Find a podcast niche and stick to it. With so many cannabis podcasts it's hard for an 'All Things Cannabis' podcast format to get noticed. By narrowing the scope of her podcast, Shayda Torabi has established a loyal following among Cannabis Marketers. As the host of the To Be Blunt podcast she tells Dan Humiston that the reason why she works hard to tie every conversation back to marketing and branding is to stay true to her audience. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/shayda-torabi https://theshaydatorabi.com/tobeblunt/
Find a podcast niche and stick to it.
With so many cannabis podcasts it's hard for an 'All Things Cannabis' podcast format to get noticed. By narrowing the scope of her podcast, Shayda Torabi has established a loyal following among Cannabis Marketers. As the host of the To Be Blunt podcast she tells Dan Humiston that the reason why she works hard to tie every conversation back to marketing and branding is to stay true to her audience.
https://podconx.com/guests/shayda-torabi
https://theshaydatorabi.com/tobeblunt/
PC To Be Blunt
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.
Shayda Turabi is here to talk about her podcast to be blunt, Jadah. Welcome to the show.
Shayda Torabi: Thank you so much for having me, Dan, I'm excited to dive into our conversation. Okay.
Dan Humiston: Well, I'm glad you could join us. I'm a big fan of the way you do your show. I talk to people about every day about starting podcast. one thing I tell everyone is to try to keep the scope of your podcasts narrow. And unfortunately, most people don't follow my advice. You're a marketing and branding expert.
So it makes sense that your show is for cannabis. Marketers. Can you back me up and explain why it's a bad idea to launch an all things cannabis podcast.
Shayda Torabi: Well, I think marketing 1 0 1 is trying to figure out, what is your unique story and what is your why and how are you going to deliver that product or go to market. And so it just, to me, seems like a no brainer. I love marketing. I have [00:01:00] a background professionally working as a marketer. I come from corporate technology
and I really just saw an opportunity to, use my voice, to have conversations with people who could help educate me. And I thought, what better way than,convincing some of the smartest and best brains in our industry to sit down and tell me some of their marketing secrets.
And I think marketing and biz. Go hand in hand. So a little bit of my conversations for sure. Skew more towards business, because I think as a marketer, you have to think of the totality of your business.
Why someone picks up your particular product? What resonates with them? Is it the way your packaging looks? Is it the way that an advertisement caught your attention? Was it the experience of when someone stepped into your store? Those to me are different touch points that we as a community need to be talking about more.
And so, yeah, so an opportunity to share my voice and launch to be blunt. And here we are about a year and some change later, it's been a great.
Dan Humiston: The demographics of your potential listening audience is just huge and you can go on a lot of different directions. Give our listeners an [00:02:00] idea of some of the topics that you cover on your show.
Shayda Torabi: Yeah. So I really interview anyone and everyone from a, brand owner, a business owner, someone who is operating, whether it's an edible company, I had the chance to interview the CEO of Love's oven, which is one of the long time running edible companies in the state of Colorado. I've had it. To interview the GM of a lab company here in Texas.
We had a really interesting episode on Delta eight. And so I think there is this spectrum of products to canabinoids to, every different facet of kind of thinking. Cannabis as a business. And how do you approach that again with that filter with that lens of how do I market this? How do I present this to a consumer?
How do I as this business owner or as this market or representing a business, understand what the heck is going on in my industry?
And so, again, really, I think marketing is this like very short [00:03:00] word that encompasses so many different things. When you step back and you realize. What goes on. My label is a function of marketing or wow. When someone steps into my dispensary, that is a function of marketing. Those are all different touch points that I try to, encompass by highlighting, the great guests on my show.
Dan Humiston: Yeah, And one thing you do really well is you take the hot topics and you tie them back to marketing, , I think a good example of that is that you brought along a clip. Maybe you can set it up for us and tell our listeners what we're about to hear.
Shayda Torabi: Yeah, so I interviewed the GM of a lab company here in Texas. If you are paying attention to kind of cannabis at large right now, a hot cannabinoid. Both popular and also, testy is Delta eight, THC, especially here in the state of Texas, Delta eight is very popular to sell and to consume because we don't have a full legal Delta nine market.
And so to me, it was like, I got to talk to somebody who's testing this cannabinoid [00:04:00] because as a marketer, Selling this cannabinoid and there's a lot of discrepancies around it. So that kind of helps tee up, the clip about what Andrew is sharing in particular about Delta.
Dan Humiston: Well, let's play it and we can talk a little bit about after we play it. Hang on. I said before, about there being different types of methodologies to create Delta aids. There's some really bad ones. Specifically, if you go and look at the patented process, the SOP that's been has a patent on it for Delta.
production.
It uses a lot of really horrible chemicals, but it also, from my perspective, doesn't create a very good da. It's not stable. And I don't want to sound judgy in any way, but if you're super granola, stay away from Delta D because it's not air quotes here again, natural.
Shayda Torabi: It's one of my most popular interviews.
Dan Humiston: I mean, it's relevant. And then the nice part about, like you said, what you did was you were able to tie it back to marketing because , this is something everybody has to tackle.
Shayda Torabi: They're selling it. They're putting it on shelves. We have some sort of obligation to [00:05:00] qualify for that consumer that we're selling legal, safe products. And I think what you observe in cannabis at large, probably not so much. As frequently as marijuana, as you see in the hemp side, but regulations are loose and nobody's really enforcing it.
And so I think as a business owner, I always try to operate out of self-regulation and try to do the due diligence to understand, Hey, this is a new cannabinoid, but as a business owner, my customer. Asking me for it. I'd rather me go through the challenges to navigate, find credible sources, suppliers, et cetera, to present the best quality Delta eight on the shelf.
Like Andrew highlighted. There's a lot of different ways to create this particular cannabinoid. Again, reflecting on the nuances of cannabis in general. You can't police everything. Obviously the regulations try to do that, but I'm trying to help close the gap by having these conversations to help hold these business owners and marketers accountable.
When you put a product in front of a consumer, you have [00:06:00] some sort of obligation to ensure that you are doing the best of your due diligence to bring to market a quality product. So I like to have those conversations. That's the impetus for the name to be blunt. I think that it's important to talk about these topics that are.
Really important because again, we're selling consumer products and consumers are, who we're in business for, or should be in business for at the end of the day.
Dan Humiston: Andrew is certainly blunt. There's no question about that. There's no question about that. Let's switch gears and let's talk a little bit about just podcasting in general. One thing I don't think people realize is that. Big name guests just don't show up at your doorstep. Sometimes you got to do a little bit of work and sometimes you gotta get creative.
Can you tell us your most unconventional tactic that you use to book a guest?
Shayda Torabi: I mean, you highlighted it, like they don't just land on your doorstep. And I think, , kind of reflecting on the whole spectrum of the podcast. When I launched, I was a little bit like, oh my gosh, No guests to start with, , , but I always like to reflect [00:07:00] on who would, I want to have a conversation with?
Like, who would I want to. And two against selfishly and then be able to present that. So one of the brands that I really love, I've always loved following them. They have a great story, a great position in the industry is Leafly. They're an education platform. They've been around a long time. And so for me, education being key, a key pillar for a lot of us brands, I thought, I got to figure out a way to get their head of marketing on my podcast.
And, Shameful or shameless. I should say , I made a short list. Like these are people I want my podcasts. And so Laura Moriarity is one of their, heads of marketing. And she is someone that I had reached out to cold lake through just like, DM tactics and things like that, and had heard crickets nothing back.
And I had a peer interview me on another podcast. And he said, who's your dream podcast guest. And I reflected of course, someone from Leafly, but it hasn't happened yet. And he just gave me a little bit of encouragement that I actually turned to LinkedIn, which I think is a huge platform for cannabis business, to business networking.
[00:08:00] And rather than going into her DMS, which I had done, I posted to my LinkedIn feed. Saying, Hey, , if you don't ask, you won't receive just putting this out there. I've got this podcast. I now have got, X amount of episodes. My dream guest is Laura morality. If anybody has any connections, please put us in contact.
And within, I mean, a couple of hours, I had multiple people tagging her to the feed posts, so she would see it. And then I even had her responding to the feed posts saying, Hey, shade, I'd love to connect. She slid back into my DMS. And she saw that I had messaged her. She was like, I'm so sorry. I didn't get back to you.
I'm like girl, you're so busy. Of course. Like I, no harm, no fault. Back that, whatever, but she was very very great and ended up following through and having me connect to her assistant. And we were able to book her on the show and had a really great in depth interview. Just understanding the nuances of how Leafly, exists as an education platform and as also a driver in the cannabis conversation, through [00:09:00] different research and highlighting different subjects of, , matter in our industry.
So that was a fun one.My tip is, , you always got to ask, cause you don't know what could happen and leverage your notes.
Dan Humiston: Yeah. If you don't ask, you'll never know. And that's a great story. That is a great story. Well, check out a new episode of, to be blunt every Monday on all major podcast sites, including pod connects, where you can also apply to be a guest Shayda thanks for being on the show today,
Shayda Torabi: Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It was a treat.