Ep. 32 | Buds to Brands - Michael Rich

Jack Moran sits with Michael Rich, founder of Paradise Cannabis and industry consultant. They explore the creative and strategic approaches that drive successful businesses. Michaels discusses how innovation, strong company culture, and targeted marketing can help overcome challenges and connect with customers. The two share insight into breaking goals into actionable steps, optimizing processes, and adapting to competitive industry challenges.

Michael Rich
Nothing Held Back

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Host: Jack Moran
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Chapters

• 0:30 Introduction to Michael Rich
• 5:01 Origins in the Cannabis Industry
• 15:01 Revolutionizing Cannabis Consumption
• 25:00 Entrepreneurial Philosophy and Growth
• 35:00 Marketing Mastery and Storytelling
• 44:00 Challenges in Cannabis Advertising
• 55:08 Resilience in Entrepreneurship
• 1:06:00 Building Brand Loyalty and Community
• 1:12:08 Closing Thoughts and Future Insights

Transcript

0:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 32 of Shakin’ Hands. I'm your host, Jack Moran. Today on the podcast, we have Michael Rich, the founder of Paradise Cannabis. How are we doing? Fantastic. Appreciate you having me here. Yeah, we met the other day at, Red palm and kind of hit it off. We got introduced by one of my buddies, justice, and, I knew right away you were a mad scientist entrepreneur, and we started chopping it up, and here we are. Yeah. With Charleston's. Let's see, let's go. Yeah. What are you doing in Charleston? I you know, I'm on a hurricane. And to be honest, Asheville got, like, devastated. So we came out here, just did a hurricane, and we've been to Edisto, Tybee, and now we're back in Charleston. And the energy is just fantastic here. You like it? Yeah. It's fantastic for entrepreneurs. There's, like, way more energy. Why do you think it's good for entrepreneurs? That's a great question. I would just say that like, you know, in Asheville, it's like not as like a community. There's like more people here. You're by the beach, but also like, I don't know, there's a lot of wealth here. So I think they're like people were gravitated to come here in South Carolina. Sweet. So tell me about your business a little bit. What do you got going right now, dude? So what I got going on right now is. So I've been working, extensively in the cannabis industry since I was like, I was a cultivator in Canada when, for like ten years. I moved to America in 2017. And so I thought I was not going to be working in cannabis in the farm. Bill got approved. We've been doing CBD hemp for and now we're most recently just in pure cannabis and so what I'm doing right now is with Paradise is we are basically providing a personalized consumer experience. So everyone's always been toggle indica sativa hybrid. But there's never been like so I visited like 2 or 3000 smoke shops. I was doing the distro company and I just kept talking to all the bud tenders. It's like, yo, what is good for like creativity or to focus or to chill or, you know, just basically like, you know, how you get vitamin B12, it's good for energy or vitamin C, it's really, you know, good immunity. There's never been anything like that in cannabis. But that's like when I found out. And so from there I was like, oh, this is a great marketing plan. So from there, I just started like, I became a ganja, like I'm a cannabis Somali. And so as a cannabis Somali, you can smell cannabis until it's effect. And so from there, I just seen that there was nobody marketing like that. So from there it's like created a company so you can buy cannabis today. It could be it could be good for focusing, could be for chillin, could be euphoria or socializing. So that's kind of like where I'm at right now is just providing personalized alternative health. So as an entrepreneur, what was your interest in the cannabis industry from like a business sense? I would say I would go on like something like with Maxwell Gladwell. There's like a book called The Outliers. I think I was born at the right place, doing the right things, doing the right. You know, I got a BBA major marketing on Vancouver Island and, you know, at the same time, that was my cultivation in the cannabis space was paying for my college. And so I was doing those two things simultaneously. And then through college. Then I went into, you know, branding, direct response, marketing online. I was one of the first homies online. Like, I've been marketing since 2006 online. And then I came to America and then it was like, oh, cannabis is now something that we can, like sell through CBD or hemp and all that. And I was like, wait, I can bridge these two worlds. And so I feel like I'm a bit of an outlier, like, you know, just creating some alchemy. Have you always kind of had the entrepreneurial make up or this was something like after graduating, you're great, great, great, great question. So I would say that there's like people that are extrinsic motivated and then there's people that are intrinsically motivated like, yes, I love money. But like when I wake up I don't need money to like, like obviously I'm a capitalist and like I like making money like that. However intrinsically. Like I had something in me that just like when I wake up, I'm like, I want to like, accomplish something. I like, like, you know, look at the shirt. I ain't no soppy, hey, now everyone's going to know. And soppy. But like, I love shops, I like KPIs, I like metrics, I like data. So like, yeah, I just intrinsically always been really interested in waking up every day and making the difference. Yeah. Do you think that intrinsic motivation is key as an entrepreneur, and that extrinsic motivation is a limitation for an entrepreneur, or is it just kind of person by person, case by case? Yeah. Good question. I think that like, you know, I think we all probably like start extrinsic early because you know, like they say money can't buy happiness. But you know, money can do a lot of things for you. You know, once you get a taste of it, being extensively motivated is great. But like you can only go so far. So like that's when you see like maybe people like get like a Lambo or this or that and they're like, you know, blowing their money. And it's like, I rather just continue to like, invest in myself. So then I can wake up and do the things that, like other people are, were unwilling to do. What motivates you to keep going like an entrepreneurship? What what makes you get out of bed every day? Dude. The process. I love the process. I love collaborating with the homies. So like right now I have a team of like nine other vibes and we're all like collaborating and like, right now. For example, if a film in-house were like breaking down, like, how long does it take to pack a package? How long does it take to like, you know, put the product in the package? How long does it take to, like, trim? How long does it take to make a pre-roll? So I like like always continually to a better the process. It's like, do we save 10% this month? So I'm always like after the process, that's what I really love. So how do you, as someone who's like a new entrepreneur or someone who's like trying to start a business, what are like the first pieces of the process that you start to establish or emerge when developing a business? I would say that like, you know, when you're going to like start a business, there's like a couple ways of looking at it for me. So the way I look at it is I look at the big picture and then I look at the small picture. Right. You have to take a step every day. You have to make progress every day. What's the best way to eat an elephant? You know, just eat one bite at a time, right. And so like, I think a lot of people get overwhelmed by the, you know, like, oh, I'm building a business. And it's like, okay, let's break this down into departments. And then you have the departments, and then it's like, what do I have to do? So like with customer service, you have this with fulfillment. You have this with merchant process, you have this. So then just breaking it down into more of a granular form and then kind of like just hitting each of those each day. So like making small progress towards your big goal is what I would like encourage people to do. It's like it's overwhelming or like at the end of the day, like if you do like ten things in each of these different departments every day, well then boom, it evolves and you have a new plateau. And then it's like, okay, how do I improve and optimize this process another time? How do you like what are the indicators that make you enter into a business or make you interested in a business? Are there like a personal checklist or are there like business fundamentals that you're looking at, say, okay, this is a good opportunity that I want to engage in. That's like, I'm gonna have a little off on that because like, you know, like I see a lot of people talking about like, hey, you got to find your passion. You got to find your why. And I totally agree with that because, like, I think, you know, if you wake up every day and you're going to a job that you don't enjoy, then it's really challenging. And so for me, I've always been a marketer. Like in grade 11, I took one marketing class and I was just like, okay, I'm going to be a marketer. So like just having a path and having faith in yourself to continue to move forward and like what your passion is, I'm marketing. So then boom, next thing you know, I have a BA. Next thing you know, I like go to an internet marketing company and I'm there. But you got to like keep moving towards that area. Yeah. So what's a marketer like. What do you how do you define yourself? What is your skill set? It's a great question. As a marketer I basically like look at like, you know, like a channel or a category and I'm like, how can I improve on this? So when I first entered into marketing online, it was all like branding, branding, branding. Well, then they came out with this thing called like cost per acquisition, like CPA. And what that means is like that I only get paid when I like, so I'll spend my own money on Facebook, cost per acquisition, cost per acquisition. So I spend my own money and I'll spend like $30 on Facebook. But when I get a conversion, I get paid $90. And so boom, I can like make $60 profit there. That's like a pretty significant profit. And so like as a marketer, I'm just looking for like areas where I can improve, right. So when I came into the marketing, it was like direct response was not really a thing. So I was like, Holy shit, I can sell like you. Yeah. Like, what do you call that? Like selling ice to, you know, and ask them out? Yeah. Like I go to any big brand fortune 500. Like I've worked with Uber, Airbnb, Jenny Craig, State Farm, all of them. But you come to them and they're like, you know, they just been branding on TV, magazine, radio and never like, did too much online. I go to them and I say, hey, pay me $10 lead. So it's like really easy for me to sell. Same with when I'm in cannabis. You know, I come into the cannabis, it's like, how do I like make an impact? Well, I say I create a new business model like a marketing people based on their creativity or their focus or their channel euphoria. So I'm like basically creating a new market in. So that's like what I would say is like, if you want to like be a big player, then you need to do something different. So let's talk about the marketing model a little bit. I have a lot of people approach me. It's like, blast me with cold emails for marketing. And they all are retainer based. But for me, I'm like, I'm not going to pay you a retainer because it has no like there's no way to have accountability and performance. But if you want to get paid on leads, I'd be happy to do that. Converted leads. I'd be happy to give you a commission. How does that utilizing that model give you more flexibility and allow you to enter bigger opportunities by like not having the client assume that risk of your performance? You know, it's like a pretty brand new model, like jerk response. It's been like going through magazines, radio like direct response isn't a new thing, but to like, bring it into the internet world, I think that that's like really what change the direct response, direct response. Meaning I get paid for performance. So I interesting I can come to you and like say it's like Jenny Craig and it's like, give me $100,000 budget that is run ads on the internet and it's like has it's just branding top of mind, you know what I mean? Like top of mind advertising where like I come in and it's like more of like a sniper. The I'll come in and I like market to people based on like their psychographics, like their age, their gender, you know, their pain points and what they find valuable. And so, like when you start communicating to people like that, well, like I'm basically doing what the big brand wants to do overall, but because they're a big brand and top of mind, they have huge budgets. So they have to do branding. But then I come in in sniper and I bring in customers like through a funnel based on what their actual needs are. So let's talk about funnel a little bit like if you were to be given a new product right now, that is not something that you've marketed before. Obviously there's going to be like individual variables that you would apply to that marketing strategy. But what are the like? What's the cookie cutter fundamental strategy that you follow when marketing something? You want me to give my secret side. All right. So like the first thing I would do is say like what are we selling like diet. Right. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go on to like Reddit, you know, or some kind of public forum, or I'm going to go to like other brands that are in this space, you know, they're like have big market share. And I'm gonna look at all their negative reviews. I'm going to see, like, what are the negative things that people are talking about here? And like, Reddit is like it's just it's a dumpster fire for great people. Like just putting this shit out Twitter too. And you start seeing like, what their pain points are and then, you know, from there will then I can start like, you know, that's just the beginning phase. It's like, oh, there is a market. If there's not a lot of negative stuff going on, but everyone's talking shit. So that's what I'll do is I'll just basically look at all of my brands like reviews and see how they're like basically what their pain points is. And if there's not a lot of pain points and what's the point of being in that market? I, I don't know, like right now it's like an interesting time. Like I was, in one of the Facebook groups that I'm in and they were talking about, like, selling, diet stuff, and they're like, dude, we don't know what's going on. Ozempic is like taking the money, right? Yeah. This is like, just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And everyone's like, trying to figure out how to sell diet again. With another way to sell diet is, you know, you can have like, short term instant gratification, right? As like a, you know, a consumer. You take your own epic by like, guess what, to have a healthy lifestyle that's like actually what's going to keep it off. So you have to be on epic for your entire life. Who knows what the side effects are, but then do like, you know. So you want to like focus on like creating healthy habits with people, giving them like, you know, a calorie counter, you know, are they actually motivated to wake up in the morning to do those things? I'm not looking for people that are just kind of going out as epic. So it sounds like you're taking those pain points and then you're creating a value proposition based off those pain points. Now, what do you do with that to create an ad off that or, you know, from there, like what I would like to do is I would like tap into like meta. Meta is kind of like my, my number one spot, you know, meta being like, what's Facebook, Instagram. And so, you know, we have a magnitude of ad accounts. And so I would just attack it going to meta or, you know, like e to your fan pages and like start building a following and like interacting with it. But like I'm just going to like create a meta. What's the biggest thing that you see, like businesses doing to market their products that you're just like, that's all waste of time. That's a great question because it really all will come down to like what that business is. Intention is right. If they're just branding, like I see like a lot of weird branding ads and then I'm like, what the hell are they doing? But their engagement is so high. And so like, you know, like having like, I just really the intention. But like, I've seen like companies like Chubbies, they have this weird ad going out right now. But the following, like they're making like no return on ad spend, but they're getting like more followers, more engagement, more people that are actually organically going on their computer. It's searching chubbies. So it really just come down to like, I don't know what brands are doing, but what's their intent? You know, when you say branding, do you just mean like ads that are like propping up the company in like the company's values and their services? Branding is like, top of mind. So like when I was talking in college, you know, is that it takes about like. And this probably changed because I graduated 2005, but like, you know, it takes 11 points. So I have to target, I have to advertise to someone 11 times before they even consider me. And then you imagine, like, you know, and you're in New York or, you know, like Wall Street and you see all these ads and everything's like, so and now we have social media. So like I would say that it's harder to be top of mind. I like the, what's that chick off The Golden Girls? She does a Snickers ads so she'd eat a Snickers. That's top of mind. Like, dude, there's so many choco bars, but Snickers is like. So I'm hungry. I can even have a Snickers. That's top. Yeah. So I kind of like kind of going into some brand recognition brand recognition like Geico and all those guys don't have to advertise, but they continue to do so because it's a competitive space. And then like they're like in saturated markets. So they have to be top of mind because like, dude, I'm going to go get insurance tomorrow. Well, I heard the Geico ad on the radio or I seen an online ad. So that's like always branding is just being top of mind. So when you're evolving a marketing strategy and you get someone in the funnel, are you trying to get the sale right away? Like I always say, like, don't fuck on the first date. For like, how are you? Kind of like nurturing and maturing that client to the point where they do make a sale or they do purchase with you what are kind of like the the steps to that process. Yeah. So it's a funnel is like I would say the way I do top a funnel is I will drive someone to my website. I have all my retargeting pixels for all the different platforms. If it's going to be native ads read like Taboola, or if it's going to be Manna or Instagram or TikTok. I'll have all my retargeting pixels and my Google Analytics and my Google Tag Manager set up. So basically, like once everyone comes into my top of funnel, will I have the potential of retargeting them? But like primarily like when they come to my website, boom. I offer them some kind of incentive through my email newsletter. So when you come to Paradise, is that after they've entered the funnel or that's how you get them into the that's how I get them into the final. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say like top of funnel is they come to the website. You know, I'm saying I'm selling cannabis. So a majority of people like knew what they want. It's not like I'm trying to sell like some clothing and it's like very competitive. So people just want cannabis. They know what the effects are going to be, what they want. So then when I get them into when they come into my website, either like the funnel starts with, like if they don't buy, well guess what, besides my email list. So then my email list I use klaviyo. And so what I like about Klaviyo is it's like a personalized, I can like segment all of my data. So you come in and I have a welcome to see sign up to get 20% discount incentivize. But when you come into my talk with funnel, it's like Welcome to Paradise. And I basically like tell them like what the brand stands for, what our intentions are, what we're selling and what, you know, features, attributes, benefits. And so from there then they get a welcome series. Email two. Email three. Well, let's say that like, they haven't become a buyer. Well, and they go into the checkout, they don't make the purchase. I send them an abandoned cart or checkout flow. Yeah. And so I'm segmenting and like right now. So I'm starting to build a really big database. So I have to start segmenting my data. So like anyone that's engaged with my site in the last 30 days. So they come in the funnel is starving. Bot okay. Well guess what. I'm going to send you an email. I send two meals a day. I'm going probably, two emails a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I'm gonna increase that to probably Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And the thing is, it's such a busy landscape. Everyone's like, don't email more. Well, I only email to the people that have engaged, open, clicked or been active on my site in the last 30 days. Because if I'm engaging with like the 60 and 90 days, I'm going to start having like negative feedback from Google, Verizon, AOL, because my ISPs are like looking at how many people are opening my email ESB yeah, internet service provider. Okay. Interesting. So when what are those emails like? Are they are you trying to provoke the sale or are you sending more about like more branding stuff? Like what is the strategy for that. The email marketing. Great great great question. So I'll give a shout out to William Blond on this one. He's my, CMO and and head of branding. And so what we've been like really focused on is, you know, you can be using a lot of lifestyle brands. So I really look up to like Red bull. I got coffee here. I like, you know, Red bull it's like gives you wings. Right. Well every skater, snowboarder, every extreme junkies out there like extreme junkie, they're like, I want to go skydiving, I do this. Everyone resonates with Red bull. And so what we've been focusing on is like, you know, cannabis. Everyone's like kind of been focus on like, it's good for anxiety, it's good for this. It's good for that. We're like in our niche. We can't like do a lot of medical claims or, well, literally zero medical claims because this the way cannabis is. So we are really focused on storytelling. So by storytelling it's like kind of like Red bull, you know, like they're telling a story, you know, hey, I'm a professional skateboarder. I drink Red bull like it's it's literally like a bunch of stuff in a can. So that's what we're really focus on is like storytelling and then incentivization, you know, and I'm not like, I got VIP customers where I'm going to like, you know, communicate to them different. But yeah, it's all storytelling. Right. How do I give you like a few examples. So Burning Man, we had a bunch of the crew go to Burning Man. And so we share the story of Burning Man and like so people like identify with it. We're just looking for like different ways of identifying with our customer and a bunch of different ways. So everyone's at Burning Man if you like. I love going to festivals. Well guess what? We're selling our euphoric product, right? So at the bottom we plug euphoria because you're a festival, you're euphoric. And so I'm really like trying to distill our storytelling to have customers resonate with why they want to have our brand versus another brand, because there's like, you know, a thousand cannabis brands. So there's kind of like a psychological reason why storytelling resonates with people. Is there any other like, psychological principles that you're utilizing within your sales, using suggestive imagery, which kind of elicits the dream? Like these are psychological principles that like, get people to resonate with your product. I'm trying to think of another, better example of like, is there any, I study psychology a lot because I think it's super. I love consumer behavior. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's really applicable to sales. So I was curious if you are interested in that or if you're utilizing anything like that. Yeah. Well, I like the way I look at it is like cannabis is always been like, it's kind of like the devil's lettuce, you know, it's like been it's been like in prohibition for all these times. But, you know, there's been a huge market for people and like, it's been kind of like, oh, I know a lot of people indulge in cannabis. Yeah, but they're not public about it. Right. And so psychologically, you know what I've been like focused on or not me, but us as a company is like creating like an experience. So like, we all know like we all like hiking. Cool. I go on a hike. Well guess what? I bring my cannabis with me, right? Oh, I'm having a backyard barbecue. The boys are over. We're watching football social. So I'm like, basically wanting to like, you know, lower the stigma of cannabis and introduce people to the ability to, like, enjoy cannabis and not be ashamed to not be ashamed of it. It's like like it's okay to smoke cannabis. Have you dealt with any, like, pushback from selling cannabis for like, entering into this business space? You know, it's things have evolved a lot like yeah like well onto in Canada, like I come from a small island and cannabis is like, we can go to a skate park and smoke up. Everything's gel. You know, coming to America was like, I ain't smoking because, like, people have been incarcerated a long time. Yeah, it's like kind of evolving. But like, has there been any adversity that you've faced? Like, maybe it's not even just from it being a cannabis company, but just in general. Like, what kind of like hurdles have you encountered with this business? Well, advertising is like probably one of the biggest ones. You know, advertising like cannabis on meta. They don't like us, you know, like recently, just for example, like my Instagram got taken down about 15,000 followers. I'm building a great thing. I went from 3000 views to 100 overnight. Like I've been shadow banned. And so then imagine like that's just my organic traffic from my authentic self, right? I'm like putting out all these advertising points. So we've found ways to like advertise on these platforms. But like it's the wild wild West it's really hard. It's very sophisticated. So like that's just one like element. It's been hard to advertise. Yeah. So like I say in like entrepreneurship we call it taking the arrows. And I don't see you as being someone that would get discouraged in any way by losing your Instagram. Like you're just going to keep plummeting on because you have that entrepreneurial makeup look for someone that's watching this that may not been through the entrepreneurial journey yet. Like, how would you say is the best way to deal with adversity and like hurdles that you encounter? You know, if you're out there and you're feeling adversity, you just got to keep doing it, doing it and doing it. And I think one of the people I like I look up to is R Williams. You know, he's like, I got a bad marriage. What do I do? You just do it. Oh, I woke up and I got $5,000 in debt. What do I gotta do? You just do it. But you need to just do it and do it and do it. And if you don't do it, well, then go work at Walmart. Oh, yeah. Do you think anyone can be an entrepreneur? You know, I think that, like, anyone can be an entrepreneur. I think that like, the way that, like, society is, you know, structured makes it like a little bit more challenging and maybe not more challenging, but, like, people just get more in their comforts, like, where's my phone? My phone's right there. Right? I have a better founder. The president did in 1980, like right now. Right. So you have like, a lot of, like all these different tools and it's very distracting. Like a lot of, like entrepreneurs fall into this like shiny object syndrome. Right. And so what I focus on is like I'm in cannabis. So there was another opportunity that came to me and I'm like, I can make a ton of money here, but I'm not focused on my thing. So it's like, don't it don't fall onto the shiny object. Yet. I keep focus and then, yeah, like, if you're not in like it, anyone can be an entrepreneur. But like, really is challenging. Like, this is this ain't something that you just wake up every day and you're like, oh, this is easy. Like I'm like, I'm 41. When I was like doing entrepreneur, like, I like, what was it, 2009? So it's 2020 is 15 years of an entrepreneur. Like when I first started, I lost $108,000 from a homie that I thought was a Halloween. And guess what I did? I woke up and I did it. But outside of that, my family like, help me is like, I got to pay rent. I owe this dude all his money. So I'm just like making that money and paying him back, but also like doing whatever I had to do. Like I had to actually get a job, like, you know, my uncle's like Candace and like me. So I'm like, dude, I'm cutting lawns and I'm an entrepreneur. I make, you know, I was like, do it takes? Yeah. I was like, putting mayonnaise and like, putting some mayonnaise and some tuna and, you know, like, just living, like, terrible. But I'm still an entrepreneur, right. And then like, five years later, you know, like, I think a lot of people, like, come into their future and they're like, three years after they've accomplished what they want to accomplish. They're like, oh, that was destined, motherfuckers. You could all have a little bit more destiny if you got, like a little bit more want or need, right? But like, everybody got to pay the bills. Well, guess what? I was paying my bills while I was an entrepreneur and I lost $100,000. So it's like, is everyone able to do it? I think yes, but like it's it's just challenging. Yeah. Yeah. I like when you say the, shiny object syndrome. I've definitely dealt with that in the past. But as entrepreneurs like, I think that we do kind of have that 80 day and like we see the opportunities, we want to jump on them. But also like you talk about, like having passion to enter into a business at a certain point, like you might not have that passion forever. So how do you like set a good end point where you can like exit? How do you like exit a business successfully or like not get tied down to it forever and be able to move on to a shiny object, but without neglecting, like the previous business, like, oh, that's like a high level question. You know, I would say that like the way to do that is so what I've done is like, I've built an octopus, you know, it's got like eight tentacles. And so, like in my business, what I found is like, someone is really good at merchant processing. Someone's really good at fulfillment, someone's really good at customer service. And, you know, like, as a younger entrepreneur, what you want to do is like develop these relationships with people like, so what's your business again? You're like in the ecological. Yeah, we do shoreline restorations, shoreline. So like what's what's your octopus like you would have like someone that there's soil someone that does this, someone that does that. But like those are your homies like right. And so like, you know, over your career, over like ten years, like you got all the homies and then all of a sudden, you know, you're become an entrepreneur and they're like, oh, dude, you took the job. Like, I'm still working for the man. And working for the man might be a $300,000 a year thing, but you're still working for the man, right? And so then when you jump out and then it's like, so you can empower people. But like that's what I would focus on is like building my community really early and then finding out what people are good at. And if they're in my niche, then I'm going to fuck with them. Yeah, yeah. You know, I've had like so many people go from like Uber and then my homies like Geico and I'm like, oh shit, now I'm working with Geico. It's like, so like, just keep your network. Like your network is your net worth. Yeah, I've kind of taken like a similar look to look at it. It's like, how long do I want to stay in this like specific niche? It can be scary because I want to entertain these other things that I'm interested in. But how I would like approach that is by like saying, okay, maybe erosion control isn't like the business that I am fundamentally growing, so what am I fundamentally growing? I think that like I'm interested in lead generation. So I can apply lead generation to a bunch of things. Although erosion control is my niche, there's a bunch of like, octopus tentacles that come off of that where we can broker deals and I can get to outsource some of those. Exactly. And so I can utilize like that space and the expertise within that space to enter different businesses. And then agreed. Like having the impact is like a big driver for me. So like that entrepreneurial impact, that's why we do the podcast and everything. I think when you start building that community and people start like talking about their businesses and utilizing you to get their strategies for lead generation or whatever it is. That's what kind of keeps me going and like, makes it interesting every single day. Yeah. And to go back to like what you say, it's like, how do you get on to the next shiny object? Well, the for me to be here right now, right. Like my business is running. I have a CEO, I have a CFO, I have a head of a format. And so like you need to be able to, like, delegate. You know, for a long time in my entrepreneur career, I always wanted things my way. Well, here's like and this one's for like the viewers out here, this is like a badass mind, right? So, you know, when the sun sets every single day, you know, does God look at the sun and say like, bro, you did not sun, you did not set correctly, or you did not rise correctly today? Like what? And so the way I look at it is like, I used to get like very personally attached on, like how I wanted things done because I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. And like, I know that my way is generally probably I won't I'm not gonna say better, but, you know, like, I want things that my way. And then what I learned is like by delegating and giving that space, there's actually more innovation. So like when I give, like when I delegate, I go, this is the objective. How you get there is not my business if you want to collaborate while we're on the process. But that's kind of like my executive business coach, Eric, you know, he basically said like, dude, God don't care how the sun sets. And so it's really important, you know, when I create the product to like Paradise, I created what I think is perfect for the audience. So I send out a survey to all my people and all the customers, and I start garnering like what it is that they want. I know what I think they want. So it's like, you got to delegate and you can't be like super romantic on like the way that you want things done, as long as you have talented people that are going to get there and, you know, over time, like like my brand strategist William, it's like boom, boom, boom. Nate, my CEO, it's like, boom, you have all these things and it's like, okay, run with it. So that gives me the freedom and flexibility. And we just have like high level convos and then it's done. But that gives me the space to go like I actually have a call today at 2 p.m. with some, some, some, consulting crew from like Belgium. And they have a big brand that they want to take to market and they know that I'm a cannabis Somali. And then I've taken a company from 0 to $100 million in the cannabis space. So they want some time for me. Six months ago, I didn't have time for that, but I have time for it today because I was able to empower those people. So that's something that I've really struggled with. Is team building in a startup, what's your approach to like getting people good people working for you and, you know, executing this vision? And how do you do it with low cash flow? Yeah, bro. You give me all the secret sauce today. I think that kind of goes back to like, you know, as a young entrepreneur, stick with your stick with your intuition, stick with your gut. But like, stick with the homies that are actually making moves and then like, just keep building that relationship. So for like me and my entire team, the people that I've worked with, like we've been together for like ten years, you know, any or like, you know, Todd, I met him in Panama, like 8 or 9 years ago. And it's like a merchant processing thing. I'm like, what do you do? He's like, bro, let's just chill. Seven years later, him and I are working together on the brand, and he's taking care of all the CFO, you know, responsibilities. I don't know how that happened, is just building that genuine friendship and understanding. And then it's like when you take a company from 0 to 1 million, you you get eyeballs. You know what I mean? People are what are you doing? What are you doing? And it's like, so then people are wanting to do that. So as a young entrepreneur, I do put in more hustle, put in more work, you know, like, well, Smith said, you know, like one brick at a time, a one brick at a time, but also like, you know, it's like everybody should be like, doing this. This isn't that. But I'm putting in more time. Right? So as a young entrepreneur, you got to put in time, you know what I mean? Like when I was like weekly I'm putting like 60, 70 hours and I'm going home and the lady's like, what are you doing? I'm like, bro, like, I'm working from like, we dinner. We do that and I'm working from like 9 to 1, going to bed, get up at eight and just like putting in that time. But you got to build the network, do it. And so like once I had the network then I was able to bring those people in on low cash flow because they know that I'm able to do something that they're not. So it's credibility. Yeah. What. And having integrity too right. Yeah. Valid. Super valid. Yeah. Trust is everything. Especially an influence. Like if people don't trust you they're not going to follow you. Yeah I've been in the game for like 20 years under nobody. Yeah. And that's another question that I have. It sounds like you had a body or whatever that fucked you over like early in your entrepreneurial journey. What did you learn from that and how do you avoid getting into business with those types of people? Dude, I had the homie like do that to me. They me real dirty and I don't know how to like, not do that. Like I made like hundreds of thousands of dollars with them when I was at the company I worked at and then when we left, he just skipped town. So like, I don't know, like my gut told me that this was a great ability, but what I would if I were to retroactively go back in time, I wouldn't have scaled as fast, I think, like I would have built that. So I wasn't at such a disposition, like losing 100 grand at like 26 isn't a good feeling. So I scaled really fast because of the trust. So like, I think that it would be very important to like, you know, create like plateaus or like identify points like, okay, cool. Instead of going 0 to 100, let's go 0 to 10, 0 to 10, 0 to 10, build that like relationship a little bit more and then go to 20, then go to 30. I don't know, like dude, I rolled with my intuition. It just like bite me in the ass. I don't think there's like a lot of ways of like describing how not to do that. Other than just like kind of don't go like go all in, obviously, but you don't have to scale like from zero or like a million overnight. Like, is there any red flags that you look for in like a person when you first meet them that say like, okay, I probably shouldn't go down this path of this person, you know, like the way that things are today is like social media. So a first thing I'm going to do is I want to look at your LinkedIn. I'm going to look at your Facebook. I'm I look at your Instagram like there is just I'm not a private investigator, but I'm a sleuth. You know, I'm like, can I do my due diligence? And then I'm also going to like ask my community like, oh, we have like ten mutual contacts. Yo, how's Jack it? Oh, Jack's a shit. Okay, cool. You know, so I would, like, kind of use my network and, like, just do my due diligence. I like a red flag. I like listening to people's language in their body language. And I mean, like, for me, I, you know, if I'm, like, going to educate someone, I would say like, hey, this is going to be like challenging, but it's an easy challenge. You know, like the way that I communicate with people is like very and it's like their body language, but like the words they say, like it's a weird way, but like it's basically like I agree completely. You know, you point a finger, you get three pointing back at you. So then when you listen to the language and then you just kind of pick up like these little trips and you're like and like and, and as a young entrepreneur, what you like sometimes are like wanting that instant gratification or like that success quickly, even though you see a red flag. And so it's like maybe you got to dig a little deeper, right? Yeah. You can go against your intuition. Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the biggest thing that I look for is if a person's super transactional or like you said in the beginning, like extrinsic first intrinsically motivated, if a person's language is revealing that, like they're motivated by money, that's typically like a big red flag for me for doing business with the person. Because for me, like, money's nice, but that's not why I'm doing this. It's like impact. It's like having a positive impact on the world. What's the legacy I'm going to leave behind? It's the like loving the journey in the process. So when someone has language like that, that's more of like a green flag that, you know, they align with my values. But when someone's like super transactional, just money, money, money, money, money, that's like in those types of people reveal themselves very quickly. I think that's a major red flag for me, because when money's the priority and values are secondary, they have a much bigger chance of like fucking you when the opportunity that we first met. Right. Like, we're both successful entrepreneurs and so like, do we talk about money once? No, not at all. Right, right, right. We were just jamming, you know, and it's like, I think that, like, you know, I don't want to, like, give a bad impression on like, people that have money, like that's a great thing. But like, if that's all you're trying to flash and like, materialism, well, like, maybe you can be like someone that I like strategically partner with or get an investment from. But if I fuck with you like one of my, like, really, really successful friends, it's like, you see Steve Jobs, he goes there. Zuckerberg. They all like roll up in the same clothes. They got a fucking tire, you know, like they're just chillin. They're not like, they don't need to like, exemplify by their wealth because like, they already got the homies like did who are you? So it's like when someone's like, super transactional, like you're saying it's like, Insurance. And I think we talked about this a little bit when we met. Like, do you have to be a stick and a hard ass to be a successful entrepreneur? No, not at all. Dude, you got to be like, good vibes, be chillin. But you gotta be hard in the paint, right? And you got to know how to communicate because, like, yeah, that was one of the things when I was like, in my early, late 20s, early 30s, it was like I was like a little bit more of a stick in the mud, you know, and I like communicated. It just didn't work out, you know, and my Eric, my, like, executive, you know, coach, he was just like, dude, I had some staff members bring me like better way to make a pre-roll, right. And then we would have like, I'm like, did you just see me like $0.15 a pre-roll? Like, that's like a 10% like. And imagine you're selling a million, 10 million pre-rolls. There's a lot of fucking money. What I would do is go to the meeting. We'd always have, like, all the staff, and I'd be like, bro, I'm going to give a shout out to Anthony. He just saved us $0.15. And you know what that did? Is it created like a really safe space to bring ideas. So like if you create a safe space, always give credit for other people's ideas. Don't take credit for that. Like I I've never taken like credit, but I've been a stick in them in the moment. I became not a stick in mud and I give credit to everybody else's ideas. Then all of a sudden I created like an incubator within my own corporate culture, and I empowered. And then all of a sudden it's like the next time he's like, dang, I got a better idea for fulfillment. And I'm like, tell me. It's like, bro, we just saved another $0.10 and then you go in front of the whole group and you go, boom, Jack did this. And what does Jack feel? Jack feels great to he wants to do it more. So he wants to do it more like positive feedback. That's like one of the things that I always like think about is like, so like we're all entrepreneurs, like all the people in my group still are all entrepreneurs, but they're still coming. And then they have an idea. Well, the scariest thing for me is like, if they have an idea and they leave my space. So it's like, if you got to go, you got to go. And it's like, can I invest in that? Can I like, how do I keep you? Right? Because like most entrepreneur is like the way I left my business is this, this is like actually a fucking hilarious story, dude. So I'm selling online ad space. Animality, this is you. If you guys see this, you're going to laugh your ass off. You don't know this, but Sheryl is CFO. She. I'm like, starting to crush it, dude. Like, I'm like, I know I'm making money. They like, I like they invited me. It's like, who's the best sales rep? Whoever was the best sales rep goes it near San Francisco. Free trip. I crush it, dude. One of the sales rep, Kirk, he's like, he's got a three month contract. He's cutting it into three different agreements for like April, May, June. Even though like usually it's like April through June to make like more insertion orders. So I was like holy shit. So I win this and then I'm like, okay, I'm starting to like, move up the ladder. I'm making like three grand, dude. I'm like fresh, like two years out of college. Did. And I'm like, And so I go to the CFO and I go like, look, if I outsell the business development, like head of business and the director of sales, right. You got to buy me a don't if I beat Melanie and if I beat any, you give me like, a coffee. So I roll up. I did like two, 200 grand or 150 grand or something in this month. And dude, I come up on the first and Cheryl's got a donut and a coffee for me. I'm like, dude, I did it out. So my bosses. And so I'm just like, feeling. So, you know, I'm like, they're making ten grand a month. I'm making three grand a month. Something's not fucking hard enough here. So this is wild. So I take the owner of the company short. I'm like, bro, sorry for how you day, but like, this is old school shit. I'm like, bro, let's meet up. So we going to do a commission plan, right? I make less money on a commission structure they built. So then at this time, I'm breaking all the rules. Dude, I'm working from home three days a week. Everyone else is. We're in the office working five. Because this is my stipulate. I'm working on the internet. I outsell everybody, I meet with the owner. So I got ten toes. I pay time off. Yeah, they will not give me what I want. And no, I desire because I know about sold the two top performers. Yeah I go out of the media, I just walk out of the meeting, I go up to the CFO and I go, hey, I'm taking my ten pay days off. And she's like, meeting, then go get. I'm like, no, that's how I became an entrepreneur because like, who is the company that I was working for was unwilling to facilitate a space for me to perform for them. It was so frustrating. So then I went out. I fucking did it. Then I lost 100 grand. Holy shit. And now we're here. But you know what I mean. That's what pushed me. And so that's why I, like, create like a really nice space for everyone to interact in my space is because I know how I felt. You incentivized performance. Yeah. And so, like you and your entrepreneurs, you out there, any entrepreneur you're out there like, and someone is unwilling to give what you want. Just be nice and you know, earn that. Like if you are actually like the way I proved it was a down in coffee from the CFO like I never had. Like, if you can get that information and you are performing, then just put it out there and if you're not able to financially do it well, then figure out how to save some money. Man. Right. I read track your, you know, like million dollar blueprint, figure out how to like budget and stuff like this is basic shit. That was a fucking awesome story. My next question that I have for you, you were talking about like, how you got to go hard in the paint and you can have fun, but like when it's time for business, you gotta like, buckle down. And you had talked about early in your entrepreneurship career or your suggestion to early entrepreneurs is the time is the like difference maker? What habits do you implement in your daily life that provide the foundation for productivity and being able to do those ten 12 hour days? Damn or secret sauce coming out okay. So, so like for me, I think like the number one important thing for me is to, like, follow my morning routine. If I'm out at someone else's spot, then I gotta figure out how to do my routine there. But like me, for me, it's like. So I wake up, I have a shower. Okay? Immediately I have a shower. I go out and I pour my lemon water. So like, I like alkalinity. So I'm gonna have my lemon water. Boom. Step two. Step three I got the kettle going on at the same time. I have a tea. I'm not looking at my phone when I first wake up. You know what I mean? I'm just following a routine. The things that make me feel good. Water, cool. Cleaning my body, tea, I don't know, I like tea like I used to like I going to do the coffee here and stuff, but like, I don't know, coffee just doesn't get it going for me. So I just follow a specific regiment. Like I have ten tasks and I follow those ten things. And then I answer my day, you know, working from home, it's like kind of challenging, you know, for a lot of people like, you know, I used to have the homies come back to my spot. It's like noon or one and they're stopping by my house and I'm like, fuck you doing here. I'm working. And, you know, people like, don't realize that, like, just because you work at home. But I have to follow that process every day. If I don't follow that process, I'm not as productive. Like and I said to anybody out there watching, it's like there's no such thing as perfection, right? We're like doing positive additions and like revising the way that we interact with the world every day. But like, I'm just following that process every morning and that that allows me also for me, like, don't put all meetings like for me, like I have like impact meetings. So like on Tuesdays I meet with my team. On Thursdays I meet with full team. Outside of those on I have a Friday with just the boys where we just kind of like get lit Friday, have a couple beers and just reflect on what we did. But I don't like stack my whole day like if you're out there like, you know, you got to have like all the calls, like you're young entrepreneur and you got to have like your whole fucking day. Like it's good to like, do that. But like, for me, I don't have to do that no more. But I have to follow my routine. If I don't follow my routine, then like the days, like I get like four out of ten. But if I follow the routine, it's a ten out of ten. Good advice. Yeah. Just routine. Is this, this obviously is in your first business. What other business have you had before this one, dude? Okay. So, like. Yeah, when I got out of college, I worked for, like, this, branding company, and it was like, crazy. I was in third year college professional selling, and they were like, internet marketing, and I'm like, What's internet marketing? Okay, we're talking like there is no internet marketing. We created internet marketing. And so like once I did that, I was just like went on my own, lots of money. And then from there I did affiliate marketing for 15 years. So that was my first business. What does that entail? An affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is like kind of like an amalgam. You know how people like do like I said, genetics are all these MLMs, MLM, MLM being multi-level marketing? Okay, so like affiliate marketing is very similar to MLM. So like but on MLM you have to own the product. So like I said, Gen X is like one of those. So I get someone else to buy. Then I get a commission for that. So affiliate marketing is I, I get paid a commission for all these different brands if I create a new lead or sale for them. Gotcha. So I did that for 15 years. Then I moved to America in 2017, and I was like, how I'm going to keep doing affiliate marketing. This is fine. Straight. Like it's it's one of the hardest niches like when when CBD. So the farm bill got approved in 2018, I found out it was CBD like two days after the farm because in affiliate marketing everyone's fine. The next big thing was the farm bill. Farm bill. It's like put through the government where it's like all the agriculture, everything that exists within, like even EBT is like in, in, in the farm bill. So basically it's like a signature. And so what they did is they brought hemp off of a CSA, like, you know, like, what is that, a schedule one. So hemp was like on a schedule one, don't call me on that. But like it was like you couldn't do hemp. So you brought him into the farm. Bill and we seen it affiliate marketing. And all of a sudden I got like these affiliates, like, people are basically driving traffic for all these offers I have. And I was like, Holy shit, do you like CBD? I'm going to get back in the cannabis space. So we created a CBD company, Everyday Optimal cbd.com. We were like one of the first brands. We're partnering with a guy, Alex, really good at SEO. So we went from like zero, like what was it like Sara to 100,000 and like six months like monthly, right. Like that's just the reoccurring now. And then from there everyday optimal, I started noticing that cannabis was starting to like we can't actually sell cannabis at this point like we could, but we did. Mr. Hemp flower. Mr. Hemp Flower was a brand where we sold hemp flower which is a non intoxicating form of cannabis. So like you have like marijuana and you have hemp but they're all part of like cannabis. So we started selling like you could like buy like hemp flower. It's like really high in CBD, low in THC. So you like I smoke and I'm like I feel like kind of like a lot of that. And and so we did that. We went from like 0 to $250,000 and like per month. Yeah. Like in 14 months. So then, you know, it took like first month was like five and then it was like 15. I was like 30, but like within like 14, 16 months we got to $240,000. And that's just like happening in Vermont. And we were doing SEO based on like this. It was like because like cannabis, you know, it knows what's going on. So we were doing like, is CBD legal and Oklahoma is CBD and Arkansas is CBD legal on this. And so we created like a huge library of like all these articles because everyone's like, oh, I want to get some CBD, visit legal. And so like they'd all of a sudden we had serious like thousands of people coming because Google is wanting to like reward websites that are educating the consumers on these things, then I, was part in another company, called, Endless Distribution. And we had like two brands, we had, legal and we had Fitz Fitzgerald and they Fitzgerald was like the vape and then legals was the CBD. And I partner with a guy, Zach, he worked for, Altria ultra. Altria like the people that own like, the cigaret company. She was like the number one rep in, like, Kansas City. And so he knew that I knew about weed. So then we created endless distribution. We went, I don't know, there we went from like 0 to 600 stores in like 12 months, 14 months, 16, something like that. I don't know, it's all like so we did that and then we exited from all of that and I just basically went and I was like, okay, I'm gonna do my own thing. So I created a distribution company, and that's how I found like the big, big, big winner was like. So I was like, every department there was me for, like, on my fifth project now. But the last project was like, the big hit is like basically I had a great group of marketers. I'm a great marketer, but I focused on, I don't know, dude. I remember sitting in Mr. Campfire and we would have like 30 strains and I'm like opening the bags, you know, I'm in the back room just like. And every stream smelled different and like, what the hell is going on? And like, obviously with cannabis, you kind of like figure that out, but it's like then all of a sudden there was starting to be talk that like, you have a transgenic nerve here, and when you smell cannabis, the way it interacts with your nose and your nerve, you can actually like dial it in. So I dialed in, smelling the weed and it was like, so indica like, sits at the bottom of your nose. Hybrids like here. And then Stevie's up here when she start to like, figure that out. It's like they're culture beings, but like, terrapins are like essential oils, you know, anything like. Yeah, like limonene or pinyin. And pine means like pine. Limonene is like lemons. I was like, man, all this stuff smells different. And then this dude, Max, he came out with, Trichomes Institute, and it was just like, you can actually smell weed and tell the effects, and nobody's thinking about this yet. So I, like, started doing these courses and I'm out of Philly market. I'm just doing like, those other, like, projects. I get to this point where I go out on my own and I start growing all these bud tenders and I'm like, dude, tell me what this weed does not like. We don't know. I'm might give me something good for sleeping like we don't know. So I launched, I got the the packaging and everything ready for Paradise. And then this group approached me and we took this company from 0 to $100 million per year in, like, 18 months. Well, like, they're probably doing, like, quarter billion now. Like, I'm like a year old shit. But like I created that market. So like, this is not my first rodeo industry for lack of better terms. Yeah. And now it's like kind of like I'm going to, like, just probably mess with cannabis for a hot minute here. But we do have like a new product coming out for the next not announced two, three, five years. But I want to get into like some other parts of cannabis, that people haven't even thought about yet, but I can't like put that on the pot yet. Yeah, no, I can't put that on the pot, dude. But like, we're like, probably like another three steps where I can keep making money in this. But outside of that, I think, like, you know, I'm going to get back to my Islander kind of thing from a small island like a town of 1300 people graduated to like 13,000, 400,000. Now I'm out here in America, but like, I like, get my hands dirty. So I want to, like, build a hobby farm and then kind of figure out how to do, like eco tourism as well. Yeah, that's like that. Yeah. Like eco tourism. Like I'm in Asheville, one of the most, like the oldest mountain range Appalachian Mountains. I want to like, have like a huge, like, cannabis farm and then have, like, all my goats, my chickens, my rabbits, my boars, whatever. And then people come through and they're like, oh, I got five Airbnbs or like five little mini places and do eco tourism. And then like, that would be like kind of like my life is fulfilled. Like, okay, cool, I did the marketing, but like what I really want to do is get my hands and my feet dirty and kind of get to that. So I, I'm just going to ride the cannabis thing. I going to psilocybin. Like we'll just like based on how things are going. But I would like to get in like this functional muscles jogger alliance me all this. It's like cannabis market is like let's say it's 200 million people in America. Functional mushrooms is like 20 million people. Like, why do I want to fuck with a niche that's, like, so small and just emerging, right? Yeah. That's funny. I don't know if we talked about that at all, but that's like very similar plan for me as well as like exiting this. I'm purchasing the land out in Panama doing, which is funny that you said you spent some time in Panama. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was stoked. When you're like, you visit, like 18 years behind it. Two years? Yeah. Just like it's a butts up against the national forest. Like I'm big into. Like, I want to have this fully sustainable property with no inputs, like growing my food on property, having like a community of, like, thought leaders and like minded people. I bought it outright. So like the end of the day, I'm trying to make money off of it. But at the end of the day, if I can get the right people, I'll just give the fucking lotto and then want to build like a sick community where like people are coming together, whether it's like creating businesses or like coming up with ideas to kind of like a rework, but on your property. Yeah, like, hey, we work, but I'm less of a nutjob than, Adam knew him, you know, he. Yeah. How did, like, build a, like, how to build an IPO and make it go away real fast? Yeah. He, So he just did that with Selena, too. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's like this massive hostile. Oh, he's just taking. We were to hostels. Yeah. And, well, they just like, I guess they. So they went public. They pumped him, dumped like investors. Just fucked the the big investors just fucked all the, you know, little guys. And so typical Adam Neumann like, pulls out, makes a bunch of money and fucks everyone else. But yeah, they're right next door to my property. And my mentor helped them like, build their first location, which was in Petoskey and Panama. And those were all Peninsula right next door I'm building. So there's already that kind of like community of entrepreneurs. But I want to bring together like more entrepreneurs and have like a little not a we were like a jungle Silicon Valley. Yeah. One time is like one of the places to do it. They're like a it's like beautiful country 100%. And like, just I like surfing, yoga. I like, like all the eastern philosophy stuff and like, what do you think? Like, I meant you said something about a mentor. Like, how important do you think, like mentorship is like as a, as an entrepreneur, like having mentors. Yeah. Well it's like I would my mentor gave me this advice, but it's like, do you are you on the 40 year plan or are you on the five year plan like, you can't hit your goals? Like, why did I enter entrepreneurship? Why did I put in all this time? Yeah, to I love entrepreneurship, but why do I put all this time into a business like it was? Because I don't want to work for 60 years. So I in my brain looking big picture was like, how can I achieve the amount of money that I need to support the lifestyle that I want to live every single day in the fastest amount of time? And that was not through. Like learning these things through my own trial and error and process, I was like, let me find the person that is embodying the life that I want to live in, just to drain the knowledge out of his brain as fast as possible. Exactly. So I went down and moved down to. I found that guy who lived in Panama, and I went down and moved into his house. He was actually moved there to be with your mentor? Yeah, yeah, I had been building the company for two years. We were doing like a couple million dollars a year at this point. I ended up getting fucked over by doing this. I, like, left, you know, when the cats are away, the mice will play, which he helped me out a lot with. But my when I said to my partners at the time was like, there's this guy that I think can help us, like, get through this plateau that we're in right now. Like, it's very important that I go next to him because he is going to help us scale this business up. So they were like, yeah, that's great. We'll run the business like stateside while you go do that. So I already moved in with this guy and like helped him out with a bunch of stuff, build trust with them was like trying to be more of a giver than a taker. And after like, seven months of being on his doorstep, like just fucking around with him, bro, I'm here again. He's like, oh, welcome back. I did like, yeah, after the first time I met him, I was there two weeks later and he was like, yeah, you can like get mentorship for me. And he has all these properties throughout Panama. So he's like, I mean, just leave on the couch if you want. And like, I don't even think he knew his knew my name. The first like couple months and then like started helping him out was like, you know, trying to give him value. And now eventually I was like, you know, six, eight months later, like, you want to take a look at my business. He got involved. Now he's like one of the biggest shareholders of my company. But he came back and was like, yeah, he he came back and was like, yeah, those partners that you got, they're going to fuck you over. And three months later, after he told me that, I was like, no, no, no, they're fine, blah, blah, blah. And like three months after he told me that, like, this guy's intuition is so high, exactly what he said happened. And he helped me get out of that pickle. And that's how I ended up moving to Charleston. The business was at Florida at the time. So through the settlement agreement and blah, blah, blah ended up moving up here and basically restarting the business, which looking back, like getting fucked over by them and like separating from them was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was like really limited in my entrepreneurial, like creativity, because I was trying to be a good partner and like adhering to these guys that weren't entrepreneurs at all that had been kind of implanted within my company because of a person who did. That was actually one of the biggest things that I learned, too, is that, like, you can't have too many chefs in the kitchen. Yeah, I can in my entrepreneurial career until like, you know, 3 or 4 years ago, I had like, you know, I love business partners. I'm all about it. But like, if every cook wants to be in the kitchen, it's just like, there's so much like, oh, are we going to have daily meetings? We gotta do this. You I do that. It's like, that's great. But once I went on my own and then I created the entrepreneurs in my circle, that's when shit fucking took off. It was. And that's what happened to me. Like, everyone wants to cook. Everyone's like, well, I got this idea, I got this idea. And it's like, you can't actually get any ideas because there's conflict between five people. And I felt that same way, like I had this entrepreneurial vision I had built the company for, like, I spent all this time like putting the things in place to start the company, then as like a young guy, I met this, you know, other mentor that I had, and he was like, let me give you 50 grand to like, jumpstart your business. So at that point I'm like, where's the dotted line? Let me sign. And didn't really look at the like, you know, the stipulations that came with that. And he implanted these two people like, these will be good partners for you. But it was really like watching his investment. And I still love the guy. The guy the guy gave me the money. He didn't have any, like, mal intent from it, but these guys were just employees of his company that he was going through a merger. He broke them off, put him in to watch my investment, and they were like, you know, when they first came on with me, they're making $500 a week. That first year that they were with me, each of them made over 200 grand. So like they were catapulted and like, it sounds like a good clickbait how I took someone from 500 a week to 200 grand a year and I'll be like, I like where that is a badge, right? Every person I've ever done business with ends up getting rich like being a part of this, like vision. But I have a problem with, like, being kind of a yes man and like, letting trying to like, empower people too much and letting them encroach on my vision. And that it's like starts going out of my control. So that's what happened with them. And I've learned my lesson. I like what you're saying there, though. It's like so like for me, you know, as an entrepreneur and then like leading, you know, like nine other VP's and like, building your company is like, so it's like, how do you like, have everyone validated? How do you have everyone feel heard? But then also like making your moves, right, because you have all this perspective. And so like for me, you know, I love perspective, but I also know my lane. So it's like I can be impressionable in a conversation and like take a lot of value out of that and then bring it into this. So it's like, you know, it's it's the opposite of like selfish, you know, it's like you're listening to everybody and everybody's got great ideas, but like, who knows how to fucking execute, who knows how to make money. It's like, so that's how you got to roll it, right? It's like, it's like you, you're like, okay, cool. Like you're making people rich, but like, but you're also taking their perspectives and then like kind of formulating it like that because you're the leader. Yeah. And you got to take the ego out of it. And it seems like you have no ego and that's why you're successful. You got to have no, like, dude, I definitely got an ego and I got to keep doing it. I got all those things right and human being. But you had to remove it from your decisions and yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. And like if I want to have an ego, I have that ego with my girl. Right. Or like, you know, like or with my boys, you know, and like, just like kind of shoot the shit and get that out rather than, like projecting it on your team 100%, like, you know, definitely no ego when you said you were in this company like that, got to 100 million. What lessons did you learn from like being in something at that scale? Dude, it was like fucking badass, honestly. Like, some of the like the biggest challenges in that was like scale, right? And like for casting. So like, you know, okay, where do you need like 50 grand and it's like 150 grand and like, oh, we're advertising on meta. You know, we're spending like 100, 100, $50,000 a day, like 3 to 4.5 million a month. And like with those mechanisms, you know, comes like market saturation. So like, it's hard to egg understand what the scalability is. So you know, it's like I'm like we're using like Tableau through like Salesforce all the forecasting tools. So like when I'm like that was the hard part. It was like scalability. And then you know like I'm talking to like 80 to 100 growers in, in America. Like they're growing CBD far. And like the scalability is tough because like for me, you know, as the procurement like I'm procuring like I think I like send like 5,000 pounds of cannabis through the USBs last year like a lot of bud and and and then to be like interacting. So the digital team's telling me like here's the forecast. And then they're like therefore cast is off. It's actually like more. So then I have to go and procure more product. Well guess what? You can only grow so much product. So like I'm trying to like be this middleman in the sense of like the digital team and the growers and the growers can only grow so much than the digital team can do this. So like having the ability to, like, use my intuition to take outside of it, that was the hard part was like scalability. And I fucking did a great job at it. Like, we literally crossed it, crushed it. But yeah, like some of the things I learned also is like, you know, I really like, admire like the processes and the tools. Right? So like we would use like Clickup clickup is like a process based thing. So like everyone's in there, but it's like so a product comes in to the warehouse, it's a brand new product comes to the warehouse. So it needs to have a label made. It needs to have the bottle. It has to have feedback. You need to get your certificate of analysis. So like you had like Clickup had like 20 stages and you take it to stage two, stage two would notify automatically all the people that needed to be on that task. Then it went from task to to task three. Then it would notify those people. Okay, cool. We've got all the code. Now we got to put this on the label, blah blah blah blah blah. So like the prep like to streamline things at $100 million Company. You can't just like not have like those tools like there's turnover, right. You got new staff coming in, old staff leaving all this stuff. But if you don't have all of those tools like, okay, Etsy comes in and she's on task three, well, how does she know what task three is? But you're in Clickup. It's bound. She gets a notification or email done. So like having those kind of like processes and tools and automation made it like ability to scale so like processes. But that was like the hardest thing with like scalability. It's like, dude, this is the first time in my life where, you know, in 18 minutes we went from 0 to $100 million, and I'm the person procuring the product and then interacting with all the growers to, like, coordinate, you know, thousands of pounds and then getting it to the facility. It's tricky. It, you know, and that's a good segue to my next question. I have a kind of a love hate relationship with technology because like, you can have these products with all these features, but unless you implement them, they're kind of useless and they're just like burning cash. What are like must have websites or pieces of technology or like things that you utilize that if you went to another company, you'd be like, these are things that we got to get great questions in. What do they do? Yeah, I'm going to be basic on this one. Slack. You know, internal communication was slack just to have like all of your departments like, you know, like I have like a formulating channel, I have a fulfillment channel, I have a customer service channel and all there's only the key members in those channels. So like slack, it's great for internal communication. A big one that I like to use is notion. So notions like a project management tool where you can basically like it's kind of like click up at like more big level. So like you have all the granular tasks. Well, notion is like has like the bird's eye view. It has like every department. And it's like, say I need you to do something, Jack. I just like going in notion. I create a task tag you, you get a notification, boom. Then I don't have to think about anything. Like I don't have to like, think about, like, oh, I gotta follow up with this follow up that to this. It's just automated, like you and I were talking about like HubSpot with your sales, right? It's like automating an accountability. So it's like once you get to, like, a big level, like you have to have those tools like notion slack, like, you know, HubSpot or something like a CRM. If you're doing like that, we use like ship Station, which is like our shipping. So like my websites, I would say, don't hate me for this, not Shopify, WooCommerce, more for the customization. And then so WooCommerce attaches to like, all these like different tools and like, so a sale comes in, boom. It goes to like my ship station, my, the fulfillment team is, like, notified that there's a new order. Then they ship it, and then after that, then it's automated email to the customer with that shipping information. Zapier is a big one for, like, if this, then that. Basically, like Zapier, you just pull in the APIs of all the different things. So like, there's like a manual task that I have to do. I don't have to do it. I create the content for the email boom that calls this, and then that happens. Otherwise, it's just like a lot of manual work that you can't scale. Yeah. Do you use any tools for like analysis of your data, your marketing data? And like optimization tools or anything like that. Yeah. So when it comes to like data, it's a really interesting one. So what we do is like we download the reports and then shout out ChatGPT. You know, basically like what we, what you, us as humans, you know, like I can like break down all the data. So like I have milestone. So like we just launched this new part of the website. How did our conversion rate. Well, I, I have all of this documented and, and I just upload it to ChatGPT and I say give it all the prompts. I'm not going to give you guys all my prompts, but, you know, prompts. And then it literally will like make a visual database. And so I can make. So I think like using like AI for really condensed Excel spreadsheets or like all this data, like I don't have to have a data analysis, I can have a data analyst, but like they're just using to do. Yeah. And then it makes it all visual. But yeah, there's like if you think about like a tool for like data, like all of our data is like put into, what we use as like looker studio. So Looker studio is like a tool within Google. So it attaches its API to Facebook like meta. And so and then it attaches to WooCommerce. So then it has like how much media like how much do they spend that day. What how many sales that I get. What's my return on ad spend. What's my average cost per click. How many impressions I got. But then it breaks it down by AD so I can like literally see every single ad. This ad spent $70 today and it made $300. Oh cool. My return on ad speeds like for now I have this other ad spent $200, paid zero sales. So it pulls all that data and I can just like I mean, so Looker Studio is a huge one for the data. And then Google Tag Manager when you're doing an ad through meta, how much is like a good budget per week to test something that would actually go back to my affiliate marketing days, so to say, like I had, say I get paid$100 per, per acquisition, right? So I would generally spend 2 to 3 times that. So like it just depends on what your acquisition cost. And if you don't know the acquisition cost will you're going to be in the trouble spot. You know, for me, how do you figure that out if you don't have that data. Well I'd say like ask someone like me, maybe ask them like you. So you can figure that out just by, like, without running a test on on it. You can, like conceptual. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would conceptualize it, but like, it also like, okay. For example, like there's like high ticket, like, phone sales where people are buying like bizarre opportunities when maybe I spent $1,000 because my payouts like 5000. So it's like I think it comes down to like the cost of the product. It's like in cannabis, you know, on average, like we our average like ticket is between like 70 and$110 depending on the day. So I like and that means like, so someone comes in and they make a purchase. They're not just making a pre-roll, you know what I mean. They're buying like at eat some gummies and a pre-roll. Yeah. It's tricky I would say like, you know, I spend between 100 and $200 a day just to start. I don't really, you know, like, just to like, feel the market and like, literally like my CTR. I'm always just looking at CTR or if I'm getting good engagement right. So your, click through rate. So someone like, clicks my ad. Holy shit. I got a 9% conversion or CTR. So they land on my page. Will my conversion rate from there is 1%. So then I will like use another tool like this. Hotjar. Basically Hotjar does is it like records the consumer screen. So when they come they click the add. My CTR is high. Good intent. They come to the landing page. No one's no one's buying or like 1% or buying 100 records that. So I can actually see that the way people interact with it. Like they could scroll, scroll, scroll. I can see where they click, what they read and then it heatmaps it. So it's like an actual heatmap so I can see where people are engaging the most time and where they're bouncing. And so like if my intents high with the conversion slow, then I know it's my landing page. So I got to improve my messaging. That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've had difficulty like with my product. So I have a super high ticket item, which was I minimum $100,000, like per contract. Yeah. Really long sales cycle. 12 to 18 months sales cycle, zero competition in the space with a lot of opportunity, but a very small niche of decision makers that are making the decision on that opportunity. And they're extremely hard to target, like golf course superintendents and HOA property manager. So yeah, how do you talk those people. Exactly. And that's I've, I've had I have been able to do it in no other wet and cold college. You know, just like directly marketing to them, which is like takes a lot of labor and a lot of resources and a lot you get a 12 to 18 months sales cycle. You do it just to get to, like, you got to get through the gatekeeper and then you like finally it's like you get to the decision maker and it's like, oh, it's not actually the decision maker. I got to go to the next channel. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine doing that. I mean, yeah, so I've like tried to and like it hasn't really worked, but it would be so like if we could like turn our process and automate it. And you know, business is great when you don't have to utilize people. But we haven't figured that out yet. Yeah I like like for us we also do like retail like so we want retail shops to come and promote Paradise. And their shop. Well how do I target all these store owners. Right. Well I just target people that like canvas or that, you know, Facebook's algorithm, once you get like five sales a day, it starts like it's like, oh, we knew the type of person you'd like to target, but then how do I get retail people? Well, those are the people that are just there. Right. So you're just trying to find other like distribution channels through interesting. Yeah. Like so the retail people, they're like, I've seen this Paradise ad like 40 times. I'm a store owner. But like how do you do that in your market? It's tricky. Like how I make sense. Yeah. Or like referrals. Yeah. Referrals are big. It'd be nice if we could figure it out, but having, dialed that in quite yet, what is your definition of success? That was my last question. I would say, like, you know, my definition of success right now is, like, really privy to, like, how my team feels like if my team is, like, happy and they're performing and they're doing their things, then that's success. But like, you know, how do I like define what success is for the team? Right. It's like to have like specific SOPs, you know. So like I think if you're like out there like you need to have like, SOPs like so like, for example, like I have some staff, they come in and I'm having them trim cannabis. So I've trimmed like 2,000 pounds in my life. So I'm like, I take every strain. I had all 30 strains and I seen how what the average time was to trim a pound. So then some staff come in and they're like, hey, you get your default wage is like 15 an hour or something. It's like, if you are better than this, you get a raise. If you're lower than this, we got to figure out how to improve and if not where, maybe we're not a match. So like SOPs and KPIs within your business is like fundamental, right? So like I don't know if that like kind of ties into that. But like the biggest lesson or I could rephrase the question, what's the what piece of advice would you give someone that starting out as an entrepreneur? If I was starting out as an entrepreneur, you know, it just like depends on like if you like love what you're doing right now. Like, if you don't love what you're doing, well, then go find something you do love. I, I've just always like marketing and sales. And that evolved to like, you know, branding with fortune 505,000 to then moving into affiliate marketing and like building leads and customers like I think I've probably generated like 5 million customers in my career, like, you know, like probably like 10 or 15,000 leads. And I love doing that. I, you know, I like that transaction. It's just like, I like making money. So when you're like doing that, but if you're not like enjoying what you're doing, then figure out how to do that. You know, like, I don't know I don't know how to explain it. That's great advice. Yeah. Are there any like, business models that you would say are like a good intro, like business structure to, start off as an entrepreneur, what I see like, people like bringing ideas to me and they're like, I'm going to manufacture this product. I'm just like, dude, like top down, no manufacturing. But is there anything like any specific structures like I love, like the, the affiliate marketing as you described it, that's a sick model. But I think that like, yeah, if you're really an entrepreneur and you are really wanting to like, figure out how to make money, get into affiliate marketing and like focus on some of you, like, like, so if you like, like running or like you have kids like I remember when like I don't have any kids, but like I remember I went to Clickbank and I picked a niche potty training like everybody wants to do. Like you got to figure out how to potty train your kids. So I did that, started making some money, but like figure out, like if you like fishing, sell fishing reels, make a blog like start making content and focusing on like that and then trying to figure out, like alchemy, like, you know, for in the cannabis space, I like created this marketing angle that never existed before. So like kind of like if you can create like two different niches and bridge them together, it's like we're in 2024. There's so much alchemy happening right now. It's like I'm trying to think about like how to like, dial this in and like give some like good guidance, like, but like build your own offer. That's like, I got some Facebook groups I, oh, I look on my phone here in a minute, but like there's a couple Facebook groups, whereas like you, you're a young entrepreneur and you're trying to figure out how to like do this. There's people that have already done this and it's literally like, so for me, I like cannabis. I create a cannabis brand. You got to have capital, right? So how do you build capital when you promote other people's products and you get commissions for that 100% and and like it's like, so you got to like you got to grind it. And I don't like the word grind because like, grinding doesn't sound fun, like like Iselin and stuff, but like, we're living in 2024. And to become a successful entrepreneur, you got to stand out in the crowd. So like, like I said earlier, like go to Reddit, you start seeing all the pain points of all these different things. We'll find out what your passion, what it's like. Fisher was like, what's the number? It's the top five pain points of fishing roots. Cool. Build a fishing reel. It's like that work. That's sick advice. No, that's really good advice. And now I'll have you send the, groups to Samuel. Plugged them at the bottom of the episode in the bio, too. Yeah. There's like there's like this dude. It's like Alex, did he literally Alex Ramsey? No, no, no, I like I like it. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Like school like that. You say, I know it's another Alex guy Santana or something like that, but like, basically teaches people how to build an offer. So it's like how to like get Shopify, how to integrate it, like how to get fulfillment, how to do that. But everything is dropship these days. So you like the overhead of like starting your own offer is like minimal. The hardest part is like, dude, if you're in 2024 and you were a young entrepreneur and you don't not know how to make a website or like how to like do these things, like, dude, I don't know, just ask the AI and he'll tell you, like, you know what I mean? It's it's not rocket science. You know, it's like, I, I remember my old business partner, his like daughter was like two and she figured out how to turn the phone off airplane mode so she could play games. So the two year old can figure out how to turn that airplane mode off. Like, dude, there's like, communities, like, they're teaching people like this. Yeah. No, I think it's really good advice. And, I mean, you are the, in my opinion, the definition of an entrepreneur. Yeah. Oh, mad respect on that. And, I mean, your success is inspiring and I congratulate you on everything that you've done. Like, it's super clear that your knowledge base is extensive. And I think people are going to really like this podcast if they want to reach out to you or like they're interested in your services, like where can they get more information? Where can they find you? You know, great question. LinkedIn. Probably my number one spot. Like I said, my my IG just got banned. But on LinkedIn, Facebook, you can find me at Michael D Rich. You want, you know, if you want to reach out to me directly, I can put my phone number out there, but you can do Michael at a distribution company.com. Go check out the brand unlock Paradise. But, yeah, like, you know, LinkedIn is kind of my jam. So if you want to, like, reach out to me, or if you know Jack personally or you're within the network like I'm here. Hell yeah, man, I appreciate you coming on. This. Been awesome. Yo. This is thank you so much, man. This is a great pod All right guys. Well, that concludes this episode of Shakin’ Hands. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any more suggestions for guests or questions that you want to be asked, don't hesitate to reach out. But, otherwise, tune in next time for some more interesting conversations. So yeah. Absolutely.