This is Under Pressure, a podcast where we dive into the untold stories of entrepreneurs and business owners who have conquered adversity to achieve greatness. And now, here's your host, Nick Staton.

Welcome to episode 12 of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nick Staton. Today's guest is Josh Whitaker. Josh Whitaker, if you don't mind explaining to everybody a little bit about your background and like where you come from and stuff like that.

Nic Staton

Sure, sure. I went to school for computer science and mathematics and Hated it, so switched over to liberal arts and philosophy and psychology and all that kind of stuff. But I stayed with the whole computer thing and I've started building websites about 21 years old, 20 years old, and have never stopped. I love websites. I love marketing. I love all of that stuff. About 10 years ago, I got into the cannabis space and I had a marketing agency at the time, so we did a lot more than just websites. we were one of the only marijuana marketing specialists in the world. And so we got in really early and then grew really fast. And then that was not near as fun as just working virtually building some websites. So I had a big office, had a bunch of employees, and that just was not fun. So eventually grew out of that. And now I'm kind of like a fractional chief marketing officer. So I I basically just help grow brands, help grow companies. I love startups. I've launched about 50 brands into the marketplace in the last eight years and I've mentored for well over 150. And I just love all things marketing. Now I've got a couple of e-commerce websites as well. I sell CBD and other hemp products, mushroom products, that kind of stuff. But really, I just love launching companies and I love marketing.

Josh Whitaker

I got you. That sounds cool. Sounds like a crap load of pickleball.

It sounds like, it sounds like a lot to keep you busy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. For sure. For sure.

Some people's minds can withstand all of that. And some people would be like, what in the hell? So, so why did you start your, your business?

Um, I have always loved computers. So that's why I started. That's why I got into computers, right? Just, that was always just growing up with them. I loved it. Um, got into marketing because it's a natural progression, right? You, you build websites and then, then you start learning SEO and then you build search engine optimized websites, and then you learn lead conversion. So then you build lead conversion. I mean, SEO optimized lead converting websites. I just kept growing on and on and on. I just kept. filling my brain with more and more stuff until, you know, just keep making everything better. And so, and now with the help of AI, we get to do it even better and even faster. So I just, I just love it. I love it so much. I don't love it as much as pickleball, but I do, I do love it for sure.

Okay, nice. Yeah. Um, so you, you do all your SEO and everything like that yourself. You don't, you don't.

Not me personally. So as the, you know, I'm just the guy that oversees everything. Right. So if somebody says, well, first of all, we only take on like one client a month now, cause I have my own, my own projects. And, um, so I've got to like, really like the business or, or really, and really like the person, you know, whoever I'm. whoever I'm working with, but my job is just to kind of start everything. So I basically say, okay, we, we take all the information, say, okay, how are we going to lay this out? How are we going to build this? And then I give it to a designer to build the, the, the design part. And then I give it to my, you know, my SEO guy, that's going to do all the SEO on the backend. Um, and then I handle the lead conversion part. So what elements do we need to make sure it converts traffic once we drive it there? Okay. So yeah, every single website, um, is search and anonymized for sure.

Nice. So how did you start this business?

Um, I mean, I just, well, actually that's kind of a weird story. So it wasn't college that had me started. Um, so I was at a party one day. Um, and I was, like I said, 20 years old, 20, maybe 21 years old. And I was at this guy's house. He was early 20s saying like 23, 24 years old. He had this big four bedroom house, nice car, boat, jet ski. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like you're 24 years old. He's like, oh, I build websites. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I build websites. I don't live like this. He said, well, I got a trick. So watch this. So he goes, he takes me in the back and he says, and he just types in some information and a website spits out in 15 minutes. And this was before they had all these website builders, right? Every day, this was before you could just go to, you know, Wix or whatever, and I throw in a logo and a name and it just spit everything out for you. This, this did it for you. And he was on cutting, he was at the cutting edge and And I mean, back then, I worked on a website that cost $40,000 and took us six months to make at that age. Here's this guy coming in charging $1,500, and he's done in two hours. And I'm like, oh, wow, I got it. That's how I got involved. That's how it originally started, for sure. Got you intrigued very, very, very, very much. Yeah, exactly. I hated computer science. I hated college. I hated it. We spent, I don't know, maybe two months, and all we could do was, hi, my name is Josh across the screen. I mean, that was just stupid. I didn't like that at all. But what this guy was doing, it was amazing. I loved it.

That's what's up. Yeah. So what's been the hardest part so far of everything?

Well, the hardest part was not growing the business. The hardest part was when my My business got acquired by a company and then the company went bankrupt. Our attorney robbed, I mean, I'm sorry, our accountant robbed us. So I took an all stock deal in this company because I believed in it. Here I've got a marketing agency with a whole bunch of employees. I also had a 3PL at the time. So I was like the Amazon of temp. Everyone would just send me all the products and thousands of products and people just send them to me and any one of these websites would make an order. I would ship it out. Anyway, I had those two things. I had a bunch of customers and this... Oh my gosh. formulate this, this company that is formulating all these products. They said, we want customers. We want marketing. We want our own house brands. And they were just doing manufacturing, but they didn't have their own in-house brands. So anyway, they wanted me, they wanted my clients. So they acquired my company, but it was all stock deal. So I got no cash out of it. And then within six months, our accountant just robbed us completely and we couldn't stay awake. We couldn't stay alive. Um, We, I mean, we were having record months. One month we did a million dollars in sales and it didn't matter. Like we could not stay alive. Manufacturing is horrible. And I will never do that again. Never to get an all stock deal and never do manufacturing again. So that's, that's definitely the roughest, uh, the roughest time for sure.

So the accountant just basically took everything from y'all.

Yeah. So it looked like they were paying, looked like she was paying her bills. You know, it would say like, you know, JP and sons and it would say rent, but then the accounting and routing number would some other bank. And then she did that with all of our bills, uh, for, for like about three weeks until we caught on. Um, and then just drained us, strained our entire account. Wow.

Yep. And there was nothing that y'all could do about it with her.

No, no. I mean, this this lady had no assets. I mean, she was I mean, I think she was like 50, 57, 58 years old. I mean, she she's she had she didn't she didn't have anything. I mean, we obviously we filed a police report. Obviously, you know, we can we can garnish her wages because all of all the accounts were drained. You know, she sent all the money out, but then the money was removed. Right. So there was no trace. We can't. But imagine how much, how long it would take us to get money garnishing our wages. Yeah.

Cause I mean, she's, she's obviously pretty tricky anyway, probably out there working and not, not doing anything with taxes or anything like that.

No, not at all. No. So yeah, that was a, that was a rough lesson for sure.

Damn. Um, so how are you, how are you dealing with when, when you find yourself under pressure, uh, with dealing with all of this type of stuff?

Um,

The gym and pickleball both. They, more pickleball. Pickleball just, I don't think of anything when I'm on the pickleball court at all. I mean, I've been in tournaments. I play four to five times a week. I love that sport, and I'm just, I really don't. My mind is 100% in that. And when I get done with that, that's it. Like, I get back to work after that. That's it. What is pickleball? It's like if tennis and ping pong had a little baby. It's a little bit smaller court than a tennis court, a little bit smaller paddle, a lot smaller paddle, and it's played with a wiffle ball. So it's a, it's a lot faster pace. And, um, yeah, it's, it's fun. It's the third, I'm sorry. It's the first group, but it's the fastest growing sport three years in a row.

Hmm. I've never even seen anybody play that must be something out there on the West coast.

Well, I'm in Texas. You're in Texas. Yeah. But I mean, it's on the West coast too, for sure. But no, yeah.

Texas it's huge because over here, all the thing I really see is like tennis stuff like that.

Yeah.

It's taken over tennis right now for sure. Okay. That's what's up. Um, so how are you managing your, your mindset and stuff like that? Um,

I'll tell you what I wish I was doing. I wish I was meditating again. I really want to get back into that. But yeah, my mindset is really all over the place. I've got so much opportunity. And as a fractional CMO, there's endless work. Like it's just, it's endless. Even when I was taking on many clients a month, I had to turn away clients all the time. Like it's, there's not very many people that understand a whole lot about everything, right. To be able to hire the right people, put in the right, you know, systems and processes and that kind of thing. So, um, I really want to get out of, of that. And that's why I've scaled back a lot and just focusing on my own e-commerce websites. It's just, um, I'm doing too much still, so I think I want to do a little less.

A little less? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you do a lot.

And as you know, I've got the distribution company now too. So I don't just have my e-commerce website. I had all these brand or these stores that, you know, they see the products on the website, like, well, hey, will you sell to me too? And so now I just started distributing. I mean, now we're in over a hundred stores just in Texas alone. Plus we got a bunch in Kansas and yeah, we're just going nuts on the distribution company. So I work too much, man. I work way too much.

It's so hard. I understand that part. I just keep on going and going and going. I feel like whenever I don't, then I'm not doing anything. I'm not accomplishing nothing.

Right. Right. Right. Right. For sure. If I had a girlfriend, she would not put up with me. They pretty much never do. I just work too much.

See, that's my problem as well, too. They're always like, you know, do you ever have time for anything? And I'm like, yeah, a little bit.

I've decided that I have to find someone that either plays pickleball or works as just as much as me. That's the only way they're happy, because I can see them when we're playing pickleball or see them, you know, when we're both off. So, right. I got to find.

Yeah, that's hard. They want us to be lazy and that's not going to happen.

Yeah, that's definitely not going to happen for sure.

So, uh, what's been the best part of all of this so far? Hmm. Oh.

Probably all the traveling. I love traveling. I love going all over the place. Right before COVID, I was speaking all over the place. I've given over 200 speeches, and I would always speak. I mean, I would always visit a couple of days beforehand or stay a couple of days after, and then just see the sights, right? Like, what does Boston have to offer? What is there in Tampa? I mean, I'm just visiting all these places, and I would usually stay at Airbnbs and just kind of get tours by the hosts and that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's been the best part. I love that stuff. I had my first speaking engagement in Spain right before COVID hit, and I didn't get to go. And I was pretty sad about that. I think that was going to launch my international speaking career. And then after COVID came, I was like, I'm tired of it. No more.

That's where my next question was coming. Was this just in the US, or were you going out of the US and speaking and stuff like that as well, too?

I mean, there's endless for that, too. Like, I mean, there was a cannabis conference in Medellin, in Colombia, and they asked me if I want to speak. And I and this was after covid. And I really thought about it. I've already been to Colombia twice and I do like it. It is it is fun. I launched a cannabis brand down there, actually. That's why I've been there. And but yeah, that's yeah, I don't know. Things are just I don't know. We'll see. I've been I've been heavily debating getting back into speaking again because I do love it. I love it.

Right. That's crazy that y'all were one of the first ones that got into the CBD side.

And I didn't even smoke at all. Like I didn't, I had a COO. She didn't smoke my graphic designer, my content writer. None of us did anything to do had anything to do with marijuana at none of us, but we were one of the first specialists. And, and I think that actually led to our success because everyone else in our industry got high all the time. I mean, I went by, I helped launch. I think it was, I think it was Mass Roots. I think, you know, big, big media company. I'm pretty sure it was Mass Roots. Now I can't remember, it's been so long. Anyway, I helped them launch their app. And when they were launching it, they, you know, called everyone over and it was like four o'clock and we're testing, we're debugging, we're, there's, it's like, I don't even know how, there must've been 20 of us in this room. And at 420, 75% of them got up and went to the smoke box and got high. And I'm like, well, are you, they're publicly traded? Like how in the world are y'all getting high at four 20? This, this is crazy. So yeah, that was, that was wild. That was, uh, anyway, so we weren't stoners. And so I think, you know, everyone else just getting high all the time and they, they, uh, they weren't near as successful as we were.

Right. Yeah. Y'all kept on the grind where they kept slacking off.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And things change. Uh, they've changed a lot since then. Now I do, I do like the products. Um, I like them a lot. I like it better than alcohol. Even when I'm going out drinking, like if I'm, if I'm, if we're going out, have a good time going to a birthday party or whatever. Um, I'll do like a little five milligram edible and I'll drink a whole lot less. Um, I feel a lot better the next morning. Um, I'm all about it now. I have such a hangover. Yeah. I, I rarely, rarely ever get hangovers now. Like pretty much never. Right. Yeah, it's great. It's great.

What are you excited about for 2024?

Oh, oh, that's a tough one. That is a that's a that's a big, tough one. I'm heavily debating getting into the business side of pickleball now. Everything is bad. You know, any any emerging industry is just it's all everything's just bad, like everything sucks. Yeah.

And you're finding ways that you can know that you can make it better.

Endless. It is literally endless and it's never stops. And I can't, it, I almost want to do it just because I hate dealing with it so much. I know it'll make money, but I want to, I want to D I want to fix the issues even for myself. Like it's just, I just can't stand out. I've been debating that a lot in the last like three to four weeks, a time.

Do you run across that with everything that you do or that you come across in life or whatever? You're like, I can fucking fix that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I can make that better. Yeah.

Yes. Every day. I used to own a fine dining restaurant and I managed a bunch of restaurants before that. So you can imagine what my mind goes through almost every time I go into a restaurant. I don't ask it. I don't want it to like, I don't want to tear apart the bar or like it's already Nick picking every little thing. Yeah, man, I see, I see everything, but it's not a good thing. I do not like it.

But, uh, one day, one day, maybe one day you have any, like any, any plans on like, uh, I guess expanding what you've got going on, making it even bigger than what it is, or you just, are you just going to Debbie it down? Um,

Yeah, that's another that's another tough one. My the cannabis industry at large, whether it's CBD or marijuana, either one, it's it changes so much.

The legal, the industry, the regulations and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's it's wild. So I don't know. I'm launching a brand in Costa Rica right now. There's some pretty big guys over in Brazil that have reached out. I've been talking to a lot, helping them launch. So the word expansion may not be my company getting bigger, but more so just me. having more fun and visiting more places and, you know, doing, doing more things, doing other people to grow or whatever.

And then being that mentor or consultant or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's what's up. Do you plan on doing anything else outside of CBD or anything like that? Or is just CBD pretty much like going to be your ending kind of thing that you ride out?

I mean, the the reason why I like the industry the most is not because I'm good at it. It's because it helps so many people. So I get, not a week goes by, not a week goes by that I don't get a text message or an email from somebody that says, you have no idea how much you helped me. Like, I love that so much. I mean, it just feels so freaking good to make money off of helping people and truly help people. It's not like I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not giving them antidepressants, like I'm literally giving them functional mushrooms and it's helping with their depression, like an all natural gummy. Like that's I just, I love it so much. So it'll be it'll be tough to get out for good.

So the Now you say the, like the mushrooms or whatever. So out there, I noticed, you know, all that's gone, uh, legal as well, too, to where they can turn around and grow all of that. Is that what y'all are doing too?

No, I'm not. I'm not in the psilocybin yet. Although coming from Denver, you know, I do have a lot of friends in that industry, that space. Um, but no, it's, it's really the functional mushrooms, like lines, main Chaga, reishi, horticeps, that kind of thing.

Okay. And do you think the other side will, will expand out, uh, any, a whole lot faster than marijuana.

That's for sure. Yeah. A whole lot faster. Yeah. There's so many big studies going on right now. It's it's crazy. It's endless. Maybe most, but at least a whole bunch of the big colleges are doing studies on PTSD and anxiety and things like that. It helped me a lot.

I used to microdose. I would just get an ounce of it and turn around and break it all down into just little capsules. And just take those capsules and, dude, man, it made me feel so damn good. And then it got to a point where I would, I would not take them. And then I would kind of take them on the days that I kind of needed to. And then it got to a point where I didn't even need them again. Yeah.

Yeah. That that's, that's the way it works. Like the studies that I've seen are number one is exactly what you did. It's just, it's simple. It's microdose. Very simple. You go for a little while.

You don't need it to, you don't need it to hallucinate or anything like that. You just need it to take that edge away. Right.

However, there are other studies. even more successful is if you go in into a regulated environment and you take a macro dose, like you, you really just trip your balls off. Right. And then you just have to microdose for like a week. Right. That's shown dramatic improvements, dramatic PTSD specifically. I mean, these, these, a lot of these studies are targeting vets.

And I noticed one thing that it did really help a lot with is like my mind is, you know, Be here. And then it'll also be here because I'll be doing something, but it also wants me to do something else. And then while I was microdosing, I could just focus on that one thing and get that one thing done. Then go on to the next thing. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. So when you went, I just kind of was wondering if that was something that you were going to get into as well, or, or, or not with noticing that, you know, it's starting to kind of blow up out that way.

If I was still in Denver, I'd already be in it for the hands down. No, no doubt. For sure. Is it just Denver? Uh, Colorado. Um, there's a couple of counties in California and then I think Oregon, um,

Because a lot of my buddies were up there in Oregon and I noticed that they just really converted from, from the marijuana side over to the mushroom side. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Um, I've done, I've launched a brand in California in the mushroom space. And I got about two weeks ago, somebody in Colorado, um, asked me to help them launch as well. And, uh, uh, mushroom brand. So it's, it's on, it's up there. If, if, if it was the only, I'm not going to do anything here. In Texas, it'll be forever until we, I think it'll go nationwide legal before Texas does anything with it.

So I'm not pursuing anything, but it keeps kind of like the marijuana here with Georgia, Georgia is half assed with it. They say that they have the medical license and stuff like that, but it's so stupid. All you can get is a tensioner and some something else or whatever the hell is that going to do for me? Right. Right. Right. Suppository and intention. Those are the two stupidest fucking things ever. Suppository. Wow. I got up there, walked away whenever they were only giving out five license, I think it was, or four. And basically they told you straight up, we're going to take all your money, but four of you and the rest of you can just kiss my ass and just lose that money. Yeah. And then you couldn't have nobody on your thing that has ever gotten any trouble at all. They basically say that they got in trouble when they were 13 years old.

Disqualified.

They couldn't do anything if they were 40 or 45 or 60 years old, just because they got in trouble when they were 13, they were going to turn around and analyze every single person that was in within that, uh, that facility. It's ridiculous. That's what I said. I was like, well, you're just basically pushing everybody out that it was just basically into this and wanted to be into this the whole time. You're just going to you're just going to push them to the side. Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Yeah. It was wild. But yeah, that's that's pretty much I'm just going to kind of end that right there. How can people find you?

CBD Emporium dot com. That's it. Go get some CBD or, uh, yeah, that's, that's easiest way. Um, Instagram is Josh from Denver. I'm there a lot.

Okay, cool. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on here and explaining some stuff about CBD and different things. It was fun. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes, sir. Well, guys, that's the end of episode 12. If y'all don't mind, go subscribe and check us out for the next episodes. Peace later.

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