Anybody that owns a cannabis business knows that advertising is no easy task.

The Real Dirt is no stranger to adversity when it comes to cannabis marketing. We’ve been shut down, shadowbanned, disabled, you name it.

And anyone else who works in cannabis marketing, owns their own cannabis business or even just likes following cannabis creators on Instagram has probably noticed the issue too. And that’s part of the reason that Olivia Solero started Cannabis Stack.

A Platform for Cannabis Professionals

Cannabis Stack was created to be a home for people in the cannabis industry to connect without the worries of Instagram and Facebook shutting them down. While it may not be the behemoth of social media that Instagram and Facebook have become, it’s a start.

The reality is that advertising any cannabis business or product is basically forbidden on these platforms. And when organic reach has decreased over 60% since 2014, it’s easy to see what the intentions are; money.

When they can’t make money off of you, what’s the point in giving you free exposure, especially when you work in an industry that is still illegal on the federal level? That’s the mindset of Instagram and Facebook.

What’s the solution?

In this episode of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker, Olivia talks with Chip about her experience with being a cannabis business with “cannabis” in their name and the problems it has caused them all the way down to getting a logo made.

The two also talk about why cannabis businesses struggle with marketing and social media platforms so often, what could be the cause behind it and why cannabis is constantly fighting an uphill battle.

Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit

The best way for cannabis entrepreneurs and marketers to be successful in the cannabis industry is through group collaboration and sharing of ideas. If we are all dealing with the same problems, then by working together we can solve them.

The Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit is a free online conference featuring some of the most prominent and successful cannabis marketers in the industry, including Chip Baker!

Roll it up and get into the dirty business of cannabis marketing!

Learn more about Cannabis Stack

Get your FREE ticket to the Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit

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Transcript

Chip: Hey, this is Chip with The Real Dirt. Today’s dirt, I have Olivia Solero. How’s it going, Olivia?

Olivia:  It’s going great. How you doing, Chip?

Chip:  Oh, doing good. I am proud to have Olivia on the show today, because we’re going to be talking about one of the hardest problems, the biggest problems of cannabis professionals. No, it’s not growing weed. No, it’s not extracting weed. No, it’s not packaging weed. It’s not selling weed. It’s marketing and branding cannabis. Olivia has started an online cannabis community, Cannabis Stack. And it’s here to help cannabis professionals connect. Tell us a little bit about this, Olivia.

Olivia:  Yeah we started – my partner, AJ and I – started Cannabis Stack so we can create an online community to inspire, educate and connect cannabis professionals and help them achieve success in you know, the cannabis industry. So our goal –

Chip:  So, is this like a Facebook group, or..?

Olivia:  I would say it’s like a social network, but it’s more like a member community for professionals that we host on our website, where individuals can connect, and they can talk about best practices and resources, and hold each other accountable, and all the great things that communities offer.

Chip:  Oh, yeah, well, that means that you’re not bound by any of those nasty guidelines of Facebook, because it’s your own website.

Olivia:  Oh, yeah. And you know, it’s great to do it on Facebook or somewhere else. But like, you know, you have those guidelines you know, that are really troublesome for this industry.

Chip:  And that’s why we are talking today. What made you realize this was going on, Olivia? When did you have this like, idea that you should start a community, or focus on these type of business problems with cannabis?

Olivia:  So both my partner and I, my business partner and I, AJ, we both come from a marketing background. And we’ve each had agencies and done a lot of work. I used to run a networking series for startups in a community that I lived in, a smaller community that didn’t have that kind of space. And, you know, I’ve always been interested in cannabis, I had done some like, early investing in some dispensaries in California back in the day. We also do a lot of other content sites, so we thought a content site around the cannabis space and like, more professionals reaching professionals like, not another kind of culture site, or how to grow site, which is really cool, but that just wasn’t where our interest was. It was like, creating content in the community around the space and kind of looked around and thought, you know, this is needed. This is a good opportunity. And I’m motivated by the content and industry. So we started this back in, with some fits and you know, stutters back in 2016.

Chip: Right. You were on the forefront of adult use in the country. That’s right when I was changing everywhere. I mean, since then, it’s gone on to over 30 states, cannabis regulation for either medical use or adult use is now common practice. And the common practices of marketing, we’re not kind of, we’re not allowed to do those things. 

Olivia:  No.

Chip:  I’m like, I just mentioned Facebook a second ago. Many people, that’s the first thing they think of is, “Hey, let’s start with Facebook, Instagram ads, Google ads,” but we can’t do that.

Olivia: Nope, cannot do that. You know actually, when we first started out, we went looking for someone to build out a website, do us a logo. We had freelancers and businesses refusing to work with us, because of the subject matter. I mean, you know, like no one [inaudible 04:04] wanted, I know, wouldn’t want to design us a logo. Not that they weren’t down for what we were doing, but their company either didn’t want to be affiliated with it, or they they lived in a country where –

Chip:  On moral grounds.

Olivia:  Exactly.

Chip:  This is all on moral grounds, because in our country anyway and many others, you can say whatever you want.

Olivia: Right.

Chip:  Right? But not necessarily with cannabis. They really restrict our use. We have to tiptoe around stuff all the time. You know, we can’t ever imply we’re selling anything in the cannabis industry.

Olivia:  You and I had like, a discussion about this. And I thought it was really interesting, because one of the things that we did when we chose the name was because we were thinking about SEO, and thinking about owning the space and our name has killed us. But the word cannabis in our domain is just, it’s been painful at times, because there’s been to your point, we would have been able to maybe tiptoe around and work around some things, but not with that domain, not with that company name.

Chip:  Yeah, absolutely. Hey, I have the same problem with my company, Cultivate Colorado. You know, I own several hydroponic stores, Cultivate Colorado, Cultivate Denver, Cultivate OKC in the past, Cultivate California, and it has caused so many problems. Even though it’s a garden store, and I don’t touch the plant and we don’t sell cannabis in any form, hemp, or medical marijuana, or adult use at Cultivate Colorado, Cultivate Denver, Cultivate OKC, I still get categorized like we are a cannabis business. We just got kicked out of our Instagram account as a matter of fact, for Cultivate Denver. Yeah, 37,000 followers are now left without posts from Cultivate Denver today.

Olivia:  I’m so worried, we have an Instagram account. We don’t have your presence, you know, and that and part of the reason why we haven’t invested time in that in the past, even though we use it for other projects extensively, is for that fear. We’re, “Oh, do we want to invest in that, and then get caught out?” You know, all of a sudden, it’s they’re [inaudible 6:21].

Chip:  But you know, it’s something that you have to do, though. You have to have and Instagram account. And we weren’t even trying to get 37,000 followers, honestly. Yeah, we were just totally using organic growth. I mean, we were you know, posting multiple times a day and, you know, enjoying ourselves with it. But we weren’t necessarily trying to grow our Instagram account, because of how hard it is.

Olivia:  Yep.

Chip:  Right? But once it got to 37,000 you’re like, “Yeah, man. We got quite a bit of followers.”

Olivia:  Can I ask you a question, Chip? Do you think that’s why you were shut down, because like, you got, you stick your heart, you stuck your head above the ground and got so many followers?

Chip:  No, I think what happened, well, who knows?

Olivia:  Right.

Chip:  Well, I’ve talked to some insiders, and they say more than likely, and other friends and business people who’ve been kicked out of Instagram or Facebook or other social media things. And, and they thought that like, I probably just had somebody, you know, like, complain and say that I was selling weed. And they get enough complaints like that, and you just can’t appeal it anymore. We’ve been kicked out a couple of times. And even though we have strict policy, man, you know, there’s no mention of cannabis sales or cannabis in any of our Cultivate Colorado stuff, right? And I mean, you know, really, really work hard not to pierce that veil, and don’t, and haven’t. So I don’t know if it got broke any necessarily like, community rules, kicked us out, said no appeal.

Olivia: Wow.

Chip:  So, yeah, totally.

Olivia:  That’s frustrating. You know, the other frustrating thing too, is like you put a really good post up, whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram, and you want to boost it. You’re like, “Hey,” and you know, and you can’t. We can’t. It’s just, you know, it’s possible sometimes. But you know, we’ve had to basically not mention things and send people elsewhere. 

Chip:  Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It’s common like that. And you know, my Real Dirt Instagram presence, it’s 17,500 people. But we believe that we’re under some type of shadow ban. And I say that because about every 90 days, we’ll have a huge influx of followers for a couple, three days or a week. And then it just stops. And we don’t get any movement at all, one person, no people. 

Olivia:  Interesting.

Chip:  So I am sure that they’re not showing our posts. So we’ve actually gone from posting six posts a day, I know, I was aggressive. And to now, we post one post is we use, you know, a calendar system to post it. Before it was live interaction, someone actually posted off their phone or their computer, and then talked to everybody immediately afterwards. But yeah, we had to stop all that because we were just wasting all these resources and just, you know, getting nothing out of it. Nobody was hearing this great content I felt we were producing.

Olivia:  You know, and it’s so frustrating especially, I don’t want to get like into politics. But if you talk about people’s fear and like, all these fake accounts that are getting created and influencing elections. And whether you believe that or you don’t, or whose side you wanted, it doesn’t matter. It’s like, is this really that important? Just to you know, I mean, we’re talking about, we’re talking  –

Chip: We’re talking about weed, man.

Olivia: We’re talking about weed is right. And we’re talking a plant that’s not you know, has so many benefits.  But you know, more than just like fun and getting high, obviously, you know like – 

Chip:  Yeah. Right, right. I don’t know why they do it. Hey, you know what, let’s just give a shoutout here. If you’re Mark Zuckerberg or anyone, an upper of Facebook and Instagram, I would love to talk to me about this in an open format where I wouldn’t like, you know, be mean, or berate you at all. Just drop us a line here at The Real Dirt or check us out on our Instagram feed. Come on Martin, let’s have a conversation about it. I know you smoke out.

Olivia: I hope someone contacts you.

Chip:  That would be great if they did, I’m gonna call you up. “Olivia, you’ll never guess what happened!”

Olivia:  I’ll be like, “When is it gonna air?” It could be like, “I’ve got a couple questions, I’ve gotta ask that first -“

Chip:  Yeah, totally. Totally. I’d love that to happen. But I have talked to some, I have talked to numerous Instagram and Facebook and Google, Amazon employees. And, you know, I feel like I have a, you know, understanding of what’s going on over there. They get the word from the top, a lot of stuff is just algorithm associated. If you’re already a paying customer, if you already have an ad on an account, if you’re already doing really good, you know, revenue with Facebook or Instagram, you can often get through it, because you have an ad account person that can you know, override anything. But if you don’t have that, nobody’s picking up the phone, you’re not gonna talk to anybody at Facebook or you know, nobody that means anything.

Olivia:  That’s for sure. And then you just get caught up in some kind of like, appeal system where it’s just, you’ve got to fill out forms and do other stuff. I know you and I, you had mentioned them to me. And I you know, I knew about the Jungle Boys. I don’t understand. I’m a marketer and I don’t always understand why, you know, they’ve got pictures of like, blood on their like, Instagram pages, all kinds of humor and all these products and now, you know, how did they not get shut down? [inaudible 12:11]

Chip:  You know, I get it. No, I get it. How are they successful at it? And you know, we look at those guys all the time. And I think it’s several things. I think like I just said, they were probably in, the people that are running their social media site. I love the Jungle Boys marketing what they’re doing, by the way. They’re you know, you can hate on them all you want guys, but like, from a marketing and sales perspective, thumbs up, you guys did great.

Olivia:  They’re awesome.

Chip:  They’ve done a great job, man. They’ve done a really great job. Regardless if you’re gonna hate on these guys or not like, they’re doing a good job there. It’s hard to be second place in their first place. Right? But I have not talked to these guys. I don’t know, I’m talking out of my ass, but here’s what I think. I think that they probably come from a marketing or Instagram or social media background. They already had connections at Instagram and Facebook, or they were working with an agency that did have with those people. And I think that’s how they’re able to do some of the stuff they’re doing. And then man, other things, they’re just, they follow all the rules, because they have been kicked out over time. But for instance, you know, one of the rules that we don’t break at The Real Dirt is no weed smoking. And in the past, you may have seen me smoking weed or someone else, but we don’t do that anymore. Because you know, Instagram, Facebook don’t like it.  No implications of anything is for sale, ever. Like even, you know, like, “Oh, I bought this first at so and so.” You know, you can’t even say that type of thing. You know, I picked it up, you can’t imply it ,you can’t do any of that stuff is just, you know, “This weed from this person.” It’s hard to comment on it, you really have to separate the human portion of it. So you’ll see a lot of their stuff. And now that I said this, you’ll see it as they’ll have pictures in the background of the products that they’re promoting. And they may or may not like, hashtag or talk about those products in their comments. However, I think their comments you can, that’s one of the most impressive thing about the Jungle Boys posts, is how many comments they’ll get, right? And they absolutely have people working with them to make these comments, to generate this dialogue. And they’re doing great. I mean, it’s I wouldn’t say that it’s completely organic. But they definitely have arranged it to drive the point home they want. But mostly, I think it’s like, who you know. And just I think they just know somebody.

Olivia:  You know, I think that that makes more sense than anything else I can figure out. I mean, like you had discussed. It matters with having a relationship with these big, you know, these big publishers, you know, who are really providing the content, you know, to have a one on one relationship with them is key.

Chip:  Yeah, most people don’t understand about Facebook, Google ads, YouTube ads, like none of this stuff that’s product related or that’s website related is viral in an organic manner at all. And even a lot of the viral stuff isn’t organic. And what I mean by that is, it is paid for advertising and traffic. And you think, why would anyone want to get 5 million views of them twerking? Why? Well, it’s ego, right? And you know, if you know how to market your, market it and but the advertising. You know, you can buy the views, you can you know, on any normal product go and do that, but cannabis people can’t. And it’s common practice in every single industry on social media.

Olivia:  It’s ego, but it’s also there’s huge money involved in captivating an audience to monetize that audience.

Chip:  Oh well that’s is if you can kind of see, you know, like, there’s this guy out of Tinder, I forget his name, but it’s actually his dog’s Instagram site. And it has like him, his dog going everywhere with him, his dog doing stuff, and, you know, he gets a Toyota sponsorship. And now, the dog is in front of every picture or lots of pictures to tell you he was involved. Right?

Olivia:  Give to the dog.

Chip:  Give to the dog. Yeah and I mean, I’m unsure but I’m positive that there was a good beneficial relationship between Toyota, the dog and the dog’s owner.

Olivia:  Yeah.

Chip:  I mean, I love weed. I love cannabis. But on those really hard days, like, you know, earlier this week, when we got kicked out of Facebook or Instagram, you know, I think about it, what it would be like if I was involved with another product that I didn’t have these restrictions and how I would approach it.

Olivia:  I come from a pharmaceutical marketing background,  I worked in-house for a year and I worked on the agency side with pharma as clients. And even though their regulatory process is quite complex on how you can advertise and things that you can say, and even the use of logos on a pen have an [inaudible 17:33]. But I’m just amazed sometimes. I have those moments like you do where like, “Why is, why can’t I do the things I could do in this market? Or with this product? Why is cannabis so restrictive? Why am I not, you know, am I an outlier? Or do I live in like, areas or communicate with people that view it the way I view it?” Because I don’t see the big deal? I just don’t.

Chip:  Well, there are other industries that have our problems, with banking with advertising. I mean, you know, firearms, alcohol, erectile dysfunction, sex toys. All of these things have similar, pawnshops. They all have similar problems that we have.

Olivia:  This is true. I don’t, I wouldn’t like I wouldn’t, maybe again, I’m going to go back to I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve grown up in big cities here in the States. I don’t know. Or I don’t know why it’s that big of, I don’t know why it’s that big of a deal. Who are we protecting at this point? Alright now, I sound paranoid. But that’s not what I mean.

Chip:  No, no, you know, hey, I mean, who knows? But I tell you this, it always seems to come down – when I’m talking to people about it, whether it’s banks or magazines or lenders or car dealerships, because it comes up all the time.

Olivia:  Right.

Chip:  Right? When I’m talking to them about it, the same thing comes up over and over again. It’s federally illegal, they’re scared about the banking.

Olivia:  Yep.

Chip:  Right? There’s these money laundering terms that people are scared of, and they should be, but they’re really just uninformed. It seems to boil down to that more than anything else, is people are scared of the banking associated with it being federally illegal. Now doctors and dentists and people that have federal IDs, they’ll say something like that, that they’re scared for the federal government, because of their federally issued captain’s ID, or pilot certificate, or pesticide applicators certificate. You know, people will bring this up, “Well, it’s federally illegal.” And I think they’re just putting that stuff on it. I mean, I think those are their own pressures. They’re making it up, the federal government doesn’t have anything to do with, you know, what I do if I’m hiring you to come over and do something for me.

Olivia:  Right, right. Well, you know, it’s –

Chip:  Where’s the regulation there?

Olivia:  I don’t know. And, you know, I actually, it’s funny. I had opened up a bank account for a business that has nothing to do with Cannabis Stack. Nothing is, it’s completely separate, completely separate entity. And the bank, I brought in my like, you know, all my paperwork, and I opened up the account. And within a month, they shut me down. Because somehow, they found, they associated, I never gave him this email address. They associated my email address with Cannabis Stack domain with that account, and they just shut me down.

Chip:  Yeah. Well, you know, the banks use the social media as much as anybody else now to sniff you out. And I’ve gone through this numerous occasions, you know, calling us up and, and kicking us out because someone posted on one of our sites about weed. And, you know, we’re like, “Well, we didn’t post that. Somebody else did it.” They’re like, “I don’t care. That means you’re about weed.” You know? Yeah. And they’ve literally looked me up, I mean, I don’t hide from weed, you can look me up. So you know, I’ve literally been looked up, Chase gives, you know, every six months or a year, they have a review of people to make sure they’re not cannabis people that, you know, they’re not, you know, putting illegal assets, you know, or untaxed assets into the banking system. So it’s hard to hide, because we’re all talking about marketing ourselves, or our businesses through social media. And the banks have access all the social media, or anyone has access to the social media, you know. And they can and will use it against you if they, appropriate for them.

Olivia:  Oh, 100%. I mean, the days of privacy are over. You need to behave as if everybody is watching, and will always have that invasion –

Chip:  Everybody is watching. That’s how we sell stuff. And that’s how we brand. And that’s how we market. And you have a webinar is that cannabis slack is putting out Cannabis Marketing Masters summit that’s going to help people solve all of these products. Now, I know one of your speakers happens to be the illustrious Chip Baker of The Real Dirt podcast.

Olivia:  Yeah.

Chip:  But tell me about the Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit.

Olivia:  Okay, so yeah, the Cannabis Marketing Masters summit is happening November 13 and 14th. And what we’re gonna do is carry it over two days, really meant to serve as a resource for marketing in the cannabis industry and help like, entrepreneurs and other professionals be able to like, grow their business through a number of different styles and sessions. So we have a combination of like, techniques and tools for like, SEO and paid advertising, email marketing like, sales and traffic funnels. We also have more inspirational brand stories in regards to like, customer journeys and things along those lines and value like, driven brands.

Chip:  Tell me who you’re gonna have speak at the Marketing Summit. Let’s talk about how it’s gonna work and who should join, who should show up.

Olivia:  This is all really great points.

Chip:  This is free, right? The Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit is free.

Olivia:  The Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit is free. You can register at Cannabis Stack, that’s what two s’s in the middle, or with one s in the middle, or with a hyphen if you like it. So that’s cannabisstack.com/cannabis-summit. And you’d be able to sign up there.

Chip:  Alright, so everybody stop what you’re doing. Just stop what you’re doing. I’m gonna do it real slow. So go to your computer, your phone. Olivia, what are they gonna look up?

Olivia:  You’re gonna look at cannabisstack.com/cannabis-summit. 

Chip:  Alright, and then you’re just going to apply to join right there.

Olivia:  Right there.

Chip:  Right there.

Olivia:  You’re going to see a list of the speakers, the dates and the time of the event, November 13th and 14th. You’re going to, all you’re going to need to do is give us like, your name, and email, the company, if you wouldn’t mind. And then you’re going to hit ‘Submit,’ and we’re going to send you a link so you can join the summit, 100% free.

Chip:  And I know we’ve been talking about it, and I’ve been excited. You know, I invited you on this podcast because I thought this was a really good idea that you had not really wanted to help promote it. And yeah, I’m gonna be involved on it. But what I really liked about it is you were giving it away. And you’re trying to just help people expand their business, and do better business.

Olivia: Definitely. We have Amy Larson from Simplifya.

Chip:  Yeah. Oh yeah, Simplifya. Yep, from Vicente Sederburg. See, I know several Simplifya people.

Olivia:  That’s awesome.

Chip:  Jordan Wellington, great guy. I’ve had him on the show a couple of times.

Olivia:  But you may also know that Amy currently serves as the chair for NCIS, you know, the marketing and advertising committee.

Chip:  Oh, okay. That’s how I recognize her name as well. Sure.

Olivia:  Yeah. She’s going to be speaking to strategic plan, like as to like the foundation of like, what your marketing should be in, for any marketing program, but specifically for cannabis marketing. So, we’re excited to hear what she’s gonna present.  Then we have Tyler Horvath. He’s like, the king of SEO, right? He’s the CEO of Marijuana SEO. And he’s gonna give us some like, the three pillars of a successful SEO strategy.

Chip:  Man, I’m really looking forward to this one.

Olivia:  Then we have Brian Chaplin of Medicine Box. And Brian’s going to be speaking to the importance of like, mission driven and value based cannabis brand.

Chip:  And Medicine Box, they’re a vending machine?

Olivia:  No, they do like, a box delivery system for whole plant natural wellness products in like, a subscription box model.

Chip: Oh okay, okay, great.

Olivia:  Then we have Beth Aiden from Nissan Co, which is a public relations, marketing and PR firm. So they’re going to be speaking to the right public positioning for your cannabis business with public relations. So they’re going to kind of break down like, a successful public relations strategy, and what they can afford, specifically to the industry. Then we have Antonio Javiniar from WebJoint. You know WebJoint? They’re like the –

Chip:  No, but you could pass me one anytime.

Olivia:  Only if I could right now. They’re gonna, also they’re gonna be speaking to content, but like content that converts and marketing on a limited budget. So – 

Chip:  I’m so excited about all this stuff. You know, these are some great talks, I need these as much as anybody else for sure.

Olivia:  Yeah, they do their inventory, WebJoint’s like an inventory management software provider for like, cannabis delivery services. So which is kind of cool. And we have Travis Crane from a little company called Cultivate.

Chip: Oh yeah. Oh man, he’s a master in social media marketing, that’s for sure. Organic driven social media marketing. This guy knows what he’s doing.

Olivia:  For sure. And he’s got a really interesting story about how he kind of got into the space. So his session is going to be about navigating the waters of advertising, and kind of touched upon some of the things that you and I chatted about earlier. Then we have Andrew Watson from Happy Cabbage Analytics. So this is really cool, because they do some really amazing things with hyper targeted marketing. Because they have, they do like an integrated like, data insights. I’m not doing them justice, and Andrew could explain this much better than I. But they have a marketing platform that integrates with a POS system, so it can help retailers and brands to better engage with their customers. It’s really slick stuff, super interesting. We also have Gianna Guard from Happy Cabbage also. And she’s going to be talking about that whole infrastructure from closing the loop, from marketing to sales, which is, you know, I think –

Chip:  That’s a hard step. That’s a hard, hard step.

Olivia:  It sure is. And you know, we talked earlier about like, just advertising in general. Like, maybe you’ve got a brand and you want to reach the consumers and that’s difficult. Now trying to figure out how you want to reach other businesses in the space. That’s tricky. Super, super tricky. We also have Colton Griffin, he’s the CEO of Flourish Software. So they have a whole supply chain management and seed to sale tracking software, for the industry. So again, Colton is going to be, we’re going to focus a little bit more on sales and marketing. And he’s going to speak to leveraging technology and automation to make your sales and marketing system, let’s say more efficient. So that’s kind of cool.

Chip:  Yeah, like automated emails, automated text messages, collecting people’s emails, addresses, scanning IDs and getting their info. But that’s, all that type of stuff is one of the most useful things in the cannabis industry right now. If you’re not doing it, you got to get on it.

Olivia:  Indeed. And then we have Kevin Green and Tyrone Russell from the Cleveland School of Cannabis. Did you know that they are –

Chip:  I don’t know about the Cleveland School of Cannabis.

Olivia:  They are the only state approved career school for cannabis education east of Colorado. They have a whole curriculum, you got to check them out, Cleveland School of Cannabis.

Chip:  I do. Calling them up.

Olivia:  That’s our lineup. Over the course of two days, we’re going to be hearing from these people and they’re going to dive in deep. And then while the sessions are running, people will be able to jump on the Facebook page that we’re going to be holding the sessions on, and ask questions.

Chip:  How do we get to it again, the Cannabis Marketing Summit? 

Olivia:  So if you if you go to the cannabisstack.com homepage, you’ll see an ad right there for the Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit. It’ll be right there.

Chip:  And can you look it up on Facebook and Instagram as well?

Olivia:  Yeah, you sure can. We have all that. If you do a search for Cannabis Stack on either Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ll find us. Sharing is caring.

Chip:  Sharing is caring. The saddest thing to me about COVID is whether you believe it’s a pandemic, plantdemic, whatever. The cultural aspect of sharing joints and weed is going to be different forever. You know, I still have employees and friends that, you know, they get still hop around the joint circle. But most people I know, have now decided not to do that. You know, I went [inaudible 31:45] a long time ago because I’m such a head that I need to smoke a joint all by myself.

Olivia: Okay. Some can call you greedy, but some could say, you know –

Chip:  Hey, I’m gonna roll you a joint just as big as mine, though.

Olivia:  Alright.

Chip:  Right? So it’s fine. But just the cultural and social aspect of cannabis is such a big part of it.

Olivia:  Oh, for sure. I mean –

Chip:  Sharing is caring, that phraseology that you just mentioned is something that’s, you know, I’ve really like, embraced over the years. And I’ve tried to like, give people as much weed and smoke as many people out as I can.

Olivia:  So you know, to that, it’s funny that you said that last night, because that part has stopped and just all social interactions for me have like kind of, you know, have slowed down, you know, to the trickle. So I was with some people I didn’t know very well and some of them wanted to get high, but they had the greatest solution. They had a bag of individually wrapped tips and like, one big bong, like hookah bong that had one bowl and everybody like you know, everybody had their own hose.

Chip:  They had their own hose. Hoser, a whole new meaning to the name hoser.

Olivia:  Everyone had their own they had their own hose with their own like, brand new like, shield tip. It was awesome.

Chip:  Are you guys gonna give those out as part of the Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit as a promotional item?

Olivia:  I would love to but – 

Chip:  CMMS. 

Olivia:  I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.

Chip:  A CMMS branded hookah tube.

Olivia:  Well I was, you know, I don’t think I could give away, ’cause I gotta tell you what the head was, it was Scooby Doo. It was shaped as a big dog, the Scooby Doo head.

Chip:  The Scooby Doo head.

Olivia:  Yeah, I don’t know how I gonna be able to top that with the Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit giveaway.

Chip:  Well, I am excited about it. You know, we’re gonna participate. The Real Dirt’s gonna participate. If you’re interested in how we do it. because people ask me all the time. It’s like, “Chip, how do you put out so much content? How do you do it? How is it authentic? How, how, how?” And we’re going to tell you how. Travis is going to tell you how to do it. I’m going to tell you how we do it. And it’s a lot easier than you think, honestly. With a little organization and prepared thought, you too can put out authentic cannabis content. I’m not saying that we’re doing the best of it. But I’ll tell you man, if you listen to this channel, if you listen to The Real Dirt podcasts, you must like some of it. So join us please at Cannabis Stack Cannabis Marketing Masters Summit.

Olivia: Yep, that’s November 13 and 14th.

Chip:  November 13th and 14th November. And it is going to be on Facebook. You join through the Cannabis Stack online community. And yeah, while you’re there, check out their online community. Maybe it’s something you want to be a part of. I know it’s definitely helped me connect with other people, other people in the cannabis community. I look forward to connecting to, with more people there. Olivia, if you had, like, some advice that you could give anybody going into the cannabis business, because you’re in the cannabis space, you’re not just servicing people in the cannabis space. Looking back on it all, is there some golden nugget that you could give somebody right now?

Olivia:  Go find your tribe. Go find your community. And go find the right people that are doing the things that you want to do. And, you know, network and speaking to like, creating authentic content, network authentically. Just don’t promote, you know. You know, like, the cannabis industry is a perfect space for community. Because it you know, because we’re a little bit segmented, based on some of these challenges that we face in the industry. So like, this circumstance offers us a common goal to rally around, and like, we can bring people together, right? 

Chip:  Yeah, totally.

Olivia:  And this commonality brings people together. And we’re, we as humans are known to be more willing to collaborate more, we’re more effective in numbers. And we’re more innovative in our thoughts when we do this together. So you know –

Chip: Oh, yeah, community, man. That’s how we do. That’s how we’ve always done it. That’s how we came out of the woods, so to speak, is we gathered a community, you know, we all work together to survive and to thrive.

Olivia:  Yeah. And I think like, you know, they’ll let your like, guard down a little bit, and you got to share and you know, you can’t be worried about taking something that you think is yours, right? There we go again, sharing, right?

Chip:  Yeah, yeah.

Olivia:  I mean, it’s community. That would be my one thing.

Chip:  Yeah. It’s great. It’s great. Well, hey, hey, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you, Olivia, how do they get in touch with you?

Olivia:  They can reach me through the website, or they can email me directly. I’m happy to accept if someone needs to reach out olivia@cannabisstack.com. That’s cannabisstack.com.

Chip:  Thanks for joining us. I look forward to the conference on November 13th to 14th. Thank you once again for joining us, Real Dirt listeners. I know you have other things you can do with your time, but you chose it today to spend with me and Olivia. Thank you once again. And hey, just want to encourage all of you guys to visit Cultivate Colorado, Cultivate Garden Supply. Check out Growers Potting Soil. You have any questions about cannabis, just talk to us on Instagram, on Facebook. Once again, man, thanks again for joining us. I love all of you and fire one up for me. It’s The Real Dirt.