When most people hear the word investment, they think about setting money away for their future. Although, this is true the most important investment you can make is in continuing education. Investing in new skills can not only help you in your professional life but can also help your business to grow. We meet up with Max Armstrong of Learn Brands as he shares with us some great resources to keep your knowledge up to date in this vast changing industry.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey 420 MSP. I am with Max Armstrong at Learn brands. And Max, may I be the first to congratulate you on behalf of Marijuana Venture Magazine. 420 MSP you made the cut. You’re one of the top 200 Plus cannabis technology influencers. So we we worked pretty hard on that list. Congratulations.
Max Armstrong
Thank you very much, and we’re proud to be on it.
Harry Brelsford
Cool. Tell me a little bit about yourself. You’re out of the Denver area, I have a place in my heart for that went to the University of Denver. Then tell me about your company. And I got a few questions. So you go first, yourself and your company? What’s the stories?
Max Armstrong
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m a founding member here at Learn Brands. And essentially, what the company does is budtender education. So we have an audience of 26,000 users that we offer a variety of different education solution towards our main service offering is brand education. So providing a space where a budtender can sign on to our platform and become educated on every single brand sold in their stores. we incentivize this education with product samples, so they can actually have an experience with the products they’re selling every single day. And then provide feedback directly to those vendors. We also do responsible vendor training, internal training for dispensaries own SOPs, onboarding practices, and a suite of general education courses that we host on our system.
Harry Brelsford
Now, if you go up the supply chain to producers, manufacturers growers, or are you staying on the ranch, kind of at the end of the supply chains?
Max Armstrong
Yeah, I mean, our audience is going to consist of decision makers and all the way down to bud tenders. But our core audiences by tenders, we have really tailored this platform around the bud tenders specifically because of the influence that they have on consumer purchasing decisions. salutely Yep. So yeah, that’s what we’re targeting for. And bud tenders love us because they’re getting a bunch of free samples out of it.
Harry Brelsford
The Yeah, that’s why probably should work at a bar. But that’s a whole nother podcast. Absolutely. The but no, that’s interesting. You said influencer, because again, you know, we’re talking about the the annual influencer list and can attack so you get it right. You get it that the bud tenders themselves or influencer pack. Maybe we need to list a subset of that. In the future. Wait three questions to take us out. So all things being equal, what events might someone expect to see you or your company out in this in this field?
Max Armstrong
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we always stick to the the major trade shows. So mjbizcon is one that we’ve always attended. We did actually go into mg on pack this year, which is completely tailored towards our audience, which is brands and retailers. So it was a kind of a perfect network for us to be in. And we’ve also attended the niqab conferences, especially in newer markets that are popping up newer recreational markets like Massachusetts, for example. Just to get our foot in the door to really get a land grab for our service offering and try to get exposure to those newer companies. And then, yeah, we’ve attended events like leaf link live and in touch in the past.
Harry Brelsford
Next question, lightning round. Do you attract any popular blogger podcaster read any of the magazines any anyone come to mind?
Max Armstrong
You know, I don’t I do follow the thinking outside the bud podcast. I think that’s not the podcast that we we typically follow. And then, you know, one of the newsletters I get is from Philo, where they’re just giving updates on cannabis regulations and, you know, major acquisitions and industry news. So that’s one news source that I’ve found very
Harry Brelsford
valuable. Well, that and that’s actually very interesting over on my side account, shemales I subscribe to the state of Washington liquor and Cannabis Control Board. Alerts. And that’s exactly what they do, is they’re always come out with these administrative code. You know, I’m not a lawyer, right. But it’s, it’s kind of cool. I don’t want to flooding my main account. I get too many emails already. But it’s a nice, nice one to put in the site account. And then finally, meetups trade groups participate in some of those national cannabis. What is the Industry Association? ringabel Yeah, absolutely.
Max Armstrong
You know, we’re trying to be part of as many organizations as possible, you know, and, and we have such a unique platform where we’re able to distribute information to, you know, 26,000, you know, industry specific employee audience, so, we want to get more and more engaged. Currently, we’re working with the cannabis sustainability workgroup, CQ, you know, other organizations of that nature to push education and gather feedback around those specific topics. And yes, I was looking to get more impressions on the door.
Harry Brelsford
Well, you serve are very representative of what we wanted your country And yourself on the influencer list because that’s that’s what we believe an influencer is out and about. They’re they’re giving back to the community. They’re participating in, you know, meetups or trade associations and, and they stay current. So again, congratulations, Mack our Max Armstrong. We’ll talk to you on the flip side.
Max Armstrong
That sounds great. Thanks for your time,
Harry Brelsford
Harry. All right.
