PromoTix University

William Royall (00:00)
Welcome to PromoTix University's podcast, your go-to resource for event professionals navigating the evolving landscape of live experiences. On this podcast, we speak with those in the industry across all topics from marketing and technology to operations and sponsorship. I'm your host, Will Royall, and I've sold more than $75 million tickets across my companies. And now I'm passing knowledge on to you so that you can do the same. Now, before dive into today's episode, a quick note.

This episode discusses cannabis event production and marketing in the US. All references pertain to legal, state compliant activities around hosting events, and we do not promote or endorse the sale of or use of cannabis in jurisdictions where it's illegal. The content is for educational purposes only and complies with the hosting platform community guidelines. So this is going to be a good one. Let's roll the intro.

William Royall (01:14)
Hi and welcome to PromoTix University, I'm your host, Will Royall, and this episode is all about cannabis events, which are clearly gaining popularity as regulations change around the globe and people's viewpoints on cannabis shift alongside policy. I've got two guests for today's podcast, one who helps create cannabis activations for non-cannabis related events like Coachella and the Dirty Bird Campout to name a few.

and another that hosts cannabis-centric festivals as the event creator where the entire event is centered around cannabis culture. So joining us first today is Gopi Sanga, president of Cusp Agency and the founder of High Frequency. With over a decade of experience in live event production, Gopi has been instrumental in creating cannabis activations and integrating them into major festivals. His innovative approaches have set new standards in the evolving landscape of cannabis event marketing. So with that,

William Royall (02:10)
Hey Gopi, thanks for joining us today, man.

Gopi Sangha (02:12)
Thank you. Yeah, happy to be here. Looking forward to having this talk,

William Royall (02:17)
Gopi, provide me like an overview of your journey into the cannabis event production space. tell me about high frequency, CUSP agency, you know, the operation within this space. How'd you get into it?

give me your story. What is it?

Gopi Sangha (02:32)
Sure, ⁓

Cusp Agency, which is our agency based here in Los Angeles, you know, really want to keep exploring, you know, the frontiers and the edges of the live event experience and how we can enable great partnerships between fans and brands and the experience overall. So, you know, we, me and my partner, Julio Beltran, who sort of manages all our legal compliance ⁓ started High Frequency.

to really explore the modeling and execution ⁓ policy and compliance around integrating cannabis at live events. ⁓ we've really explored a lot of sort of edges of use cases and frontiers and created some dynamic partnerships between event producers and

William Royall (03:24)
when we first started chatting and sort of spit balling ideas on this episode, ⁓ you know, you, kind of described the cannabis event space as like a, patchwork of policies that creates challenges in the space across like different jurisdictions and states.

How does that work for an event producer in this space?

Gopi Sangha (03:46)
the patchwork you refer to is, you know, more or less, there's about 12 states in the nation that have explicit cannabis event policies that enable it to do a wide range of things. But if you look at any of those states on a county and a city level,

There's only so much adoption by these civic organizations of even retail cannabis policies or event policies themselves in California. That's nearly 40 % of cities that even have retail cannabis policies.

William Royall (04:25)
you dealing sometimes with ⁓ conflicting policies within a state and a local jurisdiction like a city?

Gopi Sangha (04:33)
Well, the local jurisdiction of wherever you're trying to execute this is the guiding policy and it goes upwards from there. So if your event execution is within a city, you're beholden to city policy first, county policy, secondly, state policy, thirdly, and then obviously federal policy or lack thereof, you know, has supremacy nationally. So not too often are we finding conflict,

between this but finding the sort of concentric circle in the Venn diagram of where the policy

clicks to make it worthwhile to execute is actually a few and far in between. ⁓ Sometimes you find that in county spaces, sometimes you find that in cities that have progressive policy on it. Our role is to work with event producers, ⁓ manage their sort of risk profile and engaging ⁓ activations like this and enabling them as much as we can with the policy that

does exist within their jurisdictions.

William Royall (05:46)
So it sounds complex, which ⁓ obviously has created opportunity for you inside the space. what are some of the misconceptions that people have either both attendees or even event creators about integrating cannabis into kind of non-cannabis centric events, let's say.

Gopi Sangha (06:05)
Yeah, there's a lot of stereotypes, I think, to break down and assumptions on what it means to create a sort of cannabis consumption area or retail area on premise at the context of a broader event. We've chosen to focus our event activations around cultural events, music festivals, concerts, things of that nature.

They're not necessarily ⁓ B2B cannabis experiences on the commercial side of things where you see a lot of cannabis events.

William Royall (06:43)
Kind of already a counterculture, right? Like you've already got

sort of that audience built in.

Gopi Sangha (06:50)
Yeah, and so, you know, working in...

the context of things like Splash House Festival in Palm Springs or Dirty Bird Campout here in California. ⁓ You know, those are, I mean, essentially electronic dance events, you know, and we're working to integrate cannabis culture within the sort of programming confines of that, of those experiences. And yeah, I think the misconceptions as you educate folks like stakeholders is like, one, the assumption that this is gonna

be some sort of unruly or wild space because of the illicit nature of cannabis consumption, it is quite the opposite concerns on how legal is this? ⁓

William Royall (07:31)
It's probably the opposite.

Gopi Sangha (07:40)
And then, you know, I think from the fan perspective and the producer's perspective, I do think there's probably a little bit of a misunderstanding of like how much cannabis can actually be consumed at these events, you know?

I mean, the retail part of it, I think, is really important for the brands, the consumption behavior, the compliance. ⁓ But, you know, the retail gross aspect is a portion of the pie. It's not the whole pie when you're talking about retailing at events.

William Royall (08:12)
So speaking of retailing, I know you've used this model called the ice cream truck model, which is quite innovative, let's say. So tell me, how does that model work and what sort of success have you seen with it ⁓ in the space?

Gopi Sangha (08:28)
at splash house festivals. We've done this several times. It's a multi ⁓ hotel resort, house music experience.

Palm Springs, we create workflows within the mobile app at Splash House, messaging opportunities between social and mobile to enable sales.

through local retail partners, web optimized cart, and we create delivery, pick up and drop off zones at each one of those hotels ⁓ to enable the delivery and transaction.

Honestly, California culture, you know, I think that's something that we're trying to drive home in some of these experiences. This is our culture here is a little bit different. People are pretty progressive about cannabis in their daily lives. And I think people like to see it integrated into their experiences too.

William Royall (09:06)
Thank

I mean, that's a culture that probably started in

the late 60s out there and just never really went away, I would assume. So, ⁓ you you're talking a little bit about the activations of whatnot, ⁓ the Ganja Garden specifically, that was at the Dirty Bird Campout, is that right? ⁓

Gopi Sangha (09:24)
Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, I was at Dirty

Bird Camp out in Modesto, California a few years back.

William Royall (09:39)
Yeah, what,

tell me about the key components that like made that activation kind of notable and successful for you and for Dirty Bird.

Gopi Sangha (09:49)
So it was sort of a four-walled, ⁓ know, fenced off in a sense with picket fencing ⁓ area in which attendees of the festival can walk right into and, you know, we make sure that they're age verified, that they're not bringing alcohol into the premise. And once they're in the area, they can smoke cannabis product freely and purchase it from the local retail.

that we integrated into the experience and that are founding sort of sponsors of the program as well.

we really focused on the daytime programming and creating

like a rehab sort of wellness area, know, so lots of shade, lots of seating area. ⁓

available, Wi-Fi available for folks if they wanted to connect. ⁓ And then we did creative programming that escalated from yoga and wellness in the morning to some comedy skits. We had a great crew doing comedy bits and ⁓ improvisation in the afternoon all the way towards having some DJs from the festival play as we wrapped up the daytime sessions.

it was very interesting. think we were attracting.

communities even beyond the cannabis community. There was a lot of like in the sober community that wanted to spend time in the space because naturally in cannabis events here in California, you can't mix alcohol consumption and cannabis consumption.

So yeah, we're really proud that we got to create this experience and you know, the state was there with us, the producers, everything's above board. I mean, in the end, we're selling weed at the rave legally, you know?

William Royall (11:23)
Yeah, I was gonna.

Yeah. Yeah. I I want,

I want to touch on that next. So obviously compliance is super critical. So, you know, how do you approach the stakeholders and the event creators themselves and kind of navigate policy, you know, for them, as well as educating them and making sure that everything's above board. How does your team specifically assist in that regard? Cause I'm, I'm assuming that's how you bring quite a bit of value to these, these ⁓ spaces and activations.

Gopi Sangha (12:04)
Yeah, think education is a huge component of it. ⁓

We actually have to make time to go through that process because generally there's a lot of stakeholders at the table from the event producer, their partners, their legal teams and risk management teams down to the venue, venues ⁓ and or sort of civic authorities, that ladder of compliance that I told you. So there's a decent amount of education you got to get out there. ⁓ And you know, my partner

Julio and I, we work towards creating, you know, sort of guidance documents, like essentially memorandums that ⁓ one sort of ⁓ illustrate the operational premise that we're operating under, supported by the local county and state law.

So yeah, it is sophisticated and we manage the education through policy documents, honestly. ⁓ And so on the front end, that is an explanation of what we're trying to execute and what policy enables that and circulating that amongst stakeholders.

so that ⁓ everyone understands the boundaries in which we can execute something like this. And also, you know, for all the lawyers out there, gives them something to challenge us on, you know, that's what lawyers love to do is challenge your premise, you know, but

William Royall (13:30)
You

Gopi Sangha (13:34)
that dialogue is welcome with us and our business and we're trying to get everyone aligned to have a great execution.

William Royall (13:42)
Yeah, so obviously lots of moving pieces that you just described, ⁓ lots of stakeholders that we described earlier. So, you know, if an event creator wants to engage in activation like this or bring in, you know, cannabis into their event, what sort of timeline are they looking at? Like, when do they have to get started on this stuff? When do they have to start talking to an organization like you to help navigate everything there is to navigate? How far in advance they got to get started?

Gopi Sangha (14:10)
So here in California, it's 90 days to apply to create a premises, a temporary premises as we described before with the DCC that.

William Royall (14:19)
So just to apply, you've

to have at least 90 days.

Gopi Sangha (14:21)
just to apply. So

I would give yourself two to three months of diligence even prior to then to make sure that one, you have policy within your jurisdictions to enable something like this. Two, you have all your sort of ⁓ business ⁓ model and proposition aligned before you decide to go down this journey. And does that mean you have a local retail partner or supporting cannabis partners that are going to help cope

produce or underwrite this experience for you. ⁓ And then obviously ⁓ education for all your venues that you'll be operating on. mean, it's not the easiest conversation to go to hotel general manager and say, hey, I'm going to operate a cannabis garden in your front yard. You know, like they're going to have a lot of questions about that. ⁓ So I give give yourself plenty of time and space on that. I would say at shortest ⁓ you need to be

William Royall (15:08)
Yeah.

Gopi Sangha (15:21)
thinking four to five months out, ⁓ healthy six months prior to your event to give it all the dialogue it needs before you're going into an execution on the operation. ⁓

William Royall (15:32)
That makes sense.

Yeah. So you also mentioned marketing and you kind of touched on the fact that like, if it's not a 21 and up event, for example, in certain jurisdictions, you know, other laws or rules come into play. I'm sure there's a lot of that that applies to marketing, like what you can and can't say about what's going to happen, you know, what the event is going to consist of or what the activation is going to consist of. ⁓

Obviously every ad platform has its own rules and regulations around what can and can't be said when running ads. So talk to me a little bit about the marketing of these activations. How are you getting these brands exposure and how are you marketing the experience to potential attendees to help drive ticket sales as another point of interest that I might want to attend an event.

Gopi Sangha (16:01)
I

William Royall (16:23)
because this exists there, right? So how do you navigate the marketing side of things?

Gopi Sangha (16:29)
You know, it has similar challenges. mean

Luckily in states where there's a lot of retail ⁓ cannabis operations, they're all probably well-versed in the marketing requirements. There's communities of cannabis marketers at this point. But very similar in how you have to, and I would say anyone that's marketed alcohol or tobacco, again, regulated ⁓ marketing and products, ⁓ are familiar with a lot of these stipulations

⁓ Obviously, they want the marketing to be for adult recreational use primarily.

focus on for the brands on-site experience and branding and signage ⁓ within the confines of the activation. ⁓

organic content ⁓ from the festival platforms. We utilize mobile apps, a lot. So the festival app or event apps, ⁓ that's a sort of a channel that the promoter producer generally wholly manages. ⁓

as well as their own social media platforms to do sort of ⁓ co-marketing content. ⁓ And when we have a retail program, either through the ice cream truck model or on-site, we're offering great promotions to the attendees. mean, in the end, we're still competing with these people thinking they can sneak it in themselves. And ⁓ we wanna offer convenience and safe product in a safe environment. ⁓

So, you know, really driving promotions, we always do a sort of a big discount 30, 40 % off first purchase for festival goers or create exclusive product packaging using sponsored product to create some irresistible deals.

what I'd like to personally really drive home and focus on is just the experience, you know. It's not entirely a retail experience for me, you know, integrating the festival culture into this sort of branded experience and programming it natively, ⁓ making it at a brand extension of the event and festival itself.

⁓

rather than just a sort of sponsorship activation area.

William Royall (18:56)
would assume then the only marketing you can really do is maybe let ⁓ through private email campaigns and things like that, let your database know that this sort of thing exists rather than more general public advertisements and whatnot.

Gopi Sangha (19:11)
Yeah, more direct

marketing. And again, we really try to utilize the festival assets at that point. know, mobile and mobile messaging, QR codes, signage with QR, ⁓ then, you know, incentivizing people to sort of enroll.

William Royall (19:17)
Right.

Gopi Sangha (19:29)
in the marketing channel, either through SMS or something, where we can create a dialogue and improve their experience, hopefully all weekend long, or through the duration of the event, one-to-one, and just keep creating value for them, ⁓ either through some great promotional offers on cannabis or that creative programming that I told you, and access to it.

William Royall (19:37)
More one-to-one direct messaging at that point. Yeah.

Yeah.

playing off of the marketing platforms and things that don't allow this sort of messaging. In addition to that, there's a lot of payment processors that will not, you know, process anything to do with cannabis. It doesn't matter if you're selling it. It doesn't matter if it's even selling paraphernalia, let's say. But like just because it's an event that consists of cannabis, you know, they won't process ticket payments, for example. And there's ticketing platforms to a lot of them, actually. I mean,

You know, I know there's horror stories of events that were on Eventbrite. got, you know, their money held up ⁓ or in Stripe, you know, all of a sudden their payment processing goes down and tickets are all of a sudden not selling anymore and money is held. So, and I've seen others that try to hide the fact that it's like a cannabis event to try to fly under the radar and they're, and they're risking it all. you know, what have you, have you come up against those challenges or any horror stories that you have around that and how do platforms like

for example, promo ticks is cannabis event friendly. don't obviously allow the sale of product on our platform, but we allow the sale of event tickets. If it's a cannabis based event, ⁓ and PayPal will process payments, for example, for cannabis based events, not necessarily product or paraphernalia. So, you know, selecting the right platform is important. What can you tell me about that? Your experience around that either horror stories or, you know, good and bad about it.

Gopi Sangha (21:20)
Sure, it is one of the challenges and conditions for anyone operating anywhere near cannabis ⁓ faces. You know, me as an entrepreneur, myself in cannabis, ⁓ and...

You know what? Unfortunately, it does is like, you know, you have to create ⁓ business entities that are dealing with your cannabis revenue and ones that aren't.

So often what you just mentioned, you know, not working with partners, especially on the finance side that explicitly enable ⁓ cannabis business, you'll often get your funds held, you know, and then you're going to have to go through whatever process, either through your ticketing provider, your credit card transact, ⁓ merchant transactions, or your bank to sort of ⁓ reclaim.

those funds and show them the compliance in which you were operating under. So yeah, that could be very detrimental to your operation and intent.

William Royall (22:23)
you're gonna incorporate this into your event, even if it's not a complete, cannabis-centric based event, but if you're gonna incorporate this, there's a risk, you need to make sure the tech platforms and the payment processors, things like that are all good with it. And you're back.

Gopi Sangha (22:38)
and your banking.

and your banking for that

matter could be held there as well. so, yeah, my, you know, from our perspective and high frequency, and I think what we try to offer to our clients and partners in this space is like, we're going to be above board on everything, you know, we're going ⁓ to be very explicit in our intent to sell cannabis and consume it under the policy and guidance in which we execute. We're going to work with partners, either technology platforms,

banks and financial institutions that have ⁓ either accepted the risk profile of working in cannabis, are well insured for it, or understand how to navigate policy with cannabis related businesses. ⁓ And we're going to be mindful of the sort of ⁓ workflow on processing the payments and who is processing what payments, know, especially

if we're talking about product.

William Royall (23:41)
Yeah, I want to touch too on the demographics of the people that are attending these events and kind of going into these experiences. And actually I just read an article I think yesterday or maybe the day before there was an article that came out that was talking about several nightclubs in the New York area, New York City area ⁓ that were closing because they just can't keep up anymore with rent because their alcohol sales are down.

And I think this has to do with the younger demographic and the younger generation kind of moving away from alcohol. And of course that's a huge revenue center for many events, big festivals, things like that. And now we have changing policy on cannabis and, and is that, are you seeing sort of this shift and are event creators starting to look, you know, in a different area besides alcohol now for some of this revenue from this younger, younger generation? Talk to me about this.

Gopi Sangha (24:39)
Yeah, no, mean, ⁓ you know, being a part of a community that produces events and festivals, I think we all see and feel the impacts of just changing consumption behaviors from the younger demographics. you know, likely, rightfully so.

I think the behavior is changing. I think it's a little fruitless to try to stem that.

found in the cannabis activations we've done, we definitely ⁓ attract ⁓ young generations, people that are sober curious even, know, and people that are looking to step away from alcohol infused events, you know.

I've

been doing events since I'm 18, nearly 20 years now.

I almost didn't recognize how infused alcohol was into every motion of our event experiences until I started doing cannabis events and I realized like not having that aspect, ⁓ how it changed the dynamic of the event itself. ⁓ and yeah, contrary to the stereotypes of how crazy a ganja garden sounds, like people are actually pretty chill and manageable for the most part.

⁓ and much different than, you know, behaviors we see on alcohol consumption. So, ⁓ yeah, I found that a lot of appreciation for just, you know, thinking outside of the box on, you know, what attendees want to consume.

that a licensed consumption area provided some value and relief to them, that they knew that it was coming from a supply chain that is legally licensed and tested. ⁓ And, you know, I met a kid at the Gondar Garden where he promised his mom that he would only do cannabis that weekend, you know, because of her concerns, you know.

William Royall (26:35)
So, moving from the attendee experience a little bit and the demographic conversation, obviously with the shifting preferences of the younger generation that's coming forward, you know, this is creating sort of a revenue gap ⁓ by removing this alcohol or the lack of sales thereof, let's say, you know, from the event creators. And so, you know, I know you've talked about product sale, but what, you know, what sort of revenue models are there with cannabis activations?

obviously product, what else? How can event creators start to earn a little bit from these activations and maybe supplement what they're losing on the alcohol side?

Gopi Sangha (27:14)
Sure. Yeah, you know, let's say you've gotten through all the barriers of wanting to create a cannabis activation or event area at your experience. You know, the modeling...

The traditional and most cannabis brands and related companies are very familiar through the business to business segment of the market with vendor fees. It's just a common model in which you're essentially selling real estate ⁓ to vendors to vend within your experience. And those are usually flat rate, you know, they'll have different sort of increases based on space and exclusivity and like corners.

all these things.

we model that traditionally more akin to like pouring rights ⁓ in a beverage garden with alcohol brands ⁓ and supporting the brand experience experiential with those said brands. So ⁓ whether you're modeling it as a sponsorship engagement with some level of exclusivity or vendors, you know,

that's sort of a part of the revenue mix from the brand side. ⁓ And that's an important part of it. You know, the retail revenue shares, you'll likely be sharing with your retailer, whoever the local licensee is. So they'll need to obviously find their margins in the cost of that. And obviously support your brand partners in carrying their products.

And then lastly, know, ⁓ co-sharing production expenses, you know, ⁓ the festival producer ⁓ might have a

or the brands to create and extend that experiential experience that we talked about either with DJs or brunches or exclusive areas ⁓ and enabling that as a production service in a sense is part of the revenue mix.

So.

William Royall (29:12)
So the main aspects

I'm hearing are like ⁓ a vendor retail, you know, space, real estate type play, which is typical of vendors at festivals. For example, there's maybe a revenue share on the product sales itself.

Gopi Sangha (29:27)
Hard

to frame it as a revenue share because then you become a person that's selling cannabis. Yeah, so generally those are sort of like flat rate vendor fees in a sense for that partner too. Yeah.

William Royall (29:31)
policy stuff.

the more the real estate play. ⁓

That makes sense. And sponsorships come into play and then maybe some sort of ⁓ added production ⁓ value or offset production expenses. Maybe if a brand can bring in their own ⁓ small stage audio equipment, LED, and basically hire their own production company, come in, adds value for the experience. So sense. ⁓

Gopi Sangha (30:02)
I think the general

misconception is selling the cannabis is gonna take the program there. It's not enough. It's almost honestly 40 to 50 % of the revenue mix. You have to create a lot of value for your brand partners and your vendors, and you have to create some great experiential value for the attendees. And that all is gonna take revenue to support the program.

William Royall (30:09)
Right.

Right.

Got it. So what trends do you see coming, right? In the future, like, so, you know, if you think back 20 years ago, a lot of what you're talking about, like, wasn't even possible. So where are we going to be maybe 10 years from now? What do you see trends coming?

Gopi Sangha (30:42)
I think even before policy enabled this stuff, we knew the relationship between cannabis and culture, right? It's deep, it enables artistry, it helps us, you know, create the spaces we want to be in, you know, metaphorically and in

But ultimately, it still comes down to policy, you know, and being very mindful. I think it's easy for anyone, event producers, to ⁓

look up local policy. Usually they might have a cannabis department or an economic development department in a city or county that could give you guidance on what's enabled or what's

There is a horizon in the news you see of cannabis operators feeling like they're over-regulated ⁓ from a taxation and a capability perspective. You've even seen the state of California lighten up on a few aspects here in California on retailers on enabling non-THC sales. So you could sell an actual candy or a soda or a brownie in a cannabis retail experience. Now you weren't enabled to do that before, you know, ⁓ or a coffee for

that matter ⁓ and even ticketed experiences for cities that allow lounges like that policy is still rolling in like and this is a still a very a ⁓ primordial space that is forming up on a daily basis really across the country somewhere

And I think once that happens and some of the financial regulations ⁓ ease up and we can have a healthier retail cannabis market and manufacturers that are able to scale their businesses more healthy and we'll see better marketing budgets.

and we'll see better integrations into events because they'll want to continue changing your consumption behavior to their products, hopefully. And so I do believe, you know, just this is a partnership that works, you know, live experiences in cannabis and... ⁓

William Royall (32:54)
Thank

Gopi Sangha (32:56)
And policy will change the horizon on that and we have the wind in our sails here to ⁓ keep taking it further. ⁓ there's about 12 states in the country that enable cannabis events and I encourage operators everywhere to start challenging the possibility of what that policy enables.

William Royall (33:18)
Well, that's great. think on that note, ⁓ we'll wrap it up. So Gopi, tell me, you know, if an event creator is curious about pulling cannabis into their ⁓ event and they're looking for you to help them consult on this deal, how can they get in touch with you?

Gopi Sangha (33:37)
Sure, yeah, you can reach us and our group at cuspagency.com, cuspagency.com. We're based here in downtown LA. ⁓

California is generally the space we like to operate in because of our licensing, but we can consult out of state from a legal and compliance perspective. And ⁓ yeah, reach me, g-o-p-i, gopey at cuspagency.com, and you'll be talking with me and my partner, Julio, the lawyer.

William Royall (34:10)
Awesome Gopi, thanks so much for joining us man. Appreciate you. Absolutely.

Gopi Sangha (34:13)
Thank you, I appreciate it.

William Royall (34:17)
Next up, we're joined by Kristy Caldwell, the force behind Oklahoma's grassroots cannabis and music festival called Harvest Fest that's been running strong since legalization hit the state back in 2018. What started in the early days of the industry has grown into a unique hybrid experience, which is part cannabis trade show, part music festival, art festival, and really all about building community. Kristy's been navigating everything from changing regulations to social media page shutdowns in an effort to support

local growers, farmers, and vendors, and create something really special at the Camp Copperhead venue in Oklahoma where the festival is at. I'm super excited to have her on the show.

William Royall (34:59)
Hi, Kristy, welcome to the show.

Kristy (35:01)
Hi!

William Royall (35:03)
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining today. You know, you and I briefly spoke the other day about ⁓ Harvest Fest and you know, I know you guys got started in 2018 back when, was changing in Oklahoma, first became legal. ⁓ Tell me, you know, what inspired you guys to really get started back then with Harvest Fest and how have things really evolved over the last seven years?

Kristy (35:27)
Yeah, so we started Harvest Fest really to celebrate a new era coming off of it being illegal and then now legal. I knew we had to celebrate it somehow

provide a platform for small businesses and growers ⁓ in our community. And that's kind of what we've done for the last seven years. We've just built a community around ⁓ Oklahoma cannabis.

William Royall (35:49)
you know, you kind of described the festival to me as a little bit of a mix of a music festival and an art festival and a trade show because of the, you know, how many vendors you guys have and whatnot. Talk to me a little bit about that format and you know, how do you integrate the vendors into the event itself? How do you support them? And what does this format look like for your events?

Kristy (35:51)
Thanks.

Yeah, well, the community has a wealth of talent with glass blowers and live artists and musicians. so a hybrid just made sense for us. And for the we can come out as a cannabis brand and display your products and engage with consumers right on site and enjoy the community and the talent that it has to show off.

William Royall (36:34)
obviously these vendors, they sell products. I'm sure some of them are maybe dispensaries or head shops, things like that. So ⁓ how do these regulations come into play when it comes to these vendors on site? Are they allowed to sample? Are they allowed to sell things?

Kristy (36:50)
yeah, so currently, OMMA does not allow any type of licensee to sell product outside of their licensed place. So dispensaries, you know, they can't bring products out and sell product. Cultivators, they can't, you know, sell their product. And they're not also not allowed to sample. So that has kind of, you know, put a hurdle for that. You know, they can show and smell. But other than that, there's really not

any sampling or anything allowed. we had ⁓ a dispensary that's located just right up the road from us. And so we kind of, ⁓ they do coupons, we do VIP swag bags to kind of give people a taste. And another way that ⁓ we help those brands is we have ⁓ Harvest Fest Cup. So we solicit those brands to enter in their product and then we take that product and we white label it. it's, you know, it's blind tasting, there's no brands on it.

And then we solicit judges from our community and they come in and they pick up their judges kit and they sample the product and there's like five categories that they judge off of. And then we announce winners at Harvest Fest. And so all the brands that enter into our cup, their products get put into our dispensary so patients can, they can go to the dispensary and sample the winners and stuff. So that works pretty well for

William Royall (38:11)
You mentioned the dispensary that's offsite and I know you used to have one sort of onsite during the festival itself, right? And you talked about this couponing and now you provide these Charlie rides. So you used to have the dispensary ride onsite. What led to not having it onsite anymore? And how did that affect the attendees and the vendors and the festival overall?

Kristy (38:35)
Yeah, so we a couple of things we decided to not bring it back. We felt like that it just kind of made us a target. You know, we didn't want to do anything wrong or anything outside of there's laws where you can't smoke within 50 feet of a dispensary. then we kind of had to make sure that we kept that area clear. So we just didn't want to, you know, find ourselves in, you know, in violating any regulations. So we decided that.

And the other thing was as we had applied for our dispensary license and it had been just in a processing status for over a year. And that's pretty common with the OMMA. There's a lot of delays. So we just didn't want to be a part of that. So we decided we'd just move it off site and ⁓ just move forward with the festival and get in the trolley rides.

William Royall (39:24)
Got it, so regardless whether the dispensary is on site or maybe it's a mile off the road, the attendees at Harvest Fest are able to go to the dispensary and get product? Is that right?

Kristy (39:33)
They

are, yes they are. So we kind of do a schedule and people just ⁓ they come up to the front gate and if the rides are there then they just hop on and take a ride up and ⁓ get their products and come back.

William Royall (39:49)
Now this is ⁓ medical only, right? Because in Oklahoma, it's not quite legal yet for full recreational use. Is that right? And so what if there's someone who's out of state that comes by? mean, how can they enjoy the event ⁓ with others? there opportunities for them?

Kristy (39:55)
Right, right, so it's patience, yeah.

Yeah, so they have a temporary ⁓ license that you can apply for in Oklahoma. It's like a 30-day card. So we do have several attendees. We're kind of right here on the northeast part of the state. we're right by Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas. So yeah, those patients can apply for their temporary license, and then they can come to Oklahoma, and they can use it and consume here.

William Royall (40:32)
you know, one of the biggest impacts that you had mentioned to me in regards to regulations ⁓ was kind of the loss of these small craft growers and farmers in the area ⁓ due to changing regulations over the last seven years. Can you talk to me more about that? Number one, how did it affect, you know, the local ⁓ industry, let's say, how did it affect Harvestfest and what was the policy change that really started shifting things?

Kristy (41:00)
Right, so after a 788 passed, you know, it was basically a free market. Anybody could get a license. And so we were kind of deemed the wild west of weed and the legislators, they did not like that. So they like passed over like 30 plus different regulations that have just been burdensome for the small for the small businesses here in Oklahoma. They just kind of tip the scale toward the larger ones and

It's really, really put a strain. I think when we started out over 9,000 cultivation license and now we're sitting below 3,000. So it's wiped out quite a bit of those and it's just that they just didn't have the income to keep producing and to keep up with the regulations that they were bringing down.

William Royall (41:46)
So that was more than 60 % decline, sounds like. mean, ⁓ it's almost like they opened up the regulation and it was a boom for small business and these mom and pops. then they just piled back on more regulations, which is driving the business towards the larger corporate ⁓ groups. Is that an accurate kind of description of what's going on?

Kristy (41:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's exactly right.

Yeah, it's exactly right. that's kind of where all the craft, know, cannabis comes from. It's from these small folks that, you know, they love the plant and they have a passion for it. And, and then, but they just can't keep up with, with all the changes. And, you know, like I said, it was just kind of, some of it was just like a blatant, you know, burden put on it. We used to have deli style.

June 1st starts prepack. There's a lot of people pretty upset about the prepack. And then that also put a burden on those small growers because instead of just cultivating a plant, now they have to, you know, process the plant as well and package that plant to be sent out to dispensaries. So it did put a lot of burden and we lost a lot of good people in the industry. We do have, there is a petition. have a group that has started a petition for adult use recreation. ⁓

So that we're hoping that we can get a good push on that, be 21 and over. So ⁓ kind of, you know, maybe open the market up a little bit for some of these small growers to survive.

William Royall (43:13)
Yeah, I actually talked a little bit about, ⁓ when you talk about 21 and up and sort of the recreational concept in the last interview we just had on the show with Gopi, we talked about sort of changing preferences these days for the younger generation in their early 20s, let's say. There's a lot less alcohol consumption that's happening and more cannabis consumption that's happening. So hopefully you guys will do some work there. It seems to be a safer option too, a lot less.

accidents on the roads, lot less violence and things like this. ⁓

Kristy (43:43)
I agree. Yeah.

Yeah, agree.

I agree. And a lot of the studies and stuff, Oklahoma just came out with a study and it was just, it was just kind of ridiculous really. It just kind of, ⁓ I think that there's just always been a government hatred of, you know, marijuana and it just continues today, even though the people are for it. ⁓ It just, I think that they just still try to overregulate it.

William Royall (44:07)
Well,

yeah, I mean, we got to remember right back in the day, alcohol was during the Prohibition days, looked at, know, like that as well. And, and now it's very much a part of ⁓ culture in America, right? So

Kristy (44:22)
Yes.

William Royall (44:23)
We'll see how these things change over time. Let's chat marketing for a minute because obviously ⁓ marketing in the industry is still very difficult to do. The regulations are a patchwork across the US and different states. so national and international platforms and things, have to come up with some sort of...

rule that they feel that they have to abide by and that makes marketing in a broad sense ⁓ difficult. So what are some of the challenges that you've experienced trying to market Harvest Fest and grow the event given that it's very much based around cannabis culture? And how have you gotten around it? What creative things are you doing to actually get the word out about the event?

Kristy (45:11)
Right, yeah, it's hard to promote something cannabis when you can't even put cannabis on social media, you know that they might remove your page and we've had that done several times and and so I think ours is more of like a grassroots effort and we try to make you know community engagement through genuine connection connections and I think that we started camp counselors and so it's just a passionate group of people that love Harvest Fest and they have you

They market for us and they spread the word and they post on their own social media and that really really helps with pop-ups. They go and do pop-ups at different dispensaries and different community, you know, relevant events that we can promote Harvest Fest and kind of give attendees like a little slice of what Harvest Fest is like and on a more personal level and know promo takes like the features and stuff for our camp counselors have been perfect because

it really gives them rewards and stuff. I think that the added features for our camp counselors has been a big win for us in marketing.

William Royall (46:21)
Awesome. I'm assuming you're talking about the ambassador platform features that we have. you've kind of branded the ambassadors as camp counselors and are supposed to be super creative. We see a lot of event organizers kind of come up with their own names that make sense for their events. So it's awesome that you guys have done that. ⁓ Cool. Great.

Kristy (46:24)
Yes, yes, yeah.

Camp counselors, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and our camp

counselors, can, ⁓ they're kind of like volunteers and they can earn, like made a set of like badges and stuff. So they can earn their badges. And so it's more camp themed and stuff. So it makes it fun.

William Royall (46:53)
it comes to expanding these marketing efforts, obviously you said you're kind of in the north of Oklahoma there and you have access to other states and such. Growing your national, maybe even international footprint, what do you see for the future in doing that? There's the temporary medical card you talked about before, which would give patients access to ⁓ the dispensary, let's say, in Oklahoma. ⁓ How do you see that being a

growth opportunity for you and what would you need to start marketing you know beyond the Oklahoma border let's say.

Kristy (47:28)
Yeah, I think the temporary cards like gives them a chance to kind of, you know, engage in the activities like we have a roll off that we that's really big a roll off competition. And so we have a homegrown competition. that temporary card for out of state really helps them to stay legal.

But we also have other people that come to Harvest Fest that don't necessarily consume because we have so many different activities and stuff going on. But I think sponsorship, we rely on our sponsorship and it's really hard to branch out outside of cannabis for sponsorship because we were just talking about, sometimes people just don't really like, I don't really want to sponsor something like that just because of the legality and just it has a stigma attached to it.

It's really hard to get sponsorship, but I think with Harvest Fest, we really want to try to keep the smaller festivals alive. And we don't want to, I know that at larger festivals, it's hard to compete with them, right? And what they have, a lot of different sponsors and stuff that they can get that we can't get. So I think sponsorship is really the type of thing that really holds us back. We don't want to be a profit driven.

Festival we kind of want to just keep the originality of the smaller festivals and and that that vibe and that's what we try to Our sponsors help us keep the lights on really and so we don't have sponsors and we don't have harvest fest And I think that that if we could branch out to get more sponsors that would that would really help us

William Royall (49:02)
Yeah, I'm actually going to be doing another podcast episode here soon, either the next one or the one after we haven't ⁓ really figured it out yet, but I'm waiting on a specific interview. But it's going to be on sponsorship because it is so crucial for so many events to ⁓ make ends meet. ⁓ So yeah, stay tuned for that. ⁓ You you mentioned High Times to me had come into Oklahoma at one point.

Kristy (49:23)
Yeah.

William Royall (49:30)
And it was a disaster. like, you know, that's a big brand to come in and do a festival. ⁓ you know, you would think it would be a huge success. So talk to me about, you know, for one, why was it a disaster? Do you feel, and what lessons did you guys take from that? And how do you prevent from becoming the next disaster?

Kristy (49:50)
Yeah, I think it was maybe they rushed into it for planning and they didn't pick the right venue. And it was also in July. So if you maybe they didn't know about July's in Oklahoma, but it can get really, really hot. And, you know, it is a medical program. So, you know, there is patients attending and we try to keep that in mind, you know, that these people are real patients that consume this for health benefits. So one of the things that we do is we open our gates up the day after Labor Day. And then that way that

kind of cuts down on the congestion. let our vendors in, we let our RV campers in, we have early birds that come in. So that kind of, it's kind of a trickle into our gates and then that way we don't get a long line congestion in there. And we also get palace of water that arrived before the festival. We make sure we have enough water and we're in September, but it can get hot in September. And we also have a staff of EMTs that are available 24 hours a day that way that they can. ⁓

know, help with anyone that may need their assistance. I know that rain was kind of a factor in mud at the high times and where we're located, we're kind of in the foothills of the Ozarks. So it's a lot of rain don't necessarily mean a lot of mud here at our venue.

William Royall (51:08)
I think most problems can usually be solved with better planning, right? And so, you know, thinking ahead of time about whether in the venue selection and the time of year and, you know, who you're going to have on site and how many, and I think all of that comes into play. So maybe the brand made it a little too popular for what they originally thought or planned at first.

Kristy (51:12)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, and

you know, it just legalized and everybody loves High Times So, you know, it was extremely popular. and then, but then you got to have to consider that, you know, a lot of these people are patients. We are handicapped accessible. I know that was an issue for them as well.

William Royall (51:46)
So you made a major pivot last year when you switched over to PromoTix ⁓ from, I guess, the year before you had some major ticketing issues. Can you talk to me about what actually happened and ⁓ what that cost for you at your event that you had to deal with and your experience around that?

Kristy (52:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

So their platform was not user friendly ⁓ at all. It caused a lot of delays and then there was really no support for us. So we really had to pivot during the festival. We had to go to the complaint manual. I had to print out everyone that had purchased a ticket. And then we had to, know, the workers at the gate, the team was super frustrated. We had to look through names, you know, just to find people. It would cause a lot of problems, but...

Once ⁓ we switched to PromoTix, it was definitely a game changer for us. It really has been. Not only that it is user friendly, but ⁓ there's excellent features. The features are great. We love the features, but very user friendly and great support. So you can't ask for more than that.

William Royall (52:54)
Yeah, I didn't ⁓ think we were going to turn this into a testimonial video, but that's great to hear. love it when I get great feedback. ⁓ Yeah, I mean...

Kristy (52:58)
Yeah, yeah, and we also

have an app now too. So that's that's we love that. That's great.

William Royall (53:08)
Yeah, we do have a lot of unique features that people find. mean, obviously people come to us when they...

have just experienced some horror story or some major problem and they're looking for another solution, sometimes in the middle of ⁓ sales that they already have open for event and we transfer them over. ⁓ But a lot of times they'll find that some of our new features they didn't ⁓ know about, they didn't know that was something that existed or they found a way like you guys did with the camp counselors, for example, to use it as a grassroots marketing campaign, especially in this industry where you can't really run a Facebook.

ad that says cannabis festival. They're not going to allow that. ⁓ That being said too, on the payment processing side, ⁓ just like the ticketing side, there's some ticketing companies that won't have anything to do with the cannabis event, even if you're not selling product, they're a no go for it. ⁓ Same with Facebook ads, let's say, but there's also payment processors that deal with that and banking regulations.

Kristy (53:47)
No, they don't. ⁓

William Royall (54:09)
Talk to me about how you guys have sort of managed that and not necessarily, I guess, had to deal with that as much. How have you structured your event?

Kristy (54:17)
Yeah,

don't want to jinx ourselves, but we haven't had any problems, but we do use a DBA. So this is a campground venue. So I think that having the event just once a year probably keeps us from drawing too many red flags. And we just really, really like with our marketing and our branding and the language we use. I think that that's kind of how we stay in the clear with that.

William Royall (54:42)
So you try not to put cannabis in the title of the event. For example, it's called Harvest Fest or the ticket type names, you're not naming anything in regards to cannabis so that they don't mistake that you're selling cannabis because that's not what's going on. You're selling event tickets to an event, right? So... ⁓

Kristy (54:46)
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

No.

Yes.

William Royall (55:01)
Yeah, so there's definitely some tactics and techniques. mean, we've worked with several other cannabis events and had to ⁓ work with them. And we have payment processors who are more friendly to that. So, you know, it's good to know that you've worked through some of those issues. Anything else that you want to add in regards to, you know, how you've gone about building this, where you see it going in the future?

Kristy (55:18)
Yeah.

William Royall (55:27)
What is the vision for Harvest Fest overall? Where do see this thing going?

Kristy (55:32)
So we have, we've built a good community. really have, there's been a lot of friendships formed. There's been a lot of business partnerships formed with Harvest Fest. Like we've kind of been here for the whole ride for the industry. And ⁓ I think we're here for it. We built a community, we love the community. And I think as long as people keep showing up, then we'll just keep putting on Harvest Fest.

William Royall (55:56)
Well, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. I really appreciate the insight. I'm sure that there's others out there in other places around the country or maybe even in another country that are trying to navigate policy and, and, know, get a community together around something that people share an interest in like cannabis and navigating that policy is difficult. So really appreciate you coming on ⁓ with your insights and experience and, know, just sharing that with everyone.

Kristy (56:25)
Yeah, thanks for having me. We really appreciate it.

William Royall (56:28)
All right, and where can they find you online if they wanted to purchase tickets and come out this year, where can they find you?

Kristy (56:34)
So our website is harvestfestok.com and they can find everything they need right there.

William Royall (56:41)
Awesome. Thanks so much, Kristy. I hope you have a great rest of the afternoon. All right, take care.

Kristy (56:45)
You too, thank you.

William Royall (56:48)
A big thank you to both of our guests for sharing their valuable insights into the world of cannabis event production. It's clear with careful planning, compliance, and innovation, cannabis can be thoughtfully integrated into events, offering unique experience for attendees and profits for event organizers. For more information on how PromoTix helps to support event creators in this space with ticketing, marketing, and payment processing, feel free to reach out to us on our website at promotix.com.

And of course, if you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful in any way, please leave me a comment and tell me what you think. I'll read every one of them to help improve the show for you in the future. And if you'd be so kind, subscribe, follow, give it a thumbs up. You know, all the things that help the algorithm as it keeps us creating this content for you for free. It would be so greatly appreciated. So I'll see you next time and until then, get out there and go sell some more tickets.