Karin Samelson:[0:46]

Great. Welcome to the UMI Social Circle, where we’ve taught consumer goods tips to help business owners and marketers grow. We’re Karin and Allison co-founders of UMI Marketing, and we’re being joined by Summer Singletary and Zoe Gardner of Emblossum, a three-day conference for emerging herbal product businesses. Thank you guys so much for joining us.

 

Karin Samelson:[1:11]

To start, let’s give our listeners just a little bit of a background. Zoe, what does your background look like?

 

Zoe:[1:17]

Yeah, well, I’ve been in the herb world for about 20 years now and always guided by my love of the plants and it’s taken me to all kinds of places I wouldn’t have expected. I was in academia for a while and focused on botanical safety and the safety of different herbs, and then went on to run R & D, research and development, at a major herbal product company where Summer and I met so I’ll leave that for her introduction.

 

Zoe:[1:43]

Part of the safety work was writing the Botanical Safety Handbook. It’s a book that goes over the safety issues of about 500 different herbs used in herbal medicine so it’s a really thorough resource and it was a great grounding for the technical work going forward. I have my Ph.D. In plant science and kind of went on from the work at the company. I’m a corporate dropout like many of us are here I think, and decided to become a consultant. I work as a regulatory consultant for herbal product companies and Summer and I, and another colleague co-founded Emblossum Herbal Business Conference a couple of years ago. It’s been a wonderful smattering of activities along the way.

 

Karin Samelson:[2:28]

Yeah. You are an herbal expert that’s for darn sure. It’s great to have you here and helping our brands that might not know that they’re an herbal brand, but just might be, and we can get into that a little bit more later, but Summer, what is your background?

 

Summer:[2:46]

Yeah, a bit of a windy road. I can’t say that I imagined that I’d end up in marketing, but here I am and I love it. I started getting into plants more deeply in college, where I was really into developing community gardens with friends. We did one on campus and I was really more focused on creating food equity and growing organic gardens and creating more access. It was through gardening that I actually fell in love with the plants and around that time was the last recession. I got out of college with an environmental studies degree and a passion for herbalism and there wasn’t much going on so it actually gave me this unique opportunity to dive into what I was most interested in, which was herbalism and gardening at the time. I came from that angle at first and studied at herb schools, a couple across the country.

 

Summer:[3:45]

I’m from Florida. So originally there and some in Vermont and then eventually I led to California and when I finished my schooling at the California School of Herbal Studies, it was just perfect timing. I had been marketing unknown to me the whole time. I had cabbed an Instagram and a blog. It was that time when blogs were very popular and I was doing marketing, I just didn’t know it at the time. It was just perfect timing. One of the bigger tea companies, if not the biggest herbal tea company in the United States, where I met Zoe. They needed somebody to develop their Instagram and start their blog. I ended up working on the marketing team and developed my chops as a marketer and I absolutely loved it.

 

Summer:[4:32]

I realized that when you work for a brand that has a really strong purpose and message, it can be quite easy to be a marketer. I think that’s probably the goal for most marketers too, is to work for a brand that they’re very passionate about. I was very lucky and learned a lot about social media advertising, compliance, writing creatively within the guidelines, and copywriting. Now I have a small boutique communications agency and also co-run the Emblossom Herbal Conference with some amazing humans. Yeah, herbalist and marketer, strange duo, but I absolutely love it. It’s really fun to be able to work with the plants every day in that way and write about them.

 

Alison Smith:[5:18]

Absolutely. I love both of y’all’s stories and they kind of match Karen and I as well, where we work together at a larger place, and then we went off and came back together to create our own thing. Yeah, so we met Summer and Zoe and all the other amazing people that run Emblossom Herbal Conference. Karen and I were lucky enough to speak at one of their last conferences and it was wonderful. The community is just rock solid, really smart people doing really cool things. I would love to hear more about how the conference came to be, how y’all decided that it was a good fit, and there was a white space for it.

 

Summer:[6:07]

Yeah, well, it was 2020 when we started it, which was, as we all know, without saying a crazy year. We had already been freelance both of us for a bit. We do a lot of work together when folks need both compliance and copywriting and creative marketing work. We’re a good team. And we love working together. We found ourselves with Jacqueline, Jacqueline Smith, shout out to our third Emblossom founder. We found ourselves in this space where we are at home, not much to do, lockdowns, and we are just hearing from our clients this huge need. Not only was it hard to be in business at that time, but the guidelines were already challenging as emerging brands.

 

Summer:[6:54]

We started offering free monthly webinars to folks and from topics, everything from general manufacturing practices to compliance, to social media marketing, to financing and loans. We just saw that there were hundreds of people signing up and definitely 30 people showing up live every time. We thought this is just our core network. We don’t even have an entity yet. It’s just kind of us putting the word out there in a grassroots way. This is really successful. I wonder what this would look like if we made it a bigger, more intentional event and that’s how the event was born. It was funny. We did a couple of press things in the beginning. I remember this sweet man who was interviewing us. He’s like, “huh, this is really niche. Who’s going to show up?” We’re like, “we don’t know, but you know, we’re just going to see what happens.” Actually, over 200 people showed up. There are actually a lot of herbal brands that are craving this information that is accessible and scalable so it’s been really, really fun.

 

Karin Samelson:[8:13]

Well, that’s just so crazy impressive that you guys just realize that, “Hey, there’s a need for this because people are showing up and they’re consuming our content and they want more.” That is so proven, 200 people that is an incredible success so congratulations on that. We got firsthand experience with that. Like Allison mentioned, we had the opportunity to speak there and your community is strong and they’re smart and they ask all the good questions, and just very cool. If anybody is interested in that, you guys got to go check it out, we’ll keep it in the show notes for sure. But moving into kind of some of the things, some of the challenges that herbal brands might face. We talk to a lot of small emerging consumer packaged goods brands, but those challenges might be a little bit different. What are those big hurdles that herbal brands need to overcome, especially in the beginning?

 

Zoe:[9:16]

Yeah, I think from the regulatory point of view, I’m just always going to answer with the regulatory nerd answers here so from the regulatory point of view, it’s first understanding what category you’re in. I think for food companies, it’s really clear. They’re food, it’s something tasty or nutritious to eat, but with herbs, everything runs a spectrum from food to medicine. There are no clear lines in an herbalist’s mind. Whether you eat the herb or whether you put the herb on the skin, it’s all herbal medicine from somebody who’s trained as an herbalist, but FDA doesn’t see it that way. No surprise. Figuring out what category you’re in, which will make a difference as to what you can say about your product, how you need to manufacture your product, and a whole bunch of other things.

 

Zoe:[10:07]

Figuring out whether your product is a food or beverage, so that would be one category. Whether it’s a dietary supplement, that would be in the category of kind of anything that helps gently fix. So it’s herbs and vitamins are all in the same category. Whether it’s a cosmetic, which is something used topically, or whether it’s a drug, so that’s mostly going to be out of, out of the reach in terms of compliance and manufacturing and all that. It’s an FDA category that they’re very clear about. Drugs heal things and other products do not. That’s the first one is getting clear on the regulatory category because that’ll determine what you can or can’t say about a product. So that’s, that’s number one.

 

Zoe:[10:53]

I think one of the other big challenges that herbal brands face is the passion of the founders in a really good way. Most people educated as herbalists who have had really positive experiences with the herbs and then go on to start an herbal product company are people who love to educate about herbs and there’s so much that herbs can do. It’s really hard to know all the things, but only be able to say a small fraction of what each plant can do.

 

Zoe:[11:24]

It’s just challenging, and I guess hand in hand with that is the fact that the regulations are fairly murky. There’s some guidance, but there’s not a ton of clear guidance and there are a lot of expectations from the FDA. What is it that you can say about a product that’s going to be okay, versus a statement that might get you a warning letter? Sometimes the difference is really small. As one wild example, if you talk about a product that treats constipation, that would be considered a disease, but if you talk about a product that treats occasional constipation, then that could be a supplement. It’s an occasional thing. It happens to all of us, but it’s not chronic constipation. There are really fine lines between some of the things. There’s nowhere on the FDA website that delineates exactly what you can and can’t say, so a lot of folks carry anxiety around that because they’re aware of the regulations, but haven’t gotten good guidance because it’s hard to find. Yeah.

 

Alison Smith:[12:23]

Yeah. I just have to say, I just love y’all’s duo. Zoe is regulations and FDA and Summer’s like, here’s how you can massage it and share it with consumers. I would love to hear, speaking of all that, because it is very scary and you’re not just if you’re an herbal brand scared of the FDA, you’re also scared of getting your marketing channel shut down, therefore not being able to market your business. It just is a trickle-down. Summer, I would love to hear how creatively and how through marketing, you take everything that Zoe just talked about and get it out there and amplify it.

 

Summer:[13:09]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, it’s no easy task. Obviously, as marketers, we know that it’s going to change with the brand voice and what the brand is about and their positioning and things too. I really encourage founders or copywriters or marketers whoever’s working on the project to just stay positive. I think the guidelines are in some ways kind of nice because you don’t have a totally blank canvas. You have a prompt at hand which kind of can make your life a little bit easier sometimes. Also, it’s kind of good for the industry not to make wild claims. When we see things like we saw things around COVID-19 that were… It harms the whole industry when we oversell and under-deliver. In some ways these guidelines are, I think as an herbalist, they could be a lot better, but in some ways, it really, really protects us as a whole.

 

Summer:[14:10]

That’s the first step is just to try to stay positive. Then the next step I usually think about is I, as a copywriter, think about the brand voice and how to make things playful. Also, we’ll go into a little bit more about this, but within the guidelines thinking about what is the context that this person is using these plants, and how is the design lending itself a little bit more to the brand and communicating. As an example, if you want to serve a clinical look, then maybe you’re packaging has that kind of clinical look and feel, or if you’re having an herbal food where it’s more of a beverage where it’s a beneficial tea that somebody needs to drink every day, maybe it’s labeled as a tonic and it feels playful, approachable, and tasty.

 

Summer:[15:09]

I think the product itself and the design can lend it to that and also the colors and the illustrations. A lot of times people shout out plants on the front of the packaging or the images. There are actually a lot of ways that you can stay creative within the guidelines. I think just as highly educated plant people, we want to share everything and more so it can feel a bit daunting.

 

Karin Samelson:[15:35]

Oh, well, it’s exciting to hear that even though it kind of is intimidating and can be a little bit scary, for lack of a better word, you can still get super creative with it and still have fun with it as long as you’re talking to the right people. We’re going to talk a little bit about that later too, but coming back to the regulations, we’d love to learn a little bit more on the specifics on the regulatory categories that you were talking about when it comes to food and bev or cosmetic and how you go about just handling that.

 

Zoe:[16:14]

Yeah. I would say how you go about figuring out which category you’re in or deciding which category you want to be in. Yeah, it’s tricky. So let’s see, the first thing is to know the category. As we mentioned, there’s food and beverage, there are dietary supplements, there are cosmetics, and then there are drugs. We’ll leave out drugs for now. The key thing to remember is that your category is determined by the intended use of the product. You could have the very same product and you could be a food or you could be a dietary supplement depending on what you say about the product.

 

Zoe:[16:49]

For example, with peppermint tea, you can have peppermint tea and you can sell that. It can be a tasty, minty tea, everybody loves peppermint, and that can be in the food/beverage category or you can sell peppermint tea. You can have a claim on that package and say, this is peppermint tea for relief of occasional indigestion, for help with tummy rumbles, for upset stomach, and because you’re making a claim around how that tea can benefit a system that puts you in the dietary supplement category. So again, exact same product, but depending on how you’re indicating your consumers to use the product, then that’ll put you in a different regulatory category. That’s often a hard one for people to wrap their head around. The ingredients matter, but what matters more is the intended use and the claims for the product.

 

Zoe:[17:44]

Another one we like to talk about a lot as a great example is oats or oatmeals. There are oats as oatmeal that we eat for breakfast. Herbalists like to use oats the seeds just before they’re ripe and those go into tinctures or teas and they help calm the nervous system. They basically come from the same plant part harvested at slightly different times, but with different uses. Then you can have oats ground up in moisturizing creams, and it can be a really great moisturizer. Oats is also allowed as an over-the-counter drug ingredient and so the same ingredient but can be used in very different products. That’s getting clear on the categories and figuring out the intended use of your product.

 

Karin Samelson:[18:34]

Wow.

 

Karin Samelson:[18:37]

Oats. I was just like, oh yeah, we’re talking oatmeal here.

 

Zoe:[18:39]

Yeah. Oatmeal.

 

Karin Samelson:[18:43]

Yeah. Just that alone makes my brain kind of turn on like, okay, what other random ingredients like that are just so much more robust than that one use case that we’re so used to?

 

Zoe:[18:55]

Yeah.

 

Summer:[18:56]

There’s a lot.

 

Summer:[19:00]

What makes it really complicated? Yeah. As you can see. Yeah.

 

Alison Smith:[19:06]

I was going to say, this is why y’all are important because I’m like, “well, what does that mean?” Yeah. That’s tough. Did we, did we cover all the types of regulations or is there anything else that you wanted to cover Zoe?

 

Zoe:[19:24]

Yeah, I guess the other piece. The area that I focus on is mostly labeling claims, et cetera. The other huge thing is the manufacturing practices. Foods have a lot of regulations around food cleanliness and all kinds of practices in your manufacturing facility, cosmetics a little bit less so, but there are still paperwork requirements and tracking and regulations on the ingredients that go in. When you go to dietary supplements, it gets a lot more complicated. There’s a bunch more testing. There’s testing of all the ingredients for identity, strength, and composition so making sure that the ingredients are strong enough for their intended use and then finished product testing. Again, that same peppermint tea, you’re selling it as a food, you have certain manufacturing requirements, but then you sell it as a dietary supplement, and all of a sudden your costs go way up because you need to do a whole bunch more testing on the ingredients in there. So, those are the two main sets of regulations that herbal product companies need to be aware of. There are a few more small ones, but those can be for down the line.

 

Summer:[20:37]

Yeah. I just want to jump in and say too, I imagine people that are listening right now, especially if you’re considering starting a business and this is all new, you might be feeling really overwhelmed and something that I really like that Zoe says a lot too and I think some of our other colleagues have said before is that compliance is a journey. It really is because the laws are constantly changing. They’re being adapted. They’re also just really hard to reach even as multimillion-dollar companies so don’t be too hard on yourself and do as much as you can now. Usually a journey and a spectrum of compliance, not saying that you should do anything illegal. I think there are some areas you should be more risk-averse than others. Like that example that Zoe said with peppermint, maybe you don’t have the funds right now to start a supplement brand, but you eventually really want to make claims. Maybe you start out in the food category with your peppermint tea, and then eventually when you’re moving and shaking, you can go ahead and make it a supplement. It’s not to say that this is completely prescriptive, but it is how the laws are written so just to add that in there

 

Karin Samelson:[21:59]

I mean, language is so important always, but even more so here. It’s a really good reminder, but that compliance is a journey reminder is just so good because especially with something that’s not black and white, it’s just, you got to remember that things change over time and to just go with the flow a little bit more and just come to it with a little bit more patience. With that kind of risk and gray area that we’ve been talking about with herbal CPG, especially in marketing, how do you generally approach this through your marketing? Is every platform the same or do you have to approach it differently?

 

Summer:[22:47]

Yeah, that’s a great question. Zoe and I work on this together a lot and what we’ve kind of summarized over the years is the packaging. It can be really expensive to change, right? We tend to advise folks to be more by the books when it comes to physical things that are printed and packaging. It also can affect your partners because if you have to change all your packaging or I don’t know, somehow they get looped in, it can just not be the best experience. It doesn’t happen often, but you don’t really want it to happen, especially on a bestseller. Then you go to digital spaces more so, and you think about product pages. If you’re having things like advertisements, go back to product pages that’s probably another one I would be maybe less colorful with all the descriptions and all the things you want to say as an herbalist.

 

Summer:[23:52]

I would say you can take more risk there and I’ll let Zoe pop in and make sure I’ve got this right after I go through it. I would say that would be somewhere maybe less and then once you get to blog and social media and things like that, we tend to say more. Those things can be updated so if somebody contacts you can go ahead and update those pretty immediately. You’re not going to get warning letters from meta or advertising private platforms as much. You’re not going to get dinged. You’re not generally advertising to a blog page. You can sometimes so just think those things through a little bit before you go on your claims journey.

 

Karin Samelson:[24:40]

Yeah. Zoe, anything to add to that?

 

Zoe:[24:43]

What do I want to say about that? Yeah. Right. There are printed materials and those are tricky. There’s a spectrum of risk. What I often see is small companies push the edge a little bit. If you have a small business, it’s a side hustle, you’re just selling at the farmer’s market then it’s easy to say many things and not be too worried about enforcement. What I often see is as companies grow bigger and get more responsibilities to employees, investors, and anybody else along the way, they get more conservative. Yeah, there’s that change that happens over time and with greater responsibility. FDA, I think it’s good for folks to keep in mind does do a lot of their monitoring online. The easiest thing for them to do is to pay people sitting at computers to search key terms that they’re on the lookout for, and they’ll search websites. They’ve been doing social media. I just saw a little piece that said there was just a warning letter that went out that included a claim made on social media eight years ago. They’re getting their search skills strong and they’re going…

 

Alison Smith:[26:02]

They go back eight years?

 

Zoe:[26:04]

They went back eight years. I’m not sure how they did it, but yeah. It’s a little startling. Social media can be a great place to try things out and then you just want to keep in mind that as time goes by, it may be good to clean up the older stuff, especially as FDA or other organizations just have different priorities that they’re enforcing around.

 

Alison Smith:[26:29]

That’s really great advice, I think, to go back, because like you were saying, I got really excited when you said it’s a spectrum. When you’re first starting out you can be a little more, I don’t know, maybe a little bit more aggressive in your claims, but as you have more responsibilities, like you said, most likely more capital, you have more resources, you have more education, you’re making less and less of those claims, but what you just said is so important. Definitely go back in time and clean things up once you start understanding what you can and cannot say.

 

Summer:[27:11]

Yeah. Just to add too there are some big trigger words too, and you’ll notice when things ebb and flow. When you follow the regulations more and we’ll share some resources at the end, but you’ll notice there are some hot phases or trends. The regulators will kind of follow those. If you have cures, heals, COVID-19, and things like this it’s just going to really put you at risk. It really is a spectrum, but also knowing what words are on the side of which things. Making any disease claims you really want to do things that support body systems not heals X, Y, Z, fixes, cures. Just learning the terms to even search for is probably a good place to start as well.

 

Zoe:[28:05]

Yeah. The other tricky thing we’re seeing is that it’s not just FDA anymore, that a lot of different hosting services want to reduce their risk also so whether it’s Shopify or Meta. I had a client who recently got a 24-hour notice from Shopify that they were about to stop her payment processing because they said she was selling pseudo supplements and she’s got a good dietary supplement brand. We were able to work with them, but it really is these other platforms that are enforcing their interpretation of FDA regulations and that’s where folks are getting into trouble even more so than with FDA. Just such frustrating spots at times, with Meta, it can be just many hours trying to get recourse on why your ads aren’t showing or things like that. The more you stay towards compliance, the less challenge you’ll face there, but you’ll also be saying less about your products, which is a marketing disadvantage so there’s a balance to be struck there.

 

Alison Smith:[29:12]

One hundred percent and we’ve dealt with Meta for a decade, maybe close to two at this point. One little trigger can shut down your account, and then we’re seeing it, like you said, with Shopify. That’s your livelihood right now so it is very scary and it really is your responsibility if you’re using these types of ingredients to know these things and to keep on top of it. One thing we say with social media, in general, is when in doubt exchange words for things like supports or helps and Summer, I’m sure you could speak a lot more on that, but it just kind of helps your brain train to say it supports this instead of it cures you or anything like that.

 

Summer:[30:06]

Totally. Yeah. There’s a lot you can say, actually, but I think when you first find out the regulations, you’re like a deer in headlights. You’re like what? I can’t talk about all the wonderful things that herbs do. I want to scream it from the rooftop, but then you realize there are other channels and people always find their way to the information that they need. We have such great access. Your product might just be the amazing first step on their journey or their aha moment that leads them down the path to other books and courses.

 

Karin Samelson:[30:44]

Yeah, definitely. We’re talking about how scary it is, but Summer we love that you’re bringing us back to earth because people are doing it every single day and there are things and resources that you can utilize. Let’s talk about those resources a little bit. Who should be in your Rolodex when you are wanting to start an herbal brand?

 

Summer:[31:06]

Yeah, that’s a great question. We say a lawyer who tells you what you can’t do. That’s a really great person to have. They’re also the first person to call if you get a warning letter. Don’t reply on your own. That’s a big thing we’ve learned over the years. There’s a very expected process that goes through and you might save yourself a lot of worry and back and forth if you kind of go the way that they’re expecting things to flow and it’s just good to have a lawyer if you do end up getting that call. A regulatory consultant, like Zoe, that researches what you can do. Zoe also does a lot of different things like figuring out the right amount and the right dose for certain claims. One herb might do dozens of different things, if not hundreds, but if you’re going to make a certain claim, it might need to be at a certain dose to state that it does that. So having a regulatory person that can look at that, look at how to put it on the label, how the packaging can look, it’s pretty comprehensive.

 

Summer:[32:15]

Then a copywriter that makes it all sound more appealing. Those are kind of the three people we think when you’re doing communications and positioning your botanical brand that are really important. Kind of like we were talking about before this call too, you might think I’m not an herbalist. I don’t have an herbal brand, but if you have some of these active ingredients, you do. Just knowing that too. If you’re using things like adaptogens and you’re using things that are more for the supplement category and you’re positioning as in food, you might actually need to pay more attention than you think. So again, working with the regulatory consultant to figure that out with your positioning would be wise if you’re using botanicals that have a little more oomph to them.

 

Karin Samelson:[33:07]

Nice. We have two of the three here, unfortunately, or fortunately. Allison and I are not lawyers.

 

Alison Smith:[33:15]

We’re not lawyers.

 

Karin Samelson:[33:16]

If you guys have any lawyer recommendations, we’re happy to put those in the show notes too, just so people can can see, but Zoe, did you want to add something to that?

 

Zoe:[33:25]

Who was next on the list? You need a copywriter because there are all the boring regulations that I focus on and then you have to have the person with the enthusiasm and the light to make everything sound good in spite of all those guidelines so that’s the other person on the team.

 

Karin Samelson:[33:42]

Yeah. We got a good balance here, which is awesome.

 

Alison Smith:[33:46]

Okay. Zoe, did you want to talk about FDA labeling guides, all of that jazz as well? Okay. Let’s hear it. I’m just going to re-ask that. Zoe, what other resources do you use personally often to check in with the FDA and all the regulatory people?

 

Zoe:[34:09]

Yeah. All those regulatory pieces. One of the things I find myself using most often is FDA’s labeling guides. FDA has labeling guides for foods, dietary supplements, and cosmetics. For companies that know what category they’re in and are updating their labels or creating their labels for the first time, those guidelines are super helpful. They go into excruciating detail and it’s all in there so all that information is there. FDA warning letters are horribly dreary to read and one of the most important or most helpful resources so there’s a whole database of warning letters that go out to all the companies the FDA regulates. They will say claims that they did not like on a product and they’ll talk about things that they saw in a manufacturing facility that were not up to their expectations. It’s a really wonderful way to just get a sense of what they care about and therefore what other platforms will care about as well in the future.

 

Alison Smith:[35:24]

That’s all… Sorry to pause you there. That’s all front, anyone can access those?

 

Zoe:[35:17]

Anyone can access that. Yep. There’s another consultant Asa Waldstein and he has a wonderful newsletter. It’s called Warning Letter Wednesday. He also has it on LinkedIn with some little videos. He can save you the work of reading all the warning letters and he brings highlights and talks about those so those are wonderful. In addition to his newsletter, the American Herbal Products Association has a weekly newsletter to help keep up on industry trends and also has some of the FDA actions in there. Then as we talked about before the Emblossom Conference. We hope to keep it an annual event and it’s really one of the best places for small companies to come and get clear on the regulations, on the trends, and hear from a wide variety of people. We usually have lawyers, copywriters, marketers, finance folks, and a bunch of other people to help everybody along in their journey.

 

Karin Samelson:[36:17]

That’s awesome. The Emblossom Conference is once a year, but outside of that, do you guys have other resources for folks?

 

Summer:[36:27]

Yeah, we do. We both have our own consulting businesses so if you want to work together one on one, I do copywriting, and communications and Zoe does regulatory work. We’re often a good duo or if you need any of those things, we both do that and we are coming up with some very special offerings that are coming soon. Without going into too much detail, if you are well on your journey and you need some deeper support, we’ll be offering some programs and classes coming up soon in-between time for people that want to dive deeper between conferences. So emblossom.co is where you can sign up for our email list. I’m sure we’ll have it all in the show notes so if you want to pop over there and sign up for the email list or just say, hi, we’d love to meet you.

 

Alison Smith:[37:24]

That sounds exciting and mysterious. I’m already on your mailing list so I can’t wait to find out, but you can find Summer and we’ll put all this in the show notes at http://www.warmly.agency and then you can find Zoe at http://www.herbnerdresearch.com and all this will be in the show notes for y’all to check out. Thank you summer and Zoe. This was so enlightening, so much good information. We really appreciate it.

 

Zoe:[38:04]

A pleasure to be here with you and just a word of uplift to all the herbal companies out there. You can do it. It’s a journey and the support is out there. I’m just excited about everybody who is an herbalist and you know, wants to bring out products to help folks. There’s a lot to be done there.

 

Summer:[38:28]

Yeah, we need you so don’t be discouraged. We need y’all leading the industry. That’s a big reason why we do what we do. We believe people that believe in the plants and have a relationship with the plants should really be steering the ship in this industry and a huge part of it if not at the front. It’s really important that people that care about our ecosystems and our traditions and the plants, that they’re a bigger part of this industry. We’re really passionate about that so don’t be discouraged. It’s going to be okay. That’s my big ending moment.

 

Karin Samelson:[39:11]

Love it. Thanks so much, you guys. We can’t wait to share this with our herbalist and botanical brands. I’m sure they are getting a whole lot out of this because we definitely did.

 

Summer:[39:22]

Awesome. Thank you for everything you all do.