talk to. It was really fun. So ,  great job and what y’all are doing. Yeah. So as you mentioned, Cabernet connect ,  is streaming everywhere.

[00:36:50]On, on any type of audio streaming service that you like. We also have a YouTube channel. And then I just launched my new website. So it’s cannabinoid, hyphen connect.com. [00:37:00] And ,  yeah, all over social media as well. So Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And ,  if you want to get in touch with B, my email is [email protected]

[00:37:11] Cool. We’ll link that up all in the show notes. So all the listeners out there continue to listen for us, give Kevin and listen, give them a review and then give us a review also because we’re competing for reviews. So thanks everyone for your time. Appreciate it. Kevin, talk to you soon. Awesome, man. Thank you guys.

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Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

Bryan @bryanfields24 and Kellan @Kellan_Finney sit down with Dr. Jordan Zager , CEO of Dewey Scientific to discuss

• How Dewey Scientific uses data to make better crop decisions
• RNA sequencing to maximize the expression of genes
• How to set up a breeding scheme
• The role of tissue culture in the cannabis space
• How brands can replicate their product to provide consistency across state lines
• Genetically engineered cannabis
• Cannabis as medicine

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[00:00:00] Bryan Fields: [00:00:00] This is the dime a 10 minute dive into the cannabis and hemp industry through trends, insights, predictions, and tangents. What’s up, guys! Welcome back to another episode of the dime as always. I’ve got my right-hand man. Kellan, sitting here with me. And today we’ve got a very special guest Jordan Zager CEO, and co-founder of Dewey scientific, Jordan, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today?

[00:00:25] Jordan Zager: [00:00:25] Hey. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I’m doing, I’m doing good. How are you doing?

[00:00:29] Bryan Fields: [00:00:29] Awesome. It’s a beautiful day here in New York, the end of  March. And we’re excited to kick it off.

[00:00:34] Kellan Finney: [00:00:34] And it’s pretty warm out here in Colorado, so

[00:00:36]Jordan Zager: [00:00:36] I’m jealous. It’s about 42 degrees and sleeting here in Washington right now.

[00:00:42] Kellan Finney: [00:00:42] It’s, it’s, it’s a normal spring,

[00:00:44] Bryan Fields: [00:00:44] I think before we get started, I think it’d be great. If you could share with our listeners a little bit about you and what Dewey brings to the space.

[00:00:51]Jordan Zager: [00:00:51] So a little bit about Dewey. We, we like to say that we’re bringing incredible science to the cannabis industry. And when we’re talking about credible science, we’re talking on the plant [00:01:00] genetics and biochemistry side. Cause you know, that’s really what cannabis is. And the end is it’s a plant that has very unique genetics and biochemistry. So we really try to apply modern science techniques to understand that. And then how to leverage that into the commercial cultivation and plant breeding.

[00:01:15] My background, I have a PhD in plant biochemistry and it was one of the early people to work with cannabis, genomics within academia. And I’ve discovered a few terpene genes, some synthesis. In the terpene family.

[00:01:29] Bryan Fields: [00:01:29] How did you get started in cannabis?

[00:01:32] Jordan Zager: [00:01:32] Yeah, so I ,  I’m going to go pretty far back here to my days in college, I worked in a plant biochemistry lab and you know, I was a college kid. I was smoking weed all the time. I was like, wait, I’m learning some really cool stuff about plant biochemistry. I happen to love this plant. Let’s, let’s make this my career. At that time, like there was medical and some States, and then recreational just, just started in Washington and in Colorado. So when I applied to grad schools, I only went to, looked for States where I could work with [00:02:00] cannabis, maybe at home, not necessarily in the lab that, that brought me to Washington. I found a lab whose main focus was the biochemistry of glandular tricombs and terpene production within secretary cells. So I, you know, I knew enough about plant physiology at the time.

[00:02:17] Oh, tricombs, terpenes sounds like cannabis, and it’s going to be pretty close to working with cannabis. So I joined that lab and then eventually I got to work with cannabis ,  part of my, my PhD project. And it was about that time that that project started. I decided, you know, let’s, let’s try to apply this into the cannabis space and it’s not like they’re, you know, at the time there were a bunch of large companies.

[00:02:38] Like there are today, at least in Canada, where they have like pretty in-depth research teams. And so in the time, since we’ve found a Dewey more and more companies have incorporated us in, but that’s, that’s how that was my path to the cannabis industry. Just a love for biochemistry and a, a love for cannabis.

[00:02:53] Bryan Fields: [00:02:53] Perfect combination. So before we happen to the questions. Take it back to Dewey. How, how did that start? Was that another [00:03:00] cannabis induced idea and kind of take us through that?

[00:03:02] Jordan Zager: [00:03:02] Yeah. So Dewey scientific it’s ,  it was founded by me and a plant breeder. When, you know, we, we started out as, as friends ,  umpiring baseball, actually, we were baseball umpires. And after a game, I think we went and smoked some weed and it turned out he was a plant breeder as a biochemist. And so we thought, Hey, let’s, let’s try to apply what we know to cannabis. So I think that that was in like 2015, 2016. We set up like a little makeshift lab in my house. We bought like some laminar flow hood on eBay, started doing some tissue culture in my house, and that’s how I liked it really started.

[00:03:35] And then, you know, fast forward a few years, we start pitching to investors. And we, we get funded. So really what we do is ,  we work with other companies, breeding programs, and we, we sort of supply them with, you know, the scientific expertise ,  as it relates to genomics, genetics, biochemistry to improve their breeding program. And so we work with a few folks in the space. We work with a couple of different farms in the [00:04:00] recreational space. Farm down in California, a couple of farms in Washington. And then of course we have our own recreational cannabis brands doing cannabis company. That’s in Washington and that’s it. And it’s whole ,  we, we do work with a couple of international companies. We’ve worked with some folks in, in ,  in Costa Rica. They, they recently just changed their laws. They’ve got a CBD market now. So we, we actually, we helped with the first import. Hampstead to Costa Rica because those seeds came through the Dewey lab ,  at one point. So that’s, that’s really what we do.

[00:04:28] Bryan Fields: [00:04:28] The classic tech garage story turned for the cannabis industry. So it’s, it’s awesome to hear the evolution of it for our space. So let’s, let’s kind of dive. Yeah. Sorry. Continue.

[00:04:38] Jordan Zager: [00:04:38] I was just going to say the first right to do tissue culture. You need an autoclave. So just like high pressure, high temperature. So we bought a Shopko down the street was, was going out of business. So we, we picked up like a $20 pressure cooker. And ,  that was how we, we made our first batch of media, $20 pressure cooker in my, in my garage.

[00:04:56] Bryan Fields: [00:04:56] Do you live in at home at the time?

[00:04:58] Jordan Zager: [00:04:58] No, this was, this was while I was in grad [00:05:00] school.

[00:05:00] Bryan Fields: [00:05:00] And imagine what your mom would say that if she opened up some, what the hell is going on here?

[00:05:04] So let’s, let’s dive into some of these things on the websites is better crop decision in its simplistic version. How Dewey do we do that?

[00:05:12]Jordan Zager: [00:05:12] So we are big fans of collecting data on your crop. If you’re going to want to improve something, you need to know what is going on. All right in the first place. So that’s, that’s sort of our approach there is, is capturing as much data, whether it’s plant performance data in the field, or if it’s data related to the genetic makeup of the plant, we take a full view of that too, and make better breeding decisions.

[00:05:36] Bryan Fields: [00:05:36] Let’s talk about those better breeding decisions. Are there ones you can specify, ones that are common in this space?

[00:05:43]Jordan Zager: [00:05:43] I, you know, I think with the increase, no, if we back up to when it became legal ,  with the, with the 2018 farm bill. You know, since then, there’s been a lot of progress by many companies in improving the genetics that are out there. I think the first couple years, everything was like a [00:06:00] cherry wine background. Now there’s, there’s, you know, maybe eight, you know, a few dozen of solid backgrounds that are out there. So, sorry, I’m going down a rabbit hole here. Genetic uniformity was a big problem with it. With the 2018 farm bill, like crops were varied, uneven. A lot of crops were hot. I mean, that’s still a big problem in the hemp space.

[00:06:18] You guys know that. So it’s, it’s a matter of, right. If you’re just breeding for, for low CBD or sorry, low THC abundance in a CBD backgrounds, you want to have the tools that can speed up your breeding decisions and your timeline to getting to what you achieve is that I don’t think that answers your question.

[00:06:38] Kellan Finney: [00:06:38] When I was thinking about this and you correct me if I was wrong, have you heard of the myostatin gene that was recognized it’s called the mighty mouse gene. Right. And so when I was actually thinking of what Dewey does, I was thinking about this kind of work that’s being done like by biohackers, I guess is the best analogy I could think of.

[00:06:56] And so, the presence of this gene or the actually [00:07:00] the absence of it causes muscles to increase dramatically, right? And so when I was thinking about doing it, I was thinking that’s exactly the type of work they do in terms of analyzing the plant to say, okay, like I see that say this specific strain has massive tricombs, right? And then all of a sudden it’s testing higher, but, but what is the exact reason that it has those larger tricombs and why is this strain yielding better when I extract it versus this strain isn’t, right? And so is that a good representation in terms of Dewey is going to come in and help me learn exactly genetically what’s going on from a expression standpoint. And then I can try to replicate that in my breeding program. Is that something that’s similar?

[00:07:39]Jordan Zager: [00:07:39] Absolutely. Yes. So, , you just have to have your trait of interest and when I say, yeah, you need the data on it, you know, you want to know, let’s say, let’s go back to your, your, , this plant is extracting extremely well. So, what will you do is, is to really learn the genetics behind that. You have to set up a breeding scheme. You want to have something that you want to set up a what’s called a segregating population. You want to have one [00:08:00] parent that has the trait. You want to have another parent that doesn’t have the trait you cross those. And then you, you look at the, the progeny, the children of that cross. And if some of them have the trait you want, and some of them don’t, you have, what’s called a segregating population. And that’s sort of the best way to go about understanding the genetics behind a specific trait of interest. You know, whether it’s powdery, mildew resistance or it’s extraction yield, that’s, that’s sort of the approach, the approach we take. So, specific examples of what we’ve done in the past are; One, is powdery, mildew resistance. We have developed more like molecular markers for that. So once we have these molecular markers in hand, it speeds up our breeding process. So rather than, you know, okay, we’ve got this Skittle Mintz, and we’ve got this lemon merengue that we want to cross.

[00:08:43] And this lemon merengue super susceptible to powdery mildew, but the Skittle Mintz is not, we can make the cross instead of, you know, going through the whole timeline of phenotyping, all those progeny. You then just have a quick genetic test at the time. They, they sprout their first leaves to identify what is [00:09:00] going to be powdery, mildew resistant.

[00:09:01] So we’ve done that with a few traits, a few different traits.

[00:09:03] Kellan Finney: [00:09:03] That’s awesome.

[00:09:05] Bryan Fields: [00:09:05] Yeah. How long, how long does that take? I know that’s ballpark and then that’s a pretty specific request, but just ballparking.

[00:09:12] Jordan Zager: [00:09:12] Yeah. So it’s, it’s really a matter of if you know the plants you’re working with. We’re talking about a 13, 14 week timeline.

[00:09:21]And if you don’t, well, then you got to start collecting data. So that that’s sort of where we come in with the cultivators. And, and just like, you know, provide them the scientific assistance to get what they want, right? Because most operators in the space right now, they know of what’s in their genetic library. What does well, for certain things, whether it’s terpene accumulation, whether it’s, you know, purple flowers or what have you, or, you know, resistance to different. You know, antibiotic factors or biotic factors ,  such as like, you know, right now doing we’re, we’re trying to tackle a fit resistance and at least develop some markers, race resistance. And so of all the different varieties [00:10:00] that are recreational grow ,  is growing. We do know some are incredibly susceptible and we know that some, I don’t want to say that they’re fully resistant, but they almost never, almost never gonna find aphid on them.

[00:10:12] So that’s, that’s sort of the next trait that we’re, we’re trying to capture. And so with this, because, because we haven’t really categorized our plants for this specific trait, the trait of aphid resistance, it takes a little bit of time there. So maybe, you know, maybe three or four flower cycles. So that is sort of a long timeline. If there’s there’s five flower cycles in a year ,  but a year to 18 months, I think is a good timeline.

[00:10:34] Bryan Fields: [00:10:34] And what exactly is that? What are aphids?

[00:10:37] Jordan Zager: [00:10:37] Yeah, aphids or ,  a, an insect pest. One of the bigger problems in the cannabis industry are aphids. You know, most, most folks control it by just having a really clean grow environment. But even then, like they can, if it’s consultant liberate. So what they do is they latch onto the plant and then they suck the sap, sort of the moving sugar water through the plant. And so it just leads to lower [00:11:00] lower production  from a plant standpoint, overall yields, cannabinoid, content, terpene content.

[00:11:05]Kellan Finney: [00:11:05] Change gears a little bit. You mentioned tissue culturing. Could you kind of provide a simple definition for listeners of what tissue culturing is. [What’s the] why is that different from traditional breeding methods where you’re just kind of crossing two plants and letting them grow and kind of doing the Punnett square? What was the guy with the beans?

[00:11:28] Jordan Zager: [00:11:28] Gregor, Mendel, green wrinkled and yellow, yellow round. Exactly.

[00:11:38] We seem to be so proud to him.

[00:11:41] Oh man. So actually tissue culture is not something that we use in our breeding.

[00:11:47] Kellan Finney: [00:11:47] It seems? 

[00:11:48] Jordan Zager: [00:11:48] You know, at the very basic level, we do go back to punnet squares. That’s what we refer to as Mundelien genetics. So like when we’re capturing all this big data, you know, genetic sequencing data, you can start to see traits segregate and [00:12:00] what we call it, mundelien fashion where it’s like one to two to one. Which is exactly the point of doing those Punnett squares. So, but, but to, to get to your question on tissue culture, tissue culture is a way for clonal replication, meaning right in the cannabis industry, people are always taking clones of their plants and, you know, cutting, you give it some rooting hormones, put it in some rock wall, or maybe some soil you get roots.

[00:12:22] Tissue culture is just a different way of doing that. And it’s done on a much smaller scale from a plant perspective, right? For a clone, for a healthy clown, or you wanna take like a six inch cutting for, I don’t even know the number, but for micropropagation or tissue culture based cloning, you know, you’re taking something that’s a few millimeter.

[00:12:43] Millimeters in length. And so it’s this the same thing you’re giving a cutting of the plant nutrients that it cannot get without roots and you’re tricking it to grow roots is, is the goal. So that’s tissue culture in the cannabis industry. There’s some companies that do their cloning methods that way, rather than the traditional cup cloning.

[00:12:59] And it [00:13:00] gives, it provides the benefit of young clone is grown in a completely sterile environment, which there’s evidence out there that you can remove some, you know, old accumulated systemic diseases or something from a tissue by using tissue culture. We’ve never done that. And I don’t want to make the claim that we can do that.

[00:13:19] Cause I have no idea on the legitimacy of those claims, but that’s tissue culture as it relates to cannabis in the short.

[00:13:25] Kellan Finney: [00:13:25] Appreciate that.

[00:13:26] Bryan Fields: [00:13:26] Yeah, I’ve got another site for you can really play a major role or can it play a helping role in the future with the personalized medicine by understanding exactly how. What the whole process works is that somewhere you see Dewey playing a role in the future?

[00:13:41] Jordan Zager: [00:13:41] Well as for personalized medicine, you know, I, I think that. You know, th the, the combination of all of the phytocannabinoids and the turpines within the plant are consistent, you know? Right. If you have, and this ties into it’s, it’s the entourage effect, right? If someone is using cannabis for medical [00:14:00] purposes ,  they want to get that same mixture every time. Just, just like you do with like aspirin.

[00:14:04] It’s always going to be the same ingredients, time and time again. So for, for folks going after a more natural means of pain relief or whatever reason you want to know, you want to find out what works for you. And then you want to make sure that those chemical constituents are always there. So where we can come in is, you know, we will know that in a given environment, this strain will always produce this chemical profile. And so the right there is there’s multiple factors there, it’s the environment, it’s the genetics, and it’s what the end-user’s getting, which basically comes down to the processing of the flower or the extract, whatever it may be. So from a genetic standpoint, it’s making sure that the plants that are being sent to the growers of, you know, medical cannabis growers, or even, even the patient themselves [that] the genetics that they’re receiving, or at least capable of providing the chemo type that, that [00:15:00] treats their ailments. There are variables in it that are out of the genetics control. But for the most part, if the, if the genetic makeup is there, the ,  the chemical profile will be there to help.

[00:15:10] Bryan Fields: [00:15:10] The environment, it’s gotta be such a complex variable to account for, and especially given all of the restrictions now with large MSO is kind of growing across different States. I mean, That’s how it worked, Jordan. I mean, you got major companies across state lines, all trying to grow roughly the same style products that when you go dispensary materially in California versus New Jersey, you can kind of feel familiar with the products, but there’s gotta be a ton of different variability. So how does that work?

[00:15:36] Jordan Zager: [00:15:36] Yeah. So from a genetic and biochemical perspective, like the, the major pathways that are producing medicinally relevant, or even bioactive components, right. We’re talking about the cannabinoids, we’re talking about the terpenoids and we’re talking about the flavonoids. All of these pathways are heavily influenced,at the genetic level in terms of genetic expression, which is really the driver, right? So if you think of back to the something you learn in, in [00:16:00] biology with ,  with Gregor Mendel is the central dogma of biology, which is  genes are at the first level. They get transcribed into RNA, which is the gene expression. And that gets translated into proteins and the proteins are like the chemical reactant reaction factories. So all of these pathways, cannabinoids, flavonoids terpenoids are incredibly sensitive to environmental interactions. And so in a genetic space, we call this gene by by environment interactions G by E. And so that is something that. Is I think the next big hurdle to clear in the cannabis space, you know, folks are getting really good with their genetics. The next hurdle, I think, to clear in producing that consistent product from state to state to state is ensuring that the environment is the same. So that the, these, these metabolic pathways that produce these biometric compounds are operating the same.

[00:16:54] Now from a recreational standpoint, you know, maybe the chemical. The, the chemo type isn’t as [00:17:00] important for the consumer. Maybe somebody just wants like super frosty buds or, you know, they only want purples. Those are two traits, you know, that ,  are absolutely controlled by the genetic makeup. But you know, if we’re talking about purple, you know, you could, you could have a purple plant when it flowers at 72 degrees. It’s purple. And when you flower it, 82 degrees, it’s mostly green. So that that’s an example of a G by E trait is, is plant color.

[00:17:26] And then, you know, something else like Tricom preservation, that’s, that’s like another big thing in the processing space right now. Making sure your, that your tricombs don’t wither because you want to have big frosty nugs for the recreational consumer that also, you know, might lead to a more potent flower, but also you’re retaining the turpines better. So it doesn’t matter how good genetics are. If these other steps aren’t taken care.

[00:17:49] Kellan Finney: [00:17:49] Is there a way that you could potentially implement like genetics testing throughout the life cycle of a plant, as like a quality control mechanism?

[00:17:58] Jordan Zager: [00:17:58] Yeah, it’s a technique. That’s a little [00:18:00] pricey at the moment, but it’s referred to as RNA seq. So RNA sequencing and what that does is it gives you an idea of. How the genes are being expressed. And so that’s actually a service that we do offer at Dewey with other folks is, we’ll look at your plants at different times. And so we can see when terpene genes are, are at their highest. And then, you know, we can modify that the grow environment to try to then, okay, how can we maximize expression of these genes? And that’s something we offer and, and, and have done at Dewey.

[00:18:31] Kellan Finney: [00:18:31] So say like I have a, my HVAC goes down one night, right. And I come in the next day and it is a completely different environment. I didn’t call you up. You come in, we are, we’re able to determine kind of what’s going on from a genetics perspective. Is that something that you could then coach us through on like how to correct the environment to try to get that RNA sequence back to where, where it should be, or is that kind of like a while you just accept it and move on kind of a situation.

[00:18:55] Jordan Zager: [00:18:55] Yeah, the, the results aren’t going to be immediate, right? If your HVAC goes down, [00:19:00] you got to get your HVAC back up and running or your house, right? But you know, let’s say right, you’re, you’re a company in California, and you’re growing indoors and you got a license for a New Jersey and you want to make sure your products are the same. Well, first off your genetics need to be the same.

[00:19:19]But yeah, so, so let’s say you start growing in New Jersey, your plant, you know, the, the chemical profiles is not there. This, this strain that just smelled so good in California, just doesn’t quite smell as good in New Jersey. We could answer that question with RNAC it’s w w we look at the, the gene expression profile from the same plant grown in what you think are identical conditions, and then diagnose what’s wrong using that gene expression ,  fingerprint.

[00:19:44] Bryan Fields: [00:19:44] Sounds like you’re the Ghostbusters to me.

[00:19:47] Jordan Zager: [00:19:47] Yeah. That’s the thing, a project like that, you know, that that’s not an immediate timeline. That would probably be a, a year to two year project.

[00:19:54] Bryan Fields: [00:19:54] We’re going to cut that part out from the two year timelines that people just here, these guys can come in, he can solve problems immediately.

[00:20:04] [00:20:00] Jordan Zager: [00:20:04] Yeah. Let’s raise expectations, please.

[00:20:06] Bryan Fields: [00:20:06] Kellan, did you have a question you wanted to ask?

[00:20:09] Kellan Finney: [00:20:09] I was just gonna ,  I thought you brought up a good point because I have consumed say like a N O G in Colorado, and then you go to California and say, I’m in Southern California and I purchased another OJI. Completely different versus even up in Northern California, there’s another hoagie. And it’s like, they’re three completely different plants, but they could have all started. Do you think they all start with the same genetics, but based on the environment that’s going to change it or is it we’re just at the point where people don’t really know what genetics are really starting with yet? Like, could you kind of walk me through why that is the reason from a genetics perspective?

[00:20:43] Jordan Zager: [00:20:43] Yeah, I think the first reason is that it’s probably not the same genetics. I think it’s really unlikely that clone from one source is going to be found all over the place. I mean, that’s, that’s what the cannabis industry has is, you know, it’s right with copycats, which is fine.

[00:20:54] But when it comes to understanding that from genetics, you know, there are tests out there that [00:21:00] you said that question, you know, medicinal genomics has a great product. For determining the lineage of something. So the first step would be okay, are the three OGs in these different locations? Actually the same genetically if no. Well, there’s your problem. If yes, then absolutely. Gene by environment is, is most likely driving that change.

[00:21:16] Kellan Finney: [00:21:16] Appreciate that.

[00:21:18] Bryan Fields: [00:21:18] Yes. My next question would be what percentage of the industry is using kind of techniques similar to the ones do we provide and is it based on the sheer size, that’s the determining factor, whether they move forward or not?

[00:21:32] Jordan Zager: [00:21:32] What do you mean by size, the sheer size?

[00:21:34] Bryan Fields: [00:21:34] So the size of the company, right? So we’ve got like boutique style growth who, who might be more geared or using it. And you’ve got like kind of larger ones where I’m curious to know, like, from your standpoint, what percentage of the, of the industry at this moment, both hemp and cannabis is using and doing scientific work, similar style analysis.

[00:21:52] Jordan Zager: [00:21:52] Oh man. Very pro probably 1% or less. Really the, the companies that are doing this are in the hemp space, the breeders, like the [00:22:00] really good breeding companies and in the correct space. Yeah. There’s a few folks that are doing, doing stuff. I think mostly in the rec. space, the companies that are doing this are in Canada and we’re talking right.

[00:22:09] Th the, the giants up there and because, you know, for the size of the company, That’s that’s really, our, our tools are, are more built for companies that are trying to get the same consistency in their products from different locations. So right, like a small farmer in Washington that is craft premium flower probably won’t have much benefit from working with us, but the, the, you know, folks that are trying to replicate their product, provide consistency to their brand.

[00:22:35] Those are the folks, sorry, their brand in multiple locations are the folks that would benefit most from what we offer.

[00:22:43] Bryan Fields: [00:22:43] It seems like a no brainer for the large Ms. Especially the ones that are like opening up shop in, in new locations, as fast as humanly possible. You need to have some sort of consistency, especially at people want that. So it seems like a no brainer for them.

[00:22:56] Jordan Zager: [00:22:56] Yeah, I think to some degree it ties so much into consumer [00:23:00] expectations of the brand. And because like some States don’t have vertical integration where the retailer is actually growing. It. It’s something that’s, that’s sort of hard to control, but for yeah, multi-state operator that is plant touching only, it makes no sense because, right, they want their brands to be the same, no matter where it is. Like Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola at my Chevron down the street is the same as the Coca-Cola where you are. And so for these multi-state operators, Hey, you’re got to have these quality control pieces in place. And genetics is a huge component of that.

[00:23:30] Kellan Finney: [00:23:30] Is this a technology that’s kind of unique to the cannabis industry or is there, is this used in other big ag?

[00:23:37] Jordan Zager: [00:23:37] Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely use another big ag. You know, I think a really good model is the Berry industry, the largest Berry provider in the US at least is Driscoll’s. I’m sure you guys have Driscoll’s in New York and Colorado, their entire business model is built on their R and D program at the genetic level. So that’s their first step of, of quality assurance is they have kick-ass [00:24:00] genetics. The next is may select their partner farms and [they’re there] they set pretty tight rules on what the farms can do and how they grow their berries and that everything from the pesticide treatment to the fertilizers that are ground prior to that, that comes down to the G by E gene by environment interaction. And then beyond that, they have, you know, very strict and standardized ,  processing procedures, right? Like everything, that’s A quality, it goes into their Driscoll’s brand. Everything that’s B quality goes into their other brand. Anything below that gets sold to somebody else or they turn it into a puree. So that’s an example of a different industry using the same tools that we’re talking about here at Dewey.

[00:24:40] Bryan Fields: [00:24:40] What’s the future roadmap or do we look like future roadmap?

[00:24:43] Jordan Zager: [00:24:43] Right now? We are ,  building our consumer brands. We are breeding breeding, breeding, breeding, always breeding and you know, we’re, we’re almost to the point where we’re going to start licensing our varieties to folks in Washington and [right?] these are varieties that are [00:25:00] resistant to a myriad of, of pests confirmed genetically. And then, you know, that are that complete with ,  with some of the popular varieties out there from a cannabinoid and terpene perspective.

[00:25:13] Bryan Fields: [00:25:13] Your biggest misconception is you started working in the cannabinoid space.

[00:25:18] Jordan Zager: [00:25:18] So from, from the time that I, I started working with cannabis to now, what was my biggest misconception? Oh, geez. I thought that we would have a larger barrier to entry ,  than we did. Right. I, I got Dewey was founded three years ago. I think at the time there was like, Eight States that have legalized it recreationally, not many. And now it’s now we’re in the twenties close to the twenties. So I think that that was this misconception. I was like, Oh man, no, one’s gonna be able to do this anywhere else, except for a handful of places. Now it’s like, Oh shit, it’s everywhere. But, but before, you know, starting Dewey, I I’ve worked in like medical collectives in California. I’ve been smoking weed a long time. So I shouldn’t say there was any major [00:26:00] misconception. I started knew what I was getting into. Also, I think the, the passing of the 2018 farm bill legalizing hemp threw me for a loop. I was like hemp, who cares? Like who’s going to be using CBD. You’re not getting high from hemp. So that threw us for a loop. And like, you know, made us question if we should do anything. And he’s sort of pivoting and ,  we, we did, you know, of course we started working with some hemp folks, but yeah, I would just say the growth of both sectors have been in adult use cannabis. I didn’t think it was going to be this fast.

[00:26:31] Bryan Fields: [00:26:31] Yeah. The industry moves just incredibly fast and it’s, it’s funny, right. As we go on this journey where the States announced, you know, they’re, they’re coming online, there’s huge progress, but at the same time, it’s like incremental and we’re still, we’re still in the first inning, which is like the craziest part. We’re literally just beginning.

[00:26:49] Jordan Zager: [00:26:49] Yeah, exactly, exactly. It. I don’t remember who said it, but they, you know, a week in the cannabis industry is like a year in anything else and split at the same time. Right? Like we, we don’t have [00:27:00] our act together on a federal level. Like we can’t even, you know, neighboring States can’t trade product. It’s we, we do still have a long ways to go despite the speed of the last few years.

[00:27:10] Bryan Fields: [00:27:10] We’re still trying to figure it out banking, which by the time this podcast is released, we’ll have it figured out is my whole foods.

[00:27:16] Jordan Zager: [00:27:16] Oh man. I really hope so. Oh man. That’s that’s

[00:27:22] Bryan Fields: [00:27:22] and then this podcast out until it goes down, no, it’ll happen we’re going to get it done. I mean, you can see they’re close, but it’s crazy, right? Like we ask people all the time that are outside industry that want to get in and are just perplexed by the type of obstacles that are kind of like self-imposed on an industry that is still fighting and thriving at the same time. And I think that’s the most impressive part is that some of these companies, including yourself, are doing really challenging next level things. And working with partners that are, rolling for all these additional obstacles.

[00:27:53] Jordan Zager: [00:27:53] Yeah. It’s, you know, you mentioned banking as a big obstacle. The other one is the tax situation. Like we have [00:28:00] to yeah, two yeah,. I don’t know if you guys have discussed this on your show, but this tax code that says the only thing that a, you know, provider of, of. In our narcotic, which of course cannabis is still labeled as, as such. The only things you can deduct, right? You can break the law by trafficking narcotics, but you better not write off your accounting expenses. Like the only thing you can write off are the costs of the goods sold. So like for a producer, like a cannabis grower, it’s like the soil, the lights, the pots, the fertilizer, and the people that grew it, but like their salaries. So like, that’s, that’s something that when I talk to folks outside of the cannabis industry and they learn about that, but like, are you, are you kidding me? And it’s just something that’s ludicrous. And it goes hand in hand with banking, like the financial perspective of how the cannabis operates right now. It’s, it’s amazing that there are companies, like you said, Brian, that are thriving the way there are some of these MSOE and all the hoops, they have to jump through. Like I do, we, we have to deal with one governing board [00:29:00] of the Washington state. Cannabis and liquor board. And like, I can’t imagine what, like, clearly it has to deal with like dealing with one entity. One, one government regulator is enough. So prop props to them.

[00:29:14] Bryan Fields: [00:29:14] I think that’s what they have a team of lawyers. So my team, like an entire baseball team full of lawyers, because it’s gotta be nearly impossible in the acuity. I don’t want to dive into that because that’s a whole nother topic on its own. But when that gets removed, these operators will just have a hold on, more profit. And people are like, Whoa, these guys made a huge amount of money this year compared to last year, like what did they do different? And it’s like, it’s not the government stop screwing them over.

[00:29:39] Jordan Zager: [00:29:39] Yeah, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a good investing tip, Brian.

[00:29:42] Bryan Fields: [00:29:42] I got to have a disclaimer at the end of this podcast. Now we’re not professional investors. You’re not take our advice, but yeah, absolutely. Before we wrap, we’re going to do two questions. We ask all of our guests. You could tell us your experience in the cannabinoid space into one main takeaway or lesson [00:30:00] learned to pass down to the next generation. What would that be?

[00:30:04]Jordan Zager: [00:30:04] Keep your end goal in sight. You don’t know what’s gonna get in your way of getting there, but as long as you have your eyes on what you want to get in the cannabis world ,  I think you can achieve it.

[00:30:13] Bryan Fields: [00:30:13] The last time you consumed any cannabinoids.

[00:30:16] Jordan Zager: [00:30:16] Oh, Jew. Before this podcast, I took my dog on a walk and then smoked a joint with him.

[00:30:21] Kellan Finney: [00:30:21] Love it.

[00:30:25] Jordan Zager: [00:30:25] I was going to ask you guys, if you ,  if you guys want to do to have a little tote stash before we started this, I’ll get on the same level, but we just got it.

[00:30:32] Bryan Fields: [00:30:32] We’ll have to save that for the patriotic members for the video subscription.

[00:30:36] Jordan Zager: [00:30:36] There we go.

[00:30:37] Bryan Fields: [00:30:37] But yeah, we should definitely get together as now off to a virtual one, but pursuing in person.

[00:30:43] So prediction time, will the future be genetically engineered cannabis? If so, what does that look like from a timeframe perspective? If not. Why not.

[00:30:55] Jordan Zager: [00:30:55] That is a great question. I don’t know if it’s tough [00:31:00] because like cannabis is an industry that has its own subculture that has thrived within America, right? And it’s, it’s often associated with, with, you know, preserving nature, right. It stems from, from the hippie movement, the free love movement. And so. For those types of consumers, GMOs are, they’re never going to consume GMO cannabis. So I think any, any company that is producing GMO cannabis is alienating sort of the, the, the base of cannabis users.

[00:31:28] Now that’s not to say it’s not being used today by certain people. I just don’t. I think that it’s GMO cannabis will ever really hit shelves just because of the makeup of consumers. Now, using it in breeding programs, as a tool to learn is probably the way that it’s going to be used. And it’s already being used by, by a few companies. And then, you know, that’s in the, you know, the plant aspect of cannabinoids. The other side is there are a bunch of companies right now that are either currently producing [00:32:00] or on the verge of commercially producing, engineered yeast grown cannabinoids, where they have genetically engineered yeast to have the entire cannabinoid pathway, including the precursors.

[00:32:10] So they’re feeding these East sugar and they’re in turn producing cannabinoids. And that that’s that’s. I think going to be a very useful tool as it relates to cannabinoids as a medicine and is going to be key for, for production of what, you know, call it the rare cannabinoids or even, you know, cannabinoids that don’t really exist in nature, but might have clinical relevance for ,  a certain disease or ailment

[00:32:35] Bryan Fields: [00:32:35] Kellan, thoughts?

[00:32:37] Kellan Finney: [00:32:37] Genetic gene ,  metabolic engineering is really close to my heart. It’s what I studied for a long time. And so, I agree with everything that Jordan said. I don’t think that, I mean, GMOs aren’t even allowed in Europe right now. Like there’s no way this, the plot, the demographic of canvas users that are going to entertain the thought of consuming a genetically modified cannabis plant.

[00:32:57] So, but as far as the genetically [00:33:00] modified organisms go like yeast, and E Coli, I, I do think that that is just going to continue to gain traction. And, but I do think at the end of the day, it’s only going to be for pharma. Because it goes back to the thing. If you aren’t producing say a THC molecule from E Coli and you’re using it to make a bait pen, that bait pen is going to have to say it’s from a genetically modified organism and they’re not, no one’s going to buy it at that point.

[00:33:25] So I think it’s going to be strictly regulated to kind of the pharmaceutical land. Brian, what do you think? What are your thoughts here? Would you consume some genetically modified cannabis?

[00:33:35] Bryan Fields: [00:33:35] If Jordan was bonded. Absolutely. Yeah. But then as a day, I mean, I crossed Jordan blindly.

[00:33:41] So the average consumer is not going to beat like just too many things going on guys.

[00:33:47] Like they’re not going to evaluate a product. At least I don’t think they will. I don’t think they’re going to pick up a product read the back. Like I don’t do that in it now when I buy products. So like, I can’t imagine. When you go to dispensary, buy these products. I don’t think that people are going to [00:34:00] be as informative in that.

[00:34:02] And I think you’ll have your slice of, of individuals who are really well-read and understand exactly what they want to consume like you do in other industries. And I think for the most part, it’s all about money, right? At the end of the day, what makes the most sense? What’s the cheapest way to mass produce the thing from a lean standpoint to get past regulations and then go from there.

[00:34:18] So I’m thinking the other side.

[00:34:20] Kellan Finney: [00:34:20] Well I like that. .

[00:34:22] Jordan Zager: [00:34:22] Well-stated for sure, for sure.

[00:34:24] Bryan Fields: [00:34:24] Jordan, before we wrap up, where can our listeners get in touch with you? If they want to learn more,

[00:34:28] Jordan Zager: [00:34:28] If you want to learn, check it out. deweyscientific.com. If you’re interested in our recreational cannabis brand, check us out on Instagram, [we’re] @Deweycannabis.

[00:34:35]And then of course, deweycannabis.com for our recreational features.

[00:34:40] Bryan Fields: [00:34:40] We’ll tag them all in the show notes so people can find you guys. Thanks Jordan, so much for your time and thank you everyone for listening.

[00:34:46] Jordan Zager: [00:34:46] All right. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Kellan. Had a blast. [00:35:00]

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Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

US Cannabis: A Generational Wealth Opportunity

In this episode, Jonathan Rubin discusses:
• Phyto Partners and what they do
• Outside industry examples of building a unique selling point (USP) and driving margins
• Trulieve’s current market strategy
• The Florida cannabis market
• How VC works in the cannabis space
• The benefit differences that retail and institutional investors receive

Phyto Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in the cannabis industry.

Get in touch with Jon Rubin on Twitter @Jonnyrubin10

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[00:00:00] Bryan Fields: [00:00:00] This is the dime a 10 minute dive into the cannabis and hemp industry through trends, insights, predictions, and tangents.

[00:00:11] What’s up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the dime as always. I’ve got my right-hand man, Kellan Finney, here with me. And this week we’ve got a very special guest Jonathan Rubin, investor of Phyto partners. John, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today?

[00:00:24] Jonathan Rubin: [00:00:24] Hey, thanks Bryan. Thanks Kellan, for having me, everything is good in my neck of the woods. How are you guys doing?

[00:00:29] Bryan Fields: [00:00:29] Doing well, doing well. It’s a nice Friday here in April and we’re looking forward to chopping it up. How are you doing, Kellan?

[00:00:35] Kellan Finney: [00:00:35] You know ,  no complaints, a little snow on the ground this morning. So welcome to spring in Colorado, right?

[00:00:42] Bryan Fields: [00:00:42] Before we dive in, John would be great to understand from our listeners perspective, a little bit of back to yourself and how you got into the cannabis space.

[00:00:48] Jonathan Rubin: [00:00:48] Yeah, absolutely. So I started off working at a private equity fund, a generalist private equity fund called combis partners. They focused on control equity deals. Basically bought [00:01:00] majority stakes of companies and I was working in business development. So, you know, my job was to network with investment banks and essentially cast a wide net for finding as much deal flow as possible because at the end of the day and the venture capital private equity space, you’re only as good as, as the deal flow that you receive and have access to.

[00:01:19] So that was my primary job. I was doing brief screenings of the deals that came our way. And ,  analysis of the companies and I really wanted to do more. So my goal was to play a role in the investment decisions ,  for the fund and get to speak and, and learn from founders. And I used to be a cannabis consumer. It’s always been my sort of, you know, drug of choice versus alcohol. And I knew the industry was at an inflection point when I first started out. With legalization taking place in Canada at the federal level and all the legislation on the state, front in the United States. So I wanted to see if I could break into the space.

[00:01:55] Us cannabis is the great American growth story. It’s a story of cashflow positive [00:02:00] companies with high growth, a long runway for growth, great margins, limited license moats a steadily decreasing cost of capital and risk premium, and a recession slash pandemic proof business. These companies are currently trading at mid-teens EBITDA multiples. And if you compare that to consumer packaged goods companies, which are trading around 20 to 30 times EBITDA, and if you compare that to Canadian LPs that are trading close to 50 times 22 EBITDA ,  just from that perspective, They’re significantly undervalued comparatively, not to mention the us cannabis industry is growing at a 20% growth rate for the next decade.

[00:02:41] So a conservative example to look at valuation ,  I would, I would call it a base case would be to look at the total addressable market by the year 2030, which is estimated to be at least a hundred billion of retail sales. If you assume that the MSO is capture. 75% of that. So assuming that they’re selling [00:03:00] 50% of their sales, wholesale and 50% via retail, and you assume 25% EBITDA margins for that, a 20% market share leader in the United States.

[00:03:11]Trading at 40 times, EBITDA could be valued at 150 billion. And right now, you know, like we’ll, we’ll mention with CuraLeaf leaf is around 10 billion of EV that implies a potential 15 X upside, you know, from the largest us operator today. So I think there’s significant upside. If you have the staying power.

[00:03:32] And ability to kind of wait for this thesis to continue to evolve for the companies, to continue growing their earnings and eventually up list onto a us exchange where investors will begin to pay a fair multiple for these companies.

[00:03:47]And an opportunity came about with Phyto partners and I, and I jumped on it. And at Phyto partners, I participate in all the components of the venture capital ecosystem from deal sourcing ,  to due diligence on [00:04:00] companies, portfolio, company monitoring, and even investor relations. And I’m super excited about the future of the cannabis space.

[00:04:07] Bryan Fields: [00:04:07] Yeah. I’m excited to kind of pick your brain on some of those topics. So I think for the first question right off the bat. When you’re consuming cannabinoids, what’s your go-to meal?

[00:04:16] Jonathan Rubin: [00:04:16] Oh, that’s a good one. Didn’t get any prep for that question. No, I’m kidding. I, I tend to eat, you know, pretty healthy diet. I actually lost 60 pounds a couple of years ago, so I still keep it pretty healthy. I’ll, I’ll stick to like fruit I’ll stick to ,  you know, sometimes I’ll do some sushi, but I mean, it just depends on what I’m feeling. I’m not really the type to just ,  have a bunch of munchy snacks. Fair?

[00:04:37] Bryan Fields: [00:04:37] That’s fair. All right. So let’s dive into some of the, the real questions, right? The cannabis industry has been a generational wealth opportunity. What are your thoughts with that? Do you agree, do you disagree?

[00:04:50] Jonathan Rubin: [00:04:50] Yeah, I totally agree. You know, just given the fact that this is the one investment opportunity out there where retail investors actually have a fundamental advantage [00:05:00] over institutional capital, much of the institutional capital out there is unable to touch the space ,  because it is federally illegal.

[00:05:07] So they’re worried. That, you know, if they invest in the space, the government can come and seize their assets or that they could get in trouble. So this is a generational opportunity because patient capital ,  that is willing to take some risk and wait for, you know, a catalyst at the federal level has an opportunity to get in.

[00:05:26] On the great American growth story, which is us cannabis at very cheap multiples, relative to other similar industries like consumer packaged goods, or even ,  apples to apples, comparing it to the Canadian cannabis industry. You know, we’re able to get in at much cheaper valuation multiples. Meanwhile, we have a much longer duration of growth ahead and, you know, a higher growth rate for the years to come. So yeah, I do think it’s a generational opportunity ,  akin to when alcohol was ,  coming out of prohibition. And yeah, I think that [00:06:00] patient capital here will be treated very, very well and will outperform the broader indices by a decent amount.

[00:06:08] Bryan Fields: [00:06:08] From a timeframe perspective though, is there a finite window? You think that the retail investors kind of limited to? I know one of the questions that I field often is, you know, there’s so many different moving pieces, I’m more well aware of all that Canadian companies, which we aggressively try to move them back towards the U S which is likely a conversation of their own.

[00:06:26] So, in your perspective, John, is there a timeframe that you would encourage some of the investors to know that, Hey, like this is the limited window we think is really beneficial. Then, this is where I think you should start from ,  an informational standpoint.

[00:06:37] Jonathan Rubin: [00:06:37] Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, time is of the essence, the time is now.

[00:06:41]But you know, as soon as there’s a catalyst at the federal level, whether it be a safe Harbor language, which would essentially allow these institutions to invest without having to worry, or there’s an uplifting event ,  and it becomes federally legal, I think that’s, You know, [that’s] the minute that the arbitrage opportunity of [00:07:00] the limited demand of institutional capital will go away and multiples will probably be, be bid up because you’ll have a larger universe of investors that can actually come into the space. So I think that’s, you know, it’s very simple and sometimes, you know, the best opportunities and, you know, things in life are embedded in the simple, and it’s as simple as that. It’s, you know, as soon as there’s a federal ,  catalysts. I think the arbitrage opportunity, the generational opportunity will go away.

[00:07:29] It will still probably be a good investment depending on, you know, the price of these companies. But I mean, this right here is just one of the best risk reward opportunities on the market, primarily for those reasons.

[00:07:42] Bryan Fields: [00:07:42] Yeah. I couldn’t agree any more. And I want to go to Kellan to kind of expand on that and John a hundred percent, right? Like to me, even if that window closes, I still think there’s tremendous opportunity because some of these companies are just laying the foundational groundwork, right? They’re scaling as fast as humanly possible, and they’re still have all these other implications, all [00:08:00] these other roadblocks obstacles to ADE all these other hurdles that eventually will be replaced. They’ll scale, they’ll optimize and they’ll go forward. So, Kellan your thoughts on the whole generational wealth opportunity?

[00:08:11] Kellan Finney: [00:08:11] Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it is one of the best opportunities, at least in our generation to generate a significant wealth in all transparency, cannabis is the only reason I started investing. [I] Oh, scientists by a traditional educational standpoint and worked in a lab for a while, kind of got out of that. And then I I think it was in 2018. We went till Ray went from trading around the $10 all the way up to like 300 and it made national headlines. All of a sudden I was like, Oh wow, like there is this tremendous opportunity for my wealth to just grow right? Passive income, all these other things. And so that was one of the most obvious signs. And from my perspective, as a retail investor with very, very limited experience, and that was the driving force for me getting involved in, in the [00:09:00] stock market and investing in general. And so, I mean, at the end of the day, like institutional investors don’t have the opportunity, that retail investors have currently, which is what Jonathan just touched on. And I think that the window will close, but as far as risk goes, I mean, I don’t think it’s as risky as a lot of people make it out to be. I mean, I’m out in Colorado and, and cannabis has kind of become a norm out here. Right? Dispensary’s are  just as common as liquor stores in the state. And ,  I look at it like the genie’s out of the bottle, like it’s going to be writ, I don’t see any way for even the federal government to come out and say, okay, the States need to re criminalize this and pulling that whole industry back.

[00:09:43] I just, I cannot see that playing out at all in my perspective. I mean, what are your thoughts on this, Brian?

[00:09:48]Bryan Fields: [00:09:48] Yeah, I think we’re going right. I think New York is the step in the direction that says like, we’re moving forward. And then, you know, New York, New Mexico, Virginia, everyone’s doing faster. The East coast. It’s these other [00:10:00] dominoes that are moving forward with Connecticut and Maryland getting closer. Obviously, Schumer’s pretty, pretty loud about what he’s looking to do. And as soon as safe goes through, I think it’s, it’s only a matter of time. We keep it moving. So I want to press back on John and, you know, get some insights on how he makes decisions and how he can recommend to the average investor on where to start to gathering the information. There’s endless sources of resources out there. But how does one understand the differences between the various operators in the space and then how do they know which one might fit their risk profile?

[00:10:30] Jonathan Rubin: [00:10:30] Yeah, I think that’s a good question. And I always recommend, especially for people that are just starting out to start by diversifying, and then eventually once they accumulate a knowledge base and understanding to then concentrate on, on what they are most convicted.

[00:10:45] And so, you know, obviously we have the ETF and SOS, and you can kind of, you can Google what their holdings are and you could start doing research, you know, one at a time ,  understanding each of these operators you can read through their quarterly [00:11:00] earnings report. I actually recommend reading through ,  the 10K document for any of the operators that are filing with PSCC. So for instance, green thumb, you can go on ssc.gov and read through their 10 K filing. And you can learn a lot about the business, where they’re operating in all of that good stuff, all of their financial metrics. And, you know, you start by getting a good understanding there, you can read a few of their quarterly press releases, understand kind of the growth.

[00:11:28] And then a lot of investing is just comparing, right? Comparing using, you know, the, the broader markets or other companies as a measuring stick. And if you do that, I mean, if you see these companies are growing at 150%, year over year. The only thing that’s comparative to that would be looking at these high growth technology companies, you know, that are actually losing money. And they’re trading at 30 plus times revenue versus cannabis companies are trading. You know, a lot of them are trading and under 10 times, or, you know, something to that nature. So [00:12:00] it’s not a great comparison to look at, you know, cannabis versus technology, but at the same time, comparing, you know, the growth that you’re seeing in the cannabis space.

[00:12:09] It’s pretty much one of the fastest growing industries out there and to be trading at a multiple that’s, you know, relatable to value stocks ,  is where the opportunity lies. So I think that’s, that’s like a good way to think about it. But mainly just, you know, reading through these quarterly reports and getting comfortable following the industry, signing up for newsletters, you know, going to these online webinars and just, you know, getting comfortable.

[00:12:34] I think right now it’s, it’s primarily a land grab kind of like you mentioned, we have the domino effect happening, New York legalized. We’re probably going to see some other States follow like Pennsylvania, probably Florida in the next, you know ,  18 months. So it’s just, it’s just a matter of time and it’s not like we’re forging building a new industry. That’s never existed. You know, the cannabis solicit market exists everywhere. People consume cannabis. So it’s an industry that already [00:13:00] exists, but we’re, you know, we’re moving from the illicit market to the legal market. And I think that’s why there’s a lot less risk. It’s not like we’re creating a brand new vertical that we don’t know if people are going to use it. Or if you know society, you know, condones it it’s out there. It’s already being consumed. It’s just now we’re having, you know, States and governments benefit from the sale of it.

[00:13:21] Bryan Fields: [00:13:21] Perfectly said.

[00:13:23] Kellan Finney: [00:13:23] I have a quick follow up question on that. How much weight Jonathan, do you put on the management of these companies? Right. In a comparison standpoint, I mean, is it something where you’re looking for individuals that have past experience in cannabis or are you more comfortable with. Individuals that are managing these companies from outside the industry that have been successful and say consumer packaging goods or, or, or something like that. How much, how much do you guys put into considering those as far as decisions made.

[00:13:52] Jonathan Rubin: [00:13:52] Yeah, I think it’s important for the management team to be adaptive and be used to highly regulated [00:14:00] industries. You know, I think that’s definitely important, but versus just looking at their previous history and where they’ve been or what successful companies they’ve built, I like to see kind of how they’ve been allocating capital. So I think at the end of the day, this entire, you know, Right now the growth for the cannabis space is about making good acquisitions and good limited license States ,  doing the right mix of, you know, debt equity, you know, stock and cash for those deals. So I think just the way that they do deals and, and think about growth and more importantly, the way they think about strategy to me is most important.

[00:14:35] I think right now it’s a land grab and going forward, you know, once the industry is more matured, That’s when I’m going to say, Hey, like, you know, I think the management team is going to be much more important at that point. That’s just my thoughts on it.

[00:14:48] Bryan Fields: [00:14:48] I wanted to ask a follow-up to that is, saw John Sandeman of air strategies on a rhino’s podcast. And he was talking about Liberty health deal and how he made that decision. And he [00:15:00] said that he didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity. And that struck me completely different because here’s somebody who’s not supposed to be making like an emotional decision, but he knows he’s limited. And if he doesn’t act now he could get placed out, right? And that to me was another variable that I hadn’t thought of, right? That like, there’s such a limited opportunity where there’s the time essence where if he didn’t move there and somebody else scooped Liberty. He might now have to pay 10 X for maybe a less valuable variable. And then his overall goal is to try and add value to shareholders and do that mixture like you were saying, but how they place that emphasis on the balance is, is truly remarkable in understanding, you know, what’s a fair price to bet.

[00:15:43] Jonathan Rubin: [00:15:43] Yeah, no, I absolutely, as far as like kind of the deals that are happening with these larger MSO’s scooping up, you know, smaller ones, you know, th they’re paying a lower multiple of EBITDA, then their stock is trading for on the overall market. And hopefully, you [00:16:00] know, AYR is also able to make Liberty, you know, more efficient ,  bring, you know, their protocols and ,  you know, playbook to them, help them be, you know, organically grow.

[00:16:10] So I think that’s super important too. It’s like how, how they roll these companies up and, you know, bring them into the organization and all of that. But that’s really interesting.

[00:16:19] Bryan Fields: [00:16:19] Yeah. It’s gotta be so complex to try to be acquiring all these different operations and then roll them back into like your normal operations and then get them up to speed and in the same breath, look for the next acquisition, the next step, because you always have to be two steps in front thinking like that because these deals take time to put together.

[00:16:35] So let’s, let’s take one more step forward on the, the MSO thesis side from a standard side. I know like a lot of the focus has been on the U S side, but when cure leaf made their acquisition internationally, does that change your perspective on evaluating these companies? That now they might need to be thinking more from a global scale? And how does that relate to the way you put together? Your thoughts?

[00:16:54] Jonathan Rubin: [00:16:54] Yeah. I mean, I think it just adds to the future potential total addressable market for [00:17:00] these companies. International opportunity is actually is, is obviously huge ,  or will be huge. So. I think in the thesis, it just increases the potential Tam, which a lot of growth investors will eventually pay for. You know, I think right now it will pay to be focused on the US especially for all the other operators. I don’t think there’s, there’s a rush or anything like that to start acquiring assets in Europe, et cetera, until. You know, the framework is more solidified there until the demand starts to pick up there a little bit more.

[00:17:30] And there’s certainly enough of demand in the U S to start, you know, to capture before they have to go and do that. But like you said, I mean, Europe alone has population of like 700 million people. So like double the US but the cannabis market there is still tiny. So it’s almost like reminiscent of, of the us cannabis market, you know, 10 years ago.

[00:17:51] So I think eventually we’re going to start having those conversations, but for now, you know, with New Jersey coming online, the New York, all of these States, I think that [00:18:00] it will pay to be focused on, on those States.

[00:18:03] Bryan Fields: [00:18:03] Yeah, Charlie’s probably looking for that first mover advantage, trying to secure an asset they think is probably going to get scooped first. So let’s talk about that, that first mover advantage you’re in Florida. Obviously we know the big player in Florida, but what’s their plans? I know they’re dominating Florida. Are they going to continue to grow on the East coast? Do you have any sort of thoughts on where you think truly it goes.

[00:18:22] Jonathan Rubin: [00:18:22] Yeah, I think that they have an interesting strategy. You know, the, the hub model where they’re not trying to necessarily have a presence in every state, but in the States that they are in, they want to go deep. And I think that strategy will probably, [you know]  pay off in the long-term if, if, and when there’s interstate commerce. But I mean, even for now with their million plus square foot grow in Florida, they could still barely supply the Florida market. So I think that the day that they’re able to do interstate commerce, I think that they still need to ramp up supply pretty heavily. But I think that they will, you know, continue to have great margins because they’re [00:19:00] operating at scale. They don’t have to replicate facilities and, 10 20 different States because they’re focused on going deep in the States that they’re in.

[00:19:08] I think that they have an interesting strategy and obviously their margin profile is, is the best of the best out of the MSO’s currently. And I guess we’re just gonna have to see how it plays out.

[00:19:18] Bryan Fields: [00:19:18] Kellan, I know you did some research on Florida. You want to ,  add any areas there?

[00:19:21]Kellan Finney: [00:19:21] The only thing I would add is I do think that that’s probably the most well thought out plan as far as approaching cannabis from a national perspective. You talked to other manufacturers in different verticals for ,  they, they look at an East coast hub ,  kind of the middle of the country hub and then the West coast hub. And I mean, that, that plays into all of the benefits from the economy of scales, right?

[00:19:46] Building bigger facilities means you’re able to maintain quality, consistency and decrease your margins, right? And then having those three different hubs gives you access to the entire country with our ,  ability to just, [00:20:00] if it’s, if you are able, able to transport between States, which I would imagine once federal legalization comes ,  comes into play, that that’s going to be a no brainer. There’s going to be no issues with that. There might be some issues in terms of like dry counties. I don’t know how ,  alcohol is kind of handled in terms of transportation through counties that don’t allow alcohol sales right? There, there might be some nuances associated with that, but I would imagine that interstate commerce for cannabis will be facilitated no problem.

[00:20:29] And, and having those multiple hubs one on the East coast, West coast and in the central United States will be the most beneficial for not only margins, but build out costs. I mean, even building like a 30 or a small 25,000 square foot cultivation facility. You’re going to be looking at five, $10 million in just capital deployment to be able to facilitate something like that, right? And so, and then you’re going to still face all of the problems with maintaining consistency and quality in every single state. And it’s just not the model that [00:21:00] works. And it’s not the model that’s been proven time and time again, in terms of other comparable manufacturing sectors.

[00:21:07] Jonathan Rubin: [00:21:07] So that’s interesting. And I’ve been hearing a lot about three tier distribution model that, that takes place for a lot of States with alcohol and people are kind of discussing that as a potential downside risk for, for cannabis. I don’t know if you guys have any thoughts on that.

[00:21:23] Kellan Finney: [00:21:23] I do,I know that ,that’s kind of the approach that California has, has taken, right? Like you, in order to say you grow your cannabis in order to get your cannabis from your grow to a retail location, you can’t do that on your own. You have to go through someone with a distribution license, right. Which is the exact same way that the alcohol industry is kind of managed, right? There’s that middleman distribution situation. I think it works from a regulatory standpoint in terms of trying to, it helps the government regulate bigger, less people, but they’re going to be bigger. Right. So I think that that might be. An attractive option from a regulatory standpoint, it’s also going [00:22:00] to increase profits for anyone with a distribution license.

[00:22:03] It’s just going to solely focus on distribution. They’re going to be more successful, not having to fight. People with cultivation licenses that are also trying to distribute, you’re going to also, it’s probably going to result in higher quality services, right? Cause they’re only focused on one, one piece of the supply chain.

[00:22:19] Right. So they’re going to do a better job in my opinion. So there’s all those things that kind of, you could put into the protocol and if you’re looking at it, the downside would be it’s. You’re going to see big corporations come in and push the little guys out, there’s going to be a lot of ,  acquisitions.

[00:22:32] I mean, you can see a lot of the complaints right now in terms of how Amazon’s subcontractors are treated within the Amazon ecosystem. You can see there’s a lot of pushback associated with. So Amazon strong arming them on some certain aspects. So those, I think you could chalk up in the con column as far as that, following that model, right? It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out though.

[00:22:57] Jonathan Rubin: [00:22:57] Yeah. It’ll hurt margins for sure. As well. Like you [00:23:00] like truly having, you know, 75% gross margins, some of that’s going to be cut down. They have to sell to an intermediary, a middleman. That’s [going to] definitely not be helpful for margins, but

[00:23:13] Kellan Finney: [00:23:13] I mean, that’s what east, east, right? East is next plan is to go vertical. And the only reason is, is because they have to increase margins in order to pay their bills. Right. And so the best way they can increase margins is by owning the bile, but owning the grow and then their margins go through the roof. Cause they’re not playing that middleman $5 for a delivery charge. That makes no sense for 80% of their deliveries, you know?

[00:23:37] Jonathan Rubin: [00:23:37] Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:38] Bryan Fields: [00:23:38] Margins are also nuts, right? 75% is not, but I have actually a different question is, is in that same regard, once companies don’t have to be vertically integrated and they can focus on the one part of the chain, maybe then, they can still increase their margins because you can’t, I mean, you can, right? But most companies can’t be efficient at all the different operations. That’s why they kind of connect with other vertical partners. So I wonder [00:24:00] if, if these companies link up and go, okay, this is what we’re good at. We’re going to really drive home here and then they can focus on maximizing those margin.

[00:24:07] Jonathan Rubin: [00:24:07] Good point.

[00:24:08] Kellan Finney: [00:24:08] What about other companies that have that skillset and other sectors, right? Like Uber, right. Uber just came out and said they were looking at cannabis delivery. I mean, they’re currently optimizing their platform for delivering food and people from location, location. I mean, the headstart that they’re gonna have when they decided to get into the space.

[00:24:28] Yes. It’ll be almost a no brainer for say another company, just partner with Uber as a strategic partner and have Uber facilitate the deliveries because Uber has been spending the last. Two decades optimizing all of their margins for moving item eight, two from location A to location B. Right. And what are your thoughts on that?

[00:24:47] Jonathan Rubin: [00:24:47] Yeah, and Trulieve[you know]  I think like a few, like a hundred or so delivery vans, and they’re kind of managing the whole delivery process, but yeah, maybe they’ll want to outsource that similar to like when AWS came [00:25:00] out Amazon web services, you know, before that. Companies like Facebook and other, you know, other tech companies had their servers on premises.

[00:25:09] They had to, you know, manage those servers and AWS gave them a chance to outsource it for a smaller fee. And then, you know, Facebook and these companies can focus on, you know, what was making them money, what they were better at and it made sense to outsource it. So I think that that makes a lot of sense, given the, you know, given what the infrastructure that Uber’s already built and their ability to probably. You know, facilitate at a much cheaper price.

[00:25:33] Bryan Fields: [00:25:33] Right? And that’s why when people were freaking out that the Uber CEO said that, I mean, logically, why would he not consider that vertical? It’s a huge opportunity for them cannabis is exploding and people need this. He already has the infrastructure and the fleet and the technology. This is a smart play for him. And. I wonder if these conversations are already happening, right? Like people are already having strategically like, okay, like when this goes down, [our] we’ll announce, this agreement will have some sort of informal handshake and understanding that [00:26:00] we’ll look to incorporate you guys.

[00:26:01] Do you guys think that type of conversations are already happening?

[00:26:03] Jonathan Rubin: [00:26:03] I wouldn’t be surprised. 

[00:26:05] Kellan Finney: [00:26:05] Yeah. I would bet money that most, I mean, most large organizations at this point, have some team devoted towards researching the cannabis industry from my experience. I mean, I was at the conference four or five years ago when California wasn’t even RAC.

[00:26:21] And I remember sitting down and I mean, the DEA and the FDA were already having special group meetings regarding how to legalize cannabis on the federal level. And so, I mean, if the government is having special group meetings five years ago, you would imagine that large corporations that are trying to make cap are trying to generate revenue are also looking at this as a potential opportunity.

[00:26:42] I mean, perfect example, you could look at Johnson and Johnson, right? Johnson and Johnson has ABI KONA, I’m not exactly sure how they’re positioned from an ownership perspective within ABI KONA, but ABI KONA is following marching orders. If you will, from Johnson and Johnson in terms of [00:27:00] how they are running their incubation hubs and those kinds of aspects of getting involved in the industry.

[00:27:04] Bryan Fields: [00:27:04] So before we move into the prediction and some of the other questions, John, I want to ask real quick about the venture space and how that kind of works because. Unfortunately, or fortunately the cannabis industry always works a little differently. So from a VC space, how does that work in the cannabis industry?

[00:27:19] Jonathan Rubin: [00:27:19] Yeah, so, I mean, we started off on the ancillary side, so we weren’t looking at plants. How should companies, I only recently started learning and ,  and doing work on these multi-state operators, but you know, how it works for us is we aggregate deal flow. You know, we have articles that come out. We have portfolio companies and the founders of those companies send us, you know, other interesting businesses that they work with.

[00:27:42]We work with other, other VC funds and ,  basically, you know, we source deal flow. Whatever is interesting to us. We ,  we start the due diligence process for. So we speak to the founders. We learn about the business. We look through their financials, we speak to their customers. We try to speak to their [00:28:00] competition and learn about their competition. We get their data room access and just go through most of their contracts. We make sure that the management team checks out, whether they have past experience running a successful business or another company that was, you know, in a similar category. And, you know, that’s kind of the due diligence process.

[00:28:20] We do sparse checks in earlier stage companies. So, you know, call it series A and before that sort of series seed rounds, and we do more concentrated investments in later stage companies, especially at this point of the industry. As we continue to mature and develop. So when we first started in 2015, there were only a handful of companies that were doing over call it, you know, a million dollars in revenue run rate.

[00:28:46] And today kind of our criteria is like, you know, a company has to be doing at least two, two and a half million in revenue run rate for us to really consider investing just because the industry has matured and a lot of the ancillary [00:29:00] verticals that make business for these operators, much easier and more efficient. A lot of them have been established. So for instance ,  we invested into a company called leaf link in ,  want to say 2016, it was their series seed round. At the time and leaf link is the largest B2B wholesale marketplace in the cannabis industry. At the time. They were only in, I want to say two States and they facilitated like 50 or 60 million of transactions on the platform and that’s not revenue.

[00:29:30] That’s just the transactions that they facilitated. They actually charge a flat fee for the brands that sell on the platform and they had a couple hundred brands and retailers on the platform at the time and fast forward, you know, three or four years later, the company has several thousand brands and dispensaries on a platform has facilitated over, you know, has ,  over $3 billion gross merchandise value run rate. And, you know, essentially. They just ,  they just [00:30:00] secured an investment from founder’s fund, which is one of the most iconic venture funds in the world that doesn’t participate in the cannabis space, but they clearly saw an opportunity here on the, on the technology ancillary front with a company like Lee flank, which facilitates, I want to say over 20% of all the wholesale cannabis transactions in the United States. I think the number is much higher at this point, but ,  yeah, it’s ,  it’s, it’s pretty, pretty phenomenal to watch these companies grow, but you know, so, so we, we source deals. We do diligence. And another component of venture capital is raising money from outside investors.

[00:30:37] So we do that. We utilize different softwares and platforms such as PitchBook, you know, family and friends, et cetera. So we target accredited investors and we raise capital from them. And then, you know, we open a fund to do so. And the way that you get paid on the venture capital side is typically two and 20, and what that means is we earn [00:31:00] 2% of the assets. That we raise and we earn 20% of the carry, which is essentially the profit at the end of the day. So if we invest a total of, you know, call it just use simple math, a million dollars. And at the end of 10 years, it turns into 10 million. You know, we sell our, we liquidate our companies that either went public or were acquired. For the 10 years, we earn 2% on that million dollars ,  the entire time. So we’re earning $20,000 per year. And then on the 9 million of profit at year 10, we earn 20% of that. So, you know, so 1.8 million, that’s kind of how the incentive structure works when you’re managing a venture capital fund. So, you know, the numbers can get ,  pretty significant when you’re investing more larger amounts of money.

[00:31:49] When you have. You know ,  a company that, you know, hundred exes or something like that. So that’s when it gets really interesting and a lot of fun. You know, that’s the basics on [00:32:00] venture capital. And one thing I will add is, you know, it’s much different than investing in the stock market because you’re investing in private companies. So you can’t wake up tomorrow and say, Hey, I want to sell my, I want to sell my stake. You have to wait until the company’s either acquired by another company or you wait until the company goes public in which you’re issued [you know] public shares, where you can sell them on the open market. So typically the life cycle of a fund is around 10 years and investors that, that invested into the fund get paid back first.

[00:32:31] And, you know, we, we make the, the 20% carry on on whatever the profits are. Sorry for the long-winded explanation.

[00:32:37] Bryan Fields: [00:32:37] No, I think was really well said. I learned a ton that I didn’t understand that the two and 20, so I appreciate you breaking that down. The biggest misconception since you started working in the cannabis space.

[00:32:49] Jonathan Rubin: [00:32:49] I think a common misconception is that, you know, the real story is the medicinal side and all the, all the drugs that will be made from the plant. You know ,  [00:33:00] FDA approved drugs, but I think that really, it’s a, it’s a story of recreational substance that, that people have been using for thousands of years. And I think that adult use cannabis is where the real opportunity is for investors and just for the largest group of stakeholders. And I think that. You know, a lot of people will use the plant for medicinal purposes, but it will be, you know, they’ll be purchasing it from a recreational dispensary. It’s not going to necessarily, you know, the large part of the, market’s not necessarily going to come from drugs that you need to be prescribed to.

[00:33:31] So I think that’s one of them and ,  I’m having a hard time thinking of others. What do you think for you? What would you say is like a misconception, maybe it’ll spark some juices for me.

[00:33:40] Kellan Finney: [00:33:40] I agree with your statement as far as medical goes, I think this thing with big pharma and like actual medicine is big pharma is going to want to make money too. Right? Like we love to say that they’re out there just for the good of people and providing medicine, but they need to make money too. And the biggest obstacle why big [00:34:00] pharma has never really approached THC as a medicinal compound is because you can’t patent it. Right? Like they can’t patent it. Like they do all of their other drugs. Because you can’t patent nature, right? And so from a medicinal standpoint, I could see a lot of cannabinoid derivatives come onto the marketplace as medicines ,right? But traditional pharmaceutical standpoint and providing people with medicine, even like, if you’re looking at the derivative products from cannabis, like these oils and the concentrates that is a cocktail of 400 different chemicals, or even even 10, right?

[00:34:36] Depending on like the turpines and all these other things. And how far down that purification chain they take it. I mean, it’s really, really hard. I mean, you listen to pharmaceutical commercial now, and it’s like five minutes of these are the side effects. Right. And those are the side effects of one molecule.

[00:34:50] And like now they have 200 different molecules in this same drug. I mean the side effects are going to be obnoxious and they’re not going to be able to kind of shore those [00:35:00] up from a liability standpoint. And so I don’t think that the future of cannabis is going to be from a medicinal standpoint, unfortunately. I think that pharma will find some pharma kinetics that why THC binds with certain receptors and how it actually interacts with the human body. And they’ll develop a derivative molecule that looks really, really similar, but it’s not THC. And then they’ll patent it and that’ll be where the medicinal side of cannabinoids come into play.

[00:35:25] And that’s just my opinion on what are your thoughts here, Brian? What’s your biggest misconception?

[00:35:29]Bryan Fields: [00:35:29] I think at least on my side, the biggest misconception is that then people want to consume cannabis. It doesn’t have to be heavy THC. It can be, you know, a low dosage or an entourage effect or a bunch of these other minor cannabinoids that have maybe not medicinal benefits, but other serviceable benefits.

[00:35:45] And I think for me, I do enjoy consuming the plant, but I also don’t want the heavy THC side that kind of tends me to be a little more antisocial. So I think the biggest stigma is that when people say cannabis, they’re like, Oh, you just want to get stoned and go eat McDonald’s. And it’s like, not [00:36:00] exactly. That’s not really how it works, but you know, good luck to you in the future.

[00:36:04] Jonathan Rubin: [00:36:04] Yeah, I agree with that. And you guys kind of sparked some other thoughts for me, but yeah, that’s one of them it’s that, you know, consuming cannabis is not just a stoners game anymore. It’s not that, you know, that archetype of somebody just sitting around the bond, sleeping on the couch and, and munching it’s, you know, people that want to be more creative people that want to take a hit to microdose and engage in like a really interesting conversation.

[00:36:26]So I agree with you. I think that is a common misconception that will [you know] slowly but surely go away as people explore, you know, using smaller doses, like you mentioned, another misconception from the investment side, I would say is that, you know, as soon as it goes legal, you know, liquor companies and [you know] Canadian cannabis companies are just going to buy out all these licenses or they’re just going to be able to start growing cannabis and kind of just bypass the fact that these, some of these States still will have, you know, a limited license structure. And I think that’s incredibly false. I [00:37:00] think they’re going to have to pay an exuberant amount to buy, for instance, a license in Florida or, or one of these limited licenses in New York. And, and I think people just forget that Amazon can’t come into Florida tomorrow and start selling cannabis.

[00:37:15] They would have to pay, you know, an incredibly high amount for a license there. They can, however, go and compete with Apple and create a cell phone, or they can go compete with Celsius, the energy drink and make a drink tomorrow, but they can’t come into a limited licensed cannabis state. So I think that’s where you know, us as investors that are sitting patiently are going to win when that legalization event does happen. And these companies all want to enter this space and they’re going to pay a much larger amount for these licenses.

[00:37:43] Bryan Fields: [00:37:43] Absolutely. Next question. The last time you consumed any cannabinoid.

[00:37:47]Jonathan Rubin: [00:37:47] So I, you know, I consume with friends on probably like a weekly basis. I only do it at night because kind of like you mentioned earlier, it makes me a bit antisocial.

[00:37:57] I used to smoke a lot more, but I’ve [00:38:00] kind of slowed down ever since I started getting a little bit more into like self-growth and meditation. But I still enjoy it. I think that there are tons of health benefits to doing it. Sometimes it puts me in a different state of mind, a different perspective. I have great thoughts when I’m on it, versus when I was doing it, when I was consuming it pretty much every day. I got comfortable with it and it didn’t really take me into a, a different state of mind. So yeah, a couple of like, I want to say like a week and a half ago. Yeah,

[00:38:26] Bryan Fields: [00:38:26] It’s fair. Right? I mean, everyone has those stories where they used to consume it every day and the couch was their best friend and wish Netflix was around back then.

[00:38:35] All right. Let’s do prediction time five years from now, who do you think will be the biggest player in the space in regards to Evy? And from that standpoint, give us two smaller companies or long shot horses that you think in the next five years we’ll make a larger growth that people might be sleeping on right now from just an informational standpoint.

[00:38:58] Jonathan Rubin: [00:38:58] I like that question. I think from [00:39:00] an evy perspective, I think curely has the best, the best shot of winning that. But that’s not to say that I think that their stock price will be the best performing stock. I think that they’re going to have a ton of dilution. I think that the margin profile is not as good, but they’re also, you know, just the amount of shares that I envisioned them issuing ,  to keep up with this growth.

[00:39:20] I do not think there’ll be the best performing stock, but I do think that they will have the highest evy. I think probably the best performing stock over the next five years will be, you know, on between green thumb and Cresco, just based on kind of the efficiency and really just the management team there.

[00:39:38] I’m very bullish on those two. As far as the little players, I don’t focus on, on smaller players that much. I think that the industry is going to consolidate tremendously over the next 12 months and especially over the next five years. So I’d prefer to, to have a more risk adjusted bet and ,  invest in, you know, companies that are the larger tier one [00:40:00] operators.

[00:40:00] Bryan Fields: [00:40:00] Fair. Kellan?

[00:40:01] Kellan Finney: [00:40:01] I mean, I can’t argue with curely having the largest CB and in five to 10 years, for sure. I mean ,  some of the moves that they’re making internationally, I think they’re ahead of the game from that perspective. And I mean, they’re already, they already have the largest CB currently, right? I think it’s like, what 2 billion larger than the next competitor? Are they at 10 now? So, I mean, they already have a substantial lead. So I got, I think that for sure, they’ll be the biggest one. And then as far as the small player goes, I’m going to give Colorado some love. My Swayze, right? They’re penny stocks are trading down at like $2. I think last time I checked and I really liked they’re growing organically.

[00:40:40] And they’re really trying to just own Colorado right now before they, they kind of expand. And the way they’re doing that is they acquired Starbucks, which is a dispensary chain. And ,  in Colorado, I really liked the brand Starbucks. I think that a lot of locations that are well thought out in the brand as well, thought out the retail experience is [00:41:00] really positive.

[00:41:00] Every time you go to them, go to one, it’s very similar across the whole state. And so I think that they are kind of sitting in the background, learning a lot and really optimizing ,  that kind of retail side of the supply chain. And I think that that could really benefit them as they go to. Kind of grow and expand hopefully in the future.

[00:41:19] And, and I mean ,  Starbucks with being green, really similar to Starbucks, like I could see just ,  a lot of consumers ,  psychologically playing on that comfort of Starbucks and then they see the Starbucks thing and then not inherently creates like a comfort level that. I mean, it’s a big deal right? On the East coast where people are still very skeptical about cannabis, right? It’s the devil’s lettuce. I mean, those kinds of little tiny nuances in terms of tackling that psychological aspect from a consumer perspective, I think go, I think that’s undervalued right now, personally. So that’s my 2 cents. What do you think, Brian?

[00:41:52] Jonathan Rubin: [00:41:52] I’m going to check that out.

[00:41:53] Kellan Finney: [00:41:53] Yeah. Go check it out. I really liked the Starbucks brand. I mean, dispensaries are really cool and I’m a regular, when I do go shop for cannabis [00:42:00] at those dispensaries. And so that’s my truth. They were met. They were formerly known as medicine man, I think and then they went through some reorganization and renamed it Swazi a more attractive name. And I think they brought in some more ,  professional financial individuals to kind of help them shore up their balance sheet. And ,  in effort to hopefully expand from a Colorado perspective.

[00:42:21] Bryan Fields: [00:42:21] I might be wrong with them, but I think they had some also bad PR that they were trying to get away from and the easiest way to kind of, you know, wipe your hands of that is to change your name and people then don’t remember all the bad things that are associated to common practice in the pharmaceutical space and some of the other industries. So I wonder if that was the direction of why they did that. For me, I’m like you, John, I prefer to bet on the bigger horses, because while the, some of the smaller guys I think are doing great things and are showing incredible numbers, I think, you know, I want to go back to the first point you said about like that risk profile and what your time horizon is. And for me, I am invested at all across the board, really heavily focused on the cannabis companies. And I’d rather bet on the five [00:43:00] biggest horses and say, Hey, I know the game isn’t fair. And I know it’s an incredibly expensive. And at the end of the day, that’s the way the rules are. And I’d like to bet on the five or six biggest horses and say, good luck guys.

[00:43:11] Like over the next 10 years, the here’s my bet. Let’s rock and that’s how I do it. And that’s what I recommend to people. Right? Like there’s so many smaller companies that are doing great things, but you don’t cause 10, 10 licenses and guess who’s in there all the big guys. So, I mean, the game’s not fair.

[00:43:27] Jonathan Rubin: [00:43:27] Yeah. And also the smaller guys are being acquired at a much lower EBITDA multiple than the larger guys are trading for on the market. I think, you know, truly, even Cresco, they did deals that they bought companies that like four X, 22 EBITDA, which is a much lower multiple than, you know, their stocks currently trade for. So I think there’s a, you know, I think might as well be invested in the larger operator that the market’s willing to pay a higher multiple for.

[00:43:53] Bryan Fields: [00:43:53] Cool. So before we wrap John, where can our listeners get in touch with you? I know you’re pretty vocal on social media. Is there any handles you want to shout [00:44:00] out that they can reach?

[00:44:01] Jonathan Rubin: [00:44:01] Yeah. Check out the phyto partner’s website and then also, yeah. Twitter, you could follow me @JohnnyRubin10 and you know, that’s pretty much, that’s pretty much it.

[00:44:10] Bryan Fields: [00:44:10] Cool. We’ll tag everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time and looking forward to chatting with you in the future.

[00:44:16] Jonathan Rubin: [00:44:16] Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Kellan.

[00:44:18]Kellan Finney: [00:44:18] Take care.

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Subscribe to The Dime

Editors’ Note: This is the transcript version of the podcast. Please note that due to time and audio constraints, transcription may not be perfect. We encourage you to listen to the podcast, embedded below if you need any clarification. We hope you enjoy!

In this episode, Bryan Fields @bryanfields24 and Kellan Finney @Kellan_Finney sit down with Laura Eisman and Allison Krongard, co-founders of cannabinoid brand Her Highness, to discuss…

• How to tailor your branding and packaging to appeal to your target demographic (for Her Highness, that’s women)
• How two successful entrepreneurs’ prior ventures set them up for success in the cannabis space
• Why they’re excited for the New York market and which location is next on their radar
• The future of Her Highness

…and everything you could ever want to know about creating a successful brand in the overflowing cannabinoid space. As always, let us know what you think, and if you have any questions about what we discussed, email us at [email protected].

About Her Highness:

Her Highness is the premier purveyors of female-forward cannabis couture – products and potions inspired by and engineered by women. They design and deliver experiences that elevate and celebrate women.

herhighness.com

herhighnesscbd.com

Twitter: @herhighnessnyc

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[00:01:00] [00:00:00] Bryan Fields: [00:00:00] This is the

[00:01:57] dime a 10 minute dive into the cannabis. [00:02:00] This in hemp industry through trends, insights, predictions, and tangents.

[00:02:05] What’s up guys. Welcome back to another episode of the dime has always, I’ve got my right-hand man, Kellen Finney here with me. And this week we’ve got very special guests, the lovely ladies and the co-founders of her Highness, Alison and Laura.

[00:02:18] Thanks for taking the time. How you guys doing today? Appreciate you guys taking the time. As we were saying, kind of before we got started, it’s nice to have that East coast kind of making that strong way forward and putting Kellen in the minority as the East coast really comes online. So. Ladies today before we kind of dive in, I’d love to hear from each of your backgrounds and kind of how you got into the cannabis space.

[00:02:39] So, Alison, do you want to go first?

[00:02:41] Allison: [00:02:41] Sure. Came from the design industry. I invented peel and stick chalkboard. That was removable and reusable, which was my sort of big venture in my former company and sort of during that process. And while I owned that company or throughout my entire creative career, I always had cannabis in [00:03:00] my life.

[00:03:00] So I’m sort of bringing the same energy of speaking to women about luxury products that improve their lives, but changing the topic to cannabis that always coming from the standpoint of design and quality and good branding, good formulas. And just bringing that into cannabis. Laura

[00:03:19] Laura: [00:03:19] your background.

[00:03:20] I come from a fashion background. I’m an art director by trade accounted. One of the first e-commerce fashion websites, pioneer in the internet industry back in 98, so long ago, and really took that industry at the time, which is very male dominated into a women’s forum by offering fashion and also working with fashion designers.

[00:03:43] And allowing them to display a collection. And, you know, also I had a love of cannabis, you know, my adult life and just watch the cannabis industry and spent like it also needed a woman’s [00:04:00] touch base, a gray, because the new developments just wearing nearly serving women. And just decided to come together and Alison, and really make a difference

[00:04:10] Bryan Fields: [00:04:10] in the industry.

[00:04:11] Yeah. And I’m excited to kind of dive into that and how her Highness was formed. So I guess to get started, let’s start with the hardest topic right away, your go-to meal after consuming.

[00:04:22] Laura: [00:04:22] Canada. Great

[00:04:23] Allison: [00:04:23] question. We are after doing years of research and also knowing how and why, and the different ways women consume cannabis.

[00:04:33] We took great care to dial down the munchies and all of our products. Our vape formulas have elevated Humulin to kill off the munchies at the end, all of our strange choices, how are other higher THCV? Higher humiliation. So that’s actually not the question for us. We are fairly anti munchie in our approach to

[00:04:56] Laura: [00:04:56] cannabis

[00:04:57] Bryan Fields: [00:04:57] fair.

[00:04:57] But if you were going to go in one direction, if

[00:05:00] [00:04:59] Laura: [00:04:59] you had a favorite, okay. I like to pair.

[00:05:06] Allison: [00:05:06] And it would be frozen

[00:05:07] Laura: [00:05:07] yogurt for

[00:05:07] Bryan Fields: [00:05:07] me. Those are both very nice. So let’s kind of switch gears back to her Highness. How was it formed? Where did the original idea come up with? Was there an inspirational piece or something that you saw that instantly you were like, boom, and then take me through the naming of her Highness.

[00:05:23] Right? How, how did that kind of come about and. The

[00:05:27] Laura: [00:05:27] backstory there, Alison and I wanted to do something together. We were, we just really respected each other as entrepreneurs and cannabis was just it for us. And so we, every day we had a brainstorming session, you know, the name actually came, we had a few contenders, but Alison came up with this for Highness and it was just ed.

[00:05:48] We knew instantly, and we grabbed the domain name for it and just started on. It, we knew it was a winner and Jaylen. Alison could talk about the formulation. We, you know, [00:06:00] very early on, we started having introductions to formulators in California. We’d go to California, you know, every other week to just get started on our product developments.

[00:06:11] But it was a really a challenging time. You know, we did that for about four years before it truly, truly came together.

[00:06:18] Allison: [00:06:18] When Laura came to me with the idea to do some, you do cannabis accessories actually was the original idea. And then once we got together, we sort of made it into cannabis products and accessories, but our conversations were about how to really feminize cannabis because we both loved cannabis, even though we use it in different ways.

[00:06:40] Laura came to it, looking for beautiful cannabis accessories, and not able to find them. And I came to it, having sold my company to a large public company and having to work for them for two years. Using cannabis medicinally for the first time in my life, because I’m such a person and not anxious and not [00:07:00] in pain.

[00:07:00] So I never used cannabis medicinally until I had a really depressing job. And I realized, you know, sort of noticing how other women self-medicate with alcohol and Xanax. Some of everybody in that office, I was like, wow, women need to know about cannabis because I fixed myself with what I do anyway. I just started doing it at a different time, like before work, instead of, you know, at night and it helped me get through work and be present and be good at it, you know?

[00:07:30] Cause I was creative director for their interior wall decor, everything. And so I took over all these lines and so it was fine to be high, but. Anyway, I came to it thinking that women who are good at marketing to other women need to get the word out about cannabis. And Laura is a great marketer. So she was the perfect partner to come together.

[00:07:52] Both of us have had the same conversation with the same customer about elevating her life, but we just [00:08:00] changed the topic to

[00:08:00] Laura: [00:08:00] cannabis. Yeah, I’d say, you know, and I started thinking about cannabis. They really wanted to normalize it and that’s just what I’ve done in my career. And so, you know, to bring it to women in a new way, you know, I’m a, I don’t want say distracting.

[00:08:15] It was a little too early for that, but we had our ambition and it’s almost like we had to start educating from, from the beginning because people have these seen, especially women have preconceived notions about what it’s like to be high and, you know, way back. New York city. When you would order your weed, you know, it came from the pizza guy and it was, you know, not nuance, you just sorta, mostly got, but you got, you know, and so it got a little more sophisticated, but you know, I think that a lot of women, when they recall being high, it’s like in college or, you know, some terrible edible experience, which they always bring up and which I still have to this day, by the way, Necessarily, it’s kind of getting them out of that mindset into a new mindset of like, you know, this is really so [00:09:00] useful in so many ways and, you know, not to get bogged down in wellness because Alison and I feel like wellness is just when women feel good.

[00:09:08] And so that includes pleasure. And that includes. You know, enjoying and having fun and just letting loose sometimes. And we adjust all those things, but it really is like, you know, especially now we’re in New York and all the customers are brand new, that it’s going to be a real kind of education. And the way to get that across to women is to show them a product.

[00:09:29] That they appreciate it. They left the packaging, they left what it can do for them. And so they use it and that’s really the way to bring it to their, you know, more of the mass market.

[00:09:40] Bryan Fields: [00:09:40] Yeah. Kevin and I, a hundred percent agree from an educational standpoint, that’s a huge stretch. And I think one of the things that your brand does better than, than most is that you gravitate really, really strongly to your target customers.

[00:09:52] So those women that are fighting those stigmas that are unsure, you know, Is this something that I can do and then could work out or be that, do it all, mom, [00:10:00] you see that product and you’re like, maybe I’ll give it a second look, and then you try it. And then you’re instantly kind of your, your stigma’s kind of changed.

[00:10:07] Right? And then you understand. But this is different than like in college or the pizza guy. There’s a different style that goes into it. So I want to kind of revisit what you said before. Alison, about the THCV. Is that a critical component in the products? Can you kind of share what that is for our listeners who are a little unfamiliar

[00:10:24] Allison: [00:10:24] with that?

[00:10:25] Well THCV, like you find it in Durban poison. There are certain strands that have higher concentrations of it. And actually it’s a little different than Delta nine and that in higher concentrations it’s sort of Trippier. So it doesn’t really work to isolate it and elevate it because it’s a different experience.

[00:10:46] But in small concentrations in certain strands, It does sort of change the, I would say like it’s sort of the soul of the high, like it changes it, but it kills off the munchies and in there’s [00:11:00] plenty of research on it. And now new research that might even be a treatment for diabetes. And, you know, people who use cannabis regularly have a lower BMI than the rest of the population.

[00:11:11] And that’s curious because cannabis causes the munchies, but what it does is it makes our bodies more efficient. And if we can target the aspects of cannabis that make our bodies more efficient, we have a product that is so much more appealing for women. Like not only can you take your pleasure? With, I think a better buzz than what wine can deliver, but it can make you thinner, healthier, make your body work better.

[00:11:38] Like if we can harness that message, we can break the stigma and, you know, with breaking the stigma of cannabis, breaking the stigma of female pleasure, which is what we do with our orgasm oil. Which is really targeted to get that conversation. Let’s talk about orgasms and make them better. And it’s the same with cannabis.

[00:11:58] That’s make our life [00:12:00] better, more joy, more feeling good. I find with alcohol, if you drink alcohol at night. It’s really hard to get up early and work out. And that is bad cycle for women. We feel better when we work out. So if you’re relaxed, time is killing off your workout time the next day. Like we can change that and fix that if we can get that message

[00:12:20] out.

[00:12:20] Bryan Fields: [00:12:20] Yeah. That’s perfectly well said from a science side, Callan THCV obviously is one area that you and I both are very interested in exploring. Is there information there that you’ve seen that kind of aligns with, you know, your perspective? I

[00:12:34] Kellan: [00:12:34] think Alison kind of said it perfectly. And I also am really impressed with kind of referencing a lot of these molecules.

[00:12:39] And I’m really curious to understand, like how long was that journey in terms of not only have you guys put in insane amount of time to the brand, but it sounds like. It’s been a giant research project as well, in terms of understanding all these different molecules that go into the experience of using cannabis.

[00:12:56] I mean, you mentioned humiliating. What does that educational journey been like [00:13:00] in terms of also becoming kind of a pseudo chemist? If you will,

[00:13:03] Bryan Fields: [00:13:03] at least the way you speak,

[00:13:04] Allison: [00:13:04] right. I’ve been keeping out on cannabis. For 30 years. So there wasn’t like, I was like, Oh my God, let me go to the library now and figure this out.

[00:13:13] If you know, it’s in my personality to find something I like and then make it better and better and better and keep reinventing it until I feel like I have the ultimate whatever. So I’ve been playing with strains and studying strains and, you know, trying to figure it out for a really long time. And it wasn’t until we started this company that.

[00:13:33] I had the opportunity to do it during the day, all day, talking to people who can just soak me with their knowledge, that it all really has come together and come alive for me.

[00:13:45] Kellan: [00:13:45] I mean, that’s got to put a ton of confidence in your guys’s user base as well. Just knowing that there’s been a ton of thought that goes into these products as well.

[00:13:54] Is that something

[00:13:55] Laura: [00:13:55] that you’ve found?

[00:13:55] Allison: [00:13:55] Yeah. Like you can see our thought in the product. Like, I don’t, I don’t [00:14:00] know if you here, you can see like, The crutch on our joint is 40 millimeters. So when you light it, you don’t Melt your eyelashes and your Gel manicure And you know, when I say like, all women who love hot, know the smell of burnt hair and Weed and everyone’s like, Oh my God, totally.

[00:14:16] But then there’s always a guy with a beard. Who’s like, thank you, sister. Like Nobody cannabis, ergonomic, like it’s ridiculous or things like are transdermal footpaths that go in your stilettos. Like transdermals have existed in cannabis for a long time, but nobody thought that women’s shoes need transdermals, but they do because in tight jeans and heels, you feel better.

[00:14:43] And that is wellness. But walking around in high heels, you don’t feel better. And the fact that cannabis has a cure for it, and nobody made it before we came along. It’s just rude, but thank goodness. You know, we’re here to really bring a feminine touch, you know, [00:15:00] to this space that’s been so male dominated in its design, even though women love pot, but men who are picking the crutch for whatever pony everybody gets is not thinking about long hair.

[00:15:11] Eyelashes or

[00:15:12] Bryan Fields: [00:15:12] nails. Yeah. I think that attention to detail is really what separates your brand from some of the others, because that’s not an aspect that I even considered. And I shared that quote with my sister and she, her first reaction was, Oh my God, I almost burnt my eyelashes off yesterday. And I was like, what?

[00:15:28] I was like, I didn’t even know that was a common thing. And then she shared, well, what about my nail Polish? I can’t even get white nail Polish anymore. And I was like, I didn’t even realize that these existed. And I think. You know, you’re shedding light on a really, really massive user base that understands exactly what they’re going through and it’s providing a solution plus an experience with the strong packaging.

[00:15:47] It seems like you’ve got the total package communicating. Really really strongly with your user base. So let’s talk about where we’re located in the United States. Is this something that’s just New York? Are we looking for globally? [00:16:00] Where are we right now and where we plan to go in the near

[00:16:02] Laura: [00:16:02] future? We plan to take over the world.

[00:16:09] We’ve been focusing on the States, the lag we launched originally in California, and then we decided to do licensing deals throughout the country. So we’re in Nevada. With a special focus on Vegas because our market is bad. And we can’t wait to go there. We haven’t been there during Cannes Amex, so time.

[00:16:29]And then we recently launched in Massachusetts, which was our first East coast mage for THC. We launched first of all on record, good time because our client, no tilt. Foldings wanted us to lunch during international women’s week. And the 20 stores that we launched in also down, like we’ve been doing, it’s just been such an amazing, welcome.

[00:16:53] We didn’t expect it at all. You know, we expected wherever on-ramp and it would just immediately go to [00:17:00] that customer. And we are based in New York. So we are so excited for new York’s legalization. But we do have our CBD line, which is national available on our website. And just recently we’ve. Been getting a lot of interest internationally.

[00:17:15] So we’re definitely on our way to be this household brand for women in cannabis, which is

[00:17:23] Allison: [00:17:23] know telco. Yeah, we’re going to make an announcement of a new state hopefully next week, which we’re very excited about, but we also are in contract for Ohio and Pennsylvania and in discussions with six other States

[00:17:35] Laura: [00:17:35] and Mexico, the year we have to be in 10 States.

[00:17:40] Bryan Fields: [00:17:40] That’s really exciting. So what’s, let’s talk the future roadmap, obviously. We’ve kind of studied your website and Kelly and I are a little sad that none of those products really speak to us directly and kind of wish maybe in the future we could kind of find something, but we can talk about that offline.

[00:17:53] So what’s the next steps. What other products can, you know, your fans and your loyal as kind of expect from her Highness [00:18:00] in the

[00:18:00] Allison: [00:18:00] future? We have a bunch of new products coming out. We’re super excited about our cat walkers, which is sort of our answer to the dog walkers. They come in this little box, but it’s with our long crutch.

[00:18:12] So you can smoke the whole thing. You know, usually with a dog Walker, it’s two puffs in a Roach and you end up flicking half of it and it’s small anyway, so this is our solution to that. And it comes with our marry me ring. So you can put your ring on and smoked your little joint. And that’s just fun.

[00:18:30] It’s like women love a gift with purchase. Like, you know, we’re coming out with more of our gift boxes. No, this is our get lit kit. Cause you know, we want to make a gift. We want to make cannabis to gift you, bring your friends. We also are working on some cocktail dummies in Vegas. And we’re working on diamonds, which we’re really excited about.

[00:18:53] We have an amazing

[00:18:54] Bryan Fields: [00:18:54] product. What would it be? Diamonds? Can you just kind of

[00:18:57] Laura: [00:18:57] shed light on that?

[00:18:58] Allison: [00:18:58] Diamonds are a concentrate. [00:19:00] It’s not an on-ramp product. You can dab them. I think would be the most common, comfortable way drop a little volcano or, you know, I think there are a couple of different ways to do it, but dabbing is probably the most common user-friendly and really the exotics are sort of a more curated experience.

[00:19:18] For people who are taking in the whole experience of the plants, a little stronger, also could be used medicinally, which is another reason why we want to come out with them. So we have a better product for the medical only States, but we’re really excited about that because our line really spans women from the on ramper.

[00:19:38] Which like we have our 2.5 milligram mints, which if you don’t know your dose or you too scared to try it, here’s where you can start to women who want no high and just want the benefits of cannabis and our orgasm oil, which, you know, there’s a market for that too women who are looking for exotic diamonds.

[00:19:58] So. We’re really [00:20:00] trying to target all women through our collection, but also through our social equity piece, which is our partnership with the last prisoner project where 50% of the proceeds of this product. Those two women who are in prison for a non-violent cannabis crime. So yeah, what we have coming out in the future is just more, we’re a lifestyle brand.

[00:20:23] We’re not a anything in particular brand. Everything that we do is targeted to either solve a cannabis problem for women or delight women through cannabis in a new way.

[00:20:35] Laura: [00:20:35] Then another category that we’re expanding on is we’re planning to launch a beverage. In several States and she liked, that’s a great way for women.

[00:20:44] It’s, it’s very discreet and a great way to consume cannabis. And also some my community

[00:20:50] Bryan Fields: [00:20:50] options too, really exciting verticals to definitely operate in. I got a couple questions before we wrap up biggest misconceptions since you entered the cannabis

[00:21:00] [00:20:59] Allison: [00:20:59] space. Well, if anyone thinks it’s easy, that’s a big misconception.

[00:21:03] Everything is harder and cannabis.

[00:21:05]Laura: [00:21:05] I would say just that everyone’s a Sterner because that’s not true. And there’s, you know, as, as the industry evolves, I’m so happy to see people coming in from all different industries and having something to offer this industry, because it really has a ways to go in, in many different.

[00:21:23] Facets and the industries that, you know, whether it’s retailers and, you know help with buying, you know, all the other parts of this pie that we feel like it’s kind of in the Jack ages sometimes are really starting to come together. And so I think that, you know, a lot of new people are entering and happy

[00:21:41] Bryan Fields: [00:21:41] about that.

[00:21:42] Well said before we wrap, we’ve got two questions. We ask all of our guests before we do the prediction. If you could sum up your experience into one lesson learned or takeaway to pass on to the next generation, what would that

[00:21:56] Laura: [00:21:56] be? I don’t know. I mean, I think the overriding thing is [00:22:00] that, you know, Canada was, is not just to get you high.

[00:22:03] And I think that’s so important to understand and it’s Majesta and there’s just so many ways that it can be helpful and that’s

[00:22:11] Allison: [00:22:11] huge. I would say in cannabis and maybe even more than in other industries, because of what it is, you have to be authentic in your messaging all the time, even when you get pushback.

[00:22:24] Like when we launched in California and we don’t have craft boxes and we have gold packaging and where. So New York and they were like, what? We couldn’t change it to fit in. Like we had to be authentic. Right. So as our message would get muddy and it really worked, and I don’t think we would have made it if we weren’t in that way.

[00:22:44]And keeping our message authentic. And even when the interviewers say like, don’t you think you’re missing half the market by only focusing on women? Like, well, yeah, we’re missing the male market, but not men who love women. So how many of [00:23:00] those, and so staying authentic and true to the message, no matter what, because the tides in this industry are forceful, but staying clear and true to ourselves has really helped us sort of.

[00:23:13] Keep threading the needle and keep pushing through

[00:23:17] Bryan Fields: [00:23:17] to kind of add on to your points about the messaging. I think as a male perspective. Sure. I wouldn’t likely buy those products to consume myself, but if I was looking for a gift for a family member of my wife, And I walked down, the dispensary does 9 million options, and I know I’ve brought her home and this amounts of products and I’ve kind of gotten some pushback and I’m pretty confident that if I selected one of the gold packaging and one of those, and I brought it home and showed my wife, she’d be way more open because he communicates directly with her.

[00:23:44] And I think she’d gravitate towards that. So I think. Sure you didn’t hit a hundred percent of the total market out there, but what brands really do. Right. But you honed in exactly who you wanted to get and you’ve made it easier for both genders to identify if this works and who it’s for. And I think you’ve kind of simplified it and [00:24:00] improved it by going that route.

[00:24:01] Thank

[00:24:01] Laura: [00:24:01] you. I mean,

[00:24:02] Allison: [00:24:02] that sort of differentiates us because a lot of people in the market. Make, whatever they make. And then they look for a customer, but we identified our customer and then made everything for her from the inside out, from start to finish. And that authenticity sort of resonates with the customer.

[00:24:19] Laura: [00:24:19] Yeah. Women need to feel like they’re, you know, they were just being forgotten in this whole initiatives. So, you know, when they see our product, they just gravitate toward it. And you’re right. You know, it’s you bring that home through women are average. She sees it. She relates to her at a meeting or mean, you know, you find that and she’s much more willing to try it because it was

[00:24:41] Bryan Fields: [00:24:41] made for her understands those tiny details, that emphasis that you put in, like you show up with the join and the difference there.

[00:24:48] So one last question then prediction time. The last time you consumed any cannabinoids.

[00:24:54]Laura: [00:24:54] Two minutes before the hour ago,

[00:25:01] [00:25:00] Bryan Fields: [00:25:01] in your opinion, five years from now, which area will be the biggest lifestyle, cannabis consumption, sex, wellness, workout, relax, sleep, etc. Any choices work. I thought you were going

[00:25:17] Allison: [00:25:17] to say where, I mean, I was going to say New York where cannabis is going. And I mean, New York is the greatest consumption, you know, biggest consumption state in the country, but you’re saying, where is cannabis?

[00:25:30] What sector? Yeah.

[00:25:32] Bryan Fields: [00:25:32] For women. Which one do we think five years from now? Do we think that will be the biggest?

[00:25:37] Allison: [00:25:37] I have to say flower because if smoking a joint with an extra long crutch where the smoke is cool, And you just get the full flower to me is the most satisfying way to consume. So, I mean, that’s, that’s my guess.

[00:25:53] Laura: [00:25:53] I, you asking ways to consume, register how he bragged to

[00:25:56] Bryan Fields: [00:25:56] use it. Yeah. Like which area do you think will be the biggest [00:26:00] one?

[00:26:00] Laura: [00:26:00] I think so. I think measure, not just for sure, because this, and especially our measure. Women write into us all the time. It’s a complete game changer. And once in a minute, I realize that, but even smoking with like during the fresh snacks and using the it around, I mean, just exploring that whole category.

[00:26:24] I can, I can just make you, you know, more aware and heal things deeper. I mean, you know, once women really get into that and discover that, I think that that’s going to be huge. I feel like there has been a stigma with sex and so it’s very empowering to them. And then I think they know that they deserve really well.

[00:26:43] Bryan Fields: [00:26:43] Absolutely telling your guys I’m going to go

[00:26:45] Kellan: [00:26:45] with Alison. I think flour is here to stay. It’s been the main. Kind of category prior to legalization. And I think that it’s really, really hard to recreate what nature has already spent so much time. Kind of perfecting, right. In terms of that balance of [00:27:00] all those different molecules and how they interact with your endoccanabinoid system.

[00:27:03] So I would have to say that flour and then I do agree that the sex and pleasure is probably one of the larger, most underrated product categories. I do think that there’s a ton of growth there.

[00:27:15] Bryan Fields: [00:27:15] I’m going to go slightly different. And kind of what you said before, Alison, about the replacement for the wineglass.

[00:27:20] I think right now, the, the go-to at least in my household is the wine glass after work, like super stress looking to relax. And I think once that becomes a staple where you replace that. With a beverage or other, some consumption method. I think the relaxing area, I think is a huge growth. I think for the doodle mom, who’s doing things throughout the day.

[00:27:40] Sure. They can consume, but I think that’ll be a little harder to pick up steam, at least initially I think down the road. Absolutely. But I think immediately in five years from now the replacing of the wine for like a joint or some other consumption method where they can restart their day, the next day with no hangover and still be functional, I think.

[00:27:57] Is, I think women obviously can move that [00:28:00] stigma. And then once they associate there, I think it will absolutely explode. And I think you guys are poised for that, and I’m really excited to kind of keep following your journey and stay in touch and see how it goes. So before we wrap up, where can our listeners get in touch with you?

[00:28:12] We’ll tag all the social media, but where can they get in touch with you guys? If they want to learn more? Our

[00:28:16] Allison: [00:28:16] website is her highness.com and then our social media tags are at her Highness NYC on all social media,

[00:28:26] Bryan Fields: [00:28:26] all those up in the show notes. We appreciate you guys taking the time and look forward to seeing you.

[00:28:31] Thank you so much.

[00:28:32] Laura: [00:28:32] Thanks ladies.

[00:28:33] Allison: [00:28:33] Thank you so much

[00:28:34] Laura: [00:28:34] fun.

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