Building Your Online Credibility Without Going Back to School
When men want to learn a new skill they get a new job, when women want to learn something new, they go back to school — or so I have found in years of hiring.
In my experience, men were more likely to make offers that they were under-qualified for and plan to fake it until they made it. Overall they were right to do so, if you’re only applying for projects you already know how to do, you’re underselling yourself and stumping your growth. Here’s three methods to build up your credibility, make connections, and learn new skills–without going back to school.
Speak
You’re an expert in something and there are organizations that would love you to share your expertise. Not only will you get great practice at public speaking but the next time a friend of an audience member is looking to hire an expert in your field, you may be the first person they recommend. Most events have moved online and are looking for dynamic speakers that are comfortable on Zoom. Contact the organizers of groups in your lane to get started:
Clubhouse App – as of early 2021 the hottest speaking and listening is happening on Clubhouse. Right now its an iPhone only App that you need to get invited to join. Follow me there as @jazminhupp.
Live Interviews & Podcasts – look for social media influencers who host interviews about similar topics and start following their show. Once you get a sense of it you’re a good fit for their audience, reach out and ask to be interviewed.
Meetup.com – lists thousands of groups on hundreds of topics. You may know nothing about restaurants but there’s plenty of restaurant owners who would love your advice on social media.
Local Chamber of Commerce, co-working spaces, and professional associations – anywhere business owners and managers meet, you need to be.
Conferences & Summits – you may not be ready for the big time but there are thousands of smaller conferences desperate for speakers. Start looking early though, many conference start booking speakers up to year in advance. I’ve booked speaking on smaller online summits within a week.
Publish
I self-published The Inside Guide, my first book. It’s my guide to intentionally using marijuana, MDMA, magic mushrooms, and meditation for healing.
It costs between $1,000-$3,000 to self-publish a print and digital book these days. Although getting picked up by a publisher is better for your resume, there’s no reason not to publish yourself now while you search for a publisher. Don’t think you’ve got enough material or time to write a book? Start a blog in your area of expertise and start writing one post at a time. Soon enough you’ll have enough content to string together into a book.
Volunteer
Want to learn a new skill or polish an old one? Volunteer your skill to the organization of your choice and you’ll get free practice you can add to your portfolio. Plus as you meet people throughout the organization, they’ll remember you next time someone they know is hiring for that skill.
Hackathons are my favorite! They bring together inventors, designers, and coders to create technology over a weekend. Even if you don’t have the skills to participate you can volunteer to help run the event. You’ll meet hundreds of working and freelancing technologists in about 72 hours.
CatchAFire.org – Matches volunteers with non-profits. Plus they’re a women-owned startup based in NYC.
Idealist.org – Lists thousands of volunteer and non-profit jobs throughout the world.
VolunteerMatch – A wide variety of local volunteer opportunities.
Pro Tips
Always keep your business cards handy. Even if you don’t have a current gig, you should have personal cards made out with your name, general skill set/title, email address, and phone number. Add your personal blog, Twitter handle, and LinkedIn profile if you can.
Get business cards from as many people as possible and follow up! Connect on LinkedIn within a week or send them a follow-up email thanking them for you their time and letting them know that you are looking for new opportunities if they hear of anything.
11 Things You Haven’t Tried To Improve Your Website’s SEO
“Best practices are things you should have done if you had thought of them first.”
If all your competitors are doing it already, you won’t get the returns you’re looking for by jumping in late. Try taking best practices from other industries and reusing them. Here’s some lesser-known Search Engine Optimization techniques to try for your site on SquareSpace or Wordpress.
If you aren’t earning traditional press yet, you can increase your search ranking by getting covered by other blogs. Picture above of me on the cover of Dope Magazine, 2016.
How to Advance Your Way Up the Online Media Hierarchy
Here’s how to work your way from nothing to a top-level blog or news source.
Do a Google search for “your industry blog” and “your industry news” and you’ll find the most popular ones. Pick a highly-ranked blog that speaks to your prospects. Then use Google to show sites related to the highly-ranked blog by searching for “related:rankedblog.com.” Less popular related blogs will be returned. Continue to do this until you find the most and least popular blogs with readership communities. Collect these into a list.
Stalk your new blogger friends. Comment on every post they write on your industry and re-tweet their stuff. After a few weeks they’ll start to recognize you as a loyal reader.
Write a post they’ll like on your blog and send it to them. For example, write a deeper-dive into a topic they cover or a clarification of something they wrote. If they repost your piece you’re in! Plus you’ll be the girl they turn to when they need a quote or clarification on your industry.
Now use their repost of your content to trade up to more popular blogs. Most bloggers read all the blogs larger than theirs and a few sites less popular than theirs. Write an email to a more popular blog, “You may have seen my post on LesserBlog.com, I liked your related post, and so I wrote this post.”
Continue trading up until you reach the top blog or media source in your industry.
Get More Shares By Giving Up Comments
You can get more shares if you make sharing the only action available at the end of your post. When someone gets to the bottom of your post, they typically have a couple of choices: commenting, reading a related article, etc. If you make the only option sharing the article with their network, you’ll get more shares. This works especially well with controversial content where your audience wants to add their input but can’t because you’ve removed commenting. Google doesn’t discern between people linking to your page because they disagree or agree with you.
Fast Content Gets Shared Faster
Content that is fast to read will get shared more often and more quickly. Shorter posts rise to the top of Reddit because Reddit takes the velocity of votes into account. So a photo that takes five seconds to read and react to will rise further than a well thought-out post that takes ten minutes to read. So if you have a long article, create an infographic of your top data from the post that you can share everywhere and then link back to your longer article.
Get More Shares By Figuring Out Why Your Audience Really ReTweets
Why do most people actually share your posts? They want to show off that they read your type of content (regardless of whether or not they do). This is why posts by Malcolm Gladwell are tweeted seconds after they’re posted. Your audience wants to show off how smart they are for finding your content and sharing it with their friends (Facebook) or potential bosses (LinkedIn).
Test Keywords Using AdWords Instead of SEO Because It’s Cheaper (Really)
Ranking on your keywords through organic search can take weeks and even months to climb to the top. You can buy the top slot through AdWords and check if the keywords you’ve chosen really convert before investing in a longer-term SEO strategy. Once your keyword terms move into organic search the conversion rate won’t necessarily be the same but this is a great tactic to compare potential keywords against each other.
Swap SEO-Friendly Headlines In After Human-Friendly Headlines
SEO friendly headlines are stuffed with keywords that target searchers. Human-friendly headlines use a teaser proposition, controversial view point, or question to encourage click-throughs and shares. You can post the article with your teaser headline, get a lot of shares, and then switch it to your keyword stuffed headline later. Your article will retain it’s popularity for being shared even after you change the headline.
Optimize Your Bio
What you may not have thought of is optimizing the keywords used in your bio. Try to keyword stuff the link back to your company’s site. So instead of “Jane Smith is Founder of Company.com” try “Jane Smith is Founder of the first Black-owned widget company in New Jersey.”
Links Are Forever
When someone posts about your business but doesn’t link to you, simply contact them and ask. Articles last just as long as the news cycle but links are forever.
Use The Most SEO-Friendly URL For Your Blog
Your blog’s URL should be YourSite.com/Blog for maximum SEO benefit to your site. If you’re in a “serious” business and the term “blog” isn’t appropriate for your target audience, use YouSite.com/Articles or YouSite.com/Research.
How to learn almost anything for free.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” ~ Eric Hoffer
Read A New Book Every Month
John Spence says that the average business person reads one business book every 5 years. If you read 6 business books a year, you’ll be in the top 1% of learners in America. If you read a business book every month, you’ll be in the top 1% of learners in the world. However you can, make reading a monthly goal.
Use Audio Books to listen to books during your commute, workout, or while you do chores (about $15 each or less).
Start a book club with some like-minded colleagues to keep each on top of reading.
Replace Your TV Time
If you haven’t already cut the cord and ditched cable, now is a great time. With the money you save on your cable bill you can still buy your favorite TV shows and stop watching all the junk you’re just filling time with. Have you tried watching these yet?
TED – Instead of watching 20 minute sitcoms, watch 20 minute of the worlds greatest living ideas (free).
Netflix Documentaries – They may not all be unbiased but they’re definitely interesting ($12.99/month).
Clubhouse App – Hosts extensive conversation on every conceivable topic with experts dropping gold (and some cooks). Right now its iPhone only and requires an invitation to join. Follow me on Clubhouse at @jazminhupp.
Take Free Courses Online
Academic Earth is the largest directory of video lectures from universities like NYU, Harvard, and more.
Khan Academy to really learn calculus or finance with easy to follow videos that build on concepts as you go.
iTunes U App – Hosts more than 350,000 free lectures from Stanford, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley and more.
Go Back To School To Defer Your Student Loans
Going to school part-time may be cheaper than paying your student loans. Since you can defer some student loans (some interest-free) while you’re in school at least half-time, it may be cheaper to continue taking classes than stop. I’m not your accountant so do your research first but it’s an excellent excuse to keep taking classes if you’re on a tight budget. Even if you work full-time, you’ll find tons of night classes and online classes that work around any schedule.
Getting Started with Psychedelics Radio Replay
I loooooved doing this interview with Christopher at the Cannabis Connection in Santa Cruz. He asked some great questions for folks who want to get started mindfully with psychedelics. You might be surprised to hear that many of this show’s radio listeners are actually right-leaning farmers.
The beautiful thing about psychedelic work is that it works—for everyone. The molecules don’t care about your politics.
This is a great listen if you’re new to intentional psychedelic work or want to send to a friend who is psychedelic-curious.
Listen below or on Soundcloud for free.
The Top Businesswomen in the Cannabis Industry
Jazmin Hupp – Women Grow was founded in the summer of 2014 by Jazmin Hupp and Jane West. WomenGrow is a national professional network that connects leaders and entrepreneurs in the marijuana industry. The group cultivates female leadership through programs and events across the country. In just a short time the group has grown to 30 chapters nationwide. Hupp is the Executive Director and spends a whopping 35 weeks of every year on the road. “We were attending these cannabis events and we weren’t finding our tribe,” said Hupp. “So we decided to set up these events meant to welcome women into the industry and be the first place they come when they are interested in the industry.” The group is sponsored by companies within the industry and has received commitments from fifty different companies and uses the #First50 to recognize this campaign.
Where To Start Optimization Testing On Your Website
If you're just getting started with web optimization testing or have limited testing resources (hey that's like everybody), which pages you test is the most critical decision you have to make.
If you're just getting started with web optimization testing or have limited testing resources (hey that's like everybody), which pages you test is the most critical decision you have to make. At today's WhichTestWon's Conference I learned from Justin Rondeau that our optimization instincts are probably wrong on where to start testing.
Page Requirements for Optimization Testing
Before you can test a page, it must meet these two requirements:
Does the page get enough traffic to reach statistical significance in a reasonable time frame (1-5 weeks)?
Does the Page Directly Impact Conversation? If Yes, what is the current conversion rate? If No, what is the long term value of the conversion that this page lifts?
Start Lower in Your Funnel
For an eCommerce site, start as late in your conversion funnel as possible. Here's a typical eCommerce funnel:
Entry Pages: These are politically charged since many people may be involved in creating these campaigns, skip optimizing these first.
Category Pages
Search Results
Product Pages
Cart & Checkout: START HERE. Few people will challenge you to improve the cart because carts are just carts. You can create a lot of lift here.
Receipt/Thank You: Rarely tested! Try an up-sell or cross-sell here instead of during checkout.
Next, Where Is Your Landing Money?
Don't start with high bounce rate pages. We know–they're sinking ships that you'd like to save. Not worth your time. Try landing pages for your highest conversion traffic. Or landing pages for your most expensive (PPC) traffic.
Next, Test Your Conversion Path
Now that you've improved the beginning and end of the funnel, now you can test the middle. This means testing your category pages, search result pages, product pages, and so on. Find everything that is stopping people from buying in your funnel and test how to fix it.
Next, PPC Traffic
If you're paying for customers to click on your links, you need to nail the landing page. At a minimum, your page needs to feature what your ad claimed. You'll be surprised at how many people screw this up.
Next, Referral Traffic
Know who is sending you traffic and where they are sending them. Make sure you're meeting the standards that people expect.
Am I Done Yet?
Of course not! Follow WhichTestWon for more testing ideas or get you butt to Austin for the Live Event.
My 28 Days of Kundalini Yoga Training
I had six excuses for why I hadn't completed a Yoga Teacher Training. In August of 2018, I overcame these and completed an intensive Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in New Mexico. Here's what I learned wasn't true at all...
I had six excuses for why I hadn't completed a Yoga Teacher Training. In August of 2018, I overcame these and completed an intensive Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in New Mexico. Here's what I learned wasn't true at all...
I Can't Hold My Arms Up for 3 Minutes & I Can't Sit in Lotus
I thought that yoga teachers needed to be masters of every move before they started teaching. Wow was I wrong! I learned that you don't have to demo the poses for nearly as long as you're asking students to do them. Starting from the same place as many students (can't hold my arms up, can't sit comfortably in easy pose) was actually an advantage. As I learned how to improve my stamina, it was easy to translate that into suggestions for students working on the same thing.
I Don't Do Things I'm Not Already Great At
Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training was the first training I signed up for that I wasn't sure I could complete. Up until this point, I had only chosen to learn things I knew I could be world-class in. The first yoga class I taught was the first bad training I'd given in my life. I was mortified but I learned a ton! It turned out that Yoga wasn't about being perfect. It was about being brave enough to keep trying.
I Don't Wear White
My first career as stage manager in NYC was an all-black clothing affair. I was proud of my elegant, multi-functional, and very black wardrobe. I was resistant to a lifestyle change that required more laundry expertise. During school I discovered you only *need* white when you're officially leading a class so you can get through training with one nice white outfit. Secondly, I found buying white clothing from real people was a joy compared to supporting expensive clothes produced in cheap conditions. Lastly, I got better at laundry. I'm shocked at what OXO/OXY cleaners can get out of white these days.
I Don't Have the Money
The economics of training appeared insane. Not only does it require skipping a month of work but it costs thousands of dollars. And of course at the end of the whole process, yoga teachers rarely make a living wage. Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training taught me to trust. I arrived at my training with not enough money to buy the gas required to drive home if I didn't like it. As I meditated a thousand miles away from my friends and family, they were cheering for me. So by the time graduation came, I had a possibility of selling my company and friends flying in to pay for the road trip home.
I Don't Have the Time
I have learned from my wealthiest friends that having control over how you spend your time is the ultimate luxury. My motivation to attend Yoga Teacher Training was altruistic but in the end I was the one who benefited the most. Time will bend when you add this to your schedule. It's an amazing opportunity to ask for support at home or at work while you do something for yourself. I know you would put in extra effort to help a family member improve their mind, body, and soul so don't be shy about asking your family for help.
I Don't Want to Teach
I was shocked in the first opening circle of training where virtually every person said they were here to deepen their own practice. I was externally-impact oriented so the idea of coming to a yoga teacher training for myself had never occurred to me. They were right and I was wrong. I spent the most time in training deepening my own practice and setting the foundation of a daily home practice. I turned out to be my own best student.
My Best Advice for Female Entrepreneurs
There were 3 things that made being a female leader fundamentally different and frankly I was going about leading the wrong way.
After crossing paths with thousands of female leaders, there were 3 things I learned. There were 3 things that made being a female leader fundamentally different and frankly I was going about leading the wrong way. I've kept this video private for a while because I had barely learned these lessons in time for this speech but this is the best advice I've ever given to female entrepreneurs.
How to Respond to Bad Yelp Reviews
You don’t have to burn it all down just because you got a bad online review.
You don’t have to burn it all down just because you got a bad online review.
Photo from my first year at the Nowhere festival in Spain by Fabio Affuso.
YELP MYTHS
The Majority of Reviews are Negative
83% of reviews on Yelp are positive. From my work on CitySearch and Google Reviews, overall our Yelp audience is more fair.
Yelp Doesn’t Do Anything To Protect Businesses from Questionable Reviews
Consumers can remove review themselves, if the situation was corrected by the business owner
Reviews that violate Yelp guidelines will get removed by the customer support team.
Reviews can’t represent a conflict of interest. If a competitor is writing a review it will be removed.
Reviews must be a first-hand experience. Something that a friend told you about a business will be removed.
Lewd and offensive language gets removed.
About the Review Filter
An automated filter suppresses some reviews. Typically short or intelligible reviews. You cannot manually add or delete reviews from the suppression filter. Yelp is tight lipped about how this works so that no business can abuse or benefit from it.
CONTESTING A REVIEW
There are two methods to contest a review.
Go to yelp.com/contact and select “Questionable Content”. This may take longer but you’ll get an email response back from customer support.
Flag the review on the business page. This will be reviewed faster but you will not get an emailed response about the resolution.
TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
If you have the customer’s contact information, reach out to them directly. If you don’t know how to contact the client, you can go through the Yelp website. There are two methods to respond to reviews posted on your business page: Private & Public. Once you are logged into your http://biz.yelp.com account and uploaded a human photo to your account you can:
Private Messages
A private message is typically the best first step when you receive a negative review.
Thank the customer for the review.
Recognize any positive aspects of the review.
Apologize for the issue.
Let the customer know how you’ve followed up on the issue to resolve their concerns.
Welcome them back to give the business another try
Public Review Comment
Thank them for the feedback.
Address the issue and let them know how you’re fixing it.
Let the world know that you always endeavor to resolve problems like that your business. “Your experience wasn’t our intention.”
Call out anything that might have changed in your business since
RESPONSE TIPS
Don’t Freak Out
Consumers look at the big picture. No business is made or broken in one review, they’re looking at the overall rating.
Potential customers will see you lashing out against your customers which will do more harm than good. The Yelp community may punish you for abusing Yelp users.
Don’t encourage a back-and-forth. Take the high road. Something like: “We’d love to work with you to resolve this situation. If that’s not possible, we respect your opinion and wish you well.”
Should You Respond to Positive Reviews?
If you have time, it’s great to compliment positive reviews as well. Thank the customer for their positive review and let them know you appreciate it.
GETTING MORE REVIEWS
Tell customers you’re on Yelp without telling them to give you a 5 star review.
Tell People Your Business Is On Yelp
Post a “Find Us On Yelp” Badge on your website. Check out Yelp’s Flickr page for badges and logos.
Place Yelp a check-in table topper or check-in card at your business (download from Yelp’s Flickr page).
Add your Yelp page URL to your email signature.
Yelp mails out “People Love Us On Yelp” window clings a few times a years to top reviewed businesses but they are scarce.
Stoney Sunday with Coral Reefer & Jazmin Hupp
This was one of my favorite interviews on women and cannabis. Coral Reefer is the first female cannabis vlogger that I saw build an incredible community to support her. We had tons of fun with this Thanksgiving weekend broadcast in 2015.
This was one of my favorite interviews on women and cannabis. Coral Reefer is the first female cannabis vlogger that I saw build an incredible community to support her. She has since transitioned back to civilian life but we had tons of fun with this Thanksgiving weekend broadcast in 2015. We go into depth on talking to your mom about marijuana. And yes you get to see me dab on camera :)
The Women of Weed
Some of the most successful companies in the cannabusiness were founded by women. Check out the stories of three founders who have already made a significant impact on the burgeoning industry.
While it’s certainly not easy to achieve success in the heavily regulated legal marijuana industry, it’s a field that remains highly accessible to savvy entrepreneurs. That’s especially true in Colorado, which unlike other emerging markets doesn’t have a limit on the number of licenses to grow and sell pot.
The result is an industry with a diverse set of business owners, including a significant contingent of women. Data is hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is far more inclusive than tech and many other hot startup fields.
To ensure the continued presence of women, people from the cannabis industry in 2014 founded Women Grow, a Denver-based network that now has 29 chapters across the United States. Women Grow estimates that about 20 percent of cannabis business owners are women, a number higher than tech but one that still needs work. Co-founders Jane West and Jazmin Hupp tell Inc. that while it’s certainly a challenge, gender equality is a much more attainable goal in the marijuana industry compared with what they encountered in the tech startup world.
“The entrenched patterns were so entrenched that I don’t think technology will ever be an equal playing field for women,” says Hupp, who founded female-focused tech media brand Women 2.0 15 years ago. “When we started to get into cannabis, we realized the industry was already an equal battlefield from the beginning. We had an enormous number of women already in the industry.”
From software companies to large grow facilities, women are represented in leadership positions in the cannabis industry like no other, Hupp and West say. “Cannabis has more female entrepreneurs because it’s nascent,” says West, who is also the founder of cannabis-friendly events company Edible Events Co. “We’re working with a blank slate. Most of these companies didn’t exist five years ago, so there isn’t a patriarchy and nepotism like other industries.”
Below, check out three women who are playing pivotal roles in Colorado’s legal weed industry.
Women In Weed: Legal Marijuana Could Be The First Billion-Dollar Industry Not Dominated By Men
It seems fitting that a plant called Mary Jane could smash the patriarchy. After all, only female marijuana flowers produce cannabinoids like the potent THC chemical that gets users buzzed. Pot farmers strive to keep all their crops female through flowering female clones of one plant, called the Mother. And women are moving into the pot business so quickly that they could make it the first billion-dollar industry that isn’t dominated by men.
…In Colorado and Washington, the key demographic in the legalization movements were 30- to 50-year-old women, according to a study by the Wales-based Global Drug Policy Observatory. “I think women can help demonstrate that it’s a reasonable choice for a lot of people,” Title adds. “And it’s not going to turn you into Cheech or Chong.”
…As pot legalization spreads, women are taking over more roles in the industry. There are female cannabis doctors, nurses, lawyers, chemists, chefs, marketers, investors, accountants and professors. The marijuana trade offers women a shortcut to get ahead in many avenues, and women in turn are helping to organize it as a viable business. Eloise Theisen in Lafayette, California, started the American Cannabis Nurses Association. Emily Paxhia analyzes the cannabis financial marketplaces as a founding partner at the marijuana investment firm Poseidon Asset Management. Meghan Larson created Adistry, the first digital advertising platform for marijuana. Olivia Mannix and Jennifer DeFalco founded Cannabrand, a Colorado-based pot marketing company. In Berkeley, California, three female lawyers—Shabnam Malek, Amanda Conley and Lara Leslie DeCaro—started the National Cannabis Bar Association, and Conley and Malek also started Synchronicity Sisters, which hosts Bay Area “Tupperware parties” to sample pot products made by women for women.
…Women’s presence in the pot industry does more than just close the gender gap—their participation is necessary to legitimize marijuana as a business. “The mom in her 40s is the one with the power to push marijuana into the mainstream once and for all,” says Title, the drug reform attorney.
…But the woman who appears to have united the most women in the marijuana industry this year is Jane West, the founder of Women Grow. West, by her own admission, is “one part Martha Stewart and one part Walter White.” In 2012, she was fired from her corporate job in Denver after vaping on camera in a local news interview. It was the night Amendment 64 passed, making pot legal in Colorado. A clip of the segment played on national TV. Afterward, she launched her own marijuana event-planning company, Edible Events. “When I first entered the industry, I joined all the women’s groups,” she says. “I tried and waited for four months in Denver, but there wasn’t a single meeting. Weed had just become legal, and all of the women in the Women’s CannaBusiness Network told me they were now too busy with their businesses to hold meetings. That’s when I decided to start Women Grow.”
Soon after, she was joined by Jazmin Hupp, whom she met at a National Cannabis Industry Association conference. Hupp had previously started a group for female founders in tech called Women 2.0, the group West modeled Women Grow on.
This past February, West’s newsletter featured an open invitation to accompany her to Washington, D.C., and help lobby Congress for cannabis legalization. She didn’t expect anyone to show, but 78 women—all wearing red scarves to show solidarity—came from 14 different states for the three-day event. Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Representative Jared Polis of Colorado spoke at the news conference Women Grow hosted at the National Press Club.
This month, Representatives Titus and Eleanor Holmes Norton, of the District of Columbia, spoke at Women Grow events. Norton believes groups like Women Grow and the women in the legal pot business increase the chances of federal legalization. She says she’s noticed that the female potrepreneur population is “growing faster than” the marijuana legalization movement itself. She’s equally impressed by the number of women who have entered the D.C. cannabis industry “so early on.” (D.C. legalized recreational marijuana only a few months ago.) “How in the world are there so many women entrepreneurs in this very new commercial field?” she asks. “Women aren’t even seen as particularly entrepreneurial.” She was even more excited about how these women “pioneers” were changing the public perception of the pot business.
For Norton, legalizing marijuana is more than just creating a booming business with gender equity in her district. It’s also about ending the war on drugs and reforming a racially biased criminal justice system. “A concern in the District of Columbia was the disparity in who gets arrested. We think we’ve licked that with the legalization that we have been able to do.
…Titus says Women Grow is inspiring her to bring together other women in Congress to push for legalization and drug reform laws. She’s teamed with Representative Barbara Lee of California, the only other woman who’s advocated for weed in Congress. Will they start their own Women Grow in Congress? “I think that’s a possibility, and that’s what we should be working on,” Titus says. “I have traveled with Barbara in California, and I think she’s amenable to that. So I guess we need to get Eleanor on board too.”
Mother of All Highs
At a soirée on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado, one woman greets her fellow guests with a delicate bowl of vanilla sea-salt caramels, each one laced with marijuana. “It’s quite subtle,” she insists. “I just keep a few in my bag for when I’m feeling stressed out.” Over light chat about family and work, the group quickly cleaned up the bowl.
It is a scene Americans will be accustomed to by about 2025, according to Jazmin Hupp, head of Denver’s Women Grow society. “Once moms are on board, that’s it,” she explains, taking a drag on a hot pink e-cigarette filled with cannabis oil. Her battle cry explains the recent surge in products such as vegan weed bonbons, cannabis kale crisps, cannabis spiced almonds and “high tea”.
Meet 5 of the Most Powerful Women in the Pot Business
It’s high time women took on the industry.
The newest industry in the U.S. may also be the most female-friendly.
In corporate America, women hold about a quarter of leadership roles and less than 5% of CEO positions. But in the fledgling cannabis industry, women make up about 36% of leaders, including 63% of high-level positions at testing labs and half of leadership roles at infused products and processing companies, according to a survey conducted by Marijuana Business Daily.
In honor of 4/20—the 20th of April, which has become an unofficial marijuana holiday in the U.S—Fortune took a look at some of the pot industry’s female pioneers, including a “cannabusiness” investor, a dispensary owner, a grower, and a professional connector.
A “genius entrepreneur,” Jazmin Hupp launched six different companies before entering into the cannabis industry in 2014. Just two years later, WomenGrow, the professional network for women in the cannabis industry that she helped found, has grown to 30 chapters across the U.S. The network’s goal is to increase the number of female business leaders in the nascent industry and keep it from becoming yet another male-dominated corporate sector.
What I Learned Turning Off and Tuning In
See how I learned how to be in a museum, how to Burn in Spain, new psychedelic treatments, the final Summit at Sea, winning licenses, and at the very bottom, everything else I'm up to this year.
Picture of me in a hedgehog onesie on a giant teddy bear from New Years 2016, photo by Jane West.
2016 brought a lot of learning and a lot of joy.
My biggest lesson of 2016 was figuring out how to serve myself first in order to serve everyone else sustainably. People had always warned me about "burning out" but I had never hit my limit. Creating the 2nd Annual Women Grow Leadership Summit in Denver for over 1,200 women was my greatest accomplishment. It was also what broke me.
Although I could have blamed external challenges for breaking me. I realized that all my external challenges were reflections of my own inner struggles. So I went about investing everything I had into working on myself. Yoga, meditation, books, dance, music, purpose-driven leadership, cannabis, psychedelics and the School of Womanly Arts were my practices. We found a new CEO to take over my role at Women Grow on July 1st and I focused on myself full-time.
Leaving the CEO role at Women Grow was the hardest transition I've ever made. The unexpectedly tough part of aligning your personal and professional purpose is allowing them to separate when needed. It took me almost three months just to stop thinking of myself and my role as one.
I ran away to play in Spain, speak in Berlin, camp at Burning Man, and work Symbiosis. I traveled 26 weeks of 2016. I learned a lot.
I learned how to love myself unconditionally. I learned how to stop using food to solve problems that food doesn't solve (and lost 30 pounds). I learned how to stop caring about what people who don't care about me think. I learned how to put myself first every day. I learned how to process dark emotions and self-hatred. I learned to stop over-thinking the past at the expense of being present. I learned I didn't have to be afraid of my full emotional range.
I took six months off for myself. The changes I've made to my mental, physical, and emotional health have just begun to benefit me. I'll be back at the 3rd Annual Women Grow Leadership Summit in a few weeks. I invite you to join me at the summit, Feb 1-3. It’ll be an experience like you’ve never had. Click here for more info.
Scroll down to see how I learned how to be in a museum, how to Burn in Spain, new psychedelic treatments, the final Summit at Sea, winning licenses, and at the very bottom, everything else I'm up to this year.
I Learn By Teaching
I perfected the blend of education, inspiration, and community that encourages women to take huge risks. Over 1,200 women gathered in the Ellie Caulkin's Opera House in Denver to hear 32 speakers, including Melissa Etheridge.
I Learn What Burn-Out Really Is
I was wiped after this event. I couldn't think. We tried to do long-term planning but we had exhausted ourselves and the entire team. It was impossible to follow up on this momentum. I'm so grateful to the so many of you who gave me space during this sensitive period to grow and recover. I was no longer taking care of myself and I had failed to care for my team.
I Learn How to Release
I Learn How to Be in a Museum
Being featured in the Oakland Museum's exhibit on Cannabis in California was a first. You sometimes feel like you're both predicting and making history on days like this. I'm grateful we got over a dozen women featured in this exhibit.
I wrote
You have everything you need to start. Every time you are waiting for another teacher, you are wasting time. Learn in practice, not study.
I Learn to Relax in Europe
Grateful to Bar-Keep for showing me the most diverse Burning Man event in the west. 2,000 Europeans gathered on a small plane in the Spanish desert for a week in scorching July to build a humble city and party down.
Grateful for the invitation to speak at Tech Open Air in Berlin. I got to debut my talk on "Clarifying Your Calling with Cannabis" to a packed house.
Grateful to edge pushers like Cindy Gallop on "Why the Next Big Thing in Tech is Disrupting Sex" if you want to know what's up after cannabis.
I Learn About Relationship...
Excerpt from More Than Two
Grateful for the many books I read on relationship this year...including American Savage, Goddesses Never Age, The Law of Attraction, The Art of Everyday Ecstasy, and More Than Two.
Learning at the Burn
Getting the bus tuned up before we leave for the Burn.
Playa-bound!
For my fourth Burning Man, I attended for 10 days and lead a camp of 35. Friends from across the world came. I learned to run my first electrical grid (with lots of trial and error). I found a pair of exceptional Tantra Energy Teachers and became enraptured with their workshops.
I Learn About Fear & Love
John Lennon and I share a birthday in October and this thought
"There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."~ John Lennon
I Learn About Psychedelic Treatments at Horizons
The Horizons conference presented research on MDMA & psychedelics from celebrated universities...NYU, Columbia, John Hopkins.
Multiple studies showed patients experiencing up to 8 months of relief from symptoms with just one "magic mushroom" therapy experience. These "peak spiritual experiences" were leading to increased positive attitudes, altruism, and deeper development of social relationships.I was seeing that we had extended our physical bodies past our ability to fill our lives with meaning. Alzheimer's disease was preventable if we stayed mentally active and engaged. These patients showed how spirituality was actually a component of health, particularly at end of life.
I Learn Prototyping in November
I took Prototyping for Creative Innovation with Megan Goering, formerly of Google. We ran through prototyping techniques and tests until we could do them by habit.I wrote out dozens and dozens of business ideas and then weighted them on factors like start-up costs and market size. I began testing messaging of all the different things. The cannabis helps with ideation but didn't make narrowing down any easier.
I Learn About Sex & Sugar at Sea
On the eve of the election, I boarded a cruise ship for 3,000 "innovators" and we sailed out to the Caribbean. Marijuana was legalized in six states but we were all shocked by the Presidential election. We gathered to build new ways to a future we all want to live in. We workshop. We dance. We drink. We eat. We snuggle.
I attend panels like "Sugar is the New Tobacco" and learn from Dr. Dean Ornish that 86% of 3 trillion dollars spent in healthcare are spent on chronic care for mostly reversible conditions. We've created a food system, which externalizes all the costs of eating cheap food that causes illness.
Dr. Ornish reveals that "bad habits" are developed to deal with the isolation of modern life. He uses lifestyle as treatment by asking people to eat well, stress less, move more, and love more. He's found that fear is not a sustainable motivators for people to change bad habits. You have to fill the voids those habits leave with even more joyful and pleasurable motivators.
I Learn Good Work Pays Off in December
Grateful to the Women Grow community in the Bay Area celebrating two years.
Grateful for the dispensary license process in Maryland where two teams I had advised won licenses.
Get Free Press For Your Startup With Original Data
Getting traditional PR coverage is hard! As new startups flood journalists with lame press releases, how do you stand out from the pack? Will Flaherty of SeatGeek taught "Data Driven PR" at General Assembly today.
Startups have a treasure trove of valuable, propriety data regarding some aspect of their given vertical. When packaged in a digestible and usable format to the right journalists, it will get you mentioned. Although it may not be a love story about your company, it will get you more free press.
What kind of data do you have?
Demographics about your audience
Trends in your marketplace
What Your Data Can Lead To
Print: Stories were created from data sent to individual writers.
Radio
TV: Since television is a visual medium, they place the highest value on giving them someone who is immediately available to be on camera. This means you need someone who can talk knowledgeably and is willing to meet a camera crew wherever local news crews are.
Infographics: These are produced by SeatGeek and take about 15-20 hours to produce. You'll notice in their Final Four infographic that they partnered with Seamless to get even more interesting data.
How to Pitch Data
Create a couple of hypotheses around a topic that your audience might find newsworthy. SeatGeek picks a type of event and location to focus their analysis on based on which news outlets they want to attract. It's faster to chase existing stories in news (like the Super Bowl) and provide data to earn mentions. SeatGeek has also done well digging up deep data on an original story to get higher quality mentions.
Pull the raw numbers into something like Excel and analyze it while keeping an open mind for new findings.
Synthesize the trends you're seeing in the data. What are the changes over time, locations, etc. Write compelling punch bullet points.
Create a visual element (graph/infographic) to convey your data in a different and powerful way. (Don't forget to include your logo & URL on the graphic)
Push the pitch out to interested journalists, bloggers, and media members.
Building Your List of Media Members To Pitch
Find the media members who are writing stories in your locale/vertical/etc. If you know one site that perfectly epitomizes the readership you're looking for, copy their URL. Then do a Google search for "related:URL.com" to see the sites that are similar to them.
Most of the time, their email address will be listed on their stories or website. If not you can use a few tricks to find it.
If they work for an organization with a common email structure like first.last@company.com you can use that. You can use Gmail tools like Rapportive to confirm your guess.
You can search the journalist's tweets for their email address using sites like Snap Bird. Just enter the target's Twitter name and the search term "email".
How to Contextualize Your Data Points
Comparison: How do prices/demand/profits compare to others or past? How do customers in your area compare to other areas?
Superlatives: Most expensive/popular thing in X years.
Trends: How is prices/profits/demand changing over time.
If Statements: If you bought all components individually would it be cheaper than buying them individually? If you had bought this widget it the past, what would it be worth now?
Use Google Alerts to track what are popular story topics in your industry.
Writing Your Pitch
Punchy, description subject line. Use an actual data point that will stand out to a journalist drowning in story pitches.
Personalized opening paragraph. Make it clear this isn't a stock email to hundreds of people. Mention your specific relationship with them whenever possible.
Crisp, clear data points. Write in complete sentences (that the journalist can copy) and bold the numbers you're pitching.
Always provide a link. Encourage the journalist to link to your site by providing a landing page that supports the story (hopefully a page that puts readers a click away from a transaction with you).
Give them a method to follow up. Make yourself available to provide more data or provide a quote. Will uses a Google voice number that forwards to his cell phone (which I thought would be great for scaling later on, if you want to have different folks answer at different times).
Check It Out
OkCupid (a dating site) pulled aggregated data on their users to create buzz-worthy blog posts and earn press mentions in the New York Times.
Yipit (a daily deal aggregator) has become the go-to source on daily deal industry metrics. They produce detailed data reports that they sell to the other daily deal sites and the financial community.
15 of the Most Powerful Women In the Weed Industry
Jazmin Hupp is one of the co-founders of Women Grow (along with fellow list-er Jane Wes). Founded in Denver, Colorado, in August 2014, Women Grow holds networking events in 45 cities across the United States and Canada for the sole purpose of allowing those (especially women, obviously) interested in the cannabis industry to connect with and meet others to help them build and create their dream. “It’s a really great industry for women which is absolutely the truth, but it isn’t a story that would be necessarily the case without us,” says Hupp, of the organization she helped created.
When asked what advice she’d give to other women looking to break into the industry, she answered without pause: “Move to California.” If you’re interested in the cannabis industry but not quite ready to pack up your bags, Hupp advises attending Women Grow’s annual summit. This year’s conference takes place in February in Denver: “There’s no other time when we bring over 1,000 women in cannabis.”
The Women Hoping to Become New York’s Pot Moguls
Last year, whenever women asked Jazmin Hupp about starting a medical-marijuana business in New York, she responded with a question: “Do you have a million dollars?” Hupp is the founder of Women Grow, a professional network for women with marijuana businesses, and she’s used to helping others get their start in a male-dominated industry. New York, however, was especially daunting. The state was licensing only five companies to participate in its medical-marijuana program, and each would be required to grow its own marijuana, process the flowers into a pill or oil at a manufacturing plant, and then sell the final product at four dispensaries around the state. The costs of vertical integration are enormous, and it is historically more difficult for women to raise capital than men. None of the women who called Hupp had the funding they needed — until Amy Peckham and her daughters Hillary and Keeley called her last September. “Do you have a million dollars?” Hupp asked. “Yes,” said Amy. “Yes, we do.”
The Peckham women are like characters from a Jenji Kohan script that was workshopped by a Lean In circle. They come from a wealthy family in Westchester County. Amy Peckham is a compact blonde woman who raised four children; sat on the board of Peckham Industries, her husband’s construction-material company; and started a family foundation. When the New York legislature was poised to pass a medical-marijuana program in the spring of 2014, she called her daughters Hillary and Keeley and suggested the Peckham women branch out on their own. She had been waiting for New York to legalize medical marijuana after watching her mother suffer from ALS without access to the drug. Hillary, a senior at Hamilton College, was an easy recruit: Who else was going to offer her a job as the chief operating officer of a new company?* Meanwhile, Keeley was 25 and trying to start a horticultural therapy in New Orleans when her mother called. “I wouldn’t come back without a greenhouse,” she said, so her mother offered her a job as chief horticultural officer. They called the company Etain, after a heroine from Irish mythology. Amy was named the CEO.
CannaInsider Interview with Jazmin Hupp
In this podcast from 2015, I share all the information on why women will be successful at running cannabis businesses and how to get started.
In true Cannabis social media fashion, the CannaInsider was banned from YouTube in the years since this podcast from 2015. The transcript still remains though! In it, I share all the information on why women will be successful at running cannabis businesses and how to get started.
Full Transcript
Matthew: Hi, I’m Matthew Kind. Every Monday and Wednesday look for a fresh episode where I’ll take you behind the scenes and interview the leaders of the rapidly evolving cannabis industry. Learn more at www.cannainsider.com. That’s www.cannainsider.com. Are you looking for a fulfilling and lucrative career in the cannabis industry? Visit www.cannainsider.com/careers. That’s www.cannainsider.com/careers.
Now here’s your program. Women Grow connects, educates and empowers cannabis industry leaders by creating community and events for aspiring and current business executives. I am pleased to welcome Jazmin Hupp, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Women Grow to CannaInsider today. Welcome Jazmin.
Jazmin: Thank you so much for having me.
Matthew: Sure. To give us a sense of geography where are you today?
Jazmin: I am mostly based out of a suitcase. Today I am in New York City. Women Grow was founded in Denver. The majority of our national staff are there, but I have bases in New York City and San Francisco, but I’m mostly on the road. We have chapters operating in 20 cities, and my goal is to visit every city at least once a year.
Matthew: Wow. For listeners that may not have heard of Women Grow in the past, can you just give us a high level overview of what it is?
Jazmin: Sure. Women Grow is a professional networking organization that supports female leaders in all segments of the cannabis industry. Our goal, as you said, is to connect, educate and empower women to lead America’s fastest growing industry. Our largest program is the signature networking events which our held on the first Thursday of every month in 20 cities across the country. We also hold cooperative events with the top conferences, host webinars, publish a lot of content. And on February 12th we recently brought together 76 women in cannabis in Washington, D.C. Then I flew to San Francisco, held an event for 200 entrepreneurs and investors called Creating Cannabis Products for Women featuring 6 of the top female cannabis business owners in the Bay Area. And then I went to the Emerald Triangle and met with women organizing in Humboldt. That’s a pretty typical month for me in Women Grow.
Matthew: Jazmin you’re so lazy. We’re going to have to talk to somebody about that.
Jazmin: Of course.
Matthew: Now I want to rewind a little bit. I want to talk about the, you know, making cannabis products more friendly to women, but I want to rewind a little bit to back in the very beginning with you and Jane. What was the impetus to start Women Grow? What was the conversation you were having with Jane, and how did women grow spark? What was the first spark where you said we got to do this?
Jazmin: Sure. And you’ve interviewed Jane before so I will have to reference your listeners to her edition to get her perspective on it because of course it’s a little different from mine. But Women Grow was announced at NCIA’s national conference last June by Jane, and I was sitting in the audience. Jane had organized the top women business owners in Colorado who wanted more women to join the industry but had run out of steam to do it in their spare time.
She had been producing events for international organizations like UNICEF and G Medical. I had launched six businesses before this and had about a decade of practice in branding and communications. And I had been working with an organization called Women 2.0 based in the Bay Area. And Women 2.0’s mission was to get an equal amount of venture capital funding for women in technology, and I had helped Women 2.0 from grow from the Bay Area to do events in 6 countries for about 100,000 entrepreneurs. But even after 9 years of Women 2.0 only about 4% to 6% of venture capital funding goes to women which severely limits the types of technology products we see on the market. The script for how technology funding worked had already been written and it wasn’t inclusive. Coincidentally Jane had fashioned the Women Grow launch after Women 2.0. So we decided it was meant to be and started collaborating right away.
Matthew: Great idea. Now there are a lot of different areas under the cannabis umbrella where women can get involved, but they may not be aware of all the different ways they can get involved in the cannabis industry. Could you name a few to help add some color around that?
Jazmin: Sure. Well your audience is probably a lot more sophisticated about the types of cannabis businesses out there because you’re interviewing all these great people. But a lot of people start out thinking that there’s only two jobs in cannabis. Either you’re producing cannabis products or you’re selling them. And the truth is that this is a multibillion dollar industry with dozens of different specialties.
Some of the areas that I don’t see a lot of competition in, but I think women are particularly great at are cloning banks, trim crew services, HR services, marketing and training. We have a webinar that should be available by the time this podcast is released. It goes into depth about all the different industry opportunities and how to decide which one might be right for you.
Matthew: Great point. We also interviewed one of the founding members of Women Grow from Cannabis Trainers, Maureen McNamara. And she’s an excellent trainer. So that’s to your point, you know, there is a lot of opportunities in training as the other aspects you mentioned. Now for women that are in states where cannabis is currently not legal, what should they do? Should they just wait or is there any opportunities to get started doing something now?
Jazmin: Yeah, you’ll notice that a lot of the successful business owners in cannabis actually came from the legalization movement. Working to legalize in your state will instantly connect you with other like minded people, educate you on all the issues and give you the confidence to move forward. Additionally having women help write this legislation make it more likely that the final results appeal to women who are often cited as the swing vote in legalization. And it helps make sure that the final results are fair and inclusive.So if you’re in a prohibition state, find the legalization organizations near your and volunteer. Some of the groups that we partner with are NORML, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Marijuana Policy Project, MAPS which is the Multidisciplinary Associate for Psychedelic Studies and so on. And so get connected with those folks and start volunteering and start making a difference.
Matthew: That’s an excellent point about the volunteering and activism because you are dead right. There is so many people I’ve met that are really leaders in the space from a commercial side that have their origin story in the activism. So it was a natural progression. So a lot of people out there what are listening that are wondering how to get in that is an excellent suggestion. Now you were recently at Lobby Days, what is that and why is it important?
Jazmin: We just had our first annual Lobby Day event, and it was a fantastic experience for everybody that attended. To steal a line from my friend Joe Brezny, “If you’re in the marijuana business, you are now also in the policy business”. And the cannabis industry is one of the most closely regulated, and we don’t expect that to change any time soon. Unlike most developed industries where multibillion dollar companies pay hoards of lobbyists, there are actually few lobbyists involved in cannabis. So each individual person can actually make a big impact on how we get to serve patients. After 80 years of Reefer Madness, the staffers creating marijuana policy may know very little about what we do and why we do it. So we have to show up and tell them.As you would expect from an industry that is legal at the state level but illegal federally, there are a lot of conflicts to be resolved in a short term. So as your listeners probably know, access to banking for cannabis businesses is spotty at best. One of our founding members,Brook leads the Live Green Group in Colorado, and they’ve lost 34 bank accounts over the last five years. Last year they did over $10 million in revenue and didn’t have banking services for half of that. So forcing these cannabis businesses to be conducted in cash benefits no one, and that’s why we were there supporting HR 2652 which is the Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act of 2013. Notice it’s of 2013 because we’re still trying to get this passed.The second major conflict that we were working on is the section of the tax code called 280E. I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with 280E.
Matthew: Sure, you can cover that briefly.
Jazmin: Well so 280E prohibits businesses involved with drug trafficking from deducting normal business expenses from their income. This was written so that drug cartels couldn’t write off their speed boats for example. Unfortunately the IRS has interpreted that to apply to our state legal cannabis businesses. So many dispensaries pay 50% to 70% of their net income, not profit, income in federal taxes because they can’t write off salaries, health insurance, retirement benefits, business equipment, rent, marketing, utilities, so on. Cannabis business owners want to pay their fair share of taxes, but we need to make it fair.
Matthew: Gosh that is totally unfair. You’re right. Now you have somewhat of a controversial position on women’s purchasing decisions of cannabis. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jazmin: Yes. Women are going to be the dominant cannabis product buyers after national legalization. Right now it appears that more men than women consume cannabis, but that’s mostly related to its illegal status and the types of products on the market, not because there’s anything about cannabis that’s better for men versus women. Once prohibition is lifted cannabis products become just like any other household good, and we know women already control the majority of household spending. On top of that women are more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, more like to try alternative health therapy, and are more likely to be in charge of the wellness decisions for their families. One on five women will face depression. One in eight will face breast cancer. There is no scenario where I can imagine where women don’t become the dominant buyers of cannabis products.
Matthew: Right so make your cannabis products very women friendly and how do they do that?
Jazmin: Well the first step is to get more diversity on your leadership and marketing teams. Having an inclusive team where people of all genders and colors are heard are going to help you make the best decisions day in and day out for your brand to attract an inclusive audience. I especially encourage you to pick a woman to run your social media marketing. We’re seeing a ton of brands take the easy route for quick attention by posting bikini babes with bongs. If you’re treating women like decoration to attract men instead of serious customers, you’re missing out on a loyal audience. A loyal audience that very few brands are actively serving. I think anyone who probably picked up a podcast with Women Grow on it gets this, and I can’t wait to see the new products and services you come up with. The guys with their heads stuck in the sand will be quickly surpassed.
Matthew: Now is there any examples you’ve seen recently of companies that have put out in the market women friendly cannabis products that you were impressed with?
Jazmin: Absolutely. We’re seeing a lot of great work being done on the edibles front to serve a more diverse customer than just candies or cookies. So in Colorado one of our founding members is Julie Dooley, and Julie’s Baked Goods specializes in gluten free edibles with no refined sugar. Which honestly she was just a patient on the market who had to be gluten free herself due to a health concern, and there were no products available on the market for her. And so she brought those products out to the market and they’re wildly popular. We have another brand called Auntie Delores out of California who sponsors Women Grow who is going to rapidly expand into multistate operations because they’re creating products that just nobody else was in a brand that’s friendly to both men and women.
Matthew: You know one other thing that Julie Dooley is doing that’s interesting is she actually names the strain too on her edibles so you know exactly, it allows you to dial in your experience which is very helpful which I don’t see a lot of edibles doing. I know Julianna and Lauren at Auntie Delores, you know, they talk a lot about their ingredients and being very transparent with the ingredients and that’s helpful. And they also talk about, you know, doing things that other people aren’t doing. They’re like hey there’s a lot of chocolate bars out there, we’re not going to make a chocolate bar. So being innovative in that way I think really helps you stand out. So great points. Now Women Grow is still a young organization. Where do you see it going? I mean even since we had Jane on, maybe Q3 of last year, it’s changed. The scope has changed. How are things evolving? Where do you see it going in the next few years?
Jazmin: I mean it was just since you’ve interviewed her we really seen what an amazing opportunity we have to create a new industry with a new script that’s diverse from the very very beginning. This is an industry that’s going to serve people of all colors, of all genders, of all ages, and the best way to do that is to invite all of those people into the industry. So from our humble beginnings as a professional networking organization we’re now working to create programs to push women into the cannabis and up to the top.
Our monthly events in 20 cities are a great introduction to the cannabis industry for women. They can learn a bit about the industry in a supportive environment without quitting their day job or investing $1,000 up front. We hope that our events and content online are part of a very successful research phase that convinces them to get their first job or launch their first company in cannabis. From there we hope they attend one of our national events like our leadership summit which teaches women how to grow and expand their businesses to rise to the top of the market. And we’re just going to keep going from there.
Matthew: So walk me through what it’s like to attend a Women Grow event. For someone that’s walking in for the first time, what can they experience? What’s it like? What do they do? How long do they last? What’s the vibe like?
Jazmin: So our monthly networking events in these 20 cities across the United States are the first Thursday of every month. So you have a consistent time and place that you can plan to, you know, make your first entry or your fifth entry into the cannabis market. And that was something that no other organization across the country was offering was a consistent, pre-planned time to meet which seems so simple, but consistency is one of the things that this industry is lacking on many levels.
So when you arrive we hope that you will be greeted with a crowd that is the exact opposite in ratio from what you would see at a typical cannabis industry event. The majority of cannabis industry events are about 80% men and 20% women, and our events are the exact flip of that. So you’re going to have 80% women and about 20% men at our events. You’re going to have time to mix and mingle. And again these people tend to be very open and welcoming. The marijuana industry is blue ocean right now, blue sky. There’s no reason for us to even treat each other like competition because the market is going to be large enough that there is room for everyone right now. And then we listen to an industry speaker and get a current perspective on what’s going on in the market.
This is an industry that’s difficult to research online. Remember it was illegal not too long ago, and it’s still illegal in a lot of states. So there’s not a ton of information available online. You really do have to show up in person and talk to the folks doing this and do the research on your feet to really get a sense of where the market’s going and where you might belong in it. So you’ll get some great information from an industry speaker. And then we do some sort of activity at almost every meeting that will force you to introduce yourself to as many people as possible. So for example my meeting here in New York, we go around the room and everyone gets up for 15 seconds and just says who they are and what they’re interested in so that after we have the speaker people can just jet over to meeting new people. When is the last time you went to a networking event and knew all 50 people in the room, that’s the type of event that we hope to create.
Matthew: Do you have an example of a woman that came to Women Grow and didn’t have any background or history in the cannabis industry and was successful in kind of breaking into it, because I want to leave listeners with actionable information or examples on how they can get into it. You mentioned a little bit about the social media and women tend to gravitate to that because they’re good at it. That’s an excellent way you can provide value I think out of the gate. Do you have any other examples of how women kind of busted into the industry with no previous background into it?
Jazmin: Sure. I think a lot of people think that you know you had to be an underground grower for the last 20 years to be a part of this industry, but the truth is the vast majority of people getting into this industry are new to the industry. They’ve got great professional backgrounds in maybe related fields, but being new doesn’t make you unqualified. It just makes you kind of like everybody else. And so one example is we had a member come out to our Denver chapter named Lauren Gibbs, and she runs a business that does social media strategy and was able to very quickly assess what the cannabis industry needed in comparison to our other clients, and now has cannabis clients within her larger social media strategy business.
Matthew: Now there’s a lot of cannabis companies out there that are looking to get their brand out there in a national way, and you offer some sponsorship opportunities that I think do this well because everything is so compartmentalized in states or cities. Can you talk a little bit about the sponsorship opportunities you have?
Jazmin: Absolutely. Like you said there are very few national organizations in cannabis. I actually was just in Humboldt County last week, and the women there asked me well what are the women doing at a national level. How are the women organizing at a national level? And I kind of looked over my shoulder and I was like oh shoot we are the women organized at a national level. There really isn’t anybody else. And that applies to the industry in general is that there’s only a very few organizations working on a national, and we’re lucky enough to be one of those.
We’ve been really fortunate to have nearly 50 companies come out to support making cannabis an inclusive industry, and in order to make our events as affordable as possible we depend on this companies who want to be known for attracting female customers and female employees to sponsor us, and that covers the majority of our expenses. So if anything I’ve said resonates with you and you want to be part of creating something awesome, email Julie@womengrow.com to talk about those sponsorship options. The cannabis industry will never be this small again. And so your small gesture now can make a big change to our collective future.
Matthew: And before we close, you were just on a bunch of trips all around the country. Can you just give us a few nuggets of what you learned or key takeaways, you know, visiting different people in different parts of the country?
Jazmin: Oh wow. I mean I think the thing that you learn the most is that this is a very very local industry, and what is so stunning to me is how different everything is, you know, in Colorado versus Washington and Washington versus California. And then once you get within California the difference between Humboldt and L.A. they’re just different planets. So I guess my first advice is to recognize that to the outside world we may look like one cohesive industry, but there is actually so much happening and so much that varies depending on the local level, and that’s why we do have these local chapters that can talk to people about what’s happening locally in their state because a program that I might give in San Francisco that generates a ton of interest… so for example we did Creating Cannabis Products for Women for 200 in San Francisco and we got great feedback from people who said yes I’m going to start my business now, yes that really encouraged me to start fundraising, yes that was exactly what I wanted to hear. And then I drove up to Humboldt and started talking to women there about becoming executives and leading the industry and they were like hold the phone, we don’t think of ourselves as executives. We think of ourselves as farmers. We don’t think of, you know, we’re not out here to lead an industry. We’re out here to protect our families and to protect our livelihood. It’s just a whole different mindset and a whole different set of priorities. So I think the first tip is just to remember just how actually diverse the industry is.
Matthew: Now for women listening right now, you said 20% of the people that come to you, the different chapters are men, do men come? What are the reasons that men come?
Jazmin: Men come because they are very smart and they know that what we’ve got going on is pretty powerful. Many come just as a support to a female executive on their team. The guys who come they tell me that they understand how well connected and how fiercely intelligent the women are that are a part of this industry, and they want to be a part of that. They’re looking for female cofounders. They’re looking to add women to their team, and we’re a great event for that.
Matthew: Now as we close how can listeners learn more about Women Grow online?
Jazmin: Definitely go to www.womengrow.com and sign up for our list. That’s how we publish all of our future events, all of our content. Go to our blog and just read everything I’ve ever written about how to research the industry, how to figure out what event is right for you in the industry. We also encourage you to make a plan to attend a national conference this year if you haven’t already attended a national conference. It’s a great way to give you a good picture of the industry, and we host kick off events for the largest of the national conferences. So you can join us in May in Chicago. In June we’ll be in both New York City and Denver, and in November we’ll be in Las Vegas, and we do these kick off events to set you up to be more successful and make connections there. You can also follow Women Grow on Facebook and on Twitter.
Matthew: Jazmin thanks so much for being on CannaInsider today. We really appreciate it.
Jazmin: Absolutely. Thank you Matt.
Matthew: If you enjoyed the show today, please consider leaving us a review on iTunes, Stitcher or whatever app you might be using to listen to the show. Every five star review helps us to bring the best guests to you. Learn more at www.cannainsider.com/itunes. What are the five disruptive trends that will shape the cannabis industry in the next five years? Find out with your free report at www.cannainsider.com/trends. Have a suggestion for an awesome guest on www.cannainsider.com, email us feedback at cannainsider.com. We would love to hear from you.
Weed Entrepreneurs Woo Women In Bid To End The Ganja Gender Gap
When Jazmin Hupp was searching for a container for her marijuana at the Cannabis Cup trade show in Denver, all she could find were boring, utilitarian glass jars.
So she asked a vendor at one of the booths if he had anything more elegant. He offered to make her a jar in pink.
Her immediate conclusion: “You guys need some help.”
Hupp’s experience may shed some light on why women account for only about a third of heavy and moderate cannabis users, even as they make up about half of occasional consumers, according to the Brightfield Group, a market-research firm. Women like Hupp say that’s partly because current pot purveyors aren’t offering the products they want and are marketing in ways that annoy them.
She’s now among a group of entrepreneurs seeking to close the ganja gender gap, which represents a huge sales opportunity in an industry that researcher ArcView projects will grow more than sevenfold to $21 billion in the next five years.
Winning over women will require more than just churning out pink bongs. Women use marijuana differently, often preferring alternatives to lighting up joints. Health foods like cannabis-infused juices and raw salads are becoming increasingly popular, as are creams and salves containing the drug. For women who still want to inhale their pot, vaporizers have become the go-to method.