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Gabrielle Smith is helping educate cannabis enthusiasts or cannabis users through accessing the knowledge of bud tenders (which are the folks that work in the cannabis dispensaries). In a lot of situations, people really don’t know what they want. They’re very curious. And most times, it’s very difficult for them to actually have access or spend a large amount of time asking the questions they need to ask with bud tenders. In order to help educate Gabrielle developed a way to break the bud tenders out of the four walls of the dispensary, and open up that communication channel with cannabis enthusiasts.  Read more about Gabrielle’s journey, and how it can help you get your questions answered.

Check Out Spark Mobile

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Harry Brelsford 

Hey gang Harry here with Gabi, one of our CannaTech influencers. How you doing, Gabby?

Gabrielle Smith 

I’m doing well Harry, how are you? Good, good,

Harry Brelsford 

good. So you have some weather coming into New York, don’t you? You have a bomb cyclone is

Gabrielle Smith 

another one. This would be the number two for this season. But my favorite part about this and I swear when I come back, I’m coming back as a weatherman because their recent forecast is you may get hit with two feet. You may get nothing.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Gabrielle Smith 

Awesome. Great. Thanks.

Harry Brelsford 

Well, first, let’s talk about Spark mobile. So you’re the CEO of Spark mobile, what’s what’s your story? What’s spark mobile all about?

Gabrielle Smith 

So Spark was a Mobile app that I developed. And basically, the concept behind the company was helping educate cannabis enthusiasts or cannabis users through accessing the knowledge of bud tenders, which are the folks that work in the cannabis dispensaries. In a lot of experiences, people really don’t know what they want. They’re very curious. And most times, especially on the East Coast, it’s very difficult for them to actually have access or spend a large amount of time asking the questions they need to ask with bud tenders. So we developed a way to break the bud tenders out of the four walls of the dispensary, and open up that communication channel with cannabis enthusiast.

Harry Brelsford 

Cool. And so this would be a b2c play. So I’m, I’m a customer, I would I would download your app and put it on my phone. And, you know, they all talk about the customer journey, we we get 80% of the way there by our own research now. And I truly believe that I just replaced my tires. What did I do? I went online, did some research made the right decision for me in the last 20% was to go to Costco

Gabrielle Smith 

and make the purchase. So are right now our goal is to help out with that first 80%. But our long held vision will be assisting them with that final 20%. Yes, we want to make sure that before they walk in so right before you walked into Costco, you knew exactly what you wanted, you might have had one or two questions, but you were efficient and walked out with what you needed. Same exact premise is we want them to spend as much time as they need asking the questions to the experts, and then going to the dispensary themselves and be able to ask those final level of questions.

Harry Brelsford 

Now, I know certainly, you know the popular media coverage of some of the lifestyle lifestyle side, but there’s also the medical side. So is your app good? For someone? Let’s say that they were curious about how to help a partner with pain relief from camps or or some medical condition? Can Can you help me there?

Gabrielle Smith 

Yep, absolutely. So the way that we’ve actually set up the app itself, it gives you the ability to search the recommendations or the product information by conditions. And because we allow that open access to bud tenders, you can sort on recommendations specific to in this case pain management, and then actually ask that budtender specifically, what type of pain management this product that they’re recommending will do. So it’s more tailored approach to what you’re looking to do, and hopefully giving consumers the ability to access that blood tender tribal knowledge. Okay,

Harry Brelsford 

and I’m looking at your LinkedIn profile. So like so many of us, we do two or three things, it appears you’re no different. You have a consulting practice or activity. Talk to me, what’s what’s that about?

Gabrielle Smith 

Yeah, so I it’s, I would say it’s less of a consulting practice and more of what we’d now message it out as as a startup studio. We have a very kind of siloed focus at the moment on cannabis startups as well as crypto startups. And like focusing working with folks on web three and that type of dynamic market movement. But we walk in and we help the entrepreneurs in the startups get structured, set up and build for scale. And whether that’s product management, whether it’s a go to market strategy, or whether it’s getting them prepared for a fundraising pitch. We’ve been very successful in working with a lot of companies in that way. In the past 12 months, we’ve helped companies raise over $10 million in seed funding, including my company so it’s, we know the road we know the roadmap of doing this.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, harder than looks. I’ve had some experience with fundraising and a lot of phone calls and you’re on the investors calendar, their their timeframe, not yours.

Gabrielle Smith 

The the unique approach that we have with it is my business partner is actually former New York Angel board member and a venture capitalist. So he really can come in and say, Hey, you’re missing this, that and the other thing and your pitch. So before they walk into that room, like they already know what’s in the mind of the VC because he steps in and oversees all the pitch deck from that viewpoint. helps us.

Harry Brelsford 

Tell you what, let’s Jenny over in the radio control room, if we could make a note maybe next quarter to get you back with your partner and have that exact conversation, I think that will be that would be interesting. So we’ll get Yeah, we’ll get you back quarterly but hey, congratulations on being a logo on the chart and an influencer in the industry.

Gabrielle Smith 

Thank you very much for having me.

Harry Brelsford 

Take care. Take care. Bye, Harry.