IAM636- Consultant Teaches the Business Side of Cannabis

Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Llauris Rener of 710 Squared. Llauris, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Llauris Rener

Thank you, thank you for having me.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

No problem, I'm super excited to have you on, and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Llauris so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Llauris is the creative director and founder of 710 Squared. He is also the lead instructor of Green Schooled, where they teach the business side of cannabis. Mr. Rener has lectured coast to coast on the rudiments of branding, visual vocabulary, viral video marketing, sales, and user experience design.

He served as the only African American on the rebranding board of CEO Space International and was a distinguished member of their faculty for many years. Often known as the branding guy, his skill sets are incredibly diverse. Over 10 years ago, he produced the first educational car detailing web series, Final Touch TV, which has grossed over a million views on YouTube. Today, Mr. Rener is a highly accomplished and sought-after consultant, strategist, educator, and designer. He has worked with a plethora of clients including Fast Frame, Wendy, IDA Fitness, Bombay Sapphire, John Leslie Brown, and many other clients whose names can't be divulged because of standing non-disclosure agreements. Llauris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:46 – Llauris Rener

I am ready.

01:48 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear, I guess, more about where things began. I wanted to hear your CEO story and what led you to get started with your business.

01:58 – Llauris Rener

Well, I guess I'll start with my entrepreneurial story and how I left the corporate world. Basically, I used to live before I moved to the DMV. This was back in 2002. I used to live in Ohio and worked in IT actually have an IT background as well. And 9-11 happened and all the jobs disappeared and I decided to seek greener pastures. I came to the DMV, I came to Maryland and basically couldn't find a job and decided to branch out on my own. I started off with a direct mail magazine that I used to have.

I had for about 3 or 4 years, and we used to mail to 15, 000 homes in Silver Spring. And that basically eventually turned into a consulting business because people would ask us for other things, you know, hey, do you guys do web design? Do you guys do this? You know that. And I'd say yes, even though we didn't. And I'd go teach myself how to do it. And eventually, that grew into a burgeoning consulting business. And from there, built it up and eventually got 8 employees.

And a year and a half ago transitioned into the cannabis industry, well actually 2 years ago transitioned into the cannabis industry. The CBD helped me with the chronic issue, health issue I was having. So I decided to, you know, go into the cannabis industry and help to erase the stigma. So created 710 squared and 710 is referencing the medical side of cannabis. So because that's how I came into it. So that's in a nutshell, my entrepreneurial journey, the condensed version.

03:44 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well, no, I appreciate it. And I know you've done, you know, so many awesome things and, you know, being able to help me out so many business owners and obviously now focusing more on the cannabis industry in many different ways. So I know I read about it a little bit in your bio, but could you take us through exactly what you're doing with 710 Squared and also what you're doing with Green Schooled as well.

04:05 – Llauris Rener

Okay. 710 Squared is actually the first minority-owned cannabis branding agency. I know for a fact the DMV and I know the East Coast, I'm not sure about the West Coast, but I know we're definitely the first in this area. And we're also the second cannabis branding agency. The first one is a women's agency, which started, I think a year or 2 before we did. But we're the second, but we're the first minority-owned. And the cannabis industry, basically, it's, it's, we're building this plane as we fly it is how I like to frame it. It's very much a burgeoning industry because we're at the tail end of prohibition. But at the same time, there's a lot of issues, there's a lot of imbalances.

For instance, a lot of African Americans lost time languishing in jail for something that's now legal and they need to get their fair share of the pie. So I've also actually become a bit of an activist because I actually got to speak at the legislature in Annapolis. And we're talking to lawmakers about that. And I've partnered with other groups. But in general, the branding industry and cannabis, there's no differentiation right now when it comes to branding, cannabis, like when you look at the oil industry or the pharmaceutical industry, if I asked you to name a couple of companies off the top of your head, like oil, you'd say, Shell, you'd say BP, you know, Exxon.

With cannabis, it's still that differentiation still hasn't happened. And that's primarily because for several reasons. one, you have people coming from the black market or the street world of cannabis and then trying to come into the legal side or the legal side of selling cannabis and they don't have the corporate savoir-faire, the corporate business skills and they still kind of operating the way they did when they were doing it in the black market and that's just not going to work because there's a lot of money in cannabis, a lot of big companies who are coming with the corporate backing, the branding, the PR, and a lot of these smaller companies are not going to be able to compete.

So we formed 710 Squared. Of course, we deal with mostly bigger companies and medium size, but we noticed that discrepancy and we wanted to fix that. So we started Green School, this is the first cannabis business accelerator around this area to help the minority. It's open to everybody, but to help the minority black and brown folks to get those corporate business skills. How to create your brand promise, and how to do content creation. So again, you need to be able to focus on a lot of them doing the cannabis production from their homes. So they need to be able to maximize their time.

So content creation hacks, how to get PR in high-end publications like Wired or Wall Street Journal, and how to get reporters to come to you. So a lot of growth hacking, content creation strategy, brand strategy, even how to get, how to raise capital, how to be attractive to VCs and people who have money to pump into your business to be able to expand your footprint. So That's basically what we've done and we've been doing. And it's been going well so far.

07:51 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, yeah. I definitely appreciate you for shining light on that, especially too, because as you said, if somebody's transitioning from the black market and doesn't really have that kind of, I guess, business skills, for lack of a better term, in terms of the branding and the concentration, getting PR and of course getting financing. It sounds like you have been able to bridge that gap from working with clients directly, bigger clients, but also for those people who may not necessarily be those bigger clients, but have the desire to eventually be that. I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and it could be for you or your business, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:29 – Llauris Rener

I think my background, Personally, I think my background, because again, I have such an extensive background. I have a business background. I also have an IT background. I've lived abroad internationally, like people who are originally from West Africa and Sierra Leone, and especially with the cannabis industry. Africa actually has most of what is called land-raised strains, which are the most original strains of cannabis you'll find anywhere in the world. But yet only 6 countries out of 54 are involved in the cannabis industry.

And We actually did a podcast about that on our show, Squared Talk. So to answer that, I mean, I just offer a very diverse perspective because of my background. So I can talk about a lot of different things. I can also too a little bit about accounting and laws and IT and of course branding, and marketing. So my offerings are very comprehensive and very well-rounded, I guess compared to a lot of other people because of my background.

09:29 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and you might have already spoken to this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And that might be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient. Is it that mentality of making sure that you're always upgrading yourself that you would consider to be your CEO hack?

09:46 – Llauris Rener

I read a lot of, I would say really, I listen to a lot of audiobooks because you know when I was at CEO space you know I met many people who had books I met Les Brown there did some work for his son met Jack Canfield chicken soup for the soul you know all these guys they all have books and when you talk to them, they read like 3 to 5 books a week. And where you, you know, if you do that consistently and you think, okay, That's a lot of books by the end of the year. So they're constantly expanding their mind.

And I kept saying, okay, well, I don't have time to actually sit there and pick up a physical book and open it, but I can listen to an audiobook while I'm working. So that is something that I do. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I've listened to The Millionaire Mind. I've listened to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hale. A ton of books. The Virgin Way by Richard Branson.

10:44 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be around branding or marketing or any of the kind of topics that you spoke to, or it might even be something you would tell your younger business self or maybe even a client as well.

10:59 – Llauris Rener

I'll say 2 things. Your best customer is always going to be an educated customer. And that of course translates in any business, but with cannabis in particular, where we have a stigma attached to the product. And then the last thing I'll say is branding. People assume that branding is graphics and logos, but branding is, brand is a promise at the end of the day. And that promise is basically what you tell your customer.

11:27 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Llauris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:38 – Llauris Rener

CEO is leadership. And leadership is not a title. Leadership is your actions. Because anybody can stand up and say, hey, you know, I'm the leader. I'm the person you should look up to. I'm the big man on campus. But at the end of the day, people don't really pay attention to what you say, they pay attention to what you do.

11:56 – Gresham Harkless

You know, that makes so much sense. I always usually say actions speak louder than words. And I think, As you said, if your actions are consistent in that promise you make as you talked about branding then that is truly You know what makes you a leader what makes you a quote-unquote CEO not a no not related to the title but according to like how You're taking action and what exactly you're doing.

So I definitely appreciate that definition I appreciate your time even more Llauris What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get an overview and find out all the awesome things you guys are working on.

12:29 – Llauris Rener

Thank you. You can find us on Instagram at 710 squared if you want to get some branding or if you want it we have a lot of posts a lot of carousels free information on you everything from how to sell CBD and how to create custom avatars tons of information on there So you can learn more about that. We're also on LinkedIn, if you use the same name, 710 Squared, we pop up. For Green Schooled, again, we're on Instagram, Green Schooled, and it's spelled S-K-O-O-L-E-D, So G-R-E-E-N-S-K-O-O-L-E-D.

You can find us on Instagram and we have courses that we hold, or classes that we hold in Largo, although we were supposed to actually have class today, we had to suspend that due to COVID-19, and that class has been pushed back to April 13th. Hopefully, the virus would have, we're hoping Knock on Wood would have subsided by then and people start coming out of their shells. But those, and of course YouTube, we have our podcast called Squared Talk. And if you type in Squared Talk on YouTube, you can find the channel. If you type in 710 Squared, you can find the channel. And, you know, don't forget to subscribe. We, again, have a variety of topics. We have guests. We have classes where we basically talk about different things.

One of the classes we talked about the last time was the power of using different colors and how colors speak to emotions. And so lots of content to digest. And we're also working on coming out with classes, online classes for Green School because there's always opportunity and tragedy.

So with you know with this coronavirus people are staying home so there's an opportunity with you know teaching online classes because in fact one of them just one of my students just emailed me today saying hey I saw class was canceled you know Will there be an online class and that's something we're putting together and we're also putting together some ebooks that we'll be selling from our website that you can download. They'll all be under, I think, under $40. So basically anywhere from 10 all the way up to like, you know, $39 or something. So lots of things we're working on to again, help people and give people the tools they need to succeed in business and in life.

15:06 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate that, Lars. We will definitely have the links and information and the show notes as well too, so that everybody can click through, and see all the awesome things you guys are working on and building and creating as well. But again, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:21 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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