Pete 0:00
Pete Bahrenburg here again always with Nick DeFrancesco, CEO and owner of pure oil has gone there, buddy.

Nick 0:07
I’m good Pete We’re getting ready for the cannabis in sports conference this weekend. So a couple of guys that we’ve been interviewing as well as some new people. We’ll be getting to mix it up with so excited about that for sure. And I guess we got some, some special guests today that I know the listeners want to hear about. We got

Pete 0:25
absolutely Wu’s Joining us today is we’ve got the founders of respect my region we have Joey J. Pink Bravo and Mitch Pfeiffer. How’re you guys doing?

Joey Brabo 0:36
Man? Getting the day go on, you already know. Of course,

Pete 0:42
thanks for making the time.

Nick 0:44
So I guess you guys are going on the road till about December 10. Right, you’re going to do about 20 250 episodes, going to city to city region or region, talking about cannabis onto the doors. Anyone that’s in the industry. You know, this is second year you guys doing it? Tell me what got you into it and what you look for when you’re trying to find these people.

Mitch 1:07
Yeah, this is our second year and doing the doing the national run following three years of just a West Coast, we tour in the West Coast, we tour days, we’re actually in a van for three weeks driving up and down the west coast and a full on tour move into this national one I was telling you guys a little bit off air I’m not trying to be on the road for four months straight. So it’s a little bit of a it’s a mixture of a digital content campaign mixed with some travel. So we’re doing content, the whole five months and intermittent travel just kind of flying driving in and out to different places all over the country base and some of that on just visiting dispensaries and cultivation facilities and some of that kind of on the trade shows and events that pop up around the map. So we can kind of double team go somewhere for an event do a bunch of networking go shop at dispensaries go visit facilities. We’re pretty efficient when we’re on the road traveling man. Well, we can get done in 48 hour 50 hour span is usually pretty impressive by most standards. So we just really need a little bit of time and a market and we can connect with a lot of people. And this campaign was really built selfishly, for us to how can we growth hack building out relationships and content at scale, over a short amount of time with with like, hyper focused intention and purpose. And then as far as like what other people can expect from it is really just looking at what legal cannabis looks like across the mat.

Nick 2:28
So, I mean, Are they contacting you? Are you reaching out to these people? I mean, how are you finding the people that you’re, you’re going on check out?

Joey Brabo 2:37
Research, straight up research. We do a lot of research. We do Google weed maps, we do Leafly we call dispensaries we find people on LinkedIn, we we literally I find go on LinkedIn and LinkedIn. Just show me like, Oh, damn, like, this person just got hired as the GM at Massachusetts cannabis cope. And all the sudden, I just screenshot it, send it to Mitch. And we just hit him up. And we’re like, Yo, congratulations on the new job. What can we do to support you with like, because your industry is just getting going? Right? A lot of these places are just getting going. So what’s good or greatest, super subjective. So the whole campaign is about identifying just quality first, right? And then determining how good or how great they are after that. People are just looking for good weed. They’re just looking for a good deal. They’re looking for consistent things. So we just do some basic market research. We just search in the cities, we search on Instagram, search on LinkedIn, and then we just shoot our shot. And we literally shoot our shot until they tell us no, we don’t stop and that but they don’t respond. It’s like digital gorilla street

Nick 3:44
team. Yeah, that’s basically what it is. So what you’re talking about

Joey Brabo 3:51
1,000% That’s I mean, we call it the swarm method. But it was literally taken from the guerilla marketing days when we were physically popping up selling shirts. Like if you had 20 homies and they were all good looking. And they all were talking to somebody walking by, bro, you’re getting sales, you’re getting opportunities. And so we shoot our shot online, we make magic happen.

Nick 4:09
So it’s not someone that you’re looking for just like to make the cut you’re finding out to see when you go and do a review at that place or that facility or whatever, to see if they make the cut. Right? I mean, you’re basically reviewing a lot of the stuff or is that is that what I’m trying to understand?

Joey Brabo 4:26
Oh, both at this point at this point, unless unless you’re a new state that just went online like literally like let’s say like a lot of a lot of states they always launch it off in January February March right they kick it off or whatever whenever they’re like it’s approved and then a couple years later it comes online right so like what we do is we start planting the seed early just about those areas who got licenses what’s you know, cookies just got a new spot there Right? They’re always in the market. So what we do you just find out what’s what’s good out there. We talk to humans like you guys and just say hey, what are your thoughts on this area? What have you heard about this? And usually, if if there’s someone that’s respected or been around already for a bit, then we go to routes, we offer them a partnership to participate for free. So that way we can just showcase the culture. It’s our job, it’s our duty, it’s our role in the space, to showcase the culture to amplify, that’s, that’s our role in this industry. So depending on the type of person, we’re talking to the type of business, we play at two ways. Are you going to fuck with us for free? And do it one time for the culture? Or do you guys have a big enough budget already, because you’re killing it to where you can physically support the culture, and we’re not afraid of asking for money. And we’re not afraid to do it and shoot for free. And the either way, our role has to be fulfilled some way or another, these podcasts have to happen, and the interviews that have to happen articles, they got to happen. And so that’s our duty here is to just showcase that and figure out a way to get that done.

Nick 5:53
No, no, of course, I’m just saying quality wise, like, it would be it would be awesome. If you talk about and you talk to, for example, we’re not even in the you know, we’re not marijuana, per se, we’re in cannabis, we’re on the hemp side. So we do custom formulations for specific disease states on the medical level, okay, that’s what we’re known for launch to publicly traded companies, but I’ve been in hemp for 10 years, because of the fact of not just because of the regulations and everything, I just felt like the medical benefits outweighed some of the cannabis, I didn’t want to have to worry about being Scarface bringing cash in. Everything was bankable, but I really we connect to doctors, healthcare professionals, athletes, people that are really using relief and products. What we make our name on is quality. Right? And and what we do different than anybody else, and that’s why I’m asking like, everybody’s got a company, you know, it’s just how are you reading this out? Like, obviously cookies, biggest name in there. So it’s just what are you doing to figure that out? And what makes them different?

Joey Brabo 7:04
I mean, for us, it’s, I mean, again, quality is so subjective, and they’re the most popular items that can have you looking on the data at headset and the BDS Analytics, the top selling products are not the best, they’re never the best. The top selling products are the most affordable with the highest THC. It happens every time in every state. So what we’ve done is we do a general outreach to about 500 to 1000 dispensaries across the country, we do look for the best based on Google reviews, Leafly, reviews, weed maps, reviews, that they have the star system, right? So we try to find people that are at least a 4.25 or higher, right, that’s generally what we’re looking for is an eight out an eight, an eight out of 10 or higher in terms of 10 ranking, right, usually the Google stuff out of five or we’ve been satisfied or whatever. So we start there. And then from there, because all the products and the brands and what’s popular, what’s the best is all different. You got to think like there is a best product of mids there is a best product of lows, of course the quality, this quality and all these different categories, categories and niches. And Mitch and I ran into this problem before we were like man, I you know, we had friends that were like Man, why are you guys reviewing mids like why are you guys featuring this or like bro people like a million people bought that product? Like last year? Like we have to talk about it. It’s one of the best at what it is. And in direct response to you for to answer the question is we do referrals. First, we give the culture a chance to speak and share who they think is the best when we’re leading up to the tour before it launches. We do a massive outreach just to identify and make a list what dispensaries we have to have participate. Right? What brands are subjectively the best of the best in terms of canister quality, mids, etc. It’s really easy just to look at dispensaries and be like, oh damn, everyone carries this brand. Like we have to we got to chat with them. Right. in Cali, that’s your Pacific store. Oh, and you know, you’re out more something?

Mitch 8:59
I think yeah, like there’s two things that we look for that always tell and and so like Joey’s right we do a lot of online research and then there’s a lot of outreach you know, we come from the music space and it’s always been localized content. So we’ve I don’t know if we’re good at or we’ve just always been doing you know, looking at other areas or regions if you will to tie it into our brand name and trying to identify through boots on the ground what is like hot locally and I always when we sit when I always call people whether we’re cold calling and dispensary to ask him for brand recommendations are we’re talking to somebody that’s like vetted and trusted, you know, this really from the culture really ahead that that should be respected. You know, everything they say should be held in high regard, right, because there’s those individuals as well. You know, we always ask for two different things like when we’re looking for the best I put that into like Joey saying two different categories. There’s like, the top five that the heads or the culture would agree on and whether we’re talking about hoops skateboarding, top five rappers of all time, we’re never going to have a top five we all generally agree on that top Five might be 12 that we all loosely would be like, Yeah, I respect you if you put one of those interchangeable in your top five. So we try to identify that subjective top five, which is really eight to 12. And then we ask what’s the most popular because like Joey said, those are two different subsets, sometimes they crossover sometimes the best is one of the most popular. That’s kind of a rare anomaly. But for us, it’s it behooves us to touch on things that the culture in the heads generally agree on, because then we’re curating accurate, authentic content that is, that is talking about what’s good. And then what’s popular has benefit, because if it’s the most popular, it’s probably the most requested, it’s probably the most recognizable, and it probably commands the most search queries. So it behooves us to talk about that. Talk about that from a digital perspective. So we kind of put it in two different buckets.

Nick 10:48
Yeah, of course, quality is subjective. And it just, we talked to somebody a show ago that talked about having the first purple strain in a location like moving it from Cali to Oklahoma. And, yeah, they have an amazing strain. But it was actually the color that people were going crazy for what made it the best. So it had nothing to do now, they said it’s smooth, smooth, and it did all this other stuff. But the truth is, it was about the color. And it wasn’t for them about quality in in that situation. But everyone’s always like, well, what’s the strength of this THC? And but look, what are you looking at it for? And I think that’s why it’s subjective, right? I mean, they’re looking for terpene profiles they’re looking for it’s not just, oh, man, that’s fucked me up, that they’re looking for different things. I mean, that’s kind of like I said, Well, we do we do custom formulations for something specifically that they’re looking for. So it’s not now again, this is not stuff. Most of the stuff is not have psychrotrophic effects. And we do have both right, but, but they’re looking for something specific, a specific feeling. And some person might want to be up and clear. And another one wants to be crowd slots, right. So so that’s why I was asking I was looking into when it comes to me, I mean, we have farms, of course, it’s the quality of how they’re growing. What how they’re doing it, you know, how they’re putting products out? I don’t know, there’s just more to it. You know, everybody in their mom has a farm now, or has a cannabis brand or are trying to launch something. And what’s what we do on the show, we’re, we’re basically bringing people together to understand the ins and outs of the industry, what’s really going on what’s not going on. And so I’m not grilling you I’m just trying to I’m giving you guys some I’m trying to understand how they can use you as a service to be like they are the leading experts or they’re getting reviews not just doing research, anecdotal research, how they’re getting there. So they’re like this is a trusted source. So I’m trying to boost you guys up and that’s what I’m

Pete 12:45
trying to keep pushing the product you know, because someone gave me some money you know, it’s not just product pushing you’re actually doing some work and research on everything to figure out you know, what is actually quality for whatever specific region you’re actually yeah.

Joey Brabo 12:58
Yeah, and that’s exactly it right is I’m not from any one place. I mean, I grew up in Indiana, Texas, Seattle, I’ve been in Cali three years I’ve been in chameleon my whole life. And why I joined respect my region is allowed me to be my true version of myself or our platform is is built on authenticity is built on realness is built on being not just fake cool, or making people happy. Like Mitch and I regularly have done things that are against the grain in our industry for a decade not just cannabis, we’re talking rapper lists, mitigating threats, we don’t care, we’re not afraid we have a set we have a process is a system. It’s built on two different other people’s systems. That was that helped them make millions of dollars at what they do. Our stuff is all data driven. We do 10 categories, and points per category. There’s different sections of our reviews, a taste test portion. And then like the overall with just the accumulation of 1010 10 categories 10 points. I I’ve we do get handed a lot of product and we do get paid to do reviews. It’s not every time and it’s not all the time we write about artists that don’t pay us and we write about weed and review weed that don’t hit I have a ton of weed sitting here right now underneath this desk that I personally dropped 600 to $700 for not one of those people is gonna get 100% niceness on every one of those videos. Matter of fact, we I was doing three reviews last night with one of my podcast hosts and he straight up failed one of them and they personally walked me around their house I met their daughters I met the wife took the took a safari through their grow in the back of a pickup. We don’t care how nice you treat treat us or whatever it is. This is 100% for the customers. I’m a medical patient. I’ve had kidney stone over 15 times. I have IBS every day. That’s an anxiety physically makes my stomach upset. And weed is the only thing that allows me tonight to do what we believe is good greatest version of

Nick 15:00
ourselves. This is what I want functionable and functional is what I want. This is what we do. We’re trying to not only legitimize the fact that we’re trying to get the best strains. Remember now do you do a lot of reviews for CBD and hemp? Or is it just marijuana cannabis that type of thing

Joey Brabo 15:18
as well as I do that the happen to hemp farmers out there the stuff that tastes good it’s just not readily accessible like that they’re not growing that in downtown LA they’re not growing great craft hemp anywhere except for southern Oregon and, and regions like that to be honest Western Pueblo, Colorado. Call I was walking to Colorado, you’ve got main regions microclimates, right? That’s where it’s able to course because indoor, indoor hemp is a $60.08 and no one’s buying $60 heavies. That’s not a thing. So, like

Pete 15:51
no matter how hard they try to sell,

Joey Brabo 15:54
or how hard you try to stop, if you can’t, I’m not no one’s gonna walk in there and buy and buy that at a smoke shop. That’s not something that they buy for 60 bucks.

Nick 16:02
Now but you’re talking about smoke bubbles. Now we don’t do anything with flour that you smoke. Okay, we have a we have a pen, okay, that we use that we’ve processed down with distillate but what we do is we take cannabis, okay, well, we take him, we break it down, obviously do distillation process, we extract it, but then we add different molecules to it for specific disease states. So it’s not just about the taste. It’s more about the purity again, USDA certified organic, kosher, vegan, non GMO, pesticide free or COAs are nine pages. That’s the starting point of what we do. So I would love for you guys to come and check out the farm that’s fine. Or just come and check us out in Florida or try the product and understand what we do is completely different than what anybody else is doing. It’s not flower to flower I don’t sell flower. So we sell finished goods that we do custom formulations to and that’s why I completely understand I mean we’re gonna compare him to marijuana people are gonna want to smoke weed. I mean they’re not gonna want to smoke hemp that’s fine.

Joey Brabo 17:10
There’s level right the psychology that consumer is people are cannabis friendly, they’re not they didn’t start off hemp friendly. So they’re they technically work backwards or they work sideways left or right depending on the product. Now it’s

Nick 17:22
in society, but not in real life because we know that hemp has been around since 4000 BC when they were making textiles. They just started as they started smoking in one day and go oh, it’s pretty cool.

Joey Brabo 17:38
This is a straight up CBD. It’s a pouch that’s a liquid pouch. This is super cool. Or drink and you know, specific down like it’s a Gatorade, the little you know hydration packs. And these are CBD straws or you know, stir sticks or something or something along those lines,

Nick 17:55
honey sticks or something. Honey sticks.

Joey Brabo 17:58
Literally stir sticks been whipping around or whatever. It’s not a straw I apologize my homies probably cringing a few other seasons. I 80% of our product is flour and I’d say that’s reflective of the market as well when eight when 70 to 80% of the of the market. And like you said society is physically buying flour, or 80% of our products that we review are going to be flower now I do have you know, Mitch is Mitch is reviewing a lot of weed in Washington and Oregon. When he’s in Cali, he does Cali but generally speaking, I use edibles every day. I do use tinctures I have capsules right here. And these are all products and vapes all the time. So I’m personally using five to seven different categories of products all the time. And members of our team are also similarly doing the same thing. The guys, the girls, we have a couple of our more trusted people they’ve been using cannabis for longer than me and a variety of products. And I think Mitch can speak on again, that the the person of varying perspectives combined with our 10 categories that we use, and then doing it in multiple states. Again, the goal of this is really, we just want to give people trusted perspectives and a variety of them across across the country. Was the West Coast diverse and across the continent.

Mitch 19:18
And is it my view, and it’s about reviewing the product from the perspective of who it’s for, right? Like Joe we touched on that, you know, as connoisseur level smokers or whatever, right? There’s a certain quality of flower that if I’m putting my money out there, I mean, not even not even my money. Like even if you give me it I’m not gonna I literally won’t smoke it right if it doesn’t meet my standards or isn’t a flavor profile that I enjoy. When it comes to like vape pens, that’s a popular one because a lot of people we review a lot of vapes. They’re super popular distillate is one of the highest sellers, right when it comes to the THC vapes. You know, Joey and i Same thing, we’re never going to put our money out and buy a distillate pen, but it’s such a popular category if I can’t Not review it and I can’t review it and immediately be like, Oh, this is shit anyone that’s smoking this should be smoking live resin like sure I believe that but clearly the market data is showing that so many people are not doing it, I have to review this from the or we have to review this from the perspective of okay if I’m if this is the product I purchase, and these are my expectations for said product, I can’t compare that product to the top scale limited batch craft live rosin pen versus your hot dog water distillate pet you know, you know the coarser those to one another, you have to look at it for what this product is for who it is and review it from that perspective. You might get some, some antidotes in there where it’s like, alright, well, I prefer live resin because I get more flavor. And this doesn’t quite have that. But if I was this type of person, so it’s very much looking at things like that. And then same thing similarly, like there’s certain terpene profiles, I know I just won’t enjoy. So there’s no way I can authentically review it. I’ll have to pass it off to someone on the team. It could be the award winning best fucking version of a jack career strain, and I fucking hate Jack like, it does not matter how good it is. I’m gonna fucking hate it because I disliked that flavor profile. So that makes sense. You got to stay on bias. We want to be authentic and unbiased. But we also want to make sure it’s it’s set up for who it is. Right? And, well, they

Nick 21:17
are best in class for cars, right? So you can’t compare a Honda to a Rolls Royce. I mean, of course, right? So

Pete 21:24
there are still people who are shopping for that Honda. So you know, you gotta you gotta give them some information as well.

Nick 21:30
No, and that’s, I think that’s the case. And it could be THC content levels, you know, somebody doesn’t want to go to a lot of resin or something. It’s just too strong for them. It’s just not what they’re looking for. You know, so of course, there’s going to be something for everything. And that go in said, I mean, obviously you’re going to events, you’re going to festivals and things like that. Is there any names? I mean, not the name dropping, but there’s got to be some people that you’re meeting. You’re like, Oh, that was cool that I met him or I learned something or something crazy happened. Give me some dirt man, come on, give me something.

Pete 22:00
Toys.

Joey Brabo 22:02
I like been crazy. The last three weeks? I’ll let you go.

Mitch 22:06
Yeah, I mean, you know what, we’re meeting a lot of people right, like through through the through our podcast and through just our general out people outreach to us, PR companies outreach into us or us doing the cold outreach, you know, we’ve been able to meet you know, the founders of a lot of the companies right like a lot of the biggest companies in cannabis, we’ve been able to meet them you know, we just did an interview with burner a couple weeks ago and put that out did really well. You know, we just did some work for exhibit. You know, he has a cannabis brand. We’re in talks with a couple other route you know, people from the hip hop community that have brands and I always laugh You know, after doing 10 years of music, blogging and music marketing, obviously winning cannabis quite a while as well. But cannabis has connected us to more higher tier higher profile rappers than being in fucking rap is and that just is so funny to me and blows my mind. But these guys need help selling their shit. You know, I guess they didn’t need help selling records, but they need help to move in their fucking

Pete 23:05
circle keeps getting bigger.

Nick 23:09
Cannabis brings everyone together on all different levels, you’d be surprised who we have on the show from all different types of levels. And everybody has one common ground, you know, there’s no socio socio economic, there’s no demographics, there’s nothing there’s no division. It’s, it’s, it’s the love of the plant, you know, and, and business or the planner or whatever, whatever you’re, you know, associated with the plant. But it’s just kind of funny. I mean, we have conversations with just crazy crazy conversations going on different levels of different people and you go from some of that goes, I looked at cannabis when I was young as this is a bad thing and people would judge me and and now it’s changed their life and help them through cancer. So and then we got you know, rappers on that are like, I was in the ghetto smoke and I had cops coming after me. You know, because we were smoking a little weed and now it’s legalized in every state so it’s kind of crazy. People are always pushing the boundaries and this is kind of funny I was looking at of people doing podcasts in crazy places right? So they shut down the Sixth Avenue blue bridge in Los Angeles dysmenorrhea Dominican Republic and just some places that rooftops and what’s the craziest place you’ve done a podcast or are you looking to do something just somewhere nuts

Mitch 24:35
Oh, you know we did we did want to like you know, I won’t call it a house but a real nice I won’t call it a mansion but a real nice crib and in Bel Air we did a podcast in the middle of a consumption cannabis event we through and so that was pretty dope you know to be out there the Fresh Prince used to lay his head out there and then we won

Joey Brabo 24:55
that top that one bro the one that tops out. When is the 39th floor though

Mitch 24:59
Oh Yeah forgot about I forgot yeah good thank you

Nick 25:02
all right tell us a little about Jack was that

Joey Brabo 25:05
I mean because at the end of the day bro that he right That house was at I mentioned ability like shout out to Jared but it’s just not you know what I’m saying? So yeah but we throw we threw a west coast we tour event I think it was year one maybe in year 2/39 floor of a building in Seattle is the has the highest in Seattle it has the largest outdoor like rooftop area like loungy space. It’s probably like, man, it’s probably like 75 yards long as a bay outdoors

Nick 25:36
near the needle isn’t near the needle.

Mitch 25:39
No. Okay, so you can see you can see the stadiums or waterfront and the Ferris Wheel. Got it?

Joey Brabo 25:46
It’s the Columbia River. It is literally by the Columbia tower building on it right. Okay. Yeah. And like, on the same it’s on the it’s in the same building as the federal government. It’s in the same building as the Seattle DEA is in the same building as major banks. It’s insane building us. Like Morgan Stanley and shit. Like, we’re up there. 394 We got a podcast going in the middle of the party. It looks it looks like the Breakfast Club in this bitch. You know what I’m saying? My shit. Like, girls, man, all the homies was there, Mitch and the other hosts were all doing their thing. There’s just weed growing up everywhere. Like it was crazy. And then the party’s just raging around it that’s this room in the center. So like the party was around it and then outside so it was fine. Then outside we set outside we set up like maybe seven or eight tents and created a little tunnel with and then we lit it with like Christmas lights. So it was like a little tunnel and you had brands and boosters serving and like sampling people out and shit. It was it was dope.

Nick 26:48
It sounds sounds like we should have been there right?

Pete 26:50
Sounds like it’s just that they’re passing like Mr. Johnson Agent Johnson. Take a pass.

Nick 26:56
Well, that’s what I was gonna ask him. I was gonna go ahead I’m sorry, Mitch. Because

Joey Brabo 26:59
our thing is like we create experiences, bro, like, like, I’ve been to so many music festivals. I was the number one rated festival in the world last weekend for four days. The whole time we have media press access, which is the same as artists access and we get to go to EDC we get to go we haven’t gotten like Mitch said in cannabis has opened the door for rap stuff and music stuff faster than regular world music stuff. EDM has always been open to us coming in and supporting they want more support. So we get that access we get like we were hanging out with one of the biggest artists in the world the whole weekend from Australia, and are up there on stage while he’s crying crazy in front of 20,000 people you know what I’m saying? Like That shit is dope. You feel me to be rolling up the best weed in Canada backstage and she liked that in Vegas. You were at g4 LIVE. Your homie who’s one of the CO owners of planet 13 walks me up and introduces me to on the phone and Mike Tyson never in my life in my regular path. And my dad’s work path of Boeing and bullshit would I ever have met Mike Tyson?

Nick 28:01
Candidate cannabis

Pete 28:02
damn good point.

Nick 28:04
We just had double Mo and so we were just it was funny because we were talking about it. Um, so Okay, so then. So what is the best way to get to these hope high profile? People? I mean, obviously, you got to go around management, you got to go public, and things. So what was the best way you guys have used to get around to get to these guys?

Joey Brabo 28:23
Content? Content? Yep. Figure out if. And also, here’s the first off, you don’t do content with the hopes of meeting those people. You do content with the hopes of working your way up to be around those people. That’s gotten your homies. That’s when that’s when you’ve supported the community of people that are around all these people that are in these communities in these in these cannabis or music or EDM or rap or whatever it is when you support the people that that make Atlantic Records that that make that artists pop, or that make this brand pop out wherever, then yeah, bro, all of a sudden the person that works underneath you, the CEO is like y’all you got to work on my homies they just put me on and I look at all this other dope shit. Like these are all the most poppin people across the country like you gotta meet him. Whenever you launch a brand, Mike, this is my boy. You gotta you gotta let them know you like and that was the intro. Y’all bro. Next time you launch a product. Get my boy Joe. Yeah, man. He knows he covers all the best products in the country. Simple as that. Oh, yes of Joey. Like to Mike Tyson, whether he remembers me or not the guy he’s standing next to just saw that interaction. And that’s his market. So that’s and that’s that’s how that works is do content to get access, get access, and then go network. And then hopefully after you’ve done that for three 510 years, you’re getting introduced to celebrities at the highest level like we are and Mitch touched on a couple of his favorites. We’ve been blessed to work with Super Bowl quarterbacks Super Bowl winning quarterback Jim McMahon, Kyle Turley all pro We’ve been able to

Nick 30:01
work we had Kyle Turley on the show. He’s awesome. Hey, Kyle is great.

Joey Brabo 30:06
We just ran a press release for Sean Kiernan at weed for Warriors, we work with cannabis talking. There’s a lot of great brands out there in California that have a lot of respect. And we are actively trying to work and align ourselves with people that represent both the culture and they also have a name associated with it. We’ve worked with a lot of people that are smaller for a long time, and now we’re proud to finally have our friends straight up being like, Joey, you gotta meet this dude. Mike Tyson. You got to meet my friend, like telling someone like that. You gotta meet my, you know, some nobody. Come on.

Nick 30:37
She’s crazy. Especially I mean, come on.

Pete 30:39
Nobody votes yourself into something. So definitely not nobody, man, that’s for sure.

Joey Brabo 30:44
We come from Ellensburg Washington College started we failed to close Mitch look at look at my business partner there but his goofy ass like we don’t vote for so many. We were no buddies still. And that’s why we work so hard. It’s a joke. But you know, Mitch and I should talk all the time. So this is nothing new.

Pete 31:06
That’s awesome, man.

Nick 31:07
Yeah, when I was gonna talk about is So Mike, you gotta be honest with you. I love what he was doing. He just put out a half bid out year. I mean, come on. That was the one of the best things. I mean, obviously, we remember Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. So to me, Mike Tyson. And in real life when you talk to him and and now what he’s doing in cannabis is huge. But when I saw him do the, the half bid here, I just I lost it. I know that that’s out of control. And that’s great marketing. Smart. I thought that was that was amazing. Um, so what do you guys Alright, so now where are you on the tour? I mean, where are you going next? What’s going on? I mean, obviously, you’re going to December 10. So you got a lot more time. You have a little downtime a couple of weeks. Now. You were telling me. So what’s next?

Joey Brabo 31:55
No downtime. There are so many events in California this weekend, we are going to at least three

Nick 32:00
I meant to say from traveling I meant to say from traveling.

Mitch 32:03
Yeah. From from, from traveling, you know, Joey’s in the in the LA market. So stuffs always happening. So he’ll be he’ll be staying, you know, somewhat local. And then around California. I’m in Seattle. And so traveling, I’m still I’m still I’m in Seattle, he’s in LA. So I’m still bopping around Washington hitting Portland every now and then he’s still hitting California. But in terms of getting on the road. Coming up here in September, I know we’re going to be mean, I think we have this stretch where we’re both flying out to Boston. And like September 20, we’ll be out there for a week kind of driving all over the state hidden main, then I’m flying with Joey back to LA we’ll be there for a couple of days, then we’re in Vegas for a couple of days, then we’re back in LA for a few days. And then we’re in Santa Rosa for Hala flowers for a few days.

Nick 32:49
And then guys coming down to South Florida.

Mitch 32:52
I don’t know the the only issue is like our model kind of depends on like wreck, you know, us being able to go into stores and just buy stuff and is really like how God said like content, we really lead with content, that’s we get ROI on that down the road or use the content to build relationships. So any state that’s kind of has that medical block isn’t as friendly, or as accessible to our model. So we have some people in Florida and we’ll be covering some stuff out there. But as far as me and Joey, I don’t you know, there’s some other markets that are a little bit more priority.

Nick 33:24
You want more full wreck places. You don’t want just medical, there’s wonderful.

Joey Brabo 33:31
Well, we want well, we’ll give and take we have partners in various states across the country. We have partners and and staff, right. So we have we have a human in Georgia, we have a human that’s in South Georgia, we have a human in North Florida. They already go to shops that already review weed here and there. We have a we have a person in New York, we got a person, we got a couple people in Illinois influences across the country that we’re working with here and there to support. There’s various ways that we’re, you know, partnering and navigating these puzzle pieces to try to just get the content to happen. Again, our goal of this is just to figure out how to showcase as much of the culture across the country as possible. And even with you guys, if this conversation leads to you guys helping us review, we’re down there and Florida. So be it. We don’t necessarily it’s not about not caring who’s a part of it. But you got to remember, every perspective matters. So if this is just one perspective, or two humans perspective into what Florida looks like, that’s huge. And to it, because then next year, I’ll get five net and then after that, it’ll be 10. And then and then it’ll just snowball into people submitting us content, which is the goal. We want our goals to create enough power and snowball effect that we have user submitted content the same way Leafly gets reused. So that way, we ultimately have a never ending engine of user generated content plus our curation. We feel that that’s the most authentic for what we’re trying to achieve with this campaign. On top of what we do in the music’s Six.

Nick 35:00
Have you noticed a big jump before the year one and year two? I mean, Justin. Yeah, huge

Joey Brabo 35:06
year five, we’re in year five on this campaign. And on the year we’ve done things differently COVID hit, we went from doing events and parties and reviewing weed and physically drive into a lot of places to doing at podcasts with guests across the country, and just breaking our model and just saying, like, Hey, we’re going to sell our car, and we’re going to rebuild and buy a different one and try that one. Yeah, podcast really worked for us. And then we did eat, we did lose, we did spend a lot of money, I’d say, year one of COVID in year two of COVID, just specifically on product. And as we were spending a lot it was me mainly spending a ton of money on it, I had a job that was making enough money where I could do that and afford to invest in the content as a relationship, and you don’t smoke weed for perks, what we realized very quickly is that again, if I just went and bought the most fanciest brands, or the most expensive people, and we swarmed them Guerilla Marketing style, on social and on LinkedIn, and we email them glued them up, you know, in seven different places. They were all responding. And we had gotten big enough, in the two years of doing the idea that everybody started responding, we added beard Bros and a bunch of media partners. And no one really says no to the free content anymore. They may not respond because they don’t see the email. But they aren’t saying no, if they get on the phone with us.

Nick 36:29
Yeah, we got to figure out well, we’ll definitely work together. Obviously, we’re on the home side, you can review our products, check us out. We always love working with everybody that’s on the show. So we’ll definitely figure out how we can work together. And you know, I think you guys will bring out maybe hemp and all that’s not your thing. Maybe we can make you a believer too. So maybe you just have some problems or

Joey Brabo 36:51
you have flowers, pre rolls, we sold we sell we sell hemp CBD products, we just ended the relationship with the manufacturer, manufacturer manufacturer, they were out of Wisconsin. And so it’s not that we don’t believe in it. It’s just that the amount of people participating in that is very low in year one through three on the West Coast, we do or we reach out to a ton of CBD companies that just wasn’t interested in participating. Yeah, they’re

Nick 37:16
a different market. Well, it’s, it’s consolidated. Now. It’s consolidated. Now, you know, before there was everybody in their mom had CBD, and they thought it was a fad and all that, where it’s now after COVID It’s definitely consolidated. Again, our market is more for people that actually have medical conditions, right? So they use our products because they really can’t sleep, or they genuinely have pain or inflammation, or depression or you know, stress and these kind of Yes, Crohn’s, any of that. So everything that you actually mentioned that we have a medical problem, I have a product for that. Now, yes, it might not get you high, okay, but it’ll treat it a lot better than just cannabis alone. Or for people that just don’t want to get high or they got to work all day long or, or whatever it is, and they still got to deal with these problems. That’s who we target. So it really is a different market than what you’re normally doing. But you should have a little bit of everything. So that’s why I said I think us working together these people will still be looking for this type of product as well. So

Joey Brabo 38:22
we review everything as it comes. I know Colin just did a word maybe not combo I know we just did some hemp topicals and CBD topicals we definitely get sent I get handed a ton of you know, I spoke at the USA CBD Expo in Chicago about marketing, things like that on Tiktok and Instagram and I met a ton of CBD, delta H HC, GH co th CP all these different cannabinoid products that are out there and we review them all. Again. It’s not we don’t want to put effort into that. It’s just a matter of when this campaign is called the North American weed tour. The hemp and CBD companies are always feeling like oh why am I so overshadowed this is but it’s when you look at the other competitors all again. There’s always a section for CBD products and so we do want people to know there’s a space for you guys. We’re here already. I I’m familiar with great CBD products. I have tried a lot of them. I know things that taste good. I know when it should, what it shouldn’t shouldn’t taste like from strain to strain and the hemp varietals as well. I’m familiar with CBD isolates and hemp isolates on all the different cannabinoids, we’ve done research and published articles on all of it. So I’d love to try your products. I personally am a cannabis patient and a CBD patient because I have IBS and Crohn’s kidney stones 15 times ruined my I know that’s

Nick 39:38
crazy 15 times I mean that’s that’s That sounds very painful. That’s that’s janky level coming

Pete 39:45
up the Yankee level championship.

Nick 39:47
Yeah, right.

Joey Brabo 39:49
Oh, away from the energy drinks guys, monster and Rockstar combined with smoking really does damage to your body just due to the natural levels of dehydration you experience smoking is not Let’s let’s clarify some smoking is not good for anybody. It’s straight up no matter what anybody says smoking weed is not good. It tightens your blood vessels, it restricts blood flow and circulation. It doesn’t allow your body to heal faster and might make you feel better in the short term. But it is not the end all be all the physical act of smoking. There are better products in the world of cannabis slash THC that are better and more effective than smoking, you can get the strain you like in a full spectrum oil, you can get the strain you like, in an edible and it can be sugar free. So there’s no can’t be a beverage without any sugar either or any food coloring additives depending on how much of a freak you really are, when it comes to all those little details. I get that those nuances matter. I understand I would come from Seattle is the pickiest group of people in the country.

Nick 40:46
I was just there. It’s you know, I thought Seattle was it was crazy, because I was just there. The Jetsons it’s some of the stuff that I when I go there, we’re in the middle of Seattle, and people are walking out on a you don’t need to pay for it. We know what you put in your bag. I’m like, wait, wait, what? Oh, yeah, don’t don’t park your car, it goes on a little machine and it goes down 17 You know, floors down and it parks for you. Or just, I just was like New World Order. Everybody was just like, you know, especially coming from, you know, guy, you know, travel all the time. But I love Seattle. I thought the people were nice. It was I was it was a city, but it also felt live with. I mean, there’s trees on trees all over rooftops. And everyone’s very health focused. Of course, you have all the major hubs over there. So no, yeah, Seattle was very health conscious. And, yeah, I mean, of course, there’s a lot of people and our target markets are the people that are looking for, you know, alternatives. They really have medical issues. And so it would be cool to that you guys removed the products because I think you’d love them.

Joey Brabo 41:52
Yeah, absolutely. If you guys, you know, let’s definitely connect offline and figure out how to get me a box or something. So that way we can run through it, you know, the products that I don’t personally like, again, what Mitch said earlier, the products that I don’t personally find the need to use that I wouldn’t be the ideal person for the CBD infused rose waters. And yeah, it was bombs and all the different kinds of what

Nick 42:13
is that? That’s, I know, trust me.

Joey Brabo 42:17
I give it to the girl that I’m dating, and I and I get feedback. And then I also send everything to my mom, Mama Payne gets to try all these products and FaceTime with me once or twice or three times a week whenever we send her stuff and she gives me meticulous meticulous feedback. We say we

Nick 42:34
like Mama’s love us. But Mitch No. Is this plausible? He gave it to his girlfriend for a rose bath. Are we sure Joe eating just jump in there? Little rose bath action? I mean we I mean really we used to believe this

Mitch 42:52
company of Joey so you know I think it’s all cat man.

Pete 42:59
Now he knows Tuesday nights what’s going on over the bathrooms Mitch,

Joey Brabo 43:06
let me tell you a little story about how many times in a row I went to Mitch his house in college and he was getting out of the shower

Joey Brabo 43:16
I’m just here to buy a visit you know just by looking like come inside

Nick 43:25
this empire see this story.

Pete 43:32
The real question though is he’s tightening that tower loosening the towel because there’s a big difference between the two

Joey Brabo 43:42
Did you bring the rose water with CBD?

Pete 43:46
And you said of course

Mitch 43:53
putting the topical on my lower back, you know, back there you know, right right. Purely purely medical purely.

Pete 44:01
He’s got the fingers they can reach.

Nick 44:03
I’m having hamstring issues. Inner hamstring. Yeah, we get it. What’s who is that? Our famous football player that just had those special massages that he was saying? Oh, he needed the special spots hit wasn’t I mean if you listen to some of that stuff, it’s just like oh my god. It’s mentioned be put away forever. No.

Joey Brabo 44:31
Mention has had an old man. They caught him. Oh that he got his Instagram account old head Mitch you know his Twitter account. He’s the old one on the squad. His back’s been hurting since he first started hooping and falling off skateboards so you know, isn’t definitely he’s getting massages hitting chiropractors, you know, you got his little one running around. He’s this guy definitely needs that CBD in his life. So

Nick 44:53
Mitch, we get we get I’m telling you I think you’re gonna be shocked. We you know, we put it on it. You know again, thanks for coming by. I hear all the time and we do stuff uh, we give it we give things to people that, you know, they’re they’re set up with opiates they’re set up with prescription drugs and they don’t even know about cannabis. And I said look, I really do have something that’s going to work and you know, of course they still smoke or whatever, they put a lot of our stuff on and they go wow, wow, it really is not what I expected. It’s not like stuff we’ve had before and and that’s what we do. So we’ll definitely hook you guys up. We’ll get you some swag. We’ll get you some good stuff. Go ahead Pete tell us not right.

Pete 45:32
I will have one other quick question. I need to know Joe’s saying you got threats but what you did with the rapper list? I need to know what got you these threats. What did you do on this list? Oh, yeah, good question.

Mitch 45:44
Man. I mean, anytime you put out you like we were saying best is subjective, right? Like anytime we list anything as argument, right? I can come on here and whether I said MJ is the goat LeBrons, the goat Kobes ago, one of you three guys is going to probably violently disagree with my stance, right? We’ll never all agree on what’s the best. And so for a long time, like locally, we did a lot of like Best Hip Hop lists, you know, year end lists, you know, rap, and it’s funny, even when you didn’t do best, I started straying away from best and do like, rappers you need to hear like some super vague where it’s like, everyone you need to hear but here’s just eight of the many you need to hear it because included doesn’t you know, but anytime you do a list people get you know, I always would laugh, you know, people be like, Nah, man, my cousin or my brother, like he’s never even put a track out. But he’s the best, like, how would I even know he’s the best if he’s just rapping in his basement is never put anything out. So it just anytime we put it out, it turned to so much. You know, and obviously being a white dude and hip hop and I’ll take it with the right I get an aquifer is white boy, okay, cool. You got me on that this is not my culture. So I’ll never be able to sit here and win that argument. But listen,

Nick 46:57
Eminem, still one of the best

Mitch 47:01
is but you know, it is it is black culture at the end of the day, right? So any sort of feedback or criticism on that, I’ll take it, I understand it. But people would just do all sorts of these guys don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about this and that. And I started doing it because I thought everybody else didn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. And I thought I love

Pete 47:19
this buildup.

Mitch 47:23
But, you know, it definitely got to where people would start messaging certain people that would know me with texts would call, I mean, there was definitely some friction a couple times where someone was just simply not included on a list. And, you know, there was some threats of violence that came my way, you know, more than a couple of times, you know, and being called a culture vulture, this and that. And, you know, it was it was all good, like anyone that really like, if someone credible, like who I was, like, are you are a talent, or I understand why you believe that you’re one of the best, I’ll go pull up on you one on one and engage you like no one ever, you know, thankfully, I’ve been punched in the face for other things. But none of these people ever punched me in the face. Because I think I didn’t just hide behind the board and I didn’t talk shit. It was like, here’s my thoughts, here’s my opinions. And if you if you feel why I’ll engage with you, like, you know, I’m not saying you’re bad, but I think this person is here. And they’re this is where you’re at, like, you know, and I think I was always willing to help people. So I think, you know, there was definitely some criticism, like, there’s a lot of people on Twitter stuff that would talk crazy, who was like, I don’t even know who the fuck you are, nobody would put you in that. So I’m not I’m not even going to entertain that. But if 4869 and they’ll do it. Someone is the you know, I get it right come from that if you’re a musician, like you got to fight so hard to get noticed and get fans and pour so much of your heart and soul and money into something and you should think you’re the best you know, if you’re if you’re really doing some right, whether you’re a sports player, or, or a musician, you should think you’re the best. So I understand and empathize with that. And I think I would engage with anyone, you know, definitely a couple of different times I’d pull up to a location and some it’d be a little funky, you know, you walk in the room and the atmosphere changes a little bit because, you know, there’s someone there that doesn’t like, you know, I was like, I have no issues with nobody but someone really has issues with you. And thankfully, man, nothing crazy really ever happened. I’ve been called all sorts of crazy names definitely threatened and you know, you know, thankfully, I’ve never had I’ve never throw and I never would I don’t want to fuck it throw hands over some goddamn list on the internet man. Right? Right. We can fight over some other shit, but not that, like do it every

Nick 49:35
list though. I mean, it’s not just that. I mean, it could be the you just said sports. I mean, I went to school with Kobe. I literally grew up with Kobe. He was in Lower Merion. I went to Lower Merion, I went to the same high school. And so, and to be completely honest with you, when I was younger, I didn’t even know who Kobe was. When I walked into freshman year. I was like, okay, that’s Kobe, but I didn’t know of course we all New Michael Jordan and everything like that. So, um, you know, so so that was that I’m from Philadelphia. So, you know, the best, the best. I feel the best fan base in the country. That will definitely throw a battery at you if needed. I mean, we’ll do we’ll do anything that it takes to boo our own players, if they give us one quarter of bad play, so I mean, but um, so we’re obviously very opinionated on

Joey Brabo 50:32
athletes. So you guys get some lazy athletes out that way?

Nick 50:36
Yeah, you know, it’s crazy, didn’t we? And this is Oh, no new school. Remember? We had Rocky, you know, like, we had all that blue collar hard working. Hustle. That’s what we’re about, you know. And, and the fact is, is this new lazy generation? Yeah, this is not working for Philly. This is Ben Simmons is in the West. Gross. Yeah, trust

Pete 51:03
the process. Now. The process? Well, we

Nick 51:06
got rid of him. I’ll take you on beat all day long. But, but But Ben Simmons. I mean, come on. He was a joke from the beginning. Um, but yeah, so but what I was saying is even they do it in the NFL. They do it with products. You know, and like you said, I think everybody has their own idea of what’s best. But what’s best for you? You know? Do you like a stone? You want stone cold killer? Do you like a beast that’s been playing and broken every award ever? Do you? Like someone that looks you in the eye and goes, I’m not going to beat you. I’m going to destroy you. I mean, what do you like in an athlete? And I think that’s what people say, Oh, the goats. They separate those three goats. I mean, what do you say Tom Brady? When he How do you not? I mean, is he automatic? Or do you put in all the old school guys are some of the new up and coming but they don’t have a history. They don’t have rings. Like, you know what I mean? Like you could make so many arguments of and I think it’s just what people like their playing style. If they could be in those shoes, what they would want to be if that was the if they were the goat that’s I mean, that’s my honest opinion. And then everyone wants to play like Sunday Sunday to be quarterback but not a day. Have you ever been on that court? Or on that field? Or been hit like with these monsters and torn a knee or I mean we talked about putting your life on the line for something athletes and Real Warriors is you know, yeah, so So I guess it takes us out but I mean, we covered everything you guys are gonna stay on for a minute we’re gonna we got to do a couple things afterwards and I don’t know Pete anything else

Pete 52:43
that I have to say one we do appreciate the times you guys made for it. We want everybody to do their favorite and go check out respect my region when they can check out Mitch and Joe and what they got going on on their tour and everybody else could just do us a favor and know if you’d like what you heard subscribe follower on you know, iTunes i Hard Spotify, Amazon, cannabis, radio, of course and anywhere you like to where you’re listening to your podcast, so we do appreciate it and thanks for your time guys. Have a good one. We’ll catch you next time. Cool. Have a good one.