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okay so i went ahead and just went live because you're talking about everything that fuels my fire and i can just keep going so thank you so much for joining us um i'm really excited because this is exactly where for a year or more now i have said the opportunity is and not just me but this is like you said there's so much more to the plant than what goes in the ground and the flower that pops out um so i'd love for you to introduce yourself really quick well we are recording um we will edit this and so you can use this also for yourself later on but um if anybody has any questions as we're live we're streaming to both facebook and youtube um and then they'll be shared on the youtube page also later on awesome edit and clean it up but if anybody has any questions comments will pop in and you're welcome to answer them otherwise anybody that does jump on feel free to yeah ask any questions so back to erica tell me a little bit about uh who you are and what you're doing and what's going on so my name is erica halverson and first of all thank you so much for this opportunity it's i love talking with anybody that has any sort of passion in the hemp industry it just it's like you said fueling my fire type thing too so i am the founder and ceo of tiny e paper and we make 100 pure hemp paper out of not only hemp stocks but also out of the post extraction waste from cbd extractors so there are two real big issues that i'm trying to solve specifically for the cannabis industry number one is we sell this healing medicine this wellness product this wonderful magical plant in the most irresponsible way possible i mean it literally makes us makes us look like [ __ ] we've got enough [ __ ] in this industry but it's surrounded by mounds of garbage made from trees which is one of our most important renewable resources as human beings and so that's the first thing is we need to sell this medicine responsibly and we also have that material within our own house we have a self-sustaining business model built into our own industry and we're not utilizing it right now so that's challenge number one number two is that you are and i i mean this in the best way you are not one of my favorite people knot that's right but the other the other problem the industry is having is the cbd industry is the fastest growing segment of the fastest growing industry in the world and they are producing tons and tons and tons of waste every single day i have one extractor that can give me one to five tons of waste a day because they're continually almost 24 hours running those machines coming out so that's another problem that i'm trying to solve is utilizing that waste somehow because these are either depending on what state they're in they're either paying somebody to take that stuff off of their land and they then they have to turn it into something else so that they can just get rid of it or they're burning it for fuel which just breaks my heart because there's so many other things to do with it but those are really the two biggest issues that i'm trying to solve for the cannabis industry really as a whole we can legitimize ourselves by making really smart responsible choices about how we sell our product and then we also need to be really cognizant about what we are doing to this earth what we are expelling is waste from our product what we are utilizing and how we're treating this planet with our product as well because we have a huge like climate change statement we can be making as well oh yeah so talk to me a little bit about each of these each i i feel like we preach this all the time and i love hearing it from somebody else so talk to me what are some of the topics that we should be talking about or why should people be listening um because when i got into him i i did the same thing i was like oh cbd the kind of smoke the kind you use kind of rub on your body i had no idea my passion would turn to supply chain and um down to labor laws down to how and really i think what brought to light is our timing we have an opportunity and a time to really uh grow this industry with the pandemic it's right here it's being handed literally sitting there and we need to be very careful with it and make sure we have great things with it so yeah so so what's your what was your aha moment or where did you really um realize that what needs to be talked about is supply chain and is more than just the flower in the plant yeah well i'll be honest if you would have told me five ten years ago that i was going to be a somewhat quasi expert in hemp and hemp paper i would have told you you were smoking something and share but it just kind of happened um it started when i actually got my foot into working in the cannabis industry for the first time and i was working for the largest vaporizer company in the industry packs on the cannabis side and jewel on the nicotine side and when i saw the packaging that was being put together made of trees surrounding this tiny vape pod it's this big and it has this much garbage around it and that's that was kind of my first aha moment i didn't understand even then what my place in the world of that challenge was going to be um yeah and then i left pax and jewel we kind of had a shared meeting of the minds and said this isn't working for both of us and about two weeks later is when i had a serendipitous conversation with a friend over happy hour about hemp and about camp paper and why we are not utilizing it on a b2b basis and that's my light bulb went off and i was like holy heck cannabis hemp paper why are they not being utilized and that's where my journey began um two weeks after i had that a-hole moment and doing a [ __ ] time sorry i don't know if i can swear on this but doing research i found out that there was no other company that was focusing on the campus industry and no other company in the states was making 100 pure hemp paper which means that we were only putting a band-aid on a problem that we've already discovered as a problem like we know using trees for all of our paper is not the smartest thing to do but why are we only getting to get why are we only getting to 25 hemp that's still 75 of bad stuff that we're putting in the paper so that was my first kind of wow this is kind of nutty is that there's literally nobody doing a hundred percent hemp paper so that's that's just literally where my path started and i have been doing this now november was my three-year anniversary for tiny e-paper and it's ironic we're having this conversation right now as we speak right now i am producing my first production role it is on the machine right but the problem that i found during this entire process is that entire piece of the chain that is right in the middle of the supply chain that is missing and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the very start people are so focused on putting the plant in the ground or focused on the flower once it sprouts and they're forgetting that the stock holds all of this together and the hemp stock is the strongest natural fiber on earth it's really tough stuff it is impossible to use anything anything utilizing the stock it's impossible to do it without processing it to make paper to make plastic to make anything fi for our fibers for clothing and things like that you have to process the stock the other part of that coin is i talked to a lot of farmers that don't understand there are many different species of hemp plant as well there are species that grow short and stubby with big cores that are made for holding up these large buds because they want all those cbd flowers but they're short and stocky like a cannabis plant or a weed plant yeah yeah i need industrial hemp it grows a lot like bamboo it grows 12 to 20 feet tall it has a very small core i need more of the outside bark i don't need the core on the inside and there's not a lot of flowers to it because you you actually grow it very close together so it doesn't get sun down to the bottom of it which is why it's always striving to get up up up and get to that sunlight at the top and the only flowers that you have are just at the very top of the plant when we're so focused on cbd though i'm finding that farmers aren't planting the right hemp for me even so i can't get enough of the stocks from a cbd plant in order to make paper that i need so it starts with the very beginning of what we're putting in the ground and making sure that we're understanding who our audience is who do they want to buy that stuff whatever it is that they're planting and the other odd thing that's going on is i have farmers that are asking me to give them pos and lois before they even planted the plant i planted the sea and i'm like well that's kind of weird why do you want me to pay for something really promising to pay you before you've even planted it and i get to see it and make sure you understand how to grow it because a lot of you are doing this for the first time and then i find out that the epa put a standard farm bill that they can't get crop insurance unless they get a promissory note of some kind that somebody's going to actually buy their raw material so they they've put in all these weird kind of things in the farm bill even that are making it really hard for us to get this thing going here and the biggest problem from that is we don't have enough people in the industry making the rules about the industry we have a lot of people who know zero about it all that they care about is the economy of their state that they're living in i.e mitch mcconnell he didn't care about us hemp people he cared that him is kentucky's number one cash crop and that's the only reason why it's one of the only bills that the grim reaper has put through on the floor is for his own state to benefit from it and he and he even made a comment this week he is not putting the safe banking act on the floor even though congress just voted it for it again so there's a just for me to make paper i'm finding out that i'm having all of these challenges with how the laws are being set up how the farmers are even thinking about this product because they're focused on the wrong things and then we get into the processing and pulling and that supply chain and why we're not thinking holistically of the plan and how that's messing things up for me as well because again if i don't have processors and pullers i can't make my paper here in the states which means i have to pass us and go to europe or go to canada and like i said we've got enough [ __ ] in this industry i don't want to cannibalize ourselves before we get a chance to get off the ground well and i think what i've seen you said a couple of things that are really really stuck out is the processing the supply chain um the insurance the crop insurance the banking right um i think where people the more i go out and i talk to people oh and also standards standard design standardizing yes because how do you know what you're supposed to buy and how do farmers know what they're supposed to grow and how do i know i'm gonna get that same stock year after year and crop after crop i don't know right now i have to sample to send samples of everything before i even make a buying decision that takes a long time in the process well if we look at say the wool industry right the wool industry all of the wool is sent to one place where it's checked graded and then sold right there are fundamental um practices in place that protect the buyers so that there are it's not even necessarily i don't need a sample of your wool i know that it's it's a certain quality and a grade and if it's not you're responsible for it and there's not structure like that set up in this industry and i think it's important that consumers and understand that right big buyers get it right it's the consumer that that i think you know even when i talk to people and i talk about hemp and i say well you know i i list some of the statistics about why is hemp paper better than wood or better than paper you know what we're what we're considering paper now you know and and why is it why are we not doing it if it is so much better because when you repeat those stats people are like bull crap or else we would be doing that yes how come we're not utilizing it then and i'm like yeah i think it's important that people understand that there's this broken piece of or or that there's been an industry that's been opened up with opportunity without these structures in place like banking i mean how many billions of dollars moved across our roads and suitcases and trunks of cars last year yeah well if you can't and not out of illegal right it's not that that money is bad money it's not it's that there is not an infrastructure set up to put the money into the bank no and going back even to your wool um example there are laws to protect the sheep right that we're shearing them properly we're not hurting them that they're humane we have no laws protecting our plant nothing so we're not even looking at the hemp industry the same way that we're looking at other industries in order to regulate it because we're not even looking at the plant as something that needs to be protected and regulated and made sure that it's being taken care of the right way right right well and i think this goes back to how a new and unique this industry is right what other crop when we go back to a crop right is in every single facet of our lives yeah we build our houses with corn yeah you know we we're not i mean i guess i mean but look at oil and gas right we're back to an oil and gas industry um a new commodity and we're creating opportunities and so uh real quick when we talk about standards i'd love to chat about that in a minute but i want to hear why why hemp paper yeah why should i be switching over and understanding that without those standards we can't but in order to get there yeah what do we need moving forward so i'm going to start with i'm going to go backwards and start with probably the scariest stat about why we need to be switching from trees to hemp and kind of work our way backwards because i think a lot of people already know if you can recycle it more it's stronger it's all that those are all pretty normal things that people have gotten now paper to make it look white like this to make it be white there is a bleaching agent and one of the ingredients is called carcinogen dioxin and carcinogen dioxin happens to be an ingredient in agent orange and there is so much of this that is being put into our waterways into our soil system into everything that goes into our environment just to make paper look white that every single female on earth has traces of carcinogen dioxin in our breast milk that we are feeding our children and again that is just to make paper white for no other reason than we believe it needs to be white so that's the first thing is i don't use any bleaching agents or anything to make my paper i don't even allow the word bleach in the vocabulary tiny paper because that assumes harsh bad chemicals and icky if you can't put it in your body it does not go into my paper making process okay so this is the same this is this is across the same board in textiles right i have the same like the exact same concerns about the way our textiles are being made and the poison that's being used watching lies if you just look at the ingredients in ink and dyes to turn at these pretty colors it's amazingly horrible and so that's what i'm looking at is i've got a printer that i'm going to start doing r d now that i've got this roll produced i can send some of that off to a printer for more r d for different processes and things like coatings obvious coatings and gold leaf and all that kind of stuff because you've got to be able to do everything with hot paper if i'm going to switch everybody over i'm even looking at things like vegetable dyes and i have my product developer and i um we're also looking into i believe he's gotten to the final stages of a um adhesive like for envelopes and things that is completely natural with no chemicals in it as well so i'm literally looking at everything that touches my paper and that goes into making that paper turn into something else whether it's a box a book a newsprint or whatever i need to make sure tha that entire process is as responsible as the way that i made it and and that means not doing anything to destroy the environment from which that raw material comes to us from and that's the whole that's my whole big point about switching over to hemp paper is we can take away all of these harsh chemicals and grossness and save our trees you know we as humans we gotta have trees to live we really need those for the carbon dioxide exchanges things like that we have dr seuss dr seuss was on to something yes i always say i feel like i've become the lorax because the more i learn about how readily available a solution is it just it almost makes me angry some days very very obvious of things it takes 25 to 50 years to grow a tree they are not fast growers and you have no choice you cannot hurry up that process you just cut them down sooner hemp you can grow two full cultivations within four to six weeks or four to six months which means two full cultivations every single year that's fantastic so just when you think about how renewable that resource is it's it just looking at the mathematics of it the land space that you would need to grow that much hemp is is minuscule to how many acres and acres and acres of trees that you have to have just for paper making and that doesn't include lumber for house building and all that kind of stuff as well this is just for paper and i uh something else that people might not know there are literally forests that are throughout the united states protected forests where that that land and those trees are only made for paper they're owned by companies like warehouse or in georgia pacific and they only grow those trees for paper and then they chop them down and have to start that entire process over so just doing that to our land area to constantly have this resource for paper is nutty to me just looking at the simple mathematics it just does not make sense what about what about this is something that's come up to me lately or it was just brought to my attention is you know the redwood trees and the problems with the redwoods and the availability of now to be able to replace those trees with hemp to prevent the forest fires and the true risk that those trees are i mean for those that don't know they blow up when they get hot they literally yeah really bad yeah and so then all of the area around them then lights on fire not just the tree like other trees and so it it really is um yeah so i again when we talk hemp people always say well why and what are you doing or when somebody says well what are you working on i have a really hard time saying what my passion is or even and and being i mean i don't have a 30-second elevator pitch anymore i literally turn and i'm like well first what's your passion because hemp is also part of that and that's why even when we before we go got on live what when you said what do you want to talk about it's literally just even to make paper i can talk about almost anything in this industry because it all is part of my process it all approaches something having to do from the laws just to plant that seed to the type of hemp that grows to the amount of it that grows to the processing of it to the making of the paper and then turning it into a box turning into a whatever like that whole process involves just about every single piece of this entire industry so when we talk price and cost how competitive are we now with cost and understanding that as this grows and when you said earlier the the piece of this business or this industry that needs the capital injection is the processing and the manufacturing you know the big the big um the scalability opportunities so yeah and with that's okay so with that being said um [Music] for pricing so yeah this is the number one question whenever i talk about headache that's always going to be the number one buying buying issue of is price and my strategy has been from the start if i don't make this paper affordable nobody is going to make the switch that i'm wanting them to make and my my original goal was to get the entire cannabis industry on a bdb level for all their packaging labeling not rolling papers that's consumer driven b to b or any of the paper that is required to run a cannabis business my original intent of tiny was to get the entire industry to stop using trees switch over to hemp and and create a self-sustaining business model and then we get to be among everybody else i can't do that if i don't make it affordable to him or to cannabis people specifically especially so my strategy for pricing has always been to hold within a 30 increase over the tree paper version of that product toilet paper printer paper box whatever it is i like in my model to the way people are looking at led lights versus incandescent light bulbs people to this day even in states where you still have a choice of incandescent or leds are still making a choice to pay up to 70 percent more for led light bulbs because they get it they get it that it's environmentally better they last longer there is a better cost justification over the long run for that light bulb i believe that that 30 can be baked into my pricing because people will still understand all of those other benefits why paper is better than tree paper but if i go outside of that 30 i think it takes away that value proposition and they're not that's where i think that that degradation starts happening so i know that this is not a great conversation to have with investors but i know that i'm going to be eating it a little more on the front end in order to get as many people to switch as possible but there are two things just look at basic economics 101 there are two things that are going to help me drive that price down and one of those is volume so the more people that i get to switch over the more that that pricing starts making better sense for me on the back end and then also the cbd extractors are giving me the raw material for free so the more that i can make my paper out of raw material that is considered waste the more that can also help my pricing structure as well but the other thing that i've always had to keep in mind from the very very start of when i started this company is i'm always competing against a commodity paper is a commodity and when you start a business in an industry where your product is already considered a commodity that is the number one challenge so this stuff is expensive it's expensive to make it's mostly expensive right now because i can't do any of it in the states right now the raw material unfortunately that i'm doing to get this product or this roll made came from canada because i had to buy it already processed and have it sent over already cleaned already decorated and separated and remixed in the in the fast curd mix that i need it to be because i don't need a lot of the herd that's the inside core i need more of that long outside stringiness of the bast there's not anybody doing that here yet i would be interested in having and furthering this conversation this is something gha is working on in on a bunch of different levels and we're working with a few different groups to really dive into the specifics of those standards we actually have a meeting this thursday i'd love to invite you to if you are interested because i think if we if we as an organization or collectively can come together and really set these standards for the industrial the the commodity side of the industry right that's i think that it will further your success tenfold because i validate when you say it's hard it's hard to do i've seen when people send fiber they're decorticating but some of it's full of the it's dirty it's sandy it's dusty knives which are the pieces of herd that look like this i i can't have those in the mix i can't have it my entire there's no cellulose in it there's no cellular structure that i need there's no fiber content like there's a there's a reason i need it processed the way i need it processed and i'm even now talking to a couple different groups that are interested in giving giving me the money on a capital scale to be able to build these machines or buy ones that are currently um out there because i use a lot of the same machines just a little tweaking and a little calibrating difference because hemp is stronger than trees and it's trees are pretty soft and it's always the same size of the tree fiber you need for what for the paper that you're using i'm using fibers in all different sizes based on how much of that hemp fiber somebody wants to see in the paper so i need machines that can chop it up a little bit differently but i can buy machines that already exist and kind of retool them a little bit so i'm talking to people that want to give me enough capital that i can build those machines myself and turn it around like within the next 90 days i'm just looking for the space now to put those machines but i'm and i keep saying this to my team when we solve this problem for tiny e i am solving this problem for the entire industry so that's why this is my my new mission my i've been saying this since i started this it has not been about just making paper to me it has truly been about saving the plant and changing the planets with this plant and really making an impact on it and getting it going in the states the way that it needs to get going well and again we go back to supply chain and opportunity right now with our pandemic and how how much it was brought to the surface at how broken or dependent we are as a country or a state or even a community on everybody else right and when that's lost or cut or broken no i've got a girlfriend that manages a grocery store um and she said ketchup lids became a problem i was walking through the grocery store the other day and these nice white bottles with white labeling and branding had bright red labels and i was like that's pandemic yeah they could find bottle lids so now they're stuck with bright red lids or they couldn't put product out yeah and so companies had a problem getting their empty vape carts because most of them were getting them from china well and printer i went to best buy the other day to buy a printer and you can't buy printers right now so there's so many things that have been brought to light and consumers i think are just now starting to see it right our our b2b has felt the pinch for a little while now we're re it's just trickling down in my opinion so i i'm curious about recyclability you know if of hemp paper i've met a number of packaging companies and have had further conversation with a great connection that i'd love to connect to adam peake is his name i've interviewed him a couple of times he's with fortis um but we he's he's done ted talks and anyways um i could go on and on great connection long story short we've had a number of questions and one of them was about recycling and you know can it be how long how many times because the fibers are cut short and just now you said some paper has longer fibers some shorter fibers and i assume that i'm going to have people that want my paper to look like hemp paper they want people to ask about it they like that you can see the [ __ ] excuse me see the fibers in it because it forces that conversation there are going to also be some people that want it to look as much like tree paper as possible get it as light and bright as you can i don't want to see any fibers in it i don't want anybody asking about it but i still want to make a responsible decision so i've got to account for everybody that wants any different variation of that so that's that's why also i need some of those machines a little bit differently um because you don't have those variables in tree pulp it's one that's it right right well and i would assume that your paper that contains more fiber long fibers is a stronger longer lasting paper not necessarily it's just a longer fiber on the shorter fibers when i make it so that you can't see them i'm just chopping the fiber down to a micron size which is like dust particle size just so that you can't see it and on the recycle bin you can recycle paper seven to eight times you can only recycle tree paper three to four times so you can more than double your recyclability just by switching over to hemp paper as well so that's that's an important piece to me and we're not even talking about the like you said the the carbon footprint and our ability to you know produce on the other side before it gets to you yeah piece to this i'm talking to a biochemist right now about working with an enzyme that will help to break down the paper when it gets into the ground a little bit faster as well once it starts um once it starts getting together with the other enzymes that are in the dirt and things like that so those just to help it break down a little bit faster i'm talking about that there is also one form of waste that comes from the paper making process otherwise i am i am very carbon neutral but there's only one little area of waste and it's called black liquor or black licorice and it's this grody tar type stuff that is the back end of the paper making process i can't get around it it's just part of the process but the same biochemist is working on an enzyme that will help break that down into such a renewable resource that we're going to be able to utilize that black liquor turn it into recycled water that we can then reconstitute back into the entire paper making process so i'm literally looking at being able to make a statement with my entire process that i use as much waste as i can and i expel zero waste in my entire process so that's also very important to me in creating not only a self-sustaining business model but a self-sustaining ecosystem and one of the other ways that i'm doing this is i mentioned that i'm utilizing the post-extraction waste from cbd extractors i'm actually going to be utilizing all their waste all the waste from my extractors and from my farmers from the root ball all the way to the sticks and stems the leaves everything because i'm also going to be working with like an eco recycling type companies and we're going to turn that stuff into a living soil that will go back to my hemp farmers that gives them higher yields better quality product which gives me better quality raw material and that's how we recreate that self-sustaining ecosystem so that always goes back to what i said at the very beginning where this has always been about more than making paper to me it has been about creating an entire structure that can support itself and benefit all of us this goes back to our supply chains this goes back to sustainability everything that i didn't even think about before i stepped into this industry i considered and i shouldn't say everything sometimes i make myself sound but like i've never even thought about it but really like i didn't know how impactful sustainability was for me and i've even now the majority of the people that i talk to that are my age say why why should i care why should it actually yeah why should i spend 30 on a t-shirt that's made out of hemp that's biodegradable that's carbon you know all of these positive things when you can go to walmart and buy a dollar t-shirt and you know i go back to labor laws i go back to the things that are impactful so bringing it back to the united states or to circular you know economy and sustainability is more and more critical for us to survive right for us to be successful we can't depend on other countries to get 90 something percent of our textiles or cut down trees wait 12 years to cut down trees if the fires maintained at the rate that there they are and our lack of nutrient and soil we're we're doomed right and it's more and more available okay so with that being said our younger generations um our gen x and z's they listen yeah right paying attention and that 30 you talked about an increase um i've always heard 20 you know at that 20 mark people are willing to pay for 30 they're willing to know where it came from that it's that it really is recyclable now when we say recyclable and sustainable right there's a lot of green washing that i've discovered yeah i was and i'm throwing more companies now that are saying we are we are a company on a mission for sustainability well re lly what does that mean define that what does this mean to your company because i think we throw that word around a lot i'm going to the grocery and i'm buying sustainable fish yeah i'm doing [Music] or recycle or organic yeah i mean if we i think a lot of people use that form and don't truly understand what it means what the philosophy behind it is and how you can impact it no matter what you are doing everybody in the world can make choices that are more sustainable as long as they understand what that is how you go about that like what does it even mean and it means something different to everybody it means something different to every industry but i think especially the cannabis industry we have to preach this with just going back to the whole message of what this plant is about why we have passion for it why why 90 percent of people that you talk in this industry are passionate about it and making money is never their first reason for why they got into it that's why we have to always talk about driving that message home yes uh nancy just said something really she said sustainable solutions are important in becoming mandated with large organizations she was just working with sustainability director at sap last week i think that that's i mean that just goes to show you that people are listening people are paying attention right and when we talk about you know the market that's available it's massive our younger generations they are being affected my generation and my parents generation is probably the least affected by this we got lucky hit this gap where they really won't see it right and that's where the generation that younger generation is are the they're going to be our teachers they are going to be the ones teaching us what all of this really means because they're the ones that truly do get it and they're the ones that honestly should care more it's them and their children that are going to be affected most we've already our time's almost up on this planet like we've already screwed it over as much as we can for ourselves it's our generation behind us that are the ones that are going to really be the ones that that that make this movement happen we've got to get it in the hands of our children and i've said this this for a while so that's part of what gha is doing or really taking an initiative is to create some opportunities for education you know and with that come jobs naturally then we've got the economic development and so i've got a question i've got a member of gha in the textile space that you had mentioned earlier um microns the micron size of what you're chopping your um herd or pulp up to so that um for paper he's concerned about micron size for textiles would you think maybe that the paper and textile industry are along the same lines of the type of fiber that they need okay yes very similar in fact it need part of the process for the stock to get it to either a pulp situation for me making paper or a fiber situation for it to be spun into something like a yarn or a fiber right almost identical right up to a certain point almost identical yep um yeah so i would really like you to be i would love to have you involved in this conversation as we move this forward further i'm just to make the fiber the cottonized temp fiber that i need to make toilet paper and any of the offshoots of any of that soft like fibrous paper like purple apples and all of that that is even a more similar process to the fiber that's needed for for cotton and yarn and that kind of stuff for fabrics okay so i'm really because this this then goes back to educating our farmers right our farmers have to know that this stock one that's being grown is not the stock that we need for the fiber or the hemp we're talking about right they are different and that when we're growing uh stock to the full 120 days it's a thick heavy trunks trunk of this tree right i don't want that right zero good exactly exactly so when we talk about waste and when people you know talk about well there's all this waste we have all this product out here um this is kind of what happens when a market is open like this and our infrastructure isn't set up we've got this influx of product and i'm it's unfortunate but you see it starting to happen now in in the fiber side of the industry and now even on linkedin videos of entire bushels of hemp being burned just out in an open field burned now and i get i get contacted almost on a daily basis by farmers that still have crop from last year that are looking for buyers but it's all cbd hemp it's all cbd i can't use it yeah well let's um i've made this commitment it's become more and more passionate you know more and more it's just syncing with me that um the reason we started gha is to support this industry i don't have an invested interest in one business but i am incredibly passionate when it was my aha moment to see that we have a solution to the plastics problem and the papers problem and the trees burning and the housing and so many things right so with with the paper going back to paper where are where are what do you need or where can we really step in and support the industry that then lifts you know lifts all tides rises all tides but really to support the paper industry specifically and do you see a big battle coming forward with the current paper industry or do you see the transition happening um you know with less resistance um well i'll start with the kind of the most interesting part of that question to me which is what are the other paper companies doing the tree paper companies um so they are desperately trying to get into the hampton temp side of things um it's i have already been contacted by a very large paper company who already asked me the a question of i'm sure i'll be interested in an acquisition at some point and i very politely said here's where you can shove that because that to me would be one of the worst things to happen to this industry for any it's kind of like pharmaceuticals taking over the cannabis side of things if a large tree paper come comes in and let's say they they offer to buy me tomorrow when i say yeah you will never again hear from tiny paper and you'll never again hear of hemp paper because that cannibalizes their entire company and that is that's that's what scares me is that side of the beast getting a hold of us and silencing us and so first of all that ain't gonna happen for that's not gonna happen to my company so i have a question yeah sure i i'm curious and i've said this for a while if businesses like paper companies are not talking about him they're going to they won't make it yeah i mean it's not a matter of hey i'm going to silence it it's not going away hemp is hemp's here to stay and it's real and and so i think that for me i look at it as uh companies that are willing to get into it are those that are going to be i mean we're at the front of a commodity look at what happened in oil and gas you know there's a reason that there's oil and gas tycoons and these companies that have the capability to put the capital injection in and support an organization like yours and say here's a new fresh brand and we're sustainable and we're you can recycle us and we're going to last and we can create it within organizations and we can support rural communities that's who's going to win yep you mark my word those are the you know in patagonia i have to give them a shout out they're doing a good job at leading the way with sharing the message right and i think they as big as they are are running into the same problems finding him quality hemp fiber and then turning and educating the farmers of the type of fiber and that it's not just one type of hemp they look different they're harvested different they are processed differently and in other countries you can process fiber or cottonize fiber where you can't do that here in the united states due to poisonous chemicals yeah right the same type of things i'm sure you're facing right in the paper industry yeah that goes back to you said what do i need is is i think education and doing more about talking about this talking about our ugly babies and the issues that we have talking about putting people like us in law making positions let's start putting people like us in office and start thinking about actually how our votes affect our own industry that that's to me is kind of where we really have to get a lot more passionate about being involved in the jurisdiction part of this process and the regulation side of it and not be scared of that kind of stuff but it just goes back to more and more people talking about this and talking about the different species and and it even goes down to there are different regions of the country that will grow different hemp varieties differently some better some worse and we need to start identifying that and talking about it and have farmers talking to each other and saying this worked for me this didn't work for me and and just keeping those lines of communication going that that would be the biggest thing that i would need and then that's where that's where jason commits that that go-to place for these types of discussions you know and that's one thing that i realized the first time i went to an event um it if i'm in marketing i can google who else is in marketing and i know that the marketing company down the street from me is bigger than me or same size as me or competing with me or in a completely different industry focusing on different industries there's nothing like that in cannabis in him right and so my commitment was just that is to provide a place where we can get these discussions going and that now you know somebody else who's processing fiber for high-end textiles that may be a solution for your your need in fiber distribution right and be able to get it here within the united states and so those types of things are i'm super thankful we connected because i think that this really is a matter of bringing our leaders together yeah and uh just to come on a point on what we're just talking about too loretta just made a great comment i know southern states or tobacco are moving into him like paper companies tobaccos are trying to invest in him i actually talked to one just last week he's a tobacco farmer he wants to get into hemp and i shocked the hell out of him with our conversation because he thought growing buying and selling hemp was exactly like tobacco and i have and then say it is nothing like tobacco zero of it is exactly like tobacco and it he didn't didn't even understand that and already was he's like wow now i'm even more excited because i actually think i understand what i'm doing but that weren't back into the education that's needed is there are a lot of people that think oh i'm just gonna switch over my crop to this and then i'm gonna be in the hemp game and that is it's just not true right right well and again i think we touched on so many of the reasons why today you know down to the quality of fiber and each buyer is different based on what they're producing i mean hemp crete you know hemp creek to me seems like low hanging fruit it's pretty basic standards should be there from wyoming to florida completely different specs you know it's not and it has nothing to do with the fiber it has nothing to do with the pump at that point everything else in it and so those types of things that i just think more and more education and discussion i'd love to invite you back i'd love connections for anybody else that you know that's doing it right in the industry i'd like to highlight them and of course i'll send you an invite to our meeting um questions and thanks loretta by the way for joining us i'm super excited that you did but anything else we have a couple minutes left before we sign off anything else you'd like to add or say or say that one of the most other important things that's going to help my hemp mission move forward because it's not just my admission i'm on a movement to to have everybody be involved but it's also finding synergies and partnering and partnering up with other companies who are very similarly passionate like not plastic and what rye is doing and finding those places where we can get together and i always say that i i know i can make a lot of a lot of noise on my own but i want to make a lot of noise and i can do that a lot louder when i work with other people and so community looking for those partnerships looking for those synergies and that only happens when people like you want to talk and that's fantastic yeah well i'm super excited i'm i'm thrilled to have you on and i think this what you just said goes back to the value of the plant right the the very core of this plant is the community and the synergies and the beauty and bringing things together and that in order for it to be successful it's going to take two leaders sitting in the table room next to each other and brainstorming right and discussing opportunities um it's going to take a community of people to say hey we need to we need to put forces together and a facility has to be in this location in order for us to compete on price you know and in order for you to to get the quality of fiber you need someone's got to educate our farmers about what you're looking for and where your facilities are where are you located and how do people get in touch with you so i actually live in long beach california only because i wanted to live at the beach which is awesome on months like this i don't trust any part of my process in california zero none so i'm located in the united states and i do my process in all different states because right now i don't get to decide where they are i have to move my product for that process all over the place and that's also not a way that i can survive logistics is the number one cost on my p l right now and that it's painful that's a good you know and these are things we talk about i've started to really loop in logistics companies because if we as we figured out how do we get these products to consumers that logistics is a piece that's become and again another opportunity to bring it into the united states right also another opportunity for our youth that care they they care that it's u.s made they care that we're taking care of our own people yeah they should we all should and not that i'm not discrediting anything outside right because we're a global organization however i i also validate the need for stable supply chains so that when tragedy happens or war happens we're set up and protecting ourselves right just like i would hope the caribbean is set up i want i want china to be set up everybody needs to be set up and really in order to be competitive our processing facilities have to be within what how many up to 200 miles maybe from where it's grown i'm trying to key i'm trying to build geographical silos one on the east one in the center so i'm really only shipping down versus shipping all over the place and look those three different silos of jobs farmers processors if i say hey i need three or four of everything as part of part of my process there's a lot of people that i can help that's a lot of states economies that i can help those are a lot of farmers that i can keep from having to have hot crops and burn their crops down and things like that so the more that i can help the merrier in my mind my opinion 100 well and you're a really tiny piece of this right you need so much supply our paper industry is massive and it's only paper yeah i was blown away when i was talking to i think it was rye about kitty litter or vinnie and maybe it was vinnie about kitty litter and the demand it was him and the demand and what we would need in the hemp industry to grow you know what we would need to grow in order to support just kitty litter and that was just yeah and just from the volume that i am talking to people about on my social media feeds because especially lately i've been telling people get let me know what you want let's talk about pos because the time is now yes they're not one part of the hemp industry can be supported by the supply right now none of them can so like we're in a we're in a really awesome unique opportunity right now how many how many times does somebody get the opportunity rea time to create an entire industry and we're all involved in that right now it's it's really exciting uh a hundred percent so i feel blessed and it was handed to us with the break in our as much as the pandemic's heartbreaking and it's not what i would have ever asked for um the cycle repeats itself right yep and it's it's now is a time of innovation and i say when someone's struggling we have how many thousands hundreds and thousands of people without job in hospitality i welcome you to get involved in the hemp industry because it's a team yes yes yes well thank you so so much erica for joining me today i'm really excited we'll have this edited for you and you're welcome to share it or use it and then i'd love to um i'll send you over contact information or over um meeting information for our textiles and our uh standards meeting and then if you need anything i'd love to talk more and thanks for everybody listening and watching and for all the comments as well in the questions yeah absolutely okay thank you guys enjoy