The leading hemp expo producer is also the leading hemp podcaster Hemp entrepreneur extraordinaire Morris Beegle the host of Let's Talk Hemp joins Dan Humiston to explain how he is leveraging all of his platforms to promote hemp. He discusses some of his favorite episodes including a recent show about delta 8 and his famous interview with Colorado Governor Polis. He also talks about adding excitement to his show by featuring guest hosts. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/podcasts/lets-talk-hemp https://podconx.com/guests/morris-beegle
The leading hemp expo producer is also the leading hemp podcaster
Hemp entrepreneur extraordinaire Morris Beegle the host of Let's Talk Hemp joins Dan Humiston to explain how he is leveraging all of his platforms to promote hemp. He discusses some of his favorite episodes including a recent show about delta 8 and his famous interview with Colorado Governor Polis. He also talks about adding excitement to his show by featuring guest hosts.
https://podconx.com/podcasts/lets-talk-hemp
https://podconx.com/guests/morris-beegle
PC Let's talk hemp
[00:00:00] Dan Humiston: All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us.
And welcome back. We have another great show in store for you today. Maura Spiegel is here to talk about his podcast. Let's talk hemp Morris. Welcome to the show.
Morris Beegle: Hey, thanks, Dan. Good to be back talking to you.
Dan Humiston: It's good to see you. Yeah. Thanks for doing this. When people ask me to describe you, I always say the same thing. I say Morris's a stone cold entrepreneur, and fortunately, a good chunk of your entrepreneur. Energy is directed towards hemp, which I want to talk about, but we can talk about that. Let's talk about entrepreneurs in general.
Do you think the reason that so many successful pod-casters are entrepreneurs is just because of our curious nature.
Morris Beegle: absolutely. I think that being an entrepreneur, you're always looking to. Talk to others that are of some blood about like-minded newness and trying to always grow and get ideas [00:01:00] for your own business, or, how you're going to work with other potential businesses and so forth.
Dan Humiston: Yeah, I agree. I agree. A lot of podcasts struggled to land big name guests, but you've never seemed to have that problem. In fact, you've had so many high profile guests on your show, including what was, it was prior to becoming governor, but the current governor of Colorado, Jared Polis was a guest on your show.
Can you tell us about that?
Morris Beegle: Yes. Governor Polis, who was Congressman Polis has been my congressmen and my district it's district two in Colorado. I'm in the love and Fort Collins area. And he served five terms here as a Congressman for the us house of representatives. And. Spoke at our events starting in 2015, he's always been very supportive of the hemp industry here in Colorado, as well as nationally and huge supporter of the cannabis marijuana scene overall, not only in Colorado, but nationally as well. And he announced his governor run back in [00:02:00] 2018 and fortunately we called and said, Hey would you like to be on our podcast for our earth day episode? Because he's very environmentally conscious. And we did get at that time, congressmen Polis on the show to talk about what he was going to do if he became governor and we got him on, I spoke to him for 20, 30 minutes and it was great.
Dan Humiston: That is so cool. That is so cool. I mean, itgives the whole industry validation. When when a Congressman, soon to be, governor is comfortable enough to come onto somebody's podcast. I think that, you know, it says a lot about you.He trusted you, but it also says a lot about our industry you're involved in so many entrepreneurial endeavors.
One of the one that I want to talk about is you produce the nation's largest HAMP expos. Does that give you a unique vantage point helping you see things before they come trends or challenges?
Morris Beegle: I think so it's definitely been eye-opening for me to see how things have evolved. Since 2012, we launched [00:03:00] NOCO hemp expo in 2014. That was the first event. But I went to a few smaller events, went to some cannabis events and it's we need a hemp event. And just seeing how it grew from 20 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and all the influx of companies doing various things.
People failing people, succeeding. And where we are today, I have got a lot of insight as to, what is going to be coming next. And it's been a challenging thing because we've had all these regulatory obstacles with the USDA and the FDA and the DEA still keeping their nose in our business.
And there's a variety of reasons why the DEA is still in our business. And I think we might even get to that here.
Dan Humiston: Well, we definitely will. And I think that, like I said, at your vantage point being the producer of such large shows, you get to hear all the cutting edge information. You get to hear what the exhibitors are saying. Some of the challenges that they're running in to, and you also hears about the challenges and you brought along a clip [00:04:00] from your show.
Can you set that up? Tell us what we're about to.
Morris Beegle: Yeah, so I got Mariel Weintraub who. Been a friend and colleague of mine for probably six years now. She used to work for a lab called Euro fans. And then she went on to work for another company.
Now she's actually the president of the us hemp authority, which is a body that certifies hemp products. And it's a self-regulating certification here in the hemp industry that we've created. The us hemp authority, certifies products and verifies them for consumer confidence. So consumers know that, Hey, there's no heavy metals in here. These are growing appropriately. It's USA, yada, yada. There's a whole list of criteria, what they do. But anyway, Mario is an expert in her field with compliance and regulation.
And we got on the topic of Delta eight because Delta eight is a big topic here in the hemp industry right now. And it's creating a lot of waves and. Issues for a lot of [00:05:00] companies and regulators and people are passing laws in different states and banning it. And so where are we going with this? And this conversation that I had with Mariel was a great conversation.
, we touched on a lot of different areas of this debate.
Dan Humiston: Well, let's play it. And then we'll circle back and talk a little bit about it afterwards. Hang on one second. That Delta eight thing is definitely something new for our industry and it was never the intention of the farm bill to have this product that can get you high as Hamtramck.
And I think where I have my reservations is the fact that this product is primarily made up really intoxicating. If being sold under the guides and we will have, and I think that can be like undermined the hard fought efforts to secure FDA regulations. It's good stuff. I mean, she's got a point.
Morris Beegle: for sure. And this whole thing has undermined the hemp initiative to get CBD [00:06:00] regulated as a dietary supplement and a food and beverage additive, because all of a sudden, we've got this. Cannabinoid Delta eight, which is intoxicating. And as an industry for decades, we've been preaching that hemp doesn't get you high.
And now we've got a product that does get you high. That's being sold under the guise of hemp. And the argument from the hemp side of things is, well, the farm bill legalized all cannabinoids, as long as. The material comes in at 0.3% or less Delta nine, THC. if we're talking cannabinoids, we're talking naturally occurring cannabinoids and now Delta eight, as far as a naturally occurring cannabinoid on the hemp side of things is very minuscule.
It's like 0.0, zero, whatever. But what's happening is there is a huge oversupply and has been a huge oversupply of CBD biomass and CBD isolate and crude and so forth out on the market for the [00:07:00] last several years.
And this is a result of the FDA not doing their job in regulating this. Like they should have once the farm bill passed, that was the intention of Congress. So all of a sudden we have all of this material and. Cannabis people have a lot of ingenuity and it's what are we going to do with this?
How can we get rid of it? Well, let's convert , all of this CBD into another cannabinoid, let's synthesize it. And they figured out how to synthesize all of the CBD into Delta eight or Delta nine or Delta 10. So you can take a molecule. Synthesize it into another molecule that is intoxicating. And then all of a sudden here's a new product that we can start selling.
And it's a gray area because, okay, well the farm bill did say this and this, and you can try to use that argument. It's a loophole and our industry has done that and I get it. I know why people have been doing it. And I'm not anti Delta eight. I don't think it should be illegal, but it is a synthetic cannabinoid.
Everything that's out there on the market, 100% [00:08:00] is synthetic and our industry basically came together several years ago. The hemp industries association included saying we are against synthetic cannabinoids, we're against gas station CBD. That's an argument that we've been making for a long time, but all of a sudden, now there's a lot of reversal of those original positions by people in the industry that you know, where are we going to go?
So we, we do have a divide in the industry, but I'm on the side that. This really should be regulated as an adult use product in the adult use market 21. Plus, does that mean it has to go into dispensary's or is there another avenue channel to regulate it? Well, that could happen if we're going to try to carve out another swim lane, but I don't think that's realistic given where we already are trying to get CBD.
As its own thing with the FDA, which hasn't happened and it's still creating all kinds of problems for the entire CBD industry, until that happens, Delta eight just needs [00:09:00] to not be in our industry because it's just creating problems for the long-term of the industrial hemp industry, the CBD side of it, and the fiber and grain side, because the DEA looks at this stuff and it says, Hey, there's a bunch of bad actors trying to work around the system and do things the way it wasn't intended.
And they're going to keep involved in our industry. As long as people are doing these types of actions.
Dan Humiston: Just what you said is the reason why your show is so successful because you know this stuff inside and out. So if you have a guest on your show, they can't smell you. They say something and you're like, hang on a minute. You're talking to somebody who knows this stuff. And clearly, if anybody just listened to what you just said, Obvious that, the hemp industry and all facets of it, whether it's making guitars out of hemp or it's running trade shows.
I mean, you're right at the forefront of it. And I think that's one of the reasons why your show is so successful before we wrap. I wanted to just ask you one podcasting question. You do something unique on your show, where you have guest [00:10:00] hosts. How does that work? And what are some of the benefits of having rotating guest hosts?
Morris Beegle: So that was a new thing that I tried this year. I had a partner guest host, Rick Trojan did the first several seasons with me and going into this season, I wanted to try something different and invite in a different guest host every episode. Cause I know so many great leaders in this industry and if I can invite an Andrea Herman in to be a guest host or.
Joy Beckerman was a guest host on one, and I had Lorraina Beltran from Mexico. It was just a, a trial and error thing for me. It's here's something I haven't done before. It seems like it would be fun. I could grab several different people that are very knowledgeable, as knowledgeable as me or more so, and then have them compliment the show and bring on some additional guests and we just go back and forth and it was a fun thing to do.
Dan Humiston: Well, there's that entrepreneurial spirit coming out, crafting a new way to do podcasts. A new episode of less talk [00:11:00] hemp comes out every other week on all the major podcast sites, including pod connects, where you can also apply to be a guest more. So I wish we had more time, but this is great guys.
Tune in less talk hemp Morris. Thanks for being on the show.
Morris Beegle: Hey, thanks Dan. Great job on all the shows you do. You're like a podcast wizard and you've got great hosts on all your different shows that you put together and keep doing what you're doing. You're providing great information to the community.