Episode Transcript

Trevor:  Kirk, we're back.

Kirk:  Hey, Trevor, how's it going?

Trevor:  Really good. I'm gonna do this in the beginning, I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I am the pharmacist.

Kirk:  I'm Kirk Nyquist. I'm the registered nurse and we are Reefer Medness The podcast and we're doing something different today.

Trevor: Yeah, uh, Rip or Ripley, Halfyard, we have talked to several times over the years.

Kirk:  Four times. Four times on the Reels.

Trevor: Four times, And we're uh another i assume going to be very interesting chat because they are they're very interesting person who does a bazillion things in cannabis world uh you talk to them a bit when you're on your road trip but this is kind of a follow-up let's try to get some better audio interview so I assume Birk we're talking about Blunt Botanicals

Kirk:  Yes, we're going to meet up and they're going to log in directly, Trevor. So we're actually doing this, I guess, live in our normal process. And Ripley has been a guest of our podcast four times as Smiley Kylie, Bouldery. And they are transitioning to Ripley. And they're in business with Jill. And I met Jill and Ripley in Edmonton, had a conversation which I recorded And as I listened to it, realized that, God, there's so much stuff I didn't talk to them about that I wanted to meet them again. So we're bringing them back live, and we're going to we're gonna wait for them to actually log in as we talk about them.

Trevor: That sounds good. I don't know almost nothing about Blunt Botanicals So I'm just gonna start with the real basics and they'll go much more into this Jill seems to be the the head the face of Blunt Botanicals. They seem to do I'm not sure if it's all or mostly topicals and they had a interesting origin story, you know superhero origin story, about started making a cream for a friend who had radiation burns from breast cancer treatment. So I'm intrigued already from the little bit that I know.

Kirk:  Yeah, they've got a couple businesses, actually. I think we'll touch on a few of them. They've got business called Cosmic Cannabis, I believe. They'll clarify this. Blunt Botanicals. They also have a business called Hipbees. And their story basically is they're a female-based business. They talk about that often, and I'll ask Ripley about that. But they're small independently-owned Alberta company. They are creators and chemists and they put together some ethically considerate products. They use only natural products. They use cannabis products. They use terpenes. There's little, if none, artificial products in any of their stuff. So we'll get down and deep and talk to them about this.

Trevor: The bees get a little massage after their day's work?

Kirk:  Sure. When I met them, I am a customer. I have used their products and I will be gushing when I talk to them because a couple of their products were wonderful. One of the deals was I had to send them a picture of me using their bathing soakers, their soaks, their mineral baths.

Trevor: I'm hoping it was a suitable for work picture of you. Yeah

Kirk:  Yeah, it was suitable for work, but there's a picture floating around of me now in a bathtub using their products. And Ripley's a very dynamic individual. They're going to provide us, I think, an exciting interview. Jill. Oh. Jill, when I met Jill, she is a very thoughtful individual. Also, as we're talking to her, she loosened up a little bit more. And in my first discussion with them, as our listeners will know, I've been making balms out of my medicinally grown cannabis that I make. I've be making balms outta them, salves. And I spend a lot of time in my first interview with them discussing my salves, which is one of the reasons why I... I decided that maybe we should talk more about their business next time.

Trevor: Yes, and but one more just while we're waiting for them to come in, one of your many, many other interests in life is bees and apiaries and honey and all that kind of stuff. So I'm assuming the fact that they had something to do with bees really piqued your interest.

Kirk:  Oh, very much so. They're Hipbees products. They sent me home with something called Groovy Glow. And I don't know if the listeners can tell or the visual, but my face just glows.

Trevor: It's- It does.

Kirk:  It does! And it's, and I've been using this product now for about four months. And I gotta tell ya, my skin feels really good.

Trevor: That is fantastic.

Kirk:  And you notice that I shaved the beard off.

Trevor: The beard looks good. 

Kirk:  I shaved the beard off, and now I'm moving on to using the product more in my jowls. So it's been good. It's all been good!

Trevor: Excellent as if you're watching this you may notice I'm on vacation. I've got a little bit of the scruff scruff the vacation scruff going on here. So so yes, we're we're recording this midsummer. You're glowing. I'm scruffy and we're you know excited to talk to Jill and Ripley

Kirk:  and there they they should be on by ah look at that they just came on just as we're

Trevor: Hey, big smiles!

Kirk:  Perfect timing perfect timing we were just running out of things to say about you Good to see you all.

Ripley Halfyard: Good to see you from our vehicle.

Kirk:  So what are you guys doing right now when we organize this you were in the middle of doing some sort of tour?

Ripley Halfyard: We're just going to tour another manufacturing facility. We're gonna have a quick chat with them about their ability to do GMP.

Kirk:  Okay, fantastic. So we rattled on a little bit about your businesses, and you've got, I think, three worth discussing in this interview. Why don't we just let you rattle on about your businesses and introduce yourselves. Our listeners, we know you, Ripley, and Jill, you're new to our program, so maybe we'll start with you, my friend.

Jill Provencal: Oh, great. Okay. My name is Jill, and I've been working in the cannabis space since 2017. And I make topicals. And I work with Rip. I have three kids, and I'm a Virgo.

Kirk:  And I knew this was going to be like pulling teeth with you Jill, but you do more than that.

Trevor: And, Jill, I'm going to jump in because, you know, every superhero needs an origin story. We hear one of the origin stories of what you do might be a friend of yours who had radiation burns after breast cancer treatment. Was that sort of involved in the beginning of this?

Jill Provencal: Yeah, actually that's exactly my origin story. It was my best friend and she had breast cancer, very, very aggressive breast cancer in her early 30s and she was using RSO at the time to treat herself for pain but as everyone knows it makes you high. She had little kids, she didn't want to be high so she started out needing something to manage her pain in her body because her cancer had spread to your bones. That's how I started, was figuring out what to make for her to help her with her pain. And then with the radiation she had all sorts of burns and severe reaction. And so with radiation you can't use a typical lotion or cream, it has to be very specific. And so I formulated some things for her that worked exceptionally well. And that's obviously a deep and profound love for a friend. Was what motivated me to do that. And then from there, I thought if this helped her, I feel like this is something that should be available to other patients and other people that are suffering that don't have a solution. So I just, I tried, I worked with Office of Controlled Substance. I had my ACMPR. I did all sorts of things that way. And then eventually went the legal route, which is what led to the here and now. Yeah.

Trevor: And Rip, because we know you've done just about everything in the cannabis world, including, you know, mergers and acquisitions and buying and compliance and, and, so did you sort of come in on the paperwork end of this, I'm guessing?

Ripley Halfyard: I came in with Jill and I, I mean, I came in with number one, all my relationships as well as the experience that I had building Parkland Flower. So I came, I'm the responsible person for our operation. Jill's the alternate responsible person. And so I did all of our licensing and application same as what I did for Parkland. And then I also do a lot of business development obviously with all all the friends that I've made over the years in the space. And Jill also has a lot of, built a lot relationships in the industry as well. And we both play to our strengths and we both really compliment each other. And we have a lot fun. There's a lot love in our facility making topicals, lots of great intention going into the products that we make and we're seeing that now. And I was just at a pop-up the other day and I was telling the budtender that you know, if you look at the any of our packaged products, if you look at the phone number, that's my phone number on there. So same as when I was at Parkland, it's my phone number. And so far, we've only ever gotten calls saying how amazing our products are. I'm waiting for the day to get a complaint, but we have not.

Jill Provencal: It's going to happen today.

Ripley Halfyard: Exactly. I just go over the two existences.

Kirk:  So you're the CEO, you can call the CEO of the business and say, hey, kind of like, kind like.

Ripley Halfyard: C.O.O., Jill's the CEO. I guess we're both kind of coat. We both kind of coat, we wear all the hats anyways.

Kirk:  So you've got three businesses, yeah? That's three businesses. You got Cosmic Cannabis, Blend Botanicals, and Hipbees.

Ripley Halfyard: Yes. Yeah, Blunt Botanicals is outside the Cosmic realm. It's a separate company, so we basically white label all of the Blunt botanical products and Cosmic Cannabis, we do a lot of contract manufacturing and our newest product is out now, Rapid Cryo. So this is one of our in-house cooling topical brands. And then we have Hipbees, which is our non-infused brand that we have in the marketplace. And Hipbees was built. What, 2000?

Jill Provencal: Oh, 2011?

Ripley Halfyard: 11. Yeah. So Jill's been, Jill's been, you know, sort of has a lot of great customers in the market space that just love sort of no fuss skincare. And I've been using it myself for years. And yeah, I know. See?

Kirk:  It's I was I was telling Trevor that I've been using

Ripley Halfyard: its the gray hair that gives me away, not the wrinkles.

Kirk:  I was telling Trevor that I've been using Groovy Glow for the last four months and I literally have a glow. Like I literally have glow. Go back. What does white paper mean when you said you white-

Ripley Halfyard: White labeling, contract manufacturing. So that's when we manufacture a topical product for someone else's brand. So for example, we also manufacture for an indigenous brand called Mother Earth Essentials. So we manufacture all their candles and their bath salts. And she has a beautiful line. She's here in the Edmonton region in Treaty 6 territory. And so we manufacture a lot of her products for her as well.

Kirk:  And that's the Cosmic Line that does that, or the Blunt Botanicals. Okay, so Blunt Botanical is your label.

Ripley Halfyard: Is a brand. Blunt Botanicals is a brand.

Kirk:  I was also telling Trevor that there may or may not be pictures of me soaking in one of your products.

Ripley Halfyard: We love it.

Jill Provencal: And Jill, I'm sorry we're all over the place and you've got both of us.

Jill Provencal: It's great.

Trevor: What made you think that, or how did you start learning about making topicals? Was this something you'd been doing before or you had to do a bunch of research? Or how did, yeah, I can make that. How did that happen?

Jill Provencal: Well, if we go way back, my dad worked for Maybelline when I was a little, little girl.

Trevor: It's literally in your blood.

Jill Provencal: Yeah and I used to he would have a bunch of it was called car stock so I would swipe a bunch of the makeups and potions and then I would go into my playhouse in the backyard and was constantly mixing them up to make new things so originally but that was you know when I was six then uh I was always making things and then in high school I had a strong focus on chemistry and then you know, did life. And then my husband was a bee farmer. And so there was all this wax and I loved lip balm was my favorite thing to make. My son had super chapped lips. So I started out by learning how to make lip balm. And then each product I did cosmetic formulation officially courses and things like that. And then Anytime someone I knew said, oh, I have psoriasis or I have adult acne, or can you fix this? Can you fix that? I would formulate a product. We would test it out and then if it worked, it would go into our line and then we sold them at farmers markets and online. And that was how Hipbeess was born, was just strictly out of a love of making products, having an abundance of wax, and then having people that love the product and asked for new and interesting things. And it evolved, too, with our community of people that purchased from Hipbeess, because a lot of people had little kids, so we had a little kid line. And then we had people who had teens, so we had the teen line. And then a lot women were going through menopause, perimenopause. So we developed a menopausal line. And everything just sort of unfolded organically in a way that was helpful. And it filled a gap in the market where people wanted to buy local, I wanted to buy organic. And they wanted to buy something that was actually natural, not just called natural or green washing, some people call it. We genuinely used single source ingredients and that was how I got into it. And I just loved it.

Ripley Halfyard: I think that's a great segue into the products that we manufacture today, in that we do single source raw ingredients and we formulate everything from scratch. So right down to we make our own bases and then put the cannabinoids in that. And so I think that's what sort of sets us apart from some other topicals that are out there that typically takes a sort of a ready-made base and just mixes cannabis oil with it and we put it out and then it's good. You know a lot of our products are very intentional. They're original and they're really high quality and they are very fresh. We have to use fresh ingredients because we try not to use preservatives so most of our product are all oil based. We not put out any water mixing like lotions and things like that yet. Because of the need of of having preservatives in those and so that's when you know like these products when they go out To market they're fresh. They're good for your skin They last they smell great. And then they're also They're they're good. For you. Like, you know, yeah, you're not you're not you know there's not a a bunch of different preservatives or pesticides or anything like that all of our raw ingredients that come in all have to be tested and approved by our QA as well.

The Voice: It's Reefer Medness - The Podcast

Trevor: I appreciate you guys making the creams from scratch back in the day when our pharmacy used to do a lot of compounding Making a cream from scratch that pain in the butt just it just is everything about and you know If you do it's just a little bit wrong it breaks into two components that don't like to be together. It's a royal pain in butt so to be honest in the pharmacy we just eventually you know, we could make something from scratch but since it was such a pain, it was just easier for most of them to just order them from a company because then I could worry about what drug to put into it and getting that into the patient rather than spending all my time making the cream. So the fact you guys are doing that all from scratch, kudos, and that's just another layer of complication.

Ripley Halfyard: It certainly is, it certainly is. But it helps us to control what goes into our products and we know where our ingredients are sourced from.

Kirk:  So is this all organically learnt? Life happens, but like Rip, you've been involved with the cannabis industry for like as long as I can, I've been in it actively. So you learnt as you went, or did you have a university degree? Are you a chemist, Jill, are you a Chemist, or?

Ripley Halfyard: Jill and I, we go, so Jill and I got together in 2017. So when she started kind of exploring the cannabis space, that's when her and I hooked up, because the first product I ever made was the RSO for my father-in-law who had brain cancer. And so that was my jumping off point, which I think that's, you know, a lot of people speak to that, speak to, sorry, we're just gonna open the window here, it's a little warm. Um, it's when you, when you have to make a product for a family member, uh, all of a sudden the word gets out and it's like, Oh, can you make this for someone else? Can you make? This everybody wants the product made, right? Or they want the same thing, or they're like, can you this? And like, I know Jill has experienced that as well. And, um, so then, you know, I started working with people on getting their medical license so that they could, so that I could take the product that they make, um. And make it into, you know, what they need because you could only get flower, you could only get oils, you can only get Kief on the medical side, pre recreational legalization. So that's, you know, how I ended up going down the rabbit hole making suppositories, you know, for pediatric patients with cancer, because their parents wanted to explore cannabis, but they didn't want their kid getting high. So we looked at you know so I made suppository reason. Jill and I met in 2017. And I was you know, making different products. And then Jill brought me into her lab. She has a, she had a lab in our basement where she was formulating. And that's where we kind of, we were like, okay, we're going to do this. Jill was actually an original shareholder of Parkland Flower. We were going to build our facility out on her land. Um, but then just expense and things like that. Um, we, she ended up helping our building topicals for another LP. I ended up building Parkland Flower and now the plan was that she was going to come in and make the topicals at Parkland and then we ended up selling. So we didn't get a chance. So this is our full circle moment now. We get to come back together with everything that we've learned, which I think actually worked out better for the both of us, because.

Jill Provencal: We got PhDs.

Ripley Halfyard: We got real PhDs. In life and in the cannabis industry in Canada and how it works and now that we're back together we're a force to be reckoned with.

Kirk:  You've done your 10,000 hours and trial and error and here you are.

Ripley Halfyard: More than 10,000 at this point.

Kirk:  I will say, like, I've used your products and I really like them. I noticed on your I noticed on the web page that Jill is the face of the company. Rip, you are buried someplace. But also you make a point of saying that it's a women based company built in Alberta. Is that is that a part of your marketing, your punch? And I guess without being sexist here, because, you know, a couple of guys talking about it, why is saying women-based is important. Why is that important?

Jill Provencal: For me, that's my why. My ultimate why. I was raised by a single mom that wasn't around because she was constantly working and not around. So if we go down to the root of it, that drove my wanting to own my own business to create freedom to be able to be with my kids. I've also watched a lot of my peers, single moms, not be able find work in between school hours. So it's just harder when you're caring for children, you're the primary caregiver. It's not meant to be sexist. It's just, in my experience, the fact of the matter is 90% of my peer group, it was the women that were doing the caregiving and it was their jobs that were compromised. And so women owned and operated for me is that we're creating a safe working space. We're creating a space where women have flexible work hours so that they can also be available for caregiving for their children and their parents, to be honest. There's a lot of caregiving involved with the women we work with and a living wage. A lot of times if you give up and you need flexibility, you aren't getting paid very well. And so for us, it's not meant to be this big feminist thing, women only, women rah rah, but it's about a safe space for women to work and still be able to function in the world with their families living in a caregiving role.

Rene: All right, we're going to put this conversation with Ripley and Jill from Blunt Botanicals and Trevor and Kirk, the hosts of Reefer Madness, the podcast on hold for now. This is episode 186 part one. The conversation will continue in episode 185 part two. Thanks for listening to Reefer, Medness the podcast and please go to the website. All the details are coming up right here.