 The majority of the business world has forgotten about that. They are so fixated on the transaction portion that they forget to get to know the human on the other side of that transaction. And that's really where the secret sauce is. The psychedelic space is going to be 100x bigger than the need space. What kind of psychedelics are you speaking of? So the first one that's going to be fully legalized by medicinal purposes and it's going to be the same play as Kenna clinics. It's going to be psilocybin, most likely not in Canada. It's going to be California or Denver. Denver or Colorado already has decriminalized. Yeah. So for actual is decriminalization by still a substance one. So what decriminalization is we won't charge you about you will still charge you for dealing, right? So if possession is like whatever, Canada, believe it or not, it's league. There's a lot of psychedelics are legal already in Canada. So all the analogs of LSD, all the analogs of psilocybin are legally can order online. Iowaska is legal under the religious act. Ebo gets legal on the religious act. So most likely we'll see the FDA give because we follow the FDA. So FDA will give full clearance of psilocybin once the final stage three clinical trials are done. And so luckily we have amazing studies. U of T is part of the super cluster group of universities. So the top guys are John Hopkins, U of T and Imperial London College. So that will go first. MDMA set to be legalized for medical psychiatric use by 2021. Give or take. And then we already have a lobby group and push for legislation to as well as BC has unofficially decriminalized shrooms, the mayor has publicly spoken about it. It's not on law. They haven't set it in, but unofficially, the police don't give a flying fuck. Now, when it comes to entrepreneurs, it gets a little bit tricky. Where do you fit in? A lot of people, how they're trying to make money is a pharmaceutical game, which is unfortunate. So they want to IP analogues and do mass production. Now, we just don't have enough studies. They assume they can extract an analog from the substance and have the same effect. We have no idea. Even though we have a resurgence of psychedelic interests, the reality is we don't have that many new studies. The studies are expensive. They're hard to control. And so we need to spend the next four or five years studying micro dosing that we have to see if it contracts with any other types of drugs. If you're like SSRIs, Benzos, for example, like 32 percent of the American populations on statins, there's been some early, early, early studies that there might be conflicting issues. So we don't want anybody to be like, I'm just going to pop this stuff. But when it comes to the upside of the beneficial, let's say, the beneficial results to improve society, it's it's going to be amazing. Yeah, for sure. Well, tell me about your experiences with psychedelics. I've been doing them forever. Tell me everything. Um, I've done them all from from DMT to peyote. Tell me about your experience on DMT. I was an offendant DMT. Really? No, I did vape three hits. I blast it off. It's about 10 minutes only and I came back. That's it. I recall the first 35 seconds where it's like, whoa, my next thing I want to do is five MEO DMT. I've done it. Oh, you've done five MEO. The ego, yeah. So that's my next thing I want to do. The most beneficial for me from like a truly psychedelic experience was probably I've done, if I had to guess, was 10 grams of mushrooms. I don't like mushrooms, like at all. I would rather do like DMT or yeah. You know, once again, it's not a panacea. So for me, like when it comes to like real second, that was the best I've done peyote. LSD is okay, but I don't get that many insights off of LSD. It's not like I come back to, I don't integrate it quite well. So the best integration for me has been, actually, not best integration for me, at least for my issues has been MDMA. Yeah, I would believe that too. For an actual integration. So going through a process, writing it down, journaling it, understanding it, what did I just experience and then kind of working through that. But I'm big on micro dosing. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not big on psychedelics for general public. I think tripping is amazing. I think there's no such thing as a bad trip or a good trip. It's just a trip. You just have to experience it. But I'm not in the camp of recommending to people like, hey, go do a hero's journey or do or five MEO, where it's like, that shit will rip you apart. And so, and Paul statments talks about this, law studies are now coming out where there's a lot of amazing benefits from micro dosing, whether it's micro dosing psilocybin, we're talking about like maybe 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 types of doses. Through, for example, what I've loved, I've been experimenting with micro dosing is eboga. So, you know, you feel a little bit like tiny, tiny stuff. Maybe your equilibrium is off for like 20 minutes. It disappears. But when you look back in hindsight, and you kind of analyze the day, it's like, it's different. Yeah, but we just need more studies. Yeah, for sure. I mean, even we were just talking about cannabis, are we recording now? Yeah, we're recording. I can do the intro after. So we were just talking about cannabis, but I mean, like it's the same thing within like cannabis. I mean, we didn't really have the studies that should have been in place prior to business really coming in and plowing through that space. Yeah. Well, for me, my biggest concern for cannabis right now is the edibles. So I've personally overdosed twice in my life from drugs. And I was young. I was about, my first overdose was 17 or 18. And then the following summer I had a second overdose. And both these overdoses were at, let's call them outdoor raves. Like I was a raver before raving was cool. Like deep raving in a Gunkwin park, a Trudeau park over there, and like generators everywhere. And just, and I was popping uppers and downers, whatever. It was a dispensary. Give me anything. Alcohol, cocaine, you name it. But those types of overdoses were, oh shit, my heart's beating a mile, 100 miles per minute. I'm puking. I see stars. I passed the fuck out. And next thing I know, I'm in the ambulance or they didn't have, but they didn't have an ambulance. They actually had like medical centers over there. They know people and they're on an IV. There's monitors on me as like, thank God you're here. So the actual experience of me having pain wasn't really pain. The pain was maybe for like 10 minutes of me going to blackout mode. The worst fucking experience I had ever of any drug was edibles. Worst ever fucking experience. I must have taken any between 500 to 600 milligrams of edibles. Brownie, a friend made it. We're guesstimating how much I took, right? Because who knows, the tinctures and the oils they put in. But for literally, I think like eight to 10 hours, I was gray. I was cold sweat. I was puking and diarrhea back and forth from the washroom and shaking this nonstop shake like this, sitting on the bed and through a wormhole of death like this, not feeling my body and thinking I'm about to die every second of my life. I'm like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Back and forth and I've never touched edibles since. Yeah, that is not something that interests me at all either. Even like recently, I was, yeah, I mean, maybe it was how you described the diarrhea and vomiting and I was like, wow, that's for me. Yeah, edibles are not for me either. Even the micro dose aspect, I actually, a close friend of mine has an edible company and they make phenomenal edibles in California and they make it with really good ingredients because I think that's another thing too. I mean, not everybody, like some people are in the keto diet and all these kinds of things and they don't want to be popping sugary gummy bears and it's not the same kind of experience, like not everybody's looking for that kind of experience. And he was like, yeah, it's just one, like the way I get really enthusiastic about like a new like hemp cleansing face wash is the way that he got really enthusiastic about his like gummy keto bite. And so I know what that feel like, that enthusiasm feeling is like. So I couldn't be like, no, like when he was like, oh, check this out. Like you should totally try one. It's micro dose. It's one, like one milligram. And I was like, all right, that can't sound so bad. And like, of course, like I'm sharing that enthusiasm and I just popped it. And like a couple of seconds later, I was like, yeah, I'm not meant to have edibles. Like I, that I was like terrified of what was coming my way. And then I was headed to another meeting and I'm sitting in this meeting with like some people that I really admire in business and I'm invested in their company and really excited about the things that they're doing in the cannabis space as well in California. And I am just sitting there in like a casual meeting, dead, silent, staring to the point where they were like, are you okay? And I was like, I just got to be honest. Like I am high as fuck off of a one milligram gum. It was one milligram. Wow. And I was like, this is clearly like my, maybe the way that my body like metabolizes or something. Or you still miss one milligram. Like I don't know. It was delicious. It was amazing. But like, I am really, really high right now. Like I can't function. But then he had like a ping pong table in his office and he was like, okay, well, like let's play ping pong and have a meeting at the same time. Like keep your hands busy. Like let's go do something. And so I was like the master of ping pong. So I mean, there's, there just has to be a way to market it. Because I mean, if it was marketed to me as like, you're going to have laser focus and be like, you're going to be able to win every ping pong master after popping this keto bite. Then I would have like no one to expect. But the fact that like we, and it behaves so differently for every single person. Like psychedelics or anything like that too. That like it's really hard to kind of narrow it into that. So to your point, I think there just needs to be so much more study. Because yeah, if I would not have had that keto bite and then stepped into a meeting where I'm just staring off into space, like. This is why I'm kind of interested to see how the, how they roll out the rules here in Canada for edibles. Yeah. Well, the rules started rolling out October 17th. I am by no means like a regulations like expert. So I don't want to like pretend that I know a ton of it that I don't. I always lean on our partners for anything relative to my mind is blank right now. What's the word I'm looking for? Blindables. I must be, must be too many drugs. No, I don't do drugs that often, but. Plant medicines. Yeah. Plant medicines. I hate what you say it's drug. It's like it's a drug. I'm like. That's a good point. But yet you're drinking alcohol there. But yet you're drinking coffee. Coffee is probably the biggest drug in the world. That's actually a really good point. And I actually find it fascinating to hear people say that they would rather have their children drink than smoke weed. It's crazy. That's insanity to me. I mean, I don't know. I don't have children, but medical standards. If we discovered alcohol today and we looked at all the negative aspects, it would be illegal. It would be hands down. It would be a class one drug. It's a depressant inhibits how you behave. This is just there's no benefit. There's no upside. There's no upside. The crazy thing about like, for example, I'm going to pull it up. A LD50 weed. So LD50 is a lethal dose 50 of a drug. So how much you need of a dose for the 50% of the population to overdose? I have to pull this up. LD50 stats is... Here it is. One for in layman's terms. All right. So in layman's terms, this means in order to induce, so theoretically it's possible. But in order to induce death, a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as contained in one marijuana cigarette within like, given hour or something. Interesting. So theoretically it's possible. But the amount that you got to ingest, you'll be blacked out by that time. And also, I mean, theoretically a lot of things are possible. But it's, I mean, yeah, I don't know. But this is why I'm excited by psychedelics. You look at LSD, no LD50. You look at psilocybin. It's one of the safest compounds in the world. There's no LD50. These are substances where you do it, if you do it through a threshold of having, let's say, a godlike experience or like an ego death or something that takes you in for an experience. There are substances that it creates a relationship. I don't fucking want to do this again for a very, very long time. Like when I have, like last time I done something deep was like a year plus. I don't have any craving to do it again for a while. Yeah, you also, I mean, hopefully when you're doing it, you're doing it for an intention to work through something. And so you can't just do it and expect that something's worked through like anything in life you need to put work in. It's not going to be gone in a 12 minute DMT experience. And so you need to recalibrate the information that you've now processed and that the new things have come to light, the new perspective, you need to reintegrate that and calibrate that into your life. And sometimes that's really painful. Sometimes it's not the trip that is, you know, the outer body experience. Sometimes it's the like calibrating afterwards. Sometimes it's going out for lunch with the person who was your best friend before you had this experience and now you're looking at your relationship completely different. And that can be painful when you're like, Hey, you know what, I now realize I need to step away from, you know, this relationship. And maybe it was the experience that pulled that to light, but you need to reintegrate yourself into real life from what you learned from that experience. And so I think that it's important that people don't do it back to back to back for lunch every day, you know, like, then you've lost the intention. Now it's a different kind of experience without the same kind of intention. I would say intention and integration is the most, in anything that you do in life. For sure. But this is a great segue into... Yeah, I did not expect to come here. And I didn't, I didn't like look at notes on drugs prior to coming here today. I feel like, so I'm totally going to talk about all of my... It's a reoccurring theme over here. It's psychedelics, always, always. I'm telling you. My publicist used to be like, every single interview that I had. I would tell them about Toad. Like, I could not stop talking about Toad. It's like Tyson, you ever watch his podcast? No, I have to be honest. I don't watch or listen to any podcasts. And I think I've maybe finished three quarters of one book in my entire life. I don't, I don't really absorb information that well that way. How do you absorb information? Throwing myself into the pits of the fire. And just like, yeah, like very tactile. I'm very visual and, and yeah. So I, yeah, but I did not expect my, so my publicists all the time, every single interview should be like, you got to stop telling people about your drug use. And I was like, but it's fascinating. Everybody needs to know about this. The reason why I brought up Tyson. Yes, he's done the Toad a bunch of times. Yeah. And it's going so mainstream where like, I was watching a clip from ESPN and they did a whole segment about the Toad. I'm like, I'm fucking ESPN. I'm like, oh, shit. Like people are catching on and he raves about it. I personally haven't done five MEO DMT yet, but it's on my list to do. It's honestly, I rave about it as well. The last time, so I've done it twice. The last time that I, or the first time that I did it, like I got on a flight afterwards and went to Australia and just like took a beat to recalibrate myself and changed my life drastically from that moment on. And then I did it again six months later. And the experience that I had six months, like the second time was so much harder to recalibrate into. It was so much harder to come to terms with of what was in my subconscious, which I knew was there. But you know, there's a lot of, you have a lot of blinders on in your daily life. And yeah, I'm maybe just now coming around to maybe being interested in doing something again. But like it's been over a year and that one was, that time was really, really, really hard too. And you're doing this with like a facilitator that guides you through the experience. Yeah, yeah, in California actually. I also prefer to do things like completely, I feel safer when like I'm away from my current environment and the pressures of my current environment when I can take the time to like calibrate properly and like go into it with good intention or not good intentions, because it's always good intentions, but clear intentions. And I find that really hard to do when you are mixed up in the pressures of your everyday life. Because they're remarkable your journey. Like I think we should maybe start from the beginning because at the age of 21, you were living in a woman's shelter and you've created this multi-million-dollar beauty conglomerate, let's say. And so the evolution that you've had in the last couple of years has been remarkable. I think it kind of would be a really good case study to tell our audience is like, how did that progress look like? Let's take us back to when you were in the woman's shelter till now. Like what did that look like? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, there's like the answer that I gave all the time, like the Cole's notes of like, so I was in the shelter. And to be honest, it wasn't the first time I lived in a shelter. A lot of people think that that's where the story starts is when I was 21, I was living in a shelter. I had a laptop in $15 and I Photoshopped a catalog of makeup that didn't exist by teaching myself how to use Photoshop on YouTube and then downloaded like a pirate bay version of Photoshop. Thank you pirate bay. You guys rock. And yeah, and then made this catalog and then shop this catalog of makeup that didn't exist around to local boutiques and made enough pre-sales to then actually bootstrap this company and build it. And no one taught you this whole idea. No. This is all like innate, natural. Completely natural. I mean, I dropped out of school when I was 14 and I was a competitive ice dancer at that time. Really? Yeah. So I was a figure skater. Figure skater, I did pairs. Oh, wow. And my partner and I skated like 10 hours a day and I thought for sure I was training to be on the Olympic team and so I thought for sure I'm going to be on the Olympics and then when my Olympic career dies down I will be Belle from Beauty and the Beast on Disney and Ice. Naturally. Of course. And I will skate on cruise ships and that's my life. And so I didn't think much about it to leave school when I was 14 but that's kind of where my education stopped. So I mean, there is some things that I, I crack jokes about it now. Like there's certainly some things that I can tell that my education is like, but my emotional. I never finished high school. Okay. They kicked me out in grade nine. Okay. So we're like, there we go. So yeah. And I think that's also I was mentioning before like I don't really like read books and stuff because I'm really slow at it. And but what I have really become good at because of some of the challenging experiences I've had in my life. Like I mentioned at 21 wasn't the first time I lived in a shelter. The first time I lived in a shelter I was six months old. And so I grew up in and out of some challenging relationships and challenging situations with my family for my whole life. And I was 14. I left school by the time I was had just turned 17. I was living on the other side of the country on my own. And yeah. So through all of those experiences, I was able to have a really solid understanding of who I was and a really good understanding of how to follow my gut and how to listen to my gut and really good at emotional intelligence. And that I think some of those skills are incredibly important skills as an entrepreneur. And so that really drove to just, you know, kind of figure things out as you go. And yeah. So I photoshopped this catalog and it was just something that came naturally. And in fact, I was just distracting myself from my reality. It's nothing that I anticipated I was building a business. But then I built that from, you know, $15 and a laptop in the shelter to a $15 million company in five years. Holy fuck. That's amazing. Yeah. And so you mentioned you were, you originally didn't start it off as a business? No, it's not like I was in the shelter thinking like, all right, this is my business plan. This is what I'm going to do. Like I didn't know. Like I didn't, I didn't even know what an entrepreneur was. I was simply just distracting myself with from what my reality was. And I was interested in makeup. I did some makeup for like weddings and things like that for friends. So you saw this catalog of makeup. You photoshopped it and you put it online. Yeah. Like whatever website. Well, it was like, I think it was, well, I actually physically got some printed which were like $10 a catalog from what was it called at the time. It changed names now, but I think it's like ISSU or something like that. Like it's free digital online catalogs. And so it made it really easy to like have this digital catalog and copy the link and send it off to people. And was the company called Evio at that time? No. And actually this is part of the story. I don't share nearly as much. But it was actually called Karma Face Cosmetics. Karma Face Cosmetics. Karma Face, like what goes around comes around. Like Karma. Karma, got it. Yeah. I thought it was clever. I thought so. And the reason why I was in the shelter was because I was leaving a unhealthy relationship. I was leaving an abusive relationship. And when I was in the shelter, shortly after that, I actually left and I say this, like I'm really vulnerable about this because I think it's important to be honest about these things. Because often you get asked, like, well, why did you stay? Or people have a certain perception of how domestic violence is. And so I'm pretty honest about it. After the shelter, I even went back. And things got a lot worse. He ended up being arrested. And while he was in jail, he trademarked Karma Face Cosmetics. What? And soon he was on house arrest awaiting his trial. He trademarked Karma Face Cosmetics and sued me for infringement. Jesus Christ. And so at that point, I had the products on the shelves because it took, he waited, it was about three months in between this time. And so I had products on the shelves. And yeah, he sent C-synthesis to every shelf that carried us to any manufacturer that he knew that we were working with. And yeah, threatened to go after them if they continued to produce. And so everything came to a screeching halt very quickly. And I learned a lot in the first couple years of being an entrepreneur because of those experiences as well. A lot of resilience and a lot of persistence. And so I ended up, after fighting it for a little while, I recognized my energy. It's getting drained for this. Yeah. And for what? Really, it wasn't worth anything at that time. And it was some great experience and it was a lot of hardship. And I said, keep it. And I started over. And that's when Evio was started. So Evio really started about a year and a half after Karma Face. Yeah. So the start of the story is really Karma Face in the shelter. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. So what was your strategy when it came to cosmetic and beauty spaces saturated? Like, you know, I've walked into maybe Sephora with my wife two, three times. And it's like overload for me. I see everything like... Yeah. Like what the fuck's going on over here? It's like a zoo, it's chaos. It is. And so... And there's passionate consensus. Oh yeah, it's insane. Did you know it is the number one watch thing on the internet? Well, besides porn is cosmetic tutorials. Really? Yeah. There's that too. There's that couple. I don't know if they're together or business partners. They just... The most ridiculous... They just sold out something like $10 million in sales of their beauty line. Oh, I believe it. Some Instagrammers. I was like, what, in 24 hours? I'm like, holy fuck, this is insane. Yeah. What was the gap that you saw that Evio came in and filled? So when I first started, I didn't really... I didn't really see the gap. What I was doing was I had lip glosses and I named them after women who inspired me. And ironically enough, so this was like seven years ago. And seven years ago, the way that makeup was marketed was very much like, there's something wrong with you and we're going to fix it with this concealer. Got you. Like, you are not beautiful enough and this is going to help you. And so simply by just having a human to human, I really believe that that's all businesses in any business that I've interacted with is that all businesses is a human to human interaction that results in a transaction. And unfortunately, the majority of the business world has forgotten about that. They are so fixated on the transaction portion that they forget to get to know the human on the other side of that transaction. And that's really where the secret sauce is, is that when you know the person on the other table, and it doesn't need to know them personally, but when you know the ins and outs of what their goals are, what makes them tick, why they're doing what they're doing, you can negotiate one hell of a deal. And that results in a better transaction. But so many people are missing that in between stage of that human to human connection. And so really that's what I was doing with the cosmetics as well. I had five lip glosses, and I named them after women who inspired me. And that was really my message at the beginning when it was karma face was, you know, it's makeup by women for women. And ironically enough too, the, it's starting to shift a little bit, but cosmetics is predominantly managed by men, which that's fine. Like it's a high margin business area and we have to all work together and there's a lot of room for both of us to be involved. But the interesting thing about that is that the men in the room, the majority of them, if not all of them, don't wear makeup. So they've never tried the product, but they're deciding what product is going on our skin. And so that was the messaging at the beginning. And I've, as I've evolved, it's evolved as well. Also society has evolved. And so I don't necessarily subscribe to that female empowerment aspect anymore. I think like, I think that equity and equality is super important, but I think we need to work together. I don't necessarily subscribe to like, hey, let's have just like a female only. In fact, my board of directors is a lot of old white men. And that's not necessary. Well, you're correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah. You're looking for the best suited talent that you need, regardless of if you're white, black, purple, pink, alien, non-binary, female men, as long as you're the best at this role, you got the spot. Exactly. And as long as you are stepping up and putting your money where your mouth is or putting your time where your mouth is, and as long as you believe in me and you believe in this vision and you're willing to give the support that's going to help all of us flourish. And unfortunately, not enough time has really passed of women being in the work field for us to have that same kind of equal opportunity. Our time is coming. And the women before me have fought for it and we're certainly embracing it, but we can't be mad at time. Like we need to, anything that's sustainable, time has taken place in order to refine it and get your footing in it. And so unfortunately, the pool of women just isn't nearly as much as the pool of men. And at least with that kind of capital and that kind of experience, unfortunately. And we're starting to get to a place where that's not as true, which is amazing. Like that was my whole vision and passion towards it. But yeah, so what really has now driven and kind of evolved with EVEO is that honestly, at the end of the day, before the way I was messaging it and our mission hasn't changed, the way I was messaging it was female empowerment and now it's just do the right thing. Do the right thing, yeah. Like we literally have a giant neon sign that says do the right thing even when no one's looking. As soon as you walk into our office and it's a hidden message on every single box and it shouldn't be whether you're black, white or purple or female or male or transgender or anything. Just do the right freaking thing. And we don't really need to have all the conversations in between. And to be honest, that also gave me a bit of like a identity crisis with my company because I was like, I'm no longer passionate about having this conversation. And it took me a while to get to a space that I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to have that conversation of female empowerment anymore. That was what made us different at that space was that we were really walking that talk of female empowerment in one of the first to do it. And then we also were natural and organic but not at the beginning. At the beginning, we were actually fully chemicals and not good for your skin at all. Yeah, I was going to ask you the question. So even when you started with karma, now EVO, what was your strategy of like, where did you get the products from? Was it like white label? Did you work with somebody else? Was it like a JB deal? So karma face was all white label. White label, yeah. And yeah, that's kind of like how I got things started. So there's full services out there. I can right now, I'm like, hey, I want to start a beauty line. I can call them up and boom. Yeah, absolutely. You could have it on shelves in a couple of weeks. Cool. And that's pretty common. So that was how we started karma face and karma face was not natural or organic at all. And then as you start to really want to create formulas with value to them and as you start to see this niche that needs to be filled in this white space, then you often have to get into custom formulating. So we got into custom formulating when we got into EVO and the first product that I ever custom formulated was a green tea primer. Okay. And that green tea primer, I was able to pre-sell 277,000 of them and I did it the same way that we did just, I photoshopped a green tea primer and then sent it around and Ipsy actually picked it up. So yeah, they're Say that number again. How many pre-sales? 277,000 of them. Yeah. And so Ipsy was kind of your distribution or? Ipsy is a subscription box. No, Ipsy. Yeah, yeah. So was that the main form of eyeballs? Yeah, at that point, we also wholesaled. So with EVO, we don't wholesale. It's all direct to consumer. In fact, we're launching a really cool new way to shop, which I think is going to change the way that retailers and brands work together globally in 2020. I'm super excited about it. People will no longer buy things, they will buy experiences. Experiences, yeah. And I'm really excited to be a part of the beginning of bridging that gap because historically, brains and retailers didn't really work together on that kind of scale. And so yeah, we were selling to wholesale stores at that time too, and that certainly helped. And then sampling boxes helped as well. Yeah. What do you think was one of your major catalysts for getting, let's say, more organic interest within EVO? Like more with EVO than like, well, okay. So we were karma-faced. And then the line that we sold EVO, that we sold wholesale, that wholesale line was called Evelyn Iona, which we still sell to this day, but now we sell it all direct to consumer. And then we came out with a new line that's all custom manufactured. We spent a lot of time on these formulas. They're all natural organic and don't contain water. So they are conserving water resources as well. And those are called EVO. So really, we're kind of talking about two brains there. But yeah, they, so we were able to get, I think a lot of like organic traffic on it, simply just going back to the same thing. Like it's not that complicated. It's a human-to-human interaction. And I think also by sharing my story, so when I was ready to be vulnerable and share my story in a way that I could control the narrative, because I never wanted people to feel sorry for me or anything like that. I wanted it to be an empowering thing. And when I started sharing my story and finding the right way to do it, it became not about me at all. In fact, it came about how many people could see themselves in my story and how many people were inspired to dream bigger no matter their circumstances. And so our product became a symbol of that. In fact, we had somebody write to us. They were from Winnipeg and she bought our product. And actually the first time she got our product was in a sampling box. It was glossy box. And she said that she keeps her empty packaging around her house of our EVO products because it reminds her that anything is capable. And so I think people really started to resonate with my story and that if I could accomplish what I did in my circumstances, that they could do the same because I'm an ordinary Joe. And so I think that's what a lot of the traction came from. It's an impressive story. I gotta tell you. Thanks. The reason why I asked you about did you have any education or did anyone mentor you? It's especially in this day and age when people are raising copious amounts of capital you have the common sense insight to be like, well, sales matter. Even though I may not have the product on hand right now I can pre-sell this stuff. It's like natural instinctive nature of like, duh, I need to sell this shit. Yeah. And I mean at that time too, like not even a bank would touch me with a 10-foot ball. I didn't even have a home address. It's a privilege to have a credit card. I didn't have a credit card for the first four years, three years I ran my business. And so like. At what stage did you guys raise capital? The first time that we raised any capital was 2018. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow, just last year. Holy shit. And a lot changed very quickly in 2018. Yeah. So where do you see the future right now with Evio? I know you mentioned this cool new interesting experiential thing with customers. Yeah. So I'm really excited that we have a platform that we're spending a lot of time getting to know people. I mean, we kind of spoke about this before. Like when people raise money, sometimes you kind of get away from your roots. And I wish I could say I was different, but I kind of got away from my roots a little bit. I would say money doesn't solve problems. Oh, God, no. In fact, like more money, more problems. Fuck yeah. So I'm really excited that like we've found our way and gone back to our roots and we're really just focusing on human-to-human connections. And we have this really cool platform where we're interviewing people about what kind of rules did you have to... We're interviewing really cool people based on like what kind of rules did you have to break to get to where you are? And then also tying it into beauty, like what kind of rules do you break in your beauty routine? Because beauty's supposed to be this space of self-expression, but it has all these rules to it of like your wing line are supposed to be equal on both sides and look like this and look like that. And what if you threw all those rules out? And so we're really exploring that on our platform that's coming out at the first quarter of 2020. So really excited about that. And then we have with one of Canada's largest department stores, we are launching experiential pop-up shopping for limited amounts of time nationwide throughout the year. And we're really excited about that because it is kind of like turning retail and brand relationships on their heads. And even just the way we've interacted each other and putting this experience together has been really cool. Yeah, so that's kind of what's next for us for 2020. Really excited about that and more collaborations. I'm actually really looking forward to it's like the saying if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I'm really in this to create a difference. And just because I've seen the impact of having more than most people and having less than most people. And again, like all it is, it's the same in between every sector. It's a human to human connection. And sadly, the world has kind of lost that. And so I'm really looking forward to connecting even with other brands to be able to collaborate on up and coming products and things like that. So more collaborations, more experiences, and more human to human connection for reveal. Are you paying close attention to, and we were talking about earlier with like the social media scene with how powerful, let's put them in quotes, influencers are. Like I was looking at the stats that Shopify releases with, well, what's her name? Caitlyn Jenner? I don't know. One of the young, one of those young Kardashians, like she sells out something like. Oh yeah. Some ridiculous fucking number. I can't even put a number on that. For cosmetics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So how? Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner, that's the one. Yeah. Have, has that kind of like that type of new method of direct to consumer sales and that type of influencer marketing changed your guy's strategy for how you guys approach everything? Um, I mean those stats certainly help. But again too, like I don't think that it was, I'm not, I'm the type of entrepreneur who really goes by my gut in a lot of ways just because I'm not traditionally trained. And so data is really important to me and I've been really fortunate to surround myself with an incredible team who's really driven by data. But at the end of the day, when I make the final decision, it's totally based on like, how do I feel? And, and really what I'm focused on is that human-to-human connection. And I think that's also why influencers were able to, you know, get on that pedestal and be able to push those kinds of numbers is because they were making a connection. And unfortunately, I think that the influencer marketing has changed a little bit just because now it is so saturated and it has become a lot less authentic. And so I'm really excited to be part of that. Definitely the data in it has helped us kind of drive what I was feeling that case study that, okay, like the way I'm feeling has merit to it and there's numbers to back this up. But really, we just want to focus on those human-to-human connections and what lights me up and what our numbers reflect is when we are sharing, when we're sharing with other people and sharing their stories and what really excites me, honestly, is to learn more about like, what kind of rules people have broken? Like what have they done differently than other people? At what point in their life did they say, fuck it, I don't care what anyone else thinks, this feels right, this is with the right intentions, I'm doing the right thing, and like break the rules when the rules don't make sense. And let's talk more about that because our world has become so, you know, it does things because that's the way it's supposed to be done. What if we shook that all up and what if we did the right thing? I'm gonna put you on a spot. All right, I'm ready. You just said, give me an example of breaking the rules, somebody. Can you give us an example of when you broke the rules or rule? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this one is maybe like a bit of a fluff answer, but yeah, we did a cannabis deal before cannabis was legal. We were the first people to do a deal with an LP and actually within five minutes of that press release coming out, we lost a large contract. Really? But yeah, somebody wrote us and they, this, I was super pumped to be working with this very large company and they wrote to us and said, given your support of legal drugs, we no longer support you. Where are you guys now? Put their contracts. And this was 2018. Like this isn't like this was that long ago. And so that was one time that I broke the rules. Yeah, just because the rules didn't make sense. So what was your vision to talk about that? I would say JB deal that you did with Aurora. Yeah, so yeah, I just, I think again, like when the rules don't make sense, break them. And when I was looking at what we could do with cannabis, I would, there's not enough studies out there to be honest, to understand what it's doing from a topical perspective. At least not enough studies that have given me the confidence to really understand that cannabis is going to be this mega ingredient that takes all your wrinkles away. I mean, like- It's like panacea, right? Yeah. But what it can do, which is interesting to me that not more people are talking about this, is it can really make a huge impact in our world. It can reduce the use of plastic. We did a pilot to infuse our plastics with hemp fibers, and we were able to reduce our use of plastic by 45%. That's amazing. And now we've got to figure out a scale to make it financially viable. So I know that people don't know this. Canada was the number one hemp producer in the world before World War I. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, because hemp grows very easily in our Canadian climate, well, at least during spring, summer and fall. The reason why we don't have it anymore, rapeseed came in as a monocrop, subsidized by the government. Now what rapeseed is, you guys all know the oil called canola oil. Canola oil is Canada oil. Canola oil comes from rapeseed. So the government came in and lobbyist groups, et cetera. Hemp oil, too, was competitive against the fossil fuel industry. As you mentioned, hemp, biofuel, you can make fibers from it. You can substitute it as a synthetic for natural. There's so many use cases for it. Absolutely. We also found that we were able to eliminate animal byproducts by replacing beeswax. And that then made us completely vegan. And so again, our motto is do the right thing even when no one's looking. Like how can you argue against producing use of plastic and animal byproducts and also transparency? That was a really, really big thing for me is that our cosmetic industry has been largely self-regulated. There's no, especially the green space, there's no regulating bodies that say this is natural. This is not like in terms of what you can put on your label. It's like a supplement industry. Exactly. And so, and I mean, I'd like to think that everybody's doing it with best of intentions, but the truth is, is the greed is running the industry. And good practice is actually good business and it's good profit. And we just have gotten away from that. And now we're doing it this unfortunate way because it's the way it's always been done where we kind of need to wheel back and just do the right thing and break all the rules because they no longer make sense. And cannabis helped us do that. And it also helped us raise capital. It helped us scale up from that perspective. And it helped us do the right thing. And it helped us increase transparency with our ingredients because avocado or sunflower oil, these are great ingredients, but they're not regulated the same way cannabis is. We can't tell you exactly who grew that sunflower and exactly where and how it was done. Crazy thing about avocados now the cartels are getting that business. They're controlling it. Yeah, it's really profitable for them in Mexico. I mean, I get it. Avocados are so expensive. They are. Yeah. So yeah, it's exactly that, like allowed us to be more transparent with this ingredient. And I think that actually cannabis should give more of a precedence to other ingredients in terms of regulatory aspects to it. Because yeah, like I wish that there was more regulatory bodies on cosmetics so that there was a larger sense of transparency or even like a way to really track that kind of stuff because our consumers are wildly intelligent and very vocal. Like to your point, when you go into Sephora, like they're passionate consumers. And as a brand, it's really hard to keep up with their demands of transparency because it just doesn't exist. And so we've got to start creating that. You're right. Like my wife's a naturopath. And so before going into medical school her specialty was like organic biochemistry and like deep, deep science. And she's like schtickler when it comes to like what she puts on her face. Like I sometimes buy some crap. She's like, what the fuck is this shit? You know, throws it at me. This is crumbling. What the fuck do I know? Yeah. But yeah. But it's even hard to read the label. Oh yeah. Because it'll say like natural and you'll think like, hey, like, hey babe, like I did a great thing today. That's such a hidden word. Natural. Natural. Like I got a natural skincare product. Like be proud of me. And the label probably says otherwise. And she goes in on the signs that she looks at every ingredients and you know, you can look up a bunch of these ingredients and go and PubMed and anything. It's like stuff shouldn't be on your face. And your skin is your largest organ. Yes. Like it absorbs that into your bloodstream. And there's no regulating body. So you hope that people are just doing the right thing. But unfortunately they're not. And greed runs a lot of that. And also now that's just been the precedence is that that's okay. And so I think that it's important to change that. I agree. Have you seen an uptick in let's say like interest from men in this industry as a consumer? Yeah. It's actually really interesting that I have seen I've seen a lot more men openly be interested about it. I've also seen a lot more cosmetic companies geared towards men. I'd say right now though I'm seeing a lot of a lot more like gearing towards men who are more like feminine type features. I hope and I think the trend is going in the direction where it's going to become more like masculine. I think also just the trend in society is that people are talking more about masculine and feminine energies and the balance of the two and how it's okay for a woman to be masculine and it's okay for a man to be vulnerable. And so I think just by nature a lot of those industries including the cosmetic will start to cross over in terms of marketing strategies and then therefore if you're marketing towards a man it's more likely that a man will buy it. And so you've seen a little bit of that but not a ton yet. But certainly an upswing from say like even a year ago. Interesting and so these products would be like what do you think they're buying? Well I think skincare has become much more important than it has been historically for sure and I think a lot more men previously they would just like borrow the girlfriend's skincare or like use body soap like to wash their whole like face and everything too. And I think you're seeing a lot more men get into their own skincare regimes now. So that certainly is an upswing but also like skin tone and like foundation. So like having a more like cosmetics that will give you the appearance of having more clear skin. Interesting. I've seen a massive explosion in what's it called? Beard oils and such. Yeah like anything to do with beards. Like it's fucking crazy. They're everywhere. Yeah it's like the masculine version of like self-care. I'm lazy. I just throw coconut oil on sometimes. That's awesome. That's not lazy. That's like super conscious. That's great. Yeah but going back to our original talk. So about psychedelics? Yeah we're gonna have a good transition from the products with hemp etc. We see that the psychedelic space is going to be the new weed space and I agree. I've been in a space for a while. I'm a personal user of the plant medicines for oh god since I can remember. And I think it's going to be 100x more beneficial for society because psychedelics isn't just one plant medicine. You're talking about Jesus Christ. So many plus the analogs and the analogs. Etc. Do you see beauty having a synergistic relationship as it has now with the weed industry with the psychedelics? Let's say four or five years from now. Interesting. I mean actually a trend in beauty is that there's a lot of cosmetic companies that name their products after drugs or have a lot of like marketing that are all about drugs. And so I wouldn't be totally surprised if there was some kind of crossover. I'm currently having a hard time seeing where that synergistic aspect will be because I don't see the added like value of you know eliminating plastic or What about like use of mushrooms like in products? In an ingredient? Actually yeah you know what and like I see it more from maybe like a supplement aspect or like there's a lot of like digestible cosmetics and maybe you know what I just again like I don't have enough information to really know what kind of what's the upswing of say a mushroom ingredient in like is it going to help with amoliancy? Is it going to help with um is it high in omega three six and nine or like what kind of benefits are there to that ingredient? I don't know but I could see how it could help to what we're just speaking to of like the transparency. So if mushrooms had the ability to say replace you know some shitty ingredient that's currently in there and is also regulated now there's that transparency aspect to it and it definitely would be an added value. I just don't know like do you know what is in mushrooms that could potentially be helpful from a topical perspective? It depends there's so many different mushrooms there's medicinal mushrooms there's different forms of psychedelic mushrooms. There's also what people don't kind of pay attention to there's the actual you can manipulate and grow fungi into plat let's say a substitute for plastic or even substitute for wood. Interesting. Highly durable highly highly flexible depending on how you build it and there's many like imagine instead of like let's say you have a makeup case with a mirror inside and whatever foundation you're using that can be a beautiful hundred percent organic mushroom case. Yeah seeds and it certainly has a place for it. Yeah stuff like that's interesting. And what about scalability and cost on it because that's such a big thing in beauty because our margins every six weeks you can grow a massive batch. Interesting. They grow in bags. And what about to process it? Is it an expensive processing process? Mushrooms you can grow in a greenhouse. Interesting. They're so durable and cheap to grow. Sanitation is really important because they don't want cross contamination but in a nutshell like you can order right now really healthy mushrooms like lion's mane is one of the healthiest mushrooms you can order kits at your house. They'll come in they'll come in kind of like a big white bag. It's already sport ready to go. You put it in kind of like a closet area. It's about like six to eight weeks give or take you make some holes in it and you can grow your own lion's mane. And then the only thing you have to do is buy more spores. And so they're using the actual turnover of product is fast. The cost of production is low and this is just the beginning. And so you can like this whole table can be from fungi. And would it make the table more expensive? Like anything I actually I don't know these tables like this are expensive. You know I don't know that's a good question I have to figure that out but like any I consider a technology like any technology there's a curve. All right so supply and demand like for example organic foods at the beginning was like I remember you know my wife's a natural path doctor. I've been in health space for a long time. I remember when we were getting into the let's try to source our quality of food was like fuck man it's a hard time finding it. Finding it and then it's expensive. Yeah but now it's like shit. Yeah it's everywhere. Yeah like you can order like if you're if you're omnivore and you eat the um let's say livestock you can buy a half cow 100 grass fed humanely butchered 699 799 a pound. Yeah it's like cheaper than loblas. Yeah it's true. It's crazy. I wonder yeah I think that there's room for mushrooms then. Yeah it's going to be also I think maybe the first like step and challenge within that which like we should build like a psychedelic makeup line. Totally. Just geared towards like visuals you know what I mean that'd be insane. And I think that the biggest curve would be like even with cannabis one of the hardest things that we had was getting some of our manufacturers to be open to even working with it. Really? Yeah like they were like no not happening. They wouldn't work with hemp? Some not with hemp some not with the CBD aspect of it. Are they here these manufacturers? Yes even now even just before I got here I had to like go through an addendum and like a checklist. What's the reasoning though it's fucking fully legal by federal standards? But the reasoning is is like you and I are really educated in this space because we've exposed ourselves to it because we have an interest in it or we you know have we you know have businesses in it or whatever it might be but for the majority of the people it is confusing as fuck right now because there's so much different information and so like most things instead of you know it's not their main business and they really you know could kind of care less about it or not and so rather than get their main business it could be you know 500 million dollar business in trouble because of something that they did wrong that they didn't quite understand in cannabis because the regulations are so deep um then they're just like you know what like I'm just I'm gonna have to bow out of this one um because it's so confusing and because there's really not any straight answers that you can get like I remember going back and forth with the regulatory team at Aurora and our manufacturer and the things we could and couldn't say not because of regulations but because of people's comfort zones really and so I think that mushrooms would have a really big curve with that but maybe not so much because we eat them like I don't know so I think they'd have a different relationship with people um because maybe mushrooms don't have the same kind of stigma is say I'm this close from starting a psychedelic brand you should yeah it's called egoic love it yeah where's the name come from like ego uh yeah egoic I think I don't know yeah I have no idea what I'll sell I just want to create a fun it's just throw shit against the wall I'm gonna give a shit but um yeah it's interesting man I'm just really surprised that that hesitant still after it's fully legalized and everything oh yeah completely because it's so confusing yeah so confusing you can't seem to get any straight answers and so if you're not somebody where this is your mainstream of income you're like okay well I'm just not gonna rock the boat you know I'm gonna focus on where my money is coming from um and so yeah yeah well I appreciate you sharing your story and everything yeah thank you so much if people want to get a hold of you and learn more about your story and what you guys are doing at EVO what's the best resource yeah check out evobeauty.com brandy thank you so much all right guys if you like this episode subscribe to my youtube channel leave a comment also if you're listening this on stitcher itunes there are any of your favorite podcast apps out there please leave a review the more reviews we have the better we get in the search algorithm still next time thanks for listening or watching to the Amir approved podcast and I'll talk to you guys soon peace out