Danny Keith, CEO/Founder Cannabis Club TV
Danny Keith is the CEO of Cannabis Club TV. Danny has built and sold numerous businesses and has also raised over $20M in nonprofit and corporate fundraising. He’s worked in social media, internet development and professional sports team marketing with the Golden State Warriors minor league affiliate Santa Cruz Warriors before founding Cannabis Club TV.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannykeith/
http://cannabisclub.tv
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:30] Welcome everyone this is Thinking Outside the Bud. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host and our guest today is Danny Keith and Danny is CEO of Cannabis Club TV and we're gonna find out more about that and about Danny's background and what he's doing in the cannabis space. So with that Danny and welcome to the program.
[00:00:47] Hey thanks Bruce I really appreciate the time and I think for once California and New York are on the same par for weather.
[00:00:54] Oh yeah. Now we're we're we're suffering right now.
[00:00:57] Probably won't hurt us.
[00:00:59] Well it turns out all the other days you have you have us beat and I'm excited about this conversation because I think that the whole kind of media part of the cannabis industry is still kind of in infancy and still kind of developing out. And it's also an area that I think is kind of suffering from I think a lot of aspects of cannabis which is there's a lot of big players in the market that normally would come into something like this and make big players. But because of cannabis sort of legal status and everything they're kind of staying on the side. So it takes a lot of make a lot of vacuums here. So I'm curious to see. Give us a sense of your background how did you get into media how do you get into TV. How did you get into cannabis. What was the what's the story.
[00:01:38] Well for most of my professional career I've been an entrepreneur and a visionary and really a problem solver. I think the first step to any space that you go into is you have to identify the problem manufacturer solution and then determine if it's actually monetized able to kind of fast forward to how I got to where I'm at right now. I was doing a four year stint with the Golden State Warrior organization I worked with their minor league team the Santa Cruz lawyers. We instituted some digital concourse components to the space. And while I was selling you know six figure gyms in the space on four logos endorsement opportunities the tv's and the digital concourse seem to be the most exciting for those brands. So you know for me I saw firsthand you know first of all when you walk into any sporting arena you know it's 100 percent.
[00:02:27] That particular set of brand for the entire time you're in there. So that's for one. And so that just taught me that inside that it's sensory we have the same set that same type of atmosphere and it can't just be a digital signage atmosphere it has to be a television broadcast style atmosphere because that's that's what people are used to consuming. They're used to being influenced by content supported by advertising.
[00:02:49] So you know Tommy I'm longtime family friends with the Chung family Tommy approached me in 2015 I said he was starting his brand Chung's choice. I saw the vision of where marketing was going to go within the cannabis space being that it was bookended by alcohol and tobacco and knowing that that widespread marketing really wasn't going to be an opportunity. I said hey I'll start this and dispensary platform and we can kind of work together and then fast forward to right now. You know over 200 locations 14 states we have Cannabis Club TV we have harvest TV which operates out of the hydro stores and then we're launching the headshot TV which is going to be launching sometime in early March.
[00:03:28] So really what we're doing is taking a cannabis centric business and creating an alternative television market to serve that while supporting the brands that the customers want to discover.
[00:03:39] Yeah so tell us more about your business model.
[00:03:40] So your SO YOU'RE YOU'RE PUTTING THE the media into the locations and you're out there finding advertisers and you're producing content. Are you doing all four of the or all three of those kind of parts of the model.
[00:03:53] You know it's always a struggle to kind of really get people to grasp what we do and even I tell Tom with a television network they just don't get it. But think about hotel networks think about television content that's controlled on a level almost geo targeted right. That's really what we do. And then when it comes to the content provision and the like you know there's so many the same pressure applies to the content manufacturer that applies to the product manufacturer. Believe it or not not a lot of places that these content manufacturers can deliver their content and monetize a lot of them will be on YouTube or Vimeo or their own Web site and they're hoping to monetize in line because YouTube will pay out CPM ads on cannabis or alternative media outfits if it doesn't meet their T.O. sees them there. They're not monetizing on those platforms. We saw this early on as an opportunity to give a lot of really great content producers like civilized life which is a major partner with us. We just signed on Danke city and super deluxe and Mary Jean and we have others in discussion.
[00:04:54] But this gives people an opportunity to have their content be seen and the inline programming monetization that they're applying to get views right. So every day when a dispensary opens we turn the TV on for them and when the dispensary closes we turn it off. So imagine you're going into your house and someone's doing the programming for you and you just watch whatever is being put in front of you. We do a little bit more finesse on the programming side based on the theme of that actual dispensary or of the other locations that we're in. And this gives the content providers an opportunity to. Get the level of exposure that they need in order to continue to produce the content. So we have a little over 50 channels in 13 different categories that range from entertainment to education to medicinal to what is this to current events. And it allows the dispensary to have an on demand television network that they can select the channels if they so choose about what they want to watch in their particular location.
[00:05:50] Got us so they can really dial in the content that's gonna work for them as a brand and for the people that are coming into their location and make it meaningful and impactful and entertaining at some level.
[00:06:01] Absolutely and I think for the content providers you know there's really four pillars there. Content providers. There's brands there's dispensaries and their customers. So we try to hit the problem on all four of those levels and so over the content provider it's they need distribution so we can provide that distribution. They monetize their inline we monetize interstate really for the brands we get a chance to tell their story and actually help create that brand relationship between the consumer and that respective brand for the consumer. They're completely undereducated and a good chunk of them are not going to be looking at magazines going to events trolling social media or going to Web sites. So we we have an under educated group of consumers who are who are curious and anxious to consume the content so they can better understand what they want to purchase and then with the dispensaries that provides them the lift in the connection between brands that are still being produced I mean you'll hear me say a lot but I believe the kings and queens of the space regarding brands have yet to be designed or developed.
[00:07:00] Yeah and I think that's the general theme I've kind of both heard guests talk about and I've seen in the industry this last year as you know everything is about brands and brand building and at some level acknowledging our knowing that at some point the stuff is going to become federal legal and then the big brands are gonna come in and start doing things. And you've got to you've either got to be big enough to you know big enough to survive or you know niche enough to be able to be sold and not just get trounced. But branding is gonna be key because people buy consume you know from a major market point of view based on this kind of branding concept not not not based on the history of sort of pop culture and people that know the products inside and out already. So you know I'm curious in terms of the court itself what's your content strategy.
[00:07:42] You mentioned these different channels the different programs like what are the kind of facets of the content and how do you organize and categorize it so you know usually we have the 13 base categories that we offer and then usually the content manufacturer glaringly falls in that one of those categories in a company like supplies that they have five different channels on our network that ranges from you know did you know to educational stuff to entertainment to bite sized snack content. So it's really the content usually denotes the category that they exist in. You know I think what we look for is you know a certain percentage of Evergreen productivity evergreens a term we use in television of how much of your existing content catalog is refreshed every month and we try to run a twenty five to 30 percent refreshment rate. So that's that's the first kind of check off you know that we look at to broadcast into our locations as are you giving us new content frequently enough to make it. So it's not stale for the consumer there. And we do have options you know because we run our own CNS and see the end delivery mechanism content that doesn't meet that evergreen requirement or content that might be a little too racy for the indispensable play will exist on our Web site in our mobile app.
[00:08:56] So there are going to still get the opportunity to monetize their content and while we e broadcast them through the various channels that we have developed. And so it's you know we actually have content submissions you know weekly from people and we go through an evaluation of that content through a different series of viewings and kind of rankings like is that night. We won't publish you know obviously just obscenely bad words we won't publish under boob or under but and we stay away from the political scheme of the atmosphere like we'll work with the state of California on a you know don't drive while intoxicated campaign but we're not going to ever really you know during this whole legalization period and politicians running we got approached. You know we get approached from out of industry people to run marketing all the time. We're currently doing a partnership with one of our partners in lighting with Showtime. They're they're promoting a new television show on their network promoting them through our network. But we just stay away from politics man and never seems to really you're always gonna get a division and we want to be Switzerland more or less we want to be the mechanism to deliver education and content to the consumers where they best can consume and we want to stay away from ruffle any feathers we figured the space we're in NRT rebel is enough.
[00:10:10] Yeah exactly. Just stay where I want to add one note about the big boys coming in that you stated a second ago that the ironic play for us. Most people that make some weird out. I was just in Boston it's an emerging space. I was on that trade show for NCAA. And you know the brands are all they're all worried about that that's the hush talk. Oh my God. What if these guys come in and you know it's going to happen eventually I think it's somebody is gonna have to let them in. First of all second for us it almost has no impact because the marketing regulations I don't really see changing with federal regulation changing. I don't I don't see that being this simultaneous transaction. I think alcohol and tobacco are going to keep cannabis fairly book ended on the marketing path for them and I don't I really don't see that changing in the future.
[00:10:56] Yeah yeah it's an interesting one. I think you're right. I think that you know the federal legislation is causing these kind of vacuums in certain areas but for someone like you there's there's other factors there's other kind of regulations or regulatory frameworks in place that that probably makes it less of a earthshaking of it.
[00:11:13] You know when when federal passes I'm always curious about how people kind of manage their business and what kind of numbers and metrics and stuff they look at like how when you look at your business what are what are the key metrics what are the numbers what's the data that you use to know what's working what's not working where you know where you're applying efforts for improvement what what are the what's the dashboard look like.
[00:11:36] So I for a quick second I got to go back into my past. You know I randomly failed business for 20 years I'd been in sales. I always get given sales pipelines and expectations and I think it's really you know you nailed something that I use a term called KPI. A lot of you still don't know what that's a key performance indicators right. And so for us any business you know my my specialty in school was statistics. That's where I excelled in business math. And so I look at our KPI is are driven by how much am I doing per customer per geo location and then how much of my doing per location in total. Right. So when I build performers and we're doing this right now as we build out a three year perform I just went over it with each one of my advisors alas advisor that I got to run it through as is Tim Seymour from fast money. So I feel like he's got some you know some sort of gumption and that's it. And so you know you look at the numbers and you go if we do this much per screen and we grow this many screens per month then we retain this many advertisers at this rate then we should do this.
[00:12:37] And really it's about narrowing the possibilities it's about looking at the downsides. I mean I just had a talk with Tommy's people last week and it's like there's there's upwards of seven or eight distinctive pressures that exist in the cannabis space that don't exist anywhere else in any other business. Right. And so from commodity to price to supply to the customer to dispensary to branding to regulation to packaging you know so we can look at our sales figures and see where regulation impacted income or testing impacted income or whether it's good or bad. And so and we're as states emerge and how those markets emerge some markets emerge and verticals some markets emerge an open market. So the key things that we use are that KPI for location and that KPI per customer per region. That's how we know where our strength is. And then from there everything else kind of follows suit in the trend. Pretty simple dashboard but in the long run it's a complicated process to perform and project because you've got those seven other pressures that are hitting the market that you have very little control over.
[00:13:42] Yeah those are kind of existing factors or existing dynamics and then they're ones you can actually change or respond to in different ways. No that's smart. I think that's always always a lot of people that you know look at their business as you know as a sort of mechanism that has inputs and outputs. And there are things you can measure to tell you how it's working and where it's not. So I know what kind of this advertising model there is know pretty good regular cash flow through things. But how. However you have a view kind of built the business at this point have you you've raised capital or you venture funded what's your. In terms of capitalizing the business. What's been your strategy and what's your go forward plan.
[00:14:20] Well I mean I think I can't start to answer this question without saying numbers don't lie right. And so a lot of things out there in the space people are a lot of hype. I don't want to call it fake news because I don't think it's necessarily fake news it's just people's perceived view that's going sort of put it. It's not an easy business to be in you know. So in you know how I've done I've had consulting businesses I've sold media you know one of the biggest challenges in media sales and ads the sales in general is the whole PR component chasing the money. And so for us you know I looked at how can this you know if you don't sit down at the table while you're forming a company and look at how can you do business the easiest most scalable less painful way because people get these like thoughts in their mind that they need to do some a certain way and it's just as served their own purpose. It's like what's the best for the space what's going to get you to the end goal regardless of if you even buy into it. What's the angle. And so for us we realize that cash flow is an issue for brands. We realize that how we process money is an issue for brands. So we try to run we run 90 percent plus of our entire advertising platform with a partner and artistry and snap. Well and we do a subscription based program where they advertise your logs in. They're able to check off what they want to do.
[00:15:34] They can stop it start it whenever they want. And there's just a lot of communication and touch points having been director sponsorships at the wares. You don't keep six figure deals by selling them and ignoring them till you have to renew them. And so we try to have a lot of input regarding monetization. You know this is I've raised a fair enough amount of money over my time and I've done everything from Let's capitalize the business from the start. Let's hire 15 people and that sometimes you know when the company grows too fast you put too many personalities together. It can actually cost you more money than what you raised. And so in this particular space because it's always painful I haven't had to do this. I mean I've had to I've had episodes I've only been able to give people their money back that they put in but I've never except for my close partners who we all lose together. Right. I've never had to tell that some person like hey I lost your money. So for me and the way our team has built this business we really tried to focus on do we have a business here. Is this sometimes you pick a problem provide a solution and even manifest a monetization plan. But when you take it to market it doesn't overlap. And so in the first year we were in business. Nobody want to talk to us dispensaries we want to have nothing to do with those brands and want nothing to do with us. You know nobody really wanted to have anything to do with this.
[00:16:48] So it took us a year just to get into these dispensaries. Then we got dispensaries and brands are like numb and we're sold through. We don't need any advertising we talking about. Meanwhile they're blowing 10 20 grand a month on weed maps. Once regulation came into play and packaging came into play and more brands came into play then all of a sudden brands started talking was going well we need a mechanism that's different. We don't have the budgets we once had and we need to find a different way to communicate with this customer that doesn't look at weed maps doesn't look at High Times doesn't go to Wiz Khalifa as AIG or go to a cop. You know these are people live in their day to day life and pop into a dispensary to get their CBD or their you know their indica or whatever they're doing you know to kind of deal with their medicinal issue. Some of it's intoxicating obviously. People want to do that but the customers that are under educated are the ones that are not living a cannabis lifestyle. And so we wanted to make sure that that our tool was that way and then midyear last year we realized we've got a tool and we grew 3 400 percent over the last eight months. Now it's time to put a performer together really tying up the business plan and activate the different advisors we brought in at the right levels to go get the real capital to bring in smart people hopefully smarter than me to make this company you know what it really needs to be.
[00:18:04] Yeah that makes sense. Yeah. It sounds like. I think there's a general trend the industry is kind of grappling with or going through which is kind of the early users were people that came out of sort of the pop culture communities you know previously so they had a certain approach. They had a mindset they had knowledge they had understanding of use and everything like that. You know as we're expanding this industry we're moving into these areas where they're not as knowledgeable they're not as sort of dedicated or entrenched in this space and you're gonna have more of this education you're going to have more sort of segmentation of the market you're going to have some people who are you know soccer moms who are looking for you know some CBT solution you're gonna have athletes you're going to have road warriors who are traveling and stuff like that. I mean it's just this market is gonna get more and more complicated it seems like some of this growth or some of the benefits that you've seen as as this market develops is that is that you're kind of your understanding of it. And do you see that continuing.
[00:19:01] Yeah I think you nailed it on the head. I think you know brands are starting to become brands and have you know at least California which is California Oregon Washington let's just take because that's where the closest and it's really to be honestly the most has most momentum besides Colorado at the moment Nevada is coming on. States that come on after all the mistakes have been made.
[00:19:23] You know they have an unfair advantage because they can. They can grow quicker more more efficiently and with more harmony right.
[00:19:29] Like we've been battling it out on the West Coast getting punched in the face by by laws and by just you know just the craziness that it is. I think you know the other component is you know it's prior to regulation for most of these states. A lot of these brands never thought to tell their story. Right. So the ones you're starting to see emerge that are making big moves like you're flip Cana and you're Camdessus they're taking the time to tell their story they've been early adopters of our technology and they've really understood the power of video and the power of content to communicate with a customer. And so I think you know as we go forward you know monkey see monkey do not in a bad way but people are going to start to see what the trends are and what's successful for some brands versus other and then that goes into the nasty word data you know candidates. There's few words that cannabis don't really appreciate and that's and they won't say it outwardly but it's data and science and you know like you know those are two things you know everybody's relied on you know. Blue Dream and it's got this and it's got that man I spoke at a UCLA event and in the early spring here and then you know the things that scientists are doing. Not to bastardized the plant but to actually enhance and pull out specific properties that help people. We're not we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. So I think for those luxury brands like your Camdessus or your float carnies or people that really get the fact that you've got to create an image and an aura around you all the way down to the functional brands not that they're not function but the ones that are like CBD and CBN and things that are specific to a specific calamity right or cause you're going to see those mechanisms of Marketing and Development begin to mature like we've seen in almost every other aspect of commerce.
[00:21:13] Yeah the whole industry is like I see a series of facets that need to evolve and mature and grow to meet this kind of changing market. I'm curious on the dispensary side. I mean having having a lot of insight into the dispensaries I mean it's the one thing that I certainly did. I mean part of this is by my background's in architecture originally and looking at the sort of the experience and design and the actual in-store retail space I mean what's your sense on where the dispensary experience is going to go or where the customer experience is going to go on this stuff. You know as it relates to education relationship advising the actual purchase process I mean where where it is.
[00:21:49] I guess what's your sense of where it is now and where do you see it going.
[00:21:52] Yeah I mean I just had this conversation one of our advisors owns a dispensary on beach One Love Beach Club Jeremy. And you know we were just in Boston together and we were talking about you know dispensary owner preference right. I'd say a good chunk of dispensaries are still one or two dispensaries of ownership right. And then there's your chains and there's your medicines and stuff like that. And you know I think every dispensary owner always has it's own like Jeremy happens to be a flower aficionado if you will and he loves flower and so he has a lot of flower. So as edibles and tinctures and babes and CBD and other stuff but he has a preference right. I think I think the consumer is going to mature. I think a couple of things are going to happen. I think the consumer is going to mature and then the market is going to mature to meet that. And what I mean by that is like right now everybody expects to pay 50 bucks or sixty five bucks for any eighth that's in a dispensary. Well you can't go buy whiskey like that. So there has to be an adjustment of price for better quality product and lesser quality product because the blend is really kind of strangling the space. And that's number one. Number two I think dispensaries because of the breadth of the amount of brands you know you're already seeing it in CBD. People are opening CBD only shops. I think you're going to start seeing just like you do with liquor you know you got the place that you go to that has every single hard alcohol you could want maybe a little selection of beer but every bottle you need it's there.
[00:23:13] I think this thing is going to happen in cannabis. I think you're going to see there's so many vape companies and so many edible companies and so many flower companies that try to get one dispensary and they're all hitting every dispensary. Eventually you're going to see I think it would make sense to me maybe I'm off but that these vertical style stores open where it's like strictly a strict or vape and edibles or you know just reduce you know sometimes you have to lose some customers to gain market share and you know when I own a surf shop at the time there was a big short board longboard thing going on and we chose know I was younger we chose to go short order and so we didn't alienate the long border we just didn't cater to the long border we catered to the short order and by doing that we had a larger subset of market in the short board area. Right. And so I think it should take that course. We'll see if it does because otherwise I mean I've watched Jeremy he's going to be expand now and he's already out of shelf space you know with these products that he wants to carry and so I think the market is going to have some corrections but I could be wrong in three months to this.
[00:24:18] Well you know predictions are always or always come with a probability but I think and I think you're bringing up a good point. It's something we we generally talk about in kind of looking at strategies for growing businesses which is you know focusing there's this kind of you know irony or this somewhat counterintuitive logic which is the faster you want to grow you know the more coke you want to grow and the bigger you want to grow the more you need to focus the more you need to zero in on a particular customer of a particular product using particular channels. And it's hard because a lot of people don't want to chase money and want a lot of people want to focus on everything that could possibly bring on revenue. And that's actually works against you when you want or really want to grow and scale and I think you have this idea that the dispensaries are going to start to really cater towards particular particular personas or particular parts of the market.
[00:25:01] And then obviously tailor their their products tailor the actual experience itself. I mean I've got dispensaries which are high tech and lots of screens and beautiful displays and then all the ones that feel like you know the backroom of you know someone's drugstore. So I think there's there's a lot of room to go and I think a lot of you know building a real kind of experiences around us as it's gonna be an interesting next phase to that you know.
[00:25:28] Kind of back to the pressures that are on the market. I think you know to your point around how things are going to continue to evolve. You've got a you know I often tell people beware of the shiny object and don't pivot so quickly. You know what just says if you're not ready to be insecure feel like a failure and want to quit. You know almost every day then you're probably not really an entrepreneur. You have to kind of have those three things inherently built in. And then you have to have the vision. And so you know it's probably a horrible analogy I'm I'll get ripped for it but I'm married. You know when you're married you're like you might look outside. You might Oh that's a pretty girl. But then it's like I'm not taking out what I have. Exactly. You know. And so same thing in business you know if you have a plan just because you run into a wall don't pivot. Don't go for the next shiny object you know you just if you're just trying to appease your investors and stay moving forward. And again you shouldn't bring them on. I mean I have no investor calls all time with people where I'm like Hey man you know this is where we're at. This is what we're doing. This is how much we've done it on this is where we're going. You know all I can ask you to do is be patient and wait and see what happens. You know just like all of us that are going through this and you know you got to be able to be realistic with yourself and when to say when don't bleed yourself out too you're completely dry. You know the difference between sticking it out and just having your head in the sand too. So you know avoid bright shiny objects that cannabis for them of them. And don't pivot just because you kind of hit some challenges either try to go over it around it through it or whatever but don't completely pivot you know because you may be running away from a great idea that's just on the other side.
[00:27:09] So I've got a cure. You mentioned something that I'm kind of curious about. You mentioned your investors and trying to communicate to your investors you know for other folks here that are in capital race situations are starting to bring people on. Any advice or thoughts on how you pick a good investor particularly in this kind of a space. Those are things that you have found that have worked well in terms of building the right investor relationships investor partners. Given the nature of cannabis something and other stuff you have to know about it there's some complications about investing in this space or would you recommend to someone who is out there doing fund raising in terms of you know selecting the right investment partner.
[00:27:46] So you know the way we've always approached it the way I've always approach it whenever vertical I'm in is you know I first instead of going after whoever has money I think there's a lot of these you know opportunities to pit your company in front of you know multiple different types of companies that make investments and funds and all that. And I think that's a great place to start if you have an idea and you're trying to find who will help you if you wanted to go a different direction and like establish a company and then go after funding and then there's multiple levels of funding there's no founder funding there's friends and family funding there's angel then there's your series rounds and they all have different to me they all have different environments around them.
[00:28:24] And at some point you have to go for the money and not for the person that's investing because you have a buy do share your obligation to your existing investor base to make good on you know you've promised them. So I think you know I think when you look at your friends and family arounds you have to look at it as kind of like you got to be willing to look them in the face and go man. I might lose this money and be ok with that and it can't jeopardize our friendship. It can't jeopardize our future if it's going to have any impact on any of that stuff. I don't want to take your money. So I think the first and foremost thing is it's really hard. People view asking for money as some sort of a weakness and that's not really the case. I mean our entire capitalistic society is built on other people's money. I mean and so it's like if you are nervous about asking for money or you have a weird relationship about money or money makes you feel a certain way. You probably don't want to try to raise money. That's number one. Number two you know when to stop raising friends and family and to go and angel round and then go series around if necessary don't keep going back to the well of the same people because you can't figure out your progress you've got at some point had some an internal line that said this is a we don't do it by this point with this money then we got to we got to change directions as far as how we're going to finance this company or really what the future of this company is.
[00:29:42] And I think then at that point disassociate yourself and when you're going from friends and family which are people that you're basically getting the handshakes on and you start looking at angel rounds and series rounds pick who pick who you would like to have invest in you not just who will invest in you. So you know I think I've listened a ton of podcasts you listen to Howard Schultz who's necessarily the most popular person right now but he launched Starbucks and you know he had 400 pitches before he finally got somebody to invest in him. I don't know if you need to do 400 but it's somewhere near one in four hundred that are going to do in order to get company. So if you're not used to hearing no or you have a stupid idea or I think you should go get a job or good luck with that you know that's another indication that you may not want to be an entrepreneur. So I think when you start to go from friends and family to. Angels a series try to control who you want and then also don't pitch an apple to an orange you know makes other people stand what you're doing so that you're respectful of their time and yours. And remember when you're raising money it's not a sales pitch. It's an open book. So open your book and let them and help them comprehend what you're trying to do but you're not set. You have to sell an investor. That's probably a disaster and wait.
[00:30:51] Yeah exactly. It sets you up for a difficult relationship long term. I always think of it more as partnerships.
[00:30:57] Then the main thing is I can I get started in a rut but I've had people that have said they were going to invest multiple times sign the p.m. I'm wiring you the money to go blank and then I sent an e-mail came in or whatever. If you're not comfortable with this don't do it. That gives them. I've had people say Thanks man I just I thought I wanted to do it. I talked to my financial people to get people get influence like you sound like hey it's cannabis you know you're putting yourself at risk.
[00:31:27] So all of a sudden a guy who was all in or a person that was all in gets a little bit of advice from a CPA or a financial planner and then they're like I can't do this. It's OK to offer an investor and out to the like. Close the door. Either it's a yes or no. Somebody saying it. Close the door. Sorry. That's the last part I wanted to add about investments.
[00:31:45] No I think that's good. I think it's good. So if you were an entrepreneur looking to start a new business in this space where do you see interesting opportunities like what's your kind of you know as you've been at the business have you seen the market. If you are out there starting a new business what might you look at. What other areas or problems might you want to kind of focus on or try to solve.
[00:32:03] You know it's funny because I tell people all the time or just get things started. But then I hear that question I think and rightly so far down the path like this hypocritical statement I have in my own head. But. you know I think you know people. That's the number one question I get from outside animal space. I came out I see you're doing this like how can I get in. And the first thing I tell him is like well you can always get in as an investor. That's the that's the first way if you want to buy your way an easy way. When it comes to getting in. I think you have to look at what you're good at doing already and then where does it apply in the space. And then you have to acknowledge who your competition is. And like there is only so much of the pie no matter what pie make a little bigger. But there's always a pie and there's always pieces of that pie. So I think you know I see a lot of agencies popping up a lot of marketing a lot of Web site. I think we're we're one of the number one challenges for the space is web. Like if you're not driving a good SVOD program or you're not driving a good keyword met a tag program and really getting that organic traffic because you can't market it on Google or Facebook or other online properties you know that that's an area I see as a huge need for the space.
[00:33:12] And it's a hard educational tool to look at a brand and say you're going to pay twenty five grand to get optimized or however much and then it's going to be five grand a month to keep it up. So I think business advisors you know the problem is is the cannabis space is not unlike the late 18 hundreds in the wild west. So you have a lot of confusion in the space. That's why I really do like some of the shows that we go to they offer panels they offer educational that are all well attended and I think that people need to look at the same business properties that exist outside the cannabis space and then alter them of how they best outside the cannabis base may not need to optimize their Web site as much as somebody in the cannabis space. So that's why I saw the need for marketing and in dispensary or in location television network as the best opportunity for us to future proof ourself of and be scalable. I think you also have to look at. Are you going to make long term money or short term money or are you just looking to pump and dump and make a bunch of money then maybe you join something that's already going versus trying to start from scratch. But if you want to have a long play and eventually exit or be acquired is fine too. Then I think you look at what skill sets you possess and how you can best apply them to the space.
[00:34:23] Yeah I think that that makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of a lot of people that come in to say oh we're going to open a dispensary I'm going to I'm going to start to grow. And you know there's so many more opportunities than just that kind of plant touching stuff that are available and needed. So Danny This has been a pleasure we're gonna have time here. If people want to find out more about you about cannabis club TV what's the best way to get more information you can visit us online at Cannabis Club TV.
[00:34:46] You can follow us on Instagram at the same Cannabis Club TV. My personal one is that Ricky Danny on Instagram you can follow what I'm up to and where I'm going. And then on LinkedIn I use LinkedIn quite a bit.
[00:34:57] So I'm on Linkedin as Danny Keith and we're on LinkedIn as Cannabis Club TV just to add we are launching two more properties in this first quarter. One of them being harvest TV and hydro stores and the other one being the headshot TV into headshot. So we're taking the same cannabis core content advertise it's in market and we're just book ending it with high just stores and headshots. So look for us to be in your head shop and high just over here by beginning 10 to mid 2019.
[00:35:26] Great. Will make sure. All those links are on the show notes so people can click through and get that information again. Danny it's been a pleasure. I enjoyed this. I've learned a lot and really appreciate the time.
[00:35:35] Thank you man and I look forward to hearing this on the backside and anything I can do to help you. Please don't hesitate to reach out Fred. Thanks.
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