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Dec. 16, 2024 - The Adam King Show
28:32
My Exclusive Interview with Industry Leader Big Mike from Advanced Nutrients
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all right so MJ biz con I didn't even anticipate doing my podcast I It was actually the amount of technology that I saw being stolen that I was like, okay, I'll do a podcast about this.
And in the podcast, I ended up getting to meet and interview Big Mike from Advanced Nutrients, probably one of the top five most legendary and iconic business leaders that shaped this industry, truly shaped this industry.
I mean, without your company, cannabis would have never taken off In the dark ages.
Yeah, the dark ages.
We pushed the envelope.
We realized that when it came to the nutrient game in our space, there was no nutrients specifically for cannabis.
So we just started researching cannabis with UBC University and BCIT. And then from there, went over to Bulgaria.
We had a license to study that during the dark ages.
There was only three licenses like that.
Tikkun Alam in Israel and GW Pharmaceutical.
In the UK, and then us in Bulgaria, we had a whole team of scientists from Sophia Technical University working with us, undergrads, and learned a lot about the plant.
And now we have our R&D in Fort Collins, Colorado, with some amazing, really super smart scientists.
And we understand how the different pathways, how to up-regulate, down-regulate, and to manipulate the hell out of that plant through every stage of its development.
We have all the products that do it.
We have our eighth generation coming out.
It took us three years to develop and millions of dollars, and it's all new technology.
And not only is it a two-bag system instead of a three-bag system, but every one of our biostimulants and biologicals are all just absolutely, it's a different beast totally.
And as good as advanced nutrients is, our eighth generation blows away our seventh generation.
We have some really dedicated R&D team that stays up until two, three o'clock in the morning And studies, and studies, and studies, and that's what you have to do to get ahead.
So the credit goes to the R&D team.
That's amazing, and I gotta say, for the record, I'm 41 years old.
I've been growing with Advanced Nutrients since Humboldt State University growing in my closet at Humboldt State University.
God bless you.
God bless you.
So it's kind of a weird thing to end up here, you know, 20-something years later.
But your company is so cool because it's always been on the ancillary.
Like, back in the dark ages when we were pushing the issue of legalization, They were even coming after ancillary companies.
Oh man, where are they ever?
We've had so many bank accounts shut down and get hassled at the border.
And you were just selling nutrients for plants.
Our team members getting hassled, held up for hours, three hours, six hours, all their stuff being searched.
It's fertilizer, biostimulants, and biologicals for cannabis.
Okay, I get it, but we're ancillary.
Well, you can use it with anything else.
Listen, Advanced Nutrients holds the record that the guys who Broke the record for the biggest tomato in the world.
It's 8 pounds.
Watermelon, 309 pounds.
Wow!
Second largest orange pumpkin.
The largest non-orange pumpkin.
All with advanced nutrients.
All with advanced nutrients.
Unbelievable.
In fact, some people even in their gardens who use advanced nutrients, one guy trades his local butcher the vegetables because they taste so good for meat at the butcher shop.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Thank you.
It's also inspiring because in order to really legitimize the industry and be able to just get something like retail sales in a recreational capacity, I mean, I remember when Tommy Chong's bong shop got raided.
Can you believe that?
I know Tommy very well now.
I can only imagine you would.
Yeah, and we were out to dinner probably about a month ago.
They just picked on him.
Yeah, because he was a celebrity.
They put a target on his back.
He made the movies.
It was a character.
He's selling pipes and bombs.
Really?
You want to bust somebody and put them in jail for that?
So yeah, they did that.
He had to go through that.
He made it through.
Tommy Chung is an advocate of cannabis, and God bless him for doing what he did and pushing the envelope.
And I gotta say, for companies like mine, because we are an ancillary company making manufacturing equipment for the production of products, you know, to like, the trail that you blazed for ancillary companies in the space is really, and that's why you're really one of the leaders of this whole industry, from the seed to the sale.
You were here from the beginning.
We were the first company to come out and say that these products are for cannabis.
And it's backed by science.
We've always invested a lot of money in R&D. It's important.
What would you say to entrepreneurs like myself who have put their whole life savings into their vision and want to make it into cannabis?
First of all, when you become an entrepreneur, it's going to be a journey of self and what you're going to learn along the way about yourself.
And through the process, You're going to go through some really hard trials and tribulations.
Every self-made millionaire and billionaire I've talked to has gone through trials and tribulations and has been put into the fire.
And the fire either destroys you or you come out, as they say, tempered with a sheet of armor.
And you have to go through that.
And if you think that you're going to be an entrepreneur and you're going to have an easy life, you're mistaken.
It's going to be some of the hardest road you've ever traveled.
And in cannabis, they make it especially hard with their excess regulations.
Then you've got regulation, you've got the police knocking on your door, you've got banks debanking you.
It's a struggle.
Cannabis is an exceptionally more difficult space, but any other space, it's going to be the journey of a lifetime.
I'm in LA and after the Cannageddon in California in 2018, after they legalized it, there were like two years of unbelievable profits in the cannabis industry.
Oh sure, yeah.
And then regulations hit and it became 35% excise tax and you have to donate park benches as well.
Germany has it right.
They're just taxing it like a normal business.
And I would say to anyone who's listening to this in the government, Trump, you're going to be president.
Tax cannabis like a normal business and it will grow.
Because if you strangle it, now Europe has Germany and Germany is going to grow.
Right now, California cannabis is like putting Napa Valley and all the French wine production together.
California is known for their cannabis and will be the biggest exporter to the world if you reduce That tax.
If you don't, some other country is going to get that designation.
What do you think about, like, and just being real, because this is what my podcast is really about.
I speculate.
You know, we're really, like, we're open about our political beliefs on our show and everything like that.
Right.
What do you say about, like, Democrat lawmakers who, like, strategically constructed the laws in order, intentionally, to strangle the business?
I remember in 2016, the black market economy was expected to be $30 billion.
When they finally put up the metric system, they boast that their economy is $5 billion, and there was 20,000 jobs that were lost in the cities of L.A. just to make it legal.
What all politicians have to realize is, and I've spoken about this, tax it like a normal business, treat us like a normal business, and watch what happens.
The Democrats are going through a reset, let's just call that.
I see them doubling down on their old ways, and I think that they have to change their viewpoint.
Now, let's talk about Trump.
Trump has said that, you know, he's going to go for the Safe Backing Act, they're going to de-schedule it, and they're going to allow for export.
If all that actually happens, the Republicans will do more for cannabis than anyone else.
To the Democrats, you know, for their side, They let us push that agenda.
They're the ones that let us get cannabis to where it is today.
But the marketplace has stalled where it's at.
Now it's time for the Republicans, it's their turn in office, to do it right.
And let's hope that they do it.
In fact, I'm going to a roundtable of industry leaders in about 45 minutes.
And these are a group of guys who are going to Mar-a-Lago to talk to Donald Trump about cannabis.
And so it's going to be interesting to see what their take is on, what all of our take is on what we have to add to that.
You should have one of my investors on that panel, too.
He's always at Mar-a-Lago with the president.
Really?
I don't know who he is.
He's probably there.
Who knows?
I'll introduce you to him, Mike.
Anything to get Big Mike over with our company.
Yeah, all right.
But I wanted to...
I had this idea of being at MJBizCon, and one thing that I've noticed here, as a tech company, they pushed me heavily to get a booth, and in the end we didn't get a booth because You know, we want to have our...
Out of the way.
That's okay.
A lot of shows for the first year or second year that open up, we just walk the show to see if it gains traction or not.
MJBiz, I remember when they first started, it was just tiny, tiny, tiny.
And it wasn't until the third year that we saw them catching fire, growing in a good way, and we jumped in.
But I have seen some shrinking.
I've been here before, and this is a smaller...
It's a little bit smaller this year than this.
It's better in the sense that the app that they've made is truly revolutionary.
I really encourage them to develop that into an actual social network.
They will make billions on it as a social network, as an app.
Cannabis is about community.
Exactly.
It is.
And you have to build a community.
So my only criticism about MJBizCon, which really inspired me to podcast, because I wasn't even going to broadcast to my community.
I was just coming here as an entrepreneur.
I did.
As an entrepreneur, I came here just for the success of my company.
But one thing that I noticed was the amount of Chinese nationals who are non-American, who are out here to steal technology.
And I think that MJBizCon can do a better job at checks and balances on making sure that American companies are safe.
You were talking about President Trump.
My suggestion, I asked the guy at the front on this video also about...
And he said that more Chinese nationals are in the cannabis than other conferences, but they're in all other conferences too, looking for technology, because he works the show.
And I was thinking that, and I want your take on this, that maybe President Trump, because I know he's doing a lot for domestic security, maybe President Trump could ban foreign nationals from U.S. trade shows where sensitive technologies are being shared and displayed to the public.
What he will do is put tariffs, and the tariffs will automatically make them...
Non-competitive.
And I'm all for tariffs because, sure, we're going to be paying a little bit more, however, we've lost our middle class to China and we need to reshore all those companies back to America.
And as Americans, we should be willing to pay an extra $1.50 for our master lock that's being made here in America instead of China and all the jobs that it creates because our middle class has been gutted on This premise of, oh, shareholder value.
What about the nation we live in?
And what is the value you're contributing?
So sure, shareholder value is important, but so is domestic support for The people of the United States of America.
The greatest country in the world, by the way.
It is.
It's our home.
It's our country.
And our company is committed to buying American, hiring American, and building in America.
So we do our technology, we do our manufacturing in America, and we're committed to that vision because we have to build it together, you know.
China came there and said, hey, why don't you make your stuff in China?
Yeah, like, sure, I'm going to do that and give you all the formulations, you guys.
And their aunts, uncles, brothers and nephews will be knocking it off in different factories.
No way would that ever happen.
So we have manufacturing facilities in British Columbia, Canada, Washington State, Barcelona, Spain, in Sao Paulo, Brazil is going on and we're currently in negotiations with Thailand.
That's so awesome.
Honestly, Advanced Nutrients is seriously one of the most interesting companies in the world.
We're 120 plus countries now.
I got a question for you.
How many patents do you own?
I had one just to go through the process.
And the reason why I don't like, in some things, when you have a chemical in a bottle, it's kind of hard sometimes.
It's very difficult to break it down.
So no one's copied our PH Perfect Technology.
Had I patented that, the patent would have ran out by now.
So I know that the investors love patents.
Sometimes it's better not to have a patent because you're basically showing your hand to the world and they can see a chemical and they can make an analog that's closer to it now, especially with AI. So sometimes it's better just to be hush-lipped.
So there's advantages and disadvantages.
And by the way, if you get a patent, you have to defend it.
It's going to cost you $600 to $1 million plus to defend that patent.
And so sometimes it's better to keep your mouth closed.
Yeah.
Did you see Elon Musk's comments about patents?
They asked him about his patents.
No, what did he say?
They asked him about patents like a week ago, and his response was that Starlink and SpaceX and all of his tech companies open source all their patents, and they publish their patents as this kind of machismo thing, like bring your game type of a...
What's your stake on that?
Well, when you're highly intelligent, The ideas that flow out of highly intelligent people's brains never stop.
And so what is very easy for him to do, to come up with the next iteration, and the next iteration, and the next iteration, it just flows from his brain like water out of a faucet.
And I don't know if he's realized or not, that's a special gift.
And not everybody has that.
And so he understands, I believe he understands that, and he goes, yeah, bring it on because I'm already four steps ahead of you.
I would open source stuff knowing that I was three or four moves ahead, and it doesn't matter.
And so one of the things that we're doing now is any company out here who wants to white label advanced nutrients, it's like, yeah, come on in.
We'll white label for you.
And even if they were able to figure something out, just like our competitors, sometimes they figure out some stuff, it doesn't matter.
We've got the 8th gen There's a new generation of ideas out there.
A new way of what it's going to do to the plant and how it's going to grow.
And we're already starting on our ninth generation.
That's crazy.
And not only do you got the ninth generation, but you've got that heirloom brand.
The heirloom brand of Advanced Nutrients.
That trademark is so industry standard.
It's a seal.
It's not just a company.
It's a seal of quality in your garden.
Our consistency of quality is, bar none.
We use Haifa Inputs.
We've been using Haifa Inputs for 21 years.
Why?
Because Haifa makes fertilizers in Israel for the specialty crop business.
They understand that people are going to be eating the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and lettuce grown with that.
And so it is a super pure and clean product.
And why is that important?
Because, well, people consume cannabis and we don't want to If you look at the COAs, you'll see heavy metals, ND, ND, ND means non-detectable.
And we're really, really proud of it.
If you look at your CBG, it mostly gets, you'll see zero CBG because it's all been used to make cannabinoids.
And then there's GPP, that's like the grandfather of making all terpenes.
And, you know, we understand that pathway and we really juice that pathway and we can make the plant make more GPP. So now it can Make more terpene production.
And now we've even, in our 8th generation, we've supercharged that pathway even more.
This is so cool, and this is also like...
We look at upstream, downstream, and where we can hijack the system.
Yeah.
And we're going to get the most play.
It's such cutting edge technology.
Yeah, there's like one of the pathways we use.
If someone were to look at it, they go, oh, that's just a nitrogen pathway.
Yeah, it is.
But what they don't realize is, it opens up all the other pathways for all the macros, secondaries, and micros.
And we know that pathway, and we hijack that pathway.
And it's like, literally, this 8th generation just opens the floodgates.
These plants are just big, beefier, thicker stalks.
The stalks are stiffer so the plant can sense it can put on more weight.
But the terpene production is second to none.
It's amazing technology.
I'm so proud of our R&D team and what they've produced.
You know, I'm not such a fan of this guy, but Saad Guru.
He works at the World Economic Forum.
He's kind of weird.
He likes population reduction.
He's a soil guy, right?
He's a soil guy.
And he gave this whole speech on Joe Rogan about soils.
And the truth is, American soil has been so depleted Yeah.
By heavy metals and pesticides.
You're right.
You know, in the new Trump administration, especially with the RFK going after the FDA and the CDC and all these different organizations, it would be so cool and so like also gold standard if someone like Donald Trump Have like a commission for soils and had you on it.
Would you be down to like get involved in Save American soils?
100% I would love to do that.
That would be amazing.
You heard it here first, guys.
I'm going to send this to Roger Stone directly.
I ran Roger Stone in my house a long time ago.
He's on the show often.
Yeah, right.
Oh, good.
Good for you.
And so, cannabis is a great soil remediator.
Yeah.
It adds nitrogen to the...
And it also...
It's a great carbon sink, probably more than any other plant.
So reducing carbon emissions and all that, cannabis is really great for that as well.
Oddly enough, yesterday a gentleman came in here who has a product that costs X amount of dollars, it's reasonable, that you put it on an acre and it juices the soil and it's a mineralized product and adds Punch back to the soil and so we're really interested in this product for the outdoor cannabis growers because it fixes the soil.
I grow personally at my house for myself the best part about transitioning into ancillary is not having to worry about cannabis sales and just if you're truly a connoisseur and you truly love the art of cannabis it Still carries with you.
So I grow a lot.
I use hugelkultures in my home gardens and Advanced Nutrients.
Well thank you.
Thank you for your support.
I appreciate you.
I remember, gosh, there's so many different types of Advanced Nutrients products.
Well, you've got a bunch of products.
Yeah.
We have a deep war chest, tool chest.
It's the difference between going to Kmart and buying your tools or buying Snap-on tools.
We got all the little tools that can get into all the nooks and crannies.
So depending on your strain, we have the right product fertigation protocol to set you up.
And the biggest misconception is that we're too expensive.
What we did is we invested in our production infrastructure during COVID. And now we have economies of scale and we can produce at a lower cost.
We slashed our margins because we realized that's where the game is going.
And so now we can Produce volume with all the different manufacturing facilities that we have.
While I have you, because this is such a rare interview for me, because to all you guys at home, I've been watching this guy build his company for over a decade.
And it's the most impressive company in cannabis, hands down.
I want to ask you about your technology.
I want to ask you about your business.
My mind goes to a million different places having you for whatever this 20 minutes.
Give me some stats on your company.
How big is your company at this current juncture?
How many employees do you have?
You said you're in 120 countries.
Our products are 120 countries.
We've got 268 people.
We're right around 100 million.
During Coralette we had 161 million.
Impressive.
Yeah, and our goal is to take it to, we'll probably hit about 150 in 2025. Incredible.
And how many SKUs do you guys carry?
Boy, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
Hundreds.
Did you say hundreds or thousands?
High hundreds, yes.
High hundreds, approaching a thousand.
I don't know.
I'd have to actually sit down, but Some of the stuff we're doing skew rationalization as time goes on.
You know, one of the things is we're keeping the 7th generation line for the hydroponic store, 8th generation, specifically for the commercial cultivation facilities.
We weaponized our product line specifically for the commercial cannabis space.
You know, an interesting thing, we run into a lot of some roadblocks even with the cultivators that we go in.
True Leaf.
They have a facility in Magnolia, Arizona, and they ran a test against their True Newts, GH powders, and advanced nutrients.
They got 19% THC with their True Newts, 22% with GH, and 26% with us.
Wow.
And the guy, when he saw the COAs, I said, you know, please take him to upper management.
They said, no, we're not going to do that.
Why?
Because the guy who mixes their own True Newts was afraid he was going to lose the job.
And this is the kind of mentality that's going on.
He doesn't realize if he would have showed them how they could make a couple hundred million dollars more per year by using Advanced Nutrients, they would have promoted him to a different job.
They say, man, you're a genius.
Thank you for being honest.
But in this case, this gentleman is putting himself first instead of the company first.
And then you talk about entrepreneur.
One of the biggest things that you want to do when you hire people are people who put the company first before themselves.
They're not a dime a dozen.
You get these people and you surround yourself with those type of people, especially your top five people, and you can just crush it.
But this is the biggest transition.
We've put all of our middle managers and upper management through a leadership course.
There's a book out there called I Am Leader by Chris Collins, and it has made an amazing difference.
It talks about External locus of control, internal locus of control, shadow integration.
In fact, we put, some of our team members, this happened, I have three stories to tell.
We put them through the course.
There was one guy that after he went through the course, he went home and apologized to his wife.
Wow.
For being such a dick.
Can I say that?
Okay, yeah.
You can say whatever you want.
And then another case where a woman realized what she was doing, was divorced, And went back with her husband and they got remarried.
And another guy, I've heard this a couple of times, that after the training they have to pull over to the side of the road to process.
This is stuff that isn't taught in any other book.
You can go to Amazon.
It's called I Am Leader by Chris Collins.
And it was the most amazing way that we turned around our company.
Then realized Because of internal locus control, they have to take full responsibility for their life and on their job.
And it has made all the difference in the world to our company.
It's probably the best leadership training in the world that I've ever come across.
Because it rewires your brain, puts it in a different architecture in your brain.
And it's information that was never taught to us by our parents or anyone else.
And every single person we put through it, everybody's just gone.
Oh my God, thank you very much.
You've changed my life, because it doesn't just help the business, because it does help the business, but their interpersonal skills, it really, really makes a difference in their whole life, and everything in their life gets easier.
You don't have to be fighting all the time.
Incredible.
I'm going to do this leadership course.
I am leader, yeah.
Like Chris Collins.
Yeah, and then you get the books, and then there's a seminar that he has as well.
Our entire industry, guys who are in the traditional market, They must have this kind of training.
Because we were lone wolves.
We were self-dependent.
We didn't collaborate in a commercial way with teams.
And most of us had some pretty traumatic childhoods.
And most people do.
We're all products of trauma and reward.
And because of that, we have this baggage.
And it burdens us.
It self-sabotages us.
It does a lot of things that we're not even aware of.
And so when you can put a different architecture in your brain and you can start collaborating with people and working with people, magic happens.
So I would definitely say get the book by Chris Collins, I Am Leader.
And there's a way, I'm sure, throughout the book that you can figure out how to get to his seminars.
The seminars are held in Los Angeles.
By the way, we flew people in from all our facilities all over the world just for this training.
And you're in Los Angeles.
And I'm in Los Angeles.
I've had the training.
Magic.
I'm going to do it because I've been watching your company for so long, always wondering, what is the secret sauce?
What is the secret sauce of advanced nutrients?
And here it is, secret sauce, Chris Collins, I am leader.
One of them.
One of them.
There's a lot of actual sauce.
After Chris Collins, it changed the trajectory of our company.
And by the way, it's not just our company.
When I talked to Chris, he said that most all the business, he went to Toyota and he's trained a bunch of management there and these other companies, and their revenue has increased from 200 to 400 percent because the people get it.
And also, your team members, employees, they have nowhere to hide after that.
They know that you know.
And because you've had the training too, it's like, okay.
That's incredible.
We have to have accountability and have to be responsible.
Big Mike, you are one of the most interesting and fascinating people and companies in all of cannabis.
I hope to make that list myself one day.
And I have to say, from his mouth, but since you're in LA, I'll leave you with this.
I have heard of your legendary parties.
I have to get myself invited to one of your parties.
Right now the economy is tough.
I don't feel good doing them, but we will do them again when the economy gets better.
Oh my god, when you throw a party, I want to be there.
I've heard about them.
The parties that we do are customer appreciation, grower appreciation, cultivator appreciation parties.
And you think that they're essential for your company's growth?
Is that one of your secret sales also?
Yeah, it is.
Alright, we'll close with that.
You want to have parties, and you want to get people in the same room together and appreciate them.
And when you do that, every party that we've ever thrown has increased our sales.
I will always be watching your company.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for this time.
Thank you, Adam.
We appreciate it.
Appreciate you.
There you have it, folks.
Big Mike.
Advanced Nutrients!
That was a killer interview!
People, that was big!
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