Chris Vardijan & Misha Frankly, NorCal Tour Company Inc.
Veteran Northern California tour guides Misha Frankly and Chris Vardijan are the founders of NorCal Tour Company Inc., a company founded on the premise that making travel plans should be easy and exciting.
They are also the producers of The Mendocino Experience Cannabis Tours, the tour is based on the Northern California wine tour model, taking tourists to licensed legal cannabis farms giving tourists a comprehensive look into Northern California's cannabis industry and culture
https://norcaltourcompany.com/
https://mendoexperience.com/
https://www.facebook.com/mendoexperience
https://www.instagram.com/mendoexperience/
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.
[00:01:06] Welcome, everyone. This is Thinking Outside the Bud, I’m Bruce Eckfeldt, I’m your host. We have two guests today. So Misha Frankly, and Chris Vardijan is from NorCal Tour Company. And we're going to talk a little bit about their business. Interesting aspect to the cannabis space tourism. You know, one of the biggest interests in the world. And like all of these industries are getting impacted or developing a cannabis component. So we're going to hear about NorCal tours, understand how they got into it, what they're doing, who's using them. I think it's quite fascinating. And my profit them, they give me some information, which I'm fascinated by. So I'm tours out of this conversation there in northern California, sort of the epicenter of cannabis in the United States. So they're in the hot seat of it. And I'm curious to hear what their insights are with that meta. Chris, welcome to the program. Thanks very much, Bruce. So why don't we chat a little bit about background and, you know, professionally? Like, what were you doing before the cannabis tourism stuff took off for you? What was your professional background and what was your relation to the cannabis?
[00:02:03] And and let's understand kind of how it came together to form NorCal and the tourism business.
[00:02:08] Sure. That's always a question. Get back into history. Like tell their founding stories of the Meesha. So we both actually come from San Francisco tourism background. They've both been tour guides in San Francisco for gosh combined more than a decade.
[00:02:24] And I mean, way back in our past, we call my performance kind of a theater upbringing.
[00:02:29] So we got into tourism is such a great fit. Yeah. And we will. We feel like not to teeter on horns, but we're very good talkers.
[00:02:38] Well, good. You know, it's tough to build a business if you don't think you're the best the best in it.
[00:02:42] Yeah, exactly. We were doing that for a while and eventually started getting our own bus drivers licenses and driving the tour buses to wine country and their small little 13 14 passenger buses. But it's been in the regulated, but it's a great little job. Before I did this personally, I actually was in the medical marijuana industry and I produced medical marijuana. Oh, yeah. I did that for about that before I got into tourism. So we we were doing that. And then Chris actually came, you know, and you tell the story.
[00:03:13] Yeah. I basically approached Michaud and said we should take that Napa Valley wine to our model, you know, day trips from San Francisco. Have lunch day out with lunch included and get you back in time for dinner. Yeah. We just took that exact model and applied it to cannabis.
[00:03:28] And we bring people up to the Emerald Triangle, swapped out alcohol with THC and poof, new business.
[00:03:33] Yeah, we visit farms, we visit dispensaries, indoor grows, outdoor grows, cloning, packaging, everything, the ins and outs of the culture and the industry and where it all started.
[00:03:44] Yeah, I'm curious because it my kind of perception and most of the folks that I've spoken to that know kind of that Humboldt County, Northern California world, you know, it's such a relationship based, you know, a little protected. You know, I know it's opening up, but, you know, traditionally it's been a fairly kind of closed community. How Megan's how did that play out? How how have you kind of open that up as that as I've been? Easy now. Did you have to really work, develop the relationships? I mean, how how have you been able to kind of build a business in this relative to the partnerships and things that really require it to make it work?
[00:04:17] Yeah, it's very much the case in those areas. You're either a stranger, an anathema or your family.
[00:04:22] There's not a lot of in between, you know. You know, it's been illegal for for a number of years. And and people are reasonably insular
[00:04:30] So we knew people we've been connected to the candidates industry. We've had friends in that and we're connected that way. And I think that's why even though there are definitely bigger tour companies and bigger players in the game, they can't get in there because, you know, they don't trust outsiders and for good reason. And we proved that, you know, I think they knew that we had their best interests in heart. So we're not there to exploit the industry. We were there to bring people together and show, you know, the positives of this industry. I mean, really, what's more wholesome than farming?
[00:05:00] Yeah, no, I mean, it's it's kind of the route not only of sort of the economy, but of really culture. You go back millions of years. It's you know, it's it is it is a core part of how we sustain and sustain ourselves in the world. So I get the I get the connection. So tell us a little bit about, you know, I can I can imagine how kind of coming up with the idea. And it's clear that you've got a, you know, a thriving business now. I'm assuming that's not always been the case. What have been some of that kind of the challenges and things you didn't anticipate or maybe things you did? It's still hard to overcome. I'm always curious what trials and tribulations companies have gone through to get to where they are.
[00:05:34] Well, you notice we have the aptly generically named North Cow Tour Company. We go under the Mendocino Experience Cannabist Tours. That's our brand. That's what the tour that we're that we're selling. But we named the company the North Cal Tour Company, because we were trying to avoid all of the issues that cannabis industry people have been dealing with, not being able to bank things like that. And we assumed that it wouldn't touch us because we don't take a penny of cannabis money. We are paid by the tourists to take them on a tour. It's that simple. And yet we ran into the same things. We don't bank in the state of California. We had to find a bank up in Washington that we deal with online and pay a hefty monthly fee for the privilege.
[00:06:18] Really? And what was the I mean, did you ever see you tried to bank in California? What was the reaction or how did how did that play out? Did they discover this and and close your accounts? What was the conversation like?
[00:06:29] That's what happened, basically. We.
[00:06:31] We open the company. We were banking with with major business bank. And once we released our first press release that showed what we were doing, all of a sudden they called this and said, we we can bank with you. And so they were gracious enough to give us a 90 day period to find somebody else so that it was.
[00:06:49] Yes. I'll pick up your check at the front door. Right.
[00:06:52] All the things we thought we were able to avoid by not really being in the cannabis industry was not the case at all. All the same restrictions that fall on cannabis companies fall on us as far as advertising and online things and all that. We've had to figure out workarounds just like everybody else in the industry has.
[00:07:10] Any insights in terms of the work arounds that you have been able to develop, given the nature of the service you provide and the customers that you're trying to get?
[00:07:18] You know, what's really fascinating is that I guess it's the marketing struggle that a lot of people have has since where cannabis adjacent. We can't advertise using Google AdWords, which advertise on Facebook or YouTube, even though we have a lovely commercial and a great Facebook page as well. Instagram. So a lot of our. Oh, yeah. I don't know. This is definitely something you should have your listeners look up, especially if they're interested in their visual people.
[00:07:45] Most people are to go to our Instagram page mindo experience. It's the same as the Web site, but it's what is it at that sign? Yeah, it's admen doing experience put.
[00:07:54] I'll put it in the show notes so people can click on it and get through to it.
[00:07:57] Because visually I think when I bring that up to people, people immediately get what we're doing because it's we have like a year's amount of photographs up there and we post everyday photos and video. But even even with all that, that's you know, these are kind of organic ways. These are social media is advertising.
[00:08:17] And so we have to get creative. And since we're in the tourist industry, we came from tourism. We're also like we're we're implementing signage, which we've never had before on a vehicle. We have partnerships with big tour companies that want to carry our are, which kind of surprised us.
[00:08:32] But these big tour company did manage to partner with us and we'll be selling through their kiosk this season. So this is about to kind of become something. You know, last year was kind of our first operational year and we're about to start year two and we see big things a foot down on.
[00:08:46] Sure. I guess. Tell us about the growth or tell us about how you see the business playing out. I mean, I know you mentioned in our kind of discussion, I guess, the people that are actually coming to take the tours, I mean, these are not mom and pop and four kids, you know, on there kind of you know, they go to Disney World and then decide there doesn't lanta. They said they're going to come up and and do a cannabis tour. Who's coming to actually take the tours? Why are they coming? What are they learning from it?
[00:09:12] They have some of the people that are definitely vacationing tourists to come check it out. But the bulk of our people so far seem to be people who are either in the industry or they are trying to get into the industry. Things are starting to become legal where they are or they're already legal growers on our very first tour.
[00:09:29] We had a grower come from Canada that they want to tap into the deep brain trust that's up in Mendocino. We're talking generations of knowledge, you know, and and they're wanting to plug into it.
[00:09:40] There's also a lot of people coming, I noticed, who are who are coming from places that it's not legal. It's not even on the horizon of being legal, at least from our operative point of view, from their point of view. They think it's it's about to turn over in their country or in their state, and they want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to legalization. So they're coming here to northern California, where we have a well-deserved reputation for grace, an excellent, excellent cannabis. And people come here to literally see us do that and walk us through the tours.
[00:10:11] I mean, what what are you actually highlighting? How does the experience work? You know, if we were to go on a tour. What do we see? What do we do? What do we learn?
[00:10:19] Sure. So we pick up in in San Francisco at the Ferry Building and in Fisherman's Wharf. You know, your typical tourist areas. We drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and it takes us about. Hour and a half to two hours to get up to the Emerald Triangle. And that's where sort of the meat of the informational tour happens. You know, we we go over the history cannabis usage in the world, how it became illegal in the United States, how it became illegal in the rest of the world, what the forces were that made that happen, how it became legal again, and that history. We talk about usage. We talk about, you know, if people are coming up to try cannabis for the first time, we we talk about what to expect. We make sure that they're in a place where they're being driven, they're being taken care of and all that. And so we give the history and the usage and all that and the culture of it. We talk about that on the drive up. Then we stop it. Probably the most beautiful candidates dispensary on the planet. And the people can smoke out in this beautiful place. It's like smoking inside a French impressionist painting. If you go on Instagram, you can see photos. It's amazing. We take people to a lovely lunch at a bakery and cafe in Ukiah as part of the you know, it's covered in the tour. Originally, our plan was to do a catered lunch in the redwoods. And these guys were the best they had the best catering. They seemed to have it together. So when we went to meet them, we walk into their place, which is also a bakery. We see this these rows of glass cases with the most brightly colored baked goods and the like.
[00:11:50] Oh, we're taking here. Yeah. Yeah. And even the sandwiches are phenomenal because they fresh baked bread every morning.
[00:11:57] And then we go and everyone just got back and everyone just got exactly, exactly the confluence of wonderful food.
[00:12:04] And then we take them in the spring. Right now it's the winter. So the outdoor groser are closed, the fields are fallow, but we take them to outdoor grows where they can learn about all three different methods of sun growing, greenhouse growing, where they use light assist and light deprivation, who passes, where they use light deprivation to grow three crops in a season instead of one.
[00:12:25] And they also have full term fields where they're plant in May and harvest in October so they can see all three types of outdoor or sun growing. And then from there we go to the largest indoor grow in all of Mendocino County up at Emerald City Genetics. And they get to Ben, the year of the master grower there. And I've seen people like I said, that Canadian grower came on the first step. He had his notepad out, I'm sure, notes, copious notes. And they get you know, they get to tap in. And these guys are very passionate about what they do and they do it so well and they are happy to share their knowledge. And that's really great. It feels like we're bringing the world together, which is really exciting around the, you know, cannabis.
[00:13:05] Yeah.
[00:13:06] I'm curious about, you know, I see that the business opportunity kind of the profit opportunity. But, you know, I find that the vast majority of people in cannabis have are motivated or driven by, you know, more than just kind of financials, I guess. What's your motivating drive here in terms of what you hope to achieve impact you want to have on cannabis, on the world in general?
[00:13:25] Like what do you do this? Like, what's the what's the motivation?
[00:13:28] Well, I think that, you know, I was I was we were doing another podcast the other day and we were talking afterwards about how there was a movement. The world was coming together in a lot of ways around peace and anti-war things in the 60s and the 70s. And then Nixon put in the drug war to kind of put the kibosh on that. And it split up people in it. And it didn't let we have a natural community here that has been sort of separated for, what, you know, 40, 50. You know, nearly a hundred years now since thirty six, especially since the 70s, since the war on drugs took place. And now that that's starting to break up, this community, this natural community is starting to form or reform that was being sort of kept apart. And so, you know, when you get people from disparate countries sitting together and smoking out and realizing their commonality and the separations don't become as important as the similarities. And so besides the financial things, we're literally bringing the world together. And you've had people from all over the world coming every every continent. So that for you, I don't think that anywhere for Africa. But just about every continent on the planet, we've had guests come and I am meeting my employees.
[00:14:38] You asked for my financials and it's like what drives us.
[00:14:42] And I think, though, what to me, especially coming from a background in cannabis and and wine tours, is the incredible obvious similarity that one can draw between wine, cannabis, the taste, the feel, the the altered state, the ability to be an adult about it. Right. And so what seemed obvious to Chris and myself was that this was an industry that was going to happen anyway.
[00:15:12] This is an idea that people are like, oh, that's an interesting idea. Everyone that hears this goes. They're like, oh, my God, that's such a great idea. You're like, yeah. Right.
[00:15:22] So when you get to those ideas, that's like, well, somebody is gonna do it. And we're kind of well positioned to be. Guys. And so, you know, it's it's kind of fun to start an industry that doesn't exist.
[00:15:35] Yeah. Well, the connection that one. I mean, I I'm always fascinated by the similarities in terms of, you know, the focus on the cultivation side and the terroir and the subtleties of sort of the subtle subtleties and complexity of, you know, the profiles and your own cannabis. You have the turbines and everything. I mean, it's it's such I mean, it's it's it's just a it's a product that is ripe for dynamics and sophistication and complexity and almost a poetic, you know, kind of connection to, you know, I'm waiting for the I'm going to forget the name of the Sideways.
[00:16:07] It was the movie about going up. You know, I'm waiting for they'll get the cannabis version of Sideways. You know, it becomes in a scene for these plot plots in these romantic bags like there is it just there's a lot of it.
[00:16:17] Somebody listened to this podcast is now, right? You're like I went I went 10 percent. No smoking sour diesel. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:16:26] And the fact that it happens to be in the same part of the country and, you know, so kind of connected, like I'm I'm like. I mean, if you fast forward, say, five years, what do you I mean, what do you envision? You know, for the company or for the industry or for that kind of, you know, cannabis tourism? How do you see this playing out? I'm curious where you see the market going or where this this industry going?
[00:16:45] I've had a new insight about that the other day, actually. What seems to be the case is that while we have kind of come into this industry from the direction of cannabis tourism as viable means generating income. What seems to be very available is the connections that come with having a company like this that brings people to the door that these dispensaries and basically industry in general is starting to see that we grab eyeballs and we're consistent. And so what's available to all of these companies is as when they work with us, they'd have the ability to kind of really extend their brand and grow by bringing people to them in a way that, you know, cannabis just hasn't done because we've been under a hundred years of prohibition. So this is a completely new direction. A lot of growers when we first started this, we're like, yeah, that's a good idea, but no one wants to bring you into their land. I mean, so land that they've been guarding from the feds and all that want to rip them off for, you know, many, many decades. So for people, you're a forward thinking farmer. If you're like, yes, come over, bring the world's my doorstep right now. I'm ready.
[00:17:48] Yeah, yeah, right.
[00:17:50] You know, Chris, I mean, there's so much obviously political and social history with cannabis, racial justice, social justice. I mean, I think the wine analogy is has a lot of similarities. But there's also a kind of this element or potential element.
[00:18:03] You know, wine can be, you know, a little classist or a little kind of you have to have a lot of money to afford really expensive wine. And it becomes kind of snooty. You know, I'm curious on the cannabis side, you know, how I guess how do you see that kind of dynamic playing out or, you know, kind of the social access, social implications of it playing out?
[00:18:23] And I guess, how do you see that return?
[00:18:26] I know all the travel over Christmas. Second, the fact that we think wine as snooty. And yet we're charging 20, 30 dollars for a bottle for wine. And yet we're charging with taxes, you know, 50, 60, 70 dollars for an eight in the clubs. And we're like, oh, so it's so not undistinguished when we're spending way more money on cannabis than we are on wine.
[00:18:47] I mean, definitely wine is an aspirational thing. You know, people that got wine tours sometimes are trying to connect to something. You know, there is that perception. But remember, at one time in the 20s, it was the grape growers who were the illegal growers. They were hiding the venting operations. The way that people are hiding their growing operations a few years back. So there are a lot of parallels. And I think five years from now, it's going to be a totally different world. I mean, we're we're trying to erase 100 years of stigma. But going back before that, there's thousands of years of commonality in common usage all around the world. You know, it's been in human usage probably, you know. Yeah. I mean, we we five thousand years in recorded history. It was first in the Chinese pharmacopeia 5000 years ago. And so one hundred years is a lot of stigmata, a race. But it goes back so much deeper into the human reality and human conditions that, you know, the human experience that we will we'll get past it. But I think five years from now, you'll see a lot less stigma. And I think it's going to be a completely different world. I also think 10 years now, it'll be a completely different world than five years from now.
[00:19:52] We're sort of in the infancy of this industry and we're watching things play out and we're watching rules change and we're seeing the way that they're they're changing things. Say like up in Mendocino, you know, they're talking about, you know, we're primitive. These meetings where the you had the city council and the and the Cannabis Growers Association getting together and discussing what they want the future to be. And you hear ideas about people like, you know, some farmers up there. It was part of the back to the land movement. You know, these generational growers, they weren't just growing weed. They were growing their tomatoes. They're growing their vegetables. And a lot of them go to farmers markets and the like. We want to have our weed. Star tomatoes at the farmer's market. You know, so I think the whole landscape is going to change dramatically and how it's going to change. I have no idea. Because it's dynamic, it's fast changing. I don't think we're going to recognize the world in five years. And I think five years from then, we won't recognize it. The change that happened in the next five years either.
[00:20:46] And where do you see your business in a couple of years? I mean, you know, you're you're poised for growth opportunity. You have big ambitions. Are you hoping to to really scale this thing up? What are the challenges? What are the choices that you see kind of coming at you in terms of the future of the business?
[00:21:01] Well, you know, what's going on is we're not the. We may be innovators, but we're not the only ones. Right. So we have people who are kind of our competition in the market. Yet no one kind of does. What we do good are his work. We're coming at it from different directions. So a lot of our competition comes from the cannabis space and we come from the tourism space. And so we're the only ones that kind of have figured out this component of actually going up to the Emerald Triangle on a regular basis and selling tickets on a vehicle that's going to do this just like a wine tour. They kind of are working on it from kind of San Francisco East Bay perspective. And it's hard to kind of get people out of the Bay Area. There's problems. Yeah. So since we mastered something in a way and they themselves have come from a direction that we don't know, we find that probably in the future we're gonna we're gonna be part of a machine that's bigger than us. We don't. I don't know how that's going. You know?
[00:21:56] Yeah, we you know, we're we're friends with a lot of our competitors. And in the tourism thing, like I say, it's the second largest industry in the world. You know, during the peak season, a thousand wine tours go out a day from San Francisco to, you know. And so we could grow to ten times our size and still barely be scraping this market. And so there's no need to be cutthroat or anything. And I found in the tourism industry in general, people are pretty supportive of one another. And so I can see it's expanding quite a bit. And I but I don't see us growing our buses per say. I like the intimate experience of a 13 passenger bus. So we probably do more more buses, more tours. You know, we currently have three different tours that we run once a day, but we could have three buses and do those simultaneously and we can grow into other regions. A lot of there's a lot of potential for growth.
[00:22:48] Now, I'm curious in terms of I'm I'm assuming that a lot of the value or the experience that you deliver is based on, you know, the people and not only kind of their knowledge and capabilities, but, you know, personalities and style and cultural fit. Like, how have you found people that kind of represent the brand and the experience and the company so that you can actually expand? Have you. Is it been easy? Has been hard wherever you found these folks? I'm always curious about how people, you know, maintain kind of culture and the feel of what it's like as they kind of bring out people and grow the company. What are your experiences so far?
[00:23:22] People in Mendocino are phenomenal. It's like going to paradise. Not only is it one of those beautiful places on earth that the people are phenomenal. I mean, they're they're supportive. They're warm. Everybody comments on it. They're struck by how friendly everybody is there.
[00:23:36] And I think you think you get more pushback. But I'm surprised by how welcoming then. Very much to us. Yeah. Once you're in, you are in your family. But even though like they're welcoming, not just in that they're welcoming the world to their door. And it's pretty open to a very we've had very few people kind of like, give us the paranoid feeling. Everyone's like, please come bring people here.
[00:23:58] We want people here, which is very different than what we've seen other businesses experience in county like Sonoma, which is just something, you know, that's been like a pushback from Sonoma County in regards to campus. But our expereince and Mendocino has been extremely welcoming.
[00:24:14] I'm curious on the on the client side. On the customer side. You know, given that you're you are kind of almost kind of bringing people into people's homes. You know, it's a fairly intimate kind of experience that you're you're creating. How have you kind of either filtered or made sure you you're bringing in the right clients, you know, that you're you're being respectful and kind of cultural alignment for that. Have you had any issues as it kind of worked out naturally? Have you had to do anything more intentionally to make sure that you you critics. Right experience for both sides of the equation?
[00:24:42] I think there's a level of like we haven't had problems with any cultural problems. Every everyone's been extremely respectful of the locations we go our private. And I wouldn't say the residences there. There were places of business. And so we got to public ones and private ones. Everyone's been extremely respectful. I think it's because there's a level of like the quality of our our ticket. Our ticket price is roughly the same as that of a wine tour where it's a little more because we this is you can't do this. There's plenty of wine for companies that are doing this. So but it's roughly what we pay staff. Our ticket office is the line for the data. So that means there's a like a price of admission that keeps people really kind of like the people that can afford to go or are people that really are. Added to this experience, that makes sense.
[00:25:31] Is kind of a natural filters in place that that do make sure you've got alignment on that or the people. People want to kind of experience that you're offering for it.
[00:25:38] I've certainly run into more issues in the wild.
[00:25:40] Just going to ask you, probably it's probably harder on why it's easier. It's easier to deal with someone that smoked a little too much, then drank a little too much.
[00:25:47] Yeah. Well, one of the things we've been working on is with a with one of our competitors is we've been working on banding together to create an overnight experience. And we and some of our tours, we combine wineries, we have a woods. wine and weed tour that's going to love. Yeah. And so for the so for our overnight, we're actually looking at a winery and we said, you know, we're planning it out. We're talking to the people that ran the winery and saying, you know, we'd probably be here around 4:30 in the afternoon. And he said, oh, usually we don't do tours that late because people get drunk, get obnoxious. By that time and day. And he said, but you've got cannabis. People will be happy to do 4:30 in the afternoon for your guys. So great. That right there illustrates the difference. Yeah.
[00:26:29] Know, I'm curious, do you know the things that you see that are going to shape your sort of specific part of the industry and the industry overall there in northern California in terms of regulations, politics, you know, compliance, stuff like that?
[00:26:41] What are the things that you kind of keep an eye on or that you're watching out for in terms of, you know, changes in that world that might impact how you do business or the nature of the business or, you know, operations and stuff like that? What's what's on your radar?
[00:26:54] Well, certainly looking for for changes that I think we're going to see before too long. You know, nationally. So you can open up the bank and you can open up the advertising, all the things that we've had to do workarounds for.
[00:27:07] We're looking forward to those resolving, which I think they will within a couple of years. But it's getting from here to there. So we're always keep an eye on on regulations, but regulations seem to be moving in a way that's better for the industry. Well, I mean, you and and kind of sideways with the latest regulation that kind of had to deal with us, which was direct.
[00:27:28] Was that one about smoking on a party?
[00:27:30] On a party? So last yes. Last fall, the California legislature, along with the governor, there were like, you know what? I used to be that like the understanding was there was a partition. So just understanding on the vehicle, especially if it's a bus that you could consume like they being and maybe even smoke on it, it wasn't clear. And so they were like, no. And now we're gonna make it quite clear there is no consuming any smoked or airborn kind of product on a bus. You can drink on bars. You know, you can not smoke something. So that actually it never Venus does because, ah, we never had a vehicle that had that capacity. We always tell people to. Yeah. That wasn't our model. That wasn't our thing. But we noticed that a few other tour companies definitely had to change their model because suddenly you can't consume on the vehicle like very clearly. You can see another vehicle, you know.
[00:28:21] Yeah, it's interesting the little nuances that end up impacting different industries and how they operate. And you know what they need to change in terms of, you know, whether it's the vehicles or the policies or the operational steps in terms of you mentioned, you know, the national legalization.
[00:28:35] Do you imagine developing other tours in other parts of the country? Cannabis or otherwise, any expansion ambitions in your business model?
[00:28:43] God, I can't see that far ahead.
[00:28:46] I tend to be the one who looks off into the distant future. I would say we've got a lot here in our wheelhouse of Northern California to deal with before we'd venture anywhere else. There is so much opportunity here. I mean, we barely scratched the surface of what's available in the Emerald Triangle. We take people into Mendocino because that's what we can do in a day trip. But, you know, we thought about expanding into overnights where you spend the night on a cannabis farm and sit around the fire with music and getting high and going out to the beautiful Mendocino Coast or up to Humboldt County. And there's also lots of new businesses kind of popping up around.
[00:29:23] You've probably heard of Air BMB, as they're called Weed BND, where you just go up to somebody whose land, you know, and they just they'll just let you stay on their land and they probably grow in their backyard. You can go hang out there, smoke all you want, probably with the grower. Those experiences are starting to grow. And considering we are a tour company, we'll probably start interfacing with them as well. So I think more, more and more connections with more and more parallel industries that probably start accumulating as we keep doing this.
[00:29:52] You know, we can we can expand a lot without leaving this region at all.
[00:29:56] Yeah, a lot of opportunity there.
[00:29:57] You don't need to travel far to to see growth, opportunity like sense any recommendations or advice or insights that you would give to other folks that Piggly folks that are in kind of these adjacent industries and are thinking about adding a sort of a cannabis component or pivoting into cannabis, as I like to say. Any thoughts, pieces of advice that you give them? Either to do it. To not do it, but to think about before they do it based on your learnings and your business.
[00:30:22] Well, I think anything where you're a new adopter, there are advantages and disadvantages.
[00:30:27] I think anybody knew. Adding into it.
[00:30:29] Don't think that just because you're cannabis adjacent, you're gonna avoid all the pitfalls that cannabis companies are running into. Because we. Right. We thought that. But you figure out work arounds. You have to be nimble. You have to be nimble in your idea of how you get around these things. Any obstacle is just it's just something to overcome. It's not a stop. It's not a hard stop. So I think it's worthwhile. I think the more that we expand and reach out and connect, combine other industries and connect other industries, the less of a stigma you have, the more socially acceptable it becomes, the more mainstream it becomes. You know, it demystifies it and it makes it more acceptable. So I would encourage anybody to get into it. Just be aware that being a first adopter of anything, you're going to have to be nimble and think outside the box.
[00:31:14] No, well-spoken. Chris, this has been a pleasure. If people want to find out more about you, about NorCal tour company, what's the best way to get that information?
[00:31:22] So I think we're gonna kind of steer you toward the monsignore experience, a branch of brand, our company.
[00:31:28] So you can go to our website at www.mendoexperience. com. And the same could be said with our Instagram is at mendoexperience and there is a cornucopia of information on our website and you view those lovely party.
[00:31:44] We have every day, every time we go out and we've got a Facebook page, we have a Twitter, we never check.
[00:31:50] We just broadcast.
[00:31:53] Oh well make sure that the website, the Instagram and the Facebook are on the show so people can click through and get that. I'm fascinated. I will certainly come and do a tour the next time and in the area. I think it's just it's a it's a great part of this business. This industry. You know, the kind of the tourism side. I'm quite fascinated what you're doing. And I appreciate the time today. It's been a great conversation.
[00:32:18] It's been great talking to you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you on our tour.
[00:32:24] 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.