Jenna Goldring: Founder and CEO of The High Confectionary

25:16So I have two Tims We had one who was legacy at one of the largest cannabis websites where you can actually purchase things through. And then Tim Kermidis, who's my partner still, was logistics for a big cannabis company. And between the three of us, we were able to kind of figure out what to do. Talk to me about development because I've interviewed lots of folks about, you know, building a wine brand or building other consumer goods, but I have not asked anyone about this. I can only imagine that there was an additional layer of complexity because it's cannabis. Yeah. This is my favorite part is development because I think it's the coolest thing in the world to think of something.

25:56And then a couple of months later, like you can hold it. It's a really, really weird feeling. We started by thinking about what candy we like. So I was like, I love Sour Patch Kids. I want these to taste like Sour Patch Kids. That was kind of my ethos for the gummy. And like, you've had them. I think they kind of taste like Sour Patch Kids. We went through a year of crittiness because it was like the texture was wrong. And I was very big on like, this actually has to be sour. Like I don't want it to say sour and not be sour. It gives you a pucker. Yeah. My manufacturer was like, I'm going to kill you.

26:24I'm like, it's not sour enough. Like this is not sour. So we went through a million flavors, a million rounds of testing. I didn't want them to taste like cannabis, which was my big thing. I wanted them to taste like candy. So that's part of it. And then testing is really difficult when you're doing a low dosage because you get a percentage of room for error in a product. So like if you're doing a 10 milligram gummy, if your gummy is 11 milligrams, it's actually still going to pass testing to be labeled as 10 milligrams. I know. But when you're doing one milligram, it's like the margin of error is much smaller.

27:00So sometimes we would make a batch and it would fail testing. So it was hard. And a lot of manufacturers, like we can't do one milligram because of that. We don't think we can get it right. So we went through a few manufacturers. We finally have a great one. But yeah, that's kind of how it works is it's as simple as you think of something and then you see if it can translate into something that tastes good and actually functions from a wellness perspective the way that you want it to. Man, that is intense. Yeah. It's fun though. Talk to me a little bit about some of those big learning curves in that first pre-launch formative stage?

27:37Like what was the hardest thing to figure out and what was easy? So when we first started, we were actually strictly selling into dispensaries, which was a very different model than now we're DTC. And we're still in some stores too, but the biggest challenge is kind of what I alluded to before was convincing them to sell the product. Like they were like, no one's going to pay this for this product. And we launched in a store called Sweet Flower, which is in Los Angeles. It's great. I'm familiar. Yeah. They work with innovative new brands and they took our product and it ended up selling out. Were they your launch partner?

28:10Yeah, they're our launch partner, which is a great partner. We ended up selling out there. So they kept reordering. And then we were playing this game where I was literally on calls pitching sales reps and buyers at these stores who, by the way, were all stoners. So it was even harder because they're like, we don't want this. We won't use it. And so that was the biggest challenge. And I just got told no so much. Cause I think when you know that there's a need and socially, like I was giving this out and people were becoming like really obsessed with it and asking me for more. So I'm like, this is just not the right channel.

28:41Like we have to figure out how to get this out there in a different way. That was a huge challenge. It was dealing with like industry veterans who are just like, no, one's going to pay this and no one's going to care. Okay. So I also want to get into launch and getting to that initial product assortment. What were your flavors? Like what was the offering? We launched with our gummy packet. So we had four flavors. We had the peach, watermelon, passion fruit, plum, and strawberry lemonade. So we launched with those and they were single packs. You could only buy them in a single pack. And we thought they were great for like checkout.

29:19So if someone came into a dispensary and bought like a heavy hitter joint, like you could be like, Hey, like smoke this and that snack on these. And that's still one of our bestselling products. Like people love those. And the idea behind it was like, I want something that is a one serving socially. So like you can put it in your pocket. You could put it in your purse. It's not a tin. It's not something bulky. You share it with your friends and then like you're done for the night. You don't have to carry this thing around like all the time. That was our first product. That was our product for a while before we kind of went into developing sleep, which was our next product, which is now actually our bestseller.

29:53Interesting. Yeah. I actually was using our Sour Flower product to sleep, but I'm like, this could have some more stuff in it to actually make me a little bit more sleepy because those are more for socializing. And so we went on to develop our sleep gummy. And then from there, I was like, what if you don't want to fully sleep? What if you just want to relax? Like how do we create something that's kind of in between those two different products and we launched chill out and we launched some products that also sucked that we didn't remake. Like we tend to just try it, see what happens and then make a ton more if it works.

30:24Yeah. So in addition to sweet flower, did you have any other early good experiences with retail or at what point did you start thinking about like, how do we start taking this business into a more D to C direction. We were in a bunch of partners in San Francisco and it wasn't that it was a bad business. It was just like, you don't make any money because in cannabis, first of all, they want to sell it for three acts of what they're buying it. So if I'm selling it for$15, I have to like basically sell it for like$3 and 50 cents. And like, that's not a very high margin for the amount of work that went into it for us.

30:58And then they expect you to like come to the store and do a pop-up and sell it to the consumer. And it's just like, we just were not making money. And I'm like, this is not sustainable at this point. Also, you're like, this is not a Whole Foods. I'm not doing a pop-up with my ice cream. Like, come on, that's a totally different model. It was like a one little boutique-y store. It's not like they're ordering like these huge wholesale orders. So we knew that our goal was always to get into D2C, but we had to get out there a little bit more before we made that pivot. I've never run an e-commerce website.

31:31It's a totally different thing. Now I'm like, I could do with my hands tied behind my back. But we had to develop a different product because the manufacturer we were using was in California. And so it was for California products. And we had a manufacturer in Michigan and that was for Michigan products. Like how you had to develop it is very different. Can you explain that part of like the legalities of it? That basically like if you're going to sell cannabis in New York, it has to be made in New York, right? Yes. So, okay, this is a science lesson and my numbers are examples. So cannabis is a genre of plants.

32:03Within cannabis, there's like what we think of as cannabis. And then there's hemp. They are scientifically basically the same thing. Cannabis has really high Delta 9 THC, which is like what gets you high. It also has CBD. You can have a ton of other like cannabinoids in it. Hemp is the inverse. So majority of the plant is CBD, but it still has Delta 9 THC in it. So traditionally, why would you get THC from hemp plant if the concentration is so much lower? You would have to grow 10 times more. So what happened in 2018 is a farm bill passed and it legalized hemp. So you could get Delta 9 THC from hemp and then it has to have a certain ratio in your product.

32:48So it's harder for higher dose products to do this because they have to put so many other ingredients to get the ratio correct than a lower dose product. but since I was able to get my THC from hemp, I could then sell basically nationwide. There's a few states that restrict it and I could sell DTC. What that also let me do is have a single manufacturer because I no longer had to have my cannabis that's sold in California produced in that state, which is how it works on the cannabis side. And so it was a completely new business model, but we always knew we were going to do it. It was an investment.

33:20I had to do R &D again. I had to take my products and get them to make them perfectly. And we had to build out a website, but yes. So that's kind of how it works. And then I would also like to make a distinction between Delta eight, which people get very, very confused. Delta eight is synthetic. It's made in a lab. It takes THC and kind of uses chemicals to transform into other things. And like that's even regulated separately. And there's a lot of very sketchy brands that use Delta eight. And I think that's what gives hemp a bad rap, but hemp is not bad if it's Delta nine from an actual plant and not like the synthetic form.

33:54Got it. It's actually the same thing you would get in a dispensary. So it's 2023. You switch into making product and have to go through all the R &D again with hemp, which then allows you to move into D2C because you can ship almost everywhere in the United States. Yes. Almost everywhere. Yeah. But all of this requires money and funding. How did you manage that piece of it? So we raised money initially and I'm very, very stingy with money. We had money still, like we didn't spend all of it. We actually haven't fundraised since then. That's awesome. We're profitable. We haven't had to. So we knew it was going to be an investment.

34:30We went through our finances and we're like, okay, but the return on investment is huge. Like if we can do this, like we're going to have a real business. So we decided to make the investment and it took a second because I'm very much about the product actually being correct. And so people yell at me from this a lot on our team and they're like, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like we just need to launch it. And there is truth to that, but like with the actual product taste and quality, like it kind of does because you get one shot. And if people don't like it, they're not going to order it again.

34:58Like packaging, I'm like, yeah, you can make tweaks too, but like the product has to be good. So it took us a bit and then we launched and I literally remember we did$2 ,000 in sales our first month. And I was like, this is amazing. Now I'm like, I never could have imagined like what it would have turned into, but like, it was just like cool to see like a stranger buy it and then email and be like, this product is so great. Like it helped me with my sleep or, you know, my mom's had cancer and like nothing's helped her relax. We get stuff like that. And I'm like, even it's 50 people, it's awesome that we're helping them.

35:31That's amazing. So talk to me about bringing Whitney Port on as your creative director, which again, feels like such a smart move. Were you looking for an additional person to work with? Like, how does that work? And what does she do? Yes. So Whitney is the best. She's so great. Yeah. We knew that in brands nowadays, you really need like a face of the brand, which I was definitely not going to do. I'm very behind the scenes. So I don't like being in front of like pictures and stuff. I like to kind of be in the background. So we needed someone that was consumer facing. And I wanted someone that actually generally liked this stuff.

36:09So I don't even know if Whitney knows this, but when we launched in Sweetflower in the Studio City location, she actually came and bought a packet and we like gave her a hat. And that was like years before I met her. So my younger sister and Whitney's sister, Paige, known each other for a while. And Cassie, my sister, was like, you should talk to Paige. She just knows everyone. She could probably like have some ideas and she likes the product. And so I had a call with Paige and Paige was like, you've got to talk to my sister, Whitney. Like she loves this stuff and like has been trying to get her feet into it.

36:44Also, we all went to the same high school in LA, different grades. So like I knew one of their sisters was on my tennis team, but I didn't know Whitney at all or Paige. And Whitney and I had a call and it was like one of those calls that just went on a very long time because she loves the product. She wants to get into this space. We both are very passionate about like women not being scared to talk about using this stuff. Like it really straddles wellness, right? Like, why can we talk about alcohol? But people are so scared to talk about cannabis. And the low dose aspect also kind of makes it a bit different.

37:16And I was like, do you want to come on board? And she was like, yes. And we started working together more in like a partnership capacity because, you know, you never know how you're going to work with someone. I learned that lesson a couple of times in my career. And so we wanted to make sure it was like a good fit from both perspectives. Obviously it was. And so we brought her on as like our full-time creative director, but she's honestly basically a partner in the company. And I think that was a point where like everything kind of changed. Everyone knows Whitney and loves Whitney, especially who our target audience is, right?

37:44It's like twenties to fifties. Like we grew up with the Hills and all of that stuff. So it was just a great fit. And Whitney is so creative and so visually talented. So she adds so much value. The chocolate launch is a great example. Like that was from Whitney and Sarah too, creative brain and sleep, you know, we designed together. So she's been such an integral part, both from like creating new products, but then obviously getting the word out there and helping destigmatize what we're doing, which she was one of the first influencers that was not a cannabis influencer to come out and endorse a brand like this.

38:22Yeah. Let's talk about the chocolate collaboration. So you did a collaboration with a friend of the pod, Sarah, who does Broma Bakery and created three low-dose infused chocolate bars. They are amazing. The toffee one is my favorite. I know. Everyone loves that one. It's so good. They did such a cute tutorial about how you take the pure chocolate bar and make that into low-dose brownies. talk to me a little bit about how this collaboration came together because the packaging is so beautiful. The product is so beautiful. It was so thoughtfully done. It feels so chic and elevated. And also it's just delicious.

39:02I'm such a big fan. Oh my God. We'll send you more. It kind of goes back to this idea of like people that organically like the product. So Whitney and Sarah sat next to each other at an influencer dinner and kind of hit it off. Amazing. When he was like, want some gummies? And she was like, yeah. And they figured out like they both are kind of into this. And Cassie has had this idea and the high confectioner is meant to be a candy company in cannabis. So chocolate was always on our list. But again, I've learned that it's really good to launch with someone who has a platform, but also like, you're not like, please do this.

39:34Let's collab. I'll pay you all this money. It was like someone who actually cares about organic. So we pitched Sarah on the chocolate and we're like, let's make chocolate for eating and let's make chocolate for baking. So you can put it in cookies. You can put it in brownies and the bars are 12 squares, like a Hershey's bar and you break one off and that's one milligram. So again, you can eat the whole bar. You can have one. It took a very long time to get the creative for kind of the vibe that we wanted to do. We're moving a bit more into like the luxury elevated branding space. So sleep is very much reminiscent of that.

40:07And same with the chocolate launch, but it's the same process. We're like, what flavors do we want to make? How many pieces do we want? How big do we want the bar to be? All of our packaging is childproof. Some people are always like, I don't know how to open this, but I'm like, yeah, that's the point. Like we'll teach you, but we don't want your kids getting into it. Like they physically cannot open it. And we wanted this to feel like a thick bar. It's fancy. Yeah. It's fancy. And like, you've never think about how thick chocolate is until you're like making chocolate and you're like, I want it to really snap.

40:35So we went through quite a few iterations of it's too salty. There's too much toffee. There's not enough quinoa in it. And so we kind of got it right and we launched, but the launch was crazy. And I know it looks so polished from the other side, but I was like losing sleep and it's a lot, but I'm so proud of that one. It's so well executed. Can you make a dark chocolate mint? Yeah, we're going to do more. You know, when you go to hotels and they put like a little thing on your pillow, we're going to do like single serving squares of more like innovative flavors. and we're going to do a sleep chocolate, which I'm really excited about.

41:11So taking the same ingredients that are in our sleep and then putting it into like a little chocolate you could have before bed. I love it. On that note, I just realized we did not differentiate about sleep. I think the formulation is so cool because it has other things in it. Can you speak a little bit about all of the additional benefits and fun things that are in the sleep product? Yeah. So we have a few variations of it, but sleep has CBD in it. It has CBN in it. And then And it has one milligram melatonin, which I recently learned there are no one milligram melatonin products on market. So we have one of the only ones.

41:45And then we also make a melatonin free version for people that don't react well to melatonin that has some other fun stuff in it, like valerian root and a bit of other herbs that is actually like Whitney developed that one. It's really special. And they all kind of magically work together to put you to sleep in a nice way. And you don't wake up feeling like you took something. There's no hangover. Yeah. I hate like sleeping pills. I remember in pregnancy and when I really couldn't sleep, I like woke up the next day and I was like, I don't feel right. So that was why we kept everything so low dose.

42:19And it just kind of has this like magical blend that works really, really well. And then the chill out product also has, you know, some more of the CBD type cannabinoids in it. So it gives you a bit more of like body relaxing and mental relaxing where the anytime is a little more uplifting. So it's subtle unless you take a lot, obviously you'll feel it more, but they're designed to kind of give you relief for certain things that you need throughout your day. And we're developing some other fun ones that are going to be coming out soon, but I'm pumped about. I'm excited. I also want to point out again, as someone who has been a longtime client, one of the things that I appreciate about it is I have two children who occasionally wake up in the middle of the night for whatever reason.

43:02And the thing I like about the high confectionery is I can wake up at three in the morning because someone has had a bad dream and you don't feel the way that you do if you've had a couple of glasses of wine and you wake up at three in the morning and you're like, oh, I'm not fully all together. It is so gentle. And also part of the reason I like it too is I work out in the morning and I can take it and go to sleep and work out in the morning totally fine. I have not done anything the night before, which is amazing. It's so funny you say that because I actually always say that when I pitch people.

43:32I'm like, I have a three-year-old who wakes up and screams and I have to go in there and I'm fully up with him. I'm not groggy or not alert or tripping in the hallway. It's a very cool product. How do you think about growth now? How do you think about product cadence and how often you launch newness and when you expand into something? I think we're really careful and thoughtful about it. So chocolate, we've had that idea probably for two and a half years and it took us a while to actually be like, all right, this is the right time. We have enough customers. We have the right partner. There's kind of like a playbook we've developed with launching new products.

44:09Chocolate was harder because we'd never made chocolate before. So launching a new gummy is pretty easy. I have a base formula. We can plug in different ingredients and flavors and test out what works. We can whip those out much faster than when we move into a new product category. So I think it's like understanding, like, do people want this? Are people going to buy this? Are they going to care? Like, what is unique about this story that is not just another chocolate bar? And like, what is a messaging to the consumer? What's the target? What's the brand feel? So there's a lot that we consider before we launch a new product.

44:41And like, again, we have a set of ideas that like we've been sitting on for years because we're like, it's just not right now. Like we need to kind of have a few more puzzle pieces fall into place before we decide to pull the trigger. And then obviously funding like chocolate was a significant investment, but we're like three bars away from selling out of our first run and we're going to have to produce more. So we just felt like very strong about the ability to move that product. So there's a lot that goes into it. So I think the larger vision is twofold. One, I would love to partner with a legacy cannabis brand that doesn't have a low dose product to get back into the cannabis stores, but I don't want to build that out again.

45:17So I want to just plug into their ecosystem and be like, here's an entirely new audience that you don't have. And I know they don't have it. 95 % of our audience are female. They're in a certain age range. And it's been something that traditionally I know from my days at Philo, like they couldn't reach. So we have that. And then we can use their ecosystem, both from manufacturing to distribution to kind of like build out that side of it without having to run it. The larger vision is I would love to continue to expand our products. So there's a few on my list that I really want to do. And then the dream is to eventually have a retail footprint where we could do this like candy store.

45:55Boutique. Yeah, exactly. But again, it's like, how do we do that strategically? It's not necessarily like us taking a lease out. It's actually partnering with someone who has a licensing and has all this and sees the value. So we do a lot of partnerships that are value add to them and their value add to us. And I think heard that your ultimate goal is to sell this brand and that then you'd want to build something new again. So I have to ask, is that still the hope? I don't want to sell the company yet because I feel like there's just more to do. And like, it's gotten to a point where it's stressful.

46:32Yes, but it's so fun now. The things that we get to do, the products that we get to make, like the people that I'm so lucky I get to work with, like it's really, really fun as well as like, at times I want to pull my hair out, but that's just the nature of a startup. I like building things. So I think eventually when I feel like this isn't a place where we are at a point to can over the reins or go work for whoever buys us, I would love to do something new. I have all these ideas written down. I don't know what I'm going to do, but you got the bug. Yeah. I would love to do something like farming and agriculture.

47:04I feel like I just love that stuff so much. It's part of what I do, honestly, like cannabis is from the ground. It's a plant, so it's not so far removed, but yeah, I don't know. I think things lead you places, you know? Sure. Okay. So on this podcast, I always ask everyone the same three final questions. And the first one is about mistakes because everyone makes them, but we don't always talk about it. We tend to give like the Instagram perfect version, but I think it's important to talk about mistakes, especially for women to hear about women making mistakes and then still being resilient and able to move forward.

47:37So can you tell me about a mistake that you've made at any point in your career and what you've learned from it? There's two I would highlight. One is I think when I initially raised money, I was so, so, so scared to spend money because I was like, you know, if this doesn't work or we're not making money back. And so I did a lot of shortcuts to kind of like save a thousand dollars here or save a couple thousand dollars here. And then like you end up redoing them a million times. And then after that, you're kind of like, I just should have done it the right way to begin with. And I would have avoided time suck.

48:09And also just like actually then spending more money than doing it the right way the first time. So I think I did that a lot when I first started this company. If I could go back and change that, I would. I think the other thing that... I don't know if this is a mistake, but I think it was humbling. I obviously had a baby in the middle of all of this, which was definitely not a mistake, but I didn't know how to navigate that. It was really difficult running the company, feeling like I was in charge. And then like, I was a first time mom and I was dealing with some like postpartum and it was just like a really, really messy, hard time.

48:44And I wish that I had like given myself some more slack than I did at the time. I had so much pressure and I didn't really have many people that were founders and first time moms that I could talk to about it. And so it was just hard and lonely and stressful. So I wish that I could have like given myself more grace and patience and gone back and been like, it's going to be okay. Like even if you have to take a break for a little bit and come back, which I actually ended up doing. And now I'm like, thank God I came back and I love this, but it's hard to kind of see that when you're in it. So those would be my two.

49:18So a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast are in their first lives and they know that they want to do something different. Maybe it's in the same industry that they're already in, or maybe it's moving to a totally different industry. Maybe they want to start something, or maybe they just want to switch careers. Who knows? but they're scared as someone who has made a big pivot in her career. What advice would you give someone who's standing there thinking about it, but just hasn't made the leap quite yet? I mean, it's definitely scary. I get it. I was terrified. I think it's hard because especially if you're in a job where like you have a steady income and it's familiar and you're kind of thinking to yourself, like, if I take this risk, what happens if it doesn't work?

50:01So I think like you have to evaluate one, like, can you take the risk? Right? Like you don't want to do something that is going to put you in a bad position where like you can't pay your rent. You have to be a little bit realistic. And so that's kind of why I started working on it on the side where it was an idea and I was working on it after hours and it was my whole life. Like I was working a job and I was doing that, but it allowed me to be a little bit less afraid because I wasn't just diving in. I was a little more calculated about like how I was doing it. But I would also say that like, no one knows what they're doing when they start a company, unless it's like, they've started a bunch of companies to figure it out if you're resourceful.

50:35And there is something to be said about like, if you don't try, you might regret it. And even for things that have failed that I've worked on, like products that I've failed or companies that I've worked at that I ended up leaving, like you learn a ton. And so it's not not valuable. It's just maybe a different kind of value than you thought you were going to get. So I just say, go for it, but be smart about how you do it. If you have the ability to jump in with both feet, great. If you can't, there's ways that you can still work on something while keeping your job. There'll be a time where like I felt a pull and I knew like, all right, this is the time.

51:10I just say, do it. Life's short. You never know what can happen. Like follow your idea. You know, just don't have any expectations and follow what you want to do. My last question is my favorite question, which is if you could get in a time machine and go back in time and give your younger self some advice, what would you say? Don't panic that you don't have a job when you graduate college. I know we torture ourselves, right? Yeah. I was like, oh my God, I'm a failure. Like I was always an A student. I don't have a job. I don't know what I'm fucking doing. And it's fine. I feel like if you're smart and you're resourceful and you grind, it works out.

51:46And like, that was like the least of it. But at the time it was so scary to graduate without a job. I would go back and be like, it's going to be fine. And I would also tell myself, you have no idea what you're going to do. You're lucky if you have that, but in a different way, like I feel lucky that I've gotten to work with so many people on so many things. I didn't know I was creative. Who knew? And now I'm like, that's actually like my superpower. But I didn't know that when I was younger. I love that. Well, as someone who is an honest, huge fan and so enthused by what you have built. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making such a great company.

52:23Oh my God, thanks. That's so nice. This is such a personal episode for me because I'm such a fan of what you've built. And thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy you're a fan.

52:43That was the co-founder of The High Confectionary, Jenna Goldring. for more inspiring interviews with women like Jenna, head on over to secondlifepod.com, where we have so many more for you to peruse. If you like today's show, please subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to rate and review us. We love seeing you spread the word on social. And now you can tag us in your posts. We are at secondlifepod on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We always want to know who you're interested in hearing from on the show. So send in your requests to hello at secondlifepod.com, or you can DM us on Instagram.

53:23I'm at Hillary Kerr. The show is at secondlifepod. Our DMs are always open. I'm Hillary Kerr, and you've been listening to Second Life. This episode was produced by Hillary Kerr, Summer Hammeris, and Natalie Thurman. Our production assistant is Grace Ingram. Our audio engineers are at Treehouse Recording in Los Angeles, California, and our music is by Jonathan Leahy.