Greetings, hempster. Thank you for listening in to another hemp episode of

Hempel Ware Radio. This is Tyler Hemp, your hemptrepreneurial

host, here to hemp power your hemposphere because it's hemp

portant. Hemp entrepreneurs and hemp companies around the

world struggle to market and sell their products effectively,

but it doesn't have to be that way. At HempAware, we

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that hemp entrepreneurs just like you can transform the world

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or branding in any way, visit hempawaredot com and check

out some of the valuable resources that we've put together for hemp

entrepreneurs and companies just like yours. On

today's show, I'm honored to have a long time buddy and

one of the OG Hemsters. His name is Ron

Alcalay. I like to call him Rony. And he is the

creator of a lifestyle and hemp clothing brand called Vital

Hemp based out of Southern California. And their

mission is to introduce people to the superior

qualities of hemp by producing the most comfortable,

healthy, and truly eco friendly clothing on the planet.

As a vital member of the sustainable business community, they

were part of the ground swell that changed the antiquated

laws re legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp in

the USA so that we can all benefit from the

myriad uses of this amazing plant. From food,

plastics, clothing, paper, energy, fuel,

medicine, and so much more. Vital Hemp introduces

people to the superior qualities of hemp by producing

the most comfortable, healthy, and sustainable hemp

clothes possible. Hemp has come a long way and so has

Vital Hemp. From their 1st weekend stand on the Venice

Boardwalk in 2003 to their journeys up and down the

West Coast to green festivals in Denver and DC

and back to Sedona, Joshua Tree, and their old shop

on Main Street in Santa Monica. All I can say is

wow and express my gratitude for Ronnie

for being such a an inspiration for so many people and for

making this world a greener, more sustainable, and hempy place.

So, Hempster, as you very well know, it's been far too

long since hemp was known for what it really is, an

essential solution for food, homes, clothing, plastics,

energy, medicine, and fuel, and so much more. So if you're ready to take your

hemp game to the next level and learn some things about how you can

do better with your hemp business, then you're gonna love this hemp

episode. So with that said, I'd like to welcome my good buddy and long

time hempster, Ronnie Aukule, to the show. Thank you so much for

joining me on this hemp episode. I appreciate you being here, brothers.

Thank you, Tyler. Thanks so much. It's always good to see your

face. It warms my heart. Right on. And, you know, we've known

each other, gosh, I think probably close to 18 years. You've

been doing this over 20 years now. But I don't

think I have ever asked you, what did you do

before you got into hemp and before you created your

own hemp company with Vital Hemp? What what is your background? What is your

expertise? Sure. Well,

I was the eldest son of 2

Jewish immigrants. My father from Bulgaria, he was a

quantum physicist. My mother from Mexico,

from Polish ancestry, and they met on a blind date here in

LA. I was kind of the

A straight son until I started smoking weed in

the summer between 7th and 3th grade and threw

little plants just beyond the backyard,

which my brother saw me doing and ratted me out to my

mom. Even though I told them it was a science experiment

and she'd like, she'd like, mom, what's mommy's

science experiment? But anyway, so they weren't too pleased.

And they basically sent me to an all boys prep school called the

Harvard School, now Harvard Westlake. And from there, I went to

Brown and I did all the things that, you know, the eldest

son is supposed to do. I graduated magna cum laude,

double degree, and then I went to graduate school.

Well, I thought I'd be a lawyer, but I ended up working in a law

firm and realizing that wasn't for me, and that it would kill my

soul. I knew I was a writer from probably 8th grade.

I decided to go into a master's

and PhD program at Berkeley with master's in

creative writing and PhD in English and American literature. My

idea was that I hadn't really even though I was one of my majors

in college was top line, I felt like I hadn't read enough

novels, and I really wanted to

become an expert in writing stories. And I felt that the

only way to do that was to consume more stories.

So I did my master's in creative writing, my

PhD in English and American literature. It took 10

years. Along the way, I taught 6 of those years at

Berkeley. I developed I developed an expertise in

teaching writing and also in the literature

of the 19th 20th century in America and the US.

So I focused on post World War

2, fiction and film. I also taught film history

for many years. So at Berkeley, at San

Francisco State, I lectured in the film industry department there

and in the film department, and then I moved out here. I worked in the

film industry, and my idea was to help the industry tell better stories.

I worked with Steve Jobs around the entertainment

world until I got hired to, like, some screen clothes.

And then went back to teaching again at AFI, later at

Loyola, with 3a half year stint working as

a brand writer for the Children's Nature Institute with the nonprofit

that served about 20,000 kids and

parents and teachers everywhere, bringing them out to

from the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, landlocked neighborhoods. We

would rent buses. We had trained walk leaders who went through a week

long training program on how to

provide interactive multi sensory nature

experiences to the youngest children from

pre k to 3rd grade when kids' minds

are really developing and when their attitudes are

forming. And I learned so much about how

important being exposed to nature can be.

I took it for granted because I grew up on the wild edge of LA.

So the call says that a lot of these kids have never even seen the

beach or walked on uneven ground. And those experiences

form neural networks in to brains as kids'

nature. Super important. We also combined with

the lesson plans where we pretended we were trees

or birds and sang songs and smelled things and

interacted with nature. You know, their their impulse is if they see

ants, they just wanna kill them. And we would say, no. You know, this is

their home. I would be like it if a big giant spayed and

stomped on you in your home. And so, you know, keep

developing the apathy for these kids so that they started to see

that every species are placed and

functions in this world, and

to to have developed feelings of respect and responsibility

for the natural world because we're intertwined.

And the the state of humans isn't

intertwined with the state of other species. So,

my expertise, I did teach students to the

professional writers, writing screenplays, music video

treatments, treatments, commercial treatments.

You name it, I wrote it. And I'm still doing that. I just, this morning,

wrote a holiday newsletter for the largest postproduction

company in town, and I really enjoy

using my skills of the wordsmith to

help other companies, particularly allied companies,

achieve their goals, whether internally or externally.

I'm doing more of that. Vital Hemp is still going.

Ideals for how to for new products that I wanna bring

to market. And that's that's my background.

That's beautiful. I mean, you you have done a lot in your life,

and I I didn't realize you had a a PhD in American literature

and taught at Berkeley. I mean, that's super

pertinent information that all these years I didn't know about you.

And it totally makes sense with, you know, the kindhearted

human being that you are, that you worked with kids and taught them

empathy, connecting with nature. It's totally on point with with

who you need to be. So tell me,

like, the moment or the the revelation that you had,

like, I'm gonna create a hemp company. I mean, you could have been a lawyer.

You could have gone into, you know, other fields like you

said. But for some reason, you're like, I gotta create this hemp

clothing company. Why did you what was that moment like for

you? When did you have that epiphany? Yeah.

Well, I think there were several epiphanies along the way. The

first was on a road trip north to bid farewell

to my friend, Lincoln Shlensky, who finally got his PhD at Firpo

After 13 years, I had bought him a swatch as a going

away present. He was going to the University of Alabama in Mobile

to teach English and Dubreich studies. I always think

that's kind of funny. Dubreich studies and in

Mobile, Alabama. And I bought him a swatch to remind

him of the value of time. But but on the

way up north, I stopped in San Luis Obispo to get a bite

and saw this place called The Hemp Shack. And it was the first

time I'd ever seen a hemp store before. I went in

and there were some beautiful clothes. And I remember

feeling the hemp linen shirts and

thinking, you know, this feels like it was made

from plants. And it was the first time in my

mind that I connected the idea that clothes

can be made from plants. That when we're walking even that when we're

walking around in our cotton, it's actually comes from the

earth, which plant matter. But the with the

hemp, because of the nature of the linen and the longs

long fibers, it was really clear to me that this was

like walking around wearing plants. And when I tried it on,

it felt that there was this kind of instead of being a

barrier between me and the world, I felt that it was a

permeable barrier. Like, that my my skin could breathe

through the fabrics. The world could breathe through the fabric

into me. And it felt much more

natural, and I felt more alive wearing it. So that was

maybe my first experience. I bought the Lincoln a

a sea salt gray banded collared shirt by a company called

Juice Naturale. And but by the time I got to Berkeley, I had

fallen so in love with the shirt, but I ended up giving him the swatch

and keeping the shirt for myself. So, maybe

a month a month later, I'm down in LA. I went to a

yoga expo in in the expo center, and I

see a guy selling some closeout merchandise of clothing

and things. And so there's some hemp feasters, and I said,

hey. Do you know where I can get any more clothes by this company called

Juice Naturale? He said, oh, yeah. It's a long story, but they

were the leaders of the high end hemp clothing business in the nineties,

and they divorced and they dissolved the company. I said, well, well, do you know

where I might get some closeouts? And so, yeah. You know, there's this guy

named Jeff. He opened the hemp store on the just off the

Windward Circle, and I think he bought all their closed out

stuff. I said, oh, well, that's cool. That's not far from where I

live. So and I at the time, I was in Louisville Street at

Loyola, Maryknuff. So I went down there after after

lecture, and I saw

this parody of a hemp story, you know, with the plastic marijuana

leaves around the perimeter and the obligatory picture of

Bob Marley, and it smelled thick with

No. Chocolate. Smoke with with smoke. No.

No. With with cannabis smoke. And Oh, okay. The the stoned owner

the stoned owner was behind their glass case with the walls,

and and yet there were these beautiful clothes.

All these different colors of just natural clothing all around

stores. So I bought some things and

returned the next day, very excited and bought more things. And

I signed his guest with email list, and I made some

comment like, this stuff's so great. I just have this fantasy of sharing it

with the world. So about a week later, I'm in my

flat in Los Feliz, and I'm preparing a lecture on, you know, Francois Truffaut

or Italian Neo Reeler. You might forget which ones. On my Zenith

laptop with the green little letters tell you how

old, how what when it was. It was 2,000 and true, actually. And

I get this email, and it's just like a one line email

from this guy. It says, I'd like to discuss the possibility of going

into the Hemp business with you. So here I was in academics,

and suddenly I get this email. And I remember going into one of those

moments where I just looked up into the right, and I think

my eyes were open, but this full potential future

sort of unrolled like a movie in front of me,

one that I had never seen before. And it was interesting. I was like, wow.

Could I do this? This is at the time I was lecturing,

I just felt I'd seen an inconvenient truth. And

I I felt like there's more that this world

wants from me than to be standing on a podium in front of a

podium, in front of a 125 film majors and lecturing

about the, you know, creative achievements of mostly dead

white men. I think that this world needs me to

to do more and to fight for healthy

environments and healthy ecosystem. And so in this

moment, they kinda had a vision that that could be possible

to have clothing. So I said, I wrote back and I said, yeah. Let's

move. And so we met. He said, I wanna start a hemp clothing

wholesale hemp clothing company with us. He said, what do you think we'd need? I

said, well, I think we need a name and and a website. We

might need a partnership agreement to figure out our roles

and responsibilities. I I might like a an LLC

to protect my meager assets. And he says, oh, you know

so much, I'll give you half. And I said, well, I don't know about let

me think about this. So I talked with a couple friends who had gone to

Brown and got on to Wharton Business School and were, you know, successful

business people. And I said, what do you think about this? They said, well, be

careful who you get into partnership with because the partnership's like a marriage.

And you gotta know that you can trust the person and then you

communicate the with the person and then you like them. So you're

gonna be spending a lot of time with them. I said, well, how do I

do that? I just met with them. Well, they said, well, do something small with

them first just to test test the waters. And I said, oh, that's a good

idea. So I went back to him and I said, look. I spoke with my

friends. They gave me some good advice. We're very small. Anything

small that we can do together is to see if we try to get

along. And he said, well, there's this dream festival up in San Francisco. I said,

perfect. San Francisco, we could stay with my friends in Oakland.

I'll work the booth with you. I don't even wanna get paid. I just

wanna see if I like it. And so we met up there. He

showed up showed up smelling like a homeless guy. My my friend

gives me the bottle of doctor Broders and says, hey. Please give this to

your friend, ask him to take a shower. Alright.

Like, Jeff, you smell like you've been marinating in your own urine for

hours. Oh, sorry. Sorry. So he took a shower. The next morning, we get

up. We drive the U Haul across the Bay Bridge towards San

Francisco. Francisco. Literally

runs out of gas. He's like, oh, I forgot to fill up. Like,

dude, quit putting the neutral. Roll up the windows.

Turn off the radio. Get in the right ways. And we, like, screwed over

that last bump on the Bay Bridge, and I knew where to get off on

that first, Texas. And I knew where the 76 station was, so

we, like, put I ran there. We got one of those gas tanks. We made

it. And we sold. We set up the booth and I worked the

booth and we sold a couple of $1,000 stuff. And I

felt great because I met the green the members of the green

business community, the, you know, fair trade

chocolatiers and solar nuts and the

health, the superfood yeets and all in all of these

people who later became my close friends. And

I thought I felt more at home in their company than I

ever had among my supremely intelligent academic

sons because they were on mission that it was

more than just Hetty. It was really from the heart, and it was more than

just ivory tower who was really in the world and

here to be a service for the future of life on Earth. And

that was what that was what I how I saw myself.

So did you go into business with Jeff? I did. I

we drove home together. We talked about our vision for for

our company. We both wanted to to bring hemp back to the

masses. And I said, yeah, like like the gaff of

hemp. And, you know, we wanted we wanted to do stylish basic.

So we came home, I copied a 2 page partnership agreement from

the back of a Nolo press cook I found at the library. And we were

partners for about 3 months until he kinda at the time I met

him, I learned he had a seaway notice for his shop. I

talked to his landlord. I kinda got him out of a jam. I invested some

money. I started opening accounts in Northern California and the desert

on Melrose. And, you know, he kinda got back on his feet, and then

we ordered a second ship. We sold through the first shipment,

and then he ordered a second shipment. And I learned that he

had ordered some fabric without telling me, and the second shipment came with a

name that we hadn't discussed. And I'm like, what's this forehead thing?

And he said, oh, well, I just had some extra labels. I'm like, what about,

Lord, I thought we were gonna do vital temptations.

He says, oh, no. Well, I had these extra like, yeah.

So he said, well and then he's kind of he wasn't

communicating well, and I said, look. Just tell me what's going on. And we said,

well, I wanna do 4 halves separately. And he said, well, listen. I don't have

our agreements in front of me, but I think there's something called a non compete

clause. Why would I be in business with you if you if you're gonna be

running a competing business? And he said, well, then I'll buy you out. I said,

I don't wanna be bought out. I'm in this. And he

said, well, then let's just divide up the flows and and

terminate the partnership. Like, really? Can we just do different brands

for different sectors? Like, you know, the gap has Old

Navy and Banana Republic. And so, no, I wanna do this. I'm like, alright.

So it was like, one for you, one for me, one for me, one for

me, one for me, one for you. And I had 40 boxes of PEM clothes

in my garage. And most dealers, no experience

in the in the clothing business. And I was like, what am I going to

do? What am I doing? So I called my friend Greg

Went, who was a sustainable guy. And I said, what do I do?

He said, well, why don't you talk to my friend Clayson? She's producing the 1st

birthday on the promenade. And I think it's going on in about a week. This

was an an equals. I said, great. I called Casey. She said,

yes, sir. Just bring a check for a $125. This was

in April of 2003. Just goes to show you how much booths bought

back loans. A $125 for a 10 by 10. I mean,

later I would spend, you know, $8,000 or more at the natural

products next up for the same size foods and for

not making that much more. But anyway, so I I I was like, okay, I

got a week. So I put an ad for a man with a van to

help me, stop take the stuff down.

I painted a a sign of the logo

on some hemp cloth. I went downtown. I bought

some used racks and used hangers

and basically set up booth. It was a one day event.

And, you know, I sold about a $1,000

bad guy from the closeout piece that the name was

Howard. He had had a store on the on the boardwalk in the 90.

He he walks by and he says, oh, look at you. What are you doing?

I I I thought you were partners with Jeff. He said, I said, yeah. We

terminated. He said, oh, so what are you gonna do now? I said, I have

no idea. He said, oh, well, why don't you

come down to the boardwalk? I'll help you out. I know a guy, and he

can rent you a spot. So I went down the next day, and I

met this guy, and he shows me this little closet, you

know, in a terrible part of the boardwalk. And he says, and you could put

all your inventory here under under this building. And,

I'm thinking, like, yeah. And it'll be gone the next morning.

And so I just said to him, I'll I'll I'll get

back to you. So I called him I literally called him back 10 minutes later.

I said, I think I'm gonna pass. I walked to the top end of the

boardwalk, turned around, started walking really slowly, just vibing,

like, I'm gonna set up on the free side of the boardwalk. And I got

to this place just south of Fig Trees, and it just

felt right. And I look up, and there's a guy named Dave, and he's

straddling a bike. And he's like, hey, Ron. And

then Dave had worked for Jeff. And I said, hey, Dave. What are you doing?

And he's standing underneath an empty half of a 10 by 20 foot

booth. And I said I said, I'm just looking for a place to set

up my, you know, cell hemp clothing. And he says, oh,

yeah. I heard you and Jeff parted. Guy's a

jerk. He borrowed my van and blew out the transmission and and he, you

know, not pay me back. So I'm I'm

leaving town. I'm going back to Vegas. He's like, you wanna buy my half of

the booth? I said, how much? He said, $50.

I said, oh, well, let me check. And I I looked to my wallet. I

actually had a $50 bill. I handed it to him, and he he took it.

And he said, well, wait. Hold on a minute. I shared the book with Mary

Anne, who was in the other 10 by 10. And there's this, like, white

Rastafarian woman, like, with selling white e Ethiopian

clothes. And she looks up, and he says, hey, Mary Anne. This is Ron.

He's a cool guy. He wants to sell hemp clothing out of this side of

the booth. Is that okay with you? And she looks up at me, and she

goes, yeah. He looks pretty cool. Oh, okay. So

so I say he takes the 50. He says, and I'll come back tomorrow

and help you set up. So that's began my, you know, 2

year adventure on weekends on Venice on the

Venice board. That's awesome. Yeah.

Man, so you've been doing this. I mean, that was way back

in 2003. So that's, you know, 20 years ago.

What has the transformation been like for you in

terms of people being open and receptive to

hemp? I mean, obviously, being in Venice, I'm sure from the very beginning,

you had people that were gung ho about what you had to offer.

But I'm sure you've encountered the people asking if they can smoke your

clothing and just the overall the negative

perception of hemp being cannabis. What has your

experience been seeing the transformation over these years? Well,

yeah, I haven't experienced too much outright negativity.

I've experienced a bunch of stereotypes. You know, I

created the term hemp education. And on the back of all

my hang tags and business cards, I have several

backs of amputation mostly gleaned from the

emperor wears no clout no clothes. And anyway,

I you know, so when people would say, hey,

if if I wear out my clothes, can I smoke them? I would

say, well, hemp won't get you high, but wearing the clothes

will raise your spirits. And I came up

with little slogans that were designed to sort of

counteract some of the Stigma. Negative negative

stereotypes. Mhmm. Yeah. You were a big inspiration

for me in that way because like you, I'm I consider

myself a wordsmith, and I love the power of words

and the, and so I created something called

the the HempSecon, which is a Hemp Lexicon.

And so over the years, we've just been adding, you know, as

you very well heard at the beginning of the show, all my little I

loved that. Yeah. It was so much fun. So overall these

years, when it comes to the products that you've you've developed,

tell me a little bit about the the spread of, you

know, shirts and hoodies and pants? Like, what what

are the different products that you've developed and and offered through Vital Hemp?

And what are you focused on offering these days?

Well, you know, I just wanna finish up the the last point a little bit

and to say Sure. That that the project of Hemp

Education was always a big part

of vital hemp through my new, through, one

of the things that I really enjoyed doing was writing the newsletters,

But I really enjoyed it when people, the Venice

Boardwalk drew a lot of people from all over the world and so did my

store in Santa Monica. And a lot of people were just curious. They didn't

really know what hemp was. And so because I knew a

lot more and continued to learn, I was able to tell them

everything from the difference between hemp and marijuana in terms

of how it grows, in terms of the THC content, in terms of the

different uses. I was able to tell them about all the different

uses of hemp, both historically and and currently,

turn them on to the ideas of hemp bioplastic

and building materials, and then put them in a hemp

shirt and tell them about the benefits of

hemp fabrics, both from the antimicrobial perspective and

the breathing, the durability, the way it wears

in. You know, it was fun coming up with metaphors, like people that

I told you about the hemp won't get you high, but these colossal rager spirits.

I would I had another one that I came up which would which is like

hemp is like you know, it's like canines. Not not all

canines are the same. You know, the golden retriever can be your best

friend, and the wolf, which also has a a valuable place

in in in the ecosystem. But if you encounter it, it could

it could bite you. And so in the same way, you know, you you might

if you were to just discover marijuana for the first time

and ingest a bunch of it, you might get really, you know, way

too stoned. But hemp t shirt could be your favorite t shirt

in your wardrobe. Anyway, good luck. Now that's just

on that. Now in terms of what we've made in the

past, when I first started on the boardwalk,

I was buying t shirts that that Barbara

Fillipone designed and had

made in her fact in one of the factories she worked with in

China. And they were very standard cuts. They

were pretty standard colors, you know, black, white.

I believe there was a navy blue and possibly a

burgundy and maybe an olive. And, you

know, those were good. I was selling them for $30 a piece. I think I

bought them for 15 or something like that. And, you know,

it was an okay business. It was challenging. It wasn't I

wasn't getting rich on it at all. I I don't even know if I was

making a profit after all, but didn't really pay myself much in those days

or ever. But, eventually,

I used the contact that

I had through my short lived partnership with

Jeff to travel to China and to well,

even before I traveled there, to just just

just start becoming a designer of things that I wanted to make.

So if I wanted to make a long sleeve, I would buy a Patagonia long

sleeve and send it to China and say, please make this in this

specific hemp tencel knit that I was using. And

they would make it. And then I would, you know, work with a pattern maker

here and say, okay. I want the sleeves a little bit narrower than

than how they came out, and I want the body a little narrower and

or a little longer. Or you know, and I would send notes back with

drawings to China, and then they'd say, okay. We got it.

And then I would cry I'd wire $20,000 or

whatever it was as the first payment, and then another

20 later. And then cross my fingers, and then all these boxes

would come in, you know, filled with hemp clothing, whether it was T

shirts or hoodies or long sleeves or later pants or

skirts. And I would, you know, unfurl the

boxes. And they and they were all colors that I had chose from, you

know, Pantone chart based on things that I wanted to

to see in the world and, you know, usually inspired by nature.

And I had a lot of fun with contrast stitching and back in

those days. And, you know, I I experiment. Like, this shirt that I'm

wearing, it's probably from that old time. I mean, can you believe it? I this

shirt's probably 10 years old than these. It's an aqua shirt

within the contrast. It's, you know, flatlock stitch. I mean, this one was made

in LA, but, yeah, this is one of my aqua shirts I love it.

Wearing. So my idea was to

still to create fashionable basics so that we could

replace the polluting cotton that was really

polluting ecosystems and leading to

farmers and places like India killing themselves

because they couldn't maintain their livelihoods with the

expenses of the of the pesticides, and then the pesticides

would blow off into the rivers. And there would be health problems

among their wives, birth defects, and the fish would be born

with 3 eyes and all sorts of problems. I remember listening

to a presentation by the head of women's health organization,

International Women's Health Organization at one of the business

conferences up in San Francisco, and it brought tears to my eyes. And I thought,

you know, if if hemp can alleviate some of the suffering

and help clear up some of these polluted ecosystems that are

being polluted because of cotton, then then we're doing a good job.

Which actually ties into my my next question. And you already kinda

touched upon it, which is, you know, why is hemp so much

better than other fabrics? Why why should more people

be wearing hemp fabric clothing? Well, I think

it's better on a micro level and on a macro level.

On the micro level, I've touched on the fact that, you know, it it's it's

the most breathable natural fiber. Really well. I

wear it as a base layer when I'm skiing. I also wear it

as when I'm in the hot, humid tropics.

And I've had people from mountain

climbers to surfers give me, you know, phenomenal

feedback. Like, hey. I love this. I was down in Ecuador. It performed

so well. Or I'm in Bali. I wear your stuff all the time. Or I've

had, you know, rock climbers say I was in Joshua Tree

in winter stuck up on a face overnight, and I was so happy that I

was wearing your Vital Hem hoodie. Or, you know, things like that.

Or people coming back from Tibet saying, like, I was holed up in

a cave, and all I had given away, all my belongings, and all one of

the only pieces I had was your vital ham booty, and I was so

happy. Oh, you know, I mean, these stories sometimes bring

tears to my own eyes. But so that's the micro level. The

macro level is that unlike cotton, that

is pesticide intensive, except for organic cotton, but

that accounts for such a tiny little one

part overall cotton production of the world. Hemp,

is largely grown all over the world without pesticides because it's just

naturally pest resistant. It also

uses a lot less water than cotton cultivation, both

in the growing of it, but also and more importantly

in the care of the garments. For example, when I wear

a pair of of pants, if it's a pair of cotton pants,

typically, I'll wash that pair of pants, you know, after I wear it because it

will have absorbed a bunch of sweat, and it just doesn't feel

clean anymore. I can wear my hemp anywhere. My my

that's which I think you've probably had a pair or 2 in your

lifetime. I can wear those 3, 4

times before putting them in the in the laundry. They're made out of

a 100% hemp linen. They're they breathe.

They don't absorb perspiration. They wick moisture away from the

skin, and they stay fresh longer. So,

you know, I'm saving 3 to 4 washes

every time I wear that. Same with t shirts. I thought I was wearing a

cotton t shirt. Every day, I would have to wash that or

put it in the laundry. I can wear a a hemp t shirt two times.

It's second day, it's still fresh. I mean, unless I'm, like, running up a hillside.

But for the for everyday use, yeah, you can wear a t

shirt earlier. Afting it having the water

usage of that. Mhmm. The life of the garment, that adds up. Over the

over millions of people, that adds up. So there's that. Then I learned

about the most important thing with respect to

global warming, which is the way in which the hemp crop

sequesters atmospheric carbon. For every

ton that we've harvested, sequesters 1.62

tons of atmospheric carbon, which means it's a carbon

from that carbon that it brings out of the atmosphere goes into

the soil, into the fibers of plant the roots

root systems and the actual matter of the plant. So it gets turned

into products, whether it's clothing, food,

building materials, etcetera. And I felt really, really

good about that Actually, Patagonia, actually.

Mhmm. Those are a couple of reasons. How how's that? Oh, more

than enough. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear to me that there's

far more reasons to wear hemp than any other type of fiber.

So to kinda shift gears here and get more into the

hemptrepreneurial aspects of your life. It's not

easy being an entrepreneur, let alone a hemptrepreneur.

There's more challenges. There's more struggles.

There's more things I think that get in the way for somebody to be

delving into a hemp business. And so in your

experience, what what would you say are some of the biggest challenges

that you've had to face as a hempsterpreneur and how have you

been able to overcome some of those things?

Well, I think like many people, we

go in from because we're idealists and because we care

about this world and we wanna do something tangible. We don't

just wanna go, I would have never gone into apparel

if it wasn't. I would have I I really didn't care

that much about clothing. At work, I was still wearing God's

for Ross dress for less or from my from an estate

sale on the side of the road or stuff that I was still wearing in

college because my body hadn't changed that much. So, you know,

to me, as long as it was comfortable, I didn't need it

to be fashionable. And I I really didn't care about fashion. I

never went to fashion magazines. I still don't. It

it was because of hemp that I got into it. And I think that's

what draws a lot of entrepreneurs or people in to

become entrepreneurs, to become hemp hemp preternures

in in the hemp world. So what is it that that's that

are the unique challenges? I think for a lot I think that one of

the unique challenges is that it draws a lot of people who don't

have necessarily a lot of business business experience. I did

not have business experience. I did not go to business school. I've

never taken a business class. I didn't even know

how important marketing was until probably 10

years in no, probably 7 years to

running my business when I opened my store on main street.

Okay. So of all your years

marketing your products in the hemp industry, what

would you say are some of the biggest challenges that

you've had in this industry and and marketing and

selling hemp products, and how have you been able to overcome some of those challenges?

Right. So as I think I said before,

the the challenges were at the

beginning largely because of my background,

or or I should say lack of background in business, I

didn't even realize until probably 6 years

into the business that it made sense for me to

put money into marketing. I was just putting

money into product and refining product and

and, you know, occasionally, I would go to a festival or a

show. And I in my mind, I didn't even think of those places as

marketing opportunities. I was just there to sell. And

I I mean, I did eventually create a website, and

I I did start my newsletters a long time

ago. So in some sense, that was marketing. It was marketing.

Had I back in, let's say, 2,005

or even 2010, had I decided to put

more money in into such things as Facebook ads

and understand that world, I think or even

Google AdWords, which later I discovered maybe

2015 around then I started to put somebody into

Facebook ads, somebody into Google AdWords.

I I also never really understood or

devoted myself to affiliate marketing, which would have been

another really good opportunity for Vital Hemp because I have lots of

allies in the world, and I think that they would have been happy

to make a little money by turning other people on to

Vital Hemp stuff. So in a way, I think it just had to do

with inertia and just going with where I was strong, which

and where I wanted to spend my time, which was working

with the designer other designers, cutters,

sewers, bit models, pattern makers, dye houses, all of

that, you know, all of the people associated with production,

and then writing my newsletters, which I can do and love

to do just because it's that's my strength, And

being out on the road, being either being in the shop or being out on

the road at festivals or expos and so forth, where I'm actually

meeting with and interacting with my customers

and helping them out. So I think that was my biggest

challenge, was when I did eventually understand that my

understand that my business could really flourish

much better. If I were to devote some qualified

resources towards marketing. I ended up hiring

a series over the years of, you know, probably starting in

2,000 15 or so till 2020,

a series of digital marketing agencies

who just let me down one after another. They would get

me on a monthly retainer. You know, the the salesperson who initially

I spoke with knew his stuff impeccably. And I thought,

okay. Finally, someone who gets what I wanna do. They're saying all the right things.

I've asked them all the right questions. They're telling me all the right answers. And

then I sign up, and then I pay, you

know, whatever, $3,000 a month and getting

some college 19 year old college graduate

in Florida or Mexico who's, like, writing these stupid,

thank god it's Friday, you know, memes, which

are ridiculous and full of grammatical errors. And

and anyway, I I can times

I went through that stuff and no accountability,

no increase in sales, just money out the door over

and over again. Not entirely true with the

one foray I did into Google AdWords. I did get some

some benefit from that. I may have gotten some benefit from the

few times that I myself paid for some

Facebook ads, but it would have been really good,

I think, to have someone trustworthy and knowledgeable

me or to maybe bring someone in house to

do that. I just never found the right people to do it for

me. Well, what what did you find to be some of the most,

like, effective ways of getting sales? I know we

from what you've shared with me and from who I know you to be and

how you operate, word-of-mouth is, like, probably

foundational. People wear your clothing and are pretty much walking

billboards for Vital Hemp, and then they tell their friends and

then it kind of spreads. But is there anything beyond that that you're I

don't even know if word-of-mouth is number 1. I think it's

repeat business. I think that Mhmm. I have a, you know, I have a

email list of 75100 people or so. And

I venture to guess that every single one of those people well, no, not every

single one, but probably 6,000 out of those 75100

are actually customers who've bought something at one time or another over the

last 20 years. Yeah. And so when I send a newsletter

marketing is a big thing for you. When I send a newsletter out,

there's a I usually get a flurry of orders. Nice.

For whatever reason, I had it in my mind that I should send out a

monthly newsletter. So I've really only been sending out monthly newsletters. Some other

companies I see, they're sending out 2 to 3 newsletters.

They're maybe not newsletter, but 2 to 3 email marketing

this or that a week. Yeah. So they're really

benefiting from that. I, for whatever reason, didn't do

that even though that would have been a smart move. Yeah. And it's not

too late. And it's not too late. And, you know, I'm I'm in a I'm

in a point of transition in a way because I'm

not sure how VitalHab's been a bit of hibernation

since we closed the store at the beginning of the pandemic.

And I've not really produced anything since the beginning of the pandemic.

I've just been selling off existing inventory and

inventory levels are very low right now. I mean,

and I I I I just got very tired of running

the business all by myself. When I say that, I I mean, I've always had

people working with me, but I've always been the one in

the c level making those decisions,

whether it was CEO,

CTO, CFO, CMO,

blah blah blah, technology. Mark, I've been making decisions that I

wasn't actually that qualified to make. And a few times when I

did hire someone to take over those

hats, they might work for a while and makes help me make some good

decisions. And then, you know, for whatever reason, they might leave

or I might let them go. And then I would

be left with sometimes with systems I didn't understand,

sometimes with systems that were half made, sometimes with systems that didn't

integrate with other systems, and so forth. So you're saying marketing

for you has has at the core been repeat business,

sending out your monthly newsletter, word-of-mouth. Showing

up. I mean, showing up at at events. I mean Live events. And also,

what's interesting is that I had a pretty decent business. Part of my

business was making custom orders for other

companies. So whether that was early on,

raw food restaurant called Leaf Cuisine. My friend Rod loved my

shirts. He's like, hey. We need shirts for our for our team and our customers,

and so I made I think he might have been my first custom order customer.

He chose the color. He had a new logo. I made it.

I took it downtown. I had it printed, blah blah blah. That was first

one. Next one might have been early one was John

Rulak from Nutiva, and that was a big order. A 1,000

shirts, men's and women's, and in two colors

with his logos and even a little side patch here, logo on the backside

patch here. Those turned out great. He loved them. His people loved

them. And when you have a 1,000 people getting shirts,

right, that's a 1,000 people going, oh, I love this

shirt. Wow. Vinyl hip? Okay. Yeah. Let me go

online. Oh, okay. I'm gonna order another one. So now that's kinda like I

don't know how long it would take me to sell a 1,000 pieces

if I was at a booth. Mhmm. So you don't know how long it would

take you to sell a 1000 pieces long it would take me. If you've been

in the store, it might just to sell a 1000 pieces, it might have taken

3 months to sell a 1,000 pieces Mhmm. Or or a month or

2 months. I don't know exactly. I I don't have had. But to to

get a single order where it's a 1,000 pieces or maybe you have a 1,000

customers who bought each of them will likely fall in love with that

piece and then maybe might wanna get more. So it's kind of

a very good model, I think, for me to grow the business if

I wanna jump back in and grow it

with the middle bound. B to b wholesale focus.

Yeah. Especially, like, cut to border. Not even wholesale

because those customers have you know, wholesale

owners, especially of boutiques, they're they're operating with

limited budgets. They wanna place limited

orders targeted to their customers, and they're very

finicky. Like, you get they get something and it does, oh, can I return this?

Can I just, Okay? I would like they want what they want everything at

wholesale. So you're not making the margins. Plus, you're dealing

with someone who's as finicky, if not more finicky, than your

average retail customer. So it just didn't me. I mean, I

did it for many, many years. I I love Yeah. My wholesale

customers, and I love the fact that there was someone in from

Mexico to Seattle, there were stores

telling my stuff. And, you know, on the East Coast

and all over. I love that. And I I love visiting

those stores and meeting the owners and and and supporting them as

best I could. From a business perspective, it wasn't the easiest for

me to do. And then sometimes, a lot of times, I wasn't just able

to satisfy them. It's like they'd be like, oh, we want

more men's long sleeves. And I'd be like, well, I don't

have enough men's long sleeves to give you a full size run-in the colors you

want. All I have is enough maybe for my store, and even then, I'm running

low. Mhmm. So Hard to keep up with it

all. Yeah. So I do I I think it would have been better had I

got had gotten into had maybe a wholesale sales manager

who was really good. And I did, at times, have people

who were devoted to wholesale. And I had at one time, I had

road reps, and I had people who were supposedly representing the

brand. And the idea was to create

enough preorders and aggregate those

preorders so that and even get deposits on the preorders so that then

and I did this successfully kind of near the beginning. Starting in

around 2005. I was doing that even when I was getting

Chinese goods because it was allowing me to fund the

production. I would take 50% deposit. I'd let people know

what I was ordering. They'd order. I'd take 50% deposit. Then this stuff

would come in. I would ship it out and and collect the

second 50% before shipping, actually, including Mhmm. That was a

good model. And I just you know? Anyway, with this

I think at a certain point, I was probably doing too many things. I was

doing the store, wholesale, custom orders, and ecommerce, and

festivals. And so it was just too

many things. I was one guy. I was self funding it.

And yeah, it was sort of a recipe for a little bit of

It it burnout. Yeah. A little burnout and also just

not being able to look at all of these

activities that I was doing and be with a very cold analytical

eye. Mhmm. Hit the numbers and go, okay. Does it

really make sense to be doing wholesale? Does it really

make sense to be going to this festival considering

the costs? Yeah. You think maybe as as, like, a word of

of advice to other hemp entrepreneurs, you would say

maybe pick one area of a business and hone

in and focus your energy so that you can really ignite that one

aspect of it rather than trying to do 10 different things? Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. For sure. I mean, it's very

tempting because, you know, you wanna be able to serve people

online. You wanna be able to serve people if they're going to a store. You

wanna be able to serve people if they're going to an expo

or if they want custom orders. But unless you have the

the staff to help you manage

and integrate all of those different sectors of

your business into one model

and to coldly assess, like, what's performing,

what's not, and then to make decisions based on those things. Same

with I mean, I'm an optimist. Right? So I and I like to try

new things. So I always thought, well, maybe doing the wholesale

will eventually grow their business too, and then they'll

order more the next time. Mhmm. More in terms of

production. Maybe it would have been better for me to stick to t shirts and

hoodies and pants for a while before venturing into

long dresses and short dresses and, you know,

whatever, beanies and hempkins and everything else

that I did. Yeah. What I I call it chasing all the Henleys,

button downs, long sleeve, short sleeve, shorts.

I mean, you name it. Right? Yeah. And there were many, many,

many more things that I wanted to do that customers were asking

for, any one of which could have been a success. But the

problem is that when you spread yourself too thin, as I did,

and you don't have the resources to thicken the

ice, so to speak, to support you, you can fall

through. There's some thin areas, and then they become kind of dangerous

areas. Like, oh, well, is this whole thing just gonna cave in? Or

what do I do now? I gotta, you know, I can't really support this area

anymore because it's too thin. I can't support that area anymore. It's too thin.

So gotta skate over to the thick areas.

Yeah. I call it the the for hemptrepreneurs, it's

the curse of too many hemportunities. That's there you

go. There you go. To kind of shift gears here, I I

just have a few more questions. Sure. So I, first of all,

really appreciate you and everything that you've done in the industry. And

I wanna kinda focus in specifically on

vital hemp products and what makes them unique, what makes

them different from other hemp

clothing products on the market? What what it what is different about your

products, and what makes them unique? Initially,

my my vision for the brand was to

create stylish, comfortable,

affordable hemp clothing and ultimately made in the

USA. So I think that the first distinguishing

feature from some brands is that some

brands are still made overseas. Many have returned home, and

I'm happy about that. But we've, ever since 2010,

we've been manufacturing here in LA. And I'm

a designer in in effect, and I have been since the

beginning. I'm told I mean, since the beginning when I started designing,

not in the 1st couple years when I was just selling other

people's stuff. But for the last 18 years, I've been the designer,

and I've worked with family owned businesses in Los

Angeles, and I've always attempted to source the very,

very best quality materials and to work with the very,

very best contractors. And and it took me a

while to find those.

For example, if the knits that I

was getting were shrinking too much or would develop holes

or whatever it was, I would switch and I would find a different manufacturer.

And, ultimately, I ended up making my knits

in LA, like, actually from yarn. I found someone

somewhere that could just import the yarn, we'd make the fabric in LA.

And it's a really, really and so it's so stable and so

good. I took a, you know, probably like a 4 mile hike today.

I'm still wearing the shirt, and it doesn't even smell because it

was wicking the whole time, and hemp has these great ant

antimicrobial qualities. So there's that. Best

best sewer, best dye house, best cutters, finishing,

all of that. I really have. When I made my Anywhere pants,

I used American made thread. Who uses American made thread?

No one, I guarantee you, uses American made thread because

it's so much more expensive than the Chinese made thread or

thread made anywhere else in the world. I wasn't I tried to minimize

the use of plastic. Like, I never went into the

recycled plastic blends. I just think plastic. There's a

myth that plastic is recyclable. Most of it, above

90% of it, never gets recycled. And because

people think that it can be recycled, it just give permission

to make more and more things out of plastic. Oh, I'll just recycle these bottles.

I'll recycle these containers. I'll recycle. And it just ends up going into

landfill, eventually gets into the ocean, but everywhere else. It's horrible.

It's clogging up the arteries of the planet

and the lungs of the planet and the ocean being one of the

major ones and very harmful. So I never

wanted to participate in the plastic thing. I

don't even think recycled plastic's a good solution at all. You know,

maybe if they're taking stuff out of the oceans and then

recycling that, fine. But any new product,

recycling, forget it. Just let's not make let's go to a

0 plastic model Mhmm. Manufacturer. Mhmm. When

that plastic is made with biomass. Mhmm.

And or polymers. I know that's not right on

the horizon, but it we're we're there. We're getting close. Okay.

Second thing is I was one of the first people

to just really invest in 100% hemp stuff.

I'm not saying I'm the first. I mean, the company that came before me, Juice

Naturale, they had a lot of heavier, 100%

shirts and some 100% pants made in

China. I I really liked using the 100%

hemp linen fabric for my shirting and

pants, and I just think it's such a great fabric.

And people have loved my Anywear pants, both

men's Anywhere pants and the women's Anywhere pants for decades

now. So I just keep making them when I can all totally out of the

men's ones except for small and double extra large. But I have

women's still in most size runs in most in

most of the sizes, in most of the colors, not all, at this point.

But, yeah, and I would use YKK zippers because I knew they're

the best. I would use either coconut or Coroso buttons

because coconut's a natural

product and Coroso is a shell. Or is Coroso a nut? I

think Coroso is a nut, actually. So, again, just reducing

plastic, using the best quality. What else? I I

know one thing. What? Oh, the colors. Yeah. The colors

is definitely unique. You're using hemp and

TENCEL. You're blending with before. No. No. I used anymore.

I used hemp. I was one of the early ones. I mean, Barber developed

that that fabric. Like, your your knit

fabrics, the jersey knit, is that a hemp and organic cotton, or what is

it? Hemp and organic cotton. Okay. Nice.

It's a hemp and organic cotton. It's a 5545. It's a really

nice weight. I garment dye everything rather than piece

dyeing. So Oh. So everything is preshrunk. Yeah.

And I spend a lot of time with fit. You know, people

really like my fits, whether it's I mean, I can't tell you what I what

I meant wanted to make a wrap dress. I probably went through so

many iterations of that wrap dress till I got it just right. And then I

you know, and then people loved it, and I sold out. I maybe made it

one more time after that. I don't know why I didn't continue making it.

I guess it's just bandwidth. Maybe I didn't have enough money to fund production at

that point for more. But, yeah, I really, really concentrate on fit. I

mean, my background, as I had mentioned to you, is in writing and literature,

and and in this I I get I put as much care

into the fit into sort of nailing the fit of things as I

do with making sure that, you know, I've

proofread an essay that I'm gonna put in the world or or something like that.

You know, there are times when things where there are surprises and, you

know, maybe the sleeves come out too long because the fit, the

shrink test was different than what ultimately happened in

production. And, you know, I've had to adjust. Sometimes I've had

to shorten sleeves, or sometimes I've had to somehow make things

work or size down or do something. Rarely, but it

happens. Not not everything is perfect. Yeah. I'm more

proud of certain styles than I am of others. I made a hemp

Henley couple years ago, and I thought, oh, this is

gonna be so cool. It's a Henley hoodie, and it's got buttons.

It ended up a little boxier than I would have liked and a little shorter

than I would have liked. I still wear it. There's still people who love

it and buy it, But it wasn't like one of those,

like, the regular hoodie where people just where I sell

out very quickly because that's a staple that people didn't want.

Yeah. You know, and they wanted it every color. They want I mean, I

have people who are constantly saying, oh, can you bring this back? Oh,

can you bring that back? Oh, can you make more of these? And let me

know when this is available again. And, you know, on the one hand, I really

want to make more. On the other hand, I

just am at a point where unless someone wants to come

in with resources and know

how, particularly maybe marketing know how, ecommerce know

how to build the business. I'm just not

inclined to jump in by myself again.

Those are all unique, you know, differentiators with your

products. That was, you know, what I was looking for. I mean, I think people

have over the years told me that the colors are

so unique and and really make them feel good. And I think it's because I

choose the colors both with my eyes

and, like, with my whole my heart and my whole body. Like,

I literally will just look at colors and

say, how does this make me feel? And then I'll just,

like, let it let the color allow

let the vibration of the color create a feeling in me.

Yeah. And when I have the feeling that I

feel good about, then I'll choose that color. That's

awesome. Yeah. Well, man, we're I'm just coming up to the kind of

the end here, but I have a couple questions left for you. Sure.

Okay. And this one is more related to hemp in

general and the history of hemp. I'm curious. Do you have,

like, a couple of hemp fun facts that you keep in the

back of your pocket when anybody doesn't know the

history of hemp and and how

embedded and woven into the fabric of our of our history it is? Is

is there a couple like, a handful of hemp fun facts that you

like to share? Yeah. Many, many, many. I bet.

Of the fact that hemp has been

used for paper for 1000 of years

and that the Gutenberg Bible was written

on hemp, and the Mark Twain were

published in on hemp. Abraham

Lincoln wrote his speeches on hemp. The

constitute the early drafts of the constitution, all drafts except

the final one, were written on hemp paper. Benjamin

Franklin, with the works of Lewis Carroll, also hemp.

Benjamin Franklin's first printing press employed hemp

paper. And I just feel like hemp is

so inter intertwined with our history and the history of

the world. And people, you know, who don't know much

about it think, oh, hemp is marijuana. But once you start

to introduce them to the many

varieties and features, not varieties, but the many many uses of

hemp, they kinda go, oh, wow. Really? I never knew that. I

love also talking about

hempcrete and, you know, Dion Margraf

and his work and that that that moment when he was

at Earth Day down in San Diego with that little demonstration

hemp house and his blowtorch and, like, you know, 3 inches away

from a hemp house with a blowtorch, and the thing would not ignite.

And it all it might do is just a little bit of a little little

circle of carbon that was, you know, not even burning

but just getting hot. And and and knowing from

documentaries I've watched and from reading that this is the

healthiest possible building material,

fire resistant, mold resistant,

super insulative in terms of

regulating temperature. And I remember learning

about this beer holding facility in, like, Scotland

or somewhere that reduced its annual electricity

bill for cooling the beer, keeping the beer cool by something

like 40% when they change one of the buildings to

hemp. And then how versatile it versatile it is

from building a small structure on your own property to building

the 2nd largest Marks and Spencer department store in all of the

UK in in modern curves and

with, like, stucco smooth stucco exterior

to the point where you're like, wow. I I had no idea this was hemp

trees. So that's another one. The other is that

hemp bioplastic is being used by the

many of the major car manufacturers for the interior body

panels of their cars, whether it's BMW,

Porsche, Mercedes Benz. They're all

using hemp bioplastic, especially in their high end cars

because it's stronger, lighter,

more durable, more flame resistant, more

mold resistant, and it doesn't off gas the way that

petroleum based plastics do. It doesn't get misshapen

with heat. And at the end of its useful life, it can be

composted. So, I mean, it's just such a win on so many

levels. And I'm I'm buoyed by the fact that

the car industry is recognizing hemp as a useful

material for body panels. I I wish that

we had never stopped using hemp bioplastic

for the exterior body panels as well Yeah. As

as Henry Ford did and Mhmm.

See if they're interested in that YouTube video, hemp, Henry

Ford hemp car and watch him use a sledgehammer on

the back fender of a of a of one of his models and watch the

sledgehammer literally bounce off the the, the

body the exterior body panel of the car. I mean, can you imagine how

much money we would have saved in

auto body costs by having lightweight,

super dead resistant hemp bioplastic be the shell

of our cars. But then our companies wouldn't have

made money and sold more vehicles. And, you know, the the

whole auto in this body shop industry probably would have just

been something else. Mhmm. So those are

some fun facts that I like to trot out here at the Those are

awesome. Yeah. Those are that's, more robust, I

think, than any other hemptrepreneur I've had on the show. You you

definitely know your know your hempstery as as we

say. Yeah. So my my last two questions

are, number 1, how can people learn more about Vital

Hemp? Where can they find you? I know you said you're not you don't have

your physical store, but you definitely have your website. How can people order some of

your products and learn more about what you're up to on the socials and all

of that? Yeah. Vitalhemp.com is the website. If

they wanna keep up with what's happening with the company, just sign up for the

newsletter. And at least once a month, I hope to let

you know what's going on. If there are any potential

investors or partners out there who want

to resources and know how and believe in the mission

and the and believe they can help scale

it, I'm I'm open to having conversations. And you

can just find me shoot me an email through the website. We do have

an Instagram page. I don't think it's super active. Well, I think we

post a little bit more on Facebook. Those are basically the ways

people can find me. But if they wanna buy something from what we have

left at this point, find us on, vitalhemp.com.

Any more? So my my final question is,

imagine you were standing on a world stage and

you were literally addressing every human being on the

planet, and you could, within 60 seconds,

share one message with them, and it could be about hemp or

it could be about anything at all. What would you want every human

being on in in the world to know? I would

want everybody to know that we live

on an absolute miracle jewel

of a planet that is abundant,

resourceful, marvelous beyond our imagination

to even comprehend, and it has

everything here for us to live

fruitfully, to live in peace

and abundance, in harmony with all the

other species with whom we share

this planet. And I would like everybody

to know that as a goal for

humanity to continue to keep this planet

vital, not just for us, but for all of the species that have

as much right to be here as we do, that we

think about how we can support

these other species in their native ecosystems.

Whether that's hemp as a crop

that serves beyond humans, birds

and and enormous amount amounts of other

species. Or whether it's dolphins or

or insects or you name it.

They are all or or algae or plankton or

coral. They they are all part of this

interconnected world in which we live

and that we, as stewards, as sort

of high on the totem pole of consciousness and also high on the

toad totem pole of potential and

real destruction that we're causing, we I believe we

have a responsibility to respect the other life

forms, to better understand how

we are all related, and to learn how we can

support the myriad life forms to work

together in holistic ways to create abundance and

peace and harmony for all the

living beings on earth. And this will require some

people earning less money perhaps, exploiting people less,

But it will ultimately be a much, much happier future

and and one that is around for our

children and grandchildren and for many generations,

as at least 7, as the our our Native

American brothers and sisters remind us, is to try to

keep that vision in mind. And it's it's a

so I would say that's my message, Tyler. Amen.

Well, I appreciate that. It's it's right in alignment with a

book that I'm looking to publish early 2024.

It's a working title, but the title is something

like how hemp pays for peace

and using this as our vehicle for creating more peace

on earth. And I I get that we may never get to a

point where there's no wars and there's no destruction and

fighting. Like, there's probably always gonna be some level of that. But if we can

create a deeper sense of of health

and wealth and and true harmonious abundance

with hemp as our vehicle, I do believe that we all,

as a human family, and all species, like you were saying,

can experience more harmony and more

peace as a result of hemp being at the center of what

we're doing. So that's why you and I do what we do, and

I really appreciate your insights and your wisdom and the

experience that you've brought to this industry and appreciate you being on this

hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio. Yeah. Tyler, thank you so

much for hosting me. And it's always good to hear from

you and see you and to just witness

your evolution from the

kid in the, alley who was helping

me unload my van after a hard day's work and

teaching me about heart to heart hugs. And a lesson

that I've that I decided to adopt probably

18 or so years ago and have

given 1,000, heart to heart hugs since then.

And I owe that to you. And I think it's a Testament to

your big heart. You shared that with me

and, but just know that that legacy continues through

me into the world. So thanks for bringing the love

brother. It's an honor and a privilege. Thank you so

much. I appreciate you all tuning into hemp episode of Hempel Ware Radio.

This is your hemp entrepreneurial host, Tyler Hemp, here at Hemp Power and

hemp educate your hemposphere. We'll see you on the next Hempisode.

Thanks everyone for tuning in.