Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the the podcast for cannabis businesses looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.
Tommy Truong: Cannabiz Media. You guys are a household name in the industry. You mind just telling us, everybody listening who, who hasn't heard your story? Why did you guys start Cannabiz Media?
Ed Keating: It started on a bike ride in 2014. I was, uh, out with my co-founder. I said, you know, we need to look into this space. There's a lot going on here, and neither one of us knew a lot about it, but we both came from sort of regulated information and. Over time we, you know, looked more into it. And then, you know, a little less than a year later, I was on the wrong side of a reorg.
I'm like, it's time. Let's start. So we started looking into the cannabis space and what I found in starting to look at the data, I'm the chief data officer, was the state where I live. Connecticut was [00:01:00] sharing all the data on their licenses. Using the same format that they had used for alcohol, which I looked at years ago.
Like, oh look, they have all this data here. Wow, they have all the violations. And as a sort of compliance person, I'm like, well, that's a great set of information to have. So then we started looking sort of state by state and realized, one, there's a lot of data out here, but two, nobody aggregated. Together to make a database of record.
You know, we had come from, you know, like the securities, uh, space, like, uh, stocks and bonds and all that stuff, like where, you know, people track this information. Then we realized like every license is an asset that needs to be tracked. So sort of state by state, you know, I'm in my living room. Typing in data from Delaware.
Okay. One state done Connecticut. And you know, we started building it up that way in spreadsheets and then we started using Airtable and then we got, you know, more sophisticated and now it's an AWS run through, you know, Algolia and other platforms. [00:02:00] But we started to trying to just help people get, to get a sense of how big is this industry in terms of licenses.
What is there to be known about them? And we've always stayed in that license swim lane and, you know, really tried to, you know, keep the focus there, uh, and, and not get too out of focus by chasing other shiny things, uh, that, that popped up in the industry. So that, that's sort of the, that bit of the origin story.
Tommy Truong: What was the initial struggles because I, I love a good origin story, but you saw a problem and I would imagine that it's just the amount of data that's out there and keeping things up to date, that must be a pain.
Ed Keating: Yeah, I like, one of the initial, uh, uh, missteps we made was, you know, we looked at a couple states, we looked at Connecticut 'cause well, we lived here, let's figure out what we can. And then we learned that, well, Washington has a lot of data and we went to Washington and, and, and looked at their data and it was incredibly robust.
So we made the [00:03:00] mistake of thinking that therefore all states must be like Washington and they'll have all this data. So, so we sort of, in some ways overbuilt all the fields that we're gonna get. And, and then you realize that Washington was the outlier. Everybody had, I'll say, you know, 50 fields per license.
Some states had none. Like it's a PDF, and, and that's all there was. So it was trying to understand how different it was. It also helped us realize though the value in aggregating in a consistent way. So, you know, from that. Lesson came the benefit of, Hey, this is our database, these are our rules. Let's make it consistent so that when our customers come to use it, they can realize that, oh, a cultivator in one state may be called a producer someplace else, but we're gonna normalize that so that when you're trying to reach stores, you can find the dispensaries and the retailers and, and here's how you do it.
So I, [00:04:00] I would say that that was part of it. And, and then initially. We just had a database of stuff and as I went out to one of the first trade shows, walking around and explaining to people like, Hey, we have leads. And they're like, well, do you have people in emails in there? Some? Well, they wanted more.
And you know, we realized we had to do it. And that's the first time that somebody said, well, are you guys a CRM for the cannabis space? And like. Yeah, I mean, it, it sort of transitioned us from just being like, something that you do research and oh, we're a database to what's the solution that you're providing?
And, and when it became a CRM, that's when we started a add in our own email tool because people were getting kicked off, uh, the email platforms, um, that we're commercial, like MailChimp didn't want weed email on there. Um, so we, we made that transition. We, we put in a very light CRM, but for some people that really helped them.
Use us more as a solution and not just as a place to [00:05:00] go look things up or try and find emails and whatnot. So tho those are a couple that come to mind, at least in the early days, where we're like, Hmm, we need to, as, as my partner Larry would say, we need to pivot. And, and we, we, we certainly did. Yep.
Tommy Truong: Wow. I, I'm, I'm even thinking through, so initially you started as, Hey, this, this is the problem we're gonna solve. We're gonna aggregate. Licensed information that's up to date in the states that we, in the states that are live, and then it slowly morphed to, okay, licensed information is good, but as a person that's trying to call into these licenses, I'm looking for who to contact.
Ed Keating: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and that was that sort of next challenge. And what also helped us do that is when we started grabbing all those licenses, we started of course looking across state lines and understanding the concept of an, of a multi-state operator, and to realize that. There are a rise dispensaries all over the country.
[00:06:00] We need to aggregate those so that when you go to sell, you're calling in at the company level at the top because you probably, you, you may not always want to go to the GM at the store. You may wanna go to the VP of operations who's headquartered in Chicago because she's got the ability to make, to write the big check.
So. That's something that we did consistently from the beginning. And, and as I've gone out talking to other, uh, sort of information companies in this space, they realized that Canna Biz Media was sort of like, good with stores or good with that data. 'cause we rolled it up and they realized that even though there's only about 12 to 13,000 stores, they change so frequently, they realize they're not really good at keeping up on that.
They trust us to, to do that. So we, we are the, the store data inside a lot of places on the internet where you'd find data about cannabis licenses because it is just easier to have somebody that you trust who's gonna do it on a predictable [00:07:00] cadence to update this data and to know that it's getting refreshed and, and whatnot so that, you know, the licenses are good and, and ideally the people in the contact data is, is, is strong as well because it's just.
In the old days, people would say, well, I can do that myself. I can go get it at the state. Like, yeah, you can, but we track 150 regulators now. Are you really gonna do that? Are you gonna check every week or every month? I doubt it. So, so, so in that sense, the industry has changed just, you know, I guess through a maturation process.
Tommy Truong: Have you seen the use case of cannabis evolve from the early days of probably just people trying to sell and choose licenses to where it is today?
Ed Keating: Yeah, so early days it was totally that it's, uh, you know, they wanted to sell and they used our email platform. You know, some were better at it than others. There was definitely a lot of folks who would just spray and pray on the email, just hit the send button and, you know, hope for the best. But over time, and this really started happening around 2020, um.
My business partner realized that [00:08:00] there were questions that we could answer to help people in the financial space, uh, who are trying to do research, like how many public companies, uh, have licensed stores or what's going on in the m and a space. So we invested a lot of time and effort to really. Track mergers and acquisitions in the space.
So for example, if you want us to know what does a dispensary go for in the state of Connecticut or Massachusetts or Missouri, we have that data because the way we looked at it was a license or an asset is changing hands from me to you. And oftentimes a price was affixed to that or you could sort of deduce it.
So we were able to build out, you know, probably like over 800 transactions. What happened there and, and how the licenses moved and, and so that people could really track that because it was important for us to know from a sales and marketing standpoint, people need to know, like, you need to call GTI, not these guys anymore.
So it, it [00:09:00] was for that, but it also helped people. Do things like total addressable market analysis because we were gathering license data as it changed. And that idea had come from a customer who said, we'd like to know about all the new licenses, specifically stores by month by state. And we're like, we could do that.
And then we realized, wow, wow, there's a lot there. We could do more than stores. And that actually became the basis for the Canna curio. Um. Pods and, and, and, and a blog post that I've been doing. I think I'm on, I'm, I just sent blog posts one 18 to the marketing team where we've, you know, looked at that data.
So I actually use our product to write those. So there, there's that piece of helping people understand how the market is changing. Like where's it shrinking, where's it growing? Um, and the other use case is really for compliance. You know, as the, as the market has matured. Vendors wanna make sure, [00:10:00] especially banks, FinTech and insurance, that they're dealing with somebody who's got a legit license, that it's one, it's current and it's not covered in violations or bad things.
So that is, uh, and that's sort of the, the business that I came from in, in, in previous lives where, you know, you're, you're focused on compliance. Because compliance, there's typically a penalty. If you get something wrong. So those customers tend to renew at a higher rate to our product and really embed us into their workflow and sometimes into their operations.
So, so those are, you know, those last two, the research in that, uh, compliance piece are where the market has matured to, 'cause, you know, we've been at it since 2015 and, you know, you sort of expect that as a, as a business matures where they wanna focus to make sure they're doing sort of best practices from a compliance standpoint.
Tommy Truong: I'm actually, I just thought about this, is if I was a retailer and I was [00:11:00] using Canna biz, I would do a lot of research on where, from a, from a location perspective, where are the licensees around me? And where are the potential licenses that are gonna be opened up around me, and what does that look like for the next year or two years in terms of market saturation?
Ed Keating: Well, people do use us for that. Certainly, sadly, not all states will share who's applied and which ones are pending. I mean, that is harder data to get or simply not available. Like if you go to Colorado, like here's the active licenses, we're not gonna give you anything else. However, over the last three years I've had us insert some other data into the database that has been very illuminating for, uh, a while.
We tracked. Unlicensed stores because they leave a data trail, and my hypothesis was that in some places, those businesses are only lacking. [00:12:00] A regulator and a license number. They've got a website, they have a phone number, they have a location. They may have a menu, they probably have a Telegram app and lots of other stuff that, you know, sort of is a tell that they're unlicensed.
But like if you pull up our data in New York and say, show me unlicensed, you can see how they surround stores that have legit licenses. Furthermore, around the same time we went and, um, went to all the states, virtually all of 'em, and grabbed another set of licenses, one for smoke. Shops and one for vapes.
'cause that is a licensed activity as well. So you, you start to, you know, draw that complexion on the map and it's like, oh my gosh. Like if you go to Texas, there's only three licensed stores that sell cannabis and they're, you know, highly restricted medical. But then you bring in unlicensed, not a lot, smoke and vape a ton.
And then finally you bring in CBDs or hemp retail. And you [00:13:00] start to reach like 10,000 stores or licenses. So it's a great way for people to sort of get an understanding like, what am I up against? In, in my state of Connecticut, they are going after these smoking vape shops for selling cannabis. Sort of, you know, out the back door with a secret handshake or something like that.
And they're forever written up. Uh, where the attorney general, that has been his big, uh, uh, push. But the thing I, I joke or, or not joke about, but, but sort of laugh at, is that these are licensed businesses by the state of Connecticut. They're just licensed for smoke and or vape. They're not licensed for cannabis, but they're, they're, they're like, oh, these illegal businesses.
Well. On this side, they're okay, and I'm sure you're taking their licensing fees, but yeah, they're selling something they shouldn't be. And, and that makes it hard for the, for the legitimate retailers who are trying to comply, get their product tested, et cetera. So, so there's a lot of, you know, things that we've tried to do to help give people some of that planning ability.
I think you, you're talking about like, what is, what does my local market look like and what should [00:14:00] I be in the lookout for? And, and those are definitely some of the areas that, you know, we learned a lot in tracking data from. Like in California, they would share. When, uh, electricity got shut off and it helped figure out where the, uh, illegal grows were.
Um, or I think in New York, we looked at some of the 3 1 1 recordings, uh, or not the recordings of data to figure out where, uh, Alyssa cannabis operations were. So we would just put those in the database as a, as a data point so that people could see that, you know, yeah, the store got shut down, but another one probably popped up.
Either in the same location or near it. So, you know, those are some of the, the, the places where we dug deep and found some interesting insights that, you know, we thought were in some cases either counterintuitive or validating. Like, yeah, there's a problem here in this state.
Tommy Truong: What do you have coming up? Like what other data sets are you building on top of your stack?
Ed Keating: Um, so. For us, we've been looking more [00:15:00] at, um, a little bit of, uh, of the, of the brand space. Um, in addition, we've uh, been working on a, a partnership, um, to.
Current in their bills. Um, so, you know, we've talked about that, some trade shows that's kind of unique. The other area that I am, uh, really wanting to focus on is, um, doing a better job or, or digging into some of the badge data that's out there and, and, you know, certainly for the business that you're in, trying to understand and, and, and follow that because.
Many states require you to have a badge if you're going into a cannabis operation, and if you're going into different ones, you need multiple badges. And just trying to understand, you know, how that data is managed by the state and if they make it available. Because the beauty of a data set like that, much like the licenses.
It's maintained by the state, it's maintained by somebody that everybody trusts for the most part. So, you know, [00:16:00] having access to that and understanding once again, the size and shape of the market. You know, how many people are in there? I, I think in Arizona their, uh, their badge population is somewhere around like 16,000, which just sort of blows me away.
Um. Yeah. Now, now those could be active, inactive past licenses, but it's a big number and other states, you know, share this information. Some do a good job, some don't. But just to help you understand. But I, I, I know in, in talking to some, in this space, in the recruiting space, they're like, well, ed, if we could have access to that data.
We start looking to fill a position in, in the state. If I know that Tommy has a license and Ed doesn't, I'm probably gonna go to him first because he's already vetted. He could start working today. Ed's gotta buy the license. Passed the test, he might not be able to work for two weeks. So in some ways it's a competitive data advantage and um, it's early days.
Uh, [00:17:00] but I, I, I think there may be some, some, some, I'll say it's on the drawing board. I'm not even gonna say it's in the pipeline yet, but I just think there's more data there that we could, uh, dig into.
Tommy Truong: Yeah. If I was a brand, let's say, and I was talking to somebody that, uh, she, she has a grow in Oregon and she expanded to, to New York, right? So, uh, and they're their white, their, um, what is that word? Acid light approach. There you go. In New York.
Ed Keating: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: How would, how can somebody that's looking to say, Hey, I'm established in this state.
I'm looking for, I'm looking for an expansion in another state. How can they leverage cannabis to identify which states have provide the best opportunity?
Ed Keating: Yeah, I, I mean it's, that's a, a profound question 'cause, you know, how do you define best, like for somebody in that situation where they've got a brand that's well known [00:18:00] in.
Tommy Truong: Well, I was thinking, I was thinking what does Canna biz give metadata on how well locations are doing based on, uh, how many locations are taken offline, sold, uh, the market saturated.
Ed Keating: So we do have data that we've gathered in sort of that research part of the product. Uh, but it, it's really state data. So we have information, let's say on, on patients and you know how that number has changed Any sale data that a state provides or product data, we will provide that in a normalized fashion so that if you wanted to compare states, you, you certainly.
Could in that example of somebody wanting to, you know, be in Oregon and they're maybe looking, you know, is New York the place to go? You know, I, I, I think some of the analysis they'd need to do would almost be more like sort of that true market research, uh, type. Where do brands do well in a state like that?
Or people just price shopping and, and, and, and that's where there's a whole [00:19:00] other part of the cannabis information industry, you know, companies that, you know, started. They are like headset, BDSA, hoodie, analytics, pistol, uh, little alerts who've really started to, you know, track that. Um, uh, happy Cabbage Analytics, where they're really getting down into the metric data and BioTrack data to, to really uncover what kind of opportunities there are and also what kind of mistakes you wanna avoid.
Like, uh, I was at, uh. Can a data con down in Miami the last two years and hearing them talk about things to watch out for and, and, uh, happy Cabbage Analytics talked about inventory is debt. You've tied up all this money and it's debt to you, and you have to manage that so carefully and too many operators don't.
So they really dug into that. So, you know, going back to your example. Having access to that sort of broad sales [00:20:00] data by state, I, I think is probably the best way to do it. It's not really our sweet spot. You know, we are not, uh, uh, retail aficionados, but we know the people who, who are doing that, and some of the info that they are gathering by hitting those menus.
Multiple times a day to come back and say, Hey Tommy, there's a stock out. You should get in there to, it's a lead. You should sell pre-rolls. 'cause they are out and, you know, now's the time to get in there. So it's become this very rapid fire kind of retail environment with, with really good data and, and, and true leads and sales intent like opportunities.
So, um, I, I, I think I would advise that, that example, that person to, to make sure that they are well aware of, of that data and some of them make. Their, uh, services available to license holders. Uh, you know, so, so like, uh, value of the product. We do the same thing at cannabis media to, you know, help people see sort of what's out there.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, we use you guys. So full disclosure, we use Canna Biz and we use you guys for multitude of [00:21:00] different, different ways. One, obviously is to get the most accurate data on active licenses.
Ed Keating: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: Who are the active licenses, what's their status, um, information on owners, executives, et cetera, which I'm, I'm actually really impressed that you actually have that data because that's probably really hard to obtain.
Um,
Ed Keating: It is.
Tommy Truong: extremely. How, actually, I'm, I'm always curious about this. How are, how or if at all are you guys leveraging AI now to.
Ed Keating: AI's definitely become a part of the equation for us. It used to be, you know, I used to have a much bigger data team and it was a lot of arms and legs work and, you know, going through, you know, whatever documents we could, there are still. Ways where that old fashioned research works, like where states do publish applications to say that, Hey, ed applied for this license, or he got it, and, and, and those PDFs are still around.
People [00:22:00] would go into that. But now we're finding that AI is really good at going in and looking for. The name field and the email field and the phone number field, and gathering that data in ways that were only manually available. And there are other tools too that help us, um, sort of use the old term spider, the web to go find information.
But we have so many examples to provide, like one area that, um. We're moving toward AI with is in violations, which is something that we've been tracking since day one. So I think right now we're, we probably have somewhere close to 11,000 violations. They're all categorized, categorized by hand. But I also have a data set, like a large library of 11,000 that have already been categorized.
So we can go to AI and say, listen, you know. Here's the new violations. Categorize them for us so that it's happening faster and perhaps more consistently and and some of the ones that I checked and did by hand, [00:23:00] AI suggested some things that were really good. Like we missed it. They said, yes, ed, you know, these three categories are absolutely right for this violation, but you may also want to consider the not categorized category.
And here's why I'm like, huh?
Tommy Truong: Oh, wow.
Ed Keating: I like that. So, so we're trying to use it for as many things as we can to also help us fill gaps and holes like, like any database provider, we've got what's typically referred to as the fill rate. Like, well, do you have emails? Do you have addresses? Do you have this? Do you have that?
So we take those holes and say, could you find this information? And the results have been astounding, like. Because the tools have just gotten better and they really help us, um, dig in and, and not only fill it once, but then keep it updated. Because, you know, the, the, the joke I used to, you know, in the early days when it was human researchers doing [00:24:00] this, it was a little bit of the hotel California.
Like you could check in but you never check out. 'cause you know, maybe we read about you in a news article that you were the GM of some store. But we never knew that you left someplace else. So, um, so we've tried to be better about mining LinkedIn and, and, you know, getting information to see how people move.
But that, that's always a challenge, is it's, it's, it's the movement of the data. It's not just getting the data.
Tommy Truong: I was gonna say, I mean. I was talking to a, it is a restaurant, restaurant data, restaurant info, and this, uh, these two founders have aggregated thousands, hundreds of thousands of restaurant data. And this is before the AI days where they would say that they would go through each license once a year to update it once a year.
Now with ai, how often are you combing through licenses and updating information?
Ed Keating: I mean, we've always updated things every day and, and our cadence has just gotten so much better with ai where we can go back. I, I mean, [00:25:00] what I've learned in the sort of the information industry and also in the contact data industry is that. You know, big contact providers that cover many industries tend to work on a quarterly basis.
You know, that's sort of how often things generally get refreshed. So, um, I we're trying to stick to that. Uh, you know, it doesn't make sense to do anything on a daily basis. Um, but uh, for licenses though, there are some states that we actually hit weekly 'cause there's enough. Turmoil there, let's say, or enough new license issuance where it does make sense to do it.
But with with ai, it definitely is sort of better, faster, cheaper, and as you train it and get smarter about building your own workflows. You know, you're definitely turning over a lot to the machine, but you can also have a more predictable cadence which benefits, you know, customers. And it benefits us too.
And if anything comes out as an anomaly or goes into the exception bucket, we can look at it, but better we're spending our [00:26:00] time there than looking up licenses by hand. Or you know, like I said in the origin story, ed in the living room typing up Delaware licenses, you know, row by row to get 'em into their cell by cell to get 'em into the database.
Tommy Truong: I'm just talking to you. I'm thinking about different ways to use the data that you're gathering, uh, not only by, if I was a retailer, what we are looking at whether or not licenses are active, but you made a really good point where you're looking at the violation. On licenses, and if I was a retailer, I would look at, okay, well what does the regulator, what are they looking at right now and what are all of the last three months, the violations have come up?
I need to be able to be prepared that when they come through the doors that I'm up to speed with what they're looking for.
Ed Keating: Absolutely. So this, uh, this May, I did a presentation to Can, which is the Association of Regulators, and I did it based on a full year's worth [00:27:00] of violations from 2024. And there were about, I think there were 2,500 violations, and I just dug into them. I mean, it was probably one of the hardest white papers I've ever done.
And it dug into exactly that, like if you're in this state. Here's what you probably got busted for. And there were definitely, you know, long lines on the bar graph. Like in this state, they really focused on operations and record keeping. In this state, they focus on security and something else, like it was drastically different.
We also shared that if you're in Michigan, you're gonna pay a lot of fines because they accounted for 35% of all the fines issued. In the country last year, and there's a 30 plus page document that they published, you know, good for them that explains what the fines are for wrongdoing. It's 30 some pages, like if this happens.
And most of those fines I think ran from like five to [00:28:00] $10,000. So, um, so yeah, absolutely fascinating data there. And, and to your point, it does give you some insight as to. You know how you need to be mindful of what folks are looking for. Like in California, my observation was a lot of the things that they were finding were things that they could probably find from records that were submitted.
It didn't look like they were as on site doing, you know, knocking doors because it's a giant state. I dunno how big their enforcement arm is. And the other part that I learned actually from the, the camera team is that. In a lot of cases, it's not the regulators who, who are driving this, they, they are just enforcing the regulations that they have been given.
And so in Michigan, that's how it works. And in other states, you know, maybe they don't do fines. So it was fascinating to see. But I, I think you're absolutely right from a compliance and from a training standpoint, like, you know, I used to work in a restaurant too when I started out and, um. Just, you know, [00:29:00] learning all those rules that you had to know, like don't keep the ice scoop in the ice machine.
You're, you're gonna get hit up by the, the, the, the, the, um, the food inspector 'cause that's bad and cross contamination, whatnot. So a lot of that stuff does play into the cannabis space. Like, here are the things you should be mindful of. And we have the data now to back it up.
Tommy Truong: You know what data. That I find fascinating, but I don't think, uh, it's being tracked right now. Is brand positioning or retail positioning?
Ed Keating: Hmm. So how would you define those? I wanna make sure I understand that.
Tommy Truong: Well, well, for me, the emphasis of this is I, I think that everybody is going after the same audience. I think right now, uh, retailers and, and we're going after the recreational, maybe medical. And in certain states it's all about THC, which is unfortunate, and that's the positioning. But there's a swath and I'm hoping that, um, we get more and more and more information on this as studies progress of the [00:30:00] health industry. So, can I sleep better? My gut, my focus, there's a, there is a natural way of. Really, really marketing to these specific people. And that industry is three times larger than the cannabis industry today. And I wonder how many brands or how many retailers are actually positioning themselves for a larger market and not competing with kind of the
Ed Keating: That's a, that's a great question. I mean, it's not something that we track, but I remember being at a, a, the show that used to be called the CWCB Expo in New York, and there was a guy, I think he ran a fund and he was a great speaker, really compelling, and I remember he put up a graph that sort of described what you just did medical.
Recreational and then the middle party called wellness. And I'm like, that's a smart way to position it. Like ma making you think more of sort of the, that solution. And, and, and I think we've seen some CPG type brands [00:31:00] try to do that, like joy or, or they'll use words that try and connote what they think this product should do for you and for you and for you.
So I think with all the CPG. Emphasis in our industry. We're just gonna continue to move toward that. And, and, and I know, you know, once again, all those companies I cited before, like Code Analytics, they had been in another industry where they really understand CPG. So cannabis is just another place for them to put that same rule book and to help people understand, you know, what's moving, what's not, and uh, and, and perhaps track into some of those almost attributes, uh, that, that, um.
We will likely move the market
Tommy Truong: Yeah, I, there's a, and maybe we're a little bit early. You never want to be.
Ed Keating: well. Yeah. Yeah, right.
Tommy Truong: The, the pioneers usually get slaughtered and they, they open, they, they open their door for everybody else to get rich.
Ed Keating: They took all the [00:32:00] arrows going over the hill is how my boss used to describe it.
Tommy Truong: Where do you, and we talked about this before we recorded, where do you think 2025, October 16th, you have all this data.
You're in a very unique position to actually, uh, get an opinion on is where is the industry today and where do you think the industry is going?
Ed Keating: So the industry and the number of licenses has been contracting for a while. It's a gentle decline. Um, I think that's. Gonna continue. Uh, in certain states we're still operating under moratorium moratoriums, uh, Oklahoma. There may be one in Michigan now, which is probably long overdue. Oregon has had one, so I don't really see that changing because, you know, one of the first analysts I saw cover the industry, Vivian Azer many years ago, said.
Basically, there's only so much that can be consumed by the existing population. And, and [00:33:00] Bo Whitney, a well-known economist in this space, wrote about this a few years ago and he said, all the cannabis that US needs is grown in California and Oregon that would meet the need of the United States. So everything else is kind of, you know, superfluous.
So I, I think working through that is gonna be really hard because we still have these state by state markets that. Are just hard to get good economies of scale if I have to build a vertical operation in every state. So I, I, I think it's gonna be hard for the industry to figure that out. Um, and, and given the current sort of federal regulatory structure and the signals we're getting, it's not gonna happen soon.
So I, I think there's a challenge there on the plus side and, and sort of what has driven us this whole time and other data entrepreneurs is. It's a big honk in industry. I mean, it's a hundred billion dollar industry, it's not going anywhere. And you know, [00:34:00] in other industries, if you've got a hundred billion dollar industry, the data and solutions part of that should be probably a billion dollars.
We're not even close to that yet, so, so I'm optimistic. Long term, short term. I, I, I think there's a lot of challenges that are gonna have to get figured out and. You know, the stroke of the pen from the White House could, could change a lot of things, but you can't bet on, you know, sort of hope being the strategy.
Um, 'cause you may be waiting a long time.
Tommy Truong: With your data? Are you, have you, have you, I always think to myself, when a state goes live or, or an emerging state, when, how many years does it take before the, there's a just a crash in terms of the, the price, right. There's usually a,
Ed Keating: Yeah,
Tommy Truong: a two year kind of.
Ed Keating: so, so.
Tommy Truong: and.
Ed Keating: I think in 2016 I wrote an article that, uh, likened a state issuing its license [00:35:00] program to what they call an organizational behavior, how a team, uh, builds and they call it forming, storming, norming, and performing. So the four stages of any team, right? So you bring the team together, then they fight and whatnot.
Uh, then they norm and sort of get things settled and then they perform. And I tried to liken that to cannabis states. Because the, the, the storming is all the lawsuits that happen. So I, most states tend to get up and running after they announce it 18 months usually. Oklahoma was unique. They did it in about six months where they just had a program, here's your license, go start growing.
Um, I think that. It's depends on how many license they issued at the beginning. Like Massachusetts has gone through that, where their prices have collapsed and they're so different from Connecticut, which is much more tightly controlled. So I think it, it, it takes time. Sometimes it can be a couple years, but from what I've read from some of the financial analysts is that [00:36:00] that time has compressed it, it's happening faster now where the price is settling and you know, also, I think.
Some of the bloom is off the road. You don't really have cannabis tourism anymore, like we did in the early days where people would fly out to Colorado and like giggle and be like, oh, I can't believe I'm here. So I, I think it's gotten more normalized. I mean, for the consumer in most states you can buy cannabis, so it is definitely, uh, a contracted period, you know, but I, I don't have a real number, but it's certainly gotten shorter from everything that I've read.
Tommy Truong: If you were to start a brand today, what state would you go to?
Ed Keating: Ooh. Hmm.
I mean, one state that everybody has said is doing well, uh, is Missouri. And I, I think just in how they've managed the number of [00:37:00] licenses and maybe the size of the state in the market. So that's one that comes to mind. Um, but I guess if you flip it on its head and you know, you went hemp, THC. You know, the world may still be your oyster for a couple years.
I mean, look at Target going into their home state of Minnesota and making THC beverages available on their shelf. So I think that is not to be ignored. And, um, you know, going to some of the, the camera conferences and listening to people speak about, it's, it's, it's one, um. It's one molecule. We, we can, um, regulate it in a similar fashion.
It doesn't need to be hemp versus cannabis. So I, I think, you know, you play that into it and almost any market may, may work because some of those states really have entrenched, uh, hemp, uh, THC businesses like, uh, Texas, North Carolina.
Tommy Truong: yeah, [00:38:00] I, it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate what's happening with him. I, I just find it. Uh, yeah, I mean, cousins fighting each other. And what are you gonna do?
Ed Keating: Right, right, right. It's true. That's, that's a good way to look at it. So.
Tommy Truong: I, oh, sorry. I we're at the, we're at the top of hour. I was gonna ask you, I was gonna geek into some data, but before I get into anything, is there anything that we didn't talk about, ed, that you think our audience, um, should hear?
Ed Keating: I would definitely sort of just reiterate that part about focusing on brands. Maybe digging deeper into that because I think, you know, in the future, brands are gonna have an outsize impact on how people, um, [00:39:00] consume. You know, they're gonna want that consistent experience across state lines and. I just think based on all the other things that we see in consumer packaged goods and just in marketing, a brand can be really powerful.
So I, I, I, I think that's an area to dig into more, whether it's through data or just through analysis of trying to understand, you know, what compels people to purchase and, and why. And it's not something that we, you focus on the cannabis media, but. And we see sort of sister companies out there, uh, or, or colleagues who are, who are trying to really understand that.
And, um, uh, I, I think that's just an area not to be overlooked.
Tommy Truong: Yeah, I, I would, I don't envy brands, especially nationwide brands, because you really have to really think about how mature a market is. And every market is very different depending on the maturity. [00:40:00] So you kind of, I don't think that there's a one size fits all when you're going to different states. You have to like really sit back and like, okay, well what is the minutia of this state and how should we position our.
Ed Keating: All right. Like in some states, and, and you can still see this, where in certain states flour is all the, well, it's sold, well, not all, but it, it's a vast preponderance, and maybe that's from. On medical side, it could be, you know, regulatory derived or not. But then in other states you start to see, you know, edibles and other products really growing.
And then if you dig further, you know, just as we would dig into licenses, you dig further in that data, you see that. You know what, it's people my age who are buying this kind of product because they're old and they can't sleep, so they, they, they want some sort of sleep aid or something. So like, you really do need to dig deeply into the data and, and fortunately, and I, I think, you know, your podcast is, you know, helping promote this is, there's a lot of data out there to help answer these questions and to provide those insights to say, listen, if you're trying to sell [00:41:00] to, you know, 21 to 25 year olds, they're probably still buying this and they're.
They want high THC and a low price point versus people who are, you know, 45 to 60 want this. And that should really help inform, um, a lot of decisions, a lot of operational decisions.
Tommy Truong: Mm-hmm. And I know we're out of time. Thank you so much. Before I let you go,
Ed Keating: Yeah.
Tommy Truong: how can our listeners find you?
Ed Keating: Uh, easy to find we're Cannabiz Media, so Cannabiz, dot media, and, uh, all of our contact information is there. And you know, we'd love to hear from you and. Answer any data questions we can.
Tommy Truong: Thank you so much for joining me today.
Ed Keating: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Tommy. Really appreciate it.
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