Cocktail Whisperer
WB: Please tell me about yourself? Where are you from? Why wine? Why cannabis? Outdoor or indoor?
Josh Lizotte=JL: I’m a born and raised California guy. I grew up in Santa Barbara County and moved to Northern California in 1999. I have bounced up and down the California coast my entire life and decided to sit still for a while in LA when we launched the cannabis beverage Rebel Coast in 2018.
Kim Rivers, CEO of Trulieve
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where did you grow up? Was cannabis vilified like where I grew up in 1960’s NJ? What brought you forward into the cannabis industry?
In The Weeds with Jimmy Young finds a one of kind talent at the NCIA NE Business Conference in Boston, he’s Warren Bobrow.
I just spent a few days down in Miami Beach at Benzinga Cannabis, the business and arts conference that represents the metric-driven intricacies in the effervescent and wildly entrepreneurial industry of cannabis.
I attended Benzinga, not knowing anything, but I did come with an open mind.
Author’s note: “Coco Meers and Marcy Capron Vermillion are the co-founders of Equilibria.”
Warren Bobrow=WB: Why cannabis? What brought you to the plant?
Coco: I was extremely under-educated about cannabis when Marcy (co-founder) and I reconnected to ideate in summer of 2018 after selling our respective tech companies. A francophile from Alabama, white burgundy and bourbon pretty much had me covered on the recreational side of things. Marcy was the first data-driven, engineering mind to emphatically share her personal CBD success story with me, opening up my mind to the idea of cannabis as medicine, versus recreation. Upon hearing Marcy’s authentic stories of nerve pain management and mental health relief, as well as the countless (anonymized) stories of the women she had counseled on dosage and delivery techniques, I began taking a high quality, full-spectrum CBD daily. After a few days, I felt more rested and generally more balanced. After a few weeks, I described my overall temperament as decidedly more “even.” I had a longer fuse with my young children and was less fixated on elements beyond my control at work. After a month or so, I realized I could take my biologic injectable drug for an autoimmune disease less and less, eventually leveling off at ⅓ the frequency. CBD has brought me balance, and I knew women everywhere deserved similar access.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from? Why cannabis? What propelled you on this journey? What are the highlights so far?
Niccolo Aieta=NA: I live in Colorado now, but I was born in Northern California and spent my formative years outside of Los Angeles.
Brandon Wiegand is the regional general manager of The+Source in Las Vegaswhich is known widely as the best legal cannabis dispensary in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from?
Brandon Wiegand=BW: I am proud to be born and raised in Las Vegas!
Warren Bobrow: Where are you from? Why cannabis? Did you go to business school? Who is your mentor?
Peter Miller: I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I spend my time now between our corporate headquarters there and visiting everywhere that the SLANG network operates, meeting with the team, our partners, and the greater group of stakeholders in our supply chain and business. Cannabis grabbed my attention seven years ago, when Colorado had a ballot initiative to legalize adult use cannabis. It piqued my interest because of the potential that the new market represented and how the cannabis space could have such a great impact. Soon after, I discovered that Canada was exploring a commercial medical cannabis market to handle what had become a pretty large gray market that the government wanted to disintermediate.
Warren Bobrow=WB: How do you set up a successful brand in the cannabis space?
Sam Arellan0=SA: How you approach building your brand should not be qualified by the space you operate within. As in any industry, start by understanding the audience you wish to engage with. You should know them as well, if not better than they know themselves. The most successful brands regardless of industry are predictive – they know what we want before we do. They revolutionize and modernize the way we think, act and shop. Successful brands become prisms by which paradigms shift and new ones get created. In cannabis, Canndescent operates like this. How does this differ from mainstream brands? It doesn’t. Good brands regardless of industry are like good conversations. That is to say they are reciprocal, meaningful and mutually beneficial.