Hemp-trepreneurship with Tyler Hoff
Business as UNusual Ep 23 - Season 3 Transcript
[00:00:00] Aicila: Hi, welcome to Business as UNusual. I'm here today with Tyler Hoff of hemp aware and bulk hemp warehouse. Welcome Tyler.
[00:00:09] Tyler: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, Aicila.
[00:00:13] Aicila: Well, and Tyler had to be patient with me. We first talked about this a couple of months ago, and then I hurt my back. I don't recommend. that happens when you're over 20, 30, or even 40. One might be, so thank you for your patience. And we're going to talk about. A hemp trepreneurial journey. Hemp trep hemp trep trep prah. Hemp hemp trepreneurial journey. You gotta say that. I gotta see if you can say it.
[00:00:45] Tyler: Hemptrepreneurial journey. Yeah,
[00:00:49] Aicila: Schooled right here on my own podcast. So Tyler Has been a hemp, hemp entrepreneur. No, there's no easy way to say this. I see why you did that. [00:01:00] An entrepreneur in the hemp industry, for some long period of time, which do you want to give a little bit of that backstory? Cause it's kind of intriguing.
[00:01:14] Tyler: originally discovered hemp when I was 12. So just turned 40 this year, and, When I was 12, I was raised in Southern California, which is, just a hotbed of, of health and wellness and alternative therapies and all sorts of cutting edge things. And I used to do like bracelets, necklaces, and macrame type stuff with hemp twine.
[00:01:45] Tyler: And that was my introduction to hemp. And I also was aware of the cannabis side of things because it was just everywhere. And so I kind of knew about cannabis. I knew about hemp in the context of twine. [00:02:00] And. I one day had a sort of life altering experience that got me to really question reality and like, what's my purpose?
[00:02:11] Tyler: Why am I here? What's the meaning of life? And start asking those very deep questions that a teenager doesn't often ask. And I knew that I wanted to do something with my life because of having these deep questions. And I saw the sort of death and destruction of our environment and the wars that were happening.
[00:02:37] Tyler: And I thought, you know, it would just be so nice to create more peace on earth. And that's kind of what began my journey of like finding a way to create more peace in people's lives. And I was a musician. And so I thought music was going to be the way that I did that because music is harmony. And so I started doing [00:03:00] shows.
[00:03:00] Tyler: I learned the guitar and singing and I. Would create CD covers and flyers and do promotional type stuff and quickly realized that making a difference and a dollar is not easy. And so over the years, from about the age 12 till I was 17, I kind of struggled with. How to create peace in people's lives.
[00:03:28] Tyler: And music was amazing. I loved playing music, but just that struggle of making a living, playing music was real. And so one day my grandmother brought home some hemp protein powder from the health food store. And already knowing about hemp, I was like intrigued by this plant and what it could do.
[00:03:49] Tyler: But when I experienced this hemp protein powder, I was like, wow, this is not only clothing, it can provide medicine. But now I've [00:04:00] realized it's also a food product. And that's when the light bulb went off for me. I was intrigued and fascinated and was like, I'm going to be a hemp. Entrepreneur at the time, I didn't say hemp entrepreneur, but I eventually coined that word and had the opportunity and blessing of being able to go on a trip, but when I was 20, traveling the world, learning about all the different aspects of hemp, I went to hemp museums and I went to hemp hostels and hemp shops and hemp farms, and just gathered as much information and education around this plant as I could.
[00:04:39] Tyler: And eventually brought that back to the States and started doing Hemp A Wear parties. And I'm not sure if your listeners Or you are familiar with Tupperware parties, but I kind of coined the word Hemp A Wear party and started doing fashion shows and educational [00:05:00] demonstrations of all of the ex Hempels of what you can do with hemp and got together families and kids and musicians and other hemp companies to demonstrate their, Products and just made it a really fun educational experience.
[00:05:17] Tyler: And so it evolved over the years. I did sales and marketing and branding for other hemp companies. And eventually it grew into hemp aware as a marketing branding and educational platform for hemp entrepreneurs. And in 2012, my beloved hempress Dodie and I created bulk hemp products. Warehouse, which is our physical hemp seed and fiber product distribution company.
[00:05:45] Tyler: So that's kind of my life story in a hemp nutshell.
[00:05:52] Aicila: That sounds like an interesting journey, a lot of clarity for where, you started. I don't feel like a lot of us start with that much clarity and stay in the same place, I guess. I had [00:06:00] clarity and then it, it expanded.
[00:06:01] Tyler: That clarity really came from having a mentor and a couple of different mentors, teachers in my life. That pointed me in the right direction of knowing how to get clear about your definite chief aim in life. I had a teacher that introduced me to the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
[00:06:26] Tyler: And in that book, he talks about having a purpose and a definite chief aim in life and getting that clarity and having a plan. And so, at a very young age, I realized if I want to help the planet, I have to plan it. And so I created a plan and this, definite focus in life. And the word decision actually means to cut off.
[00:06:50] Tyler: options to decide. It means to cut off. And so when you have that clear focus and purpose in life, it allows you to not get [00:07:00] distracted by all the other possibilities.
[00:07:03] Aicila: Mm hmm. That's wise. So hempaware, what does that do?
[00:07:10] Tyler: It started out as an educational platform and eventually evolved into specifically focusing on. Helping hemp entrepreneurs and hemp CEOs and hemp marketers to market their company and really get clear about who they're serving, why they're serving them, what makes them unique and different from other businesses in their niche.
[00:07:36] Tyler: And we provide a hemp marketing platform. It's a way for them to organize all of their marketing channels and automate a lot of that through the power of AI. Right. And then we provide additional marketing strategy and brand strategy for them to execute different sales campaigns, marketing campaigns, [00:08:00] and really speak to that ideal customer.
[00:08:03] Tyler: We have, a few different levels of service, whether it's the do it yourself, the done with you, or the do it for you models.
[00:08:13] Aicila: That's a good spectrum. I think it gives people some place to figure out where they land and find the right package. And then bulk hemp warehouse. I I think I know what it is, but you never know.
[00:08:24] Tyler: So the hemp aware model is a service based approach, like helping existing Hemp companies to better market and brand their products, find their ideal customers and provide the platform for them to do that. And then bulk hemp warehouse is a physical hemp seed and fiber products distribution company.
[00:08:46] Tyler: So we help small, medium, and large businesses to integrate. Hemp raw materials into their visions and dreams and really help bring their products and projects to life with hemp [00:09:00] seeds, like hemp seed products like hemp protein powder, hemp seed oil, and. other hemp seed based products. And then on the fiber side of things, it's anywhere from raw hemp herd material or hemp bast fiber.
[00:09:16] Tyler: So whether you're doing plastics or hemp animal bedding or hemp fabrics or hemp twine, hemp rope, they've got these raw hemp fiber materials that allow you to integrate them into your products and product lines. Yeah.
[00:09:35] Aicila: As someone who is hemp adjacent and I feel like that is a huge. Benefit it. The I worked with a woman a couple years ago who created a book ages for hemp. It's a story about the ways in which the refugee crisis is really the result of the climate crisis and the ways in which through her [00:10:00] journey, she discovered that hemp was such a powerful antidote to that. And if we just printed all of our books on a hemp paper, it would create a seriously a powerful. solution. So she decided to print her book on her paper and wow, was that a struggle. There's no infrastructure set up, finding a printer, finding material. It was quite costly. I mean, she was very committed to it.
[00:10:24] Aicila: So she made it happen. And I do think that those Innovators, the people who are sort of leading the way on that do make it more possible for it to get eventually adopted in a larger fashion and to have the real impact that it could. So making it more accessible to businesses and available so that they don't have to do that research seems like a really great first step. Do you have any kind of commitment to small farms or local or organic or is that delineated on your website? If someone listens to this and like, yeah, I'm into that, but I really like to use local folks or whatever. Is that a part of your process [00:11:00] or can you talk more about that?
[00:11:01] Tyler: Yeah. When I first got into the industry, because hemp was made illegal in the United States, it was literally impossible to offer local because it was illegal.
[00:11:14] Aicila: I mean,
[00:11:14] Tyler: and so at that point, I was working with a few Canadian companies with the hemp food products, and they were all doing sustainable, biodynamic, organic type farming, even if the products or their farms were not certified organic, they were still always using organic practices, which we honor that to this day, every farmer, every manufacturer that we work with is using sustainable practice business models.
[00:11:41] Tyler: And, so eventually. I was able to start offering USA products when the 2018 farm bill passed. But prior to that, it was only imported products and either from Europe, China, or Canada. And I know a lot of [00:12:00] people have a negative perception of Chinese products due to unfair labor practices and just the overall perception of products coming from China. But what I can say is the companies that we work with that produce products from China are treating their workers very fairly. They're using sustainable practices. They're not using harsh, toxic chemicals in the processing of the materials. And they're not using herbicides or pesticides in the growing of the hemp.
[00:12:35] Tyler: And. None of it's GMO, it's, very high quality products. And we've had relationships with these companies for over a decade. We can vouch for the quality and integrity and have certifications that come with these products to back up the quality and integrity of what we're offering.
[00:12:54] Tyler: Now, when it comes to hemp food products, we don't offer anything [00:13:00] Chinese. It's pretty much all of the fiber products, but we do have USA now because of the legalization back in 2018. We're doing our best to offer as much USA domestic products as we can. And like I said, the farmers that we work with are using organic, sustainable, Fair trade practices.
[00:13:22] Tyler: They're not using harsh pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and larvicides and all of that crazy funky business. We do offer certificates of analysis on all of our products. You can see how clean and the quality of the products that we offer. That's, what we have always been behind and what we offer to this day.
[00:13:47] Aicila: I feel like where you started a lot of the folks that are into hemp started with some sense of wanting to make a difference because it wasn't an easy industry to get into, especially not. 10, 15 years ago, and you're a little longer than [00:14:00] that, so you had to have sort of an extra motivation to participate. And it wasn't from what I could tell the I mean just is looking at where it is at now, the process the, I don't know the licensing and everything is so expensive. It's still not particularly lucrative. We haven't attracted the profit first folks yet to that industry. From what I can tell, I mean, if they're probably there, they're everywhere. So it does seem like the, that fits in line with the values I expect from the folks that I've met who work in hemp. There was very much a sustainability aspect to it.
[00:14:40] Tyler: Yeah, it can be lucrative depending on. Your ability to market because finding the ideal customer is the first step being able to develop messaging and [00:15:00] languaging that really speaks to their needs and having multiple ways of solving problems can increase your profitability of your business.
[00:15:11] Tyler: Obviously you could do one product for one customer and still. Make a living. But the biggest challenge right now is our farmers. They're not able to justify switching over to hemp because the margins are just not there. Right now a farmer can make roughly 800 an acre gross when they farm hemp.
[00:15:38] Tyler: And compared to other crops, , it's like the risk the overall hoops that they have to jump through to become licensed and the background checks. And it's like a major struggle for them to go through that.
[00:15:52] Tyler: And the margins are just not there. However, there's a new decortication machine that one of my [00:16:00] strategic partners is developing. That's going to allow the farmer to have. Like three times the profitability, because right now the biggest challenge is the farmer grows the hemp and then they harvest it, but then they have to ship it off to a processor.
[00:16:17] Tyler: Whereas if the farmer could do the processing himself or herself, then that margin of profitability, Triples essentially. So rather than making 800, they're almost making 2, 400 an acre, which makes it way more profitable. And that's the first step for us increasing the value and making this industry really thrive and want more people to get into it.
[00:16:42] Tyler: The other thing is there's more to work with in retail. So if you're doing a retail based product, I think it's a little bit easier than if you're doing wholesale or processing or manufacturing. Having a full. dialed in is also a really good [00:17:00] business model so that you can make sure you have control of each stage of the process and not have to outsource certain things, but, hopefully that kind of touches on your point of it not being really profitable.
[00:17:15] Tyler: Now, obviously the CBD market was a total craze and it had this huge green rush. It was like the gold rush. Everybody flocked to the CBD market, but unfortunately a bunch of people, got into it that eventually drove the costs down. At one point you were making 8, 000 a kilo on CBD and now it's like 250 a kilo.
[00:17:43] Tyler: There was so much saturation that it just drove the market down tremendously, but on the fiber side of things and the food side of things, there's still huge potential for growth and a lot of people to get into this market. There's [00:18:00] still a lot of potential when it comes to the hemp seed and fiber side of things, like hemp construction, for example, or hemp animal bedding or biochar and added value into the agricultural market.
[00:18:11] Tyler: There's so many different industries that can be affected by industrial hemp that there's still major potential for a lot of people to make good money and knowing that they're making a difference doing what they're doing.
[00:18:25] Aicila: Well, and my understanding, because they said I'm hemp adjacent is that with regards to the CBD market, part of the other challenge with the green rush was that a lot of folks that got into it. We're not necessarily skilled in their extraction methods. And so they ended up, providing something that had originally been hemp, but no longer necessarily had the active ingredients that was the point of providing the end product.
[00:18:58] Aicila: And that challenge [00:19:00] of, really recognizing it's sort of to speak to what we were talking about earlier that the folks that have been in the industry have been in it due to their passion for the most part, because there wasn't an easy path to profitability. And as we see the awareness and the decriminalization and the legalization, it does seem like that's going to be something that we're going to be dealing with people who are after that. And and not necessarily bringing in the same level of quality or value with regards to the product. I don't think there's anything. That's just how that's just how this happens. But I have something to be aware of for people. I don't know if there's any services. I know sometimes having like a like. You have the certification where people can see that the testing of the results.
[00:19:45] Aicila: So people don't always know to look for that. I see it in essential oils. I like essential oils. And at the same time, I don't just buy the cheap ones on Amazon. I go look and see, where's the company from? How long do they have in practice? Do they third party test? It takes [00:20:00] longer to find out.
[00:20:00] Aicila: But I know that if I want something that's actually going to provide me with the benefit of the original plant, I have to do a little bit of legwork.
[00:20:08] Tyler: Yeah, it's, it's important. Especially with knowing that CBD extraction often requires toxic compounds or caustic compounds, extraction methods can end up resulting in. or, butane or just residual extraction compounds in the end product, which is obviously not a good thing to be putting in your body.
[00:20:36] Tyler: Doing the background research, knowing the companies that you're buying from, especially when it comes to something you're putting inside your body is essential. And that's why having, third party testing is a really good business practice. it's actually required by law. Many of the farmers have to do testing.
[00:20:55] Tyler: So being able to provide that to your customers is good for transparency [00:21:00] and shows them the quality and integrity of your products.
[00:21:05] Aicila: You earlier talked about marketing as a pathway, an important pathway for profitability. So I'm guessing that's a little bit where the whole hemp aware service came from. Am I following the right thread there?
[00:21:16] Tyler: yes, it first started out as a vehicle for creating awareness about hemp and, Because of my passion for marketing, it eventually evolved into a marketing agency for hemp entrepreneurs and cannabis businesses. So in the beginning, I thought of different ideas that I could bring out to the market, like as far as products or services and things that I could do to help.
[00:21:47] Tyler: And because I discovered that many hemp entrepreneurs get distracted by all of the hemp opportunities that they could do with hemp. Once you see that this plant has [00:22:00] 25, 000 known uses, and could literally be turned into plastics, medicine, energy, fuel, Construction products, clothing products. You're like, Oh my gosh, I want to do it all.
[00:22:13] Tyler: And a lot of entrepreneurs deal with that struggle of trying to do everything all at once. I realized that being a marketer. Is the number one way I could help other hemp entrepreneurs to get focused, to get clear and to stay focused on what it is they do, what they're offering, who they're offering it to and pick the channels that they're going to go with and then just do it.
[00:22:38] Tyler: That was the evolution of hemp where we're starting out as education, just raising awareness, doing hemp aware parties, showing people the benefits and the uses of hemp. And then it eventually evolved into a marketing and brand strategy agency to help these same hemp entrepreneurs and experts get clear about what it is they offer [00:23:00] and develop the systems to automate that sort of marketing strategy.
[00:23:09] Aicila: What does success look like to you in terms of both businesses or just personally? I'm curious, like, when are you going to feel like you've met that dream you had at 12.
[00:23:20] Tyler: I recently heard the definition of success, which I thought was really good. It was really pertinent and clear. And I think it was Anthony Robbins that said success is the combination of achievement and fulfillment because you could be successful. Come quote unquote successful in the eyes of others by achieving things.
[00:23:46] Tyler: You could, let's say be making a certain dollar amount every year, or maybe you have a house that you built or a new car that you bought, or certain achievements that you get in life, [00:24:00] but there's many people that have achievements, but they're not fulfilled. They feel like I'm, I just don't have that satisfaction and that deep fulfillment of the feelings that I want to feel the relationships.
[00:24:16] Tyler: Maybe they're unhealthy, or maybe they're, not getting along with their spouse or. They don't have a good relationship with their children. There's a lot of things that come with fulfillment that may not come with achievement. And so I think that combination of achievement, which to me, when I'm part of bringing people's vision to life with hemp, and I see them incorporating hemp into some aspect of their lifestyle or their business, and I'm able to make a healthy living doing that.
[00:24:49] Tyler: I feel that I'm achieving success and with fulfillment for me, it's having the time, freedom, [00:25:00] the mental, emotional space to spend with my beloved Hempress Dodie. And I have the means to eat the foods that I want and the foods that I value going into nature and being able to not just connect with. My friends and family and customers in a meaningful way, but also being able to connect with my true self and our creator, to me, that's fulfillment, like having that time.
[00:25:27] Tyler: Freedom to do those things is success to me. Having both of those is really the overall encompassment of success.
[00:25:38] Aicila: That sounds like success to me. So running a business paving the way or forging the way, because we're not really trying to pave things. We care about the earth, but forging our way in this climate friendly industry that has, a little bit of a, I don't know, what would you call it an image [00:26:00] issue in terms of the ways it's been presented differently over the years for a rabbit hole reasons that we won't get into folks.
[00:26:07] Aicila: If you're interested, I'm sure we can link some things for you if you're not aware and how do you stay recharged? How do you keep yourself going? When people are like. are you doing anyway? Why this?
[00:26:21] Tyler: Any entrepreneur is going to deal with the struggle of the hustle. Trying to do everything to make your life work. And to me, there's a few things that I do on a daily basis to make sure that I'm staying recharged and energized and inspired. The first thing is the breath of life.
[00:26:47] Tyler: Like really getting in touch with conscious breathing is the number one tool that I go to, to calm my mind, relax my emotions [00:27:00] and stay in that inspired flow and the word breath actually comes from the Latin word, aspiritus, which means spirit, and so literally when you take a deep breath in, you're in inspired.
[00:27:14] Tyler: You're in spirit, inhaling. And when you expire, you're blowing your air out. And when you stop breathing, that's when you expire. To stay inspired, I really focus on the breath and, long, slow diaphragmatic breathing is the way to interrupt the fight or flight or freeze, state. If you're just in that anxious state to just have that conscious, slow, deep breathing is the first step.
[00:27:50] Tyler: I have a list of things that I refer to if I'm looking to get inspired, whether it's listening to live music or playing music myself, like the guitar or a [00:28:00] wind instrument. I just love playing music that really inspires me, but also. Getting out in nature to me is one of the most important things to do on a daily basis because it allows you to look off into the distance.
[00:28:13] Tyler: When we're trapped in a box and we're looking on a box and we're sitting in a box and we're talking on a box, it's keeps that box mentality. So getting out of the box and going out into nature. Allows me to refresh. It allows me to balance my hormones with getting the vitamin D and the sun and just being next to trees and on the earth and getting those scents, those smells and sites really just allows you to reset.
[00:28:39] Tyler: If I'm feeling stuck or frustrated or anxious about something, I will just take a break and my wife and I will go out for a walk and it really helps to recharge and reset. There's a lot of other things that I refer to to get inspiration or to recharge like yoga and stretching and meditation and things like [00:29:00] that.
[00:29:00] Tyler: But that's kind of the foundation of how I recharge and get inspired.
[00:29:07] Aicila: Thanks. Those all sound like great tips. And I feel like a lot of the folks that I talked to, the nature is such a big one and it's definitely one that I've also found is it's easy to get in my little, zone of work like this, my head down and every time, luckily I have a dog, so she forces me to go outside and it's actually Been a huge benefit to me.
[00:29:33] Aicila: Also, she's adorable. People will hear about my dog all the time. There you go, everybody. Yeah. At any rate for folks who are listening and they want to learn more, follow you, get in touch, what's the best way for them to do that?
[00:29:49] Tyler: Well, we're on all of the socials. So just look for bulk hemp warehouse as our handle. Or on Twitter, it's just bulkhemp and [00:30:00] bulkhempwarehouse. com is our domain for the bulk raw hemp materials. And then hempaware. com is our website and then our handles for hempaware is just hempaware. So Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those things.
[00:30:14] Tyler: I know it's X, but I still call it Twitter.
[00:30:17] Aicila: Yeah, me too. I feel that anything, any last final words you want to share with folks?
[00:30:23] Tyler: If there's just one thing that you could do with hemp on a daily basis, whether it's putting hemp seeds in your smoothies or wearing a hemp t shirt or, taking some CBD, like whatever it is that you can do, no matter what it is that you do, if you're a business, if you're an individual or a family, just asking yourself if you're going to do a new project, or if you're creating a product, asking yourself, how can I integrate hemp into this?
[00:30:55] Tyler: I believe that. We will create a paradigm shift in consciousness and [00:31:00] around this planet. The less that we're using petrochemicals, the less that we're using genetically modified plants and pesticide and herbicide ridden plants, we're going to eventually switch Our paradigm into a much cleaner, healthier, more sustainable, abundant paradigm.
[00:31:20] Tyler: The more we can do that, the more it will become affordable. I know at first it might seem like it's a lot of money to switch to hemp solutions, but the more people that are doing that, the more. Affordable it will become. Being the first to do that. And part of that wave of the early adopters is essential.
[00:31:41] Tyler: And anybody listening to your podcast is already cracked. They're already thinking differently and thinking unusually. And so integrating hemp into their lifestyle, into their business, and just constantly asking that question, how can we integrate more hemp into what we're doing? [00:32:00] I believe will ultimately lead to a paradigm shift on our planet.
[00:32:03] Tyler: So that would be my suggestion
[00:32:05] Aicila: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks everybody for listening. Really appreciate it. I hope you have a good week.
