Samir Balwani 0:03

Hi. I'm Samir Balwani, host of Chief Advertiser and founder of QRY, join me as I talk to industry leaders about their strategies, challenges and successes in managing their advertising and marketing. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a full funnel media agency powered by data and creativity to connect brands with customers who will love their products, to learn more about how we can help you improve your brand awareness and performance marketing visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited. Joe is super smart. He's on our episode today. He's the Director of Marketing at Stash Ventures. Thank you so much for joining us. Joe, it's great to be here.

Joe Becker 0:47

Samir, thank you so much for inviting me. Super excited to be here as well.

Samir Balwani 0:51

We've known each other for a while now, and I am always amazed by your background. So let's start there. Tell us about how you got to where you are today and where you are. Well,

Joe Becker 1:02

right now, I'm the director of marketing for Stash Ventures, as you mentioned. How did I get here? It's been an interesting career. You know, I started and I won't, you know, I won't get too far deep into it, but I started my career as, actually a graphic designer. I wanted it in the art world. How was I going to make money in the art world? You know, my parents were scared, you know, didn't know what graphic design was, that kind of thing, of course. But slowly, as I built my career up, over into agencies here and there, I really enjoyed the business side of things as well. So, you know, my biggest growth, I guess you could say, from agency work, was then moving to an in house, a brand name Carhart I'm not sure if you're familiar with Carhartt. Yeah, work where brand based out of Dearborn, Michigan, yeah, and I was the creative director there for the marketing team, but really fell in love with brand, like being in house with the brand. It's, it was, it's still family owned. You become part of the family. And it was a great experience. But it also got me interested in the business side. So I was put in I was working with marketers. There probably one of the first ones that started breaking down consumer demographics that we can talk specifically to certain consumers, like young workers, Hispanic workers, pretty broad level we were, we were launching women's line, a full women's line, back then. So I was really fascinated by that. My minor was psychology, so I really liked that part of that's why I was kind of gravitated towards the marketing side. So then I worked at another agency for a while in Detroit after Carhartt, but then found myself at Wolverine worldwide as because I wanted to get back with the brand, like being in house with the brand, something I really enjoyed. So Wolverine holds many brands shifting over time since I've been there, I when I started there, it was with hush puppies, cushy and Sebago, which, ironically, they don't have any of those brands anymore. It's not my fault, but it's moved just over time. They've made different shifts. But within that company, it was great because I got to move between brands, from Merrill to Wolverine and cat and bunch of other areas there. And kind of moved around from the art world to like international marketing and E commerce, marketing for cat footwear. And I said it both the same time. And you know, if I jump back to when I started in graphic design, I was probably one on one of the first teams that developed websites in like 9596 that's kind of cool working. We were part of a three I was part of a team that was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We were the design part of the team, but this was a three teams. Happened to share this building, which was fun. We had a, what's called librarian back then, and tech people, and then we would we were the art people. So we formed kind of an alliance, and the gentleman that was running the library side. Was the first person to coin the term information architecture, and he wrote a book that's really cool. He was a U of M grad. And anyways, fast forward back to Kat. I love being on the digital side of the business, like developing the web and building the program around their e com and that so. And then did ecom at Merrill. And then finally, had an opportunity where I met you, was become Vice President of Marketing at hook down in South Carolina, Michigan, born and bred. My family's here, spent some time at hook and just realized, you know, I kind of wanted to go back home. Had a good experience down there. It's a great brand. And this, this opportunity came up, and I'm like, I don't know if I want to do this, because Stash Ventures is a cannabis company that owns cultivation and two stores, timber and cloud. We have almost 20 stores in the state of Michigan, yeah. And, you know, I looked at it in a different way. And. Like, okay, if Buffalo Trace called me, I probably would go there. That's an alcohol my wife, who has rheumatoid arthritis, has benefited greatly from cannabis. It's not one, not a person that wants to get super high. It helps her sleep. So I'm like, All right, I'm gonna approach this. And I talked to the owner. His name is Scott Moorhead, who's one of the best people I've ever worked for in my life. And if I didn't talk to him, I probably never would have came. But after talking with him and where the company is and what we want to be as an organization, and you know, the caring of what we do

Samir Balwani 5:38

is amazing. So yeah, I think it's so I love your background, because you say you're a brand guy, that you like being on the brand side, but you've always worked at Portfolio businesses, and so it's always been a I always say, Joe, that you've got this little bit of agency in you, because it gives you this opportunity, The beauty of portfolio businesses. And for anyone listening, if you are not sure if you want to go brand side or agency side, portfolio business is right down the middle. You get the benefit of everything, right? But, and now you're at stash, and it is a true singular brand you are dedicated to, kind of building this, this brand up now, right? Ironically,

Joe Becker 6:19

it's slightly portfolio, right? So interesting? Well, our cultivation side is called high minded. And our product there we've got, we have to build a product brand. We also have to build a retail brand. And we have two weeks, we have two retail brands. So I actually have three brands. So timber, cloud, high minded, we may we're looking at what we might do with that down the road. Do we consolidate? Do we stay where we're at? Do we come up with a third one? You know? Yeah, bring them all under one. But, yeah, yeah, it's, it's still kind of a portfolio in a weird way. It's still one owner, though, which is nice. So, you know, we make it make decisions quicker than a board. It's just, yes, let's do this so we can move pretty quick. That's awesome.

Samir Balwani 7:01

Yeah. I mean, I love it. And so I think you touched on this a little bit, but I'd love you to talk a little bit about more about it, because I think it's such a unique and such a powerful thing that stack Ventures has. Is what makes it different than other cannabis brands?

Joe Becker 7:17

Well, people. So we have a thing that's called the five promises that we live by, that we try to help everyone else live by, because we're, you know, the cannabis business can be it's got some unscrupulous people in the business, no doubt about it, right? Some that don't know how to pay their bills, some that don't really care about their product. That's not us, right? We are. If we could be the Starbucks of cannabis, that would be our goal, right? But we have five promises that everybody, it's, it's on everybody's walls. We talk about it every week. It's, be authentic. You know, be yourself. Be you know, connect. So make sure that you're, you're going to do what you say you're going to do, but you know, share your time, your your talents. Care is our, is our third one. We care about the people around us. So, you know, if we can help somebody in our, in our in our company, like with empathy, we do that try to inspire. So, you know, mentoring, try to mentor my team or inspire other people. And then obviously the last one is, you know, drive the business, make sure you understand your goals and that kind of things, but yeah, that's last Yeah, right. So we have to go through all those things, but we also want to drive our business now. It's not just slogans at our company. So that's the key, right? It's, it's very much part of Scott's culture. That's why I came over. He talked to me and he wrote a book on this, like, Oh no, right? I'm not trying to shill him here, but he has, yeah, you know, where I came from in the world, and then understanding what Scott has done about caring about the people that works for him, it was very important so he you can, you can check him out on Amazon if you want to.

Samir Balwani 8:57

Yeah, Joe, I so I love the core values, and I do love that, that one's last because so at query, we think about this too. Our perspective is always, if you do the core values, business revenue will come with it, right? Yeah. And so I love that, that like concept, and agree with that, because I don't know, big, big fan of karma, right? You do the right thing, it'll come back to you two fold. So you're hoping, right? Like, yeah. And

Joe Becker 9:19

eventually, the people that don't believe in these the core values that your company has, or they'll find their way, as we call them, promote themselves to customer,

Samir Balwani 9:28

yeah. Oh, I love that. I actually, I love that. That is great. Let's talk advertising. Though you are a awesome brand guy, I have loved all the kind of brand thinking that you do, and I've had the pleasure of being a part of a lot of that, too. So let's talk about this, but from a cannabis point of view, right? Like, add so much unique elements to it. So talk to us about just one of the major challenges that come with, right? You know, we can always break it down into two. There's going to be like, challenges with cannabis. And then challenges, as you look at it, with the business, yes,

Joe Becker 10:03

okay, well, let's say, let's say, challenge of the cannabis, well, it's seen as dirty, right? It's a drug. It's not, you know, it's not pushed past the you know, kind of taboo, yeah, you know, people are afraid to say, you know, oh, I imbibe, or whatever you wanted to say about that. It's changing. But you gotta, you know, the idea, I think, what is the brand of cannabis, maybe, at least in my lifetime, has probably started with Cheech and Chong, right, right? Yeah. They kind of created a weed culture of, like, Stoner, you know, in all around, like, someone who's not very smart, which, right, isn't necessary. It's not true at all, actually, yeah. Now there are people, like, in any business, like, even in the alcohol business, and I'll make a comparison to that. It's like, there's some people that it's not a judgment, it's just that will enjoy a fine bourbon. And there's some people that just want to get their cheapest pop off and get drunk, right? So there's, you know, that's everywhere, that's in any kind of business we're trying to take cannabis business, like I said to like, hopefully, like, a Starbucks level. Like, we're not, we don't want people to come into our stores and just get get stuff to get wasted at home. Yeah, it's really not what we're about. We want them to enjoy what really good product, which is why we make product, because we know how it's made and tested and all that, and elevate it and then and hopefully teach a different kind of culture to to what cannabis is now. The other side of that is, how do you tell people about it, so that you can change the the narrative, that's the toughest part, because we can't, you know, the world's going digital, and we barely can, right? So we, you know, we're a lot of brands right now. It's we're for those that are that, I don't know when they're going to watch this, but we're talking Black Friday, probably one of the biggest shopping days, if not the biggest shopping day of the year, right? So, and we take part of that as well, but most people are, like, flipping through their Instagram looking at, like, all these Black Friday deals. We can't do that, right? You know, we can't. They were selling something federally, you know, not ready to sell and use those outlets. So we have to, kind of like work with that. We LinkedIn is especially great for us because our cannabis friendly, so we've, we're testing some things there, not really sanitizing words, yeah, so looking into that this next week, actually start putting some money in that. So maybe I should talk to query about that LinkedIn. And then we have to, you know, it's kind of like old school now, like Bill, a lot of physical things, billboards, things like that. It's, it's boots on the ground, yeah? The hardest part, though, same here is, is the competition is not mature in the marketing business, yeah? So all their marketing has just become make it cheaper, and people will buy it. It's

Samir Balwani 13:03

it's working into a commodity real fast and real fast. And the hard part about it is exactly for what you said, unless you do ads that don't even talk about the product you sell, you can't. You're gonna have to create a brand around it in a way that you don't talk about the product, and to force your brand to get out of the commodity world and be able to actually do anything with it. And so, yeah, I think it is fascinating what you have to do to just speak about these and I think it speaks to why it's so fragmented, right? Like, why there isn't a singular business that you're like, Oh yeah, I know they are the Starbucks of, you know, marijuana, right? Like, it doesn't exist. Because, can you imagine if you couldn't talk about coffee on Facebook, yeah? Like, imagine

Joe Becker 13:57

going to Starbucks, but you're not allowed to drink the coffee in that store, yeah, yeah. So, like, you can't even, like, have someone try it in your store, yeah? And say, here's why you should like it. And you know, we can't consume in the store. So, right? It's interesting, because

Samir Balwani 14:12

alcohol is allowed to do that too. Absolutely you can go do a tasting, for sure. The one thing that that I do find fascinating is, is that marijuana is very similar to alcohol and coffee in that it is a very social thing. Also Absolutely, like, there are people that will do it by themselves, but it is definitely something that people do in groups. And so how do you guys think about that? When you think about your brand in terms of, like, power your mouth, right? It's the

Joe Becker 14:40

biggest part of it, right? So we just, we just kind of launched our brand video for high minded and we made sure that it was social. You know, we, instead of, like, talking about it in terms of, like, it's going to get you high or crazy or whatever we we have, like, what we call the effect spectrum, like, how do you want to. Do you want to chill? Do you want to be active? Do you want to do that? And we've kind of created products that that work with that. Now, listen, everybody's body chemistry is different. So this is why it also makes it hard. It's like, you know, people like, if you know, if you grow up when you were, at least when I grew up, if you were a hyper boy like ADHD or something like, give them coffee, because coffee, the caffeine, actually slows them down, right? So for everybody else, it feeds them. It's everybody else that speeds them up. Somebody's body chemistry is different, and can react differently to any kind of product that that alters your chemistry, from caffeine to to THC and terpenes, right, which are in cannabis. So But long story short, we're hoping to sell an experience, and then have that experience be social, and then hopefully when people do gather, they think about our brand. And word of mouth is probably, as you said, it's still by far, our biggest driver of people. Because what I've learned in my almost year here now, in the cannabis is that the culture is very strong, and they know their stuff. When I say they know their stuff, like, like, scientists, that's why people think whether they're not dumb people, they know, just as if a bourbon person knows how well that was distilled here and it's 15 years it's got that they know all that stuff. The cannabis people know it down to a science like, oh, this strain came from this clone, from this guy who started it in 1975 and, like, it's an amazing culture. They know their stuff. So you can't, like, just say it's going to do this, because the connoisseurs, the can of connoisseurs, as we say, Will will definitely find you out. And what makes it Another challenge is that there is we try to build a brand and a business, you have to remember that cannabis is counter culture. It's almost against the man, right? So they don't want to buy weed from the man, right, right? So you have to, you know, in we but, but we also want our people to have health care that work for us, right, right? Because we care about our people. We have our five promises. We don't want, we want to build a business where we're, you know, I would say the vans, you know, has a great alternate, the alternative type customer. But it's very tough, because if you go too far to the corporate side, you'll lose a vast amount of customers. That's fascinating. And at the same time, we have to grow that ring of customers, right? We can't just always sell to, you know, the current cannabis customer. I want also to reach the I call it my they get tired of hearing it at work because they're not used to it, because it's like, I want the Lululemon mom that wants to trade a glass of wine for a gummy. Are we going to be rich off of her no, but she's going to tell her friend, like, oh, you know what? Didn't get a hangover the day after. It was really calm, went to bed. It was great, and it worked out, awesome.

Samir Balwani 17:51

So, yeah, I I think that that's amazing, because I always one of the unique things about cannabis, and, I mean, a lot of brands experience this, but cannabis, especially because it's a big the sub cultures within the culture of cannabis, because you talked about Cheech and Chong, that's one culture. There's Snoop Dogg culture is another. Absolutely, it's the culture getting together and wanting to smoke together, and then there's doing it and vibing it by yourself. And then there are the people that are like, so, so curious about every element of it. And then there are people that are like, whatever you give me, man,

Joe Becker 18:33

like, cheapest, I want the cheapest, highest. And it's interesting. It's

Samir Balwani 18:37

like, kind of like, wine, right? Like, you've got the wine symbol, yeah? And you got the guy that's just like, Alright, cool, the box. I'll take it. We're good. And, but, but it, you know what

Joe Becker 18:46

the difference? I mean, that's real quick, is, what's interesting to me, is like, Okay, I just went through Thanksgiving. We all did yesterday. Yeah, in the United States, nobody thinks twice. Like, oh, you know, my dad brought his Budweiser. That's what he likes. We've got bourbon, we've got this, and we're no one cares. We're all drinking. Do you imagine if, like, I foresee, hopefully, in the next three to five years? Oh, dude, I got this gummy Do you want to try this as a family? Like, you know? Like it was always something, like, I can remember 20 years ago, or like, you can't smoke pot with your kid. Yeah, right. I can drink with my son. He just had a bourbon yesterday, right? No biggie. Doesn't know what. He's only five years old, you know, no, no problem. But I still can't like, even though I'm in the business, I don't, I still have my own hangups that I gotta like, Well, I'm not gonna, yeah, you know, I don't smoke, but there's other ways, like a gummy or whatever edible or tincture or something like that. I just don't feel I still am not there myself. So, you know, I think I have to be in the mindset too and bring it apart.

Samir Balwani 19:46

It's like, amazing because, like, this is, this is the beauty of brand work, right? Because you have to not only keep in mind the brand, what it stands for, what you need to communicate. And. And how your customer even thinks about it. To bring it back to apparel, because I know you have some experience there. It's like the sustainability message, right? Like sustainability is like another example of, okay, people care about it, people care about it. People care about it. How much do they care about it? Is it enough to move their wallet? You know, on the cannabis side, it's, I want to talk about it. I want to talk about sharing it. But how much are they willing to actually share it? Like, how wide does that ring go, right now, how many people are you actually going to tell about it, and in what areas too, right? Because, like, geographically, it's very different to New Jersey, California versus, you know, Texas, Florida, Alabama, those areas the cultural thinking around marijuana is so different in each geography too.

Joe Becker 20:48

It is. It's a good way, and so interesting to think about that. Okay, so culturally in our own company, we purchased cloud in this past February, which was basically an east side of Michigan, Detroit area, more urban, okay, areas we own timber prior to that, which is on the west side of Michigan, more rural. Hikers like it's, you know, there's a whole hiking culture that loves cannabis that's outdoors, which is how timber was kind of branded, like, where your outdoor cannabis brand? So now we're marrying cultures, learning that, like, well, there's a totally different, you know, yet Detroit cultures, for lack of a better term, Snoop Dogg culture, very hip hop, you know, big music. You go in the store as music's really big. It's like Vegas, it's fun. It's awesome. And you come into our timber store as if it's serene, quiet, yoga studio, lighting and, and, but we're finding, you know, but growing it's harder to grow that culture. Yeah, to buy what the Vegas culture is, so to speak, party culture, I guess you It's so interesting you

Samir Balwani 22:01

say this, because this brings us back to the top of the podcast episode where we were talking about portfolio brands. And now the question becomes, do you create a single brand for all of these cultures, or do you create a multitude of brands that then become kind of, this is for this, this is for this, and this is who you resonate with. And I guess my question to you, Joe is, how do you figure that out? Like, what's the process to say

Joe Becker 22:29

we're I think it's super hard to figure out right now, because there's, there's one big obstacle right now is that that the business itself is cannibalizing itself with the drop of prices. Right? It's, let's say, like everybody followed suit in in leggings. So I say Lululemon because people are paying hundreds of dollars for the same material that probably is at Target, right, right? So you've got $20 leggings fighting 100 and to $200 leggings now, obviously cut, fit, performance, all that stuff fits into that world. But let's just say Lulu Lemon dropped all the way down to 20, and everybody was at now 15. They're all fighting like, well, if Lululemon is 15, I gotta be five, because I'm target Right, right? Because why would they buy target brand if they could get Lululemon for for $15 right? Right, right. So that's what's happening right now. So we're trying to kind of make it through the ShakeOut, but to get back to your thing, I think we have to maybe figure out what the current customer wants before we grow the bigger customer. I don't know if we can do it all at once. It's a little scary trying to get the outer, the outer core customer, to try the Lululemon mom, like, is the is, maybe it is, I, you know, we talk about this internally all the time. Timber is a very friendly name. You know, there's, there's a store in Michigan called House dank. Not sure that's the most friendly name for people that that don't want to necessarily be part of cannabis culture. But maybe, you know, if I'm in a we're thinking about like, well, if we partnered with yoga studios all across West Michigan, and from a serene timber point of view, could that work? You know, but maybe that's three years down the road. Maybe it's not ready yet. Maybe, maybe we're trying it too early, trying it too early. Instead of, like, how about we, in my head, we're talking as a team. It's like, and as a team, maybe we just have to, like, talk about cannabis itself first before, yeah, we start parsing it into different areas. It's like, education first, right? Like, how do you even get people to recognize like you said it, I took a gummy and I had no hangover, versus I had, you know, a few glasses of wine and then I felt like crap the next day, right? Like, it's just like things like that.

Samir Balwani 24:54

So, yeah, I yeah, I think it's such a fascinating world. Joe. I love kind of what you're working on. So here, here is where it gets even more difficult for you, that I'm sure. So you're doing all this marketing stuff, we've we've come to the realization that word of mouth is your largest or like is one of the most important ways of which you find new customers. How do you measure how do you know what's working? Well,

Joe Becker 25:22

we do have some digital programs, right? So we partner with some digital companies that do work with our cannabis business, and we have our own app for each store, right? So you can choose your rewards app, so we can message directly to them. So our goal over the past year was get as many people that download the app as possible for the year, as much as we can just download it please. Now this next phase of our our marketing is to incentivize them to opt into messaging, right, right? So you got your Rewards App. That's cool. You come in every time you buy something it, you know, like anybody else you you'll get things towards that. Now, what we're trying to do now is say like, but if you opt in a messaging, you'll get a daily deal, you'll get this, you'll get birthday stuff, you'll get other things, but you got to opt in to your notifications on your phone, not necessarily. We love it. Text is great. Email is great, but if you take the actual notification, turn that on, it a it doesn't cost us anything extra, like texting does, and it'll just pop up on your phone and then, oh, you know, we know that you're, you're near the store, you know, driving by and that kind of stuff. So that's been probably one of our saving digital graces, is to have this rewards program at app. So now you asked, How do we know it's working? Well, we can one to one. We know that customers come in and we can, we can actually plot that digitally and say, Okay, we've gotten growth. So one of my goals for the year was to grow our digital baskets through the app, through through online. You can order online at all of our stores, but it just creates a cart. You have to go physically to the store to pay and pick up your product. Obviously, we can't ship it to you. That's federal, right? You do that. So we're just trying to really push that, because if I can get them to think about us just no different than Wendy's McDonald's, they want you to if you put your order on your phone before you left, you're not going to see a sign on the way there because you already paid for your happy meal. You're just gonna go store and pick it up, right? So if I get them to think about it before they drive past other cannabis stores, I've won the battle. So we started the year, you talk about measurement, we started the year about 15% of our orders were through the app or online. We grew that to 28% of our bad that's amazing. That's really cool, trying to do incentives digitally. So my goal for next year is, can we get to a third, a third of all orders online and through the app? Because, again, I've stopped them from driving past other people, and they're interacting with our brand.

Samir Balwani 27:55

Yeah, not only that, then you also have a lever right? Then, you know, if I get more app downloads, I get more notifications on gold. We get

Joe Becker 28:02

their information, right? It's all you know that they opted in like everybody else. Follow all the rules of digital, yeah? So you pick your favorite store, we can talk to you. They know you. Then once they come in, you know, we talked about this today, our store experience has to be great, yeah? You know, we did some recon. We're opening in new buffalo. I'm not going to say the name of the competition, because it's not fair, but I'm like, I want to shop these other stores. You know, they do it. And one of them, we were in there literally for an hour and 45 minutes before was that busy. That's crazy. And this poor lady behind me was, like, I was talking with her. She just wanted one pack of gummies. She was 72 Oh, she goes there every week. And I go, why are you waiting so long? Well, for one pack. I go, there's plenty of stores and, well, they know me here. And she was a got into her thing. I'm like, she goes, You know, I go, What if someone walked through the line with an iPad and said, you know, Can I take your order earlier, while we're walking through and we can do it digitally for you, since you having trouble ordering on your phone, and go picking it up, he goes, Oh, that'd be a great idea. I'm like, okay, so take these little mental notes, like, talk to the consumer you know, of having great experience because she doesn't you know who you know, who does not wait for anything? Retired people. Oh, I can come back tomorrow. I was I got nothing else to do, so I'm not going to wait out one or 45 right? And it's I learned that from the barber shop. I put myself to school as a barber so retiree would drive up if we had six people waiting. He's like, Yeah, I'll come back later, because they can come anytime.

Samir Balwani 29:33

Come back whenever. Yeah, right. So it's fine, yeah, that's really interesting. I also love the the diversity of people that are walking into these stores. It's more

Joe Becker 29:44

than anybody can think. I'm telling you, it blew my mind. You thought you have one type of customer, but, you know, some people, it will blow your mind. How many different are a lot of people for pain, a lot of people for sleeping. A lot of people like you know, it's not what you think. It's.

Samir Balwani 29:59

Yeah, I love it, Joe, I could talk to you forever. So here's my last question for you, where we kind of close up here. But the beauty of advertising and marketing is it's constantly changing, and then you overlay cannabis into it, which is even changing even more rapidly. How do you even stay ahead? How do you think about these things. What's your process for just looking at emerging trends and technologies?

Joe Becker 30:26

Boy, you know, I don't know if I am ahead of it. I feel like I'm on the treadmill. I I try to just follow what consumer behavior is. How are they, how are, how are they thinking about it and then also paying attention. There are some things out there that we can talk about, or that we can that, that, you know, newsletters, things like that, that have some digital help from us, with some of our partners, that are always creating new tools. Because I think that it's all going to stand on what happens federally and what happens from a scheduling point of view of where cannabis is at. Because if it changes in the government, we can change a lot. What we can do, for instance, if it gets scheduled down, now Google becomes something right, right. So now, what happens to the people that we are working with that have taken the risk? How are they going to compete? Right? Right? So what we're trying to do right now, what we can do on Google is our store ratings, right? They can rate us. There's no so that's an incentive, that's what we try to strive on, that gives great Google ratings. Because once Google can pop, now we can maybe buy some that kind of thing. So we're trying to prep for what happens legally, and put some tentacles into the areas that we can do things and stay there, but also working with our third party partners that have bit better data than we have across the country and where trends are going. What types of products are, you know, we can pull that from store sales daily, like, oh wow. Gummies grew 35% this year. Maybe, maybe we are reaching that customer or friend or we decided like, Oh, wow. We know that what's called a deli style in our stores on the on the east side does really well. We don't do that on the west side. Let's try it things like that. That's how we try to keep up ahead and and there's some great brands out there, like wild is a company brand that's national. Jeter is probably the best marketing. It's the Nike of pre rolls. Because they're they're everywhere, not necessarily the top tier stuff you're gonna get, but it's everywhere. It's a brand. People know that, and they've done a good job of becoming a lifestyle brand from selling apparel and everything else. So that's so interesting. Watching good brands, yeah, helps us,

Samir Balwani 32:32

yeah, just kind of to emulate what you see. You know, I think it's your app idea, and like being able to, I think about, like, if marketing is this river, you've got to, damn, put it in front of you, and that you can't go this way. And so you have found ways to go, you know, sideways. I think that there's a lot other brands can learn from the cannabis industry, because they can take the easy way. They can look at Google and meta and go, All right, great. I'm going to throw all my money there. Yeah, it's, I mean, how many apparel brands have an app that they're using and they're paying SMS and email fees every day? And our friends at tap cart are going to love this, because, I, like, I'm a big fan of tap car because it makes it really easy to for, you know, our Shopify app to come up, and you've just talked about how, like, valuable it's been for you guys. And so there are things like that where you have been forced to think about some of the harder things first, because the easy stuff is not available to you, right? I think a lot of other people can learn from and don't forget that

Joe Becker 33:32

the that we have to be better at, too, is the physical experience. Like I was trying to I was just talking to our team today. I'm like, Why does Chick fil A have 50 people in line that get through it. Burger King not doing so great. Yeah, they don't. They don't think about the store experience, right? Like you, you go into a Chick fil A or Apple, for instance, the same the Chick fil A, there's not like, three people working like at Burger King, there's 30, yeah, and they're all doing that. You get in and out of the food is great. It's consistent. There's not, you know, Best Buy has this one experience, but Apple has 40 people working in the store to help you as a store experience, you know? So we, we're talking about that constantly. How do we make that experience so that it is word of mouth as

Samir Balwani 34:14

well? Yeah, yeah, Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. This was awesome. If someone wants to find you online, where can people learn more about you? Oh, boy.

Joe Becker 34:24

For our company, you can look up. We're at Timber and @timber_canna on Instagram, those kind of things. And Cloud stores, Stash Ventures, is not really. It's kind of our our thing there. If you want to find me, Instagram is the average @AVGjoe.co is my name there and LinkedIn, obviously, if you want to hit me up, Mary met my full name. I really enjoyed LinkedIn over the last three years. Think it's probably the best social network out there. Now,

Samir Balwani 34:52

personally, I'll add you. I'll add your LinkedIn in the show notes, so that way people can find you pretty easily. That'd be great. Thank you so much. Show, I really appreciate it.

Joe Becker 35:01

Samir, thank you so much. Super happy to be part of this.

Samir Balwani 35:09

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