 Hi, how you doing today? This is Richard and we have a rich TV live with a very special guest. It is Mark Geene, the founder of Speak Easy. How you doing today, Mark? I'm doing well. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Why don't we get off and start off a little bit about you telling us a little bit about Speak Easy? Sure. So I mean you can't really mention Speak Easy and start talking about that until you understand where we come from, what we've done. Some of fourth generation BC farmer. My great-grandfather came to the Okanagan around the turn of the century. My grandfather took after him, my dad after him, and I'm taking after my dad. So we've sort of passed the family farm down. We moved up to the Rock Creek area in 95, bought a 2500 acre ranch to grow ginseng, and it's, we've stayed ever since. So it's it's a pretty cool lineage. It's a lot of fun having that much knowledge in the family. Pretty much any condition on any plant, someone in the family has some experience with it. So we went through an industry crash with with ginseng. They started doing production in China, which which destroyed the market in North America. Planted cherries. We were growing that up until last year and transitioned into cannabis in 2013. We were the 46th applicant under the MMPR and just have been battling with Health Canada ever since. We've seen three regime changes and the Cannabis Act and all that thing we've been up to date on all that. So it's it's been a it's been a kind of a wild ride, but in the interim we were you know, we were farming cherries and stuff. So we feel that you know cannabis is just another crop. Like it's a special crop. It's an amazing thing and it comes with more culture connected to it than any other crop you can grow, but it is essentially just a crop. So my parents who somehow made it through the whole 60s without ever smoking were all over it just because it's it's an exciting venture. It's another way of a cash crop. So I mean we didn't have any stigma attached to it. It was just it was just moving on to the next stage. So it's been great. It's been amazing growing with my family. My brother is by my side every day. I've worked with my dad. I've worked with him for 20-something years now. So it's been it's been great and that that's sort of the beginning of speakeasy. We look at the production processing of cannabis exactly the same as we would with with cherries. You know, you would you would grow a high quality crop. We were able to grow successfully in our Creek because it's a later season than the Okanagan. So the prices followed the the the major times of harvest. So the the glad of the market lowest price Rock Creek because it's on the furthest end of the scale prices would always come up and we got to where the cherries were on the tree 24 hours later they're in Japan or China or East Coast of the United States. So logistically moving things through with the number of people the processing, cooling, hydro-cooling, packing, shipping and getting over there within a 24-hour period is is quite a feat. So it's it's it's a lot of moving parts and we were able to take that and move it directly into cannabis production. Very good. Now I'm gonna ask you a quick question. So what would you you guys are craft growers, correct? We're craft growers at scale. So we take we take that that like you can't produce a high-quality product without having someone that really knows exactly what they're doing on a mass scale because that person can only spread so far. You know it you have to have that attention to detail that that hyper focus. So to be able to do that on scale you need a whole bunch of people that are able to have that skill set. You put two farmers in a room, you put a hundred farmers in your room, you're gonna get a hundred different interpretations of how to do any job. So getting two or three farmers all step and all reach their toes and it's a really difficult thing. So what we've done is is even though it's under one LP, we've made five distinct LP. So that's their own show. They've we've built the facilities to their. Sorry, are they subsidiaries within the company? They're individuals. So there's actually three separate buildings. Okay. Two of the buildings have two floors and then the first LP that we're licensed for now. So there will be a grower for two buildings. Two of the buildings that have two floors will have two growers in them each. And then the first LP will just have the one. So yeah, it's essentially, I don't want Health Canada to hear this, but it will essentially be like four or five separate LPs even though Speakeasy the company handles all of the compliance and they will be 100% compliant. But so that allows each of those growers to pay hyper focus to their craft grower. So rooms will be 64 lights per room in like eight separate rooms. So they're able to style it just like a graph grow, but on scale. Can I ask you a quick question? So I've spoken to private guys and I've spoken to public guys. The private guys are telling me that the reason that the public sector is having trouble is that they're trying to build these massive facilities like you kind of mentioned and it's really difficult to build these massive facilities and manage these huge Grows. Whereas the private guys that have been doing small grows for years, like you said, they're farmers, they're experts. It's easier to manage these small crops than it is to manage these large crops. Do you think that's why we're starting to see this? Retraction in the sector because a lot of the bigger growers that spent a lot of money trying to be first movers have started to realize that they need to downscale in order to actually produce a quality product. Is this what you think is causing this this reset in the sector? Do you think that that's the reason why we're having such a reset in the sector? So it's it's it's a number of things. That's definitely one of them. Health Canada really hurt at us. They steered us in a direction and then the public markets did the same thing. So you get these companies companies in what investors wanted to hear is we're going to be the biggest. We're going to be the best. We're going to produce it the the the most cheapest and the most. Yeah, so what that causes all these guys to go well, how can we build this in fast? Let's throw up a greenhouse. So they threw up greenhouse, which is far like growing indoors is far superior growing in greenhouse. So now when we're at a position in the market where it's starting to become more competitive, it's not you don't have to look into a crystal ball. You just have to look at Colorado and California and Washington State and Oregon to see what's going to happen in a mature market. And people don't want average, a BC black market. If you're if you're sitting on a pile of average material, you will sit on that pile forever. Yeah, nobody wants it. Nobody wants it. There is too much good quality product. Good quality product doesn't cost any more than poor quality. Like if you're looking at a room, you have set costs, costs of the facility, the the power, everything except for the final trim because you're going to have more in the room. Those costs are set, those costs are consistent. And to grow a high quality product, which generally ends up with more pounds per square foot, you will end up with a cheaper product than Dartmouth. So if you can't do it properly, if your facility is not set up to be able to handle to give these farmers the best chance to do it, so aka a greenhouse versus indoor, you're going to lose. Like there's just no real way around it. So with Health Canada forcing us into the regulations that they've put out, with the public markets forcing us to you know, be the best, be the best, be the biggest, it created this massive pile of A bubble, essentially. It was a bubble that burst, right? It's unfortunate, but it's true. So what what makes you guys different? Are you guys going to be able to have better competitive pricing and a higher quality product? Is that what's going to make speakeasy rise to the top? So when we when we originally got into it, the pipe dream was like maybe someday they'll be able, we'll be able to grow outdoor. So outdoor in Rock Creek is just it's I mean I hate when people come up and say best biggest Dominic anything like that, but it is a phenomenal area to grow like it's been that area and right through to Nelson have been the backbone of BC's weed market for 50 years, like a long time. So we know the strains that work there. We know the exactly the conditions we can expect. So it's really dialed in. Not many places around Canada have that same. Anywhere east of the Rockies, you know Anywhere east of probably Nelson, you start getting into areas where you're not going to be able to grow outdoors. You get too far to the coast and it's too wet. So this is little green zone a beautiful spot. Ours is called the Golden Mile. The area from Asuius up to Ok Falls is intensive farming and just perfect condition. Wine country kind of thing. We're just over the hill a little bit up, but it's just an absolutely outstanding area. So our cost of production to produce a finished gram of outdoors is four cents a gram. That's the lowest I've ever heard. Yeah, and it's four cents a gram. Wow. It's a that's amazing. We expect to pull off fifty thousand pounds next year at four cents a gram and then have another hundred and twenty thousand pounds of biomass and that comes in for distillate of about four hundred and eighty dollars a kilogram. Right now it's selling for about fifteen to eighteen thousand. But I mean if you look down the states price for isolate has come from, you know, fifteen twenty thousand dollars down to about three thousand. Crazy. Yeah, but at two thousand dollars a kilogram we can multiple of four profit side. I mean it's it's just they talk about Columbia, they talk about, you know, producing all these cheap areas. But because we're able to mechanize and because of our proprietary extraction methods you can't produce it any cheaper than you can down here. And then they're also faced with the cost of shipping and entrance tax and all that other stuff. So for our for our extracts it's gonna be tough to be just anywhere in the world. That's really impressive. Are you guys only focused in Canada? Are you guys looking to expand internationally? What's your guys plan right now? Our plan is to we need to build a street cred, right? We totally, you can't build it off marketing because there's no marketing. You can't fool people by producing crap product. We want to grow the best product in the world. Great. And we want to own BC and then we want to own Canada and then we want to move everywhere else. But it's all going to be based on our reputation. It's not going to be because we beat down somebody or have more money of them. It's because people want our product and that's our plan. So we've got to start in BC. And if you can be respected in British Columbia, you're doing pretty well because it's a tough market out there. Oh yeah. I mean this is the market in Canada and really the market in the world when it comes to cannabis. Absolutely. Yeah. It's in shambles right now because of what's going on but we're not the only guys that are going to do this. But there's other fantastic growers that are small right now that will come in but anybody that produces like we're going to or some of the other guys, they can instantly take off the shelf whatever else is out there. Like their gram will displace anybody else's gram. Are you familiar with Gary Varnachuk, the large social media guy, Gary V? Yeah. Gary V is a huge cannabis enthusiast. What he said is that the cannabis sector reminds him of the tech sector. Exactly. And the guys that are going to be the best may not have even entered into the market yet. Exactly. And that it's just the early stages and he believes that it's not even the first inning. He said that we're not even in the first inning. We're not even throwing out the first pitch. So a lot of people are throwing money at this thinking they're going to get rich overnight. But the real money is going to come in for the people that are strategic, that are patient, that wait for the biggest and the best to really evolve. And then that's going to be the opportunity to hit it. So it's really the next 5, 10 years. And it's right now it's kind of like everyone's racing to be first but really they're racing to be first to blow all their money. Right? Isn't that what's happening right now? So a lot of that is in the public market, right? So the guys would every week. Because you have shareholder, we're a public company as well. And you have shareholders just like, what's going on now? We haven't heard for more weeks. Of course. You have to generate this news and so they would be constantly looking around for something that they probably wouldn't do if they had time to think about it and had the patience of the market. But because everyone's jamming everything down your throat and you have to get something done, a lot of these big companies that have been in it for a while have just made errors because they've been forced. Because they were first. Everyone's going to love this. They're going to make our stock pop and then we can do this. So they'll buy some asset in Columbia that's never going to go anywhere. I've heard those stories. Yeah. My goodness. And you know, it's funny. Aurora Cannabis is everywhere. Yeah. Yet they may go bankrupt, right? This is what everybody's saying. Yet their product is everywhere. And then Cannaby Growth has tons of money. But from what I hear, their product is not that good. So it's kind of funny that you've got two of the biggest in the world that were first movers. One who's everywhere in Aurora and has a lot of big branding and is on every shelf across the country. But yet they're running out of money. And then you've got this other giant in Cannaby Growth who's got Drake. They've got Snoop Dogg. They've got Martha Stewart. They've got Seth Rogen. They've got all this great branding. They've got all this money. But yet nobody likes their product. Yeah. This is what we kind of find in the cannabis sector. So I believe there are opportunities for companies like yourself. 100%. To rise above this. We have to be able to compete with the black market. Totally. Cannabis black market is probably the highest quality in the world. Absolutely. We are competing against a group that is unregulated, that is far cheaper because they don't have to do certain things. And they can go wherever they want as quick as they want. You want to expand today? Fine. Go down to the grocery shop and buy some stuff. Let's go. They don't pay tax. They don't pay the government. However, they do pay massive surcharges for transportation and things quiet. Yeah, I guess so. Stuff like that. And they get busted and they lose their crops and then they've got to start over. For us to put up a light with Health Canada involved is a month long process. At least. Probably multiple months. If you're looking for any amendment doing anything at all, Health Canada is working on a, the devil's coming to town and we want to protect all the people and they're mandated to do so. They start out with like the most extreme thing first and then walk it back if they find out they're a little bit wrong. Like the vaults that we had to put up. Ours is eight inch thick steel reinforced single pore concrete walls with seismic detectors and motion detectors and cameras and all that stuff. And our security guy was literally like putting the last screw in a panel. And we got an email from Health Canada saying, you know that whole vault thing? Just go ahead and not do that anymore. Oh no. Yeah, it can be a bit brutal work. Okay, so I know we've been doing this for quite some time and you're going to be busy and I'll be busy so I'm going to let you go pretty soon. For an investor, why would they want to invest and speak easy? So, I mean, I never do a pitch. Like I've sat in front of a thousand investors. I never do a pitch. What I do is just sort of talk about what we're up to and what we're doing. Comparing it to the rest of the market, I mean you really need to be an investor in this. You really need to understand who the customers are. And most of the companies don't seem to even understand that. The ones that are going to succeed in Canada are ones that have products that people will want to buy. That's first. If you don't have that, nothing else you do is going to work. Absolutely. You have to have some competent people that are doing that to run with that. So, I mean, in BC we're spoiled because we have access to so many amazing growers and so much technology and it's been the cutting edge for a long time here. So, they should invest and speak easy because of our land package, because of our unique place to grow outdoor, because of our fully integrated, like we're going from seed soil to oil as they call it. We have the land, a 290 acre package, we're up to about 100,000 square feet now. So, it's going to be us and companies like us that are going to be the survivors. Most of these big ones, I mean I'm not wishing them ill will, but I just cannot see a place for them in the future. It'll be companies like us. We've been in this a long time. I'm probably the most stubborn person you've ever met in your life and I live right beside that facility so nothing goes on there without me knowing about it and yelling at somebody. So, yeah, I just think that we will be here for the long haul. So, that's what we need to look forward for. That's fantastic. Well, you know what? We wish you the best of luck. Appreciate it. Nice meeting you. Nice to meet you too. And hopefully we can do this again soon. This is Mark Geene, the founder of Speak Easy. We wish you all the best of luck. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. You're not winning, you're not watching. Thanks for wish to be live and we'll talk to you soon.