Why a risk averse regulated cannabis portfolio appeals to major retailers The endocannabinoid system works best when it receives all the ingredients from the cannabis plant. Jason Mitchell and Danny Brody from Hemp Fusion (CBDHF) join Dan Humiston to explain how using their proprietary "organic panorama hemp extract" process with five unique hemp strains provides the complete profiles our bodies need to maintain homeostasis. Produced by podCONX
Why a risk averse regulated cannabis portfolio appeals to major retailers
The endocannabinoid system works best when it receives all the ingredients from the cannabis plant. Jason Mitchell and Danny Brody from Hemp Fusion (CBDHF) join Dan Humiston to explain how using their proprietary "organic panorama hemp extract" process with five unique hemp strains provides the complete profiles our bodies need to maintain homeostasis.
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] Today in raising cannabis capital. We are joined by Jason Mitchell and Danny Brody from hemp fusion guys. Welcome to the show.
Danny Brody: Thank you for having us, Dan.
Jason Mitchell: Yeah. Good to be here. Thank you.
Dan Humiston: I have a lot of ground to cover today. So I want to jump right in people ask me questions about CBD all the time, because there are like thousands of brands saying thousands of different things. Andit's very confusing. It's very confusing. And I think people. Are starting to understand that CBD helps our endocannabinoid system keep our body in balance, but I don't think people fully understand that our body needs more than just CBD.
So I'm going to start with Jason and I hopefully you don't mind, but if you can just go back and explain the entourage effect.
Jason Mitchell: Absolutely. That's a pretty loaded question. There's a lot to it. And I still think that the research is evolving and truly understanding what all of these other things do. But when you look at some of the beginning research on cannabis and hemp specifically, [00:01:00] The two most notable cannabinoids are THC and CBD, and that's what created a lot of this craze and the excitement.
So it's not a big surprise being as abundant as CBD is in this plant that people focused on that one cannabinoid. However, what more researchers are seeing now when they discovered the endocannabinoid system, they hadn't discovered that there are these different receptors that are located throughout the entire body.
It is quite possibly the most amazing intricate system that is one primary focus of restoring and maintaining the sense of homeostasis or balance inside the body. And it's like this interconnected network of receptors that helps link together all the biological systems. Now that itself can be a complicated science and discussion, but we're the entourage effect comes in is that different cannabinoids have different affinities.
For different receptors and can help the body and support the body in different ways. I would like to compare it to let's say B vitamins there. Isn't just one B vitamin. There are multiple, there's B one B2, B3, B five. There's so many different B vitamins [00:02:00] and they all have different involvement, but together they work in synergy to help support the body in places like metabolism and energy.
And it's so many different places where. Other cannabinoids like CBD V or CBG or CBC, or just to name a few, there's over a hundred of them right now where you can actually see this working. Most importantly, in a research study done at they had DASA school of medicine, university of Jerusalem, Israel.
They showed that if you use CBD by itself, it will work, but it has, what's called a bell shaped curve, dose response, which means it stops working. But if you use CBD in conjunction with all these other naturally current constituents, you don't experience the same thing.
So it begs, the the argument that, what these cannabinoids are supposed to work together. And that's where that term entourage effect came into play.
Dan Humiston: Yeah, it's like I said, the more I learn about it and the more research that comes out, the more interested I become in it.Danny, I was going to just shoot this one over to you, I know some CBD brands will refer to their ingredients as an isolated and some are broad spectrum and some are full spectrum, but [00:03:00] not complete, like they don't have everything complete. And I know in your name, hemp fusion means hemp fuse together with other ingredients. How do you retain such high levels of the minor cannabinoids?
I guess you could call them or other ingredients in your products.
Danny Brody: Yeah, it all comes down to basically the science that Jason's developed as part of the products and it all starts with the extraction process and the way we grow cannabis all the way through to the end products, when we add different things back into them so it's , the whole package that really makes this just such a unique offering. And my favorite thing is always a bit of a personal story. And I come from the finance side, right? I come from raising capital for companies I've helped cannabis companies and hemp companies raise over $730 million now.
And what really drew me to have fusion in the first place was when I was doing an investigation with Jason and he gave me a dosing of one of the products and the, I had about a 10 milligram serving of one of the hemp fusion products, full spectrum with all these incredible turpines inside of it. And I tell [00:04:00] you, my gosh,
it did about 10 times what a traditional isolate would have done for me. And I know that because I would, I was taking at the time a hundred milligram serving of an isolate product. And I tried one of these 10 milligram servings of hemp fusions products, and it was night and day difference.
Dan Humiston: That's so great. I watched on your website, Jason, you talked about taking a whole food perspective and you use what you call the organic panoramic hemp extract, which if I understand it correctly, it allows you to pull out the oil without damaging the natural constitution of the oil.
How do you
do this?
Jason Mitchell: the extraction process itself is CO2. And a lot of people think that everybody does it the same way. When in fact, that's not the case, you can vary temperature, pressure, and you can very extraction timeframe. And so what's really special about it and why it works so well for our proprietary method.
Is that we use extremely low heat and we actually extend the amount of time that the extraction process takes. And what that does is because you take a much more gentle, low temperature approach. You preserve some of these natural constituents. [00:05:00] We even take a bit of a board DOE approach.
If I can beg a little wine reference in here in how we blend together, specific strains of heirloom industrial hemp, we use five different strains because one strain might have one characteristics is a little higher and a particular cannabinoid, and the other might have three other cannabinoids that are present that aren't in the other ones.
. And my background in whole food nutrition is really important. My favorite phrase in medicine is Hippocrates. Let food be thy medicine. What he didn't say was let a singular isolated compound identified in a laboratory, double blind placebo control.
He didn't say that he said, let food be thy medicine. So the closer we can get to the natural fingerprint of the plant, the better we are. And that's really important. And that's why we model everything after that. So while you do get the same CBD that you get per serving in our products as others do at the same price or better, but you actually get more hemp and more of the other constituents, flavonoids, terpenes, cannabinoids, it's just important.
Dan Humiston: Oh, my gosh. , I saw the blend of the five different types of [00:06:00] happen. And I, as I'm reading yours, there's stuff on your website and as I'm listening to you speak right now I see a real emphasis on compliance and transparency from, like you said, usingEU registered hemp to having your product certified by the hemp authority to using third-party testing.
I even saw where you have QR codes on all your boxes, where people can actually see the test results of each lot. And, currently CBD companies. Are required to take these extra steps. Do you believe as the industry starts to get more governmental oversight, that these steps that you're already taking will become mandatory?
Jason Mitchell: You're selling a product that someone's putting on or in their body. You already have this responsibility to be this transparent it's already there, but there are 3,500 companies with an estimated 25,000 products on the market that the vast majority of them are Holy ignorance of what rules actually governance.
A lot of times they think dietary supplements are not regulated. They're heavily regulated something called the code of federal regulations, dietary supplement, health [00:07:00] and education act, the food and drug cosmetic act. The FDA does require the burden to be on us to prove that what we're selling is safe.
We've already done the toxicology studies to verify both topical and ingestible. We've done outside human observational studies, the largest of its kind by the way, affiliated with valid care to show that this is safe for human consumption. It's our responsibility to do this in, there used to be the CBD 1.0, that was the wild West where we're maturing now, where I'd say we're going through CBD puberty where we're growing up a little bit and we're starting to say, we need to be more ethical and responsible.
We've been doing this since day one. And it starts not only from the seed, but all the way through to the finished oil and the formulation itself and everywhere in between. And it comes down to the claims and ethics. See, this is what paves a brand and its future, not just a few dollars to line your pockets.
That's not what this is about. We're looking in the future and we're, well-poised not only with the team, but our compliance portfolio to make that happen.
Dan Humiston: Oh, my gosh, I [00:08:00] love what you're saying. And I know Danny for being in a finance background, you gotta be like, this is exactly what we need. Especially like I think taking these extra steps and I want to get your opinion on this one, but I've assumed that taking an exam extra steps is going to make it easier to maintain the shelf space on big box stores and online retailers like Amazon.
When they start
vetting CBD
Jason Mitchell: yeah, this is what's going to make it possible to be there. There's so many retailers and big platforms like Amazon that are holding out right at the moment for the time when the FDA finally says what they're going to say about guidance. We already know what's going to happen.
Being involved in the U S temp Brown table. We're getting feedback from them all the time saying. Hey guys, listen, the regulations already exist. You should just follow them.
Dan Humiston: Danny, when you started to say
Danny Brody: Yeah, this is what drew me and my team to this company. But probably three years ago now, but it's, Jason's what he set up since 2015, all the way to now is that. Expectation that we're going to move from cannabis 1.0 to 2.0 and have that higher barrier to [00:09:00] entry that higher bar for compliance that higher standard for products.
Because at the end of the day, like Jason said, you're putting these products in your body. We have a duty to the consumer to do what's right. And give them a product that is proper, we're not cutting corners. We're not trying to just only make money. We want to do this the right way and set ourselves up for when these regulations do change.
That we're the, one of the companies that's left standing
Jason Mitchell: It's conscious capitalism
Dan Humiston: yeah, I love it. That's what the foundation of the entire industry has been built on. And now it's in some cases we're getting away from that and you guys are bringing us back to our roots and , this is about doing what's right.
And in, from a long standpoint, I guess you're a publicly traded company you're trading on the TSX and the OTC and. You have responsibility, not just to your customers, but to your shareholders and to the entire industry to lead in a professional manner. For our investor listeners, what can they expect over the next 12 to 24?
Danny Brody: Jason. I want to answer this first and then I want to pass it to you. First of all, we've got over 3000 [00:10:00] retail investors that came into our company prior to going public. So 3000 individuals believed in us even before our IPO. And we've got this incredible thing where we have these investors that are now.
Becoming consumers of the product. They're trying the products they're telling their friends about it because their shareholders, they want more people to buy it. So we have this army of retail investors that now support the company and have this really unique synergy with consumers and shareholders.
That kind of philosophy drives all aspects of the businesses.
Jason Mitchell: What do we expect over the next 12 to 24 months? Now we obviously can't give guidance. We can't do future looking things. But one of the things that was really important to me is that if we were going to go public and we were going to be responsible to our shareholders, responsible operators, that we were willing to focus on doing it right.
Not always right away. And that's a very key piece. And, I jokingly tell us in a lot of shows that if patients was a currency, I'd be a billionaire, but So we patiently focus on the industry and look at it and say, okay, this is where it's heading. So we broke, broken into a five channel strategy and the five channel strategies where we [00:11:00] started the ethos.
The beginning was in the natural products industry, not as high bar entry, they're very open very liberal about what they actually embrace. Then going into the food drug and mass big box retailers. They're far more conservative. They have a tremendously high interest, but a low threshold for risk and having a.
Risk averse regulatory portfolio, the way that we've built it. Second to nobody in the industry makes us a really wonderful, attractive partner for a lot of retailers. In fact, the fifth largest food drug and mass grocery retailer launched with us this past year during COVID.
They launched us into 800 stores as a part of a set. And we are now currently the number one selling in units and dollars. Both out of 14 different brands and 50 products. And it's because we have the right products at the right time, at the right price, with the right messaging.
Now, going from there, we're looking at doctor practitioner, which we've signed and fully executed an amazing agreement with Fullscript natural partners to access the doctor practitioner space inconvenience. We have the largest brokerage Crossmark that is helping to represent our access into their responsibly, ethically and [00:12:00] properly with the right products at the right price.
Our biggest investment though. And the biggest thing that you'll see with us is our investment significantly into digital, into online, because we know that in CBD more than half of the businesses happening online, and we are making our most significant investment there because we don't want to miss the direct to consumer purchases, bricks and mortars are our baby.
We love it. We're supporting it, sprouts farmer's market, all these people that are behind us, we love them and we'll always support them. But reaching people, especially during the past year, when people's habits are probably going to change a little bit for awhile, we want to make sure that we can reach them too.
And so we have a very significant investment. They are now going outside the domestic framework. We are going international to and doing it responsibly there with the right regulations. In fact, we're making our first jump on both hemp fusion and Provail and into Ireland with the full acknowledgement of the food safety authority of Ireland with the properly you compliant.
Labels and what's also neat is as our Trojan horse is already in several other [00:13:00] international destinations, such as South Korea, soon to be India. And also now the UAE, which were very prominent probiotic brand over there, just to name a few. So we've got a really important annual operating plan strategy with a five channel plus the international focus on how we're going to execute.
So very excited about this.
Dan Humiston: What a tight strategy. The very well thought out. And, we'll have the links to him, fusion in the show notes, including their stock symbols. And so if you want to learn more about hemp fusion or CBD check out. The videos and their website, super informative videos. Jason, you did a great job on those videos by the way.
Yeah. And you can also purchase their products right on their website. Guys, I wish we had more time.
Jason Mitchell: Thank you very much, Dan, for having us. We
really appreciate it.Thank you.