Episode 184: The Power Plant That Could Save the World | Annie Rouse | Hemp Entrepreneur & Environmental Economist
What if one plant could solve multiple global problems: environmental degradation, economic instability, and public health? Annie Rouse believes hemp can. Kara talks with Annie about the power and potential of hemp as an industrial crop, a wellness resource, and a tool for climate solutions. They get into how policy, stigma, and industry gatekeeping have slowed hemp's progress, and why Annie’s on a mission to change that. Annie is a Fulbright Scholar, economist, and investigative journalist who’s built a portfolio of businesses and advocacy projects under the Think Hempy Thoughts brand. This conversation covers everything from the war on drugs to sustainable fashion to the underestimated power of female entrepreneurs.
“Women coming forward in unison is essential to us as a group to taking what is ours. We have a finesse that men do not. We don’t always realize it or know that we can. Having confidence that we step into our own and our collective power is the first step. ”
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Industrial & Agricultural Hemp + Cannabis
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 How Annie first discovered hemp
01:25 What we get wrong about hemp and cannabis
03:10 Hemp’s potential to transform global supply chains
05:00 Getting a Fulbright to study hemp in Canada
07:30 Fighting industry stigma and misinformation
10:20 Think Hempy Thoughts and building hemp businesses
12:15 Why sustainable fashion needs hemp
14:40 Eco-feminism and the power of women entrepreneurs
16:15 How Annie juggles her portfolio of projects
18:00 Running a values-driven business
20:10 How to talk about hemp without getting shut down
22:25 The True Cost documentary and fast fashion's dark side
25:45 Supply chains, certifications, and conscious choices
28:30 Why policy change matters for entrepreneurs
30:15 Work-life balance and wellness as a founder
32:00 Building confidence in male-dominated industries
34:30 What powerful means to Annie right now
It was very challenging for me early on to pick a lane. Because with hemp it's oh, okay, there's fiber, there's seed, there's cannabinoids. And I was really more interested in the fiber and the grain side until I got Lyme disease and I just, that allowed me to just say, Nope, I'm focusing on cannabinoids because it just saved my life.
That's Annie Rouse and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Hey guys, I am Kara Duffy, a business coach and entrepreneur on a mission to help you live your most extraordinary life. By showing you anything is possible, people who have mastered freedom and ease and success, who are living their best and most ridiculous lives and are making an impact are often people you've never heard of Until now, I am such a huge fan of women who are just out there doing their thing to make the world a better place and secretly.
Because they never brag about themselves. Our total undercover badasses, Amy Rous is one of those women. She's transforming the hemp industry in America. She's educating and correcting people on all the various products, hemp producers, and its benefits. She's running businesses and advocating and advising for other companies, and she's doing all of this with degrees in economics and MBA and a Fulbright scholarship on her ccb.
I'm excited for you to meet this badass
Annie. I'm excited to have you here today. Thank you. Likewise. Let's tell everybody right away your name, where you are in the world, and what you're up to.
So my name is Annie Rouse. I'm currently in Michigan, Northern Michigan. And I have a couple different enterprises within the industrial hemp or agricultural hemp space.
Moving into cannabis as well.
Your website is one of the most informative, easy to read, super clear websites for anyone who wants to learn anything about hemp and all the things that you can do with it. I was on there to this morning nerding out about things and falling down the rabbit holes of all the posts you've done.
And I think it's shameful from an American history perspective, but just unfortunate what's happened with hemp in America. For everyone listening, do you wanna just kinda give a rundown of the sad history of hemp and where it's gotten to today, where it's in a much better place?
Yeah.
So thank you so much for that compliment. I really appreciate it. I have spent a lot of time on the website, not so much recently, but in the past, just trying to make it easy for people to understand temp because people don't and a lot of that is because of the. Because of American history for it and because of the stigma that was pressed against it in the thirties.
But really it has a deep history in the United States and has helped us really become the nation for which we are today. Initially before 1937, it was really used has been used all throughout American history. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, they used hemp consistently.
What Sherwin Williams, a big, massive paint provider in the us they used to use hemp seed oil as a drying agent within their paints. So it has ha it has all of these rich industrial purposes. Henry Ford as well used the hemp seed oil to as a, within their combustion engines as like a diesel.
And up we, we used it and US Navy used it to build ropes and sails and parachute webbings. And it was also used as like a chicken feed great Omega profile that we were then bio accumulating into our bodies. And then in 1937, really starting in the early 1930s, it started developing the stigma because the United States and the international drug, network decided that they wanted to start regulating cannabis within this drug framework that they were creating on an international scale, really for opioids and primarily opioids, really. And they decided to lump cannabis within that. And so hemp, because it is the cannabis plant, ended up getting brushed into this international regulation and slowly got ripped out of all of our industrial processes.
And, all the way from textiles to bio composites, these products can be used or that, or this agricultural material can be used within a plethora of products. And it was ripped out in the thirties. It was taxed. Of course, you don't wanna tax, you don't wanna suddenly then shift, you end up shifting to a different supply source because the tax increases the price on everything.
And so people just stopped using it. And then by the time 1970s hit it was completely mixed in as a narcotic drug schedule. One, no medical value, high potential for abuse. Yeah, my t-shirt is a high potential for abuse. Come on. And it was lumped into as a schedule one narcotic and the 1970 Controlled Substances Act stayed in that category up until 20 15, 20 14 when the US Farm Bill came out.
And within that farm bill language was a couple lines that basically removed anything at less than 0.3% delta nine THC, which is then one of the intoxicating cannabinoids found in cannabis. So long as it was below that level we opened up a research program within states that adopted this language and developed programs and slowly.
From 2014 to 2018, research programs developed primarily actually around CBD as opposed to the industrial side which we can talk more about later. But then in 2018, that language was solidified even more and they actually completely removed it from the Controlled Substances Act. So it was no longer a research program.
It's now a completely commercialized program, still really controlled. But within that time from really 2018 and really 2020 to 2022, we've seen the grain side and the fi, especially, particularly the fiber side, really start developing and being utilized in all kinds of products, from household materials, from building materials to sunglasses really amazing proteins that you can get.
So highly valuable crop, highly misunderstood crop but has a good place in the future, I think for for the world.
I just, it seems so asinine that we would remove a core crop from human functioning, like it would, hemp is in my head anyway, so much closer to the capabilities of cotton or linen or something that just has all these uses that the human consumption part is so far down the list of why, like we need it.
Yeah. I also can't imagine not having he hemp parts on my peanut butter. Oh, yeah. And banana toast sandwiches. So I don't, I put it on everything. Yeah. Literally everything I eat, I'm like hemp parts and parts. Yeah. They're so good for us and neutral, like they just add it's like sneaking vegetables into tomato sauce for kits or something.
Yep. I just, it's it seems so asinine to me and just that it would. Limit the Amer progress of America by doing it. And I know that there's the controversial story around like William Randolph Hearst and the printing and his newspaper industry and how he ended up he was a big supporter of pushing it out.
But it just seems like how were people not losing their shit back then when they're like, we use this in everything. What do you mean we can't use it anymore?
So it wasn't, it was popular. It wasn't like tremendously popular. We were still using corn. We were still using soy at the time.
Really. Decade before was the rise of the soy movement. Henry Ford was a huge advocate of soy. He and George Washington Carver used to call it the Little Miracle Plant. But Henry Ford really was like a very large prohibitionist. So like with the hemp kind of being in this weird category, he stayed away from it.
When. A lot of it people look to William Randolph first as the, to point the fingers. He really participated more in the role of a smear campaign through his newspapers. But it was really a much larger effort, I think, personally from the pharmaceutical sector because they just, it was a nuisance.
They needed they couldn't really control it. They couldn't patent it because, the compound, the medicinal compounds in it couldn't be synthesized or isolated at the time. So they didn't know how to rebuild them. And if you can't, you can't patent mother nature. So they would have to create a new compound with it, which is really how, all of modern pharmaceuticals of that whole industry has developed.
And so they really. Seemed to have played a larger role. But people found substitutes, jute was a big substitute at that time. It's very similar to hemp in terms of the fiber properties. It's really, hemp is like a combination between jute and soy mixed into one. It's got the industrial side with the oils and the food properties and it's got the fiber side like juke.
Or canna. And there was a big economic shift at that time with the juke trade and needing war reparations. And we had to, the. United Kingdom owed us a ton of money, the United States after World War I. And so they needed to do this reciprocal trade to, bring, and they did that via Jew.
So it was like, all right, we'll get rid of this hemp industry, and they sent fibers that we use, and instead we'll replace it with Jew. And that with, industries all across the board as, as long as there's a substitute, they can make that shift. So like Sherwin Williams was, they were one of the ones that came out against it, of no, we use this.
You can't, yeah. You can't make this illegal. And then it came to light that, oh, actually, you can use flax seed oil as a replacement, so just do that. And I'm sure they probably got some tax incentives and stuff like that to make the transition and voila, the, higher powers kick out a something that one of the oldest crops on earth that has developed with our bodies and that we've evolved with.
And, boom, it's outta the picture.
Yeah. And I think the other part that makes. Hemp so magical. Is that two to one ratio with the omega profile?
It's two to one, right? Omega six to Omega-3,
omega two. It might be the other way around. Okay. I'm now blanking on that, but yeah, so it's perfect.
I think it's three to six. 'cause you need more three than six. And that's right now soy is really high in omega six, which is why, the American population has these horrible inflammatory issues because we're constantly stuffing ourselves with soy, whether we know it or not. Yeah. And hemp, the body really craves a two to one, Omega-3 to omega six ratio.
And soy is more like a one to six, three to six ratio. Yeah. It's super healthy for you.
I wanna go back in time a little bit. Would 8-year-old, you have imagined that you were the empress of hemp at this point in your life?
Probably not. I think I was, didn't, couldn't ever fathom what my life would be like at, 30 plus years old.
Yeah. But probably my, the 2009 me which was like a 20-year-old or something like that. Probably hope for it I suppose. But yeah I wouldn't really call myself that. I just know a lot about it and try to spread the good word about it, which is getting easier and easier.
Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna nominate you for that title 'cause it also funny to say thank you. You're welcome. How did you end up being in hemp in this capacity?
I luck luck and hard work both. So obviously my dad introduced it to me when I was eight years old, and then I. Just got lucky to have written about it because my parents had directed me to.
And that just sparked my curiosity. And of course my dad just driving, helping me spark that, those questions and wanting to understand it more helped me, helped push me along. But it, everything was a little mix of luck and hard work. Having to, taking the chance to go to graduate school, taking the chance to, write up a Fulbright essay or research proposal, actually going through with it, submitting it, all of those things.
I obviously had to work hard to get done. But the timing on everything was perfect. I had, I submitted the Fulbright proposal in 2013. At that time, there was already a lot of movement around him. When I was in Canada doing the Fulbright, the farm bill passed, so that timing could not have been better and that, I had nothing to do with that, but, so it things, I like to think things are a mix of both.
And did, when you were in school, were you studying agriculture? Were you study, like where, what were you studying that led to
the Fulbright Scholarship? So in undergraduate I studied economics.
But then I took this environmental economics course and I just fell in love with the whole concept of what we were doing wrong, what we could be doing and how we could monetize the right thing to do. Yeah. And what that meant, for all, for the whole world really. And so that sparked my interest at one of my, the professor of that course led me down this path of studying environmental policy, which put me into graduate school out in California where I got a master's in International environmental policy and did a dual degree in business administration.
And one of my professors had done a ful. He was, he just did it as like a class project, a paper. 'cause he really was trying to push people to do it 'cause he had such a great experience. So I wrote up a proposal I think it was for Bill. I actually don't remember which it was for, but I ended up shifting it later for the actual Fulbright.
But. That kinda led me in that direction. So I wasn't necessarily in studying in agricultural Yeah. Environment, but it was more of like the environment across the board. So I was really into building at the time. I had done a internship with the Monterey Bay Aquarium where I was studying lead certifications and helping them, assess that path.
And then was doing some stuff with waste management. So I was interested in like, all walks of the environment. I actually wanted to saw myself being like a, chief sustainability officer somewhere, was my like, tenure, 20 year goal. Not there yet. Not yet. Yeah.
And I just, I love the fact that your resume.
Is not who people expect to be the empress of hemp. Like you're from Kentucky, right? You've studied economics, you have a Fulbright scholarship, like all these things where they would be like why are you hanging out in that industry? It's a bunch of hippies from California, and you're like, no, this is why I'm here.
You guys are being idiots about it. It just, it makes me so proud to I really powerful ladies that are secretly way more powerful than you think. They're and you're just so like relaxed and casual and just so well spoken. And then you're like, oh yeah, and this is in my back pocket and this is, and what else do you want?
'cause I have the full supply of tools so that you guys are going to listen to me. 'cause you're not listening to other people.
Yeah.
Sometimes I still don't listen, but
it's
hard to convince people sometimes. Yeah.
Obviously being in, coming from a state of Kentucky and now you're in Michigan, there's a very different perspective of what hemp and also cannabis in the Midwest versus on the coast.
What how are you seeing things change and how are you seeing it evolve from a both political and cultural perspective?
So Kentucky is was very early to the hemp side. Mitch McConnell, Senator McConnell was very, was played a huge role in that. The last thing he ever wanted to do though was legalized or is legalized cannabis.
And I think we can very much see that in, in the Senate right now. So Kentucky, while they were first to market on that they'll probably be the last to legalize or one of the last to legalize cannabis, which is definitely a bummer because it is really the largest black market or was up until medical and rec started popping up everywhere.
And Michigan I'm here just on vacation, but the market here is very well developed for cannabis, but not for hemp. There is some language that needs to be changed for, really the production of the supplement side of hemp in the state of Michigan. And. The really, the fiber is more done in like the, Kansas really South Dakota and Idaho, Montana, no, not Idaho, sorry, Montana and yeah, that whole area.
And politically, it definitely, they're both bipartisan. But hemp obviously being much more so than the cannabis side. And I think that we will see that shifting. There's. It's right. Cannabis as a whole is having higher and higher rankings and more people are wanting it to go through with more sciences coming out about it.
It's funny, that there's always this call for more research and it's really? What about on that pesticide that you just shoved them down our faces? Hey, glyphosate, woo, 20 years later, there's all these, cancers coming out about it, but you just let that go to market, so 80% of our bodies now, yay. Yeah. Wow. Thanks. So it's funny how, the political VI environment has shaped up, but that's mostly because the lobbying, if there's lobbying dollars, they just shove it down those throats. And cannabis unfortunately has as a whole, hemp and cannabis and has I think one, 100th of the lobbying dollars that the pharmaceutical had industry has in the oil and gas industry have.
It's hard. Yeah. Slowly but surely though, there's more acceptance, more people are taking it. And that I think we'll see that actually with a lot of the narcotics, the drugs that are on the Narcotic scheduling Act of just all of that drug control was not the right way to go.
And we're seeing these shifts slowly, as, more research comes out about psilocybin and MDMA and things like that, so it's just gonna take time. But as our generations age and the old guys move out, then yeah. Ideally we'll all keep this same kind of spirit alive. I'm sure the baby boomers said the same thing now, so Yeah.
Hopefully we don't get lost.
Yeah. I, and I think that people didn't realize, or still don't realize how, by making them all of these drugs schedule one, that the research stopped. And I just, there's such a difference between. Researching something and using something, whether you think it's right or wrong to use it.
And we just missed so much powerful information on all of these, oh, yeah. Especially the natural sourced scheduled one products of if it's, we're doing all this research on, for crying out loud toads in the rainforest that can get you high. And we're learning all this about how they can, these things can cure cans and other things too, based on the chemical properties.
Why did we stop doing research here? We have so many big problems in the world to solve. And I think that's where chemistry can be great, versus the chemistry that we're always talking shit about lately of oh, thank you for again. The pharma, the pharmaceuticals that are now addictive or the all the agricultural products that give us cancer and, we don't need any more plastics. Thank you. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. It's and I think that's what's interesting also about hemp is that it literally crosses over into every hot button topic that exists today.
Sustainability, environmentalism, natural health even racism. It crosses over into, and its its journey. And do you, I would imagine that you would just have smart people beating down your door, being like, we have to talk. Is that happening? And do we need to start a lobby for more of that to be happening
always down for more?
It's with the industry, everyone is so caught up in it right now. It's it's hard to keep up. The industry's changing and evolving at, rates that are just insane. Yeah. There's a lot of market compression right now, and so there's, shifting tides and mergers and acquisitions and, bankruptcies and, everything Yeah.
To the moon and back. So it's but yeah, talking with people, expanding, my intellect, helping to expand their intellect and subjects is always something that really I appreciate. And it's how we learn. It's how we grow as humans and how we change opinions and, learn to.
Speaking of how we learn, so many people are just devouring documentaries right now about all those topics. And more. And part of your inspiration came from that film, the hamsters plant, the seed. Do you ever think about making, films to be telling this story? 'cause I just, oh yeah.
I had the pleasure. I've got one in my back
pocket.
Yes. I have friends at Mountain Film and I get to go there in Telluride over Memorial Day weekend. Cool. Every film is about sustainability or social cause or they're just, they all fit into the, like the social economics space at a minimum.
I think that'd be a great place to get your film shown. Let me know if we need some introductions. Alright. Both with filmmakers or the people there, but I walked out of there want, wanting every person on the planet to watch all the movies I just saw. Because you can't not watch them and be like, shit, we're changing things.
You just can't. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. And they're so impactful in that sense. People really can see the visuals of it. They can understand it a little bit more. I think we had spoken earlier about the film, the true cost. Yes. All about the textile industry. I watched that with a friend of mine who was like.
Fashion fashionista did fashion design, all this stuff. She watched that documentary with me and was like, oh my God. Yeah. I have to get out of this industry. Or I have to change it, it's yeah, it 180 her entire, feeling about what she was doing. And I think that's how a lot of things can go in that documentary setting. It reaches people that maybe, wouldn't understand it or, wanna see it otherwise or read about it. And yeah. I think they, documentaries like that can have the impact of many, it's just a fact of getting it to the masses is Yeah.
Always the hard part. Yeah.
And when I was in undergrad, I was debating being a geography or like a anthropology major. And I took this class that was similar to one that you talked about called the. Ecology or economics of ecology.
And mostly we were talking about the true costs of anything we do in touching the Amazon rainforest or other natural Oh, yeah. Tools. And it's like a whole class you just wanna cry through because you're like, dammit, we do not know how to do math at all. And we do not know how to value anything, like who is in charge. Yep. But there's such a crossover there and with so many things needing to be.
Fixed and helped and implemented. Right now, I keep being like, what do I need to do? Do I need to go and get my law degree? Do I need to go and get a PhD in economics? What do I need to do? Who, where can I channel this energy to be louder? Because Yeah. There's all these people who are like, tell me what to do.
And I'm like, Ooh, I don't know. Call Annie call these people. Do you wanna become a lobbyist? Might hate your life, but if you wanna do it well great. Yeah.
We definitely need more lobbyists on the good side. That, that's a huge, something huge that we need. Unfortunately, people on the bad side usually are the ones with all the money that hire the lobbyist.
But but the, that, that's a huge aspect. And when I was doing my Fulbright, I studied lifecycle assessment. And I think that is a, it's a field that's up and coming and is important for our future, because you see these companies out there and it's becoming more and more popular, but like I think Adidas or, some different brands, they've now got on their label like, oh, this saved 98% carbon or what, or, whatever their value is.
And it's oh, okay, great, that number looks cool, but like how did you account for that? Yeah. What did you include? Did you include transportation? Did you include it all the way back to the raw ingredient? The, all your raw materials, but what was your scope of work? Because everything in that realm, the data can be skewed so easily. Yeah. Just by, oh, we're only gonna include this tiny little like area we're only gonna include once it reaches our facility and the transportation to you. It's that's not the environmental impact of that product. But it's also hard, as a business, as a small business especially, we try and, be our very, considerate about our supply chain. We try and lower our impact. Our transportation impact by sourcing locally. But even that, it's oh, okay, we can't get everything local. I have to get packaging from China. That is just, you gotta do it. And accounting for it all the way, every single product in it, ev the packaging, the screw, the, whatever it is, you gotta count for all those parts and really get the scope of it and then start building backwards.
But getting all that data is it is painful. Yeah.
It's painful.
It doesn't
exist sometimes.
Yeah. Mostly doesn't exist. It, there's softwares, like when I was doing my work, I got a software and it had like basic kind of, okay. This is the flow. And then you could tweak some of the numbers, but not really.
And so you can use that as a baseline, but you still like. It, it's all about building the model and
Yeah.
What are you including?
Yeah. And I worked in footwear and apparel for 20 years and it was the hardest
Oh, I bet.
Like in operations and design, like across the spectrum, but the supply chain piece was crazy.
And even if you did everything in quotes right. You still couldn't control what would happen. Like I've had an entire container of shoes fall into the ocean because of a storm. Oh. And you're like how do we account for that? Where does that go? Yeah. Oh. And that happens all the time, right? And who's going to fish that out of the deepest crevices we've ever found?
Yeah.
What outta the 5% that we've explored?
Yes. Yeah. Like I, when we do expand ocean exploration, I'm, people are gonna be like, what the fuck were humans doing? Yeah. Be like I just, that if, based on what we're seeing arrive onshore or in the plastic islands out there. Oh, yeah. All the stuff that's not on the surface.
Yeah. Yeah. My my brother-in-law studies oceanography, chemical oceanography actually. And so he's like all about the nitrogen cycles and, the, he doesn't really look at the, at the plastics, but obviously just testing wa he goes to the Arctic and is testing water samples and stuff, and it's oh, every sample has a piece of plastic in it, every sample.
And it's not, people think it's oh, they're, it's a, something, like a this or like it's a full plastic and it's it's head up, pick it up, can't even see it. And then that shrimp is gonna eat it and then it bioaccumulates in the shrimp, and then we eat the shrimp and then, oh, hey, what do you know?
We got a credit card size worth of plastic in our gut. No wonder we've got too many problems. Yeah. Yeah. We're like,
we don't know how to detox that out yet.
Yeah. The body's smart. But yeah, I don't know if it's that smart.
I did an ocean cleanup locally and I thought, oh, like I'll pick up some trash, fill up a bag, feel good about the day.
And they're like, can you please sit in this 10 foot square and pick up all the micros pieces of styrofoam? And I was like. Fuck. It's like piggy like they God I don't know if you're familiar, been to Burning Man, but they like have people with tweezers picking up glitter. 'cause you are not.
That's how deep they are. And they leave no trace. Oh. And glitter is banned. You are not allowed to bring glitter or wear things have glitter on them because it's a shit show. People do. People do. So you can, someone has to go around and clean it up. And that's what I felt like. I'm like literally on my hands and knees for six hours picking up Wow.
Pieces that don't even look like styrofoam because you're like, oh, it's just like white crushed rock until you get there. You're like, no it's not. You are like, Ugh. I bet you
found a bunch of nerds. Then what are nerds? You know what those are? So they're like the little it's the precursor to plastic.
Oh. So there are these little balls that are like, yep. What you'd see in a plastic recycling.
Yeah basically when they make plastic, they, take all of the petroleum and the different inputs, plasticizers, colorants, and they put it, extrude it into these like straw, like molds. And then they just cut 'em up into all these tiny little pieces and then they box those up and then they put 'em onto barges and they s shive them across the Pacific Ocean. And then they land in Long Beach mainly. So if you ever do a beach cleanup. Clean up at Long Beach. You will find, I found like 60 of them in a four by four space.
I mean it, it's littered with Les and then a mold manufacturer in the United States will receive those and they'll make, like an iPhone case or Yeah, a water bottle or it's like plastic, whatever. It's plastic
needs to make everything else.
Yeah, exactly. They melt 'em down and then mold it into that.
And you find those things. I'm on the Great Lakes right now. I'm on Lake Michigan. They're all over Lake Michigan, all over the shores of Lake Michigan. And they're just these tiny little like clear, almost translucent, sometimes white little beads and they're everywhere. I've never really seen 'em on the Atlantic coast, but they're all along the Pacific Coast and they're all over the Great Lake Shores.
Which is just infuriating. Terrifying. Yeah. Ugh. Our most precious freshwater source. And we're just
how I'd like to have a conversation with someone who is smart enough to figure out how to make a magnet to pick all those things up, because there's no way to do it one by one.
Yeah. Yeah. That would be a really good idea.
I have no idea how you'd make that, but I bet someone can figure it out.
Wasn't there recently some bugs, worms that were like eating plastic? Yeah. So
they're, or microorganisms. Yeah. I feel like, actually in the gyres they found some bacteria or something like that actually is like, it's some new bacteria that they found out there.
I think that's what it was. That is actually eating. Plastics. Now, of course, it's is that gonna be an invasive species then if you introduce it into an environment that where it shouldn't be? Because if it's new bacteria that eats that what's going to eat the bacteria, to make sure that there's not this like overgrowth of God knows what new life alien form.
Because that is always, an externality that, that may occur. It's, there's where I am right now, there's a an invasive species called Eurasian water mill foil, and it's a it's a. Water I wanna say herb, but it's a plant. And it grows really tall and it's just, it's in the swimming area, it's just gross.
So we've always tried to figure out, oh, how do we eradicate this? Can we use a pesticide? Can we cover it up? Can we introduce these things called weevils, which are these little bugs that eat it? And then it's oh, okay, yeah, we could introduce that. But then when that plant is gone where are they going?
What are they doing? Yeah. Are they, do they die, do they, because they don't have a food source? Or are we now just introducing a bunch of these bugs and the great lakes. Yeah. And they're gonna end up growing 10 times their size who knows. And then the duck population
goes up or the other population goes up and suddenly you're like, oh, man, don't have plants.
And now you're covered in bird poop. Awesome.
Yeah. You never know these things. And again, it goes back to the precautionary principle and the innocence that we were talking about with them wanting so much research on cannabis and, oh, okay. Here it all is. Do something about it, whereas oh, glyphosate, no, just introduce that.
No big deal. Everything's got that externality to it, whether it's positive or negative,
figuring it out. I really don't believe that the majority of humans are malicious. And so I like, I'm like, maybe 1% truly are evil and that's it. But so that means that there's a large group of people who have done things that we now consider bad that didn't mean to, so I'm like, were they, was it a factor of like they did what they didn't know, they didn't know? Was it that they really weren't the best people to be making those decisions? What was going on where they were like, you know what? Release it. I think it, look it'll be fine. And you're like, wait, what? Yeah. I know from working in so many different corporate environments, like when you would see what would happen, there would always be.
Half the group would be like, are you outta your mind? The other half would be like, it's fine. And that was always the dilemma and we were not solving world problems. And so I'm just wondering who are all the people who were losing their shit that history has just forgotten over time? Because they didn't, they were the ones maybe causing problems to everyone else to be like, Hey guys did you see this report?
And you're like, sh
yeah. Go away. Go away. Yeah. Keep this deadline. I think a lot of it is driven by money, unfortunately. If you think about all the whistle whistleblowers and history, I don't know if you've seen the documentary Dope Sick. But it's all about Purdue Pharma.
Yep. And oh, just such a sad, but eye-opening and inspiring documentary. About the opioid epidemic. But, there was a whistleblower at. Purdue Pharma, and they, that person kept coming to him and being like, this is not good. This is not good. There's all these reports of addiction. And they just kept shutting her down.
Shutting her down. And it's because they were making so much money. Yeah. And they just didn't care, yeah. They knew that they weren't gonna get in trouble for it. They, and they still haven't, the family still is not really gotten in trouble for it. And so they just knew there weren't gonna be consequences.
And because of that, the, they ended up firing the whistleblower and then she ended up ratting 'em out entirely. But actually I think she I'll let people find out in the documentary that's a massive aspect of it. People just don't always listen because they wanna make a lot of money.
Yeah. They're just bad truth. They're just high on the sales reports and
And I, as an entrepreneur, it's there are days when there's just no more capacity to make another decision or think about anything else. So I under, I can understand how these things come up and you're like, please come back tomorrow.
Yeah. Look at my to-do list. I don't have room to have that conversation right now. I can't, there's moments that we can't actually handle more decision making or information coming in so I can understand things being pushed off for a period of time, but like forever and for that long.
And at what point do you not listen to your, the people whose beautiful brains you've hired to contribute? Yeah.
And I think oh, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Oh, I think a big part of it we had talked about making money and, having the decisions that. The, a lot of these public trade, publicly traded companies they have to do that.
They have to make that decision because their job is to increase the shareholder value. And so it's literally their fiduciary responsibility. Yeah. They have to do it. But if we embedded environmental or social data points into that value of a company, it would change the course of how we value everything, okay. Yeah. You didn't lost 10 cents on each product when you could have gained it, but in that process you offset, X percent of plastic going into the ocean or this waste stream or the landfill, or, you saved this amount of trees, which offsets X amount of carbon. We, there are ways to quantify that stuff now.
It's just a matter of doing it. And having, a leader to really push that forward and really wanting the investment banks to having them demand it. And I think that we will be seeing that hopefully in the coming decade or so. There's a lot of movement happen with Microsoft and Amazon and some of those massive companies because a huge investment firm called BlackRock.
They are a huge wealth management company. And they sent out a letter earlier, I think it was last year, all about if you are not investing in environmental protection and savings, then we will retract our investment from your company. That is massive news. Yeah. So hopefully those companies aren't just greenwashing what they're doing.
Yeah. And they're actually taking the steps to make it happen. And that's what we need.
Yeah. It's like we sent the letter, right? We're good. You're, yeah. No, nice try. Yeah. I don't remember if we talked about it when you were on the panel, but my favorite book this year has been Good Morning, beautiful Business.
By Judy Wicks. And she's one of those bad asses that not enough people know about. 'cause she started the Fair Trade Coffee Movement. She was part of that group in the us Wow. She started paying she start had a restaurant business initially. She's actually one of the original co-founders of Urban Outfitters when it was Oh, like a mostly vintage type store.
So she's this crazy pioneer for social entrepreneurism and Cool. She, one of the big things in her that she's excited about right now is. Moving away from the traditional stock market and looking at local stock markets, and she was like, I've made more money investing in this local, made up stock market in Philadelphia.
I made more returns there than I did investing in a, the traditional path. And I think that she's a really big, like I and so they're popping up in different cities now 'cause you're just investing in other entrepreneurs and it's, same rules, same plans, and who do you trust?
I would trust you over Exxon any day, right? Yeah. Yeah. For many reasons. Not just to keep your word, but to do the right thing. Yeah. And making your money back in those situations really is just, will they keep their word.
Because it's same fiduciary plans, but they are based on the triple, bottom line profit of people profit people, planet, or purpose, whatever their purpose is, it's not planet. But it, I'm so interested in that right now because as a. Educated business oriented adult in America. I'm like, you have to be having a retirement plan, like you need one. Oh, yeah. And I hate that it's handcuffed to this completely made up system that runs so much of US life, which is complete like it's monopoly money at the end of the day.
It is not a free trade market at all. Like it's controlled and manipulated and influenced. The. Over time, it still shows it's the best place to put money if you wanna make money. But I'm like, there has to be a better way. Like there this, yeah. I don't, I'm trying to avoid all the other yuck in my life.
And so that's the part where I'm like, how do we avoid that? Yuck. Completely. Yeah.
But I love that. I love that idea. Investing in small and you know what it is? You can trust in it. You, it's local to you. You can see it in action. Yeah. That's great.
You can jump in, help somebody if they need it.
Yeah.
But I'll send you a copy of her book 'cause it's just, it's so great. Plus she's just a badass was in Alaska on a what was those trips called? They had the, instead of going into the military civil service type trip that they used to do. Oh yeah. Okay. So just who she just is.
I'm like when I grow up, I hope I'm like you. But it is so interesting because there are and she's part of that baby boom generation of like still committed to changing what's happening and
There's a lot, so much more power in all things when it's hyperlocal.
Yeah.
Which I also think is really interesting.
I feel like I walk this really crazy extremes of a life of having been in really big global international companies and knowing that local is actually more effective and knowing the benefits on both sides, and it's
I don't know. It's like being a weird translator or ambassador of like, how do we just steal all the good parts like the rest?
Yeah. Yeah. Very true. I, it'll be a good case study too. I'm sure that the, like in the cities where those are, do they invite more, do more people move there or is there more success there? Or, the company, there's so many data points that you could probably get from them, like 20 years from now.
Yeah. And the my minor's in the urban anthropology space of that community building and what causes it, where does it come from and Right. All the things I've read show that when you have the more locally owned small businesses you have, it increases all those things you mentioned. It increases the sense of community feeling.
It increases the tourism dollars or like dollars from out of area that come into that location, how many dollars stay in that location. All the data points prove that there's a higher quality of life because of that. And you can even see it on the individual. Block level, which is crazy.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I'm curious how the safety factor comes in because she's from Philadelphia and there's a lot of great things in the local economy happening in Philadelphia. And it definitely is a neighborhood to neighborhood situation, as you can imagine in a big city. But I'm curious with the increase in crime that's happening right now in major cities, like how that's impacting it or not. But typically when you have a street of brick and mortar businesses that are locally owned, you don't have the same level of crime because they're there and they're involved in the community and most people aren't brazen enough to shit in their own backyard.
Yeah,
that's very true.
Some people do unfortunately. But, so I am curious how that layer of it kind of factors in. But now that I know that I have, I'm excited to read it friend to nerd on that then yeah, I'm gonna, I
definitely
do.
That's awesome.
When you go to the Think Happy Thoughts, Hempy Thoughts website, you list all of these programs and companies, are they all, yours is my first question.
They are all things that I've had a role in whether it's several of them I started myself or with co-founders. And then some I just advise for some I'm on the board of. But yeah, all of them in some form or fashion, I've have my input.
People get overwhelmed managing one business.
How do you keep your head on straight contributing to running or supporting all of these businesses?
I don't, I take a lot of C cannabis and CB, D, I I don't have much of a social life. I've been trying hard with the work life balance more recently, but it's still challenging.
But then I also have a lot of support with my partners and colleagues and whatnot with, whether it's within the industry or within the companies that, that I'm operating and, they are tremendous supports in all areas. The. I've tried to keep a lot of them at least within the same framework.
And it's been challenge, it was very challenging for me early on to pick a lane. Because with hemp it's oh, okay, there's fiber, there's seed there's kinda adenoids. And I was really more interested in the fiber in the grain side until I got Lyme disease. And I just, that allowed me to just say, Nope, I'm focusing on cannabinoids because it just saved my life.
Yeah. But even with that, it's like super expansive and we do have the manufacturing side, so we manufacture for our brands. We also manufacture for other brands, and so that makes it a little bit easier because we in that form it's consolidated in a sense. But yeah, I mean it's definitely challenging.
I've learned a ton. I've, I've been all the way from making a website to making a product, to, marketing it. I'm not very good at marketing it. It's definitely my biggest weakness because I just am not, I don't think in that way. And it's a lot of work to market stuff. It is you gotta be so persistent and not.
Sensitive to oh, that didn't get a reach, yeah. Ah, maybe I'm just gonna quit. It's that doesn't help. Yeah. So that's definitely my weakest point, but but yeah, it's not been easy. I will say that.
I'm glad that you brought up the Lyme disease because that was also my list to talk to you about.
What, I just wanna hear the whole origin story of how you found out you had it, what that process has been like for you. And you mentioned how it saved your life, but how did cannabinoids make such a difference for you?
Yeah, so I I actually got it in 2013 when I was on my Fulbright up in Banff National Park.
For those who say that lime is only in the northeast, it is not, it is all over Canada. It is all the way down the Appalachian Trail all over the east side of the Appalachians. It's getting into the west side of the Appalachian Mountains. It's in all 50 states in some form. And so absolutely, if you ever see a bullseye rash on your arm or you see a tick on your arm, take the tick, put it in a freezer.
You can test a tick for Lyme a lot easier than you can test the human body. But I unfortunately, because I didn't know that it was in. Spam or in Canada, I, and I didn't really even know what it was at the time. I'd heard of it, but I saw the rash of my arm and I was like, oh, it's just eczema. I've gotten that, like exact same looking rash, almost identical spot.
I'll just put some cream on it, call out a day. Totally forgot about it, it eventually it went away. Then I just slowly started getting these weird. Health issues that kept popping up. First I had a horrible arthritis in my knee. I thought I had torn something playing soccer.
I went to the doctor, they were like, no, you just have a lot of arthritis. I'm like, oh, okay. That's, I guess it's from playing soccer my whole life, whatever. And then just more weird things started happening. I got a sensitivity to smells. I had sudden really bad allergies. I had sensitivity to light, to sound.
Started having like weight loss, muscle fatigue. My body was, in general, very fatigued. The final, like two things that really set me off of what is wrong with me. I couldn't blame it on anything else, was one of which I started suddenly misspelling there and there, and where and whether.
I've never mixed those up. It was like. Okay. This is really bizarre. And coupled with that, I started getting really bad headaches, which I'd never really had. But then the thing that really made me think it was Lyme was that I was going on a hike and I was really out of breath. And I had remembered my mom talking with her friend several months back about her husband and how he had they couldn't figure out what was wrong with 'em.
And he was having a really hard time breathing. And he went to the hospital and they ended up finding out that he had Lyme disease. He's okay now. But I, that clicked in my mind and I was like, oh my God. So I raced home and I got online and literally every single one of my symptoms was on that site.
And then the last one was a bullseye rash that looked like ringworm. And I had remembered. My friend, who was a nurse when I had the rash, she looked at it and she was like, oh my God, do you have ringworm? My dog has ringworm. Did you get that from him? And I was like, no, it's just eczema. It's fine.
Yeah. She's it looks like ringworm. You should go get looks. I never did stupid. Although honestly, they probably wouldn't have even thought it was Lyme because it's just not something that doctors think about. So I ended up self diagnosing. I tried to find a doctor. I didn't have a primary care physician at the time.
Every doctor I called was like, oh, we'll see you in three months. I'm like, no, I'm gonna be di dead. I have to see you now. I have blind disease. They're like, no, you don't click. And so I finally, my dad had this like kind of random doctor and so I went in and saw him and I told him, I said, test me for Lyme disease.
I, I'm pretty sure that's what I have. So he thankfully listened to me, got the test, I got it back. It still was like. False positives, false negatives. You don't really know. It was like, because I had all the symptoms, because I had three of the five positives. He was like, I'm putting you on antibiotics.
Yeah. But it was already two years out. So with Lyme disease, if you don't catch it within a six, within a 60 day period, it will infiltrate your central nervous system and then you have it forever. And unfortunately I was well past the six, the 60 days. So I went on the antibiotics afterwards.
He was like that's really all I can tell you. There's no other, nothing else you can do. We don't recommend staying on antibiotics for a long period of time. Good luck. That's basically what I got. And then I went to several other doctors, some far more helpful than others. Got different tests on for like rheumatoid arthritis and things like that, all negative.
And I just started, a friend of mine gave me some CBD at the time when I was already in the hemp industry. And so I was like, all right, yeah, I'll try that. And it. It worked pretty quickly. Not for everything, but like I felt a change in my energy levels. I could walk a little bit easier. I could, I wasn't so depressed.
And so I was like, all right, this worked. So then that's when I started to try different products. And then I realized this issue in the industry of. At the time, which was just a quality control issue. Which is when I created a navi market, which is the retail side of my business.
And then that's what really just propelled me into that sector. 'cause then it was like, okay, I'm taking these for myself. Yeah, I'm gonna be fooling around 'cause there's not just CBD, there's CBG and CBDA and CBC and yeah, THC and all these cannabinoids. And so I was like narrowing down what worked well for me.
And I just coincidentally one of the advising one of the groups that I was advising for, still am Green Man Gardens there. They had a pharmacist on their team and he was actually specialized in Lyme disease formulations. So I talked with him a lot. Yeah, so random, hadn't, I hadn't even told anybody that I had Lyme disease and I randomly just spit that out to them and they were like that I specialize in that.
I'm like, what? I didn't know that. But, so he really helped me, walk through some of the deficiencies that you have and and then our chief science officer within our formulations, arm Mop innovates, he's a 50 years plus in pharmaceuticals, so he also is helping with different development on, on the vitamins and mineral side.
And, from that we created the Brand Overcome, which is a a brand that initially started for helping overcome life's greatest challenges. Now we've started to position it in the recovery, like performance recovery space as well. So we've got where wellness meets performance.
And really for athletes who, like me long ago, I guess I, should still say that I'm an athlete working back to it, it's hard. But those products really help with like exercise induced inflammation and those kinds of things. And they can help both on, the Lyme disease, autoimmune, people with Lyme disease, they have all kinds of weird.
Problems arthritis depression, fatigue, and it's a lot of, it's called the great imitator because it imitates different diseases like RA and MS and chronic fatigue syndrome and, all of these different diseases that actually are also linked to endocannabinoid deficiencies.
I have a theory that Lyme, the Lyme bacteria actually eats all of the endocannabinoids in your body. And that's what creates those imbalances in the body because your endocannabinoid system is responsible for relaxing, eating, sleeping, protecting and forgetting. And your body in, with Lyme disease, you're always in fight or fight mode.
You're not producing enough amino acids, you're not producing your conditional amino acids, which imparts coming back full circle, have six of the 7:00 AM conditional amino acids. So those things have been a lifesaver for me. And then cannabinoids counter, a lot of the issues that, that.
Occur when you have Lyme disease, it's an antioxidant. Lyme creates oxidation. It's an anti-inflammatory. Lyme creates inflammation. That's a theory. It's probably gonna take a really long time to prove, because similar to cannabis, Lyme disease is not studied very much. Yeah. Cannabis is studied a lot.
It's just not accepted and the same with Lyme disease. Yeah. But yeah, it's been a, it's been a tough road with it and unfortunately it's becoming more prevalent in the United States and other nations and, hopefully with that, the medical world will take it more seriously. But there's not been a ton of progress on that front.
Yeah. And we'll see what happens.
I have a couple of friends who are have it and are trying to figure out what management of it looks like.
Because I'm sure, as you've experienced as well, like they'll go through periods of everything feels great and then it doesn't, and it. It's frustrating 'cause it can wreck all of anyone who's a productive, maybe type A type person.
Nothing's more frustrated than feeling fatigue. Yeah. Because you're no, I'm not a person. I need to do this. Yeah. I'm not a person that's tired, I'm not a person that lays around. I'm not a person that needs, this much recovery time.
It's, the frustration's almost worse than the managing the actual symptoms sometimes.
So I think it's a really interesting space. And then, I don't know if, have you gone down the black hole of the origin of Lyme?
Oh
Yeah. It's pretty crazy. As a conspiracy theorist. I,
I believe it.
And it's it's called Lyme 'cause for people listen, sing.
'cause it comes from Lyme, Connecticut. And the theory that it came from the research laboratory on Long Island isn't so crazy when you look at the research that people did to share that story. And also. Tells me a little bit why people haven't been researching it. Yeah.
Yeah I totally agree.
I, there's only one piece of data, and again, you don't really even know if this is real, but that apparently, some skeleton was found with Lyme disease that dates back to 1400 years ago. Or, there's, I'm making up those numbers, but there was something like that came out and it's like my boyfriend, who doesn't really believe in conspiracy theories to that extent, he is no look at this data point.
They found it in a skeleton. And I'm like how do you know that's real? Yeah. I don't know, this story seems a lot more real. And it's, it was 1400 years ago or whatever, it's like, why isn't it everywhere? Why isn't it more prevalent? If it's been growing at this rate.
So I, yeah, I bel I believe the, yeah, the fabrication much more.
It was what, the late sixties or late seventies when it started to. Yeah, it
started to really blossom. Now some people look to it actually being used as a that they say that it was actually created in Germany during World War II and then was like brought over and more research was done in a lab or there's a couple different, is it a bio perspectives in a story?
Yeah, like a bio weapon, basically. Chemical warfare. Yeah, biochemical warfare. So it makes total sense. Back then they were doing all kinds of stuff to try and figure out, look at MK Ultra and that whole mine, they do a lot of things for war.
Especially people who we have decided as a global community we're off the rocker.
There were no rules of what you could or couldn't do to win. Yeah. It really shifts what I. What we, the research and the science that we have today for better or worse. But I do think it's really interesting. I also think it's really interesting how, just, so I'm glad that inflammatory diseases are getting so much more attention today because I don't know anyone that doesn't have one, if not multiple. Yeah.
Most of them are anthropogenic, it's because of the food we eat. Yes. Yeah. And the food that our food eats.
Yeah. There's no way to be, have a clean enough lifestyle where you're not going to have any inflammatory issues because it's in water and food and air and like every product that we touch it just, I don't know how we can escape it.
So we have to know how to manage it at this point. And I don't know if everyone's taking it seriously enough
Yeah. And I, yeah, I would definitely agree. Some people do, and others it's also just expensive, to buy organic all the time and to, it's oh, okay, I can buy conventional now and in 30 years from now have, potentially have cancer and have to pay for that.
But, it's okay. That'll be later, yes. Versus oh, okay, I've gotta pay the extra dollar to get, these organic blueberries. God, do I have an extra dollar? Because then it's a dollar on dollar and like for everything in my basket, suddenly I'm paying $30 more for Yeah.
Good food and and then it is organic even still good. It's been pretty corporatized over the last 10 years or so, which is pretty depressing. Which it, is a total other story. And
on its own, that'll have to be episode three. We Do Together. Yes.
It's, it's just it's I go back and forth between being really overwhelmed with wanting there to be community, government level organizations that do the testing and do the standards for us, because I do not have time to test everything. I do not have time. Or the knowledge to vet everything.
I really want to be able to. Rely on an on a group that will do that for us so I can focus on all the other shit that I have to focus on. Yeah. And it's so hard right now because you are like, do we need the FDA? Yeah, of course we do. Do we trust 'em all the time? Ah, it's like a 70% thing where I'm like, maybe on those things over here, we gotta talk more.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, I'm like, that's so out of integrity. Like I want to have a hundred percent faith that people who are gonna take care of us are, and I think that's what everyone's frustrated on, like
Just everybody like Yeah.
In the hemp industry. As it's come to market, a lot of, the, because the FDA's not making any movements on CB, D, all these states have had to develop their own regulations for it.
And a lot of the states ha are requiring like QR codes on your packaging and then that leads to a lab. And not in every state, but in some states they're like, you have to have pesticides reporting, you have to have all of these different reportings. And it's okay, I understand that.
Sadly, most people don't know how to read a pesticide report and Yeah. There's pesticide drift all the time. Yeah. And so just because you have this tiny amount in it, it's okay, is that good or bad? It's usually it's fine. Yeah, but at the same level. Why don't my blueberries have that?
Yeah. Why doesn't my spinach have that? Why doesn't my cereal have that? Because there's a lot of crap and all that stuff that probably is ooh, if you look at it, that would make you say, oh, okay, maybe I do want these organic blueberries instead of these conventional, yeah.
My actually, my economics professor in graduate school, he had a interesting experiment that he wanted done, which was to go into a grocery store, and instead of it's saying organic the conventional says contains pesticides. Yeah. And see what people buy. Yeah. Do will they buy, will they spend the extra dollar?
Because they're like, oh, contains pesticides. I don't want that. Change in social thought and behavior can, maybe make someone spend that extra dollar.
And that's the dark side, right? Of marketing. Literally every, there, there is a marketeer behind every word we see. Oh yeah. Natural. Yeah.
That, that means nothing.
Nothing like it doesn't mean anything. And just like you can use numbers to have any conversation you want. I love the example was it like economics 1 0 1? You're like, just flip the chart. 90 degrees. That's all I gotta do. Yeah. Now it looks better.
Okay. Bye. It's the same thing with the vocabulary. There's, yeah, I agree with you. It would just be nice just to align and have consistency between what it means to. What all these words actually mean because we're not we are certainly not using the same definition for most of them from Yeah.
The agricultural side to the consumer side. And to the marketer side and everything in between.
And it's causing we don't need to create unnecessary confusion, but That's right. One of the secrets to being like, don't look over here.
Yeah. And it, we're putting the responsibility on the companies that are trying to do good.
Yes. It's the fact that you get a package and it's contains or no hormones, no MSG, no artificial flavors. It's good. I don't want any of that in my product, yeah. But you're not forcing the companies that have 'em in there to say, contains all of this stuff and like bold.
And, lettering on the front. Instead, they're doing whatever they want and they're getting sub subsidized to do whatever they want. Yeah. So there's no like shift in that responsibility to the companies that are actually trying to do something good. And that's a huge problem in our agricultural economics.
Yeah.
Not only would that help the marketplace, but it'll help the soils. And if we can help the soils, we can nearly solve the climate crisis. That's, yes. Really what it boils down to, it is our, one of our largest carbon sinks besides the oceans. Yes. And we're destroying the oceans, so we can't really do a lot to save them.
We can do something to save the soils and that will then save the oceans. We're not incentivizing that.
No. Yeah. If it's how do we save soil and how do we just stop cutting down the Amazon please.
Yeah.
I'm like, can the UN just declare it a unco site that people cannot touch?
Because unfortunately the leadership in Brazil doesn't really care right
now. Yeah. In Indonesia. Same thing. Yeah. It's either for the palm oil or for cows. Yeah. And maybe they should look at, international narcotic trade that they created this international rules, and now every nation is we can't change our law because we would be out of the scope of international law.
And they use that as an excuse all the time. It's oh, okay. Great. Win. Declare this a law. Yes. Then every nation has to abide by it. Perfect. Problem solved.
Yes. Good. We, I think we just solved the global crisis here. Yeah. This is what powerful ladies do, and I really don't know why they haven't called us yet to really put together the think tank.
I think I'll just start putting the think tank together and we'll start pitching ideas out. 'cause be way more effective. Love it. I was recently at I'm part of the Casa Orange County fundraising committee for the big gala. They do it's a foster youth organization that actually really makes a difference, which is required for me to contribute to something because I'm so over not just greenwashing, but positivity, washing, all sorts of things.
And we were there and it's a room of 25 women. And the fact that in three weeks time we've pulled out like all these millions dollars of donations. I'm like. Why is no one calling this group fantastic. Yeah. It like, it didn't take crazy effort. And that's to me, what I think is always the most shocking.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to actually change the thing. Usually already have the answer. We already have a methodology. We are like, someone already has the plan. We just need someone to be brave enough to say we need to do it, and then we need someone to be like, this actually matters.
It's, so if we want to find the resources, we find them like, we are so good as a human population of rallying behind things. What was it like and innovating. Yeah. Or we found 80, I think $800 million to rebuild Notre Dame when it burned down. Okay. That's a lot. That took 72 hours.
So what else? Who else wants to contribute to like actually changing something? But it, it does, despite being overwhelmed with how many things we have to fix and the fact that we all have a bigger to-do list than I would've thought growing up, I thought we were solving things and checking them off lists instead of adding to them.
It does give me peace knowing that powerful ladies like you are out there in your corner of the world being like, we've got this. We can fix things. So it's just nice to figure out ways to connect all of us who can keep helping each other. 'Cause like I said about the local economies, I believe more in powerful ladies than anyone else who has a microphone.
Yeah. Yeah. I women rule the world. We just gotta seize it. Yeah. And take it. Yeah, me
too. So that leads me to ask, what does powerful ladies mean to you?
Oh, that's a good question. I think a lot of what we've discussed, I think the, I think that we as women are obviously in a very unique position, even more so recently than ever, having a lot of our own rights stripped from us.
But coming forward and coming forward in unison is so essential for us as a group to really take what is ours and, but do it in a way that, women do. We have a finesse that men do not. And I think we just need to, we don't always realize it or we don't always feel that we can.
But feeling and knowing that you can, because you can. Is really that first step to, to be able to push you over that line. Because men are I work almost every person within the companies that I work, or all men and Yeah. You know what, at the end of the day, they're all looking at me.
I like, oh what do you wanna do? I don't know. What do you wanna do? What Annie, what do we do? It's they, when they're all together, that's really what it is. It's they're all rub, stroking each other when really it's like, all right guys, get outta the way.
Let's just do this. Yeah. You have to do real work now. Yeah. Yeah. Having that confidence I think is key in order to move that forward and really make a change.
Working I've also spent a lot of my career working in a room full of men and it's highlighted the lack of female leaders in spaces and also highlighted how many opportunities there are for that.
How have women along the way inspired you, supported you and helped you along your path? And have there actually been any, or have they been. More of oh, I read about someone and they were inspiring versus having real interaction with them. There've
been less than I would like.
Things like this I've been on 2D this is my second kind of podcast that was like a female, like hey, you're an awesome female. I'm an awesome female, let's be awesome females together. And, in the industry, but early on people were like, oh, cannabis is gonna be the first male or female led industry.
And it's no, it's not. And there, but within my network, all of the women that are in it, we all support each other tremendously. We all stand by each other. We help each other. And that has really helped motivate me and drive me forward is both seeing them being in a position of power and pushing.
That charge forward, but then also them supporting me to do the same. And that support system is so important. The unfortunate aspect of women is we often have the tendency to be catty and to like get in a clique and then you shove somebody else out because of it. And so I've always tried to be inclusive and to not have those experiences because it only hinders the process.
And I think that if as a group we can put that to the side and be, more genuine and more upfront, I will say that the one thing about men, they like, they get angry, they say it out loud, they move on. And. That's a really good way to go about doing business because you can keep going and you don't let those interferences occur.
And I would say as a women, we, that's something that we could definitely work on in order to get us, over that line and be able to really, break through the ceiling
when you aren't out changing the world through hemp and you're not running these businesses and you're not just taking care of yourself and your health, what are you doing to fill up your cup and to have fun?
More recently playing with my nieces and nephews, so that's been fun. That fills up my cup. Fully every single time I even see them, let alone, get to hang out with 'em. And then, I really like to travel. My boyfriend and I pre COVID, actually, thank God we did this, but we were both working remotely and it was like, let's just hit the road and live in different cities.
And it was so fortunate because COVID did hit and we weren't like, stuck in a lease. And so we did that for about two a year and a half, and that was amazing because we get to see different places. I just, I love that adventure aspect. But more often than not, I don't really get to do a ton outside of work, but I have fun working.
So it's if I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read for purpose. If I'm gonna watch a show or a whatever, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna do that with intention because I want to like, expand my horizons or my intellect or, learn something about whatever you know about. What I'm passionate about.
You're so
alike.
It's little crazy. And then, when I'm at the beach, I actually love to go pick up plastic. Yeah. Kinda this weird my, my business partner always made fun of me. 'cause we'd go to the, oh, let's we're in California, let's go to the beach real quick.
Before we head off to the airport. And I'm like, okay. And he'll let go and, just walk down and he'll just, I'll just be in like a corner picking up little microplastics. Did you see all these? He's oh my God, you are such a nerd. But thank you.
I find comfort in knowing that there are other people who, when they describe fun, are also a little masochistic.
What is fun to you? And you're like doing things with attention and moving mountains and, it's not easy. If it was easy, I think you and I would be bored and be like, this is dumb. Yeah. Why are we doing this? Oh, yeah. It's just so fascinating. Yeah, we ask everyone on the podcast where they put themselves in the powerful Lady scale.
If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today? And where would you put yourself on average?
Today? Maybe like a two. And on average, I don't know. Does that mean oh, and on my average every day? Gotcha. Probably also a two, I don't know maybe a four for today.
I'll just pump myself up a little bit. And yeah, probably like a two. The hemp industry is so small, I don't have a very large reach. So I'd like to be, like a six or a seven, but it's hard to get your voice out there. And I don't think you can really be like, Michelle Obama unless you got the reach of Michelle Obama or Oprah or something,
We just need to get you a PR team. I'm already like, do this. Yeah. That'd be helpful. I think secretly my favorite thing to do in the world is to prove people wrong. For the best reasons. Not so I'm right. But just to be like, no, look, it is possible. Look, it's easier than you think, right? So everything you've been saying that you're like, wishing for or struggling with, I'm like, make a note of that. How do we solve that problem? I, him, I love it. Problem solver. Yeah, but you are too. But it's a matter of you and I know how many big problems there are. So all these like small things, it's oh yeah, like that we can take care of. Let's handle that now.
'cause we got bigger things to do. Yeah. It's just I tell people to get paid doing what they do anyway. And that's what I do, even if no one's asking. Perfect.
Love it. Which leads me to what we've also been asking everyone this year, which is this community is full of women with connections and knowledge and capabilities.
So what do you need and what can we put out to the group that you would love to have fixed or solved or have an answer to?
Because I'm a businesswoman, I would say, gotta get the sales. Yeah, we've got a couple different places where you can check out CCB D or different products.
Not just cbs, cannabinoids in general, vitamins, minerals overcome every day.com. You can use overcome 30 as a coupon for 30% off. Especially if your, your friends out there that have Lyme disease, highly recommend giving it a try. We've also got hemp mellow.com. And a navi market.com, A-N-A-V-I-I market you can actually find both hemp mellow and overcome on that website as well.
Getting the word out about hemp so important. Sharing friends of hemp.org. It's a nonprofit that I started several years ago that's working hard to do seed trial research right now. So great for the farming side and seeing, the different varieties that are coming in from all over the place that can help for different parts of the industry.
And then you can check out, think be thoughts.com. But yeah, in general, just, spreading the good word being positive out there. Be nice to people. People are having a hard time all the time smile goes a long way.
So sales, pr, marketing, yeah.
Just get it out there. Yeah, get it out there and start using it. It has been such a pleasure to hang out with you again and to get to hang out with you one-on-one. I get just thank you for who you are in the world and what you're up to, and know that you are not alone and it's so appreciated the work that you're doing and how you care about what's happening in the world and how you're tackling it in the ways that you can.
I so appreciate it and I know that the powerful ladies community does too, so thank
you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that, all those kind words, and I appreciate you as well.
All the links to connect with Annie and think heavy thoughts are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. They're critical for our podcast visibility and getting us in front of more people like you. Who would love to hear this episode.
Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and if you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode and new amazing guest. Until then, I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life and go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
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Music by Joakim Karud
