Unscripted Cannabis

Mark Gillilan started Kyoto Botanicals in 2020 as a THC-free CBD company, years before federal law moved the same way. On this episode of Unscripted Cannabis, host Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay) asks him why he built it that way from day one, and what the federal hemp rule taking effect November 12, 2026 means for everyone who didn't. Mark got his start in hemp wellness about ten years ago at Charlotte's Web, and today Kyoto Botanicals makes broad-spectrum CBD and functional mushroom products. The full written recap is at Mark Gillilan: THC-Free by Design, and there's a closer look at the new rule in November 12 and the 0.4 milligram rule. In this episode The afternoon Mark spent mixing full-spectrum extract in his kitchen and realized he was high, and why the 0.3% THC limit hides the number that matters: "It's the milligrams." A 25 milligram full-spectrum gummy can carry a milligram of THC, and a high-dose tincture four to six per serving. What broad spectrum and "no-detect" lab results actually mean, plus his honest warning for anyone whose job depends on a drug test. Functional mushrooms (lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, chaga, nothing psilocybin), why Kyoto dual-extracts them with alcohol and water to get past the chitin, and Mark's routine: mushrooms for "quiet focus" by day, CBD for sleep at night. The November 12 federal hemp rule and its 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, the numbers Mark has seen suggesting about 95% of the CBD industry falls outside it, and Tennessee, where Kyoto no longer ships. How the industry got here: "It's like water, it's gonna find the weak spots." Delta 8, heavy-loaded products, and what the rule could mean for the farmers who converted tobacco acres to hemp. Building a brand from the inside out, and why Kyoto leans on education through its blog, YouTube channel and local markets. Find Mark and his products at kyotobotanicals.com, and more conversations at Unscripted Cannabis.

Farmer Tom Lauerman started growing cannabis at 13 in San Diego, got arrested at 16 in the Ocean Beach pier parking lot, and has spent every decade since fighting for the plant. On this episode of Unscripted Cannabis, host Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay) hands him the floor, and Tom walks through his whole history in one sitting: the collective, the raid, the farmers markets, and the two days he spent teaching federal scientists what a cannabis farm actually looks like. He runs Farmer Tom Organics, where he offers consulting for cannabis and hemp farms. The full written recap is at Farmer Tom Lauerman: The Seed That Started It All. In this episode Shelter from the Storm, the Prop 215 collective Tom grew for in San Diego: about 20 patients, $50 a month if you could afford it, and a jar filled once a week on the honor system. "It was a true collective model." The 1999 raid on his San Diego collective (it started with his dog nipping at a neighbor's fence), why the collective kept a media list (a lesson from Brownie Mary), and how NORML's lawyers and a courthouse protest got the charges shelved. The case led to San Diego's first medical marijuana task force. Moving to Oregon's Applegate Valley, then a five-acre former nursery outside Portland on the Washington side, where he cleaned the soil with pumpkins before growing. Washington's medical marijuana farmers markets, the magazine covers that came out of them, and lobbying in Olympia while the state wrote its legalization rules. The live extraction demo he organized for TV news that helped change the state's mind about concentrates: "If you don't regulate and tax, people are gonna continue to blow themselves up." Hosting CDC and NIOSH scientists on his farm in 2015 for a union-requested health hazard evaluation, including the CyberGlove study that produced the carpal tunnel warning for trimmers. The Lund Report covered the study. Teaching cannabis courses at Clark College, training over 300 farmers through his Hemp Farming Academy, and working as an expert witness in a large Kentucky hemp case. Why he turned down a deal that would have owned his name and face, and why he answers "exit plan?" questions the way he does. His role as a San Diego cannabis social equity applicant and the county buffer rules, where he walked staff through the pros and cons and the county went with his 600-foot recommendation over the 1,200 to 1,500 feet some cities wanted. "Once you get arrested, the worst thing has happened and you really become an advocate for the plant at that point." - Farmer Tom Lauerman "Being an advocate's more about being an educator." - Farmer Tom Lauerman "There's still a lot of us in the trenches fighting." - Farmer Tom Lauerman Connect Farmer Tom: the Farmer Tom Organics website. He's Farmer Tom Lauerman on Instagram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your host, Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay): mrgudwudz.com and gudwudz.com. Meet him on

Most cannabis brands believe the product sells itself. Dan Serard, Chief Revenue Officer of Cannabis Creative Group, has watched hundreds of them find out it doesn't. On this episode of Unscripted Cannabis, host Mr. Gudwudz (Just Jay) puts his own brand on the table and Dan turns the conversation into a live consulting session. Dan has been with the agency since it started in 2018 under the name Champ Digital. It has since worked with more than 600 clients in about 36 states, all with in-house, US-based staff. Before cannabis he ran fitness clubs in downtown Boston and Santa Monica, where he set out to be "the mayor" who knew every member and business owner. That education-first, no-hard-sell habit is what he brought to cannabis. His profile is on the Cannabis Creative Group team page. The full written recap, with the 90-day plan laid out step by step, is at Dan Serard: How to Market Cannabis When the Platforms Are Against You. In this episode Why Meta and Google flag cannabis and ancillary brands: no promotion of sales, no "$30, buy one get one" offers, and no smoke or smoking imagery. Dan's team still runs compliant digital advertising by leaning on lifestyle and education, and he explains why AI-written ad copy misses those nuances. A live teardown of Gudwudz, the $20 handcrafted walnut smoking accessory: show it in people's hands, use real-world use cases and testimonials, and put the value proposition at the very top of the site, because you have less than a second to catch a scroller. "If you build it they will come" as the deadliest belief in the industry. Start local or regional, prove the concept, then expand, the way one client grew from 60-plus stores in Nashville to 20 more in South Carolina. Why cannabis spreads by word of mouth: the porch at the house party, where strangers become best friends. The two channels nobody can shut off. First, organic SEO, plus a Google Business Profile. Second, email marketing, which means building the list at events and trade shows. Acquisition versus retention: SEO, ads and awareness bring people in, and email, SMS and loyalty platforms like Alpine IQ keep them buying. Premium versus merely expensive. Nail the brand identity first (voice, tone, blacks, golds and mattes), stay consistent for three to five years, then refresh based on what customers say. What an engagement costs: everything is custom scoped, brand packages typically start around $5,000 and digital retainers around $1,500. "That's the kiss of death. I think if you build it they will come because you might have a great friend network, a great product, and you know, you think everyone wants it? Well, you gotta educate people why." - Dan Serard "SEO is always gonna be king when it comes to searching products online." - Dan Serard Dan's 90-day plan for any small brand: run a rebrand or positioning exercise so the brand reads as premium, fix the website's call to action and value proposition, and get the product into people's hands at events with a camera rolling. More on this theme from Unscripted Cannabis: You Have To Educate People Why...

Relief is not healing. That is the whole episode in three words. Becca Williams spent years as a television news reporter, producer and anchor, medicating through it, always feeling better for a while. The feelings kept coming back. Host Just J talks to her about what she calls the third wave of cannabis, and why the plant on its own does not do the work. Key takeaways Three waves, not two. Recreational, then medical, then intentional use inside a framework built for emotional processing. Cannabis is a nonspecific amplifier. It magnifies the state you are already in. If nothing is providing direction, it amplifies that too. Relief is transitory by design. Getting baked through the hard part feels better while it lasts because nothing was released. Healing conditions the nervous system. Becca’s claim is that a processed layer stays processed and does not need redoing. Talk therapy has a ceiling on trauma. Not a dismissal of therapy, a statement about what talking can reach. The macro-journey glow fades. A big psychedelic experience without an integration container leaves you where it found you. On this page The three waves of cannabis Relief versus healing Why the container matters more than the plant The limits of talk therapy When the generational cycle stops People, ideas and sources mentioned Questions this episode answers Go deeper The three waves of cannabis Becca positions her work as a third wave. The first is recreational, including what she calls adult use. The second is medical, treating a specific ailment. The third is intentional and conscious use as a tool for emotional processing and trauma work. The distinction is not branding. Each wave has a different measure of success. The first asks whether you enjoyed it. The second asks whether the symptom moved. The third asks whether the thing that caused the symptom is still there. Relief versus healing This is her defining framework and it is worth sitting with. Using cannabis as a palliative, checking out on the couch through the hard parts, gives you transitory relief. You feel better while it lasts. Then the emotions come back, because nothing was released. Only postponed. Healing, in her account, is a different mechanism. It conditions the nervous system and creates new neural pathways, and it removes an emotional layer permanently. She tells her students that once a layer has been processed through the framework, they will not need to do that specific piece of work again. She did not arrive at this theoretically. She medicated with cannabis through her television years and always felt better temporarily. The emotions always returned. That is a summary of her account in the episode rather than a quotation. Why the container matters more than the plant Becca does not endorse cannabis without a container. Her term for what the plant does is nonspecific amplifier: it intensifies whatever state you bring to it. Bring avoidance and you get amplified avoidance. So the framework supplies the direction and the plant supplies the intensity. She trained for four years in Emotional Liberation, a system developed by a Kundalini yogi, and she is also a clinical nutritionist, which is why the physiological side of this gets as much attention as the emotional side. What a container actually means A defined intention set before the session, not during it. A method for proces...

A church elder who founded a cannabis company. Just Jay, known online as @MrGudwudz, spent thirteen years teaching middle school maths and science and two decades questioning the systems he was handed. He is the founder of Gudwudz, a handcrafted wooden smoking holder built to put ritual and intention back into smoking, and the author of Eternity in Real Time and The Point of Life. Key takeaways He describes himself as a systems builder. Religious, social, educational. The question he never stopped asking is whether a system serves the people inside it. The wide path and the narrow path, re-read. His reframe: walking arm in arm in the same direction is the wide path. Working it out alone with God is the narrow one. Gudwudz started in 2003 as a bamboo prototype. It debuted properly at the Cannabis Cup in Denver, in walnut. The experiential product trap. Demand comes from trying it. Getting enough people to try it requires demand you do not have yet. Every major platform except X bans cannabis-adjacent advertising. Which removes the obvious way out of that trap. An ADHD diagnosis at 48 is what brought him to cannabis for focus, and put doctrine and personal experience directly at odds. Legacy is ideas, not assets. Everything material can be taken away. He has watched it happen twice. On this page The architect of your better self Church elder meets cannabis founder The Gudwudz problem: you have to try it to get it Twenty years to finish a book Legacy as ideas, not assets People, ideas and sources mentioned Questions this episode answers Go deeper The architect of your better self Jay opens with a deceptively plain self-description. He is a systems builder. What he means by it goes deeper than process design: he has spent his life examining the systems people are handed, religious traditions, social norms, family patterns, and asking whether they actually serve the people living inside them. Growing up as a young Black boy in Mississippi, inside a church that told him the world was written off and he should stay safe, he started asking why. He is now thirteen years into teaching middle school maths and science and transitioning to full-time entrepreneurship. The question never stopped. Church elder meets cannabis founder He came up with the Gudwudz concept in 2003. His late first wife pushed back hard. A church elder should not be helping people smoke better. After she died of breast cancer that became lung cancer, the woman who never smoked, he decided he was finished performing one version of himself for external approval. His reframe of the wide-path and narrow-path scripture is the part of this episode people quote back. If you are all walking arm in arm in the same direction, that is the wide path. If you are alone with God working out your own salvation, that is the narrow one. It is a defence of individual spiritual journeys against religious groupthink, made from inside the church rather than from outside it. An ADHD diagnosis at 48 is what brought him to cannabis for its focusing effect. Doctrine on one side, direct personal experience on the other, and no comfortable way to hold both. The Gudwudz problem: you have to try it to get it Any founder with an experiential product will recognise this. Demand is generated by the experience. Generating the experience at scale requires demand...