Morris Beegle, Co-Founder of WAFBA

Thinking Outside The Bud - Morris Beegle

Morris Beegle, Co-Founder of WAFBA

Morris Beegle, Co-Founder of WAFBA (We Are For Better Alternatives)
Hemp industry entrepreneur Morris Beegle is the co-founder of the WAFBA (We Are For Better Alternatives) family of companies which includes the world's leading annual hemp exposition, NoCo Hemp Expo, “the largest hemp-centric conference and trade show on the planet.”

Since 2012, Beegle has been developing global brands in the hemp space and with 8 companies, from NoCo, the Colorado Hemp Company, to Let’s Talk Hemp, Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars, and more, Beegle is world renowned as an educator, advocate, and facilitator for the benefits of hemp and cannabis in manufacturing, nutrition, and related sectors.

https://wafba.org/
http://morrisbeegle.com
https://nocohempexpo.com/


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] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc. Award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit Eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com/thrive

[00:01:07] Welcome, everyone. This is Thinking Outside The Bud, I’m Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Morris Beegle and he is co-founder of WAFBA, which is We Are For Better Alternatives. And we're gonna talk a little bit about his work there and the hemp industry and what I think is probably the bigger conversation in the cannabis world, which is what's going on in hemp and the possibilities with hemp. And I'm excited for this and I'm excited to learn a little bit more about WAFBA and the work that they're doing and hopefully learn a little bit. So with that. Morris, welcome to the program.

[00:01:38] Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me on the show here.

[00:01:41] So why don't we start with a little bit about you and your background, and we'd love to learn how you know, how things kind of came about for you.

[00:01:48] How did you get into the space? And then we can kind of we can talk about what's going on with the organization and with hemp and kind of the hemp industry already.

[00:01:56] So I really got involved more strategically into the hemp industry in 2012 when Amendment 64 was introduced to the voters of Colorado and which was put out there to to legalize recreational marijuana and tax and regulate it like alcohol. And within that legislation, there was an opportunity for farmers in Colorado to start growing industrial hemp, which I was familiar with him and not been familiar with cannabis on cannabis supporter and user for a long time. And things have been really picking up here in Colorado since 2008, 2009 with the medicinal side of things. And and my background really comes from the music industry. I've been in the music industry since the late 80s and had a record production. One stop shop company called Happy Scratch. I started in nineteen ninety five that kind of ran its course by 2010, 2011 was really kind of physical media centered with C.D. and DVD and in packaging and printing and all that stuff was kinda killed by the internet. And I see record stores went out of business and places like Best Buy and all these stores basically got did away with their music sections. And so that was a big part of my business and in looking for trying to figure out what I was going to do. You know, all of a sudden there's a huge cannabis movement happening in Colorado. And then the introduction of industrial hemp in which I was familiar with, do you know, soap and rope and food and apparel side of things.

[00:03:21] And I was like, you know, maybe there's a way to kind of bridge the gap for my entertainment experience and get into the cannabis space. And me and a partner of mine, Elizabeth Knight, started Colorado, him company, in 2012, really as a merchandise company doing shirts and hats and T-shirts. And we picked up some other brands that were out there doing textile stuff with bags and wallets and shoes and hair. And so we started a company in 2012. And from that, we started out in these other brands. We picked up hemp paper and started doing hemp paper and printing. We launched an event called Cocoa Hemp Expo in 2014 to start educating people the differences between hemp and marijuana. But it was all cannabis. But here's the differences. This is what you use this up part of the plant for. This is, you know, not recreational to get intoxicated and to get stoned. And from there, everything kind of grew into what is now. We started a master umbrella called We Are For Better Alternatives. Wafa the beginning of 2015 and started adding these different brands underneath it from our paper company to all of these different events. And we've got an educational media side called Let's Talk Camp, which we've also got a podcast called Let's Talk here for the 4 2 42 that I do with a buddy of mine, Rick Trojan from the Hemp Road Trip this year.

[00:04:38] This year's Season 2 is the title is Changing the Cannabis Conversation. And that really just stems from, you know, cannabis has always thought about as marijuana. Cannabis is cannabis and that includes hemp and it includes marijuana. It includes, you know, this broad spectrum of everything that this plant can do. And so with the signing of the farm bill at the end of 2013, hemp is entered into this new space and public thought and public opinion. And we're here to help, you know, direct that conversation and put the messaging out there that, you know, this plant's been around for thousands of years. You can do all these different things with it. It's something that we really need to embrace as a society, because I think that it can really change the paradigm and move us away from things that are not as healthy for our planet. You know, when it comes to agriculture and and an ingredient thing could go into so many. Things that can be a replacement from petroleum or cotton or corn or soy and some of these really harmful industries that that we need to start moving away from and hopefully hemp will be the thing that can point us in the right direction.

[00:05:44] That's right. Let's do a little education for our listeners. So we talk about we talk about cannabis. We talk about hemp. We talk about, you know, indica, Steve, team hybrids. These cultivars give us a little taxonomy or help us understand when we talk about hemp. What are we? What are we referring to in terms of that?

[00:06:02] The thing about from a plant and from a product point of view, really the only defining legal difference between hemp and marijuana is point three percent THC or less. And as you know, THC is the only cannabinoid that will get you stoned or get you intoxicated. I won't say the only one that psychoactive because technically CBD is psychoactive. And you know, anything that alters your brain and you know that can be coffee and tea and all that stuff, sugar. I mean, that's it's changing the way you think. So CBD doesn't get you intoxicated. It can alter your consciousness. So. Yep.

[00:06:43] So hemp it sounds like the have describes more of the plant material itself that is doesn't contain more than this percentage of THC in it.

[00:06:55] Anything that fits that criteria is considered hemp.

[00:06:58] Correct. So in point three percent or less, THC is considered industrial hemp according to the legislation that was just signed. Got it in the farm bill. And also kind of where Canada is at in most places around the world have a percentage of point two point three percent, summer point six. But most of it's just very low.

[00:07:17] Thc cannabis now is still I mean, I know there's a big kind of battle out there or, you know, different opinions on kind of the CBD. And you can derive CBD from hemp because they have while it can have very low THC or, you know, it is described by very low THC. It can have large amounts of CBD in it. Correct. Correct. So so when we talk about hemp or when you're looking at hemp, it sounds like you're really looking at it as an industrial product. So not the connective voids inside of it or the chemicals that were that we can extract from it, but rather its material use as a plant product.

[00:07:53] True to a certain extent. I mean, at this traditionally hemp has always been looked at is really an industrial crop and kind of food and nutrition crop where it's grown really close together and it doesn't look like big bushy Christmas shrubs and stuff like that where like marijuana plants are grown. And that has really kind of changed over the course since 2014, since the farm bill of 2014, that where states started growing these growing hemp as pilot programs and stuff. And in Colorado and in Kentucky and Oregon, all of a sudden here comes this cannabinoid hemp production, which is where growers and geneticists have been breeding out the THC and upping the CBD and still keeping these chirping profiles. And I mean, it really is medicinal cannabis that's had THC basically bred out of it and it's grown the same. It's really not an ag crop. It's really more of a of a horticulture. Yeah, crop. And it's grown just like you would grow marijuana. And for medicinal purposes. And so really, over the course of the last five years, I mean, you look at across America now, 80 percent or more of industrial hemp that's being grown across the country is being grown for cannabinoids and not grown for the fiber side in the food side, which is the traditional stuff that's been grown around the world for so long. And what we've been fighting for in America for so long. And we're kind of at a you know, at a new position here in in the cannabis marketplace with the rise of medicinal, the rise of recreational, and now the rise of the hemp side, which includes the fiber and the food side. But it's really been dominated by this canal today. Yes, I think so. It's a brand new paradigm in which we're setting right now.

[00:09:48] Do you think?

[00:09:49] I mean, I my my kind of sense of this stuff, it's kind of the sleeping giant, meaning that I mean, if you look at the market size, I mean, yes, the the know medical and adult use markets for cannabis from, you know, extract or from know THC, CBD forms is quite large. And if you look at the market size for hemp as a industrial product, as a fiber, it's huge. It dwarfs the market for the other side. I mean, I guess. Do you think it's. What's your take on this? I mean, do you see. Are you interested in hemp because of its fast kind of market application or why focus on hemp? Why have you been interested in it?

[00:10:27] Well, I am interested. Really from the mass market. The fiber side of I mean, that's really what got me into the industry in the first place. This whole new kind, AMADOR, a side of the market is is new to the hemp side of it. Wow. And I think that it's very important. And I think that this is product that you can make all these supplements and dietary supplements and health products that are very beneficial to human health. But on the flip side of that, where the fiber side for whether that's building materials, bio plastics, paper, textiles, fuels, soil remediation, rotational crops to again help clean up the soil, to help have a crop that can, you know, start being grown organically and regenerative. Lee and disrupt soy and corn and wheat and cotton that are these GMO crops that have all these pesticides that have been basically killing our soil. I think that hemp can play a major role on this AG side from a client climate change standpoint, from producing these products that are great and that are way more environmentally friendly, that can have ingredients that go into all these industrial applications and again, replace ingredients from petroleum and cotton and soy and corn.

[00:11:46] And and I just think that that side is super important in the long term.

[00:11:51] I think that this cannabinoid side that's getting the market really excited and interested is becoming mainstream and everybody's jumping on the CBD bandwagon. I think that's good because it's going to familiarize people that, hey, you know, this CBD, one compound in hemp, but hemp can do all these other things and. Yeah. And you can take it as a wellness product and take your tincture, your capsule or reuse your topically. But there's all these other things that it can do that are just going to be really beneficial for humanity in the long term.

[00:12:19] Yeah. So. So let's talk about. It sounds like there's kind of two categories, or at least I see kind of two categories here. One is the fiber side and then one is the kind of food product, nutritional side from a fiber point of view. What makes hemp so interesting or capable or special from a fiber?

[00:12:36] So hemp fiber has been used. I mean, when paper was invented in China a couple thousand years ago, it was invented using hemp. So papers was really started using him. And now we've got wood pulp really dominates the whole paper side of things. In the beginning, textiles and fabrics, ropes, sales, wagon covers, canvas, all that stuff was really driven by industrial hemp now. So we've been using this as a fiber and then also as a building material. You can find structures throughout the world that were built using hemp in line. So, I mean, it's just one of these things that our ancestors figured out a long time ago that was one of the most useful plants that could be utilized for everyday societal needs.

[00:13:23] And it's this driven by it's you know, if you look at the cost to produce, you know, volume or its strength to weight ratio or what, I guess what makes it particularly attractive or useful, you know, as a tool or as a raw material for all these applications?

[00:13:38] I think it's the second strongest fiber on the planet, natural fiber. And like China and Asia really dominate the whole textiles market. That's where all manufacturing for this has moved the last 20 or 30 years time moved out of the United States. And that in North America, for the most part, besides Mexico, I guess it's got some stuff. And then you look over to Europe and the Europeans have been developing these kind of bio composites and plastics and building material products, which they've done a lot of innovation and technological research on this, where, you know, they're providing car paneling for Audi and BMW and Mercedes and replacing these carbon fiber plastics and bio composites with these more natural chem bio composites. They're lighter, they're greener. And the push for the companies to start reducing their carbon footprint only makes sense that you have to find natural fibers to do this and that you need to find the best ones to do it with. And that can be hemp, that can be flax, that can be Caffe. And there's others that are out there. But hemp is truly right up there at the top. And we haven't been able to explore that market here in the United States for 80 years. And I think that there's tremendous excitement from this industrials marketplace to see where this is going to go. The problem that we have currently is we don't have the right type of processing setup around the United States. It's a costly investment to get these industrial to court acacia and fiber processing plants up and going like there's a few in Europe. But we need to get that over here in the United States. And I think once we do that spread across into main growing centers throughout the United States, wherever the fiber is gonna be grown, I think that you're going to see this industry really blossom in all kinds of supercool innovation come up when it comes to building materials and bio. Plastics and things that can help industries here in the United States.

[00:15:34] And let's just kind of touch on this for people. So hemp was included in the anti cannabis legislation that went in in the 50s and 60s, kind of rolled up in that. And it was really, really wasn't until I think it's 2014 when the first farm bill passed, which was authorized or allowed people to begin to grow hemp, because before that, I mean, basically it was illegal to grow hemp. If you were growing hemp, you were growing pot. You were. It was that. It was the same thing from a legal point of view. Correct. Do I have that right? Correct. Yeah. So it's a 14 authorized the ability to start some of this. And then most recently in the 20 to 18 farm bill, they they introduced more. Can you give a sense to people like what what actually happened in 14 and what happened in 18 in terms of changing the legality of producing and using them?

[00:16:21] Okay. So in 2014 and just a professor a little bit. In 2013, Colorado is set up hemp regulations through our Department of Agriculture because we had this clause in Amendment 64. So got Colorado really got a little jumpstart on the farm bill in 2014 and in the farm bill 2014.

[00:16:41] The language basically said that states could set up a hemp pilot program as long as it was conjuncture in conjunction with the State Department of Agriculture or an institution of higher learning. So a handful of states started setting up these pilot programs, including Kentucky or again, Tennessee, and there was a handful to begin with, Minnesota. And so Colorado, Kentucky and Oregon really kind of took the lead on this. And the program was slightly different.

[00:17:10] And over the course of the next three or four years, multiple states jumped on and implemented their own pilot programs. All of them were slightly different as to what one could do from a commercial standpoint. Colorado was always a little bit ahead of the curve because we set things up a little bit differently because we did it before the farm bill. And there was always this is Colorado in compliance with the farm bill. And, you know, there was debate about that and the whole thing was fairly ambiguous anyway. Yeah. Yeah. This this market all of a sudden grew and all of a sudden you had all these hemp derive cannabinoid extraction CBD products starting to come out of Colorado and come out of Oregon, come out of Kentucky. And all of a sudden we've got one hundred million dollar two hundred million dollar domestic market of these produce goods that is in a gray area, because this isn't really what was anticipated when industrial hemp gram really got put into place where they can fiber people were thinking grain, they were thinking food in these traditional things that were being done. And all of a sudden here comes this industry that most people did not see coming. And it's created a whole brand new industry for the supplements side of things. And, you know, now we've got 2018. It's signed into law. The definition of hemp has been expanded to include all compounds, extracts, derivatives, cannabinoids from the plant, as long as that is below point, three percent THC.

[00:18:45] And so, in essence, I mean, it pulls all these compounds clearly off the Controlled Substances Act, including CBD, including THC derived from hemp. That's point three percent or below. So none of these cannabinoids are on the controlled substances list anymore. So that's kind of where we're at now. And we're trying to figure out how the USDA and the FDA and all this is going to get regulated going down the road.

[00:19:12] Yeah. And talk to us a little bit about that from a from a food product on a view.

[00:19:16] I mean, I like I I you know, I see all these like hemp seeds and hemp derived protein powder and all this. I mean, what when you look at the food side of it, like I guess I understand kind of the basics of the fiber. You know, you produce the plant, your track, the fiber and you use the fibers to create all sorts of as a raw material and all sorts of kind of products and composites and stuff like that from a food side. What are the categories or what what are we kind of talking about in terms of what can produce and how is it applied to our various food products?

[00:19:45] So you've got hemp seeds. That's the main source of the food and you can press that into an oil. And then if you if you press it into an oil, then you can do a variety of different filtering things with that oil. But it's it's certainly high in protein, a moat, a mega 3, 6 and 9 amino acids. It's a very nutritious oil that you can put in smoothies. You can put on salads. It's not an oil that you heat up like you would to olive oil or canola or anything like that. But it's for human consumption. It's very healthy for you. The seeds, same thing, high in protein, amino acids, omega 3, 6 and 9. You crush that stuff in the show as you do. You can turn that into protein powder. And there's a very. Idea of deferred processing things where you're getting 90 percent protein powder now and it's super high quality. Plant protein. Yeah. How is nutritious? It's a superfood. So it's and it can go into energy bars and cereals. Yeah, I've seen it everywhere. I mean, it's like everyone's trying to throw him at it. Yeah. And in vegan burger. Yeah, exactly. No. So it's big in its paleo. I mean it's a good nutritious it's stuff that we should be putting on our body on a regular basis. There's one of these things that are good for you. Yeah.

[00:20:59] And all the boxes from a from a growing point of view as a crop. Tell us a little about what you know. Is it easy to crop it grow?

[00:21:07] Does it take a lot of water? Is it climate sensitive? I mean, what's I mean, look at it from an agricultural point of view. How does it compare to some of these other crops we have?

[00:21:15] Well, you can pretty much grow this on any continent besides the poles. I mean, it's growing well in Europe. It's growing well in Canada, grows well in China. It should grow well.

[00:21:27] And most places across the United States where farming is, it generally uses less water than corn and soy and cotton. It requires less pesticides and fertilizers. It's easier to grow organically and regenerative. Lee.

[00:21:40] Not that every crop in depending on the soil and stuff.

[00:21:44] I mean, it needs nitrogen like any other crop and depending on the soil, you still have to have inputs and so forth. But how can you do that in the least damaging way possible? And so there's a with this movement comes a movement that ties in organic and regenerative agriculture. So we're trying to get away from this mono cropping and using all these GMO roundup ready type processes. We don't want to see him go that way and become Corn 2.0. A friend of mine, John Ruling, would like to point out. And so I think that it's a crop that can grow pretty much anywhere and use less resources than other crops traditionally have. You have to have genetics adapted to the particular climate in latitude, longitude, longitude, where it's at. And that can take a little bit of time to do. But there's been people working on that here in the United States over obviously for a while now. And it's been done in Europe and in Australia. And there's a lot of dwell tested genetics that have come into the United States that are being licensed or in some instances not licensed in crop crossbred with other stuff. That's a whole nother discussion is intellectual property and breeding rights. And in all of that.

[00:23:05] Yes. I get the I mean, I guess I was I working out I mean, that's kind of going through the court systems or the court systems or trying to figure out how they're going to treat these different things. Yeah.

[00:23:14] So there's there will be certified seed programs and happen in these states. And if you're a breeder, you're going to register your seeds and those will be certified through the Department of Agriculture or whatever a certain certifying programs are with universities. I mean, we've we've started that in Colorado. They've started in Kentucky.

[00:23:32] And, you know, eventually it's going to go to a certified program, whereas it is not now. And because of that, farmers are now having to test their crops. And if their crops go over point three percent, then they're not going to be able to be used for commerce and they've got to be destroyed or they can't be taken off the property. And then the farmer has to eat the loss. There's no pun intended. Yeah, pretty much. But when you have a certified seed program, when it gets to that point, then you're you know, the reason it's certified because it's tested, it's stable. You're not gonna go over this point three percent. So you're not going to have to endure these costs. You know, when you put the seed in the ground, you're not going to go hard and it's going to just really streamline things. And that's going to take several years for us to get dialed in here in the United States.

[00:24:19] Yeah, I get it. I think there's a lot a lot that needs to be worked out and figured out both at the state and federal level on this.

[00:24:26] Let's talk a little bit about application. So I know you've used hemp composites in various capacities and for various purposes. Tell us a little bit about some of the products you've developed or the work that you've been doing with hemp. You know, where where have you applied it and what does that what does that look like and how is that developed?

[00:24:43] So we the first thing we got into were hemp T-shirts and hats. And all of that really has been produced in Asia. We've taken materials from over there and just started printing T-shirts and hats and and using what's available from a hemp standpoint, from a apparel side of things. So that's you know, that's really how we started things. We found a hemp paper company and have worked with them for the last six years. And the paper itself is 25 percent hemp, 75 percent post consumer recycled. There's no virgin wood bulb. Technically from a paper industry terminology standpoint, that's tree free because it's not utilizing any virgin. Paul, you are using those consumer recycled materials that comes in various grades. There's confusion about that in the marketplace. But, you know, that's. One area that we're using that we want to uproot the percentage of hemp in there. We want to create different hemp paper stocks and board stocks that can be put out there for packaging options and and start getting rid of a lot of this wood based pulp where we want to try to get away from wood more so than than anything. The timber industry is kind of like the fossil fuel industry. That's really not as ecologically friendly as we might want it to be.

[00:25:56] These tree farms and stuff, basically, you know, those whole ecosystems that are in these tree farms are just dead. The only thing that grows are GMO trees. And, you know, everything else is dead. And we don't really have to go that route down the road when we could utilize crop based fiber and pulp to to make our papers. Yeah. So that's you know, that's another area that we've been involved with. And I just started working with a couple of different suppliers. And we're making some hemp body guitars, him guitar cabinets made out of hemp press board. That's like a particle board that's all hampered. Some hemp based bio plastics to make volume knobs and guitar picks. And this is still kind of prototype stuff that we're doing at this point in time. But it's a start and it's kind of cool. Its novelty is just showing, you know, another application that can be done with him because hemp, if you look around your room that you're setting in. Yeah. Whether that's the plaster or the painter, the carpet, there's a lot of things that could include hemp is an ingredient that's probably a more sustainable ingredient and a lot of stuff that's in it currently.

[00:26:59] Yeah. And I think that's what excites me so much about the hemp side of this whole kind of cannabis world as is, you know, the applications are almost endless.

[00:27:08] And once you look at it as a fiber, that can be, you know, the source of, you know, that the raw material for, you know, everything from building products to consumer goods and things like that, paper and paper and papers and stuff.

[00:27:20] It's really us. It is pretty incredible. Well, you could take it. Any interesting applications that you've seen or that you've talked to people about that they're trying to pressure or new, different ways that happens? People are experimenting with hemp in terms of applications.

[00:27:33] Well, one of the more popular things that float around the Internet for a while are hemp super capacitors and being able to basically take hemp fiber and create a graphene like substance that performs just as well as graphene at a fraction of the price. So there are several companies out there that are working on this him graphene technology that has great storage capacity and could certainly revolutionize the battery market. So that's that's exciting. There's also materials that are loss prevention materials for cleaning up oil spills and going into fracking, cleaning up the water from fracking and stuff like that, basically helping to clean up all the other crap that these other industries are putting out into the environment. So how with materials that can go clean up our environment because our environment's been fucked up by exactly. The Industrial Revolution the last hundred years.

[00:28:31] Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. I think that, you know, its ability to remediate a lot of the other channels. I mean, not just as an alternative, but actually go out and fix fix some of the problems that have been created. It's quite fascinating.

[00:28:44] So tell us more about the organization, about the podcast. I mean, what what have you been? Where have you been focused and what are your goals with with some of these so.

[00:28:54] Well, like the podcast. Me and Rick Trojan from the Hemp Road Trip Change in cannabis conversation is really just about that. It's like we've been talking about marijuana indefinitely and recreational for so long that now that hemp is here and hemp is here to stay.

[00:29:10] It's beyond CBD. I know it is. It's building materials, it's bio plastics, it's paper, it's food, it's health, it's nutrition and it's regenerative agriculture. And cannabis can be all of this. It is going to be all of this. So we're helping just to try to to spread that message and make people aware of all the different things that can be used for and that him is going to be used for as this industry grows, because it's going to grow well beyond the CBD craze that's going on right now. Does this fiber side of things in the food side of things and animal products, whether that's animal health and nutrition or animal bedding? There's a variety of ways that this can be implemented into just so many different industries that we see it as a game changer.

[00:29:58] Yeah. Yeah. No, like I said, I think it's a it is kind of the sleeping giant in this industry. And I think once once we really figure out, you know, different applications and as you said, the figure out all the logistics and the processing capabilities and setting up kind of the infrastructure for this, it's poised to be significantly larger industry. And then I think that the medical and the and the adult, your site doesn't mean great more so people want to find out more information about you. About what? About the podcasts. What's the best way to get that information?

[00:30:25] You could go to wafba.org/, which actually is really a. Launch page and it's got all of our brands on there. So if you wanted to find out about no co hemp Expo or Southern Hemp Expo or tree free hemp or let's talk Camp One Planet Hemp, we've got a dozen different brands on there. Everything really works synergistically together. We're really a big producer, a promoter of the plant, a promoter of the planet.

[00:30:48] We just want to see this industry take off and be what it can be for humanity in the long term, because we think that the days of the petrol society really need to start coming to an end. Climate change is real, folks. We need to look at alternative ways going forward the next 10, 20, 50 years. And we think that hemp in the agriculture side of things is going to play a very important role in this.

[00:31:13] Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I'll make sure that those links are in the shutouts here so people can click through more. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a great conversation.

[00:31:22] I'm really excited about the hemp side of this. I'm looking forward to keeping in touch and hearing how this industry grows over the coming months and years.

[00:31:29] While I appreciate the time, Bruce, thanks for what you do and keep spreading the good word. Thanks. All right. Take care.

[00:31:36] You've been listening to Thinking Outside the Bud with Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt to find a full list of podcast episodes. Download the tools and worksheets and access other great content. Visit the Web site at thinkingoutsidethebud.com. And don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at thinkingoutsidethebud.com/newsletter.