 There was a few things that were really garnering my interest. His biosynthesis of cannabinoids was super interesting, like making minor cannabinoids more prevalent by finding alternative methods. That was really cool stuff. Water solubility or stability, like making infused beverages, like I just know beverages are going to be a huge category and finding this secret to do it. He grabs a glass of water, dumps it in and disperses and it's clear. I tasted it and it was fairly innocuous. I just wanted straight tunnel vision at that point. There could have been no one else in the room. We don't believe in the one size fits all label for this particular technology. It's actually a very complicated chemistry. We approach each skew with each new customer completely differently. We ask them, what are you trying to deliver to your consumer? What's the experience that you want them to have? The mouth feel, the taste. And beverage has been super interesting. We could literally infuse anything that has water in it. But we love beverage because it is actually truly a new experience. It's a new way to absorb the cannabinoid. It can be very complex, it's perceived to be a lot healthier since you're not smoking or vaporizing. We've seen sixteen, seven-year-old women try and cannabis for the very first time, having a very beautiful experience and coming back raving about it to all their friends. We've had people give us really incredible testimonials on the medical applications. Like, literally a woman living in pain for twenty years with fibromyalgia, you know, having one little vial, five milligrams of THC, all of a sudden sleeping through the night, painless, you know, it's just, it's really special work, you know. We get to do this every day. And this is the real exciting thing for me, is beverage is a great format to really experiment with, you know, what is commonly called the entourage effect. But when people use the entourage effect in cannabis, they're usually talking about the various cannabinoids and terpenes in the plant. But entourage can go well beyond that. Like, how does CBD and THC interact with caffeine or L-P-N-A-N or Oshakwanda, right? It's like really diving into kind of a broader plant science and understanding like the different types of experiences we can create. What we're actually doing is creating these little vehicles that you can put oil inside that are friendly with water and it's more of a suspension system. But the science that we do makes it so that that completely homogenizes and stays stable over time. This is the value that we're creating right now. Our customers come to us and they say, you know, we want to put THC, CBD, this full spectrum extraction into a beverage. It's like, okay, we can help you do that. We can figure out the right emulsion system. The future is understanding how to control the experience. Right? And so right now, we're letting our customers be the creative ones. Someone's opinion may contradict yours. Where's my friend Alan? It's all about your perspective. Who are we and what is the nature of this reality? Five, four, three, two, one. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyan. We are on site at the beautiful New West Summit, the Cannabis Tech Conference. We are now going to be speaking with Ben Larsen. Thank you, Alan. Hi, Ben. Good to be here. Thanks so much for coming on our show. My pleasure. Super pumped for this. It's been a long time in the making. It has. Yeah. I've gone through many lifetimes since meeting you. Likewise. Likewise, damn. Yeah, it has. And it's great both, you know, being a part of Founder Institute as well and also you yourself starting Gateway, the premier cannabis startup accelerator and now being the CEO of Vertosa. And I'm so pumped to jump into this because the infusion of our products, our beverages and just products at large is going to be a massive part of how we educate and onboard and all different types of stuff. So Ben, let's jump into things on a journey perspective. You found yourself being born into this world. How did you identify what your North Star is and how you ended up pursuing that? Yeah, it's a great question. It's been a little bit of a circuitous route. Growing up, I was always someone that had a lot of ideas. I was that kid that was sitting in the backseat of the car saying, hey, Mom, wouldn't it be great if we had a coffee machine that would wake up before you and cook your coffee for you? And it's like, well, that clearly exists now. But it was just, I never had the opportunity to really take these ideas to fruition or maybe I just didn't have the knowledge of how to do it. And so circuitous route, I actually ended up going to school for engineering. When I actually wanted to be an architect, I took way too many classes, ended up having to graduate at a certain point and enter the world of professional engineering. But being in the Bay Area, you're just around so many inspiring people actually creating things that are touching people's lives. And I just fell in love with it. So at a certain point, I just quit engineering, got right into it. And from my very first startup, everything that I've done has been about helping people realize their ideas and their dreams. And so that what eventually took me to Founder Institute, the skills that I picked up, working with startups all around the world, learning how to build startup ecosystems. That's what took me into the cannabis industry. It wasn't about a love of the plant. It is now. But what took me into this industry was people doing what they love and care about and risking everything to do so. And at the time, this was back in 2015, saw a lot of capital trying to come into the space. And there's just this big disconnect. And in the tech industry, that's what we've learned. That's why startup incubators, startup accelerators are created to bridge that gap between these very passionate, smart entrepreneurs and the capitalists that we're looking to kind of help build this industry. And that was kind of the nexus of gateway. Where did the cannabis bug come in though? Yeah, it kind of just found me. You know, I was asked to mentor, coach, and judge some startup competitions purely focused on the cannabis industry. This is a very Bay Area phenomenon. Back in 2015, people pitching cannabis companies, I could probably count on two hands the number of times I'd consumed cannabis before that. But it was very eye-opening. And it felt very much like the early days of tech, where you just had this raw talent and passion. And it just needed a little bit of guidance. And so a 30-minute session with the founder pitching their company could phenomenally change their pitch to be more appealable to investors or to be more on the right path of creating a commercializable product. And so that was the opportunity. My partner and I, at the time, we had been asked to help evaluate early-stage deal flow for a fund that had been created for the industry. And after looking at it, it was just like, well, you're having problems because you don't have really true deal flow. You need to be able to compare these to the same investment opportunities that are in the tech industry. And so that was the vision coming into the industry. It's like, we need to take all this raw talent and make it more appealable to the mainstream and raise the bar. And so that's what we did. That's what I continue to do today with Vertosa. We're working with great brands. We're trying to create consistent products that are on the mainstream and make it repeatable so that it's scalable. And so it's always about asking the right questions. And we learn this in startup world. It's like, what are you trying to deliver to your consumer? Always make it about the consumer. And especially as an emerging market, as an emerging category, this is very important stuff. We need to know who we're serving and we need to learn how to speak to them, educate them and bring them along with the journey. Yes, this idea that your ability to compress your north star down into an elevator pitch can then catalyze your ability to fund your north star projects at greater efficacies and also sell your north star projects along this journey as well. It's just a compression algorithm. Can you figure out how to do it well enough? Can you write it down a thousand times? Really just continue synthesizing and distilling over and over and over again. And also, then, can you have someone that has experience like you review it and then that way they can give you feedback. Then in 2015, when you're seeing cannabis pitches, if those got refined better and better, you can catalyze the emerging market rising faster by giving them feedback. Look, I mean, there's a lot of things at play here and everyone used to be at the mindset it's like, oh, that's pretty good for a cannabis company. And we're like, no, no, it needs to be as good but better than every other company out there because not only do we have to make something that is actually truly scalable and actually investable, but we have to earn the trust of the regulators, of the general community. There should be no room for people to poke holes in your business because you need to withstand all these external pressures. And that has been the hardest thing in this industry. It's hard enough to build a business. It's extremely hard to build a business in a shifting regulatory landscape, something that is questionably legal depending on who you ask. And there's just so much to learn and we deal with a lot of new entrepreneurs in space. Maybe it's their first time building a company. It is phenomenally hard. Much credit goes to those that are actually trying to do it because they are pioneers and they are taking a lot of the bullets. As far as just trying to do the learning and what it comes back to, something that we preach a lot in the founder institutes, you really have to have a strong why. Why are you here? What is your North Star? And for me, it is seeing these hurdles and helping people navigate them and truly realizing the dream that is in their head. In their heart. That's right. I love that. That led to Gateway and then Gateway was how many years, how many companies went through Gateway? Over three years, we had 20 companies come through the investment portfolio and we would work day and night, six months straight with these companies and even beyond after kicking them out of the office but entering the industry when we did, 2015 in Oakland, which was kind of the birthplace of the advocacy movement, 215, all that kind of stuff. We kind of had a cultural center. We opened up our doors to the community. We had a lot of events. We hosted normal and women that grow and all this kind of stuff. And we actually ended up having a co-working space, which also birthed quite a few companies. And our goal with Gateway was to eventually kind of work ourselves out of a job. We didn't want the co-working space to be necessary anymore. And as the years went on, more and more people went and worked at WeWorks and other people's offices and there was the community that was becoming more and more public and less ashamed about what they were doing. There were definitely times where we've both been at runway over here in San Francisco where I think cannabis companies were very hesitant to kind of like be out in the open there. There's one that I can really think of. It was called Weed Club. Weed Club was how I came into the industry. They were doing these pitch events. I always thought it was funny that they chose weed and just like leaned right into it. But you know, they put it out there and I'm like, oh, there's actually weed businesses like trying to build in this world. Now we can work just about anywhere in the Bay Area and it feels very natural and that feels great to me. We were able to take a heavily kind of like siloed, zero-sum game kind of mentality and turn it inside out and have this culture of sharing and a rising tide. And that feels really great. We have a really strong community and it's all about helping each other succeed because like I said, it hasn't been easy. 2018, you would expect with legalization that we would all have been really excited about it. But it's been a really tough year. There was a purge of small businesses because even though there's a lot of lip service paid to them like we want to help small business, California about small business, the regulations just made it really difficult to survive. And so, you know, this has been a beautiful but very difficult evolution and there's still a lot of long ways to go. Yeah, you try and make an accelerator for companies that are in a constantly shifting regulatory market and also first time entrepreneurs trying to do that as well as like nuts as well. Just trying to start a business in general let alone one in an emerging market that is like you said also occasionally deemed illegal by certain places. So this is very challenging. 20 of them got through the gateway and then it was just passed along to other people to operate? No, it actually ended up winding down. My business partner and I decided to go separate directions. Interestingly enough, I was in the process of continuing it on in new fashion, raising a new fund. This was going to purely be focus on B2B, kind of the boring side of the supply chain. I did find over three years like what we really needed to do is add sophistication and trust to the supply chain if we were truly going to reach all those astronomical kind of valuations that people were quoting. The whole US industry 100 billion by 2030 or these billion dollar brands that people are trying to build the only way it's going to be achieved is if we build scalability into the supply chain. Scalability and supply chain. So foreshadowing kind of what I'm doing now there was a few things that were really garnering my interest. You know, this biosynthesis of cannabinoids was super interesting. Like making minor cannabinoids more prevalent by finding alternative methods. That was really cool stuff. Water solubility or stability like making infused beverages. I just know beverages going to be a huge category and finding this secret to do it. There's been a lot of people dancing around it for several years and I just knew the people that were going to do it right there's going to be a big opportunity there. And there's several others. But in the process of raising that fund I actually had met Harold who's our chief scientist. His entire career is in surface chemistry. So purely focusing on the interaction between oil and water and learning how to control it, make it stable and scalable. And so he has a phenomenal background, Ph.D. out of NYU. And I cast him. He was the one who came to me at Gateway. He was very interested in joining the industry. And he's like, how do I help? I'm like, look, you solved this problem. You're perfectly aligned for it. You know, solving you'll have something really worth pursuing. And he came back to me probably about a month later and he did the Theranos thing. He showed me this little vial. He's like, I think I figured it out. And I'm like, show me. And he grabs a glass of water, dumps it in and just like disperses and it's clear. And I tasted it and it was fairly innocuous. And like I just went straight tunnel vision at that point there could have been no one else in the room. It was actually like a founder institute event. I was coaching startups on pitching their companies. He was pitching me. And I started asking him questions and he had been talking to some of the companies I had introduced him to. Everyone was already trying to acquire him, bring him in-house, do all this stuff. And I just asked him, I'm like, Harold, do you want to build a company? And he said yes. And so I said, you're not allowed to make a business decision without me. I just want to make sure you protect yourself. He's a scientist. He needed some guidance. And so I started advising him early 2018. And then by summer I was really encouraging him to bring on a CEO. And it was probably about a month after I gave him that advice that I kind of pitched myself to him. And so we launched the company and got straight to work. And so we've been working hard at it for about a year now. What we realize it's way beyond just one vial. It's way beyond just creating a formula and scaling it. We take a real, we don't believe in the one size fits all label for this particular technology. It's actually a very complicated chemistry. And so we approach each SKU with each new customer completely differently. And we ask them, what are you trying to deliver to your consumer? What's the experience that you want them to have? The mouth feel, the taste. And beverage has been super interesting. We could literally infuse anything that has water in it. But we love beverage because it is actually truly a new experience. It's a new way to absorb the cannabinoids. It can be very complex. It's perceived to be a lot healthier since you're not smoking or vaporizing. So it's really exciting. Sixteen, seven-year-old women trying cannabis for the very first time. Having a very beautiful experience. Coming back, raving about it to all their friends. We've had people give us really incredible testimonials on the medical applications. Literally a woman living in pain for 20 years with fibromyalgia. Having one little vial, five milligrams of THC. All of a sudden sleeping through the night. Painless. It's really special work. We get to do this every day. It's really cool learning about the Genesis story with Harold. It's cool how those things happen. It's also great that this more complicated chemical surface chemistry and just solubility was able to be achieved because now it seems as though the possibilities, the combinatorics for infusing cannabinoids of all sorts into beverages is unlimited. There's so many possibilities and different people want different, like you said, profiles of taste. They may want different five milligrams or 20 milligrams. There's so many ways to pursue this. You may want to do a new estimate. You may want to brand a white label for this event. Stuff like that. It's just like you crack. You send a little voice to the device or soon thought alone. But then the little drone or robots come in and bring you a little beverage. We get to work with so many amazing people. We've placed ourselves right in the middle of the supply chain. We get to work with farmers, oil extractors, people creating the most beautiful, full-spectrum live resins to CBD isolate manufacturers in Colorado. All of those things. Flavor houses, co-manufacturers, device makers. We've been working with multiple people who are trying to develop cold vaporizers, so basically just making a mist out of the emulsion. So it's just a very high bioavailability, similar to a vaporizer experience, but without having to heat up the cannabinoids. Self-dosing systems where you can put cartridges in. Each one has a different cannabinoid and you just kind of tell it the profile you want and it creates the beverage that you're looking for. And the real exciting thing for me is beverage is a great format to really experiment with what is commonly called the entourage effect. But when people use the entourage effect in cannabis, they're usually talking about the various cannabinoids and terpenes in the plant. The entourage can go well beyond that. Like how does CBD and THC interact with caffeine or L-pdianine or Ashikwanda, right? It's like really diving into kind of a broader plant science and understanding the different types of experiences we can create. That's real combinatorics there too. So you've got to add in all other types of dosages of caffeine, of teas, of all different types of plants that were extracts, that terpenes, like you listed as well, just like wow, it's endless. So then how do I know? How do you take an experience and then try and make literally a beverage for? So for starters, right now we don't. So right now we're purely focused on the vehicle. We've created these amazing emulsion systems and any time we run into a problem with an unstable emulsion, we really focus on solving it. So you put a traditional emulsion into a red wine that's very heavy in polyphenols. You're going to find instability in the emulsion system. We have created emulsion systems that are completely stable and high polyphenolic beverages. Same with can liners. Different can liners have different reactions to different systems. We are making it a lot more predictable to understand what emulsion systems work and what cans and what environments. So that's the vehicle work. So we can put anything that we want inside those small vehicles and get them delivered into your body. Okay, okay, okay. So we were just on the massive decade long epic vision. And now we're on baby step. Bring it back to here. So what emulsion system? Okay, so that related to solubility? Right, so it's not true solubility. So solubility is actually when the molecules bind and you have a completely stable system. Like when you put salt or sugar in water, stir it up, boom. And there are some technologies out there that people are working on where you're adding a sugar molecule or a salt molecule to a THC molecule. Interesting science, very questionable about the safety or scalability but it is one way chemically to think about going about it. What we're actually doing is creating these little vehicles that you can put oil inside that are friendly with water and it's more of a suspension system. But the science that we do makes it so that that completely homogenizes and stays stable over time. So it's not true solubility. It's actually stable in a suspension. And what you put into a bottle day one should be the same as when you go to test it. It should be the same as when the consumer experiences it. So there's like a matrix of molecules of water and cannabinoids? So if you imagine these little droplets that fall into the water and they're actually repelling each other and that's what creates a stable emulsion and keeps it homogenized, right? So it's like if you imagine little magnets and you drop them in with the same poles they bounce off of each other and remain intact. And that's the goal. You don't want to change the droplet size over time. And so in maintaining the integrity of that encapsulation. The reason I kind of like dove back to this is because this is the value that we're creating right now. Our customers come to us and they say, you know, we want to put THC, CBD, this full spectrum extraction into a beverage. It's like, okay, we can help you do that. We can figure out the right emulsion system. The future is understanding how to control the experience, right? And so right now we're letting our customers be the creative ones. Emulsion system is the hard science. Well, that's why I want to, let's actually just take a little more time on that. So what's some, like what would be the girls, you know, Kristen Price and Sarah Baker, right? You know, you have some very serious rare diseases that people go through rare health issues. And so then they need some sort of a full spectrum CBD for healing. And maybe they want it in a beverage. And it's a lot. It's like 400 milligrams in the beverage or something. Very high, very high dose. So then what would a company like you do? How would you, you said there's like an emulsification. Yeah. So there's a multitude of things we can do. You know, for starters, because this is a medical application, you know, it's probably less important about what the packaging is, right? It's like, oh, we can put this in a glass tincture bottle. You know, we can, I don't think they're going to put it into an aluminum can. So that immediately lets us know, okay, we can use these emulsion systems for that. Because the one of the problems like that is this why you're listening because the, because then it would, it would interplay with the molecular aluminum. That's right. And then the can liner, there's an entire chemistry industry around like what those, what the liners are inside the cans, right? So that's an important facet. Then we get to like, you know, glass, which would, right? Yeah, glass is a lot more stable. And then, you know, we say, okay, you know, how potent do we want this? Like 400 milligrams, that's quite a bit. So you're talking about taking a lot of material and putting into a smaller form factor. Maybe, you know, it doesn't have to be certain size. And based on that, based on the desired taste and mouth feel, you know, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's just about getting it to hit as quickly as possible. We'd be like, all right, we can make it super bioavailable so that you feel it in less than 10 minutes. And that, you know, you get that relief when you need it. It's going to be a little bit bitter. But man, if you're, if it's saving your life, like, do you really care, right? Bioavailability. How fast it. Exactly. So all these factors, you know, help us kind of align the right emulsion system. You know, we've made a thousand milligram product before. We have a system for that. It's probably much different than the system we would use for a 10 milligram product. So emulsion systems defer based on, based on dosages, based on packaging. They should. They should. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of where we really hang our hat, right? So you were a emulsification scientist. And so the emulsification process is making the cannabinoid work with the water. Yeah. Yeah. And the interesting thing about these emulsion systems is the one that you create for a tap water, you know, tastes completely innocuous. If you move it to a different matrix and you taste it. You might all of a sudden have a bitter note or you might have a more herbaceous note. So it's understanding that it's not a one-size-fits-all, right? And so just with that mentality, you know, we could probably go back and look through our recipe book for all of our different clients and have over, you know, 80 different formulas that we're using. Whoa. Okay. So then there's now with where this is currently getting into, does this seem like most of Vertosa is going to be, or a lot of it, is going to be its own unique product line being distributed or working with the different companies on custom making what they... Yeah. You know, true to my North Star, it's all about facilitating other companies, right? So the reason I want to focus on the vehicle and create kind of this trusted layer, you know, ones where we go out and procure the best materials to ensure that we are working with the very best ingredients. The reason I really want to do that is so we can get back to this other 10-year vision of like really creating great products and experiences. Like if we take care of all this complex stuff here, it gives the product makers the time and energy to think about, you know, what other bioactive ingredients can I add to this to really make a synergistic product? Okay. You know, like how do I take lavender oil and CBD and ashigwanda to make a truly relaxing product? That's exciting stuff. It is. Right? And... More stimulating one. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, instead of making the supply chain and your access to it, your differentiating feature, like why not make the true experience of the product your differentiator? Okay. This is really cool. So, and it has a tremendous foresight because what you guys do is you see the 10-year and you see that the 10-year requires you to become the best at the fundamental science of running all the combinatorics. So, you literally take ideas and you're enabling creativity because you take the ideas from the industry and then you actualize those ideas, which then give you basically a catalog or a dictionary or whatever you want to call it of a database of methodology. So, you are using for all the different combinatorics and then that way down the line when it's all about experience, I'm jumping into this AR thing or I'm going to Machu Picchu or I'm going to hang out with my mom or any variety of those things. And this is my biometric state now, so please make it for that specific thing. Yeah. And the true experience and what I probably need to talk to some of your guests about is how do we take all the learning that we do and really make it exponential? How do we have exponential learning on combining these different ingredients and try to make it more predictable about maximizing a certain experience based on what we know from each combination that we've already tried? So, this is where my tech background starts to work its way back and how do we take this data and really learn from it and make better medicines for the future and make up for the 100 years of prohibition that has kind of sequestered all this learning? Yeah. So, there's a really interesting amount of people now are starting to dive into simulation software for these types of purposes and you go and you look and aim to reverse engineer the pieces that were put into the final and to figure out what those pieces were and then run again just one experiment, two experiment, three experiment. Just run as many of those experiments with slightly different combinations as possible to find what the ideal final target is given that all those profile variables that we listed and maybe that actually is something that I don't even know if anyone is looking into cannabis simulations. It's very difficult. I think a lot of people have theorized on it and I think that the true difficulty is that it's two-sided. One side is formulation, the other side is biology. So, like everyone's biology is completely different, especially when it comes to cannabis because you're dealing with a complex endocannabinoid system that is throughout your body and everyone's receptors and everything have a different sensitivity, different configuration and so somehow driving towards a path where we have a better way to understand our own biology and calibrate medicines based on that. That's where the future of personal medicine has been talked about for many years now and I think cannabis is an incredible application of really delving into the possibilities there. I like how you made it clear. You've got this formulation side and you've got this biology side. You've got a different Venn versus a different Ori versus a different Alan and these are just different biometrics that are going to compute your formulation in slight variations. So, if I want to relax or if you want to relax or if you want to relax, that's three different formulas? Very different. Yeah, because we all have different baselines and you're generally modulating from whatever your own personal baseline is and so people often in the cannabis industry talk about indica versus sativa, sedative versus uplifting and for me, I don't need anything that's uplifting. I have quite a bit of energy, my mind works very quickly so I prefer pretty much any time I consume something to have more of a sedative effect to kind of slow things down and relax things and just slow the pace a little bit. I get very anxious and kind of ultra aware like when I consume a sediva and so otherwise it might be completely opposite for someone else. It's just making me realize how much harder vertosis work is cut out. There's a reason we've been very... I've been a startup practitioner for many years and one word that we always use is focus. And so we have been hell bent on creating the best delivery mechanism to the point where we're doing true pharmaceutical bioavailability studies to understand how the cannabinoids progress through the bloodstream. We're just going to keep hammering away on that for quite some time. You're going to watch how the cannabinoids go through the bloodstream into the body. Yeah, I mean it's important, right? Different cannabinoids metabolize in different ways in the body. How they're absorbed, different delivery mechanisms. At the end of the day what we're trying to do is deliver an experience and what that, you know, another iteration of that is controlling consciousness and timing plays a big role where it's absorbed, how it's absorbed, what the vehicle is made of. We have even kind of some anecdotal evidence that the surfactants, what's in that kind of emulsion system can play a role in how cannabinoids are absorbed. So there's a lot to learn here and we don't ever pretend to know everything. We wear our limitations on our sleeve but we're also eternal students and we're just super curious and like you said running 12 research experiments constantly in the back lab. Wow. And where are you guys based right now? Oakland, California. In Oakland. And you guys got 11 people now. We have 11 people on staff. And you're looking to hire? We are. Which positions are you looking to hire? All over. So like science, we haven't done a whole lot of marketing and branding to date so kind of just starting to start hiring for that. You know, always looking for more talented salespeople for different categories. We're doing work in cosmetics and topicals now so that's a whole other beast. Understanding that supply chain and the different nodes there. So yeah, it's fun and we're building a company that more than anything the North Star for the company is building a great team. Because that's when you know you can really achieve special things. Yeah, that's what Universe called you and Harold together and now you guys are calling other people together for mission. It's pretty amazing. We have this like just ongoing kind of not a joke but it's like we're always saying like how serendipitously like everything is happening for the company. And we know that can't last forever. But we do know that when that is happening in the universe that you're on the right path. And it has really truly felt like that for the past year with the whole team. That's so cool. What a blessing that is. Yeah, I do. A little bit of me is like I feel like it's all the work that we've put forth in the last 10 years. Everything that we've been doing is just kind of like culminating into this opportunity. You laid the groundwork for a long time on business acumen and focus. It was huge. And now it's tackling one of this great interesting challenge in cannabis which is going to be such a readily available thing of beverages. I talked about in the beginning how I didn't previously have a strong connection to the plant. And the true blessing is that after I got into this industry I became truly passionate about it. And this platform that I had of speaking in front of different crowds all around the world, Rotech, I just changed the conversation and started educating about children in pain not having access to the medicine that can very easily cure. And so also getting further in as soon as I entered the industry like friends, family, everyone started coming to me with questions. And I'm probably the last person that should be giving medical advice. It's a blessing and a curse. I love helping my family members but when someone has cancer or is dealing with chronic migraines, they should be hearing it from their doctor. And until that becomes commonplace we have a lot of work to do on the business side. Because if there's anything we've learned in the US is that money talks. And so if we can build a great successful business that is built with a very strong core value, that we can really help change the world. Many more questions for you next time. Last question is what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh man. I think it's this movement right now, back people's movement back to the planet understanding the power of the earth and the plant and truly be conscious about what people are consuming and putting in their bodies. I think there's a big opportunity to kind of leverage that to like, I don't know there's this happy marriage when capitalism is doing the right thing. And it's like oh good money going to good products creating good life for people. Like I think you know there's a lot of negativity out there in the world right now, but like if we see these trends like people becoming more open and more spiritual and leading to conscious consumption, like I think there is a way to kind of just a better future. That's right. Ben, I'm so happy this finally happened. Yeah me too Alan. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the program. It's a pleasure. Yeah and great work. Thank you. Wow. Awesome. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Greatly appreciated. Thanks for your comments below on the episode. Let us know what you're thinking. Go check out the links to Ben's work. Check out the links to Vertosa. Check out those links in the bio below. Also to New West Summit. I'll support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the organizations, the leaders in your communities around the world that you believe in. You can support simulation. Our links are below to our show. And also go and build the future everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon. Peace. Finally that happened. That was great man. Thank you so much. Yeah and we'll definitely pick up more, you know, I really want to dive deeper into you got your, the science and teach about that. So we'll, we'll get more, because that's where the, that's where the hard stuff to teach about is actually at.