 Aaron Lachan is the CEO of MMLG, they're a cannabis consulting firm. He is going to be moderating this panel. And yeah, they are, Aaron's been amazing. He's been a really great supporter of Green Market Report and we certainly appreciate that. So I'm gonna let Aaron take it from here. Thanks everybody. I have a fantastic panel to chat with today and I can't wait to get started. She's a Grammy Award winning musician, a humans rights activist and the CEO and founder of Ethridge Farms. Please welcome, Melissa Ethridge. Hello. This close to breaking out into song, but I won't. I'm just, oh, it's an audience at theater, okay. She is the director of Compliance of MMLG, an amateur boxing champion, a playwright, a band leader, a musician, and probably one of the most interesting folks you'll meet in cannabis. Please welcome, Julie Crockett. He's a 30 year cannabis veteran, the chief operating officer of Tyson Ranch and taking on some of the most ambitious projects within the space. Please welcome, Kevin Bell. And he was the former vice president of brand partnerships at Prohibited and he's now a founder of the content company, Ronan. They're building and producing cannabis content all around the world. Please welcome, Jason Rood. So our panel today is about building brands. I just need to pull up some notes, but I first heard about Melissa's brand three years ago, about three years ago, and everyone thinks that building a cannabis brand is super easy. It's a license to print money. I guess my first question for Melissa is, what challenges have you faced in getting your brand up and running in the last three years? Oh my. Oh my. Wow. I was very excited to talk about celebrity brands and just brands in general. I've spent years talking about cannabis and just pushing the cannabis as medicine story and it's really nice to actually be getting kind of into this other side of, oh yeah, we're selling, it's brands now. How do we make this work as an industry? And I knew 15 years ago when I went through breast cancer that cannabis was good medicine. I could see that this is something that should be offered as an alternative to everyone. It should be again offered and not prohibited. And I realized that the work I had done as an artist, just building my own, from the 90s, the songs, that sort of brand, that there's a brand that was Melissa Ethridge and when I went through breast cancer and then went cannabis, oh wow, I could actually see something in the future. Like, well, this is something that I could really get behind and do and talk about and show people that have a whole nother idea about cannabis. And it really set me on fire 15 years ago. Just, I wanted, of course, 15 years ago, I had to go to my roadie who knew another roadie to go get the briefcase, so this is a long time ago. And so I've seen it come along until about 10 years ago, I started talking about, yeah, I'm Melissa Ethridge and I'm making cannabis and I started meeting cannabis folks. And it's a colorful industry and lots of different types of folks. And I just met a lot and I learned a lot. And I love that people think I'm making money hand over fist, but that's not how it is. I am actually putting a lot of my own finances in and I've built this brand, finding the finest medicine makers, understanding how it works, meeting with state officials, meeting with federal officials about the future, meeting, finding out what does it take to move this whole thing forward so I can have a brand that I can work on how am I gonna sell to people instead of how do I stay out of jail? That's getting us into the light of it. So Ethridge Farms, I still haven't sold a single product, yet I have built, I have an entire system that is coming on this year and starting and it's been such an amazing journey. So it's not easy if, I don't know if there's any famous people here looking, he's thinking if you're looking for a brand, but to brand, when we get to that place where we're branding cannabis, I think the first thing you really need to know is you need to know a lot about cannabis. You need to have a direction. There needs to be a knowledge of the history and the spirit in which we're coming from and what are we, what we're changing. So it's, yes, it's message and all that, what we do as capitalists and then there's this whole big part of it that's really what the Ethridge brand is all about and I'll answer lots of questions about that. Go ahead, there you go. I'm not selling wine. I wanna, I just wanna clear, if you're reading the bios, it says there's a lot about this wine that I talked about about 10 years ago because at that time, I thought that was a great idea and I had had some and it was a great product. The laws don't allow alcohol and cannabis to be mixed yet so that doesn't exist, that whole, it's an old story that somebody found so I'm not making wine, I'm making actual tinctures and health-focused cannabis. Now go ahead, thank you. That's interesting that you're producing more of a health-focused cannabis product. Most companies out there seem to be marketing towards the 20-something crowd, particularly young men. Who is Ethridge Farms targeted at? Who's your target audience for your product? Moms, moms are who, moms, moms, moms who are tired of drinking a couple glasses of wine to wind down or taking that Ambien, moms that want to feel better in the morning when they wake up, moms that are looking for an alternative to sort of the pharmaceutical, the only solutions that we have. So yes, moms. And I think another question I had was, as cannabis becomes a little bit more crowded with each passing days, are there any lessons you can draw upon from the music industry that have kept you on the right path moving forward on this? I tell you what, one of the biggest lessons I learned from the music industry that I totally keep in mind here is it really isn't a competition, that there's room for everyone, absolutely. And I remember when my first album came out, I was like, here I am. And the day my album came out was also the day that Tracy Chapman's album came out, the day that Tony Childs, Sinead O'Connor, it was a massive amount of women. And for a while there I was like, oh, there's not gonna be enough room for me. And I put myself in competition with these other, and that's not true. The more there is, the more there is, the better it is. So let's work together as an industry instead of in such competition with each other. That's a great message. Isn't that right, Tyson? That's right. Right on. And so Kevin, also working with a celebrity-focused brand, in what way has Mike been able to leverage his celebrity in order to build this Tyson Ranch brand and have this platform? Well, with Mike we got lucky. Because in a way, Mike's a next level celebrity. I mean, everybody wants to meet Drake, but Drake wants to meet Mike. You know what I mean? And Mike isn't like a celebrity endorsement on a brand. Mike is the brand. He lives this. Every day he comes to work. He's there five days a week. He smokes cannabis. He believes in this lifestyle. He believes that it's medicine. It's made him a better father, a better businessman. So with Mike, so many people really care about what he's doing and feel connected to him that all we really gotta do is tell the story that's happening, tell the truth. And that comes off genuine with Mike. And that's how we got lucky. It's not like we have to figure out how to market Mike. All we have to do is film what's happening, tell the story. So it's my understanding Tyson Ranch. It's a cannabis company. It's also an entertainment company. What projects have you guys been involved with in the entertainment industry that have helped to build the Tyson Ranch brand? Well, for first, we have the podcast. So, you know, I don't know if everybody's listening to it. It's called Hot Boxing with Mike Tyson. It's on YouTube. It's in, you know, I believe we got 700,000 subscribers now. It's got a strong following. So that's one that allows us to bring other celebrities past us and use their brand or their brand equity to drag through Mike, have that interaction and gather new customers through their celebrities as well. It also allows Mike to have people relate to him because Mike really isn't who people think they are. And when you listen to him on the podcast, you get to know him and that's important. We also did a festival, which is another way that we found a branding. You know, we had the Kahn Festival out on our ranch or the land in the desert. That will soon be the ranch. And we did a great success with that. We're gonna do that again in February. There you go. But like you said, we are a brand. We actually don't hold any cannabis licenses. We actually are just a brand. We're not looking to buy expensive real estate or spend time getting compliant. We really just make relationships with the farmers that grow the best products. Right, and this is a question that's open for everybody, but there seems to be, you need to strike a balance between putting your resources towards branding, but at the same time also putting your resources towards having just an amazing product to put on the shelves. Also, I'll start with Kevin, but how do you strike that balance in building your brand and maintaining quality control? And Jason, Melissa, anyone who wants to jump in, go for it. Well, quality control is most important because one wrong thing, a thousand right things won't equal one wrong. So with us, quality control is most important. Any time we do any kind of research and kind of testing, or like when cannabis is actually bottled up, there's somebody on our payroll that has our agenda in the building watching it happen. And that, you just have to have quality control because like I said, if we kind of get a free, everybody says yes the first time, but the first time we put something bad in a bottle, that could be the end of the brand. And we've seen other brands, I'm not gonna name them, but that came out strong with great brand equity and then they grew too quick and they couldn't keep quality control. They started putting bad stuff in a bottle and really that brand lost its equity. So first we don't overgrow, we don't wanna grow too quick, we wanna be able to keep up with our quality. We make sure somebody's there, but also being a brand, it lets us move light on our feet meaning that if I was a grower and I was to produce a bad crop, I would have to deal with that. It's on my bottom line, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna discount it? As a brand, if they produce a bad crop, I go next, and that is what's great about being a brand. And then the other side to that is that, when, I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. That's all good. We understand. I think earlier it was mentioned and I thought it was profound that what a brand is is a promise. It's a promise of quality. It's a promise of a conveyance of an ideology. Whether it's sort of a psychographic community, a small group of people that collectively identify, or you even scale to a broader group of folks, quality is critical or a cornerstone to a brand. And I agree in many ways not having to carry the liability that's associated with producing product can be an advantage. I certainly think that investors and folks in the community are looking at it with a moat in between that brands sit here and production sits here. I think it's positive. Starbucks doesn't own a whole lot of Aravica beans. Josh, I think one of our co-founders talks about Costa Miga's on a regular basis because they sold for a billion dollars and they never owned in a Gavi plant. That being said, quality control, and I think Melissa can speak to this because of some of the medicine makers that she chose to partner with. Coming from ideologies with standard operating procedures that are profound certainly help for you to convey that brand more collectively and uphold your promise. Yeah, we decided as a brand actually to own a manufacturing license, to have the manufacturing license so that we do have complete control. Yeah, we do, we have a whole bunch of growers that are separate growers, but we know and we know the organics, we know where they're coming from, but we do have our license to manufacture and it's actually was the first and still is the only manufacturing license in Santa Cruz County. I agree in the California market, the manufacturing license is important because that's what it takes to put it in a jar. And Tyson did fund a social equity program and that is one of the most important license I think in California is the manufacturing license. And the thought I was having that I lost was ultimately quality control will be controlled by market share and self space. The ability to turn cannabis into money will be much like any industry, that will be the ultimate quality control. The people that have the shelf space and can demand the best product and the best product will find the way to the people who have the market share and shelf space. That's great. I wanna ask a question to Jason. A lot of folks know you, you speak at a lot of conferences based on your work at Prohibited. Can you tell us what you're doing at Ronin or what does Ronin do that's different than Prohibited? I think that through the evolution of the last, you know, five years, Josh, Drake and Keev have all done an incredible job, not only building brands, but guiding folks, you know, from the black market to the supermarket. What are we doing now? We have built many successful brands and in doing so sort of, you know, decided to make some strategic alliances. Prohibited is now part of a consumer packaged goods portfolio. It had a really strong connection to the consumer audience that was built up in its online persona, et cetera. So that was its best function. Future state brands was born out of Prohibited's brand building prowess and is now a portfolio of 11 brands thus far that you're probably already seeing on store shelves. Josh Shelley and also with a partnership with Burner and ultimately Social Club Television have taken our content library, our brand building and business knowledge and collectively put that together into a services platform that includes some performance aspects and just extending the network that we've already have. Again, we've got 55 hours of content in market right now that'll be rebranded under the Social Club categories and we're now also able to distribute other folks' content. So under the auspices of Prohibited, we were super focused on our own brand integrations, really focused on the brands that we've taken in and now we're able to do a whole lot more while supporting future state and still cheering on the next iteration of what Prohibited will be in the future. Cool. Julie, can you, hi Julie. Hi. The most interesting woman in the world. Can you talk about the intersection between branding and compliance? Like what folks are, what trouble are folks running into from a compliance standpoint when they're like building these brands? Well it's interesting because I think there's so many things going on right now that we're in this moment of transition. Like if you're in it, you know about this California track and trace and everybody's coming onto metric. So we're still in this moment of transition into, you know, there are the regulations and then there's the true enforcement and monitoring of those regulations and we haven't really seen the full impact of that but I can tell you as a person that gets to go and look under the hood of a lot of different companies, everybody's doing it wrong across the board. To the letter of the law, to the regulations, you know, when you look under there mostly because in some ways it's not feasible to do it as written and there's a lot of like built in prohibitions especially if you're trying to develop a brand and we're transitioning from a way we used to do business to this new regime of perchance over regulation, let's say. However, you know, and there's just interesting quirks, you know, like one of the things in Prop 64 was you can't give away free product and they didn't want people just going and giving away free cannabis to anybody on the street because of the children, oh my gosh, you know. So that makes sense on one level. However, they didn't consider the back end sales process. So right now as it stands in the regulations, if you are a manufacturer, there is no compliant way that you can test your own product. There is no compliant way as a distributor that you can give trade samples to your own staff. There is no way that you can take a sample and give it to a buyer and say, would you like to consider this product without it going through the actual retail supply chain and paying the excise tax and doing all those things. So I can guarantee just in that one thing alone of like, how do you handle samples? 99.9% of companies that I, you know, audit or review or look at are doing things that aren't exactly, you know, completely aligned with compliance. And that doesn't even begin. That's like operational compliance. When you get into what people are doing in the advertising sphere, there's a lot wrong there in terms of, you know, Aaron and I joke a lot. It's one of those things of I would say the human race and maybe not the best of learning from experience. And when you look back at the early, you know, tobacco advertising of the 20s and 30s and then look at advertisements now where in the 20s and 30s they'd be like, more doctors smoke Marlboro than any other cigarette. And then you see some of the approach to cannabis marketing right now. It looks oddly familiar. And so these are things that I think are going to catch up with us because right now the enforcement agencies are building out, they're training their people. There's not a lot of will of enforcement while you're doing that. But two years from now, when you're bored on a Tuesday at the BCC and it's like, I'm just going to take a scroll through Instagram and see what this person was doing five years ago. You know, because that's the statute on these things, they can levy penalties and fines up to five years later for the actions you're taking on 420 this year. That's when I think some of these things will come into play. And it's- Can trust. What's that? Can trust. Can trust. And the other aspect of it is that as this thing rolls out, we haven't really seen what ultimately the appetite for enforcement will be. But their authority to enforce is intense. So when you look at the regulations, for example, if an operator is missing a single record-keeping element, the agencies can levy a $30,000 fine per instance of any administrative failure to keep a record. So what that means to me is if the agencies felt like it, they could shut down any business any day of the week just on a record-keeping audit. So while compliance may seem like the unsexy part of getting out there and building your brand, I think that aspect of the ability to survive, the ability to be positively vetted as a valuable company if you're looking to get out or sell your brand or engage with others, or when brands are looking to engage with you, that it's really starting more and more that part of that process is people having compliance come in and look at, are you gonna be able to stand up when we get through this transitional period? And that's why Ronan uses MMLG for all our compliance needs. That's why Julie Crockett is my best friend. All right, I have one last compliance question for Julie, but, and you kind of touched on it, does compliance have to be the buzzkill? You know, is there room for compliance in a company's branding, particularly what we're seeing right now with these vaporizer cartridges, or is compliance just the buzzkill in the room that no one wants to talk about? You mean Vapocalypse, as I call it? Vapocalypse. Vapocalypse. I mean, I think, because I'm super weird and geeky, that I mean, I call compliance like High Stakes Ninja Tetris, which is where, you know, it's seeing the grid, it's like the matrix. You like see all the forms and what's possible, and then you determine how to navigate those forms. And the important thing too, I mean, we often joke that sometimes I think the worst idea the cannabis industry ever had was, we just want to be treated like other businesses. It's like, no, you don't. No, you don't, it's terrible out there. But because, you know, the cannabis industry, once it became the commercial cannabis industry, became not only liable for all of the cannabis regulations, but for every regulation, for building and safety and public resources and advertising and marketing and the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act and consumer lawsuits. And there are attorneys holding CLE classes right now on how to sue the cannabis industry. And there's all these aspects, like dram shop laws haven't been introduced. So yes, you can sue the bud tender that served you if you take too much and go get in an accident. You know, there's all these protections that don't exist yet. But that also requires, you know, not only being a visionary in the area of the cannabis space, but being able to navigate and kind of future see all of these different regulations and how these things are gonna come into play. You know, right now we're in a state-based economy, being able to predict what is interstate commerce gonna look like? What is federal regulation gonna look like? What is international import export gonna look like? You know, those are business aspects that have to be navigated. But one of the things that's amazing, I mean, this is where education becomes so critical because while everyone's like, oh my God, vapes will kill you, evidently. You know, one of the things that's interesting when you look at the situation is that so far, help us all, not a single case of any of these vape related illnesses or deaths can be tied to a licensed regulated product. This is tobacco, e-cig juice that isn't really regulated at all. This is illicit market that is not really regulated at all. So because the cannabis industry in California, for example, undergoes such rigorous testing that the cleanest thing in California is the cannabis that you're smoking, is, you know, this has, as much as it was so irritating that we were so over-regulated and the testing requirements are so awful in some ways, this is something we've managed to skirt for the licensed industry. How that plays out on the public stage, you know, where the federal government is now talking about banning vapes because there's a problem, that's yet to be seen, but it really is important to get into that, the discernment in the educational part of that to understand what is really happening there and what is really the issue. And I will say, again, just the last thing with compliance and regulation is that one of the things we're suffering from so greatly as an industry and a people is one of the worst things about prohibition other than how many people went to jail and lives were destroyed is how much research was not able to happen. So we really are like super excited in this green rush and oh, there's so much money to be made and let's do it, but with no science and no research. So it may have seemed like a great idea that vitamin E is helpful, let's put it in a vape. Terrible idea, terrible idea. But these are things that we're gonna discover as a fledgling industry that we need the science, we need the research, we need those things. And that's kind of where the FDA is frustrated as people are looking at the FDA, not legalizing CBD to be putting everything. They're like, well, we'd like to have some science to make sure it's okay before we do that, which doesn't seem crazy. Thank you, Julie. Yes. That's what I have to say. So compliance is sexy, see? Compliance is our cannabis industry. So we're seeing in more and more of the cities, more and more of the state's social equity is playing a big part in determining who gets licensed, who's awarded licenses, what role, this is for everybody. Like how are you seeing brands incorporate social responsibility and social equity into their brand values and how they implement it and are they doing enough? I think it's a cornerstone piece of the majority of the businesses that I've had the pleasure of working with. And even the big folks like Canopy, they're spending $20 million or something in the United States right now helping social causes. I think it's important for all business to be socially conscious. I think in an industry where we're healing the scars of war, because it has been a war on drugs for too long, that we all have that responsibility. So when I look across, the majority of people are doing the most incredible, incredible things. I think the nature of cannabis is social healing. And all the fun that we have in bringing this medicine to the world, it's also about healing all the fears. And so you have to move step by step. And Ethridge Farms actually has, our branch will be the Ethridge Foundation, which my best friend here, Julie Crockett, is very instrumental in putting together just exactly what that can look like can actually help other brands, other companies fulfill their need for the social equity and exactly what that looks like. And so the Ethridge Foundation is totally going deep into that to find a way and to make the best pathway to bringing in, to training people coming out of the prisons, to training the homeless and bringing that social aspect in. And we're really, really excited about that. Julie, have you seen any particular businesses or brands incorporate social equity in a really meaningful way that impressed you? I mean, it's interesting when I think about it, I mean, the first thing that always pops of mind for me is Bloom Farms, which is a brand out of San Francisco that from the gate, I mean, from way, way back, they've always done a one to one for every product that they sell, they provide a meal. So it was kind of a very early example of leading with that as part of your mission. And I mean, I've seen more people kind of struggling with the concept of how to truly incorporate it in a meaningful way, especially in, for example, in the Los Angeles Equity Program, a lot of the focus has been on ownership and making sure to have equity-owned businesses. And what we're kind of looking at now is, it's kind of, leave it to mankind that every beautiful idea will just be mangled unrecognizably in some way. So you kind of see a lot of these foe partnerships or strangely structured agreements where people in effect are taking advantage of somebody's status as an equity applicant to be able to attach it to their business, and this may benefit some people, individuals, but in terms of the spirit of Prop 64 and the social justice platform with which it was voted on, that so many people I believe that voted for Prop 64 was they wanted it decriminalized and they wanted an end to the criminalization and they wanted that reinvestment in communities. So what I love about this moment is that pretty much you don't get to go to a cannabis event or have a cannabis conversation without talking about social justice, social equity, community reinvestment, and how to make that happen in a meaningful way. And for that, I'm super grateful that these are interesting times where we get to have these uncomfortable conversations quite often on how to make this not just a little tip of the hat to like, and we're diverse. Where it's like, how are we really gonna look at the carnage and begin to address that? One in six people behind bars are there for nonviolent drug offenses. We created a third class. There are more people with a criminal record than there are people with college degrees. So I think it's great too that social equity is relevant and that it becomes a part how we look at what social equity actually is. And at what point does social equity become currency? It's something that we probably collectively need to take a stronger look at. We need to get people's records expunged and there are people that are working toward that diligently. But man, we got a lot of work to do. Yeah, I mean, I would just say too, one of the, it's interesting the lens that it puts on certain issues in the industry, because you hear, I've had this conversation with a lot of like senators and congresspeople and all these things where we talk about the need for banking in the cannabis industry. And there's a perception that the need for banking and some of the narrative transmitted is, oh, because we all have all this money and it's so dangerous because I'm sitting on this pile of money and I need to be able to take it to the bank. And it's like, that's not the issue. The issue with no banking is that it's harder for women and people of color and small businesses to get loans to start businesses if there's no banking. And with the social equity, there's a couple of people like Steve DiAngelo is doing the last prisoner project and we support that and we're all about that. And I think that the LA social equity program was one of the best, honestly, because it does require the partner on 51%, it can't be sold. And much like you said, I've seen these contracts where they've manipulated that, but like you said, I think in four years, these will be taken apart and that the compliance will follow. Where with what Tyson Ranch did is we funded these operations with no hope of owning any of them, honestly. It was just a grant and a loan to Mike's passion about that growing up, where he grew up in the streets and affected by the Juan drugs the way that he was. But the last prisoner project, everybody should get involved with that. What that is is Steve DiAngelo's project to get everybody who's in jail for cannabis out and not leave anybody around. I think also it's important as consumers, like to kind of having discussions about social equity kind of seems like an instiller conversation sometimes of the industry people who are in it and into licensing, but for average consumer on the street, they may not be like, what's a social equity program? So I mean, I've been just discussing this. I'm also in a board member in CCIA, which is the California Cannabis Industry Association. And one of the things in their diversity inclusion in social equity committee is, what I would love to see from a branding perspective is for social equity to become something like free trade where there's people who they don't know what free trade means, but they look at their coffee and they go, that's gotta be good. And then they get it. So having that be a concept that goes throughout the supply chain because I've been contacted and I deal with manufacturers, for example, in Oakland who got the license, they did it, they made a product, they're a social equity business and now they can't get distribution and they can't get shelf space and nobody's carrying their product. So it really has to be a commitment not just to let's help you get this license, it's how do we help you be successful all along the supply chain. And so much of that on the consumer level comes down to education and the mandate upon the agencies themselves, the businesses and the cities to educate consumers about what does this even mean? Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Amen. Julie, you nailed it. Yep. Jason, I'm gonna ask you a question to you and then anyone else can jump in on it but authenticity is a big buzzword with cannabis brands. What does it mean for a cannabis brand to be authentic? Authenticity, again, when you think about Mr. Plumb Bean or dancing to your own tune, comes through in so very many ways. We live in a segmented society where a psychographic becomes more and more relevant. For those of you that don't know what psychographic is, demographic is age sex, et cetera. Psychographic is what you're doing, the way you move around, the choices that you make, et cetera. Authenticity from a brand, especially an adaptive one, this is a commoditized product. Really, brands being able to help people hold margins, come back to and tie back to specific ideologies. And the person or the brand, and I might be looking at heavy grass, for instance, as a heavy metal brand, and that's interesting to me. I might have a contemporary looking at etharage farms and tying back to those ideologies. Holding margin, creating a brand promise, all tie back to an authentic approach. And I think that that's more powerful often than even sort of celebrity is ideology. And so, what does authenticity mean in this space where brands are young? It takes hundreds of years in certain instances, Coke, Pepsi, and so many more. If you look at the legacies of Condoleezza, Unilever, or any of these organizations, these are brands that built equity, built the promise over time. And therein lies the authenticity. So, I'll tell you, the most authentic brand will be on the shelf 20 years from now with a message of quality and standards that people can relate to, where I look to authenticity today is in the communities built around the brand and their ability to execute on things like social equity and more. Because in the absence or the vacuum of that establishment, we have to look to our internal company ideologies to create that authenticity. Had anything? That's all good, okay. I think we've got a lot of folks in the audience who are starting their companies, they're starting their brands. Do you guys have any insights to offer them lessons learned that you've learned over the last five, 10, however many years in the cannabis industry that you wish you had learned, that you wish you had knew when you started that could help these folks in the audience today? It's more than you ever dreamed, on all levels. It's harder than you thought it would be. It's more rewarding than you thought it would be. It's world-changing. Your own money goes a long way. And it's always changing. So the best thing, the best thing for you to do is to know that shortcuts are shortcuts for a reason. And if you really, if your heart and your spirit and your soul is into this cannabis, whatever you've got, brand or whatever, that your belief in it, will be what manifests. That that's what we're looking for. That that's why branding cannabis is so different than anything else. It's going to be the quality of the product. It's going to be that authentic. This is what we're talking about because we're talking about consciousness. We're talking about how consciousness affects health. We're talking about raising consciousness. And it's a conversation that we've barely just begun. I would say a couple, there's so many things that we could talk on it for an extended period of time. I think that a lot of people come in and to feed off what Melissa said, they come in with gut, they come in with feeling, emotion and a tie back to the plant and the space. I would say that you need to take that a step further. Today, we're starting to get the kind of data that traditional CPG companies have. And we can all relate to a brand in some way or another, but understanding your audience, the quantitative and qualitative data that feeds some of the choices that we make. We couldn't do two years ago. We certainly couldn't do five years ago. There are data companies and ultimately things we can do ourselves to not have to be a gut reactive organization. And identifying the type of consumer that falls in line with your ideologies and being able to connect with them means understanding their behaviors and understanding what moves them. And I think that in the last panel, there was a gentleman or somebody spoke about a number being put on a box for collectors and how that changed the perception of the product. And again, it was like a figurine or something of that nature. The idea being that connecting to your audience comes through understanding who they are and that's not always driven by gut. So use data. There are shortcuts, please use them. The other part of that is business fundamentals. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I've had so many conversations with folks that haven't even approached the concept of their own unit economics moving into all of these broad sort of business ideologies. And so if you can take a minute to make sure you've planned that you've dotted your eyes, that you've crossed your T's, that you've looked at regulation, that you understand your building circumstances and all of the, I mean, talk about a regulatory nightmare. So those are the things. And again, just use data, please use data. If I had to give advice, it would be very much what you said back to, you're gonna need to be authentic. If you got into this for the money, you're too late for that. Cannabis is entering the fabric of the economy. So all the get rich is over. When people quit going to jail, now it's just another product. You're entering the fabric of the economy. It's gonna be Wall Street and big brands taking all the money and it'll be shitty jobs for everybody else, honestly. And as we move, well, I mean, as we move into the fabric of the economy and you're entering this space, you need to be genuine, honestly. You need to, if you don't love cannabis, this probably isn't the space for you. And if you're looking around your board of directors and less of them get high than do, then this is a consumable. This is like cheeseburgers. Your body craves a cheeseburger because it's good. And if it isn't good, you're gonna drive by that logo every time. This is a consumable. If you're not, you don't love this and you don't know a lot about it, it's like diamonds. You could sell me a bad diamond, I wouldn't know because I don't know about diamonds. But you have to be genuine in the cannabis space to be long-term successful in the cannabis space. And this will be a great career and a great path for many companies, but it won't be for the ones that are here to get rich. That will fade out as it enters the fabric of the economy and only the genuine brands will survive. Because the consumer, they're not stupid. These are cheeseburgers. They know what they like. You know what I mean? And if they don't like it, they are not gonna crave it. And I would just say, I would encourage people to pioneer, you know? I mean, that was the thing, when I met Melissa, the thing I was, of the many things I was impressed with, one of the things that struck me was this combination of incredible patience and incredible drive and faith. And when I look back at your career, it's not that you didn't do something that was there for you to do. Like you kicked and plowed the field and went and created the path. And that's the thing that I find so exciting about interacting with the people who I get to meet in cannabis in all the aspects. Because if you think about, it's not even just the plant itself, even just the ancillary things. Like Aaron was a pioneer of Los Angeles cannabis attorney when nobody would touch it and nobody was doing it. So we're in this incredibly exciting time of getting, I mean, that's my background. I don't have a background in business. I come from theater. No. Hey, Linda. But that was the thing is I got recruited into the cannabis industry and I met with the state the first time and I met with the government. And then I realized, oh, everybody's making this up. That's what I do. Like I make stuff up all day. So that you get to like, we get to invent a new industry. So like we get to. So this incredible drive that people have to make cannabis like every other industry that exists already or let's get super corporate and do it the way that Amazon does. Why? Why? We could do something new. We could do something new. And the good news is if we don't and we mess up and we fumble the ball and we just do something old and boring again, cannabis has been around for thousands of years. It will be around for thousands of years. She will wait. She will wait for the pioneers to come and change the world. Yes, I did. Where's our guitar? Well said, Julia, as usual. I think we're coming close to time. This is probably like the question portion with the audience of folks have questions for our wonderful panel. Anybody, anybody? Anyone? Can you tell us a little bit about how your product line specifically is geared toward moms? That's for me? Yeah. Okay. Ethridge Farms is dedicated to be the brand that when you finally get brave enough to walk into a dispensary, that it's gonna be on the wall. Hopefully it'll be a guitar case. On the wall and you will be able to go to it just like a middle-aged woman goes to find her information. It's gonna be clear the way we talk it's gonna be headache here. Are you sleep? Are we talking sleep? It's the issues that, and I just say women because women are 80 to 90% of the price point. They're the ones who buy everything for the families. And so you put the information and that's what it's all about right now is information. I can't tell you how many women I meet that are like, well, I do it, but I don't know. What's this about CBD? What's this about? What are all these, you know, consonants and you know, what is this? And so to research and to one have the product that absolutely comes through have our medicine scientists that I have are the best and the best. They are, they have been dedicated their lives to making medicine, to making holistic medicine. So all of this goes into when you look at that product and I'm putting my name on it. I'm saying Ethridge Farms. Ethridge says that this is in the range. Again, the medicine is not one size fits all but it at least guides you to, hey, this is what you can try for these issues. One thing I hardly ever hear talking about is menopause. Cannabis is great for menopause, you know, and but that's not sexy. Nobody's gonna, you know, Snoop's not probably not gonna talk about that, but you know, these are the things that we are just gonna, that we are focusing on. Hi Melissa, big fan. I hope this doesn't make you feel old but I used to listen to all your songs on the way to preschool. Right on. I have a lot of songs. I'm an attorney and one of the biggest things I see when celebrities come into the fold is finding a trustworthy team, finding a trustworthy partner. Do you have a partner and how did you surround yourself with a good team? I have, yes I do, and I'm going to introduce them. I'm gonna say, I went on a journey 15 years ago to understand cannabis and I found myself in Northern California of course, where for decades they've been growing and of course making the medicine illegally for a long, long time and they are the ones who really have from the Steve D'Angelo's to the Valerie, thank you, yeah, to these women and men who have fought the good fight, spent the time in jail, did this, brought it to us. I found myself in Northern California and the business side of it absolutely narrowed it down and I found a couple and they're right here, Josie and Cricket Roberto, they're right over there from Santa Cruz and they had a brand, it was called Naturally Mystic when the medicinal licenses were put out and then when California went recreational, everyone had to start over again and they were willing to rebrand their products as ethyl farms. The Naturally Mystic products absolutely met the criteria of organic, vegan, gluten-free, all the things that I as a consumer myself would require but all the things that we're going to present that are very, very important, not only have they made the medicine, do they know the cultivators and the growers, they've also worked with the local government, with the city, with the county, it's one of the reasons that we are the first, again the first manufacturing license in Santa Cruz County which you would think there would be tons because it's Santa Cruz but of course we've all found out the political and the legal side of this is very slow moving. So yes, and my wife is also here, who's my partner in it too? Hello, Linda. So yes, that's what we're partnered with, that's what we have a manufacturing plant up there and we're headed out this year, we're doing it. Julie, this is to you, this is Bob Lewis here. You talked about pioneers and I've just made a decision because of your calling, because I have a calling and I want my last career chapter to be meaningful and I see and have heard and I mentioned earlier in a session today that the industry is missing really what I would say is a public facing messaging campaign, a communication strategy and I've been working with KCSA and others on the ambition but I think I just wanna sort of invite your support, Erin and Julie and Melissa and others to sort of help me develop a nonprofit called Can Strong Partners that basically will be issuing free content to any cannabis company, any state association, federal association that can be distributed on a monthly basis. So we have PSA campaigns across the country that are normalized in the conversation and bringing responsible messaging to the industry and I just like your support because I'm gonna be that pioneer and I appreciate you using that term because that's who I am and that's what I need to do and my heart's in the right place so I thank you for that calling. Thank you. Thank you. It is, I mean it's something that we've discussed is it's a very difficult position that the industry is in because of regulations in some ways is that lack of ability to educate because even when Melissa was talking about how clear she wants her products to be and say headache and sleep, my little compliance heart goes like you can't say headache and sleep. I know. You can't say that. You can't, you tell them what it does. We'll just call it nighty night. Nighty night, night. So it's difficult because there is the need for those third party non-biased educational arms and it's a little disappointing. The BCC did a huge multimillion dollar contract for education and we're all like oh yay, there's finally gonna be education and most of the education that came out was you had your chance, now get a license. And in a state where only a third of municipalities are issuing licenses, that's kind of insulting. You know, that no, people did not have their chance and no, you can't just go get a license. Though these are the challenges of the industry so across the board, same thing. The consumer, for a consumer to even understand what a licensed and unlicensed dispensary means. You know, I got recruited to launch a cannabis vaporizer company in early 2015 and I didn't discover until two weeks in when I had my first meeting with Aaron who was our attorney that I had just been put in charge of an entirely illegal company. That's why I'm so into compliance. That's why when I came to you and said, should I join this company, you said no and you worked for them. No, hell no. That's when I passed the authenticity test. Yes you did, thank you. My question follows up on that. In the circles that you're all traveling in, is the idea of educating consumers about buying legal from legal dispensaries coming up and what are you all doing to be proactive about it within your company? Thank you. Josh Shelley and I are building content on a regular basis that's on the education side. So from Canada and in the United States being able to share information is critical. I think when you first walked into Starbucks, you didn't know what the hell a vente latte was and now we're trying to figure out weeds. So internally from a compliance perspective we rely heavily on Julie and then try to stitch in as much of that guidance into the content that we produce and provide. Content from every company as far as being able to discuss ideologies to go back to that authentic brand story and to continue to convey trust. I think that every company has a responsibility to educate not only its consumers but continue to layer that education and I think that content and distribution of that content is the biggest gift that there is from that education perspective. All right, I think we're gonna cut it there unless anybody had anything to add to that. No, okay. Thank you so much to our panelists for taking their time. Thank you panelists. We're gonna get ready for the next panel. Thank you.