Unknown Speaker 0:00
If you have a child with epilepsy, the last thing you want to do is go to Colorado and buy a bunch of indica. That’s really high in THC to give to that child. It’s the wrong medicine, right? Whereas if you have a PTSD soldier coming back from Afghanistan, he might really benefit from some of that. So you really have to look at the plant, look at what it’s producing and see how you can use it in the medical field.

Unknown Speaker 0:21
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro, and welcome to Titans of Industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I sit down with Brad Fausett, co owner and co CEO of green remedies Group, a cannabis cultivation and refinery company rooted in Arkansas. Brad talks about the difference between hemp and marijuana, how he consults with organizations all over the country to bring consistency and quality to the industry and how his PhD in soil chemistry gives him an advantage to create some of the best and most beneficial strains of cannabis. To meet vastly different medicinal needs, from CBD products to cannabis solutions for your pet, you will love this conversation covering all things

Unknown Speaker 1:08
green. And now let’s

Unknown Speaker 1:10
get to the episode. But before we do, it’s important to know that whether you’re a small business owner or the face of a multibillion dollar industry, your organization has a great story to tell, and content Titan wants to help you tell it. We are a digital content creation powerhouse built for the 21st century, providing all in creative strategic production post production and distribution services for at 360 degree 24 seven worlds. In our world, Titans are passionate, creative doers. They have the experience to take your project from start to finish, minimizing your involvement so you can focus on what matters most running your business. So if you’re ready to take your content, strategy and production to the next level, our Titans are ready to help. Now here’s my conversation with Brad

Unknown Speaker 1:58
Fossett.

Unknown Speaker 2:01
Brad, thank you for jumping on the podcast with us. I’m excited about this one, our Titan of cannabis, as I like to call it. Just walk me through the process. How did you end up in this role that you’re in right now which is which is kind of an interesting story as well. So we’ll get to that. But how did you get into the cannabis world?

Unknown Speaker 2:19
Well, thanks for having me. It’s a really long story. I had a an interest in agriculture as a kid and always wanted to be in agriculture. And when I was in college really focused on soils and row crop production and actually got my master’s degree in soil chemistry and most of it was revolving around rice because here we are in rice country. You know, it’s college. So there’s a lot of cannabis in college and I ended up getting kind of involved with a lot of the cannabis back then. And a lot of people over time started coming to me and asking me for pain management into life. care you know, just trying to smooth out the services, you know of the pain that they had to deal with every day. And I think that’s really where you know my start and my interest in it started.

Unknown Speaker 3:12
So master’s degree in soil management, soil chemistry, soil chemistry, and that took you into the agriculture world. Yeah working in the rice industry and I mean so

Unknown Speaker 3:23
I was in rice and I got a job with Gerber foods and started working out in Colorado and of course cannabis is really big in Colorado and then I came back to Arkansas and I worked for a fortune 500 company here and and it was a great experience but I was still involved in cannabis the entire time I was still had people calling me going, you know, I have lung cancer and I can’t smoke this joint that I got from my buddy, what can I do with it and I would help them make brownies or help them make gummies or, you know, get it to where they could get the medicine that they needed. Most of these people did not want to take a lot of the They’re really strong prescriptions. And this was something that was mild and manageable for their everyday life. So I mean, again, it was all agriculture. You know, I really loved looking at the bird’s eye view of agriculture and seeing if we could fine tune the agricultural process here and make it a little better. What I really wanted to do was reduce pesticide and herbicide use and really dial in the fertilizers, you know, through a variable rate and use drones to help do that, you know, we were doing LIDAR and multispectral and hyperspectral analysis and overlaying these ortho mosaics of multispectral analysis over a LIDAR image, and by doing so we could fine tune our data points to where there was almost zero error. So we could see within centimeters and we could see bugs, we could see diseases, we could see them on big levels because we were up in the sky. And it wasn’t just drones, it was drones, planes, helicopters, satellites, it was any kind of data I could get. It was really more data analytics. Drones are just a great tool for it.

Unknown Speaker 5:03
Fascinating. So somebody who in college, learned a lot about soil chemistry, maybe grew some cannabis in the basement and ends up doing aerial surveillance and data analysis for correct. Some of the Lord, that’s an interesting journey for sure.

Unknown Speaker 5:20
So in 2014, I was at the Cannabis Cup in Denver, and I competed and I did really well. And then later on when Arkansas medical started coming up, we applied. We started that venture in 2016, so four years ago, and we’ve got a group and we have a dispensary license that we’re hoping will be issued soon here in Arkansas down in the Hot Springs area. We’re in the top 40. I have picked up several consulting gigs and some of those are with the cultivation. Some of the cultivators here. also deal with a lot of the cultivators in Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada. California, Arizona, I’m kind of all over the place these days. I even have business down in Baja, Mexico, for the CBD side because it’s really starting to take off in Mexico as well.

Unknown Speaker 6:10
I love it. Alright, so 2016 big year in Arkansas, the applications become available. But nationally, where was the national scope of medical cannabis and that whole industry at the time?

Unknown Speaker 6:24
Right, then, you know, you kind of had that transition on the west coast, from medical to recreational, you know, we’re still trying to catch up out here with the medical. And you know, my goal and my focus has always been medical more so than recreational. But cannabis is cannabis. So I mean, even on the recreational side, it has its benefits, especially from a tax revenue perspective and adding jobs and a new, a new form of business, right,

Unknown Speaker 6:48
like I live in Colorado until 2012. And it had just become legal there. And they were obviously on the front end of that.

Unknown Speaker 6:55
They weren’t Yeah, then when California where the front

Unknown Speaker 6:58
Yeah. So So kind of Give me just a brief timeline of, you know, the front end innovators in the states that took it first and then kind of where we’re at here in Arkansas now and the rest of the nation, wow,

Unknown Speaker 7:11
the the whole industry is shifting, you know, I mean, the more and more momentum this industry gets the bigger you know, the bigger players are starting to get involved. The mom and pops are starting to kind of go away and, and it’s a it’s a very money intensive, you know, industry. It takes a lot to grow and secure and manage in and comply with regulations. So it takes a lot of money. It takes the right people that can monetize that whole system. And so the mom and pops are kind of going away, they can’t really compete in some of this. I know, some of the guys that I consult with out in California, they were looking at a million dollars, you know, a license renewal, just for the renewal. And that’s, you know, you can’t do that as a mom and pop you know, So we’ve watched it kind of evolve. And now here we are in Arkansas. And it’s like in its nascent stages, like we were back in Colorado in 2012, and 2014. So it’s, it’s interesting. I’m really interested to see how it evolves here in my home state.

Unknown Speaker 8:15
And, you know, I’ve had minimal involvement basically from, you know, coming out to the farm and then seeing refinery, and yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:24
the refinery, see,

Unknown Speaker 8:27
but it’s not what a lot of people wouldn’t envision, as, you know, just kids in their basement. Putting together No,

Unknown Speaker 8:34
this is a high tech industry. Yeah, we’re real scientists. Yeah. And we have compounding pharmacists on staff and we run everything through the doctors and for the pet products, we try to get everything vet approved and and we try to do the right thing you know, we really want to help

Unknown Speaker 8:49
so break the industry down for me, it’s it’s a little bit complex. It’s kind of hard to wrap our minds around. I think as the lay person as a person, just kind of looking from the outside in and A lot of people there’s still a stigma with the industry. But if you break it down to not just dollars and cents, but kind of practical like how does the NRA come

Unknown Speaker 9:09
together before my grandmother died last year she you know, questioned me a whole lot about the same thing you know, like break this down for me, Brad, I just don’t know. So I think the easiest way to do that is to first do that clear draw the line between hemp and marijuana, it’s still cannabis it’s still part of the same family it still has a lot of the same medical benefits but you know, there is that line there. The the legalities of hemp is a little bit easier to regulate through and you know, marijuana is marijuana, it’s going to be highly regulated.

Unknown Speaker 9:41
So just real briefly, what’s the difference from hemp?

Unknown Speaker 9:44
So there one thing that qualifies me to grow a hemp crop versus American one a crop is the point 3% THC threshold. So if I break the point, 3% THC threshold I’m in marijuana if I am below point, 3% THC In hemp, I have hemp farms and you know compliance is always you know, top priority on those farms you’ve got a lot, a lot counting on that, that analytics. So cannabis, it has cannabinoids, there are many, many, many cannabinoids and each cannabinoid has a different medical benefit. But let’s think of it like a chain. If you pull on a chain, you know it’s a chain, right? It’s it’s all together it works. You start breaking the links up and taking one link out of that chain. The chain no longer works. And cannabinoids are very similar, you know, they like to be together and they work really well together as a medicine The moment you start breaking it apart, they don’t really work as well together. They call it the entourage effect. It’s actually coined by Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Russo actually, out of Seattle, both coined the entourage effect back in, you know, 2010 2011 somewhere in there.

Unknown Speaker 10:55
Interesting. I like to think of sort of the way it all works and the different strains and all this kind of stuff like apples, you go to the grocery store, you’ve got a bunch of different types of apples. Each Apple tastes a little different. If you don’t know anything about them, you’re not going to know which one you like better. Which one’s better for apple sauce versus apple pie or whatever. So is that kind of how

Unknown Speaker 11:16
well having grown a lot of apples for Gerber foods? Like that’s a great analogy. So yeah, you have the eating apples, you have the processing apples for applesauce or food, big products and then you have like the apples for apple juice, right? They are all very different. Yes. And cannabis is very similar to that.

Unknown Speaker 11:35
What’s the difference in certain types of cannabis or like how does it work differently kind of like sour apples versus sweet Okay,

Unknown Speaker 11:43
so it’s back to that cannabinoids, right and the different ratios of those cannabinoids so really what it comes down to it comes down to what’s called an interview science. You have to breed a plant to get the cannabinoid structures that help the the condition on the back end. So first For instance, if you have a child with epilepsy, the last thing you want to do is go to Colorado and buy a bunch of indika. That’s really high in THC to give to that child. It’s the wrong medicine, right. Whereas if you have a PTSD soldier coming back from Afghanistan, he might really benefit from some of that or if somebody’s coming off an opioid, he might really benefit from some of those higher THC. So you really have to look at the plant, look at what it’s producing and see how you can use it in the medical field.

Unknown Speaker 12:25
All right, now let’s walk through the process. How

Unknown Speaker 12:27
do we go from a seed to a plant that has the right makeup to a finished product walk me through kind of how that whole thing very, very, very long and complicated. And the reason the main reason for that is you’ve got an industry that’s based off of genetics in a basement so in you know the hemp for victory back in the 30s you know, they they had all this hemp and a lot of it was for medicine. Some of it was for rope, some moves for you know, but they had all this metal And that they were making back then out of it, and then they banned it well, when they banned it, you know, everybody went to their indoors basements, you know, back 40s, you know, wherever they could get away with it and not not be criminally prosecuted for it. So the over the years, they kind of changed the genetics so that they worked better in a basement setting or a bedroom setting or some closet, you know, short little plants that you know, produced exactly what they wanted. So now here, we have this industry kind of opening up and we’re, we’re basically left with that breeding program. And we really, what we find is that there’s so much genetic variability when we crack seeds that you have to do what’s called a fino hunt. So let’s say for instance, I cracked 100 seeds, I got 100 seeds in a greenhouse, and I’m cracking on them, seeing what’s in them, and I pick one out of that hundred, the rest of those 99 just kind of go away. They don’t have what I’m looking for, but that one might have what I’m looking for. So then that one gets pruned. treated real well goes into a cloning program, we produce a mass of the clones. And then from there we start our breeding. And that really allows us to dial in exactly which cannabinoids that plants going to produce that we’re looking for. And with the growth habits that we really want for whatever growing environment because sometimes you’re going to put it indoors or greenhouse and then of course, if attempt it needs to be able to sustain that outdoor heat and pests and diseases and everything else. So from that we take our, our flowers, and you know, for the dried the floral industry for the flower industry, we dry and cure really, really slow. So that’s a nice smokeable product. And then for the extraction portion of it, we take what’s left or even some of those those top buds and we start extracting either using ethanol or co2 or even butane can be used as a as a solvent and we pull all that oil off. And then we wrote to evaporate off anything that’s left over and get all the impurities out of it. There’s actually some chemistry techniques that we can use to really clean up the oil and make sure there’s nothing in there but the medicine that we want. And then that oil or that extract can now be used in a number of different products. For instance, you know, we do a sunblock and a sap and dog treats you know, out of the hemp and then on the THC side we do vape pens and gummy bears and you know, your typical thing.

Unknown Speaker 15:24
So, now that we’ve got this raw product, talk me through the process of what you do to turn it turn the oil and that raw product into your finished products. Is this something that happens in a processing lab or facility? How do we get there? So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:40
it’s very much a processing lab. It’s very much a cleanroom. So we try to make sure that when we’re processing that there’s, you know, no dust super clean, every every hair on your body is covered. We don’t want to have any of that kind of stuff in our product. We make sure everybody wears gloves. Especially right now with COVID and everything it’s really important to wear your face mask and your gloves as you’re working with these products and PBE super important in the lab, obviously.

Unknown Speaker 16:10
And that’s always been the case it’s always

Unknown Speaker 16:11
been not just a COVID-19 to COVID thing Yeah, but it’s always it’s always the case. And anytime you’re you’re selling stuff to the public, you want to make sure that you’re giving them you know the quality every time and that’s that’s one of the things that really sets me apart here in Arkansas is we have a lot of guys in the cannabis into they’re starting to get into the cannabis industry here. And they’re really looking at quantity more so than the quality and I really want to be that guy that everybody knows in the state as yeah that’s the quality

Unknown Speaker 16:44
and and not all CBD is created equal.

Unknown Speaker 16:47
Not all CBD not all THC, not any cannabinoid is created equal. That is

Unknown Speaker 16:51
correct. How do we determine or no good quality bad quality good grower bad grower?

Unknown Speaker 16:58
Well, unfortunately, labeling Requirements aren’t quite there. Now we’ve tried to do a really good job with our products to make sure that we put the ingredients in there let everybody know exactly what we do we have a story behind most every product in and I always feel I never released something until I feel good about it until I’m ready to give it to my mother. I’m not going to release it right so it’s a good good qualifier.

Unknown Speaker 17:21
Right.

Unknown Speaker 17:23
So I i’m really looking at all of those things to make sure that our quality is right that the products right before we ever get out there now I’ve seen a lot of people they’ll order isolettes from China who knows how pure that stuff is, if it’s really good, how much fillers in it and then they’re just making you know, their CBD products and selling probably a lot more of their products than I am all over the United States. They have a great sales team. They don’t have a great and a lot of quantity but they don’t have a good quality product in any time back to that chain of the cannabinoids. Anytime you try to break those links off, you’re going to lose some of them. Benefits of that medicine. Or for instance, I’ve got family members that are pilots and they’re really worried that they won’t take anything that I give them because they’re Oh no, if I test for THC at all I’m, I’m done. Okay, I totally get that. So there are some uses for the isolette. But you just don’t get the same benefits from just using the isolette I believe in the whole plant medicine and keeping it full or broad spectrum is what we call it. Full Spectrum being that first pass it’s like the first squeeze out of the out of the plant, and then further refined in it to a broad spectrum to kind of remove some THC get the CBD where we want it. That’s that’s really the best medicine out there. Once you go to isolate, not all isolate is even created equal. And that’s something that I’m actually working down in Arizona to help a really large company streamline the supply chain of a CBD isolate because they found after buying stuff off the market, nothing was the same. The quality just wasn’t the same. And it should be But it’s it just wasn’t.

Unknown Speaker 19:01
So how do we get there? How does the quality become consistent? And the same? Is that is that obviously not an easy process? But is it a manageable process?

Unknown Speaker 19:09
So we’re still in that transition from the garage, right? I mean, as we move in, and really get the right companies involved in this industry, I think we’re gonna see that evolution, we’re gonna see the regulator’s come in and actually say, Okay, this is how we want to, this is how we want to see it. This is how we want it extracted, this is how the consumables need to be. And once that’s laid out, it’ll just be the roadmap for us to follow. And I think we’re really looking forward to it in the industry in a lot of ways. I mean, nobody wants more regulations, but in the end, it’s going to help the industry and that’s really what what it’s about. So,

Unknown Speaker 19:41
so we’ve got a complex industry, with mad scientists and PhDs in you know, agriculture industries, kind of out there consulting and growing and putting this stuff out to market. If you look at it and take the word cannabis or marijuana or whatever you want to call it out of it. It’s a very Well run professional science. But there is

Unknown Speaker 20:03
so much science. I think a lot of people don’t realize how much science we really put into this. What we don’t what we really lack in the industry, and luckily enough, I’m with a group that that has this is that, that upper management, that real business acumen that gets you to the next level as a company. And without those people, you know, it’s just another grower in a basement again, you know, so luckily, I’m with a good group that has that structure has that accurate. I have an investment group behind me that believes in this and believes that this is the right medicine, it’s been really interesting to watch the evolution of even the investors how and how they learned the industry,

Unknown Speaker 20:44
back pain, all these things that people live with, sometimes chronically. Sometimes they’re isolated events. We go to the doctor doctor prescribes a medicine. Sometimes it’s an opioid we get hooked on the opioid Is there any kind of long term big picture relief that CBD products can help with some of that. And is the medical community. Afraid of that?

Unknown Speaker 21:06
I think there’s always going to be a place for the pharmaceutical community and the right, the right medicines, right? I think opioids will probably always be used and will always be needed in some way or another. I think we’ve over prescribed them. And I’ve seen I’ve had a lot of people actually come to me personally and go, Hey, I need some products to help me get off these pain pills. I just can’t seem to kick the habit of them. And, and the pre rolls and some of the THC products have really helped those those people get off of those. And I think the medical marijuana program here in Arkansas has the potential of really helping our Kansans kind of break that opioid cycle, you know, is the medical community worried about it? I would think they would be more excited. It’s another tool in the toolbox. You know, the endocannabinoid system is a very amazing system. We have our own system to take care of these, these these problems in our body. This this plant and all it does is activate that system by activity. Those internal processes really allow I think the the the doctors to have another tool in the toolbox,

Unknown Speaker 22:06
there’s still a stigma with the cannabis industry, for sure. I think a lot of the country has sort of accepted it. But there’s still a lot of people that it’s, this should not be right. And obviously certain states are still struggling with that on their own right. And then there’s the medical use versus recreational use. There’s so many reasons why this is sort of a stigmatized industry still, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:28
we could sit here all day and go through the conspiracy theories. But you know, when it comes down to is, there is a stigma, the war on drugs was a total failure, that should have never been a drug in the war on drugs. I think we could have completely eliminated the importation of all those drugs back in the 60s 70s and 80s. By allowing cannabis to be in the market, but it wasn’t and here we are, and, and now we’ve got to move forward with that. So the stigma that’s a really hard one, and that’s been a tough one for my family, too, because my family has been, you know, they’re they’ve got great jobs and they’re not ever going to take anything that’s illegal ever. And a lot of my family grew up believing that marijuana was a drug. And when they found out that I was in the cannabis industry, I had to kind of, well, this is him. This is for horses. This is for dogs, this is for people and then you have marijuana, you know, and so you had to really break it down for for these guys to get them to understand that, hey, this isn’t going to get you high. This isn’t going to alter your mind this is just going to relax your shoulders or this is going to take that ankle pain away. Or if you’ve got a horse, hey, go ahead and use this on its knees You know, we’ve got great horse products. So that’s, you know, you start breaking that stigma when you see those kinds of things happen, but to really help people then you have to really look at it and and try to break that stigma and and use the plant for what it’s here for.

Unknown Speaker 23:56
The industry is getting bigger, a lot of money behind it. money behind a fortune 500 companies trying to get their piece of that money and industry and innovation and new products to market. How big does this thing go? I mean, the alcohol industry obviously is huge right? players, right? I’m running the biggest Superbowl ads back when we had football free COVID and

Unknown Speaker 24:19
NASCAR just jumped on the cannabis wagon as well. They’re gonna start allowing some advertising. We’re just in some meetings out there for that. How big does it get? Well, there’s two different sides of that coin. You’ve got, you know, the alcohol comparison and the recreational marijuana. And I think there’s uh, you know, tax revenue is huge from something like that. And I think every state needs to look at that option from you know, legalizing recreational and putting it right in line with alcohol would be great for our tax revenue. From a medical standpoint, and from just an overall population health standpoint, not just for people But for our livestock and our food sources, I see cannabis in the endocannabinoid system really providing a lot more benefits than we’ve really given it credit for. And I think what you’re going to see over time as we get more and more cannabinoids into our system consistently maybe through a beverage or an edible or you know everyday consumables, we might have to start to have some of these cannabinoids added. We might see lower inflammation, we might see lower anxiety and lower stress rates and people maybe heart attacks will go down maybe strokes will go down. We don’t know. We weren’t allowed to really look at this for so long. And this is the first time we’re really getting able to put the science behind it but everything that I’ve seen and everything that I’ve I’ve really witnessed with my own eyes is that there has been nothing but good that has come out of this down to feeding our cattle hemp seeds or feeding chickens hemp seeds so now the cannabinoids are The meat and are part of the whole food supply in the food chain system. I think you’re gonna see a benefit in human populations from from consuming that. I think, you know, hey, happy cow is a happy cow, it’s gonna taste better, you know. And if it’s fed right and is happy, then it’s always going to be a better steak. And I think the same is true for chicken and plants and anything right? So the more we can get the cannabinoid in our food supply, the better we’re going to all be.

Unknown Speaker 26:34
And again, that’s just biological science. That’s

Unknown Speaker 26:36
just biological science, the endocannabinoid system, it’s everywhere. And this is the only plant that has cannabinoids.

Unknown Speaker 26:44
So if we were to somehow marry the, the benefit of that with another plant that doesn’t have stigma associated with it, there wouldn’t be an issue. Right,

Unknown Speaker 26:52
right. You know, there’s a lot of comparisons with hops and stuff like that. There are I think there’s some cannabinoids and hops and there’s, there’s some cards That have, you know, very limited, but there’s nothing that compares to cannabis on the cannabinoid concentrations and production and being able to pull that out of a crop and supply it to the population in general, I think you’re just gonna see benefits. I don’t think there’s really anything negative that’s going to come from that.

Unknown Speaker 27:15
All right, talk to me about some of the players in the industry. every industry has big players on a national level international level. I mean, are there certain people setting the standards around the country from a company standpoint or industry leaders, thought leaders, people that you pay attention to? Obviously, you’re consulting with a lot of these companies. So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:35
I have a lot of mentors. And some of these guys are incredibly smart guys. And they’ve been in the in the cannabis world for a long time as well. But as far as the companies go, you know, we had a big push by some really big Canadian companies to really build up their stock prices and try to make it go bigger and bigger. You know, Anheuser Busch was bought by constellation and constellation owns Have some very large grows probably the biggest in the world up in Canada and they’ve got some roots here in the United States. But it’s been a little different to get established here in the United States than it was in Canada. But as far as the real big runners that we’re still waiting, we’re still waiting for the big guys we really are. nobody’s really come out and clearly been a leader with quality. There’s been some good ones for quantity but I’ve yet to see the right quality coming out of some of these bigger operations.

Unknown Speaker 28:29
And now there’s there’s also industries being created around the cannabis industry such as my friend Elizabeth and Michael that is a principal with bud agency marketing specifically to marketing is huge in the cannabis. It’s a whole different kind of marketing and seems Yeah, and then you’ve got Dan roto with a Baka that’s doing FinTech for in the financial pieces and interesting world if you want to,

Unknown Speaker 28:54
you know really streamline the process and, and have a good regulated environment to work with them. Then we need to get the feds involved a little more and start allowing trade and start doing more banking and investments and everything else just needs to open up at this point.

Unknown Speaker 29:11
So what is the issue there? If I didn’t know anything about it tell me about like, Why Why is there an issue? Fine. It’s still

Unknown Speaker 29:16
federally illegal. So it can’t you know, none of your money can be fdic. Yeah. So basically, if I go to a dispensary that selling CBD and I pay 50 bucks or something that $50 can’t go into an FDIC insured bank is that as far as I understand, no, still now, there are banks that are allowing some banking. So we are allowed to take cards. I don’t think we can take credit cards yet. I think it’s still just debit. But I again, I’m not the finance guy. Understood.

Unknown Speaker 29:45
All right. So being a leader in this industry, somebody who is is constantly looking at what can we do new and different and innovate, but it’s a new industry to begin with. So there’s a lot of people out there that have similar thoughts. How do you how do you streamline those things? How do you work with other people In the industry, and create a more streamlined process and allow the industry to move forward working within the federal regulations.

Unknown Speaker 30:08
So a lot of that is just the throughput, right? Its supply chain and throughput if the demands there then we have to increase our throughput of the processing facility. Right now we have the ability to take care of basically ourselves and in our farms and our gardens and maybe a few others but but we don’t have especially in Arkansas, we just don’t have the infrastructure for you know, farmers that want to grow CBD hemp flour to go take it to a large scale processor and it be efficient and in the pay we actually work out right. I mean, I think everybody lost money last year in the hemp industry, the ones that one were just really survivors more than anything, or they were breaking the rules just openly and we we don’t do that. We We try to fit right in those regulations and be super compliant because I don’t want any ripples You know, I’m right where I need to be. I don’t need any ripples So, but we’ve watched it happen in the industry where people just are blatantly ignoring the law so that they can turn a profit and then others that try to play by the rules end up losing. But last year was a weird year. You know, the 2018 Farm Bill kind of blew him out of the water. I mean, I’ve been I’ve been growing hemp since 2014. Oklahoma, and to come to Arkansas last year and grow for the first time it was, you know, under the 2018 Farm Bill was just a little is a little crazy.

Unknown Speaker 31:40
So walk me through that what what was the issue there?

Unknown Speaker 31:43
So actually Arkansas didn’t comply with the 2018 Farm Bill, they still had they still were going to comply to the 2014 Farm Bill under a pilot research program. So we we when we applied for our the hemp licenses here in Arkansas, we kind of followed the same practice as we did in Oklahoma. We’re looking at different genetics, genetics that would be better for processing pest and disease resistance to reduce fungicide loads. And then, you know, just kind of dialing all of that in this industry has to have a workforce and finding people with experience and qualifications to do what you need them to do. There’s not a long list of people with resumes that date back 1520 years that you can draw a major experience on. Well, it’s even more complicated than that because they experienced that we do have come from dry weather. And you come down here to Arkansas, it’s a whole nother growing environment. I remember when I was in college, Dr. Curt round, one of the best professors of the University of Arkansas told me he goes well, but it’s Arkansas. Everything grows well here, including your diseases and your weeds and the bugs and everything goes well here. And he’s right. You know, everything does grow well here. It’s Arkansas is the most challenging Place in my opinion. Now I haven’t tried Alabama or Florida yet. But Arkansas in my opinion is one of the hardest places to try to grow. humidity is high. The bugs are really thick here the weeds grow as fast as the crop. It’s a real challenge. It’s a real challenge.

Unknown Speaker 33:19
What’s next on the big goals list? How do you measure what you want to do next how you grow the business where where you take it.

Unknown Speaker 33:26
So next time, I mean we’re we’re waiting on our dispensary license. We’re hoping that gets issued you know very very soon and and then the gloves come off. We’re off to the races here in Arkansas for the dispensary. I do have some consulting to do some cultivators here in Arkansas to try to improve their quality. I have some very big things going on out in Arizona in Nevada for very large scale production for again back to like constellation type of companies and Just the development, the overall development of really my strains, I’m trying to develop strains that are adequate for, you know, different kinds of conditions or different kinds of production. You know, what I produce for smoke isn’t the same thing I’m going to produce for oil. When I produce for a horse is definitely not the same thing I’m producing for a PTSD soldier. So I’m really dialing in those strings. I think right now, my seed banks up to about 200 varieties that have already been hunted and found really dialed in. You mentioned seed bank, you obviously take your seeds and you grow them. Is that something you also sell to other growers? Is that something is how does that work within the industry? Does everybody develop their own strains or own seeds? Are you working to get those consistencies built out and become known for certain things? There are definitely some leaders in the street, the seed industry and and we were right up there with a lot of them. We’re trying to develop different strains for different additions like I said and and it’s not just seeds it’s clones as well. We had a big contract with EZ clone this year. They’re a national company under grow life I think their their trade name on on the market is is pot pH o t i think is what it is kind of funny. But we had a big contract with them and we produce clones for him but the clone market wasn’t there. There wasn’t a whole lot of farmers buy in this year. And I don’t think you know, most of the farmers around here are still kind of row crop minded. And agronomic and this isn’t an agronomic crop just yet unless you just want to grow rope. And we do have some of those crops as well. We have a really great rope crop going right now in like village Arkansas with a very large row crop farmer. But when it comes down to it, most of this is produced on a horticultural basis. You know, we’re it’s a hoard crop. So we’re taking clones and we’re trying to do you know, 500,000 a million clones and then go take a transplant and Put it out in the field. And the reason why is because that plants already been hunted, it’s already been analyzed for compliance, we don’t have to worry about genetic instabilities, we know exactly what we’re putting out. And that’s, that’s the route we’ve chosen to go right now. Now there are some, some autoflowers being developed that are kind of interesting. And that’s a much more row crop kind of thing. We are looking at combine harvests this year on some crops to see how that can be done and how drying is going to be affected by cutting the crop that way that will never be a smokeable product that will only be an extractable product. And then we still have, again, back to the you know, the top of the cream of the crop, the top of the top will always be you know, steamed dried correctly. 60 degrees 60% humidity, you know, all the right conditions and, and just dial in exactly what we were looking for.

Unknown Speaker 36:55
And that’s all grown indoors. highly controlled environment. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 36:59
a lot of love. Most of the smokeable is grown indoors highly controlled environment there are some of the hemp products that we have that that come out of the field but they have to be a certain kind of field. We can’t have dirt roads around it, I don’t want dirt my product, you know, there’s got to be zero sprays. I don’t believe in smoking, pesticides and herbicides. You know, once it’s extracted, I can clean a lot of that up, you know, so it’s not near the same issue. But when it comes to the raw flour, I want to make sure it’s done right.

Unknown Speaker 37:28
How do you stay motivated in an industry like this that’s constantly changing, constantly being adapted and, you know, everywhere you turn, I’m sure there’s another roadblock that you have to work around. Most people

Unknown Speaker 37:39
tell me they can’t keep up with my pace.

Unknown Speaker 37:43
And most people that work with me go, Okay, I need a break. You know, I just don’t ever have breaks. I don’t think my mom tells me all the time. I work too hard. Moms are good at moms are good at that. Yeah. You know, I really don’t know. I just wake up in the morning. And I know my end goal is to get that dispensary license going in Arkansas. And my end goal is to make sure my THC farms in Oklahoma are far superior to anybody else’s. And my end goal is to make sure I’ve got revenue coming in from these consultant agreements all over the country to make sure my guys are paid. You know, I’m more worried about my employees than I am me ever. But that’s, you know, that’s what I wake up in the morning and think about before I think about anything is, you know, what do we got to do to make sure everybody’s going to get paid, make sure everybody’s better today than they were yesterday. And that’s my job every day.

Unknown Speaker 38:37
When I think just segue into our current state of affairs, you know, here we are July of 2020. And a lot of business owners, that’s their mentality. A lot of industries. A lot of people have been hit hard. And of course, a lot of people have lost their work. There’s been certain subsidies that have helped people out but from business owner perspective, a lot of people are going through that right now. And there’s a lot of mental challenges that I know a lot of people are dealing with and you know, has that something you’ve been affected with is there

Unknown Speaker 39:07
we haven’t we haven’t had to be honest until I come to live rock I don’t even know COVID exists. I don’t watch the news I don’t listen to news on on the radio I’m always on the phone or I’m just driving from one farm to another. We’ve kind of lived in a little bubble throughout all of this you know, I mean it was right in the middle of planting season you know, we had outdoor crops to get out and this has been kind of crazy. But you know, we’ve had we’ve got 50 milligram CBD elderberry gummy bears great for you know, if you do get sick, what a great product to take. We’re looking at maybe doing some vitamin D additions to some of those because we’ve heard that you know, vitamin D is very beneficial for COVID. And, and I do believe that CBD You know, there’s the we’re still waiting on some of the science on it, but I do believe CBD has some effects on getting your endocannabinoid system to help you fight. That virus so I think our industry is sitting at the top right now of the COVID crisis because I think we have the ability to really be able to help without having to go through, you know, human trials of a vaccine and all that we have the ability to actually help people right now.

Unknown Speaker 40:15
So we’re not saying it’s proven, right, we’re saying, take your CBD take your CBD

Unknown Speaker 40:19
isn’t gonna hurt you. It’s like the same thing with elderberries. Right, it’s not gonna hurt you.

Unknown Speaker 40:24
So walk me through some of the products because and the brands that you guys represent, because I know you’ve got a holding company, multiple brands underneath that.

Unknown Speaker 40:30
Yeah, so we’re completely vertically integrated company and we have a hemp division and we have a THC division and then we have an Arkansas dispensary. And then we have a delivery company that we’re hoping the medical marijuana commission will approve in the next couple weeks. So we’ve got quite a few things going on. And then I’ve got what I focus on the most really is indigenous seeds, and that’s my genetics and the string company. We do most of our development of the strains out in in Oklahoma because regulatory issues and then and and I can do THC there you know in open air out there so it works out pretty good and then as we move into different states you know we we really look at what the market needs and which ones to really focus on from there. So talk me through the rest of the brands that yeah so the brands really we have hawgs hemp brand,

Unknown Speaker 41:22
not all THC 98

Unknown Speaker 41:24
non THC CBD hawgs hemp farm is a farm by Morton. We’ve got about 60 acres. I think we got 30 acres planted this year, greenhouses and refinery on site that’s hogs hemp refinery, and it does dog treats and horse savs and horse treats and sunblocks and human savs and then we do some pre rolls out there and right now the ones that are really moving are the sunblocks the horse savs and the dog treats seem to be the big winners right now.

Unknown Speaker 41:58
Talk to me about The sunblock because it’s kind of intriguing to me that we have CBD sunblock, what’s the benefit there?

Unknown Speaker 42:06
Your skin will feel amazing. That’s, that’s for sure. So we gave a bunch out to some people that were going to go camp out on the buffalo river for three days and we all knew how burned you’re going to get in a canoe on the buffalo River. First a summer, you know, you haven’t had that first summer burn yet. So we gave some to some people and they put it on and they they came back and I think they were wider than when they left. And I was like, wow, that stuff really worked or did you even go and they were like, this stuff really works. And I was like, well, it’s a sunblock, it’s not a sunscreen, you know? And, and that was really just the goal. You know, I wanted something for my, for my skin and my kids to be able to put on before they go swim and that’s waterproof and safe for them and all organic and I can look at the ingredients and know that it’s not something I can’t pronounce as a chemist. You know, it’s just the simplicity of the product makes it so good.

Unknown Speaker 42:57
And there’s a lot of conversation right now around sunscreen and Some of it how harmful it is for you and things like that. So is this a positive in the advancement of sunscreens? I Yes,

Unknown Speaker 43:06
I would. Well we went back in technology. You know when you’re talking about cocoa butter and coconut oil and a little bit of zinc oxide, I mean we kind of went back to the stuff your mom put on your nose, but we made it so that you can it spreads it dries it doesn’t, you know, make your nose wide anymore. And it works really really well.

Unknown Speaker 43:24
So so that’s hogs hemp. Yes, brand. Yes. And I need to look for that

Unknown Speaker 43:29
you do so hogs hemp refinery online. We have an online store. You can buy any of the hogs have products there that are grown right there just in beartown Arkansas, some laurelton ha WG ha WG That’s right. So it’s an old Hog Farm right. So we had an old Hog Farm. We’ve got a we got a mascot. You got to come out and see pretty soon her name. Her name is birdie for bird town, Arkansas. She’s a guest about five months old now and probably wait And about 181 90 and she’s just a sweetheart. And so she got real bark. She’s She’s white and black and so she gets real burned on the pink parts. And so we go out with our sunblock and we put sunblock on her and she just loves it and then we give her we’ve made her some, some CBD treats to try to see how she likes someone. She loves them. We use a lot of our stocks from the field and we grind them up for her bedding and it’s just it’s a great it’s just a great place.

Unknown Speaker 44:28
Speaking of CBD treats, dog treats, so our pets are benefiting from CBD as well. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 44:34
so we even took some of our dog treats and send them over to some vets that we were friends with and went through the recommended dosing because we started looking in the market we were like, that seems really high for a dog, you know, and that’s just and then we realized that hey, they’re not giving them full of broad spectrum medicine. They’re gonna isolate so we started really playing with the full spectrums. And the broad spectrum I have refined oils and adding it to a cod. liver oil which is really good for skin anyways, and we infused it in the cod liver oil and started making these treats and we realized that dogs that had anxiety would just sleep through their stress and dogs that had back pains were acting like they were puppies again and it’s been really cool it’s been a really cool process to watch the animal products really take off

Unknown Speaker 45:22
so if my dog scared of lightning Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 45:24
yeah. Thunder lightning. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 45:26
give him a little CBD infused dog bone and helps him a lot. Yeah. And it’s a beautiful brand shout out to our friend Carlton. A few beautiful design work great job.

Unknown Speaker 45:36
Few has been excellent to work with always has been excellent to work with. This isn’t even the first company that I’ve worked with few with they’ve done branding for several of my companies as an entrepreneur. I’ve gone through a couple of different branding exercises with few and I can’t draw this decent stick man. You know, I can’t I have no artistic ability at all. I mean, people ask me all the time. What do you want this to look like? And I’m like, I am No idea. That’s just not my deal. You know? Yeah. Aren’t didn’t choose me the plant chose.

Unknown Speaker 46:07
Love that. And of course, but he’s at kill also a titan on the show. So appreciate him being here. All right, I want to run through a few little quick questions I like to ask everybody. First is what’s your favorite or latest book you’ve read or listen to? Are you big reader? How do you obtain new knowledge? I mean, I read, I don’t really read books, I read scientific studies. Okay, so I’m not like the person that lays in bed at night and reads a novel. I’ve got way too much going on to sit down that long. Yeah. But I’ll run through some scientific papers and kind of look at research. And that’s really what I spend my time reading about.

Unknown Speaker 46:43
What’s my favorite one lately? I’ve been really intrigued by, you know, different types of extraction. So I’ve been really reading into the different types of extraction that that we can look at, that aren’t on the market right now and trying to develop something there. That’s a little safer. Some of the extraction processes can get a little tricky and can be you use some pretty volatile chemicals sometimes in the extraction process and I think there’s some ways that we can get around that and I’ve been reading a lot about that.

Unknown Speaker 47:14
You’re a data guy you’re dating. Yeah, so you’re reading for the numbers not for the ultimate daily routine. What do you have to do every single day? Are you wake up and go exercise kind of person? Are you a swim

Unknown Speaker 47:27
a lot? Yeah, I swim a lot. My kids you know, are getting into swimming. I actually just taught my middle child the other day how to swim. So that was great. Took the floaties off. I’m working on my three year old now I’m going to get on by the end of summer, he’s going to be swimming like a fish and he’s almost there. My daily routine really is just my family and my children. You know, I mean, I spend as much time as I can with them as I can before I leave for work and then when I get home, I just turn my phone off the best I can and Focus on them. I love to cook with the family. And so we’ll go out by the lake and we’ll cook and swim and almost every night I’m swimming.

Unknown Speaker 48:09
Nice. Now are you cooking with CBD as well? Is that an additive to connect? Can I cook with that?

Unknown Speaker 48:15
You can but when the heat just degrades, it’s so much it’s just not gonna be the same. Good to know.

Unknown Speaker 48:21
All right, what’s a relatively new habit that you formed? what’s what’s something you found yourself doing these days that you either from getting older because I know I look at myself, I’m like, Am I turning into my dad? Or is there anything beneficial that you’ve added to your, your daily routines lately? daily routines, you know, my wife works out every day. Every day. She’s like a bodybuilder.

Unknown Speaker 48:48
And so, you know, I try to just keep up with her. I try to cook something good every day. You know, I mean, there’s something about just getting everybody at the table. I think that’s something that’s been lost in so many families. And that’s something I’ve really, really tried to focus on with the kids

Unknown Speaker 49:06
love that. If you were to write a book or an article and publish it, what would what would it be titled? What I’m working on it? And

Unknown Speaker 49:14
yeah, I’m working on it. I’ve got a really interesting story in the cannabis world and how it kind of evolved from the 90s and where I am today, and I’d love to share that story with people. I think it would be you know, I talked to people all the time that the kind of followed similar paths with me like one of my you asked me earlier, you know, about some of my influences in the in the industry and, and one of them’s a really good friend of mine, who’s an astrophysicist from Raytheon, who’s now one of the biggest cultivation guys in Colorado. He quit, you know, Raytheon and went and started running his own gardens, and then I came over and consulted with them. And we’ve done a lot of really large scale design work, and he said, Man, you ought to write a book based on everything that’s gone on in your life. You know, I mean everything that you’ve seen in this you, he’s like, you’re the one that’s been all over the country. One of my friends that I grew up with is a publisher over a discovery channel and he’s like, let’s do a let’s do a documentary. You know, like, I was like, man, they already kind of have that. But you know, let’s do something different. Like a string hunters here in Arkansas. Right? I love it.

Unknown Speaker 50:19
Love it.

Unknown Speaker 50:21
So you cook a lot. You have a favorite food. A favorite dish that you’re always making are going to azulay

Unknown Speaker 50:26
it’s my favorite dish to cook. It takes all day

Unknown Speaker 50:31
for the special occasions, all right, and what what about music? You drive into the farm? Got got some music on the radio. What are you listening to?

Unknown Speaker 50:41
Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I’m not really an artsy music kind of person. But I mean, I like I like everything I like I’m so eclectic. When it comes to music. I like it all.

Unknown Speaker 50:52
Alright, how can people find out more about the brand? How can they get involved with what you’ve got

Unknown Speaker 50:56
going on? Well definitely hogs hemp refinery for here in Arkansas. And people outside Arkansas can order we can we can ship as a matter of fact we just had our first international shipment not too long ago to Italy so that’s pretty cool it’s hemp so it can be shipped it can you know it complies with all the regulations when it comes to the THC if you’re anybody’s over in Oklahoma please look for you know some of the brands out there I’m gonna buds is the biggest one that we associate with and that that I grow for out there and in Oklahoma you know in the West Coast there’s several brands that I’ve consulted with but I would have to say you know the Nevada market has the most of my stuff in it. And then here for THC in Arkansas look for green remedies dispensary to open up pretty soon I I have a feeling we’re gonna give these guys a run for their money in this industry.

Unknown Speaker 51:51
I love it. Well, Brad, thanks for being our Titan of cannabis.

Unknown Speaker 51:54
Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

Unknown Speaker 51:57
Yeah. If you like this episode of tight Have industry head to content titan.co slash podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai