Today on the Ministry of Hemp podcast, we learn about the ways CBD can assist with recovery from injury and even addiction.
But first, our host Matt talks about the benefits of making paper from hemp. We’ve just updated this popular article to address an important new topic: hemp toilet paper, so be sure to check it out.
After that Matt has a conversation the Co-Founder and CEO of Pachamama CBD, Brandon Stump. Brandon talks about his own story of addiction and recovery, starting a his own recovery centers along with his brother Ryan and then founding their own CBD company together.
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On the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, we learned about how Brandon Stump uses CBD for addiction recovery, leading him to found his own company, Pachamama CBD.
Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 45 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, “CBD for addiction & injury recovery”:
Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.
Matt Baum:
Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. It’s me, Matt, your host, and today on the show, we’re going to talk to Brandon Stump. He is the CEO and co-founder of Pachamama. They’re a really cool CBD company coming out of California. But before we get to that, I want to talk about paper for a minute.
Matt Baum:
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about CBD on this show, because it is very popular, and people have a lot of questions about it. In fact, we’re going to talk about it again today. One thing I haven’t had a chance to really talk about, and I’m actually looking for someone to speak about it on this show, is hemp paper.
Matt Baum:
We’ve got an article up right now on ministryofhemp.com about the benefits of hemp paper, and it’s really interesting. And I knew making paper out of hemp had to be easier than making it out of trees, of course, but I didn’t realize all the benefits of hemp versus wood-pulp paper until I looked at this article. Did you know that one acre of hemp can produce as much paper as four to 10 acres of trees over a 20-year cycle? That is insanity. Not just that, but hemp stocks grow in four months, whereas it can take a tree anywhere from 20 to 80 years.
Matt Baum:
The chief ingredient in paper that they take out of trees is called cellulose, and trees are only made of about 30% cellulose, which means they have to use a bunch of toxic chemicals to remove the other 70% of stuff. Hemp, on the other hand, can have up to 85% cellulose content. That’s just more paper. Hemp has a lower lignin content than wood, as well. Hemp contains 5-to-24% lignin, whereas wood is 20-to-35%. Now, this is good because lignin is one of those things that has to be removed from the pulp before it can be processed as paper.
Matt Baum:
Hemp paper is also more durable. It doesn’t yellow, crack, or deteriorate like tree paper. Had companies like Marvel and DC had the foresight to print on hemp paper, the old comic books that I collect might even be in better shape. But perhaps the biggest reason to make hemp paper is deforestation. We’re living through a massive climate crisis right now, and deforestation is definitely not helping anything. The more paper we make out of hemp, the less trees get cut down, the better it is for everybody.
Matt Baum:
I’ll have a link in the show notes to the full article, and like I said, I’m actively looking for someone to come on the show and talk about the process and why we aren’t making more of it right now. You would think, we had this glut of hemp from last year’s harvest, we could’ve turned a bunch of it into paper. My guess is the amount of hemp paper processing hasn’t caught up to the amount of hemp being grown quite yet.
Matt Baum:
My conversation today is with Brandon Stump. He is the co-founder and CEO of Pachamama. I’ll spell it for you later, don’t worry. Pachamama is a CBD company out of Southern California that has won a bunch of awards, not just for their products, but for their packaging and their marketing, too. It’s really impressive stuff. Pachamama markets their products towards active and athletic people and has been featured in Black Belt Magazine, Golf Digest, and even Forbes.
Matt Baum:
Brandon’s actually a recovering drug addict, and he’s not afraid to talk about it at all. We really get into it. After Brandon found his own recovery, he started a whole network of recovery centers called the Buckeye Recovery Network with his brother, and from there, they got into hemp together. Here’s my conversation with Brandon Stump of Pachamama.
Matt Baum:
Brandon, welcome to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast! What the heck does Pachamama mean?
Brandon Stump:
Pachamama is a word derived from the country of Peru, and it means “Mother Earth.” So if you go down to Peru, they refer to Pachamama as everything. Pachamama, Mother Earth.
Matt Baum:
Okay. So it’s sort of like the larger Earth spirit, then.
Brandon Stump:
Yes.
Matt Baum:
Cool. Why’d you choose that name?
Brandon Stump:
Well, I actually believe that CBD is Pachamama, Pachamama is CBD, so it really wasn’t hard. I fell in love with that word years ago, and when I got into the hemp space, it was just so fitting to use. It wasn’t being used in the hemp space, although there’s plenty of names out there-
Matt Baum:
No, definitely.
Brandon Stump:
Pachamama was available, and it just made sense.
Matt Baum:
A lot of people I’ve spoken to on this show, not just people that have started companies or whatnot, but have talked about a very spiritual connection to hemp and that sort of Mother Earth-type vibe. Was that always there for you? Was it something you were looking for, or was it something you found on accident?
Brandon Stump:
Oh, yeah. I definitely didn’t grow up with a conscious mind revolved around health and wellness.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
That came to me over the years.
Matt Baum:
We’ll get to that in a minute.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. Yeah, if anything, it was destruction of health and wellness for most of my life.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
But yeah, Pachamama, health and wellness, came to me over the years, and it actually took a trip to Bali, Indonesia-
Matt Baum:
Oh, wow.
Brandon Stump:
-for my first vacation in probably three and a half, four years, and I went out there with all my buddies, that we all worked together. And we were eating fresh papayas from the trees, cacao-
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump:
We were making fresh coconut cream in the mornings for our coffee, and eating dragon fruits off trees, and hopping around the jungle, and eating all these eclectic fruits and superfoods-
Matt Baum:
That sounds amazing.
Brandon Stump:
And it just kind of hit me there that this is Pachamama, and why not utilize some of these worldly superfood ingredients and products?
Matt Baum:
Sure. So let me ask you… You’ve glanced over it a little bit, and I want to talk about it as much as you’re willing to, but let’s talk about your origin story. You weren’t always a health and wellness guy.
Brandon Stump:
No. I’m an open book, too, so-
Matt Baum:
I wasn’t either-
Brandon Stump:
-you can ask anything.
Matt Baum:
-so I can relate. I had some similar issues.
Brandon Stump:
Solidarity.
Matt Baum:
Let’s talk about that. I mean, tell me your secret origin story.
Brandon Stump:
Secret origin story?
Matt Baum:
Yeah, every hero has a secret origin story, right? You know?
Brandon Stump:
Oh, I’m no hero, that’s my pop. But yeah, I’m an open book, Matt. You can’t ask me uncomfortable question. You’re going to get it shot straight from me every single time. But yeah, I grew up in a little town in Ohio, halfway between Cleveland and Akron-
Matt Baum:
Okay. Midwestern boy, huh?
Brandon Stump:
-little five-mile-by-five-mile square. Yeah.
Matt Baum:
Nice.
Brandon Stump:
In a little five-mile-by-five-mile square. We had five state parks in there. Graduated… You know, houses in the woods-
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
Close to the city, close to the country, a little bit of everything in there, but there was really nothing else to do besides drugs.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Brandon Stump:
So I grew up-
Matt Baum:
I’m from Omaha, Nebraska, I get it! So.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. I grew up pushing the limits, looking for a thrill, and in that town, it was drugs. And so I progressively, at a young age, started drinking and experimenting with drugs, and unlike most of my friends, it kind of took a hold and consumed my life.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Brandon Stump:
Most of my friends just kind of continued on, went to college, put the stuff down and found success in their lives. Me, not so much. I had to become fully addicted to a lot of substances out there in order to finally change.
Matt Baum:
Do you think that was in you? Was it an addictive personality type thing, or was it a thrill seeker type thing? You told me you were in Bali, hopping around with your buddies, eating fruit and stuff, I mean-
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s an addictive personality thing for me as much as it really was pushing life’s limits and trying to experience the absolute highs and absolute lows that I possibly could in life.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
And, you know, I was able to do that with drugs.
Matt Baum:
So what pulled you out of that? How did we end up going from admitted drug addict to where you are now, running a health and wellness company centered around CBD? What pulled you out of that?
Brandon Stump:
Well, you can only bang your head against a brick wall for so long.
Matt Baum:
I know some people who would beg to differ! But yeah.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, eventually you realize that the wall ain’t going anywhere.
Matt Baum:
Right, right. Your head is slowly getting demolished, though, you know?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. No, it took a lot of failed attempts at changing my life to ultimately ask for help and follow some direction.
Matt Baum:
So tell me, how do you end up in CBD? Where does that figure in? How do you discover hemp? Where’s that come into play?
Brandon Stump:
Actually, I discovered hemp through… I had about five… No, I had about six, seven years of sobriety already.
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump:
I had put all the drugs and alcohol down, had started previous businesses, found success in life, built organizations and publicly-traded businesses, and-
Matt Baum:
Did you do like treatment and stuff? I mean, did you do the whole shebang, like going to meetings and everything, or…?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, yeah. I worked a 12-step program, and I’m abstinent. I don’t drink alcohol or do any drugs, and I’m actually coming up on 10 years of sobriety this August, which is cool beans.
Matt Baum:
That’s excellent, man, congratulations. That is excellent.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
I crawled out of some stuff too, but I didn’t crawl completely out. I try to dip my toe in a little bit every once in a while, you know?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. Yeah, for me, I had to give it all up if I wanted to change my life. I had fallen into the grips of opiate addiction. One thing led to the next, and next thing you know, I’m using needles and heroin on a daily basis.
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump:
So it got pretty bad and ugly.
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump:
Multiple trips to treatment centers, multiple trips to detoxes, hospitals, multiple ODs. Almost lost my life over 15 times.
Matt Baum:
Jesus.
Brandon Stump:
So, yeah. So it became apparent that I needed a drastic change in my life. And I did, and then others kind of saw what I had done in my life and were close to me and started asking for help, so I just organically started helping people, from my hometown, actually, change their lives. And one thing led to the next, and I actually was working in the aviation industry at the time, and I decided to leave because I had all these-
Matt Baum:
Tell me you weren’t flying planes.
Brandon Stump:
No, no, no. I was selling airplane parts.
Matt Baum:
Okay. Okay. I was like-
Brandon Stump:
I was sober!
Matt Baum:
“So you’re banging heroin and flying planes.”
Brandon Stump:
No, no, no. I was sober at this point.
Matt Baum:
Okay, good.
Brandon Stump:
So yeah, I just started helping people change their life, and people called it the Ohio House, because there was a bunch of people from Ohio living in my house here in California. And, yeah, I decided to leave that business and pursue the Ohio House thing full time, and so today we have over 20 properties. We have a licensed California drug rehabilitation outpatient center, we have a licensed California detox center.
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump: (crosstalk 00:11:40)
Matt Baum:
How does that happen? You can’t just wake up one day and be like, “You know what, I’m going to start a rehab center.” How does that happen?
Brandon Stump:
Oh, no. I never wanted to. It wouldn’t have been my plan, anyway.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
It just kind of became apparent that that’s what I was supposed to be doing. So one decision tied to the next, and the next thing you know, I’m helping 10, 15 guys, and we’ve been able to help almost 10,000 people in the last 10 years.
Matt Baum:
That’s incredible.
Brandon Stump:
We just celebrated 850 years of continuous sobriety, so.
Matt Baum:
That is incredible.
Brandon Stump:
To answer your question, with hemp, I actually was against CBD, against hemp products, ever since I knew what they were. I just assumed that they would get me high.
Matt Baum:
Right.
Brandon Stump:
And I had a basketball injury. Playing basketball, I tore two ligaments in my left ankle, and nothing was working. And it was like the fourth time I’ve done this. I have a bad ankle and nothing was working. I was spending thousands of dollars on physical therapy from the best here in Southern California. He works on professional athletes, and it just wasn’t working.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
And I finally was at my wit’s end, and my friend said, “Hey, why don’t you try CBD?” And I started doing my research and educating myself, and I became fascinated with the research out there on CBD and made a decision: “You know what, I’m going to try this. It’s not going to get me high.” And-
Matt Baum:
But that was a real concern, because you were sober at that time.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
Was there a lot of pushback in your head? Like, “Even though this isn’t going to get me high, I am taking something that I know is derivative of the marijuana plant.” Were you scared? I mean-
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Baum:
I would-
Brandon Stump:
And I did a lot of research and I talked to a lot of people, professionals, experts, and ultimately made the decision that this was okay to try. And within two weeks I was playing basketball again.
Matt Baum:
Wow.
Brandon Stump:
It was magical. So I never had a desire to start a business in this space. It was really just trying to get back on the basketball court.
Matt Baum:
Sure, sure. That’s one thing that… I haven’t really had a chance to talk to anybody that came at this from an addict’s point of view. I talked to a couple of people that were alcoholics, and they were like, “Yeah, I use CBD, but I also smoke marijuana after I quit drinking,” and whatnot. So it wasn’t a big deal. But coming from a full-on abstinent “I am not taking drugs” to deciding “I’m going to run a CBD company and take CBD myself…” That’s pretty amazing, man. And not that… I mean, obviously you and I now know it’s not addictive. We know that it’s not going to get you high. We know that it’s not marijuana. But there’s still a lot of stigma out there.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
When you were working with other people in your rehab centers and stuff… I’m not saying that you’re pushing anything on them, but have you asked if they’ve tried CBD for anxiety and stuff like that?
Brandon Stump:
It’s funny you ask. So, I tend to lead by example and not promote or push any products, medications, or anything on anybody. I want them to make that decision for themselves. So if people ask me, I’m an open book. I’ll tell my experience. But yeah, so, in the detox facility, where people are coming off the street, off of heroin addiction, methamphetamines, cocaine, alcohol, whatever it may be… Day one, look at detox facilities. Their job is to wean people off their drugs so that they can start their path of sobriety. So for heroin addiction, for instance, you can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you’re throwing up.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, it’s awful.
Brandon Stump:
Your bones hurt, your joints hurt, you’re sick, you’re tired, you’re in pain. So there are certain medications that are given to a heroin addict during withdrawal symptoms.
Matt Baum:
Like methadone, right?
Brandon Stump:
Sure. Suboxone, methadone, sleeping medication, anxiety medication, gut inflammation medication, all that sorts of stuff. And so I actually started providing CBD in the detox for people who wanted more of a holistic approach to getting off drugs and alcohol, and the results have been pretty amazing.
Matt Baum:
Really?
Brandon Stump:
But yeah. We just provide it as an option, because coming off of hard drugs is no easy feat. I actually ended up doing it cold turkey back in 2010-
Matt Baum:
Damn.
Brandon Stump:
-and it was probably the hardest month of my life, but I think it also helped me remember for 10 years what it was like, so I don’t ever have to go back.
Matt Baum:
So, timeline-wise, you cleaned up, you started these rehab centers. From there, you had the basketball injury, and that’s when you discover CBD.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
You dig it, and you’re like, you know what? I’m not busy enough. I don’t have enough going on in my life. I’m going to start a company and call it Pachamama. Tell me about that decision. What spurred that?
Brandon Stump:
Well, that’s not really how it happened, because there’s plenty of CBD companies out there.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Brandon Stump:
So starting another CBD company really wasn’t the reasoning. It was during my research that I found some pretty proprietary stuff, and some things that weren’t being talked about in the hemp space that I sought out for my own personal care, that I realized was not available on the market. And so I made a decision to start the organization with my brother, who helps me with everything, who still works with me at the Ohio House, who is my co-founder with Pachamama. In discussing with him, I had felt like I had stumbled upon some gold, because the things that weren’t being talked about in the hemp space were single-origin hemp: one strain, one farm, one farmer from one organic source.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, man. Yeah, man.
Brandon Stump:
In addition to that, I stumbled across, at the time, an extraction machine that had like 50 patents that was being used in cannabis, marijuana, but was not being used in CBD, and it was an evaporative, USDA organic air extraction. So no solvents, no toxins, no CO2, no ethanol. None of that. And so-
Matt Baum:
How does that work? Air extraction?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, essentially what we do is we evaporate all of the cannabinoids off the hemp plant-
Matt Baum:
Oh, okay.
Brandon Stump:
-in two seconds, only using air. So there’s a decarboxylation process that happens with making CBD products and extracting them from hemp.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
Traditionally, in CO2 extraction methods, that takes a couple hours. We actually get to… “Decarb” is just another word for activate.
Matt Baum:
Right.
Brandon Stump:
And you just have to activate the compound so that it can work in your system. And we were able to activate the cannabinoids in two seconds, in the air, without putting it through a harsh two-hour process.
Matt Baum:
That’s incredible.
Brandon Stump:
And we don’t even have to winterize our products. CO2 and ethanol CBD extraction, they have to go through a process called winterization where they essentially freeze all the toxins and solvents that they induced into the hemp plant to extract it out-
Matt Baum:
Right, to make them heavier so they can grab it and pull it out, basically.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, they freeze all the bad stuff and pull the good stuff out. But the problem with that is, you can freeze all the bad stuff, but when you pull the good stuff out, some of that bad stuff’s coming with it. We don’t even have to winterize our products. So once I found that, and kind of started messing around and making my own CBD oils in the mountains of Colorado for myself, I said, “I really don’t have an option. I have to provide this resource. I have to provide this product to the masses, because it just works, and it works better than anything I tried.” And so it really was simply, I found a solution to a problem for myself and figured I’d share it with others.
Matt Baum:
So tell me about your… You said single-source hemp, and I love that. I totally love that, because there’s more research and we’re learning that hemp that comes from different places has different benefits based on the soil, based on the sunlight, based on the temperature and whatnot. Tell me about the hemp that you guys are using, your single-source hemp. It comes from Colorado? Is that right?
Brandon Stump:
Well, yeah, like if you go to a real high-end coffee shop, they’re going to offer you single-origin coffee, right?
Matt Baum:
Of course. I drink it every morning. Right.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. So in coffee, if you have a batch of single-origin coffee, the beans come… It’s the same strain from the same farmer, and so the cacao levels and the flavonoids are all on point, right? The acidity levels are not through the roof. When you mix a bunch of coffee beans together, the acidity levels go up.
Matt Baum:
Yeah. Tastes like garbage.
Brandon Stump:
So yeah, and that’s why Starbucks tastes the same every single time, and it’s not single origin. The reason that it tastes the same every single time is because they burn the beans at the same temperature for the same amount of time every single time so that they can get a consistent product. But really, what they’re doing is, they’re harming the beans in the process. And if you taste a Starbucks cup of coffee, you can actually tell it’s burnt. And so that-
Matt Baum:
Totally! I’ve been saying this for years! And people are like, “Oh, you’re just a coffee snob.” Like, no, it tastes burnt! Just-
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. It is burnt!
Matt Baum:
And you all got used to it! That’s all you did! You know?
Brandon Stump:
And that’s what actually is happening in the hemp space, is people are burning their hemp. They’re burning it for hours. And so one of the reasons why I love single-origin hemp for my hemp extract products is that we have full traceability and control of the quality. We know exactly what strain is being grown. It’s a huge benefit that it’s grown organically and is organic hemp, for one, but it’s also a huge benefit that we don’t have to rely on hemp supply from multiple different farms, from multiple different states, with multiple different potencies and qualities.
Matt Baum:
Absolutely.
Brandon Stump:
Because when you mix that all together, you lose a lot of the benefits from the quality hemp that you’re using by mixing it in with hemp that doesn’t have the same quality.
Matt Baum:
Sure, sure. So is it the same… Like you were saying about Starbucks, what they do. Going single source like this, let’s go back to the coffee metaphor. Is the flavor and whatnot, is it the same every time, because you’re controlling exactly the strain of plant that you’re putting in there?
Brandon Stump:
Have you ever tried any Pachamama CBD tinctures yet?
Matt Baum:
I haven’t. I’m going to have you send me some after this, definitely.
Brandon Stump:
Okay. Yeah, I’m going to get you some. So you’ll notice some really distinct differences. Before I launched the Pachamama product, I pulled about 500 full-spectrum hemp extract tinctures off the market and I tried them all. And what I noticed were, all of them were either yellow, green, or neon green.
Matt Baum:
Yes. Yes.
Brandon Stump:
Ours is a completely different color. It’s amber brown. It looks different, it smells different, and it tastes different. And the reason is because of the air extraction and the single origin hemp. So yeah, you’re going to get a more robust flavor from the Pachamama hemp extract tincture-
Matt Baum:
That’s cool.
Brandon Stump:
-than anything else out there. The flavonoids and the terpene levels are through the roof, so you actually get a really strong, robust-tasting product.
Matt Baum:
We just actually learned about terpenes on this show a couple episodes ago, and part of the discussion was, yeah, flavor and taste and whatnot. And I had noticed, just in… People send me a ton of CBD, and just like you said, it’s either clear, yellow, or bright neon green. And typically the neon green stuff is the stuff that’s either been sporagically extracted or lipid-extracted, and you do get a very organic, flowery flavor. And I really enjoy that flavor, and I’ve started to notice that not only do those CBDs that are greener and extracted a certain way have better flavor, I kind of find that they’ve worked better for me. I take it for anxiety and for focus, anymore. I used to take it for pain, but luckily my pain’s getting better, so.
Brandon Stump:
Good.
Matt Baum:
Where does the brown come from in the air extraction? Explain that to me.
Brandon Stump:
So the amber brown, it’s almost a translucent amber brown.
Matt Baum:
Yeah?
Brandon Stump:
Where does it come from in the air extraction? So, that’s a great question. The actual extraction process, like I said, is an evaporative process that happens in the air.
Matt Baum:
Sure.
Brandon Stump:
So you actually do not get the hours of soaking it in ethanol gas before you extract it that you have to go through. There’s actually about 120 patents on that process right now, but the terpene levels and the CBD potency, along with all the minor cannabinoids, CBC, CBG, CBD, CBDA, CBN, are much higher in our products, so you get a full range, a full spectrum, of the cannabinoids, and that is the color that it comes out. It doesn’t taste… Like you said, with some of the green stuff, it tastes a little bit more earthy. The clear stuff is traditionally isolated products-
Matt Baum:
Yeah. Takes like nothing.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, just nothing. Unless they add-
Matt Baum:
Flavor, like orange peel or something.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. There’s a lot of tinctures on the market that actually… They want them to taste good, so they add artificial flavoring to it. Normally it’s VG, vegetable glycerin-based flavorings that are traditionally used in vapor products or food products, so it’s not made to dissolve underneath your tongue. Ours actually tastes more like a hazelnut. It’s got a nutty taste to it.
Matt Baum:
Really?
Brandon Stump:
I think you’ll enjoy it, yeah.
Matt Baum:
Oh, that’s cool. That’s really cool.
Brandon Stump:
We don’t add any artificial ingredients, so we don’t add anything to flavor our tinctures. We have a natural, it’s called the Natural. All it is is the organic hemp, organic air-extracted product, mixed with nothing other than organic MCT coconut oil. That’s the Natural. And then from there, we have five others, but they’re not flavors, they’re ingredients. So we have a Kava Kava Valerian for relaxation.
Matt Baum:
Okay.
Brandon Stump:
We import kava root extract from Fiji and the valerian comes from Hawaii, and those products combined with the CBD help with relaxation and sleep.
Matt Baum:
Nice.
Brandon Stump:
We have a Black Pepper Turmeric, and that’s for detox. It helps with inflammation. It’s always been said that black pepper mixed with turmeric actually make the turmeric more bioavailable in your system, and both of those products help tremendously with anti-inflammation. And like, if CBD needed help with anti-inflammation. It’s the best in the world.
Matt Baum:
Yeah.
Brandon Stump:
But we have a Green Tea Echinacea, we have a Ylang Ylang Holy Basil. My personal favorite is the Goji Cacao. Do you go to any of these natural grocery stores? They actually have trail mix bags, already pre-made, that have goji and cacao in them.
Matt Baum:
Yeah, I love it. Love it.
Brandon Stump:
It’s a great combination. It’s a great antioxidant. So we use raw, organic, cold-pressed cacao butter and organically-grown goji berries, and we actually make our own flavoring from those products and add them to our tincture for focus.
Matt Baum:
That sounds amazing. I’m going to have you send me a whole basket of this stuff. I want to try everything.
Brandon Stump:
I got you!
Matt Baum:
It sounds really cool. So what’s the future for Pachamama? Where do you go from here? What’s next? I know you’ve been working with, what’s his name? Hobie?
Brandon Stump:
Jeremy Jackson!
Matt Baum:
Sorry, Jeremy Jackson! Hobie from Baywatch! How does that happen?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah! Jeremy’s one of my best friends.
Matt Baum:
Oh, really?
Brandon Stump:
Actually, Jeremy helped pull me out of the slums of addiction 10 years ago.
Matt Baum:
No kidding?
Brandon Stump:
I met Jeremy… I was on a skateboard with two days of sobriety, and I had a mouth with all sorts of problems. Cavities, you name it. I had problems with my mouth. And I met him, and he was sober at the time, and he said, “Hey, man, we need to fix your mouth.” And he took me to his dentist and his dentist did about $5,000 worth of work on my teeth for free, because I didn’t have any money. And-
Matt Baum:
Okay, hold on. This is as a stranger? He just meets you and he’s like, “Man, your mouth is effed up!”
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
He’s like, “Come on, let’s go to my dentist.”
Brandon Stump:
There’s blood on my shirt…
Matt Baum:
Oh my god, what a guy!
Brandon Stump:
Oh, he’s a great guy. One of the biggest hearts I’ve ever met, and he’s just been a dear friend of mine ever since. I mean, we lived together for a couple years and he’s very pa… He’s actually helped me create some of the… He actually came up with the Goji Cacao tincture.
Matt Baum:
Oh, really?
Brandon Stump:
It was his idea, yeah.
Matt Baum:
Okay. So he’s a multifaceted dude. I’d’ve just said, you know, “He’s gorgeous, he’s ripped, whatever. That asshole.” Some of us are short, bearded jerks, right? So you’ve known this guy ever since then. He’s working with your company. He’s a spokesperson, too, right?
Brandon Stump:
Yeah.
Matt Baum:
That’s amazing, man. So what’s next?
Brandon Stump:
We just got placed into Mother’s Markets. There’s nine locations here in Southern California. It’s the best organic market; we all shop there. We’ve been shopping there for years. He grew up shopping there. He’s a big health and food nut.
Matt Baum:
Cool.
Brandon Stump:
He’s a big private chef and all sorts of stuff. So we’ll be in the Mother’s Markets doing activations, so we’ll have a stand there, we’ll be doing sampling of our products, and-
Matt Baum:
Nice!
Brandon Stump:
Jeremy heads that whole division, so-
Matt Baum:
That’s very cool.
Brandon Stump:
-any time we get placed in a key account, Jeremy flies out there and does the trainings and does the activations and all sorts of stuff like that.
Matt Baum:
So where are you guys now, outside of California? Like I said, I’m in Nebraska, and it’s next to impossible to get really good stuff. We actually have a local company that’s doing a fantastic job, which is great.
Brandon Stump:
Cool.
Matt Baum:
They’re popping up everywhere now, but where are you guys in the United States?
Brandon Stump:
So we have two locations. Our headquarters is out of Denver, Colorado. So all of our hemp is grown in Colorado, it’s extracted there, it’s manufactured there. All of our products are made there. Then we have our COO, and we have a big office there, a warehouse there. All of our employees, from marketing to sales to operations, are headquartered out of Denver. But we also have a satellite office here in Southern California, in Newport Beach, where we have another 30 employees doing everything they can on a daily basis to improve the lives of others through Pachamama.
Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.
Brandon Stump:
Two locations.
Matt Baum:
And, of course, a website where you can order, and we’ll have links to that.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, www.enjoypachamama.com.
Matt Baum:
Okay. For those of you who can’t spell it, we’ll have links. Don’t worry.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah. We got a great eCommerce platform. We do a lot of cool things for our consumer base, our fans. We have bundles, we have subscribe-and-saves, we have a huge loyalty to our product. I mean, half of our business every month is repeat customers buying the product [crosstalk 00:30:45].
Matt Baum:
That’s great. That’s great, man.
Brandon Stump:
This month, I think towards the end of June, we’re actually rolling out our swag, so we have some Pachamama yoga pants for the ladies-
Matt Baum:
Nice!
Brandon Stump:
We have some Pachamama lifestyle T-shirts, two different colors. They’re really high-end, nice shirts. And then, my favorite, we have Pachamama dry-fits for all the athletes and people out there sweating.
Matt Baum:
Cool.
Brandon Stump:
Unisex.
Matt Baum:
Very cool.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, so those will be available at the end of the month.
Matt Baum:
So this is… I hate to get into this part of it, because it’s always a gnarly question, but when it came time to start accepting credit cards and stuff like that for your business, did you feel any pushback? Did you have trouble with banking, or were you guys fortunate enough to figure it out?
Brandon Stump:
I have two guys, my brother Ryan and our COO Anthony Valentine, that… I obviously grew up with my brother Ryan, and Anthony I’ve known since kindergarten… That are just absolutely incredible at what they do. I call them the glue. They’re the ones that hold the business together. I go out and make a mess-
Matt Baum:
Right, yeah. And they fix it.
Brandon Stump:
-and throw stuff against the wall and see what works and what doesn’t-
Matt Baum:
And they go, “What did you promise them?!
Brandon Stump:
And they hold it all together. Absolutely.
Matt Baum:
You got to have that. You got to have those guys.
Brandon Stump:
Yeah, they were able to figure out that whole situation pretty easily.
Matt Baum:
Good. That’s great. That’s really good to hear, because it’s been tough for a lot of small business people.
Matt Baum:
As always, you can find links to the Pachamama site and links to the Buckeye Recovery Network in the show notes for this episode.
Matt Baum:
That’s about it for another exciting episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast! Thanks to everybody that listened in, and we here at Ministry of Hemp believe that an accessible world is a better world for everybody, so there is a full written transcript of this show, too, if you have trouble listening. You can find that in the show notes, along with links to the article I talked about, about hemp paper, over at ministryofhemp.com, and a great article about sustainable hemp farming and promoting regenerative agriculture in hemp.
Matt Baum:
If you need more Ministry of Hemp in your life, you can find us at all your favorite social media platforms: /ministryofhemp or @ministryofhemp. And if you want to become a Ministry of Hemp insider and help us spread the word, check us out at Patreon/ministryofhemp. Any donation gets you access to podcast extras, like this week, I’m going to have one with me and Brandon talking about the Pachamama hockey team and some other fun stuff. You also get access to early articles and all kinds of other content that you don’t get on ministryofhemp.com, plus you’re helping us spread the good word of hemp, and that should be reward in and of itself, right? Thank you to everybody that’s already joined up, and go become a Ministry of Hemp insider now, if you haven’t yet!
Matt Baum:
Next time on the show, I’m going to be talking about hemp-infused tea, so be sure to check back for that. I hope everybody has a safe, long Fourth of July weekend, and remember: take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.
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