12. Why Branding is Crucially Important in an Uncertain CBD and Hemp World – with Morris Beegle

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-qdhf9-d9f7c5

Episode Notes

In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss:

• Lessons Morris learned in the Music Industry and has successfully applied to the CBD Hemp industry
• Why he chooses to operate 12 brands for his different ventures
• How he has shifted from hosting in-person conferences to online
• Minor cannabinoids like CBDP and THCP
• How to think about CBD hemp diversification for your company
• His suggestions on mindset to get through the current world pandemic of COVID19
• Thoughts on novel cannabinoids like CBG and CBN and what he thinks about their future potential
• What he thinks hemp cultivators and farmers should do for next growing season
• and more…

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About Morris Beegle

👉⚠Check out the NoCo Hemp Earth Week Virtual Conference

Leading cannabis/hemp advocate and entrepreneur, Morris Beegle is the co-founder and president of the WAFBA (We Are For Better Alternatives) family of brands, including the NoCo Hemp Expo, the world’s most comprehensive hemp-centric conference and exposition. WAFBA also includes Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars, a manufacturer of boutique hemp guitars cabinets and components, Tree Free Hemp, a hemp paper and printing company, Let’s Talk Hemp, a comprehensive digital media platform, and several others. Spanning education, advocacy, manufacturing and entertainment, Beegle’s endeavors are both pioneering and award winning. Travelling several continents, Beegle regularly engages audiences in N.A., Europe, UK, Nepal and beyond, appearing at dozens of events and conferences each year.

Connect with Morris at www.MorrisBeegle.com

Episode Transcript

Jason De Los Santos: Morris, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hope you’re doing all right.

Morris Beegle: [00:03:09] Doing great. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate you having me on.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:03:12] Fantastic. So I see you have your musical instruments in the back. I’m sure we’ll get to talk about that company in the background. and I thought we’d start off with this. I always like to ask people to sort of how they got to, to the hemp and the cannabis industry and, can we start there?

Do you know, how did you, and why did you decide to get into this crazy industry?

Morris Beegle: [00:03:33] So I’ve been, cannabis user for quite some time, really since high school, recreational cannabis user. And I was never really part of the industry up until about 2012 I’ve been in the music industry before that, since the late eighties through 2010 I had a music production company doing everything from studio coordination to a CD, a DVD manufacturing and packaging merchandise.

Artists, management, music licensing, kind of a Jack of all trades, master of some, which was really more of the, the printing and packaging side of things. And when I first started getting into that back in the mid nineties having my own big production company, I worked for a large music video company before that.

when I moved back, I moved back to Fort Collins from California. And there was a company called the Hemper wears no clothes, that was a hip store in Fort Collins and they had hip clothing and hip oddity care and rope and soap and all of that stuff. And at that time I got to know the owner pretty well and, and read the Jack hair book.

The emperor wears no clothes, which is where the store obviously got her name from and, and became familiar with him and actually did some tee shirts and hats for some bands that I was working with. Wanting to have some him apparel, but really was not into the hemp industry at that point. And the music industry itself and being part of the physical side of things with CDs and DVDs and the packaging side of things.

Once the internet came along and you had Napster and mp3.com and then all these file sharing networks like pirate Bay and demon OID where people could go on and actually. Download entire discographies that really impacted the music industry, particularly the physical media industry, which was my bread and butter, and from let’s say, 2005 to 2010 record stores are going out of business distributors, manufacturers, all that stuff.

Really got decimated during that time and people couldn’t make up the difference by digital downloads and streaming and all that. So I was really looking for a different Avenue to take my talents and find out what I was going to do next in my life. And the medical cannabis industry really picked up in Colorado in 2009 2010 dispensary’s were opening up everywhere, and then there was a push for.

Recreational adult use in 2012 with amendment 64 and within that legislation, there was the opportunity for farmers here in Colorado to start growing hemp. And this was before the 2014 farm bill that launched these hemp pilot programs across the country and being kind of on the front lines, it’s like.

There’s something interesting. I’m familiar with HAMP and you know, apparel and hip paper. And so I reached out to a friend of mine, Elizabeth night and says, Hey, you want to start a hemp company? And we could start doing him merchandise. And so in 2012 we started Colorado, him company, and it really started off as a merchandise company doing tee shirts and hats.

And we worked with some other. Manufacturers that were out there doing wallets and beanies and shoes and backpacks. It was company called hippies, and another company called him mania, and another company called wicked him footwear. So we partnered with them and started distributing their stuff and selling your stuff to local retailers.

And, and that’s really what . Kicked off everything. From there we found a hemp paper company and started doing him paper printing and doing business cards and posters, and then we started doing HIPAA bands. In 2014 we launched NOCO hemp expo. Again, coming from the music industry, being involved with a lot of different aspects.

I was involved with concerts and festivals and live shows and booking and all of that stuff. So that’s really how it got going was, you know, it was amendment 64 and the whole thing. Cannabis thing that was happening here in Colorado.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:07:33] The tell me if I have the story right. So there’s a, I read somewhere about you discovering music in a, with your brothers in the attic or something like that.

That kinda ties into some of the things that you do today.

Morris Beegle: [00:07:47] Well, so. In Oklahoma. My, my folks are from Oklahoma, Beaver, Oklahoma, and, and we used to go out there when I was a kid. We moved to Colorado when I was like six months old, and we’d go back to Oklahoma and visit my grandparents and we were up in the attic and it was probably 1971 72 I was like four or five years old.

And we were listening to black Sabbath up in my grandma’s attic. And you know, since that time, 

Jason De Los Santos: [00:08:16] music. Which Nelson mind off

Morris Beegle: [00:08:18] it was my, my cousins had that lived in Oklahoma. I had a record player up in the attics and no, she was, they were pretty religious and didn’t want to have rock and roll. And so we had to go to the attic to get our dose of rock and roll.

And my older brothers influenced me in that way, turned me on to rock and roll. And I was a young kid. And, and my earliest memory of music is black Sabbath listening to it in my grandma’s addicts. So that really kind of. Was the breeding ground of my musical endeavors. Yes.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:08:49] That’s cool. I have a son, my brother and a stepbrother there.

Let’s see, about 10 years older than I am. And I remember we were all in the house living together. And, my sister who’s 11 years older, she was sort of my second mom, so I was always hanging out with her and, sort of being influenced by her music. And it was all the. Like the easy pop listening of the 80s, you know, like, what is like Peter Sitara, Brian Adams, all that kind of stuff.

And then one day I saw a cassette player or a cassette in front of, my brother’s stereo, and it was like lady justice. And I’m like, Oh, what is this? This is kind of weird. And I put it in. For whatever reason, there was nobody in the house at that time. And, it was Metallica and justice for all that album.

And like, I, I must have been, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight at that point, and I just sat there for the entire album just wondering like, what is this like, this is so crazy. Like, just totally blew my mind. And ever since then, like, you know, it just totally changed my perspective about music. Just that there were other things out there.

so I just, it’s funny how you had sort of a, not that exactly, but just, you know, kind of like discovering music in a different way like that.

Morris Beegle: [00:09:56] Right. That’s funny. I was actually going to wear a Metallica shirt today. I got a Metallica shirt like a couple of weeks ago, just saw the store. It’s like, I don’t even own a Metallica shirt.

So I picked up a Metallica shirt and I looked at it in my closet today and it’s like, ah, no.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:10:13] Nice. so let’s see, with what, what do we start there? Just this is what we’re talking about music. So you have a few different companies. You have, for the folks that are watching that will be watching this.

you have some of your speaker cabinets in the background. and so that, that has a relationship to hemp. Right?

Morris Beegle: [00:10:30] Okay. Correct. So we started a company called silver mountain. HAMP. About a year and a half, two years ago, I had been working with some folks that were doing hemp guitars out of Canada, and I approached them to see if they would private label some guitars for me.

And they said yes. And I’ve been working with them for the last a year and a half, two years. And I’ve also. Come to work with some other folks that are based out of Atlanta that are building speaker cabinets. And anyway, I have found a variety of usable materials to produce guitars and guitar cabinets, guitar straps, and we’re working on him plastic for pick guards and pics and that’s all you knobs and so forth.

So that’s, you know, how can we build a instrument company that’s utilizing hemp as a main component and that’s, mm. Kind of what we’ve are trying to achieve here.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:11:25] Okay. Very interesting. and then just to give context to folks, cause you your, your work or you have a lot of different companies, I think maybe 10 or, or 12 or something like that.

Can you kind of go over either some of the main companies or maybe the themes behind them or, or some of the reasons why? I don’t think no sane person would choose to work, or have 11 companies. Right? I mean, there’s a certain level of kinda, I dunno. So that study may be,

Morris Beegle: [00:11:50] it’s really 11 or 12 companies.

It’s like. Brands underneath. Right? So the, so the, the company is waft BA, we are for better alternatives, w a FBA. And underneath that is Colorado hemp company, which, so think of WAF, but is the body and think of Colorado hemp company as the brain creator producers. So we started Colorado hymn company to start in 2012 and from there.

We started to spawn these other entities. And Colorado hemp company when it started was really a merchandise company. And from there we started a paper company, tree free hemp, and both of these related back to the music side of things. As doing merchandise and doing printing in the music business days.

And then we started NOCO hemp expo in 2014 so there’s another entity or another brand doing events. And then from there we started, let’s talk camp. Which is really programming and developing content, and that’s evolved more and more. We have a podcast with that now. We have a weekly newsletter. We have a digital magazine, but it’s all media and marketing driven, and that’s what all of this has been so far.

And then from there we’ve also got multiple other events. We’ve got Southern hemp expo, which is out of Nashville. It’s our second biggest. Event that we do. NOCO hemp expo we’ve been doing for six years. We were going into year seven. That was supposed to happen at the end of March. We’ve had to postpone it, reschedule it into August, but.

We’ve got, Oh, a half a dozen events. So when you think, when you say, we’ve got 12 companies, that’s really brands or imprints is the way I look at it, because half of those are events. And then we’ve also got a site called hemp events.org which is really just a calendar site that promotes our events as well as other events throughout the cannabis space, primarily with a hymn focus.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:13:47] Okay. And how many people work between all of these different brands with you?

Morris Beegle: [00:13:52] So I’ve got two partners, Elizabeth Knight and Laura, Laurie, Doris, they’re my two partners. And from there we’ve got. Probably 15 to 20 different independent contractors that do various things for us. We’ve got a web master, we’ve got a graphic designer, we’ve got a couple of social media people.

We have people that specifically work for NOCO hemp expo, doing exhibitor and sponsor. Outreach. We’ve got logistics people that help with our hotel side of things and catering. And so we utilize a lot of different contractors to fill necessities within our business.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:14:30] Okay. And so for folks that might not be too aware of, just like branding, what a, why not do all of these things under one name?

Right? Like, you know, for example, like Wafa or, or maybe Nalco, you choose to segment all these businesses into different brands. Why choose to do that? Like, what’s the advantage of doing

Morris Beegle: [00:14:51] that? That was similar to what I had with my music company, which was happy scratch. So happy scratch was the umbrella.

And underneath that umbrella we had. Different record label and prints. We had a label called Fisk music, which was a hard rock and metal label. We had another label called avant acoustic records, which was primarily instrumental acoustic finger style type stuff like Michael hedges and Alex deGrasse and a lot of finger style guitar players were on that label.

Then I had another label called big vendor records, which had outlaw country and cow punk, and. Beer, Drake and pot smoke and hillbilly type music. So I come from this kind of background where I’ve always liked to have variety of offshoots and entities. And I think it comes from being in the music industry where if you go to Sony music or EMI or Warner brothers, they’ve got all these little sub labels and production companies and publishing companies.

So I was. Influenced and inspired by the music industry with some of these bigger companies that were really umbrella companies for a variety of different entities that all work synergistically together, for that one entity. Hmm.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:16:09] And so is that typically because the consumer might have a difficult time thinking that, well, you know, I’m listening to this band, I, you know, let’s just.

Put out, make up a couple of things, like, you know, Metallica, right, with a metal. but then, I’m not going to be listening to Taylor Swift that’s on the same label. you know, if I, if I only like one of those two bands, is that sort of like that, that  the kind of feeding the consumer’s mind about new account, placing what they’re going to be consuming?

Morris Beegle: [00:16:37] I would say so having a variety of different entities allows us, from a business perspective, let’s say. An investment company was interested in her hand paper company while we’ve been developing tree free hemp over the course of the last six years, and. Maybe we would want to sell that company to another company that wanted to acquire a hemp paper company.

Let’s say some hedge fund was looking to add that to their portfolio and they said, Oh, WAF was got, Hey, they’ve got a paper company, they’ve got a hemp guitar company. We’re not interested in that guitar company, but we are interested at the paper company. And so within our books. And our financials, we delineated all of our entities and it’s pretty easy for us to go through.

And if somebody wanted to do a joint venture with us or acquire a part of our company, then we could just sell that off partner a or, or do whatever we needed to do in that situation.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:17:30] Yep. That makes sense. Okay. and if we can change gears and talk about, today and some of the things that are happening, so you have, a pretty large event, or, or.

The several events, that, that you’re having to maybe re-imagine or, or postpone. can you talk a little bit about what you guys are doing, maybe what’s going on, what’s going through your mind, and some of the changes that you’re making to possibly continue? I think you are continuing to do this and this, but possibly in different way to have these expos.

Morris Beegle: [00:17:59] Correct. So we were going into year seven. At the end of March was supposed to be March 26, 27, 28, in Denver, Colorado, moving to a larger venue for NOCO hemp expo, and NOCO has grown from 2014 with 350 people to. 2019 to over 10,000 people and 2020 we were expecting 20,000 plus people and 400 plus exhibitors and had sold out the exhibitor floor and ready to really have a, a rock and show.

And because of coronavirus and Cobin, we’ve had a  postpone it. And fortunately we pulled the plug and got the reschedule to happen. 16 days out from the event. I think we, we’ve made the decision on March 10th I believe was the date, ninth or 10th and  and we learned a lesson, a lesson from our friends at new hope media who put on the natural products expo in Anaheim, which is the largest natural.

Products expo in the world. I was out there the week before and they actually pulled the plug when everybody was already setting up. And it was a very unfortunate situation for those guys. Right. And I really look up to those guys cause I, they’re an amazing. Event company that puts on these huge trade shows and, and you know, nobody could have predicted this entire situation.

And, and what happened with those guys the week before, it’s like, wow, we really better pay attention to this. And then we saw what happened with South by Southwest the Friday before we made our decisions. Like, well, we gotta make this decision, we’re going to postpone it. And now that we’re postponing it.

What are we going to do? Because people still need to congregate. They still need to do business and interact, and we still have to have education. We still have to address industry needs, and so we’re launching into the virtual space like most people, and we’ve got an earth day event that’s going to be happening on four 22.

four, 23 and four, 24, we were launching NOCO hemp expo earth week, and we’ve got a variety of live presentations we’re going to do. We’ve also got a variety of, prerecorded presentations that are going to be in a, let’s talk camp library. We’ve got a virtual trade show that’s going to go on a virtual networking hall and, and we’ve been building out this platform, which we actually just started building out about a week ago.

It’s taken about a week. A couple of weeks to get this whole thing in place with the company that’s building out this virtual platform and, and we’re launching a virtual trade show next week, and we’ve got a year license to really build out this whole ecosystem in the cloud is what I’m kind of calling it.

And that’s what we’re doing is we’re moving into the cloud and we’re going to build out an entire virtual platform for people to gather and do business and networking. Do education and that’s the direction we’re going to go until things settle down here in the real world.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:20:50] Yeah. Is that for you, I mean, you’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time.

Is that, is that a scary thing? Is it, or are you more optimistic and excited about it, or maybe like is there a different sentiment thinking about the same coming up,

Morris Beegle: [00:21:04] I’m excited about it. You know, we have to pivot when, when things happen and you gotta make a change, you, I mean, you gotta make a change.

Yeah. And in this particular situation, it’s like if we don’t do something, then we’re going to go down. And I have no intention of going down and neither do my partners. And I don’t think that this situation is going to derail the cannabis industry or the hemp industry to a degree that’s gonna.

Decimated. I think that the folks that operate in this space are generally very resilient, very innovative, and. We’ve just got to keep on keeping on. And while this situation goes on, which we can’t control a global pandemic, hopefully our government and those in charge are going to make the right decisions and open things up at the right time.

I don’t think that we can shut down our entire economy for months and months and months and keep people locked in their houses. And that’s not going to go over. Cause if we did try to do that, it’s, it’s the  detriment to society is going to be more so than. The hundreds of thousands of deaths that are taking place at this point in time.

So I don’t know. It is a scary time for our society, but I think that the dust will settle and we’ll figure out ways to deal with this pandemic. And in the meantime, those of us in whatever industry it is, we have to figure out how to continue to do business. And. And move our industry forward.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:22:36] Yeah. So you sound really optimistic.

And now actually I signed up for the, the, the conference that you’re having on four 22. I happened to stumble across that, only related to our conversation here. And so I thought it was a cool event. So I’ll put links in the show notes about that as well. and, let’s see. So with, with the hemp industry, you know, a lot of change, whether it’s retailers, right?

Like there’s some stores that are open, some that are not, just people meeting and gathering and doing business face to face. And so a lot is changing. What that, what have you seen, or maybe what kinds of suggestions are you offering the people in the, in the industry, entrepreneurs and business owners about how to.

Take this and either turn it into an opportunity or maybe it’ll try to sustain. What kind of advice do you have there?

Morris Beegle: [00:23:23] I would say people just need to remain positive and optimistic because if you don’t have hope, and even if it’s false, hope is better than no hope at all, is what I’ve always believed.

because I think that if you. Yeah. Do you turn down the wrong alleyway and you just, all you see is doom and gloom that that’s never going to get you to where you want to be. And I think that that this is a temporary situation. I don’t think that it’s going to be the apocalypse, which some people think it’s the apocalypse.

Some people think that everything’s a huge conspiracy. I think that. We’ve got a global pandemic, and if we don’t pay attention to these deadly diseases, which I think that we’ve been neglectful. And really not given it the, the, the, the emphasis that we need to probably at a government level, things are going to change now and decide is going to continue on.

That there are opportunities for those that are savvy business people, depending on what area of the supply chain you’re in right now. It is challenging because, so we’re not just focused on  hemp retailers or CPD manufacturers or brands. We’re were the entire supply chain. So the, the agriculture side of things, farmers, genetics, all of this still has to continue on and, and.

Being at the beginning of planning season, people have to make adjustments how they’re going to do business together. And again, it all comes down to being online. I mean, that’s the only thing that we can do now. And that’s why you see people scrambling to zoom in and doing this stuff. I mean, day in and day out, I, my email boxes flooded with this webinar, that webinar, and, and some of that stuff’s gonna stick.

Some of it’s not who’s going to do it well, who’s not going to do it? Well, it just goes. Back to who’s going to be up here at this level doing business on a, on a level that is going to have impact. And, and it’s going to make a difference for, for their business and for the industry that they’re involved in.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:25:43] Yeah, absolutely. I get a call or an email, almost on a daily basis from specifically cultivators and farmers wondering, like, Hey, what, what. Should I be doing or planning for next season? Or there are a lot of folks that I still speak with that have a lot of biomass leftover and not a flower.

what, if you’ve had conversations with folks like that, like what do you, what do you say, what should a farmer think about for, this upcoming season?

weather. The, you know, they should be looking at, agreements or, or whether to harvest or not. You know, the plants are not what, what advice do you have for somebody in that position?

Morris Beegle: [00:26:23] I would say that if you don’t have a buyer that you shouldn’t be planting, if you’re setting on a bunch of biomass now, which a lot of people are, unfortunately, we over overgrew the entire system this last year for CBD biomass and smokeable flower, there just wasn’t the demand there that a lot of these people thought that there was, or were told that there was by consultants or genetics companies.

Genetics companies would go out and say. By our feminized seed, by our clones. We’ll buy it all back from you, and then all of a sudden, nobody’s buying stuff back. There was a huge miscalculation from a lot of people in our industry about this CBD side of things and smokeable flower where smokable flower still is in this very kind of ambiguous.

Is it legal? Is it not legal state? And when it comes to like the smokable flower, that’s where people were making quite a bit of money on the hemp side of things is they’re making 400 600 800 bucks a pound, and now all that stuff is 10 1520. I’m not even sure how, how much it’s bottomed out at this point, because I keep changing  I don’t, the smokeable flower thing was really confusing to me because I don’t know that many people that like to smoke him flower. If you’re in a legal state, virtually nobody is smoking pimp flower. They’re smoking recreational cannabis or medicinal cannabis. Where are the hemp industry is going to go?

It’s going to be diversified. It’s going to be fiber and grain and flour. So if you’re not growing for all of those, if you’re putting all your eggs in one basket in this CBD basket, what happens when the bottom falls out of the market, just like it did was soy or with corn, you have to be diversified.

And unfortunately with the hemp industry right now in the United States, there’s not a lot of infrastructure for the fiber side of it or the grain side of it. Now, there is some infrastructure on the grain side, but there’s still a limited market because hemp seed and protein powder and the hemp seed oil.

This is a very limited market at this point, but I think that that’s going to open up and become significantly more than it is super foods, organic regenerative products. That is the wave of the future, and more and more people would like to buy and put healthy products into their system. So, you know, is that an immediate answer?

I don’t think so, but. I guess going back, what I would tell people is to be very cautious about what you’re planting right now. If you think that you’re going to plant some great genetics and get a bunch of great CBD flower and, and you’re going to be able to make money 50 to a hundred bucks a pound on this stuff, that’s just not going to happen.

That’s not reality. There’s too much material on the market right now. People were setting on . Thousands of liters of crude and isolate and all that stuff’s going to hit the market and it’s going to flood the market. It’s so cheaper prices. It’s really going to hurt people this year.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:29:34] Yeah. Do you, what do you think about, CBN?

CBG heard a lot of folks talking about that. These are going to be the, there’s going to be the next wave, which I kind of have my doubts, but what, what do you think?

Morris Beegle: [00:29:46] I have my doubts on that too. I think that CBG has a lot of promise and CBN is just. Isn’t that converted THC? Pretty much. That’s what, from what I understand that you can’t really get CBN without THC eventually degrading and converting to that.

Yeah. I’m not sure about the, these minor cannabinoids. Yeah, there’s going to be places for them. I think that that’s going to be a little more niche market than CBD. CBD is really the big thing out there, but again, that’s going to be when it all settles down and you go into a store and you go into an apothecary section or a botanical section, that stuff’s going to be.

1520, 30, $40 tops a bottle. There’s not going to be this a hundred dollars $200 bottles of thousand milliliter CBD product that’s on the shelves because people are kind of pay that.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:30:46] Yeah. And you know, up until this, current virus thing, I had it for, amongst retailers. I didn’t see a lot of prices dropping.

Yeah. I saw prices dropping with, with biomass and, you know, on the farmer to process their side, of course, with bulk products, crude and distillate and whatnot. But, with retailers, at least where I am, I didn’t really see prices bothering me out. but now with quarantine, I’m seeing a lot of retailers offering discounts and promotions and whatnot, just to encourage people to continue purchasing and then wondering if this is kind of like the, the beginning of that decline, of retailing prices where, you know, it’s, I think, unlikely for those retail prices to come back up after everybody kinda gets out of, out of their home.

Morris Beegle: [00:31:28] Yeah. I think that retail pricing is going to come down significantly. I do think that we’ve been waiting on the FDA to, to clarify a lot of the regulatory aspects of this with CBD and, and hopefully they do it this year. It should be coming. I don’t know what the Corona situation’s going to do to impact the FDA until the FDA does really clarify things.

Retail is still going to be suspect. the natural products industry is still going to have a lot of suspect. Players say, nah, I’m not sure that we’re going to get into that until the FDA clarifies thing. That’s just the reality of it. But the price is only going to go down. Margins are gonna get tighter.

You’re going to have big companies. For example, Barlean’s has been in the natural products industry for 30 plus years doing flax, flax seed oil, Oh fish oil. That was really their big products until they jumped in the CBD market and they were one of the first big companies to do so. And when you see these Gaia herbs and Barlean’s and these big natural products, companies that have shelf space at all these retailers.

They’re going to get in there. They already know the pricing model and all these small players that have been around selling stuff that has great margin, very profitable  all going to go away. That’s, I don’t see any other way, and we want to make sure that, that the pricing is. At a level where farmers can still make a living.

Everybody in the supply chain needs to be able to make margin on this, and unfortunately, in the end it seems like farmers have got screwed. Over and over and over in our system the last 30 years. And HAMP was the promise of being able to provide farmers and opportunity to make a good living. And I think that that’s still possible, but to do that, they’re going to have to diversify again.

Fiber, grain and flour, and

Jason De Los Santos: [00:33:29] so with, how do you start thinking about that? And as a farmer, if, I think you mentioned before that the, the, the supply chain for textiles is not quite there. so how do you begin to think about, you know, like, okay, well, how do I diversify away from, harvesting and, hemp for CBD oil?

Morris Beegle: [00:33:48] That. So that’s the million or billion dollar question that we’re all trying to figure out because we have to have some infrastructure in place where if I’m going to grow for fiber. Where can I send that? Is there a processing facility where I can send all my fiber and they can decorticate it and then they can separate it and put it into the building materials industry or the bio-plastics industry or the paper industry or the textiles industry.

Who’s going to buy all this fiber bio mass from the farmer, which by the way, will be a lot less profitable. Then this flower has been for the last four or five years, and the same thing with the grain side of it. I think it’s going to become traditional farming and agriculture. It’s not going to be this boutique business that.

Has been built upon the last several years, although there will be some of that. I think that the craft industry will still survive when it comes to it. Hemp and cannabis overall. You’ve got these brands that put out really cool products and they’ve got something unique about them, whatever. That’s a.

Cannabinoid and terpene profile, and people really feel the benefits of whatever that product is that they’re taking. So I think that there’s always going to be a niche market for a lot of this, just like there is in the beer industry or the wine industry that that craft market will be there. But when it comes to, it’s going to be another commodity, just like corn and just like soy, just like weed.

You know, how many different industries can this crop supply. Yeah.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:35:29] So, we thought, let’s say for the companies that are doing okay or maybe doing well, you seem to be good at attracting attention and, and kind of get and gaining clients. how do you think about getting customers? and maybe we can relate that into these companies that.

Want to either attract more customers or maybe better customers. How do you, how do you consider that? Cause you know, for CBD, either CBD oil and some of those products, there are a lot of competitors, right? Like it’s hard to kind of set yourself apart. So how do you, how do you do that? How do you get attention?

Morris Beegle: [00:36:04] So how do you differentiate yourself if you’re in the CBD market? Yeah. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a tough question. I, I’ve got asked that question several times and you have to have a hook. So I guess, look at the, look at the music industry. How, how do you, if I’m a rock band, how do I separate myself out from all the other rock bands are out there?

Is that your look? Is that. Your lead singer, is it the, what is it? That song that that breaks through that everybody knows? So if I’m a brand. Is it my packaging? Well, it really has to come down to the product. It has to come down to the formulation. It has to come down to the company ethos. What does your company do?

Are you involved in the local community? Are you involved in something that sets yourself apart from all your competitors? What can you do that that really differentiate yourself? And I would say that it does come back to community company ethos. What are you doing above and beyond just putting a product into the market that would make me want to spend money with you?

Jason De Los Santos: [00:37:11] Yeah. Does that, I love music. I listened to new bands and whatnot, and, but I, I don’t. And have the inside track it. Does that exist? Like do, let’s say executives, do they create music bands like, Oh, Hey, you have to have this look, or you have to sound like this. Is that a thing or am I just making it up in my head?

Morris Beegle: [00:37:31] A lot of the boy bands created in the, in the board room, let’s say in sync or new kids on the . Block or boys to men, right. New edition. All of those were like created in the boardroom by

Jason De Los Santos: [00:37:44] menudo. Right? Like that’s kind of like the new assumption for that.

Morris Beegle: [00:37:49] And so is there a really, that’s an, that’s entirely money, profit driven right there.

There’s really no substance with  that type of music. I don’t think, I don’t, I don’t find substance in it. Sure. Compared to, let’s say led Zepplin. Or even Madonna or lady Gaga, where those are artists then created their own thing. Yeah. And whether you like Madonna or lady Gaga or not. They’re really not manufactured.

They create, they, that’s their persona. They created

Jason De Los Santos: [00:38:26] that. Yeah. Yeah. I think with, a persona like that, it seems like for conservative executive team, that’s sort of a nightmare, right? It’s like you’re, you’re no fighting  for them to be more conservative, but you know that, that’s what the, the clients or the consumers like, right.

Like, it’s different. It sounds good. And that gets, it’s good art. Yeah. so let’s see you with ’em. How have you heard about the, I guess, newer, minor cannabinoids like C CVDP THCP and have you heard any news about that?

Morris Beegle: [00:39:00] I’m seeing that come through my email and hearing people talk about all of those.

I’m not really overly familiar. It’s new to the space. People are discovering this and putting out information. I don’t know how much research is really out there on any of this, and that’s where it’s hard to tell. What’s real and what’s not. Okay. They exist. Well, what do they do? And can they be produced in any sort of volume that.

They can then enter the supply chain.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:39:38] Yeah. Yeah. So we’re, we’ve been playing around with a couple of them and it’s been super interesting. And so, you know, we’re checking with lawyers just to make sure that, let’s get, can we put these, put this out to market. so we’ve been playing around with it.

It’s been really interesting with, playing with, let’s see. THCP Delta eight, and some of these things that are, are new. And they come from him. And so they have a legal status, you know, which is kind of weird to think about that. But I’m there with a THCP specifically. It’s been fun playing around with that.

Yeah. I’m in that. It’s so just small amount can have such a strong, effect in people. And it’s, it’s kinda like people are . I think surprised that they can do that. when they’re used to maybe smoking it or, or consuming a gummy or something like that where the stuff that we’re playing around with right now are a little vials, just, almost like a, like a tiny tincture sample.

Morris Beegle: [00:40:35] So with. Okay. And this is THC V or T? T. HCP. Yeah. And so what variety do you have that, how much is produced in the highest variety that you would have?

Jason De Los Santos: [00:40:50] Oh, I mean, in, let’s say, in, the low just for visual effect. In a kilo, you can produce enough to make roughly, 2000 samples. From just, you know, Akilah for is there were, so not 2000 samples, 2000 servings, because you need such a small amount because the, I’m, I’m hearing different amounts, but it seems like THCP is five to 30 times stronger than THC, so you don’t need a

Morris Beegle: [00:41:22] lot.

Okay. Okay. So TACP is another psychoactive. Compound. Yeah. Like THC, except significantly stronger. Right. And you can get a kilo of this isolated. Yeah. Or are you talking to just an isolated kilo of ? For spectrum.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:41:44] No, no, it’s totally, yeah, it’s the, the TCP is isolated, so it’s, there’s just that, for the most part, there’s like a tiny bit of THC in there, but it’s still on.

Once you put it into a serving, there’s, it’s less than 0.3% THC, you know, which is what the government. Right? Doesn’t want to see you go over a, but the THCP level is, I forget the exact amount right now with what we’re playing with, but it’s, it’s a smaller number than the 0.3, but the effect is the same as like, you know, 10 to 15 milligrams of regular THC.

Morris Beegle: [00:42:25] How much. Material would it take to get a kilo of THC P yeah, that’s what I’m trying to think about.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:42:35] How so? It’s, no, so let’s see. I’m trying to remember. I think a 50 pounds of biomass. Would give us roughly about a kilo after you go through, cause you have to, you know, extracted, isolated out, I’m sorry, CBD isolated and then go through and isolate it into THCP so it takes a little bit longer.

but, you know, for an efficient facility that, that it’s not a huge deal.

Morris Beegle: [00:43:09] Yeah.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:43:09] Interesting. Yeah, so still playing around with that. It’s been been interesting. W we love just playing around right now. you know, we’ve, we’ve done the CBD oil and extraction and it’s good and we like to produce a quality product, but I think just young entrepreneurs and sort of having a, some scientists on our staff, just finding new things like that.

That’s cool. Right? Like some of the, one of the things that keeps us going, especially in a time like this,

Morris Beegle: [00:43:36] right. So that material obviously would end up going into the medicinal and recreational markets.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:43:44] Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it seems like we’re, we’re talking to folks just asking questions, just trying to see and hear what kind of interests there is out there.

but I’m, I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll see where it goes.

Morris Beegle: [00:43:54] Yeah, that’ll be interesting. Again, with all these minor cannabinoids, both on the THC side of the business as well as the temp side of the business, the CBGs and the CDNs and the CDCs, and. All those seas.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:44:11] Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, like with going back to the CBD for a second, cause I keep hearing a lot of folks mainly from the processing side, which is what we do.

Or from the cultivators side saying that, Hey, CBD is going to be the next big thing, but we have a small retail store, where we just don’t help folks. We try to understand what people want and what, what works and what doesn’t. And I’ve yet to have a single customer saying, Hey, do you have CBG. you know, there, most folks that come into us still don’t even know exactly what CBD is.

They’ve just heard about it. They know that, you know, their mom takes it and they told them to come and get it. so I think the introduce another product like that, where they can see where it’s consumer driven demands, I think is a little bit challenging right now when they’re being bombarded about CBD and what that is.

so, you know, it might take a market or maybe somebody like yourself that you know, understands consumer psychology to say, Hey, CPG, it’s the next big thing, but I’m not seeing anybody getting into that space right now.

Morris Beegle: [00:45:08] I would agree completely. The CBD thing happened because of, say, Charlotte Figgy rest in peace.

She was, you know, one of, she was a huge catalyst for this industry and the whole epileptic. Children side of things really put CBD on the map and then all of a sudden CBD also assist with pain and anxiety and all these other conditions, which CBP. Theoretically can assist with, and it’s become a big thing in the media for five years.

And we’ve been building this dang around CBD and, and there is a consumer market for it and it’s taken a while and we’re still, there’s still a lot of room to penetrate the market with CBD and to follow up with CBG consumers. It takes  takes them a while before things catch on. So I still, I think it’s going to be a while before CBG catches on because CBD still has to run its course, even though CBD is maybe a little bit in limbo within our own space because everybody said on all this material, the prices are dropping.

And you know, people that have been in the industry for the last five years are kind of . A lot of us are like, all right, I’m kind of done and over with CBD at this point. It’s like, let’s move on and let’s go, let’s get to CBG, let’s get to THCP, let’s get to these other cannabinoids. But the general consumer market, they’re several years behind the industry itself.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:46:44] Yeah. and so then you have to go here soon, but just to start wrapping up, is there anything that other, you seem to be just from looking at some of your online presence and some of the different companies that you’re a part of, you’re using to be an advocate and I’m really passionate about this industry.

is there anything that you would like to leave people with, whether it’s a message or a call to action, maybe something that. You keep saying over and over hoping that people will understand or, or remember about the industry?

Morris Beegle: [00:47:15] Well, I would say B, if you’re in the industry, obviously you’re passionate about cannabis and, and that.

You should follow your passion. You should, you should do what you truly believe in. And if you, and if you believe in this plant, which a lot of us do, I think this cha, this plant can change the world, not only from the consumable side, but really from the industrial side and the environmental side.

That’s why focus on the, the hemp side of it rather than, than on the medicinal and recreational side of it. Because I see that hemp can transform agriculture and. Bye organic and regenerative practices by all the ingredients that can be made from the grain side of it and the fiber side of it, going into the food system and going into the industrial, industrial supply chain, whether that’s paper and bio-plastics and building materials, and really have a positive impact on society.

And, and to me, this industry is about social change. It’s about. industrial change, environmental change, and, and again, I guess follow your passion. That’s what I’m doing. And I see a lot of the same type of people around me doing that sort of thing. So yeah. I guess that’s all, you know, I’m just gonna leave it with that.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:48:40] Yeah. Cool. Great. That’s good message. A think a good place to leave it. so if somebody wants to reach out to you or maybe learn more about you, where should we direct them?

Morris Beegle: [00:48:51] you can go to Morris beagle.com or Morris at Morris Spiegel. Is my email. And at Morris Spiegel on social media, whether that’s Facebook or Instagram.

Okay, great.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:49:02] Well, I will link to that in the, the show notes and, so we’ll leave it there, and hopefully warrants, we’ll get to get a chance to meet face to face at one of your conferences, whenever the, the world opens its doors again. and best of luck with the, the upcoming virtual conferences that you have coming up.

And, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Morris Beegle: [00:49:21] All right. Thanks Jason. Appreciate it. Take care. You too. All right. Bye.

Jason De Los Santos: [00:49:27] Hey guys, and before you go, this is Jason from spectrum labs. Please be sure to visit us on the web as the spectrum labs.com for any show notes and links discussed in the podcast.

Also remember to click the subscribe button wherever you may be listening from, so you get notified when our next episode comes out and tune in next show and have a fantastic day.

About Spectrum Labs

At Spectrum Labs, we source local hemp and extract high-quality Full Spectrum Hemp extracts that even our families can use.

Spectrum Labs can manufacture these full-spectrum hemp extracts:

• Crude
• Distillate
• Tinctures
• Gummies
• Lotions
• Custom formulations

To learn more about Spectrum Labs, visit www.TheSpectrumLabs.com or contact us at (828) 229-7952
Asheville, NC

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