How Does The Cannabis Industry Work? - Chris Walsh | Modern Wisdom Podcast 333

Chris Walsh is the CEO and President of Marijuana Business Daily and an industry trend analysis. People are claiming that cannabis will be the next gold rush industry. After it grew by nearly 50% in 2020, that seems even more likely. Chris knows everything about the world of weed, so we get the inside scoop on this rapidly growing industry. Expect to learn how weed is somehow illegal federally but legal at the state level, why THC suppositories are a thing, whether there will be a psychedelics industry, what to expect from the next few years of legalisation and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount & Free Shipping on awesome vegan meals at https://vibrantvegan.co.uk/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on all pillows at https://thehybridpillow.com (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out Chris' Website - https://mjbizdaily.com/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #cannabis #investing #trends - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It is this stupid situation where you've got thirty eight state legalizing medical and then we have seventeen with recreational and you have all these businesses and billions of dollars being generated, but it's federally illegal. It's the dumbest situation I've ever seen that we can't do anything about. I mean, it's so, it's so ridiculous.

• 0:21Chris Williamson?

  Chris Walsh, welcome to the show.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me on. Excited to talk cannabis.

• 0:27Chris Williamson?

  What is someone with an MBA doing working in the cannabis industry?

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Well, I was finishing it when I got involved back in two thousand and eleven and definitely got a lot of questions about what the hell I was doing. I was, I was finishing my MBA and was had a background in journalism. So I was a business reporter and editor at newspapers in the US and in South Korea. So what is a person with an MBA doing? You're seeing more and more of people like me come in, but it's, it's a massive business opportunity and it's, it's in the US, it's in Canada, it's in Europe, it's in South America, it's all over the world now. So I, I'm in it because first and foremost, it was a fascinating industry that I wanted to be.

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• 2:39Speaker 00

  Part of, I don't come from the campus culture, but from a business perspective, I thought there was a lot to like here into helping develop a new industry. And also, you know, cannabis helps people in a lot of ways. So it's not like we're making, you know, cups or whatever, you know, like we're doing something, we're making a product, we're helping an industry that relies on a product that's actually helping people. And that's important to me personally, too. So a lot of unique aspects about cannabis that lured me into it.

• 3:09Chris Williamson?

  What makes the cannabis industry so interesting?

• 3:13Speaker 00

  Well, I would say that the rapid speed at which cannabis has gained support all over the place. You know, this was something, even when we started, that was really taboo still. And so this, again, we started 2011 and even then it was like, what is my aunt who's a nun on the East Coast gonna say? And what is my dad, a serious political journalist gonna say? And so, you know, what we've seen is that the rapid acceptance of this industry has been phenomenal, way faster than I thought. So there's just excitement around it. People are embracing it, they're accepting it. It's an industry that has come out of the darkness very quickly. It's existed for a long time, right?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  But not in a legal fashion. And people are interested in it. It's fun. It's cool. And, you know, there's not a lot of industries that offer this level of excitement and opportunity. The people in it are different. There's great people, there's not, in some cases, there's not a lot of business sophistication, which is changing. But what you have, this industry crop up, especially here in the U.S., where, you know, the average, everyday person could get involved. And that is changing, you know, but initially... The regulations were really low, the cost to enter was low. And so you had kind of this American dream type industry where you didn't have to, you know, have fifteen years of experience or have started three other companies or have

• 4:41Speaker 00

  a million dollars in in funding to get involved. So a lot of, these are some of the aspects about it. And and just the massive, you know, when you bring this up at a party that you're into it, that you're at, um, no one, even over the ten years I've been in it. Most people are not like, oh, I can't believe you're doing that. Or they don't like kind of turn up their nose and walk away. If anything, they're interested, even if they don't support it, they're just interested. So for all these reasons, I think it's it's a really fun, exciting industry. It's challenging, though. It's really hard. It's harder than anything I've ever done. Why? It's, um, it changes so quickly, right? And at first of all, I'll just start with this. It's really difficult to learn the industry because in the U.S., and this is a microcosm

• 5:24Speaker 00

  of what we see internationally, including in Europe. Every state is handling this differently and every city is handling it differently. And so they use different terms and jargon and they they view it differently. And there's different regulatory structures. There's no, there's no commonalities. So you, just to learn about what the heck is going on. And so you feel like you can hold your own in a conversation even at a, at a base level takes a long, takes a long time. Because just when you think you got to figure it out, there's some whole other area of the industry, you're like, oh, I didn't even know about this. Uh, or it worked that way. And so the the international industry is that way, too. The global industry, you know, um, the UK is handling it different from, you know, Greece and they're handling it different from Denmark and all of them are handling it different from Colombia and South America, you know?

• 6:08Speaker 00

  So, uh, you have to really, it's it's constantly evolving. It takes a long time to get a handle on it. And, um, and then it changes and you don't know how it's going to change. You have no idea how it's going to change, both in positive, immensely positive ways and also in in negative ways that can hurt your business, uh, and because you don't know what to expect. So these are the reasons it's challenging. And I'll go back to what I said a minute ago. The people in the industry now are different and, um, that's often a very good thing. But if you're used to regular business norms and and ways of, uh, conducting.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Business, it's different here. So that takes a while too to learn. You know, there's a lot of people who who won't do business unless they know you. It's not like you can come in using all this MBA jargon, right? And sell them on something. They're gonna, you know, smack you and tell you to go away. Uh, so there's just a lot of unique aspects of it.

• 7:04Chris Williamson?

  You once get accused of being an FBI agent at a, an expo at some point because you were the only guy there in a suit and tie.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Um, yes, very, very close. Uh, when we first started in 2011, I was doing research, trying to understand the industry myself. Which is much different than it is now, but at the time it was only legal for medical purposes. In Colorado where we were based and in, and, and some other states. Still illegal, you know, federally then and now. Um, so there was a lot of the people who were forming businesses then. Came from the cannabis culture. They were maybe growing in their basement or, uh, buying and selling on the illicit market. And so they didn't know if someone was gonna come in. We didn't know what the federal government was gonna do. Even though it was legal in, in the States, it was not, um, from, from the federal government. And they were operating businesses that you could find on sea on the streets. They weren't underground, hidden.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  And so I went to an industry trade group. And yes, I, I actually went to the bathroom and there was a guy in there and, you know, they're kinda awkward when two dudes are kinda there going to the bathroom and. He's like, you know what? You seem, you seem, uh, pretty cool, but, uh, you're not an FBI agent, are you? And he really felt that. Uh, it wasn't just in jest because they didn't know if this meeting of professionals in the industry was gonna get broken up and they'd be hauled off to jail. That's, that's the situation these people started in.

• 8:24Chris Williamson?

  Can you explain what on earth is going on when you have something that's legal at the state level, but illegal at the federal level? Well, how does that even work?

• 8:36Speaker 00

  I, hey, if anyone can answer that for me, please do, because, um, I've been racking my brain to figure it out over all these years. Basically. The government just turns its head away and says, this is a low enforcement priority. And that's what really changed the industry. Is, you know, in, in 2011, 2012, there had been crackdowns because the government was going in and raiding dispensaries.

• 8:59Chris Williamson?

  What, when you say the government, is they deploying, is that the FBI?

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Uh, federal agents. Right. In different agencies. Yep. And they were going in and, and there weren't regulations really around the industry then. The states weren't regulating it. There were just people saying, hey, it's legal in my state, so I'm going to open up a dispensary or cultivation operation and I'm just going to do this until someone says, so that it just built from that and expanded and then there was crackdowns by, um, federal government agents and, and there was a point where after we started where we almost got out of the industry because we're like, I, I don't know if this is going to make it as a real business. Um, but then the federal government basically, um, under Obama said, okay, we're going to look the other way. This is going to be a lower enforcement priority. They didn't say we're going to look the other way, but they said, look, we got a lot to deal with.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  So, you know, don't, don't worry about this, especially if there's regulations behind it. That was the key. So all these states started regulating the industry and establishing, you know, this is what you gotta do. You gotta get a license. You gotta operate under these, um, rules and regulations and you gotta be a legit business. When we started, there were, there were people on the corners, you know, for their dispensary and they'd have a, a big sign with a joint on it. They'd be spinning it around and, and, you know, pointing this way and, you know, you're on major thoroughfares and, and there's kids and, and, and there were billboards and that, people didn't like that, like the community didn't like that, lawmakers didn't like that. So you have this move to start, excuse me, regulating the industry and, I'm sorry, and

• 10:29Speaker 00

  that really started making it more acceptable. And so to get back to your point, the federal situation, it just developed on its own in all these states and it eventually reached a critical mass and there were enough people that supported it, enough people involved, enough money coming in in taxes and enough startup activity and job growth that it just dominoed and snowballed. And then you had more states legalizing and starting industries and more of the federal government really at what, you know, it got to the point where they couldn't really do anything about it. And so they, they didn't consider it a priority and with that basically pathway forward by saying, hey, we're not going to, this isn't going to be a top priority for us, the industry just ballooned. And so it is this stupid situation where you've got thirty-eight, I think we just had

• 11:13Speaker 00

  thirty-nine state legalizing medical and then we have seventeen with recreational plus our, you know, the capital of our nation, Washington DC has legalized both. And you have all these businesses and billions of dollars being generated, but it's federally illegal. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a. Dumbest situation I've ever seen that we can't do anything about. I mean, it's so it's so ridiculous when you step back. And that's where your question was. It's like, how does this even happen?

• 11:43Chris Williamson?

  Was that the final word from the government?

• 11:47Chris Williamson?

  Was the final word from the government? This isn't a top priority and there's been no other update since then, basically.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Um, not really. There was a modification of the memo that basically paved the way for the recreational industry that said if it's regulated, if it's regulated, the adult use recreational, use it for anything you want. When that started cropping up, you know, the government was like, okay, kind of same thing. We're not gonna, as long as the states are overseeing this. Uh, and there were some key guidelines in there. Uh, and there's been comments on it along the way. Under the Trump administration, we weren't sure if there was going to be a crackdown. Uh, you know, a traditional, long time conservatives, older generation is usually, you know, against this historically and has come around, but still, especially in Washington DC, there's still a lot of resistance from that group. And so we didn't know what Trump was going to do.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  His, his, uh, Jeff Sessions, you know, our top kind of law enforcement official, he, um, it looked like he might crack down, but it never occurred. So they're really, it's just this kind of gray area. But what you're seeing is that it's so big, it's so accepted now, 90, over 90% support for medical marijuana legalization across the country, whether you're in the really conservative anti marijuana states or in the more friendly ones. And recreational marijuana is above 60%. I mean, this is a losing issue in general. So, um, so, yeah, I mean, there hasn't really been, we're just kind of, people are just moving forward. And now there's been a lot of moves federally to change the laws. Uh, but they kind of, they're working their way through our, our government process and, and the resistance has kind of blocked them.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  And so we don't know what's going to happen. We're in a good position now where there could be federal change because the, you know, the, the. Centers of power in our government are all controlled right now through next year by the Democrats and they are, you know, they have been pushing marijuana. So it's become a big topic. They're trying to get bills through. There's still resistance. It's only a matter of time. It's like, is it a year or four years? I don't know. But here's what I just want to point out that it's interesting because people look to the US and say, oh, this marijuana industry and they're the leaders. And in a lot of cases, the US is, they're the biggest, right? There's a lot of innovation going on here. If you ever

• 14:03Speaker 00

  visit a store, there's all these array of products and it's really cool to see. But there's over two dozen other countries that have legalized medical cannabis federally and some of them have legalized recreational. So the US is actually way behind from that policy standpoint. And so it's just a weird dynamic all around.

• 14:26Chris Williamson?

  What do you reckon is going to happen with the UK? Can you imagine the uptight Brits over here? Gloomy skies, cup of tea and a spliff on a morning?

• 14:36Speaker 00

  I can. I'm sure that's already going on in many cases, as it is in every country around the world. In terms of the broader legalization, I mean, you know, I have been surprised many times, as I mentioned before, you never know what's going to happen, right? Some of the developments have been negative, but a lot of them are positive, where we'd never thought something momentous would occur or to this level. And I do think, and by that, I mean, you've seen countries, you've seen states in the US legalize when they weren't even on the radar a year before, or there was, there seemed to be like no way. And I remember a couple of years ago, I was doing a lot of our global market research and traveling

• 15:17Speaker 00

  around to Europe and South America and other areas of the world. As we expanded globally, I was speaking and learning about these industries and where they were at with the cannabis discussion. And everyone I talked to in Europe. Said UK will be the last, they'll be the last. Um, and, and they said, no, no, people from the UK, people from other countries in Europe, uh, said UK will be the last. And you know, you know, what happened is there was the, the one case that got out there of, of a couple who had a daughter and she needed, she had seizures and it, we've seen this play out in, in other areas, including in the US. And this whole debate all of a sudden out of nowhere arose around, you know, CBD and, and people started changing their minds. And then there were some, there were some

• 16:02Speaker 00

  moves there to loosen laws around that. So I, I do think this, I would not put it out of the question that it's five, 10 years off or will never happen. Um, it, it can absolutely happen and attitudes all over the place are changing really quickly.

• 16:17Chris Williamson?

  My impression, whenever I go to America is it's bonkers how widespread the acceptance of it is now. It's seen the same way as having a beer would be, you know, there's no friction at all, as far as I can see. People do it on an afternoon because it's Saturday and we're watching football or we're going out for some food or whatever it might be. And, um, yeah, it's crazy. I wonder, I wonder how much romance is still attributed to it being a drug as opposed to a drink or something that's obviously legalized because you still have that layer of, um, federal scrupulousness, right? They're, they're looking at what's

• 17:02Chris Williamson?

  going on and you know that there's still a tiny little 1% amount, even if you're in the most liberal state in all of America, it's still kind of a bit illegal. If the wrong person at the wrong time saw it, there's still a law somewhere that says no. I wonder how much that contributes to kind of the romance still of it being a bit of a counterculture, of it being something that's up and coming.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  That's a great observation or question. I remember a couple of years ago, I know someone who lives in the south, the southern part of the US, a very close person to me, and he said, he came to Colorado, tried out all the marijuana stores and went to, I got him a tour of a grove, and he's like, "This is fantastic," and he had used a long time's life. Again, I don't come from that background of using heavily, but he did, and it was like a kid in a candy store when he came here. And by the time he left, he said, "You know, I don't know if I want this to come to my state." And I said, "Why? This should be, this should be what you're rooting for. This is your heaven." And he said, "It just feels like it's gonna be like everything else."

• 18:02Speaker 00

  And, and so to your point, there's, there are absolutely, there's, there's resistance in numerous ways. So I want to make sure we're clear that, you know, there's, there's people who are against it morally. There's people who think, you know, that are unsure. There's others who think it's gonna ruin communities. But there's also this contingent that enjoyed and part of the fun of using cannabis was the counterculture aspect and how you got it and the people you talked to and smoked with and, and the type of marijuana you were getting, right? Even though this is much higher quality and better and it's packaged nicely and there's all these products. Some people say, "I just want that, I just want that really good, you know, bud that I got and I roll into a joint from the guy I know."

• 18:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Johnny Fatbags on the corner or whatever.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, Johnny Fatbags. There you go. I like that name. Yeah, so, so you hit, you hit the nail on the head. There are people like that. And there are others who do not like how it's progressed into more of a corporate mentality. And, and that has been needed to push legalization because the general public doesn't want to see the counterculture aspects.

• 19:12Chris Williamson?

  Punk rockers stood up in front of Congress saying that we need, we need more dispensaries in our state.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, or running stores without regulations, right? That are, there's, you, people are afraid to go in or they're, you know, whatever. And so there's definitely people who are saying it's gone way too far in the business corporate direction and we're losing that counterculture element. And, and they are right. They are absolutely right. Now, you can argue whether, whether that's a good thing or not, but the fact of the matter remains is it's happening. And we, the counterculture is actually becoming. Smaller and smaller piece as the suits, as the business people come in and start running this like every other industry. So I'm concerned about that too, because it needed to move along the spectrum, didn't need to move all the way this way, shouldn't be all the way over here. It should be in the middle. And that's what I like about the industry is it's different.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  And if it does become like anything else, you know, it's going to lose its allure. And unfortunately, it's going to block out a lot of people for business opportunities, for careers that, you know, that might have had an opportunity in the past. Because then you need a different skill set and they're going to be looking for, you know, people from the mainstream corporate world. So a lot going on in this industry, a lot of changes and they're happening quickly.

• 20:26Chris Williamson?

  It really seems like that, man. It doesn't surprise me either that it's difficult to keep on top of. All of these different moving parts and elements, it was an industry before it was a monetizable industry, or at least on scale. Here's one of the things that I found that was really fascinating. I spent a fair bit of time in LA over the last five years or so. And going down Hollywood Boulevard, you would see a 150 foot high Ignite poster, or some other big marijuana brand poster. And what I realized, or what I thought, what I figured at the time, was that when marijuana became legalized recreationally, and you could advertise it as a recreational product, what was essentially happening was that the government or the state

• 21:11Chris Williamson?

  was firing the starter pistol for everybody to just decide to press go, right? You had similar amounts of technology that people understood the industry, abilities to grow, access to growers, so on and so forth. So what people needed to do was compete based on marketing, because the products at the end of the day were all going to be relatively similar. But you had an industry that was ready to go, spinning its wheels as fast as it could, launch control, the button gets hit and everybody goes. So what I noticed was you had Mike Tyson, you had Dan Bilzerian, you had other celebrities and well-known influencers that were getting involved very sort of at the figureheads of companies, right?

• 21:56Chris Williamson?

  I wondered how much of that was companies just thinking, right, what is the fastest way that we can become the ubiquitous name that when you say weed, you say this, Ignite, or Mike Tyson's Ranch, or whatever it might be, Tyson Ranch. Is that, was that right? Is that what kind of happened? Was it companies just thinking, right, we need to capture as much of the culture as possible, therefore, who's the biggest, loudest name that we can get, strap them to the front of this rocket ship, and then when the government says go, or when states says go, we have more clout and we have more eyes on us?

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I would compare it to traditional business in general, you know, the use of celebrities that resonate with your target customer is widespread, at least in the US in many, many ways, and it's a tried and true method that companies use to build a brand and to get traction. And so as more famous people or semi-famous, you know, some of these people were famous like 30 years ago, you know, and were tied to the cannabis culture like Cheech and Chong, you know, all of a sudden they're back, back at it. But they, they felt comfortable attaching their names to this, and then it started to expand. And the companies, yes, to your point, are saying, how do I, how do I build a brand that's different? What's

• 23:11Speaker 00

  familiar to my target customer base, right? And a lot of cases, a lot of cases, it's people who had initially, the first couple waves of this were more well-known people who had this cannabis tie, whether they're in movies, whether they smoke personally, and then they were open about it, whatever it was. And is what you've seen more recently is an iteration of this. And so now companies are getting former federal regulators, former politicians on their boards.

• 23:41Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, the former Speaker of the House, the US House is on the board of a cannabis company. You also had celebrities that had nothing to do with cannabis. So money talks, right? Money, money, money talks in this country. And so that has helped bring more people into the fold as it's becoming more normalized. But, you know, we had an event, I think, I believe it was two years ago, one of our business trade shows, and we had Gene Simmons, the, you know, lead singer of Kiss. And, and because he was, he was actually signed up as the spokesman, kind of brand ambassador for a cannabis company, he never used drugs in his life, ever. He never even tried cannabis.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  But again, money talks. So you've seen another iteration, former politicians high up in Washington DC, former state politicians, and other people with brands and with names that aren't associated with cannabis traditionally that have jumped in, and the companies are. You're absolutely right. They're like, how can I stand out as I see this progressing down the road and it becomes more of a bigger national industry? How am I going to build my brand? And that's one way they're doing it.

• 24:51Chris Williamson?

  It's fascinating to look at as an industry because the barriers to entry are relatively low, as you've said. Even if you want to become fairly sophisticated, it's not going to be as hard to make a range of edibles and vape pens and pre-rolled joints as it is to create an iPhone or a competitor to the iPhone. Also, because this industry is just starting now, there aren't these established players. You know, how many iterations do Apple and Samsung and Huawei have on creating electronics? And you now need to reverse engineer all the shit that they've done for the last god knows how many years. Whereas with this, it really does feel like everyone's kind of going at the same rate. Just how big is the industry?

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Well, and just to address your first point, the US is just like Europe. It's a tapestry of different, you know, communities and viewpoints. And so when you apply that to the marijuana industry, California's industry is way different than Florida's, and that's way different than Colorado's, and that's way different than New York's emerging industry. And so in some cases, the reason I bring that up is, in some cases, states have tried to keep the barriers low. And they've tried to say, okay, there's going to be low application fees. We're going to, you know, have social equity components that help people that might not have the money that have been traditionally marginalized. There's a lot of different ways they're looking into these things. But the trend has been that it's getting harder

• 26:17Speaker 00

  and harder. So those barriers are, yes, not to the level of creating an iPhone, but it's also to the point where you usually, in a lot of states now, have to have a million or two lined up.

• 26:30Chris Williamson?

  Just to get started.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  Just to like get a license, prove that you have the money to operate an effective business and then start your operation. So

• 26:38Chris Williamson?

  That's I mean, that's a barrier to entry, right?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  That's a big one. And that's where it's changing. But again, other states, it's a lot lower. It just depends on where you're looking. So it's all over the board.

• 26:47Chris Williamson?

  Did you watch Murder Mountain?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  I haven't.

• 26:49Chris Williamson?

  Oh, man, you need to. It's this is this is your jam. This is completely about your jam. It's on Netflix. It's a fly on the wall documentary about a bunch of different. You need to watch it anyway. And

• 27:03Speaker 00

  I've heard about it. I've just I've been so busy keeping up with the changes, the cannabis industry, I don't have time to watch things anymore.

• 27:08Chris Williamson?

  Precisely, I understand. But you see, you see the the likelihood in in situations like that of what's going on, just how these people, these sort of small time growers that used to be there, are no longer able to make it work, because they are being pushed out, they're having margins squeezed, they're having particular stipulations put on with regards to the type of yield, the size, the quality that's expected, certain standards that they maybe didn't use to have to meet or were different as far as they wanted to. And yeah, I wonder whether it'll loop back around and you'll end up with artisan blends, you know, kind of single harvest grows from very particular, you know, people that are

• 27:53Chris Williamson?

  coffee aficionados are prepared to pay for a very unique blend that's a little bit more specific. And then you'd have the kind of Nespresso instant coffee pod for the the normal day to day user.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're absolutely seeing the the industry change in the sense that there's there's a feeling that you've got to go big or go home. And you've got to scale to compete going forward. So you got to be in multiple states and you got to have chain stores and you got to have massive grows. And you got to be able to recognize and get, you know, efficiencies to mass produce. But and I think that is true in a lot of cases, like eventually this industry will be like any other one where there will be the massive producers, whether it's, you know, like the beer industry, there's those couple big names and now you have the smaller ones as well that have a foothold. But I do think you you have some businesses and right, it's all about finding your place in the industry, like in any industry.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And so some are absolutely finding a market for that, what we call a kind of craft cannabis. You know, a hand trimmed and and really specialized and for the connoisseur and it's not mass produced.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  You know, and just saying that can bring a lot of people into the fold, even if the marijuana is that's good. Um, so yeah, it's there's there's opportunities all over, but everyone's trying to find their place right now. And in some, as we go forward, that is going to be the key to their success.

• 29:13Chris Williamson?

  Who's who do you think's got it most right in terms of dispensaries? Because I've been to a MedMen and man, that was like walking into an Apple store. That was insane.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the thing is, there's no one right model because of the consumer base is so broad. I mean, you have you have the traditional kind of hippies donor crowd, right? And they want a certain look and feel and they don't want it to feel like an Apple store at all. That's a they want that's the antithesis of what they want. And then you have, you know, you have soccer moms and or football moms. Um, and you have, you know, the people, professionals that are coming home from work on a Friday night and they're grabbing an edible or they're grabbing a pre-rolled joints and instead of the wine or the beer or maybe both, you know? And so they want maybe that Apple store feel. Um, and then you have just the people who are trying it for the first time.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Uh, and they need, uh, they need an environment where the store is really outgoing and friendly. And so they they just want to feel welcome and they want to feel comfortable. And, you know, maybe an iPhone type store doesn't doesn't feel that way for them. So there's it just depends on what your niche is and who you're going for and what area of the country you're in. It really does, you know, uh, uh, it breaks down sometimes geographically and and this type of store is going to work over here, you know? If you're in Manhattan, you know, that MedMen iPhone thing is cool and it's hip and that's what you want, you know? If you're in Northern California, you know, you want something that feels more earthy or

• 30:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I went to, I went to this one Captain Jack's or something. It was all kind of exposed wood on the walls. And this was very much, it was an independent dispensary in San Bernardino Valley. And it was the weekend of a big festival, a music festival, and I think Dead Mouse was playing. So there's like fairly big queue outside and I just decided to have a little walk. I had some work on the next day and I I need to go see this because I'd been to the Medmen, but I wanted to have a, I wanted to check this out. And sure enough, the doorman at the front, because there's usually, or at least in this one, there was a waiting foyer. So you have these people sat down, are you registered with us? Can you show us your ID? There's a lady at the end. And you've got this huge African bouncer at the front. He was somewhere between a doorman

• 31:27Chris Williamson?

  and a hype man for a DJ. So he's asking everyone, yeah, guys, you're gonna party this weekend? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, what are you gonna get? Like, god, I couldn't believe it. I was like, this is, it was mind blowing. Like, it's just a crazy experience to go into a place. And that was the waiting room. And then you go into the actual thing and there's a bar set up with, I don't know what you call it, where you put resin or concentrate into those special type of bongs. So, and it was, there was a guy doing special blends, like a bartender, essentially behind this bar. And there's people sat down on these stools. He's like, so we recently have this in, we have the sativa blend, and we've got this, this thing. And it's mad. It's so funny.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Well, and then you go to Vegas, right? Las Vegas, and you want a completely different experience. And you go, you go to one there near the strip. It's called Planet 13. And that's like a Vegas dispensary. You walk in and they've got like this LED floor, it's like you're walking on water. And then you get in and there's these, these circular drones every hour that come out of the ceiling and they do this like performance and they just all, you know, all synchronized. They got lights and, you know, that, that, that's awesome too. And that's what people want when they're in Vegas. That, that may or may not work, you know, in Alabama.

• 32:45Chris Williamson?

  Shit, did you see, I'm pretty certain it was in Vegas. I got, because I'm on Medmen's mailing list. And they sent out an email towards the start of last year before COVID hit, saying, if you land at, is it McCarran? In, yeah, McCarran Airport.

• 33:02Chris Williamson?

  We will pay your Uber or we will get a taxi to collect you from the airport to come to MedMen straight away.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. The innovation in Vegas on this front is huge. So yes, we have our MJ BizCon, our big event there, Industry Trade Show Global. And when we went one year, yeah, MedMen had plastered that a lot of the taxis with ads, so the taxis, the cabs were red and they had MedMen.

• 33:30Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  And that's where, so people coming in the airport, you're seeing it all over town. So you know, you're, you're getting the best and perhaps worst of American branding expertise in a city like Vegas, right? It's just in your face. It's there. It's splashy. Some people love it, but it, you know, it works.

• 33:48Chris Williamson?

  What about scaling out now then? How much is the cannabis industry worth sort of to America overall? And then have you got any idea globally?

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, in the US, we've seen tremendous, tremendous growth since 2011. As I mentioned earlier, 38, 39 states with medical, 18 with recreational, and we have billions of dollars on tap with new markets that are launching, new states that have legalized recently. But in general, you know, we have, we make, we've done market research on this industry for a decade and it's really hard to pin down numbers because the government doesn't track it. There's a lot of ways to look at it. But so we've honed our methodologies around the way. But by our best estimates, with a wide range, saying this is a more conservative view, this is a more aggressive view, you know, is that sales were up to 20 billion, $20 billion with a B in retail

• 34:41Speaker 00

  sales. So that's through dispensary, through recreational marijuana stores last year. And we expect that to grow about 30% this year. And the growth was much, much bigger in the past percentage wise, but now our base is 20 billion, right? So it's hard to double that. So 30% growth is massive for any industry. And, you know, that's billions of extra dollars in sales. And we expect it to double by 2025, 2026. And could even go higher. Again, we try and take a realistic conservative view. There's a lot of people just throwing out numbers. They're like, look at this, and they make it look all shiny. We try and be careful because we don't want to steer people in the wrong direction. But, you know, put that in perspective for your UK audience.

• 35:24Speaker 00

  I don't know how familiar with some of this they are, but we, the current size of the industry that we expect this year already is well above the National Football League, the NFL, which is massive here, right? That's where we're all based around the sport in the US. It's already well above that, and that's saying something. And it's actually catching up, and we expect next couple of years we'll surpass craft beer. And that's another big industry that has really exploded. Craft beer is the beer situation in most of Europe, but it's a, you know, 10, 15-year thing here. Everyone used to drink the cheap, mass-produced beer. So that's a big thing. It's actually surpassing elements of the alcohol industry. It's gonna surpass the global opioid market soon.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of ways you can, you can look at this, but regardless, it's becoming a big industry in the US. Is it one of the top 10? No, but it's, it's huge.

• 36:17Chris Williamson?

  What did COVID do for the cannabis industry? Because I imagine that a year ago, or maybe a year and a couple of months ago, everyone in the cannabis industry was squeaky bum time.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  It's what we squeaky bum, I like that. I'm gonna have to use that. We, you know, in, in Europe and a lot of other regions, there was kind of a slowdown. A lot of the legalization efforts there and industries and programs were kind of in the formation stage or the early stages. So that kind of went way to the back burner in a lot of other countries, and everything was kind of more or less put on pause. What we saw in the US, though, was this remarkable situation. It's just, it's remarkable to me. This is one of those changes I mentioned before that was immensely positive that I could have never predicted five, six, seven years ago. And that we have this pandemic that shut down the entire world and almost our entire economy.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  And one of the few industries, few types of businesses allowed to stay open were medical marijuana dispensaries.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  And in a lot of cases recreational marijuana shops. And not every state went this route, but the majority of states that have legalized deemed these businesses essential during a pandemic. I mean, think about that. This was a drug I couldn't even talk about or was nervous to talk about publicly 10 years ago and let people know I was in this industry. And I was worried about like searching because we were doing a lot of research and I was like, I don't want someone to be tracking my internet and I'm, you know, Googling marijuana all the time. And 10 years later, it's deemed an essential business in a global pandemic that has shut down the entire economy. I mean, so is what happened to answer your question is that move allowed the industry to thrive. They were allowed to stay open.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  They had to shut down in those early days in March and April when everything was shut down, but they were able to resume sales. And as what you saw is not only did they survive, they thrived. And that's because you had people sitting at home and, and the US was giving a lot of money to people to not work.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Without, without much to spend it on. Everywhere is closed except for a few select businesses.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Order from Amazon, order a bunch of stuff that arrives at your door and alcohol industry did really well too. As what we saw was cannabis did really well. Not all of it right there pockets and there are certain companies, but in general, it's remarkable how well it did. And, uh, you know, people, it brought new people into the fold that maybe hadn't tried it, uh, and were like, well, I got nothing else to do. And it, uh, you know, uh, current users tried different products. Um, and, and so you, you saw sales growth, you saw record sales in every state and, and some cases huge, even in the mature states like Colorado. And, and I just want to make this point, when we first legalized recreational marijuana

• 39:11Speaker 00

  here in Colorado, there was a feeling among some that once you legalize, there's a novelty, right? And everyone will start coming and then it kind of wears off and you'll plateau at some point, couple of years down the road, as other states start legalizing too, you know, they're not just going to come to Colorado to do it. And Colorado hit record sales again last year. And you know, we're six, seven years into this. And, and, and more than a dozen other states have legalized and have industries up and running. So that didn't happen. So that really shows you the potential out there in general. Uh, for places in, for, for, for anywhere in the UK and Europe and anywhere in the, in the world. There's a massive market out there and, and it's on the medical side for sure. But it's also on that recreational side.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  So the industry did, did fantastic through the pandemic, all, all, all else being relative.

• 40:00Chris Williamson?

  How does the recreational and the medical income compare?

• 40:07Speaker 00

  So it was, I believe, two thousand seventeen when recreational sales surpassed medical for the first time in the US. According to our estimates. And that was just a couple of years after Colorado and Washington state legalized. And so, um, is what you saw is medical was the dominant because there was no recreational and then it started slow. And now it, it is, it's, uh, you know, three, four times. Uh, may, maybe even more than that. I have, I'd have to look at the numbers again, but it's, it's massively bigger than the medical. The medical side is still growing. And if you were just to break out medical sales, you'd be like, hey, that's nice growth. Like for, for an industry, this is great.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Uh, when you compare it to recreational though, it's, it's just a little part of the bar, right? Um, and so, uh, we're seeing, what we're seeing is when states that have had a medical industry up and running, then legalized recreational. Within a couple of years, the patient numbers start dropping. Because it's just easier, you know, to go to the store, buy whatever you want, whenever you want. Uh, you might pay more, you often pay more in taxes. Uh, but you know, the medical side starts to diminish. And even the, the, the people who were truly using it for medical, um, you know, they, they don't want to have to go see a doctor every year. They don't want to have to get a card and carry it around with them. And, uh, so we don't know the long-term future.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  And if these two are ultimately just going to merge into a cannabis industry, or if there will be a medical component that's separate and separately regulated and require, has different requirements. There won't be homogeneity across this country, uh, for many, many years. Um, but eventually down the road, it might develop into one singular thing.

• 41:54Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that the cannabis industry overall saw so much growth throughout 2020, how is it that I've seen an endless number of videos on YouTube about how Dan Bilzerian and Ignite completely fucked it with their accounts?

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Well, I don't like to comment on specific companies just because of what we do with our journalism or our events. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things that aren't going well when you dive in and look under the covers. There are companies that are growing too fast, they're not doing the right things, they're making bad decisions. You can look to Canada for this. You know, Canada, the first G7 nation to legalize recreational, launched its industry and there was this massive rush into it, there was all this money and it's like anything, everyone's all excited and, and you lose your sense, right? Even, even veteran business people, you lose your sense.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  And so, overinvestment, bad business decisions, in some cases some sketchy business practices. And, and you get caught in that hype and we've seen it over and over in the US when different, you know, tech industry, whatever. And so, that's what's happened and, and that's happening now. There are some of the bigger companies in this industry in the US are poorly run. You hear a lot of scuttlebutt in the background that there's some, potentially some shady things going on and, you know, not, not picking out particular companies to say that about, but just in general. And there are, there's bad decisions and you look at the financials of some of these companies, you're like, oof, what are you doing? What are you doing? And they're getting a lot of money.

• 43:33Chris Williamson?

  What would you do if you were to design a company, a cannabis company, that was going to fail? What are, what are some of the things that you would have it do?

• 43:41Speaker 00

  It was going to fail?

• 43:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  I would say you jump at every single opportunity you see, which is very common, because there are a lot of opportunities out there and everywhere you look, you're like, oh, let's do that. So, if I was going to fail, I'd say, hey, let's go tackle this, this and this and this without a strategic thread behind them or the resources or the know-how to do it right. I would, you know, I would, I would play in the gray areas of the law heavily and, you know, take, take shortcuts and, and do things that you really, that you really know aren't appropriate or, or even allowed. I would be...

• 44:22Speaker 00

  I would also probably be a untrustworthy business person. Who renegs on deals, or who tells you one things, or who makes an acquisition and promises all this stock and everything and then it just disappears for the owners. These are the types of things we see and doesn't always mean they're failing the companies, but these practices are out there. And really not understanding the market, or I just come in with my experience in some other industry. And be like, I know how to do this. I don't need to listen to these cannabis people. Like, I know how to do this. I've done it successfully in another industry. So I'm just gonna do it this way. And they're all silly. They don't know what they're talking about.

• 45:03Chris Williamson?

  It does feel like-

• 45:04Speaker 00

  That's a quick rapt of failure.

• 45:05Chris Williamson?

  It does feel like a different beast.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  It's different. It's different.

• 45:08Chris Williamson?

  What, have you looked much into the potential for a psychedelics industry?

• 45:13Speaker 00

  So yeah, I've been focusing on that more recently. And it's a tough one because my opinion on this is I don't know the business potential yet. So if you're looking at it from a business side, I don't know what this is. Right now, there's money being pumped into it, sizable money in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars into, in some cases publicly traded companies in Canada. Or in the US that are doing research, or they're, you know, it's one of these where sometimes you don't even know what the company's doing. Just a psychedelics and people are like, cool. So it's hard for me to understand the market at this point. I'm looking into it more. And we are as a team, but one of the things that strikes me is the cannabis industry is quickly latching on to this.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  In, not just in the US, in Canada, in Europe, all over, you're starting to see cannabis companies talk about psychedelics. And if I start at the base level, I have to question, and I don't have an opinion on this yet, but what is the crossover? Like, should cannabis companies be leading this charge? Maybe. Because it comes from similar, you know, it's a drug, it's an illegal drug that's coming out of the darkness and, and there, and it's a plant. In many cases, it's based off and you're extracting things. So, and there's medical parts to it. So I see the, I see the reasons why companies are doing this, but I don't know if it's the right thing. Like-

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Um, you know, is there enough crossover that cannabis companies can can enter this or do this effectively? I don't know. I mean, should this be a healthcare thing? Should this, you know, is there something else? So part of me is a little puzzled, and I don't know if it's the right route for cannabis to be leading this charge, although I understand why. And so, you know, again, identifying what the crossovers are. And so for us, when I talk about how do you fail, you go in a million different directions, right? Ooh, psychedelics, now I'm going here. This is a perfect example. So we as a business and how I try and run MJ Biz, you know, we, we have to figure out, does this fit with what we're trying to do? Or is this the shiny new object that we go chase? And for our business, are we going

• 47:21Speaker 00

  to have an event on it? Are we going to have a lot of coverage? Are we going to have a newsletter? Maybe, but this is an example of how you can go down another path that may or may not have to do with what you're doing now. So I don't know where this is going. I think there's potential here. And look, when we started in 2011, as I said, people were like, what the hell are you doing with marijuana? Like, this is crazy, you know, where you closet pothead and you're starting this little, you know, magazine. And, uh, and so I, I always catch myself and say, you can't view things like that. Cause I could easily say that about psychedelics now and say, really? Okay, mushrooms, come on. And we used to joke at MJ Biz Daily, we used to say, hey, one day we'll have magic mushrooms daily. As a joke, like five years

• 48:04Speaker 00

  ago. Um, so I don't, I don't know where we're going with that, but, uh, but there's a lot to unpack there.

• 48:10Chris Williamson?

  Have you registered the domains, just in case?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:13Chris Williamson?

  Get them registered, Chris, come on, come on. You know how to hedge your bet. It's 1099 on GoDaddy or something. Get them, get them registered. Once we've finished up on here. I think, I think there does seem to potentially be a, a bit of a difference between the cannabis industry and the potential psychedelics industry in that the

• 48:33Chris Williamson?

  Potency of the drug and the potential effects are magnified fairly significantly. It's the difference between having half a spliff and having one to two grams of mushrooms is fairly profound. And I don't think it's the sort of industry, if it gets to the stage where it's recreational use of magic mushrooms, I would be very, very surprised. I think it would be therapeutic use with guidance because as anyone that's taken psychedelics knows, set and setting are very important. And if you just let someone wander in and uninitiate,

• 49:15Chris Williamson?

  go into some store somewhere, Medmen's psychedelics wing, you go into the genius bar at the back and they say, well, we can try this and you can try this and try this.

• 49:26Chris Williamson?

  The aftercare that you need with psychedelics is significantly greater than it is with weed.

• 49:34Chris Williamson?

  I don't know enough about weed to know how big of a difference set and setting makes. I imagine it would make a bit of a one, but nowhere near as much. There's a, it's a power law, right? It's, it's a real sort of magnifying effect when you do have psychedelics. So I would be surprised if we see it end up being fully recreational, but the therapeutic effects seem to be outstanding. So definitely.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Well, especially, especially if you can do what they do with cannabis now and you can extract the certain elements out of it and get to a point where you're not, you don't have the, you know, psychotropic effects that you're, it's not affecting you that way, but there are health benefits. So there's a lot on the health side that's, that's exciting to explore. I mean, I agree with you on the recreational side. I can't see that developing like the marijuana industry did. But if you asked me 10 years ago, if adult use marijuana would be legal and you could walk into a store and see gummies and chocolate bars and bath bombs and, you know, jars of weed that you could just go in and buy it and then put it on the seat of your car and drive home and not worry about getting arrested. I would have never thought that either.

• 50:42Chris Williamson?

  What are the craziest iterations or the funniest, the most interesting iterations of delivery mechanisms for weed that you've seen?

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Um, I, I mean, you know, there's suppositories.

• 50:58Chris Williamson?

  Is it really?

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Well, that's on the medical side and it has a medical purpose. Yeah. Um, you know, I, I don't have any really, really good examples.

• 51:09Chris Williamson?

  You can get, I've, I've seen some topical ones, right? There's sort of subdermal things that you rub on your skin, but your skin can absorb it. And you can still get some psychotropic effects from that.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, topicals are big that you put on your skin. They're not huge part of the market, but they're appealing to some people. So that's all out there. You know, there's, there's products out there to enhance your sex life. Gels and creams and other things that.

• 51:34Chris Williamson?

  I can't do much when I'm.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Use your imagination.

• 51:37Chris Williamson?

  High, when I'm high, I can't do much. I don't want to use it as some sort of like pre, pre-bed warm-up routine.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  For some people it works, um, apparently. So there are product, there are products out there for that.

• 51:48Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  There's a product out there for you for that.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  So yeah, I mean, I think that's where the innovation is. People are just saying, these companies are saying, what, what can I use this in?

• 51:59Chris Williamson?

  Tell you what I was really impressed by while I was in Austin. I had some one and two milligram THC mints.

• 52:09Chris Williamson?

  And I thought that that was a really cool, subtle way to integrate THC into a, into a routine.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And you go into these stores and again, the, the product selection is vast. I mean, it's, it's mints, it's lozenges, it's lollipops. You know, it's gummies, it's chocolate bars, it's cookies, it's all the baked goods. Now they've got, you know, powders that are water soluble and you can put them into any drink. And you can put, you could sprinkle it in your seltzer water or you put it in your beer if you want. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you'd be working out much. Just gonna be sitting in the corner on your phone. Um, but you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of interesting things out there. And you know, beverages is another one that's gaining some traction. It's not a big part of the market, but you know, you can buy, you can buy infused fruit punch and sodas and,

• 53:04Speaker 00

  and teas and, uh, you know, it goes on and on now. I mean, basically anything out there as a, a consumer product that can be ingested. I think people are experiencing, experimenting with.

• 53:17Chris Williamson?

  What's the future of the CBD industry? Because I've heard you on other shows talking about, there's not just CBD, there's CBN, CBM?

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of other components that, that have not really been explored yet. So CBD is the one that gets a lot of the headlines and is, is the big industry focus. And, um, that was kind of, I think, because it was the easier one that, that people had identified in that, that we kind of started rallying around that as an industry. But, um, you know, CBD is an interesting one. It, a lot of the countries that have legalized medical cannabis outside, you know, the US and Canada, there are essentially CBD programs. Um, they're called medical cannabis, but there's not a lot of THC, the stuff that gets you high in them. Um, CBD is interesting because I don't know where it's going to go.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  I think there's, there's been a huge, um, ground swell of interest from consumers, from companies all across the world. And, uh, I think there's a lot of people who feel it gives them benefits. There's not a lot of science on it, so it's hard to say, does this really help you or do you think it helps you? Um, but I absolutely think it does help people for different things. You know, whether it's sleeping or just relaxing, reducing anxiety. There's a lot of, there's a lot of areas that need to be explored, uh, into how this interacts with our bodies. But a lot of people in, in, in the US, you walk into a convenience store or your neighborhood market and there's, you know, little CBD oils or these, you know, lotions and, um, and then you can get CBD heavy marijuana strains. Uh, there's a million products out there now.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  I don't know if this massive demand will wane and when. You know, is this going to be like some other additive or ingredient to things that we use every day? Maybe, you know, does it become, uh, you know, we've had these fads. I'm sure you've had them, you know, probably in different areas in the UK, but fish oil and everything. I've had fish oil in it for a while or echinacea. You know, the thinking is, is this going to be like that? I don't know, but I think there's a lot of benefits to it. I'm, I'm bullish about its potential. I don't know where the ceiling is or how it, how it all evolved. But I absolutely think I've known many, many people who have used it um for, for pain relief. Even use, you know, rub it on sore muscles and stuff. So there are a lot of uses.

• 55:33Chris Williamson?

  Have you got any concerns about long-term use of CBD? Given that we don't have longevity, real extrapolated out studies in terms of time spans?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  I mean, you know, I guess that's the case with a lot of things. We don't even really have that with marijuana in a lot of cases. I mean, we do have studies, of course, but it um, not a lot of funding globally behind really researching that. So I'd be more worried about the THC side and I'm, I'm not overly worried about that. Anything that you um eat, you know, you eat too many carrots and you uh, you know, your skin turns orange. You drink too much water, you could die, right? Like, so, you know, you, I think in moderation, um, you know, they're, they're fine. I don't, I don't personally, and I'm not giving any health advice. Um, I'm not personally worried about like overconsumption of CBD and my long-term effects, how everything I know about it.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  Um, so I, you know, THC, I mean, developing brains, teenagers, probably not a, probably a terrible thing, right? And I don't know what it does to regular users over 40 years. Um, you know, you might need to want to be a little bit more cautious with that, but same with alcohol, right? Same with coffee, same with chocolate.

• 56:44Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting making the comparisons, especially between weed and alcohol. I think the hypocrisy is so flagrant and obvious that it's almost a kind of cliche to bring it up, right? It's so, it's so trite to say that, well, look at the way that people go about treating alcohol, a substance which causes so many more ext. That are super negative. And we have this is study from the Lancet, which you may have come across or not, that the the single line summary was there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The couple of things that people used to say that you get, which was some resveratrol and a couple of other unique types of vitamins and minerals that could be derived from red wine,

• 57:27Chris Williamson?

  was offset by the increased chance of heart failure and of the negative externalities. So even the one thing or a couple of the things that were touted as potential benefits are negated and then further offset into the negative by that. And yet, you can see within the pushback from the more conservative side or from people, especially in the UK, you know, that we don't have the same weed culture in the media at kind of the top down and then emergently from the community bottom up either. You know, we don't have a thingy and thingy go to White Castle. We don't have that kind of stoner world over here so much. So when you're talking about the fact that it might take a little while for it to break

• 58:12Chris Williamson?

  the UK, that doesn't surprise me.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, it might. But, you know, I, and I know the UK is a lot different than Germany. In Germany, you know, you walk around, everyone was already smoking it everywhere. I don't think they have that cultural side either, though.

• 58:29Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting point.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  Here, it's, it's, so, yeah, I mean, it's, again, it's hard to predict how quickly things could change. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see you guys go in this direction sooner rather than later.

• 58:43Chris Williamson?

  Some people in the UK need it desperately.

• 58:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:47Chris Williamson?

  Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with marijuana news?

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, go to mjbizdaily.com and that's our main website where we cover the industry internationally and with a focus on the US and Canada. And then from there you can get to our Information for our big conference, MJ BizCon, coming up in October. Getting a lot of international interest in that again. I think everyone's hoping the barriers to travel will fall and that we'll all be in a much better place with COVID. In the US, things are looking really good right now. And then I also started a podcast, Seed to CEO, where I talk about, for new people coming in the industry, here's, here are some, you know, lessons learned from those who are in it. Here's the things you need to know about. Here's success stories and case studies. So you can get to all of that through MJBizDaily.com.

• 59:36Chris Williamson?

  What's the podcast? Seed to CEO?

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:38Chris Williamson?

  I love that. That's cool. Nice, man. Chris Walsh, ladies and gentlemen. Chris, thank you for coming on, man.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me on. Have fun.