Getting past the talking points Many podcast guests use their interview as an opportunity to promote something. Unfortunately, the audience will disappear if the host lets the guest turn the show into an info-commercial. Will Read the founder of CannaPlanners and the Host of Common Sensimilla joins Dan Humiston to share some of the techniques he uses to get his guests to stop selling and get personal. Produced by PodConX Potcasters - https://podconx.com/podcasts/potcasters Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Will Read - https://podconx.com/guests/will-read Common Sensimilla - https://podconx.com/podcasts/common-sensimilla CannaPlanners - https://cannaplanners.com/
Getting past the talking points
Many podcast guests use their interview as an opportunity to promote something. Unfortunately, the audience will disappear if the host lets the guest turn the show into an info-commercial. Will Read the founder of CannaPlanners and the Host of Common Sensimilla joins Dan Humiston to share some of the techniques he uses to get his guests to stop selling and get personal.
Produced by PodConX
Potcasters - https://podconx.com/podcasts/potcasters
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Will Read - https://podconx.com/guests/will-read
Common Sensimilla - https://podconx.com/podcasts/common-sensimilla
CannaPlanners - https://cannaplanners.com/
PC Common Senseimillia
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. We'll read is here to talk about his show. Common sense. Amelia will welcome to the show.
Will Reed: Dan, it's always a pleasure to see you. Thanks for.
Dan Humiston: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. I'm glad you could join us. I've listened to a couple of your episodes and there's a couple of takeaways that I have. One is it's fun. It's fun. You you have a great sense of humor and you put your guests at ease right off the bat so that it makes it just fun for listeners.
But the thing that, I really appreciate about what you do is that you tend to take. Guests down a different path , than the traditional podcast. And to me, that involves a lot of preparation. I at least for me now, do you take, do you put a lot of preparation too, or you just wing it?
Will Reed: well, I would say it's probably. 80 20 winging it. So I definitely prepare, like, I'll listen to [00:01:00] podcasts, I'll read articles, I'll, scan the occasional LinkedIn page. Like I'll do all that stuff. And I'll kind of try to get a sense of, even if it's something small, like where they went to college or a job they had before, whatever they're doing now.
Like if there's something that I can personally relate to, then I know that I can do. At least have that to, to, pull a conversation from, so it's mostly winging it. , I have notes just to make sure that I'm like on a course, but it?
never works that way. Right.
Something always comes up. That's more interesting than what I thought. Okay.
Dan Humiston: the point that you don't just like, Hey, what do you do? You take it in a different direction, which is a lot more interesting for me. It was.
Will Reed: Well, that part was for sure, a conscious decision, and this isn't just the cannabis industry, but those kinds of just biographical sort of conversations, they're just like, Pitches, you know what I mean? It's like, it's, it's your pitch. yeah.
You're almost like pitching me your business Or pitching the public, your business like [00:02:00] that.
Stuff's definitely important to add context to a conversation, but I'm not interested in that at all. Like the stuff that I was hungry for when I first started.
Company the coming out of the entrepreneurial closet. Like there's a lot of fear that comes with it. And that's the stuff that really relates to me because I know that's, a big hurdle for people is I can't do X because Y you know what I mean?
Like,
Dan Humiston: Or XYZ.
Will Reed: Yeah, Or even that, so if we can kind of at least draw a correlation between people who are. Ambitious and are, doing whatever , their biography says they're doing, . it's really that journey to get through that fear to get through just even like simple stuff.
Like how do you start a business? Like those things were always interesting to me because there were things I I Googled and tried to figure out on my own. And especially in the cannabis industry, because there's an extra added Mystery. Maybe you hear this too.
Just, being around, like, how do I get into the cannabis industry? Like that kind of [00:03:00] question , I'm asked it all the time and I don't have an answer, but I think that the real answer is it's a journey and you have to know that the weirdness and fear and all the emotions that you feel are everybody feels.
Dan Humiston: . we have a clip from one episode that you did with Zach, from Dutchy, which really kind of drives that point home. Let's play this clip real quick.
that's exactly what I'm talking about. , you got that out as Zack, and that was like, , [00:04:00] that's.
Will Reed: Thanks. And honestly, I have no idea how we got there other than, I was interested in kind of what inspires someone to do, whatever it is they're doing. I did another podcast with somebody. Tito burn, who owns a glass shop in in Burlington, Vermont, where we're located. And he said something to me that punched me in the face and I'll never forget it.
, he said to me, it's not about doing what you love. It's about doing what you're good at. Which is just like, oh, don't do what I love. Like that's crazy, but you have to do what you're good at and what you love and what you're good at.
Aren't always the same thing, nor are they mutually exclusive, and that's also a fun thing to hear from all of these entrepreneurs is. A lot of them were doing what they were good at and applied it to what they love, which I include myself in that, to say that I love building websites or, writing content or whatever is.
I love it, but what I love is that challenge and basically [00:05:00] being , in a time and space , in a emerging industry where we can, take these things that we're good at and apply them to the thing that.
and just to cap that, I think that's what Zach was saying too is, like his dad was a serial entrepreneur and inventor.
, and that just was in his DNA, he and his brother. And that was an interesting
Dan Humiston: Yeah, it was really interesting. It was really interesting. Let's switch gears here for a second. You went to the same school as my daughter, St. Lawrence for those that don't know , it's, it's in the middle of nowhere and it could possibly have the longest winners of any place on the planet.
Will Reed: Yeah, that's an understood.
Dan Humiston: I'm sure that gave you a good opportunity to hone in your cannabis skills
Will Reed: Yes.
long walks across campus.
Dan Humiston: But unfortunately I guess it didn't apply to your dog. I heard a story about your wedding day. Can you maybe share that with our listeners?
Will Reed: Wow. Dan, you had to bring this up. Yes, I didn't give my dog cannabis, but as an advice to listeners?
never give your dogs, [00:06:00] cannabis. My dog found some very. Potent hash oil that a friend had sent
to me in the mail. And for some reason he packed it in a homemade sausage and he had overnighted it from some remote part of the country to Vermont.
Pretty remote and it didn't get there in the 24 hours that he had paid for. It got there in the, 72 hour range. So that sausage was not great. So I received a package of rotted sausage with wonderful, wonderful hash oil in it. Anyway, cut to my wedding day, which was like three days later.
And it's maybe three hours before I'm supposed to walk down the aisle and I'm two hours from the closest veterinary emergency room. But needless to say, my dog liked the smell of the rotten sausage, weed oil and found it and maybe imbibed a little too much. So I was very late to my own wedding.
But it was cool because by the time I got back, everybody was drunk. [00:07:00] It All worked out. The dog is fine. She's currently at daycare today. She's off the weed.
Dan Humiston: That I thought maybe we just touch on this before I let you go. Like,
Then their brand and, but there's a right way to do it. And.
Will Reed: Well, that's a good question. And I wish I had put enough thought into this whole thing at the beginning to, to actually have a real response. But I think if I'm thinking about it in hindsight, the pod. Serves two functions, really. So practically it's a marketing tool. It allows me to talk to other entrepreneurs, successful business people in the cannabis space who are doing something special.
And I want to hear about it, [00:08:00] right? So that allows us to network with those people and with their potential audience. Right. So it's a marketing tool. Secondly. It was, as my company has grown, my responsibilities have shifted slightly. So in the best interest of not having me be, micro-managing leaning over the shoulders of my employees.
They suggested, Hey , you've done pretty well as a guest on podcasts. Maybe you should host one and get away from me. So, if I'm thinking about a real answer to your question, it's, there's a, there's an obvious self-serving motivation , to having your own podcast, that's branded under your company name, but mostly you need to forget all about it.
Like, for me, like it's not about talking about me. Maybe I will lend some credence to a story or just lend my perspective through something. That's. Within Canada planners, but using your personal network to try to, help [00:09:00] educate and lend experience to younger generations of entrepreneurs, people are trying to get in the game is think. Super
important. So forget about yourself, just make it about the guests. That's what it always is. And it, and have a good personality, which I don't, I'm not saying I do have that.
But if you're boring people, aren't going to listen to you straight up, so I try not to be boring.
Dan Humiston: Well you can check out episodes of common sense, Emilia on all major podcast networks, including pod connects. we'll thanks for doing this.
Let's do it again.
Will Reed: My pleasure. Anytime. Love talking to you.