711: Do You Know What's REALLY in Your Cannabis Products? 🌿

Brian Nichols  0:26  
How do you know if your CBD hemp or marijuana is actually safe? Yeah, let's talk about that. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, hey there, folks, Brian Nichols, here on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host. Joining us live from our PNC Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Folks, a recession is right around the corner and you cannot let outdated sales techniques put your company at risk. Learn how to improve your sales and messaging game by emailing me at Brian at Brian Nichols. consulting.com. All right, folks. So we fast forward here to 2023. And the world has changed from where we were back when we started the show in 2018. Suddenly, the conversation about marijuana cannabis CBD, instead of being a taboo topic now it's the norm and a lot of folks across the board have started to partake in exploring the differences that are out there in this brand new world. But there's a lot of folks who they're concerned they're a little curious, how do I know I'm actually putting my body is safe. Well, to address that concern in the marketplace. Joining us today from credible CEO Brian Fitzpatrick, welcome The Brian Nichols Show.

Brian Fitzpatrick  1:49  
Thank you very much, Brian, great to be here.

Brian Nichols  1:51  
Great to have you on Brian, looking forward to digging into all things about how you're helping keep folks safe, as they're going out and exploring alternative ways of getting, I would say sometimes medicine, sometimes recreational component, whatever it may be, everybody has a reason that they're looking to this brand new market that was inspired with the new hemp bill that passed back in 2018. But I'm putting the cart before the horse. Do us a favor, Brian, introduce yourself here to The Brian Nichols Show audience and what is credible?

Brian Fitzpatrick  2:17  
Yes. So my name is Brian Fitzpatrick, I'm the founder chairman and CEO of credible and credible was essentially founded to make the CBD hemp and legalized cannabis space transparent. Consumers in the supply chain have no idea, you know, what's going on here in this wild, wild west industry. And we're here to shine light into the industry to help connect consumers to quality brands that are committed to trust and transparency.

Brian Nichols  2:49  
Back in 2018, right, this was all brand new world. So it was like the floodgates just open large and a lot of folks, you know, myself included start to say, hey, let's look at the world of CBD. Let's look at the world of Delta eight. Let's look at the world of marijuana to explore what else is out there beyond what has been the norm, right. And I noticed I had a herniated disc in my back and I was looking for any type of relief. And I had a good buddy Addison Todd from evals, which is a great company we have here, and it's a sponsor of the show. And he was able to give me some CBD roll on and I was like, Huh, I'm hooked. Yeah, I heard a lot of folks who said, Brian, be careful. There's a lot of questions out there. So talk to me about the concerns that you heard, Brian, as you're starting up credible, what was the main issue that folks were bringing to you when you're bringing this new solution to the table? Yeah, well, I

Brian Fitzpatrick  3:35  
learned firsthand as an investor in the industry, which is how I got involved in credible and why built credible is that there was a lot of a lot of fraudulent misrepresentations in the industry. Believe it or not, you know, just because a company gives you a lab report about what's in the product and what's not in the product. It doesn't mean that that lab reports not fraudulent. You know, if you started listening, like locally here in the Philadelphia area, channel six action news does an investigative report and shows that 45% of the brands they tested have no CBD in them at all. And as you know, Brian, the products aren't cheap, because, you know, it costs a bit to actually produce the products to grow the product and take it through the supply chain and make a quality product. But here you have good companies like your buddy's company whose product you're using and getting results from and then there's a whole bunch of other companies out there that either a don't have any CBD in him at all, or there's all sorts of harmful you know, things in the product, mycotoxins and led, believe it or not, and you know, most people don't know that hemp is like a sponge. So when it grows, it sucks up that cannabis plant sucks up anything in the ground. So if there's pesticides or heavy metals in the soil, guess what's going to get in the plant and guess what's going to move forward into the processing of that into oil or edibles or The things you're actually putting in your body. In fact, a lot of people don't also don't know that cannabis is used to actually clear environmental waste areas in inland to actually get the bad stuff out of the soil, no kill. So a lot of people don't know that. And that's the issue. Consumers don't know what they don't know. And, you know, quite frankly, my own son has a brand. And he was really concerned in his brand that he that it was good stuff he's like, how do I know the manufacturer that I'm using is actually manufacturing quality. So he was smart enough to sort of come to us and we help them understand that what brands he really shouldn't be focused on because they utilize our platform for research to find out the right companies to do business with.

Brian Nichols  5:50  
So I'm hearing the solution. Talk to us about what credible is doing and helping address this big question mark. That was over the industry.

Brian Fitzpatrick  5:57  
Yeah. So what we're doing is we're basically a digital repository of validated and verified brands. So first thing, are you dealing with a properly licensed company on the cannabis side, in particular on marijuana, you can go to New York, I think the people in New York think that the recreational marijuana has been been legalized for years. Why? Because on every street corner, there's a dispensary, right? They're not legal dispensaries. So this is the illicit market. And they're not regulated in track because they're illegal. So first thing that credible does is tells you whether they actually have a license, and that that license is validated. So we validate that license, we put it in a blockchain, we use the hyper ledger fabric, blockchain technology through IBM. So we basically you can't mess with that license, it gets a smart contract ID. The other thing you'll see a lot of brands say that we're USDA organic, or we're e GMP certified. Well, a lot of companies believe it or not, are putting it on their website. They have no idea what it means. But it sounds good. So they put it up on the website, we actually validate and verify those certifications. The other thing we do is we track Better Business Bureau. We track lawsuits we track. Do they have anything from the the FDA, you know, do they have warnings from the FDA, and we bring all of that to light so that we become the actual repository for research to find these things. And then we do the same thing with the lab reports. These lab reports that I tell you that are falsified. We get those lab reports right from the lab, we lock them down into our blockchain, and we cue verify them so that you know that those things came directly from the lab and they were not monkeyed with,

Brian Nichols  7:46  
I hear the audience's ears starting to tingle as they hear blockchain and they're like, oh, okay, we're starting to talk some of the more fun tech stuff. Great. So talk to us about not just the the blockchain, how that's helping create transparency, but also how it's helping create trust in this industry.

Brian Fitzpatrick  8:01  
Yeah, so we utilize blockchain. Because things like lab reports, you know, these things can be modified and changed, right? If you look at a lab report, it's nothing but a PDF report, right? So we can take that PDF document, anybody can take it, put it in an Adobe program and modify it, actually modify the contents of it. But if it's a smart contract, locked down in a blockchain, right, you cannot modify it, it becomes immutable. So it's, it's critically important that that we use that technology so that we can create the secure documentation. The second thing is we utilize artificial intelligence. So we take all the rules and regs and out there about what you can say and what you can't say. And we help brands understand that if they're making claims that are against the state's laws and guidelines, we notify them, we basically bought their sites in their marketing materials. And we utilize that technology to show them labels and areas in their marketing where, where there's issues where they need to correct

Brian Nichols  9:10  
what's been the feedback thus far, not just from the actual producers, but the consumers that are using these products now. Well,

Brian Fitzpatrick  9:17  
I think that the we haven't rolled to consumers yet. So I do want to state that we're in the process of building the brands in the repository. And we're going to be rolling to consumers later this year with a free app that will be available for iPhone, Android, you know, all the different platforms. And we want to make that free to the consumer. So we have a waiting list already of consumers waiting to get this app so that you can actually sign up for the waiting list and be notified, go to www dot credible Q R Ed ib le.com and sign up for the waiting list to get on that app. We're going to notify you when that apps available, you'll be able to go to the app store you'll be able to download that app and register your brand Then simply by taking a picture of the of the bottle of what your brand is, it goes back to the credible database, it finds that brand, and it will bring you and will basically say, we will send you the research and connect you with the credible profile of what we know about that brand. So, so consumers are very excited about it. I mean, first of all, they don't have to pay for it. So that's, you know, it's, it's crazy, but we believe that's important to them. The brands, I'll tell you, the ones that want to be transparent, and aren't, they don't have anything to hide, they're jumping on the ones that are a little bit concerned, it's sort of like when you shine a spotlight in a dark, you know, store room or warehouse, you're gonna see some critters running around scurrying for the for the exits, right. And, you know, I think that sort of characterizes this industry, we're not an industry of bad apples, but if you've got apples will spoil the bunch. And I think that's the issue. It's about it, pardon the pun weeding out, you know, you'll hear a lot of these, but it'll be weeding out the bad actors, to help consumers and help supply chain members, you know, like my son's brand who wants to find a good manufacturer, to find out the truth about him, we're not going to recommend to you, we're going to provide all the details. Great example, an analogy of that is, if you want to buy a used car, you're gonna go to Carfax, right, you're going to check out everything about that car before you actually buy it. And that's what we enable you to do, we don't tell you to buy the car, we simply give you the research that you need to determine that you're doing business truly with a credible brand that is committed to truth and transparency. Brian, what's

Brian Nichols  11:41  
been the feedback thus far from the companies you are working with? And they said, there's those who are jumping right on board? And are they seeing the return on getting their products verified like this? Yeah. So

Brian Fitzpatrick  11:50  
what they're, they're going to get, obviously more return once we get, you know, millions of consumers in the platform. But these there's other reasons, by the way that they need to get in there, for example, merchant processors, right, so a merchant processor that is processing credit card transaction as brand, they have to monitor these brands, they need the same information. In fact, they need more information than then even consumers need and what is that information, the information that they need is they need to to know that their lab reports are not older than 15 months, or 12 months, depending on the processor. So what we're seeing is that brands are finding a way that they can actually be more credible with their banking relationships, as well as with their consumers. So early on, the feedback is, wow, this is great. And to be honest with you, we actually had a the CEO of a CBD company, she actually cried when she saw what we were doing because she said her biggest problem right now is differentiating her quality brand in a crowded space. And she said finally, I have a moniker the que verified moniker, I can stick on my website. And I can actually be transparent I can. And I can use this as a differentiator from all these other brands that she says I know, are not doing what I'm doing. I know they're not providing quality and checking all these areas that that you know, that I am. So we're getting great feedback. And by the way, we're also working to promote those brands even in advance of the consumer. So, you know, we're bringing those brands into our publicity, you know, congratulations, you know, for example, there's a great brand called hemp Lily. And that brand is for, you know, older women who are dealing with the issues older women deal with, right, and, you know, changes hormone, hormonal changes. And the CEO, there is a wonderful lady who's very, very committed to helping that segment of her marketplace. Right. And, you know, she's very transparent. And, you know, we want to help promote good owners like that, and good brands like that. So we're including her in a lot of our own, you know, public relations, efforts online and offline.

Brian Nichols  14:07  
One thing you mentioned was she was crying because now she had a way to differentiate from the other brands. And I know another reason a lot of business owners cry is when they get a knock on the door from Mr. And Mrs. Government, because a lot of regulators and stuff will be knocking on their doors, trying to get you know, get in there and peeking around and what's going on. So talk to us about how you're helping with the regulation standpoint as well.

Brian Fitzpatrick  14:27  
Sure. So a lot of people don't realize that the FDA sends naughty letters. Yep. You know, they'll they'll basically see there's FDA guidelines that that govern basically what you can't declaims You can make in the claims you can't make so for example, I wish this was true that you know a brand that claims that there CBD cures male pattern baldness right. You know, that you can't make that claim, you know, regardless of whether it turns out to be true or not. You can't make that claim. Now I know because I've used CBD before for back pain and inflammation that it actually does work, you know, when I use that, but the brand cannot make that claim because it is not clinically been proven, and therefore the FDA can't stand behind those. So any brand that makes any of those violative claims, you know, heels cures any of that stuff, they're gonna get a naughty letter eventually. And not only will they get a naughty letter by the FDA, but the FTC is going to come right in behind that, and issue the fines, fees and penalties. So not only are you looking at reputational damage, you're also looking at fines, fees and penalties. And oh, by the way, the lawyers and plaintiff's attorneys, they're sitting there watching this stuff. And, you know, if they get a class action lawsuit, you know, then it's sort of get over, aim over at that point in time. So, you know, what we say we're doing is we're protecting the brand. And we're also helping the brand to grow. And that really is, you know, it's not like we're out there saying, Hey, we're, we're gonna make you look bad, we do not want to make this industry look bad. We love this industry, we believe this industry, we want to help the quality brands protect their brand, stand behind their brand, and grow their brand. And so we'll give them as part of their subscription, for example, we'll give them the artificial intelligence machine that will go through, look at their labels, look at their pictures, look at their videos, look at their website, and come back with an automated report that says, This is violative, as per your state guidelines, and the FDA guidelines, you cannot say this. So it's basically like having a lawyer in a box. Brands can't afford to have a lawyer constantly looking at their marketing materials. But with credible, they basically have lawyer in a box, you know, it's it's going to they can hit the button and run it as many times as they want. And it's going to run a report for him. So we're not only trying to let the consumer know and provide this transparency outward, but we're also trying to help the brands by providing these tools at a very, very reasonable subscription cost.

Brian Nichols  17:11  
Trust that seems to be the recurring theme I'm catching you know, throughout the entirety of the episode here is that they're just there needs to be a level of trust, not just from the consumer, but from the actual producer in this case, and I guess right there, that is exactly what credible is bringing to the table. It's allowing there to be a platform to enable trust. And we know in sales, you know, trust is vitally important, but also in this industry with it being so air quote, brand new, more so with just the advent of now being legal. This is exactly where I think that the last missing pieces to this puzzle, right? Because we have the frameworks created we have the products created. But there has been and I still see this some skepticism from folks who maybe they're curious about the CBD or you're curious about delta ate, maybe they want to stop drinking, and they're like, Hey, maybe I should try a different way of getting my fix whatever that may be. Let me try a Delta eight product that that right there speaks to that there's a demand. But there's nothing to trust to know that the product itself is going to not just accomplish the goal, but actually be safe in doing so. And I guess this is going to help solve that missing piece. So Brian, let me ask you this. What can we do in the greater Brian Nichols show audience here to help increase your visibility and to help improve the mission?

Brian Fitzpatrick  18:31  
Well, listen, you know, we are we have been cultivating this business for the last few years. And you know, I've been in this software business for a number of years. And I'm very new to this industry well, for years. So it seems like a long time. What we really need to drive adoption is we need consumers to be aware of this platform and jump on the platform. Because ultimately, that's who we're really trying to protect. Ultimately, that's who the brands care about. If the consumer is out of the picture, nobody sells anything. And the most important thing is we got to get the consumers to be able to come in and that's why we're offering it to for free. So what you can do on the show, quite frankly, is urge your listeners to to get to go to www.credible.com and simply place your reservation which is going to be the reservation in history. This is a historic moment, the first platform of its kind in any of this type of supplements, whether they're dietary supplements CBD or or cannabis, reserve your spot and download the application for free and register your brand or just use it for research because I can tell you there's a whole there's a big shadow economy for CBD that are just sitting on the sidelines. They're waiting to see what happens. They don't know who to trust. They don't know what Have they buy at a gas station or buy it online and because this stuff's all over the place. So, you know, I really appreciate the opportunities to talk to your listeners, because they're the ones we're trying to protect. And, you know, get them to www.credible.com. Go there guys down, you know, reserve your spot. And we'll notify you of when the apps available, and you just simply click on the link and download it to your device. That's all you got to do,

Brian Nichols  20:25  
folks, you know, we wrap things up with final thoughts here, every single episode. So I'll kick things off. It's a very personal final thoughts for me. So I herniated my disc in my shoulder in 2019 2018, somewhere in there, and it was awful. I mean, it was it was excruciating pain was pinching nerves. I had like numbness in my left hand, constantly, sleepless nights, I didn't know what to do. And I frankly, I was getting to the point where I was like, I need a nightcap. In order to fall asleep at night, I was drinking very heavily in order to try and fall asleep. And I remember waking up one day with a hangover, and I'm just like, I can't keep doing this. And I actually talked to your son, I talked to Drew, and Drew had mentioned, you know, looking at alternatives, and I kind of started to tease that as a maybe something to consider. And then just lo and behold, a guy had reached out to me to say, Hey, you're looking for a sponsor on your show. And it was TBD. And I was like, Sure, let's give it a shot. So lo and behold, evils EAB LT s, you guys hear the ad every every week now. And that ad right there started off a complete change in my life. Because I said, I'm going to get away from drinking, I'm gonna start using a different product, I tell you, it made a world of difference, a life of difference. And if we want to call it because now not only was I able to sleep at night, and I was able to actually start to feel better, but I found that I wasn't having to rely on substances that are destroying my body. And now this, obviously, is not I'm not trying to tell you that every somebody probably can do this. This is my personal experience. But with that being said, I know I'm not alone. In my experiences. I know that for a fact. So that is why I was so excited to have you on the show, Brian, because I know this is exactly what we need in order to help more people who just like me have been looking for something out there to help fix whatever their ailment may be. And it doesn't actually have to fix it. It just it's that you have a choice. Right. And you can trust that choice. Yeah, that's my final thoughts. Brian, what do you have for us on your research?

Brian Fitzpatrick  22:12  
Well, love to love to make that connection and get evals into as a cue verified brand. I mean, I will commit to giving them a special Brian Nichols discount, Madison, we'd love to get him in. And because I would love to look, you got a great experience with that brand. There's no reason why we can't help promote that brand after they go through our verification process. And which I'm sure they'll pass with flying colors, and we'll get them Q verified. And I'll even give them a Brian Nichols show discount to to get them in and get as an early adopter into the platform, the brands are signing up, you know, and that's great. We need we need great brands, because what we don't want is when somebody goes in and looks up, you know, that brand they don't want to see this company has not Q verified proceed with caution. Right, right. You know, that's not good. And that's that's the message they're gonna get if they go in there and can't find that brand if that brand has not claimed. Now we're going to continue to find what we find about that brand. But we really need the brand owners to get in there and and take ownership as as as I keep hearing this Tammy Wynette song stand by your man, it's like stand by your brand.

Brian Nichols  23:27  
Oh, man, that's good. Well, Brian, thank you for bringing this solution to the table today. Because the audience you know, here, The Brian Nichols Show, we always talk about not just finding the problems out there, but actually bringing real tangible solutions that folks can say, oh, yeah, this actually just makes sense. So, folks, if you are listening today, and you're like, Yeah, credible just makes sense. So please do me a favor. Number one, go ahead and learn more and all links will be available in the show notes whenever to go ahead and share today's episode. This is how we spread the word. If you use a CBD product or a hemp product, whatever it may be, and you want your brand to officially be credible. Well please go ahead and tell them to to reach out to Brian and hey, maybe he'll go ahead and give them a little Brian Nichols show discount as well. But with that being said, Folks, with that if you want to go ahead and share today's episode, I would appreciate it but also, you want to go ahead and learn more all the links, all the show notes, everything you could possibly want. Over at Brian Nichols show.com We have 700 plus episodes, and from today's episode, we have the transcript. Plus we have the video version of the show, which you can find over on YouTube, Odyssey and over on rumble just do me a favor. If you're here on YouTube, hit that little notification bell at the subscribe button so you don't miss a single time we go live and by the way, if you are here on YouTube, stick around because right here popping up a brand new video should be popping up talking about the advent of blockchain technology and how it's not just changing the medical, rather the cannabis industry. It's also changing the medical research industry. We joined by our good friends over there at the amazing organization focusing on pediatric research, the Beckley foundation so if you want go ahead Meet our good friend Jacob Beckley I will see you guys over there but with that being said Brian co signing off you're on The Brian Nichols Show for Brian Fitzpatrick from credible we'll see you tomorrow

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