2020 was an unprecedented year and if you weren’t able to get the chance yet to check out our podcast around the cannabis industry, now is your chance! Check out our top 5 episodes of 2020 and let us know what you think!
Ball Family Farms with Chris Ball. Ball Family Farms flower is hand-crafted from the finest raw and organic nutrients. Cultivated with meticulous attention to detail, each component of our genetics is pheno-hunted, developed, and produced in-house to the most precise standards. Ball Family Farms currently offers premium in-door flowers as well as hand-rolled glass tip pre-rolls. Their ready-to-smoke pre-rolls are made with Ball Family Farms premium flower. Chris started in the illicit market, went to jail, paid his dues, and then got the golden ticket – a social equity cultivator’s license. Now he’s built a family business that will build generational wealth for himself and his family.
#2 Rachael Rapinoe: CEO of Mendi
Rachael Rapinoe joins us for our holiday specialImproving Recovery For Athletes Using Cannabis with Rachael Rapinoe, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mendi. Our next guest runs an athlete-built and women-owned company with a mission of improving recovery for all athletes. She continues to apply her expertise in training, competition, and recovery in an effort to better understand the role recovery has in performance and the human body. With her network of influential athletes and passion for competing, she shapes a product line to meet the relevant demand in cannabis and sports. Rachael won an NCAA national championship with the University of Portland in 2005, played pro soccer in Europe in 2010, and eventually retired to pursue her passion in the health and fitness industry.
#3 Steve Luttman From Tortoise + Volt Marketing & Ventures
How Cannabis will affect the beverage industry with Steve Luttman from Tortoise & Volt Marketing and Ventures. Steve Luttman started his career at Unilever, working in Europe, the United States, and Brazil on various brands including Lipton Iced Tea, Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, and Ragu Pasta Sauce. In 2003, he joined Diageo & Moët Hennessy’s Schieffelin & Somerset as Senior VP Marketing. In 2005, he created and launched Leblon Cachaça, the leading superpremium Cachaça in the United States. Leblon is now found in over 40 countries and was acquired by Bacardi Ltd in 2015. Steve is now the Managing Director of Tortoise & Volt Marketing & Ventures, a boutique creative marketing and innovation agency based in New York City.
Everything Tortoise & Volt do is underpinned by a smart, well-defined strategy, based on consumer insights, market analysis, and brand concept. They quickly convert strategy to fast action, developing everything from brand names and identities, to packaging and brand identities, web portals and digital campaigns, advertising and guerrilla influencer campaigns, marketing promotions and sales tools, and actionable business plans. Their core team develops the heart of the strategy, creative concepts, and activation programming, and they engage talent based on additional needs and expertise required. The approach is a cloud-based collaboration with the best talent available. No expensive offices and overhead – just what the specific problem or strategy needs to get the job done.
#4 Tami Wahl: Market Access Today
Tami Wahl, Strategic Policy Advisor in Washington, D.C. with Market Access Today joins us today to talk about Sound policy solutions in cannabis. With over twenty years of legal and legislative experience, Tami Wahl is proud to represent forward-thinking clients from a diverse business landscape. Innovators from Hemp, Wearable Tech, Fashion Tech, Banking, FinTech, Cannabis, and other industries have made Tami Wahl the voice for their cause in Washington, D.C. Ms. Wahl also works with industry stakeholders, trade groups, Congressional members, and federal agencies on both sides of the aisle to drive sound policy solutions and ultimately, create a balanced pathway to market for innovative products. Ms. Wahl started her legal career in private practice as a criminal defense counsel in Austin, Texas, and for the past 10 years, she has worked as legislative and regulatory counsel, General Counsel, and In-House Counsel for entrepreneurs, and small-to-medium size companies. Ms. Wahl has expertise in working with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Ms. Wahl has spoken nationally on issues germane to her work and is committed to realizing the successful intersection of consumer safety with appropriate agency oversight and uninhibited innovation.
#5 Seun Adedeji of Elev8 Cannabis
Seun Adedeji joins us for another Plant Prophets Holiday Special here on Cannabis Radio. The youngest black dispensary owner with Seun Adedeji, CEO and Founder of Elev8 Cannabis. Our guest today is the youngest black dispensary owner in the country. A recent feature proclaimed him “the epitome of a self-made businessman who created his own opportunities.” At three-years-old, Adedeji migrated from Nigeria to the Southside of Chicago and later to the state of Texas, where he spent his teenage years. Now, Adedeji is the youngest Black man to own a cannabis dispensary in America. Seun immigrated from Nigerian to the south side of Chicago as a small child. He got caught up briefly in the street life but managed to recognize his ambition and let it lead him. This led to him securing a cannabis license in the state of Oregon and to opening his first dispensary there. He will open his second dispensary next month in Athol, Massachusetts, and then two more near Boston by January 2021. In an interview with Face2FaceAfrica, he said “I started reading more about emerging markets and the cannabis industry kept popping up. My goal has always been to create generational wealth for my family, so I saw the cannabis industry as a great way to do just that. Whites own 80% of the cannabis business, African Americans are 4x more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession, even though we consume cannabis at a lower average rate than whites.”