Potcasters

Cannabis Cum Laude | Steve VanDeWalle

Episode Summary

Cannabis reconnects two childhood friends and a podcast was born. Cannabis experts from Rochester New York, Steven VanDeWalle the co-host of the Cannabis Cum Laude podcast joins Dan Humiston to talk about combining his expertise with his co-hosts Justin Closser expertise to dive deeper into topics with their guests. He also discussed the benefits of working with a local studio to produce higher quality videos. Produced by PodCONX https://cannabiscumlaude.com/ https://podconx.com/guests/steven-vandewalle

Episode Notes

Cannabis reconnects two childhood friends and a podcast was born.

Cannabis experts from Rochester New York,  Steven VanDeWalle the co-host of the Cannabis Cum Laude podcast joins  Dan Humiston to talk about combining his expertise with his co-hosts Justin Closser expertise to dive deeper into topics with their guests.   He also discussed the benefits of working with a local studio to produce higher quality videos. 

 Produced by PodCONX

 

https://cannabiscumlaude.com/

https://podconx.com/guests/steven-vandewalle

Episode Transcription

PC Cannabis Cum Laud

Dan Humiston: . [00:00:00] All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us. And welcome back. We have another great show in store for you today. Stephen Vanderwall is here to talk about his podcast, cannabis Coombe lobby, Stephen, welcome to the show. 

Steve VanDeWalle: Dan. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Dan Humiston: Well, I'm excited.

to have you here because well, first off, it's great to meet a fellow Western new Yorker. Who's a legitimate cannabis expert. This is awesome. You and your  co-host Justin are from Rochester, New York, which is not normally known as a hotbed for cannabis. What prompted you to start the cannabis Coombe loud podcast? 

Steve VanDeWalle: It's funny, Justin and I were very best friends growing up in middle school and high school like hangout on the weekends. Each other's house sleepovers. Like we were best friends growing up. And after high school, we went our separate ways. Justin  went to college and then the military, I went to college and we kind of disconnected for many years.

Fast forward to 2017, I think 2018. I co-founded a sub subchapter of normal in [00:01:00] Rochester called the rock normal, which is the Rochester chapter for the national organization for their foreign marijuana laws.  And I was their deputy director for about two years. We did a lot of lobbying at the local and state level, some of the federal level.

We ended up having like a volunteer recruitment meeting and Justin and I, coincidentally reconnected. And, I had a passion for cannabis. I was in the business, I have my brand that I started in 2017. I've been an entrepreneur for seven years. He's an excellent cultivation. cultivation. Super knowledgeable when it comes to cultivation in the plant.

And we were  pitching ideas back and forth, what do we want to do? And it was like, let's start a podcast. We know our shit, we have very complimentary backgrounds or friends. . We have chemistry. And Rochester has been preparing for cannabis legalization for years, so the timing was right. We had the network, we had complimentary knowledge. We knew that, we could start to get away with things like talking about cultivation and homegirl and all that stuff without getting red flags.

And here we are, almost 20 episodes later. 

Dan Humiston: That's your show covers a [00:02:00] broad spectrum of topics. I just wrote some down,I saw a cultivation, a business, a medicine, science politics, advocacy culture. Normally it's hard for a podcast with such a broad scope to gain early traction, but you've seen to overcome that barrier.

What is it about your show that you think people really have been gravitating towards? 

Steve VanDeWalle: Justin and I both bring very specific knowledge and skill set, right?  So between that, we already have  a good foundation covered. But  coming from my advocacy days,  the only way to be.

Advocate is you have to address the many pillars of cannabis. It can't just be cultivation. It can't just be business because many people who get cannabis, right. Who get it for what it is like, we get it. We understand the medicinal, the agricultural, the economic benefits, the social equity and social justice.

It's this whole universe. And to get people that have that aha Eureka moment where they. You got to cover all the bases. So we knew what our strengths, which is why we have some specific just episodes him and I, [00:03:00] but we also know that, if we really want to cover these topics, well, we have to bring experts in.

So we brought in doctors and PhDs and people who've worked for high times and people who have done it and we've usually have people that we have good chemistry with and we've been lucky enough to gain some good traction relatively.

Dan Humiston: Yes for sure. That's for sure. And it certainly helps that you guys are both well-versed in cannabis. Now you broughta clip from one of your shows, a hydroponic show, which was really good. And I, let me play it for you. And then maybe you could set it up or talk a little bit about it afterwards.

Hang on one second. So you do those slight stresses, they're getting fed and then they're drying out. They stress out a little bit, but then right when they're about distress, you give them that feed and then they absorb it all. So it's almost more. Efficient and how the plane eats. You're almost training it from the very beginning.

Get it on a set schedule. The plants almost know when to look forward to their next meal in a way. So a little bit more [00:04:00] consistency. Sounds like a bodybuilder, right? Exactly. I mean, that's some pretty deep stuff. I mean, that's not cannabis 1 0 1, you guys are talking about stressing out the plant.

 

Steve VanDeWalle: Yeah, , that episode is like, there's a lot of awesome parts of that because one, the guests that we had on there, his name's Rob Bonfiglio. He owns a local hydroponic store called hashtag hydro he's on Instagram as the hydro guy.   It was cool because he's really hydroponics. . We're. Justin comes from the organic side. He is a  Cornell horticulture student who is going to be one of their first students to go through the cannabis tract.

And he comes from organics. So we have hydro, we have. Organics, we have dummy me junior grower, who doesn't really know anything. And  when you have this kind of breadth of knowledge and experience, you can really get deep.  That whole episode was gold and we actually just shot an episode this week with him about breeding and genetics.

And  you think, you know a lot about something and then you sit down with people like that who really know  and you walk out and you're like, wow, I [00:05:00] know nothing, but. There's just so many people that I'm sure you've encountered too, that you walk out of a conversation saying, wow, I really learned something today.

And quite frankly, that'sthe coolest part of running a show is after every episode, we get to talk with some of the best out there and get a free lesson. You know, That's some college level stuff that we're, you know, privy to, which is  really cool stuff.

Dan Humiston: Doubt. Speaking of college level stuff I listened to an episode you did recently with one of Justin's former professors 

I was like,  the stuff that she was talking about was like, wow, this is, again, it's not like just surface level stuff.

It's deep, good conversation. Yeah. That was a great interview. 

Steve VanDeWalle: Yeah, Burnham is so cool. And especially it was cool. Cause she was one of Justin's mentors. She was his professor at  when he was one of the first ones through that track. So he's been first one through FLTC with the first teachers who saw it and who've seen it coming on to Cornell and that first track.

So like from an education perspective, we've able to kind of see the [00:06:00] life cycle of canvas. Making its way into education and to have somebody like burner to come on, who's been, a 30 or 40 year horticulture expert now getting into cannabis and teaching it. I was just like, man, this is so cool to talk to this woman.

And she was just a normal person, just like the rest of us, we're so cool.

Dan Humiston: Yeah. Yeah. I love that interview. That was great.Let's switch gears for a second and , give some advice to other podcasters. A lot of people are interested in putting their podcasts on YouTube, and I always caution them that if you're going to do a video. You really got to commit to doing it right?

And because over the past year, the overall quality of YouTube videos have improved so much that people aren't going to watch grainy videos with crappy sound and bad lighting. You guys have a really solid YouTube game. Can you give our future podcast or some tips for producing good videos? 

Steve VanDeWalle: Yeah, absolutely.  I have a good friend  his name is Scott Fitzgerald and he runs a turnkey podcasting [00:07:00] studio. It's essentially a podcasting and media production incubator. About 10 minutes from my house. , I mean,  he is set up with all the,  top dog equipment recording, so there's different packages and there's all this stuff, but long story short, we D we said, if we're gonna make it in the content business, you gotta have good high quality content.

And we just didn't have the know-how or the time, want to spend three, four grand on something that we hadn't found our rhythm in yet. So we've been working with Scott since day one over at rock Fox studios and. I don't know if it's something that you should do forever because it is expensive.

We pay big bucks to get the full hour recording, video, audio transitions. But if you want to play in the video game, you got to have high quality. So my advice would be if you havea resource like that in your hometown see if you can access it, see if you can rent the studio out for an hour and focus on dialing in your show.

Because if you're trying to figure out  what's the show going to look like, how are we going to write it? What's the storyline on top of trying to do [00:08:00] production in a game where you need to be really good at production. Something's going to give focus on what you want to talk about and hire somebody.

We got the funds, go raise a little bit of capital, ask your friends, cousins, play the startup game and see if you can rent a studio out for the first 10 episodes. And I guarantee you, by that time, you'll have your flow. You'll know what you're doing. And maybe be able to start buying  your own.But definitely I would say, see if you can get access to a studio so you can focus on the show and the content at least for the first while.

Dan Humiston: Yeah. I think that's great advice. There's nothing worse than trying to watch somebody's zoom video   the sound quality isn't there.  You can tell, well that , you're working with professionals and it shows, and it makes a big difference.

Your show airs every Friday.

Steve VanDeWalle: Yeah. So we record about one episode a week and we were only releasing on Fridays full hour episodes. But a lot of the feedback that we got was, Hey, sometimes it's tough to listen to a full hour, blah, blah, blah. Maybe we should chunk it up. So  now, we just do  a part one, and part two 

it  allows us [00:09:00] to release  Friday mornings and Monday mornings. So I have a little bit more . content on. And then we just started chunking up the videos into like two minutes chunks. So now we have a lot more LinkedIn content that we can share on a daily basis.

Another piece of advice, more points of contact with your network is always going to be good for building a network. We realized that for just releasing one, one hour video, if you have a huge network, scarcity is awesome. But when you're cultivating a network from scratch in an industry where you can't pay for Facebook ads or Instagram ads or all that good stuff, because no one likes to advertise cannabis, it's all organic.

So it means you gotta be content content, you gotta be consistent. And you got to start looking at content outside of just, your weekly show or whatever, format you do.

Dan Humiston: ,  it's not as easy as it seems, but if you work with the right people it can make it a lot easier, especially if you want to get into the video side of it. I mean, that is not for the faint of heart, so you can check out the new episodes now, every Friday and every Monday on all major podcast sites, including podcasts and[00:10:00] Steve. It's great to have you on the show. And I appreciate you doing this go bills. 

Steve VanDeWalle: Go Bill's baby.