Why The Way We Socialize Is Changing & How To Evolve Ft. Jake Bullock, Co-Founder & CEO Of Cann

20:53Oh, you should be a lobbyist. Hey, Congress, bring me. I'll pass it around. Yes. They'll be laughing. They'll be... I think they would love that. Give them a little light, love, laugh, light, dance, love. You have to try the products, right? To your point, Like if you get this experience, this is not scary, right? A lot of people, myself included, have an experience with THC when you're young. What was your experience? No, no. So my experience is I was never a THC user. I never smoked. And so what happens is like somebody passed something around in college and it was probably way too potent and way too much.

21:31I can't picture you high. Have I ever seen you high? And next thing I know, I'm like on the floor looking up, trying to find God. Right. Wait, how many times do you smoke weed? Like, I don't think I've ever seen you smoke weed. Like maybe two or three times in my life. But I used to give you gummies sometimes and you've tried this. Yeah, yeah. But that's what I'm saying. So I got scared off smoking it because I probably had too much given to me by somebody who was like, oh, let's see what happens with this guy. And so you don't know. And I think a lot of people have that experience. And then I know other people that have never had a bad experience.

22:04It just works for them right away. for this, what is the typical experience someone can expect if they're like, hey, I'm a little scared. How potent is this stuff? Right. So the first thing is we have an endocannabinoid system. That's important, right? We don't have an alcohol system. Part of the reason alcohol is so toxic is the metabolites of alcohol are really poisonous to the liver and to the body and it goes into the cells in ways that that's not what's happening here. So we're already sort of starting from a place that's a little bit more mild. Your experience that you had in the past of getting way too high, it's almost all potency based.

22:36And I think a lot of times, you know, the most approachable THC products that you may seem like just like looking at them, oh, gummy, that seems great, or a cookie or something like that. How bad can that be? Or actually some of the worst because of the way that the body absorbs them. You know, smoking, we know smoking things is bad for you. Like we're that generation. Oh, I hit that bong when I was in seventh grade so hard. It might've been out of an apple. I was so high. I was literally in outer space. I could, I can't believe how high I was. And also, what's the other one? What's the big long?

23:06That's a bomb, right? Yes. What's the big long one? They used to have those big, long, huge glass shaped like penises that you would put your mouth over. And you don't know when you're that young, like you don't know that you shouldn't be inhaling all that. It gets you so stoned. This is nothing like that. This is literally. What the hell were you doing back then? It's literally like it's this is what it's like. that experience that I just shared is like drinking a bottle of vodka. Your experience is like having a beer. Yes, that's exactly right. That's how I would explain it. I think it's pretty close.

23:41It's like everyone that had grain alcohol, like Everclear in high school, right? Like that's the equivalent. What's the green one? Absinthe. Absinthe. Yes. It's meant to be really, really mild. It's like a gentle sort of like floaty buzz. Also, your body won't metabolize in about an hour. So similar to a glass of wine or beer, you can have another one if you enjoyed that experience. If you didn't, you'll feel it subside. Because it'll dissipate in your system and then you can come back to it. Where like if you're drunk or you're too high, you can't go back. You can't go back. If you take an edible, most of that is going to be absorbed through the lining of your stomach and your liver.

24:15It's too late. Like what's ever happening, happening. It's also why it takes like an hour or two for those to kick in, sometimes even longer. Well, that's why people also get in trouble because they think it didn't work. And they'll take another one and it's all downhill from there. These you'll feel in the first 10 minutes. I also can't do a pot brownie because I'm like a too brownie kind of person because you taste it and it's not hitting and then you'll have another one. That's what you're saying. You want to just keep eating the brownie. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. What to you when building a team makes a good employee?

24:43We've been having this discussion a lot. You obviously are building infrastructure with what you do. What makes a great employee? Yeah, we talk a lot about attitude and effort. It's kind of amazing, right? If you think about a startup, I had never been a CEO of a company before. I had no experience in that, right? I'd done boring sort of finance things before starting CAN. And so the bet that I sort of made was that I could learn things really fast. The things that I didn't wanna learn or were hard for me to learn, I would find somebody that knew them, right? So I could hire people and I would show up every day working really hard with a good attitude.

25:15And that's the model we've always used from the beginning. It's like people that are young, hungry, they wanna learn, they'll figure it out. Like we're all figuring out, I'm figuring it out every day. And so I really like that profile. Really like that bet. One of the hardest things about getting bigger as a company is at some point you have to start hiring people that like know what they're doing. They've done it before and you're asking them to come do it again with you. And we were sort of going through that transition now. We just hired a VP of sales who had done this with other brands that did it with Beatbox.

25:40That's really cool. They just had an amazing exit to AB InBev. Starting to kind of move away from that has been hard for me because I want to go get the person that's like young and hungry. We still have those. Don't get me wrong. Many of them have grown into bigger roles at the company. I think too, as you scale, it's inevitable that not everyone wants to scale with you. Yes. And that's sometimes hard when you have someone who's worked for you for a long time that doesn't want to do new systems and wants to keep doing it the old way. Or is threatened because more senior people are coming in that have more experience and they're like, wait a minute, I was the person that was on top of the organization before, but now there's somebody coming.

26:19And by the way, that even happens to the CEO, right? Like you get people that are like that person probably knows more about selling in that category than you do. Not that you're running the company, but that person's been doing it their whole career. Yeah, it's been a really big challenge. You have high energy people. They learn a ton. They grow really fast. One of the things we can offer people as a startup is you're going to work really hard, but we will give you one of the best concentrated periods of learning in your life. You're going to be doing things that at a big company you wouldn't even touch.

26:43You would have a boss. Your boss's boss would be in charge of it. Right. And I'm telling you, you're in charge of it. That's kind of exciting. Those people are the ones that are going to be the most kind of threatened by having to hire over them. Often you have to do it. There's no way around it. We try to explain to them that really you're teaming with this person. This is my gift to you to like continue your education. You're going to learn so much more from this person than you've learned from me. Some of them buy it and that's great. Others leave and that's also great. Yeah, if you're on a team, you don't want to be a gatekeeper.

27:10You don't want to be a moat. No, that's not. You can't scale if you have someone that is a gatekeeper. The way I framed it over here and in my experience is that if the business gets to the stage where you're bringing in those kind of people, then it's creating an opportunity for the company to scale and get bigger and create more opportunity for everybody in the company. It's not a limiting factor. It doesn't limit someone's growth or opportunity if the company is now in a position to get someone with more experience that's going to create more opportunity and growth for the company. It just means that there's more lanes opening up for everyone in the company.

27:47Yeah, I think that's right. And we're also not trying to build a big company for the sake of having a big company, if that makes sense. We're still a startup, right? And so that ethos permeates the entire operation. And what we're trying to do here is a very specific goal. We're trying to, you know, make CanFamous to some degree. We're trying to build a global mainstream brand. We want to make a great company, but we also want to exit this business at some point, right, for our investors sake. And so it's almost, it kind of contains the journey to some degree. And I tell this to a lot of junior employees, which is you want to be here for the whole story because you're putting in all the work in the hard early days.

28:19Don't miss out on the fun part, right? When we get really big and we go do something exciting with the business. Jake, I have a random question. Yes. You graduated from Duke University and then you got your MBA at Harvard. Stanford. Oh, you know what? If I'm being honest, I mix the two up. Sorry. Okay. Stanford. They're both like in the same league to me. if you could go back doing what you do now, would you have just thrown yourself into a business or would you have gotten those degrees? The heart, the undergrad degree, I definitely would have. I wouldn't have known better. And there's so much about life.

28:56It's like keeping options open. I went from there to learn a ton, like the fundamental business skill set that I have, I got because I went to college at Duke and I learned, I studied finance and, and then I went to investment bank and I learned that I wouldn't recommend staying in investment bank for more than two years, but it's kind of like going to army. You learned a ton and you never want to do it again, but there was some real value there. I think the harder one is the MBA. And the only reason I would say I would keep it was because I went to Stanford and there was such a culture there supporting entrepreneurship.

29:25You could have said, save the money, start the company, keep working, make more money. We made things easier. And I thought through all those, but what was amazing at getting to Palo Alto, it had almost this ethos where people would say things like, well, there's two types of people in the world. There's founders of companies and people that can't be founders. It's like, which one are you? It had that pressure almost in the other direction, which usually business schools don't do. They're like, oh yeah, we'll train you to be a general manager at a big company. You'll kind of de-risk your life.

29:49Where Stanford was the opposite, which was like, I have not started. So if it was Stanford, you would have kept it. But if it was not Stanford, you would have just thrown yourself into the business. Yes. I think I'm more mixed on the generic MBA, but the one that I got was necessary for me to do this. Like even just the emotional support, like it was really hard to graduate business school without a job, right all your friends are taking these cool jobs they're talking about great it is i moved home to my parents basement i was like buying health care on the exchange which is like an impossible task i don't know how people do it and and like needing to be at my parents basement because i needed them to like buy groceries because i had no money i had to like fly to meet investors in new york city to try to get them to fund the business like it was very challenging time period i was super lucky that i had been you know kind of through that education i had a lot of skills and things to fall back on i had a network right that i could go fundraise from but it was really really challenging to go through that process and be like, it would just be easier to take a job, go back to private equity.

30:39You'll make so much money. Like that was constantly in the back of my head. And I think one of the things that helped me get over it was if I went back to private equity and was hit by a bus one day, someone would just step into my role. Like nothing would actually change in the world. Like you think you're in this like big finance role and you're doing all this stuff. But the reality is you're you're just a cog in a big machine with can like if I didn't start this company, like I don't know that anyone would or they would start a worse version of it, which might honestly be worse, right? And so I kept kind of having that drumbeat in the back of my head of like, I need to do this, I need to do this.

31:08And Stanford really supported me, you know, through the coursework, through the people there, from that culture to take the jump. I think the discussion around college and degrees now is challenging because on one hand, I think if you have the opportunity to go on the path that you went on with a great school that facilitates that kind of ambition and that kind of thinking as an entrepreneur, I'd be like, I would have loved to have something like that. I went to the University of Arizona, the Harvard of the desert. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, that sounds great. But I also, now I have my experience where I've always been entrepreneurial.

31:44And when I think back, am I honest, not to bash U of A, it was a fine, good school. But for an entrepreneur, for me, it's like, did I need that? No, I probably just went and partied and had fun and gain some independence. And fortunately, my parents were able to support me and pay for it. And so I don't know what else I would have been doing, but do I think it actually helped what I'm doing now? Honestly, I probably don't need the degree, right? I probably didn't need it. And so I tell people like, if you're in the position where your parents aren't funding it and you're going to do that and you are at the core an entrepreneur, maybe not.

32:16But then on the reverse of that, if you're somebody who wants to go and work in an organization and learn, like maybe it's a really hard discussion. I think blanketly though, if you're a young person and you're not getting the opportunity to go to a school like that, and it's going to saddle you down with a ton of costs and debt for a long time. I don't know if in today's world with AI and all the things that we have at our fingertips to learn and the access we have that I would recommend it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think that's crazy. And I think AI is a good point, right? Like a lot has changed in the educational environment, you know, since I was even in college.

32:53and I think everyone is a little bit different, right? Like I can kind of give advice to people like me, I think, because I sort of, you know, have a theory that if you're similar to me, then you'll have gone through similar things. And I really needed that support. Like I wouldn't have been somebody that was naturally jumping into entrepreneurship, like, because I was sort of just like taking on crazy risk, right? You have to know yourself. You have to know yourself. I think that's really key. And like, you know, to get from banking to management consulting to private equity, like it's pretty risk adjusted path, right?

33:19And for me, the challenge was, am I going to at some point fight for myself? Am I going to fight to be happy? And I mean, risk adjusted, you could always go back to one of those finance jobs and know you can take care of yourself and do well. Yeah, it's they're very path dependent, right? Like, you know, the whole ecosystem is designed to go from one step to the next step. And they tell you what you need to do to get to that step. And it's pretty clear, right? And it's based on your capabilities to some degree, but they teach and train you along the way. And so, you know, that path is really strong and has a hard pull.

33:47And also, as you get older in life and you cost go up, you have a mortgage, you have kids like it really dramatically changes you know what you can do. I was lucky that I kind of caught myself right before that point and said just do it like what do you have to lose. How do you feel about leadership? What do you think makes you a good leader? Yeah it's interesting like I said you know I didn't have any training in this other than sort of just like normal life stuff right and as I look at what I do every day and the impact that I'm having it can be really hard to know right like am I getting the right feedback am I a good leader like I don't actually know the answer to that you get different bits and pieces right we're a remote company so like often i find myself like speaking out into the void like into a computer screen to 30 something employees and like they like thumbs up button you or something it's like kind of a weird experience like is this going well like how's how how is this landing on the team sometimes it will you know people will call me and say that was amazing meeting you did a great job and it's like okay good maybe i'm figuring this out right i think humor is such an important part of leadership that like is often not talked about i mean there's a bunch of stuff we could go down if you wanted to make a list right but what is often not on that list is like, do people actually enjoy you and your presence and talking with you?

34:54Are you able to kind of like deflect from tension and stress? It's going to come in no matter what these kind of high stakes things we're doing often, not always, but often. And so, you know, kind of having one of the things we did from with a brand from the early, early days was, you know, we're ultimately selling something that will alter your experience. We can't take ourselves too seriously. We're not trying to be like the Barneys for weed, right? We're trying to be fun and irreverent and quirky. Like, can you take that as a lesson in your leadership as well? right something goes wrong you could get really mad you could scream and yell we could find the right throat to choke or we could kind of laugh it off and figure out how to never make that mistake again you know i've tried to balance my style more in that direction this is one of my favorite i just run around choking people yeah yeah throat to choke it's an amazing phrase don't laugh i'm gonna get over there michael's did a really good speech at the christmas party I thought you're a great leader.

35:45This is a question that I've been asking entrepreneurs that I'm super interested in. You might say, Lauren, I don't have an answer. How are you using AI creatively within your business? It's a great question. We are, we're starting to use it to some degree. Very formally as a brand, a lot of our output is marketing content, right? There's some things that we want to have real human beings, like real life. It has, there's like an editorial element to it. There's a spirit to it. You're trying to capture friends at a pool in the summer drinking can like that's really really hard to do with ai but there's also a lot of stuff like our product photography pictures of blood oranges which we use all the time all of our ingredient photography like a machine can do that better and actually a photographer we're going to take that for those photos and we're going to doctor them up so much that like a machine's actually better position to do that if i outsource all the ingredient photography to a machine then i have more money to spend on capturing that moment at the pool with friends right or that like connection between two people i knew you would have a good answer for this.

36:42I think that's how we're approaching it, right? There's a bunch of technical tools and other things we're using, but I love that example because it shows you how you can take these tools and you can, you're not going to lose the character and the texture and the emotion of the brand. You're actually investing more in it, but you're shifting where those dollars go. I've been using it as like a psycho assistant. So I'll go to it in the morning at like six o 'clock and i'll say six o 'clock loran maybe seven okay and i'll say like while i'm brushing my teeth and like setting up my day on my vibrating plate i will say to it i'll say hey chat i have a really gnarly day today and i'll screenshot my calendar and put it in and then i'll say look at this day and tell me all the times that i have to leave you know that i can be running late so make sure you buffer it i also would really love to get a cold plunge sauna and where do you think it's most strategic and I'll be like, build out my day in the most efficient way knowing me.

37:39And it literally will give me an exact play by play of my day and when I should leave. And it helps. It really helps me have clarity for each day because it shows you exactly what to do and when to do it. So it's been like an assistant. I'm going to steal that. That sounds amazing. It works so well. And if you're, you know, when you wake up and you feel overwhelmed, maybe you're hung over because you didn't drink canned, you can go and you can say, I'm a little hungover I need you to like help me make sense of this day it's a ball of yarn and you throw everything at it was that this morning be honest yeah this morning I should have had a can last night and I had like three margaritas yeah that'll do it we had some some of the teammates in from from the east coast so we all went out not super late but you know as a in a in a parents world like 830 I'm like we're we're pushing past bedtime here Bethany Frankel has been a huge supporter of you which is really cool.

38:33How did that come to fruition? It's kind of a funny story. So the team without telling me sent her product. And then at some point was like, okay, we have to tell Jake. So they, they, they call me up and they say, so don't freak out, but we sent product to Bethany. She like does these videos. I had seen some videos. So I was like, oh God, you sent it. Like, what if she hates it? Like she will literally broadcast the hate review. Right. And so we're like really nervous. Finally, the video came and it was like, it was sort of like a beginning, middle end. I'm going to try this, like walking us through it, which I love, like telling the story is like what we love.

39:01And at the end, she's like, I like it. I really like it. And I'm like, she said, like, that's not good. We want love. Like, and she's like, no, no, no. The team was like, Jake, like is amazing with Bethany. Like, we were so happy about this. We continue to send her can. We actually had an emergency request. She had a massage. She was like, I think she was in New York, needed it before a massage. So we like curried her can to get it in time before the massage and has been a great supporter. And we're excited to keep working with her on. It's really cool to see organic stuff like that. That's awesome.

39:25What do people get wrong about cannabis? I think a lot of things. I think the biggest thing is that like potency matters. The strength of it really, really matters. We were talking about this earlier, right? Like cannabis is this word that's used to cover all this ground and it really shouldn't, right? If you think about it, a two milligram drink like can is so different than a gummy, than a vape, than any of these products you get in a dispensary, than the massive penis shaped bomb, right? Like we're talking about very different experiences. And you can't even, I mean, you can kind of use the alcohol analogy.

39:56I think that's a really good one. Like, you know, you've got Everclear on one end and you've got, you know, a hard seltzer on the other, but it's so different and potency really matters. And part of why people love these products is they're so low potency that you don't have to worry about all the scary anxiety, paranoia, long-term health effects. I mean, this is really mild stuff. And I think that is like the idea as we thought about it very beginning was we want social occasions to have beer, wine, and can. We named it can. I was on a run in Palo Alto and there's like this dish. It's like a big hill.

40:26And I was thinking about what to call this company. And I kept thinking about beer and wine. And I was like, we are creating a category here. What is that short four letter word that's going to describe the category of products that I'm creating? And can just, it was like, obviously it's cannabis in a can. Like this is so on the nose, but like I kind of like on the nose and it stuck. And now we think about beer, wine, and can at all social occasions. How do you manage to just stay in your lane? Because it can get distracting. Yes, like people that ask me, oh, would you ever create a psilocybin drink?

40:57And like, what about this? And what about that? Focus is so hard. And I want to do so many things. Because once you kind of nail this premise of like, oh, yeah, let's just make it really low potency. Let's make it approachable. Let's make it fun. Like create a brand, says something about you when you buy it. Right. That's the hard thing to do. We somehow managed to do that. But it's like, why not? Why not go into this category, go into that category? And I do do this. Like there's a lot of stuff on our cutting room floor that like I'm sure the ops team is like thankful that I killed, but you have to focus.

41:23It's so important. Like at the end of the day, when we started seven years ago, we were in a garage in Venice Beach. That was like, once we raised the money, we moved out there and we put this big kind of like, what is our main thing? I think we stole it from the innocent company, the innocent juices. They're like, keep the main thing, the main thing. It's like, okay, they still maybe stole it from somebody else. What is our main thing? and we had some options, right? Are we trying to mainstream cannabis? Is that what we're doing here? Are we a social beverage company? And ultimately we decided we are a social beverage company.

41:48So every question that comes up to us, it's like, is it social? Is it a drink? And if it's not one of those two things, then we don't do it. We're going to do a live taste test. We're just going to have a sip. So we're not going to get like... Which I try. Okay. So first we're going to try... Okay. So it comes in two sizes, both individual servings. This is the two milligram, four milligram. This is the five and 10 milligram and it's THC CBD. Yes, we put CBD and THC in them both. The CBD really helps to mellow out the THC even more than the already low amount. The high boys are kind of like our play on tall boys.

42:20So it's like a little bit stronger, a little bit taller can. This is the holiday one? Yeah, that's holiday. Cranberry sage. The one that I have been drinking before that I love is the grapefruit rosemary. So I'm going to have a sip of this one first. It's lightly sweetened with agave. I've never tried the cranberry. The cranberry is really good. I've tried this one. This is the main one. This is the main one, right? I just love the grapefruit. It's delicious. we don't use any preservatives all of our juices are freshly squeezed so never from concentrate all natural flavors what does it remind me of I think from like childhood that it reminds me of are you going to say like your aunt's house almost like a ruby red squirt no but not as sweet the grapefruit one you're holding is 35 calories I think the taller boys are 50 the blood orange is good we are the largest importer of raw blood orange juice from Sicily.

43:11Sicily is the best place in the world to get blood orange. It's incredible. That might be my favorite. I thought I was going to say grapefruit rosemary, you guys. But I still like the grapefruit. But aesthetically, this looks really cute on my nightstand. Yes. You can see it on YouTube, the grapefruit rosemary. It has two milligrams THC plus four milligrams of CBD. And I'm going to have to say, though, if you're going to try one, I think I would start with the blood orange. There you go. It's one of our most popular, like I said, the Sicilian blood orange juice makes it. It's something about the volcanic ash in Mount Etna that changes the way blood oranges are grown.

43:45They're a different color. Like the actual blood orange juice is a different color. It's like a vibrant red. Yeah, we take the flavors pretty seriously. But it has to be good, right? Like it has to be good. It's amazing how many food and beverage products aren't good. Like how is that possible? Before you go, why does cannabis drinks hit differently? This is circled on my note cards. People want to know this. So you're absorbing, unlike an edible, right, which we talked about going through your lining of your stomach and mostly your liver, you're absorbing it immediately through sublingually through your esophagus and your stomach.

44:16It's a liquid. So there's more surface area. It's going to get in your system faster. That is good because it means in about 10 minutes, you'll feel the effects of it. You'll start feeling the effects. Does it make you hungry? It could make you hungry, but, you know, it's not going to make you like wildly hungry, right? You're going to feel kind of like light, floaty. It won't lower your inhibitions in the same way as alcohol, right? You won't have that like drunk eating thing. You also won't have the like biological need to dilute the alcohol down because it's poisoning your liver, but that you'll start absorbing it faster.

44:42That's also important because it will subside in about an hour. So your body's working through it quicker. An edible is the opposite, right? It's gonna be much more slow because of the density of it, there's less surface area, it's a solid. And that also means you're gonna absorb more of what you want, which is the Delta-9 THC in the CBD. It will give you that kind of like light, giggly, floaty feeling instead of the edibles. once it breaks down into hydroxy 11, which is like a metabolite of THC, you're going to feel more like body high and stoned, which we don't want. We want that like euphoric feeling.

45:10I'm a big fan. I've been a fan from the beginning. It was really cool to interview you. I think that you've created an insane brand. You guys gave us code skinny. I would start with the blood orange, you guys, if you're going to try it. It's a great little mommy mocktail. And it's legal and you can get it now in 37 states? You said 35? Yeah, I think 35 states. maybe a few more now online and then 30 states in liquor stores. So depending on where you live, it's here in Texas. Yep. Code skinny. You get 20 % off your first purchase on drinkcan.com and it's D-R-I-N-K-C-A-N-N.com. I will say though, yes, blood orange, but you also don't sleep on the grapefruit rosemary.

45:52I think that's the, there's something nostalgic about that one too. I don't know what it is. I'm going to. I also like how it's little. Yes. So it's less. It's very pretty in pink and we leaned it at the brand. we leaned into that colorway because of how beautiful it is. I think we need to do something funny with toddlers with this. I like that. I think we should. Because there's all of a sudden at eight o 'clock, there's 4 ,000. You mean toddlers, the parents of the toddlers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what you mean. Exactly. No kids drinking. No. Just disclaiming. This is a 21 plus adult beverage.

46:20By the way, if my son saw this on my nightstand, he would literally drink the whole thing. Which is why it's not, we're going to have to watch that. I call my magnesium water vitamin water. He would think it's vitamin water and drink the whole thing. Yes, we don't want that. No, we don't want that. That's not what we want. Locked with the alcohol. I'll call it icky water too. Yes, there you go. I mean, they're adult sort of savory flavors. These aren't pleasant to kids, right? There's meant to be like a little bit of like a savory note. They're pretty good. I gotta say. They taste great. Yeah, they're really good.

46:47Everyone go follow at Drink Can on Instagram. Thank you for coming on the show and enlightening us about cannabis. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming on. Thank you.