(Ep 31) HIGHLINE WELLNESS -> Building a better world through cannabis 🌎

Chris Roth | Founder & CEO

Nov 17, 2020

Hey friends,

Back again with another edition of The Founder Recap - this is Episode 31. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.

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Mission control:

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And who am I?

I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.

Let’s get it.

This Week’s Episode (Ep 31) 🌎

Guest -> Chris Roth, Founder and CEO of Highline Wellness

Mission -> Highline Wellness is on a mission to change the negative stigma around cannabis. At their core, they strongly believe cannabis is medicine and that it has the potential to improve millions of lives

Discount -> Use code “Founder20” for 20% off all Highline products

Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

In this episode we talk with Chris about…

🌿 How CBD works and what it’s used for

📜 The history of legalizing cannabis and the future of the industry

😰 The anxiety epidemic and where it might lead

🍄 Exploring other plant based medicine, including THC and Psilocybin

📈 How Chris and his investment banking firm, Cowen, called the rise of Amazon before anyone else

Summary 🔍

What is Highline Wellness and how did Chris get started?

Chris grew up in New York and ended up at Siena College on a lacrosse scholarship.

Although sports were his main focus and he wasn’t a huge fan of school growing up, he eventually wound up as intern at an investment bank on Wall Street. He loved it. To him, the culture at the bank felt similar to his time playing sports – competitive, fast-paced and heavily reliant on a strong team.

When he started full time on the sales side at the bank after college, he covered e-commerce and specifically the transition of companies from brick and mortar to online.

In 2016, his firm produced the first report on the cannabis space and after reading it cover to cover, he realized what a massive opportunity existed. As someone who had always wanted to start his own company, it was at this moment that he had the spark for Highline Wellness.

Today at Highline Wellness, Chris and his team are on a mission to change the negative stigma around cannabis. At their core, they strongly believe cannabis is medicine and that it has the potential to improve millions of lives.

Today, all of their CBD products have 0% THC, are non-psychoactive and use the highest quality, clean ingredients. In addition to a variety of topicals and oils, they’ve formulated some of their gummies with functional ingredients like caffeine for jitter-free energy or melatonin to enhance your bedtime routine.

While Highline is just in its second year of business, the team has already taken a foothold as one of the premiere CBD brands in the country. And they’re not stopping there.

They have huge plans to develop products across several verticals focused on total wellness delivered through plant based medicine.

If you want to support Chris and grab some CBD to reduce your anxiety, chronic pain or inflammation, using code “Founder20” will get you 20% off!

Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for Highline Wellness:

They make products with the highest quality, clean ingredients
They’re focused on educating the consumer. They understand that there is some misinformation about claims in the space. By prioritizing transparent and education-forward content, they are building a community of people that trust them as thought leaders in the space
They are gearing up for entry into the THC market. The market for THC gummies in Colorado, Oregon, California and Nevada alone is bigger than the entire CBD gummy market in the US. They have a stronghold on the NY Tri-State area and will be the first movers when that market legalizes THC products
They love testing things. Chris instituted a $5K test rule for the company. He said he is open to literally any idea and that the entire company expects them all to fail. Once someone comes up with an idea, they design a way to test its effectiveness and will not spend more than $5K on something until a test is run. If it doesn’t work out and it is a “failure,” then it’s no sweat, because the whole company expected that. If it succeeds, they figure out how to double down. I think this is the right approach to experimentation

Chris’s Startup Manifesto 📜

What’s a Startup Manifesto?

At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:

If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?

Here’s what Chris had to say:

Gain conviction in your idea and don’t let other opinions deter you. By nature and human psychology, when you go and tell someone you know that you’re going to quit your job and start a company, nine out of ten times, that person is going to reply why he/she didn’t do it when they were thinking of doing the same thing. Don’t let that slow you down.
Culture over everything - build a team with similar mindsets. Everyone is wired differently, but you want to find people that are similar in their mindset and desire for growth.
Customer feedback is your business plan. All our lives we were taught to make business plans and projections, but guess what? If you make one assumption wrong, the entire forecast is null and void. Your goal is to test the market in small pieces. Get 20 customers, learn from them, iterate and grow based on what they are saying.
Start small, test small, scale what works.
Encourage and embrace mistakes and use them as learning lessons. We think innovation only comes when people feel comfortable trying new ideas. They use the $5K test rule. If you have an idea, all you have to do is figure out how to test it and we all expect it to fail. No one has the constant disappointment of expecting success.

What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔

After reflecting on my conversation with Chris, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:

Anxiety 🤯

One of my favorites parts from the conversation with Chris was diving deep into the anxiety epidemic in this country.

I asked what he thought were the main drivers of the rampant levels of anxiety we’re seeing, and he shared an interesting analogy.

He said that 20-25 years ago, someone who was 18-24 years old may have aspired to be like their next door neighbor -> to have a little bit of a nicer house, a little bit of a nicer car, the in-ground pool instead of the above ground pool, etc. If they were able to work towards that vision and achieve something close to it, they were happy and fulfilled.

Today, that same 18-24 year old is looking at Dan Bilzerian as their benchmark. Not only is it an absurd life that literally isn’t real, but it’s the .00001%. That’s a target that mathematically is not achievable for almost anyone on Earth.

The anxiety levels of the average person are heightened because they are anchoring to these unrealistic benchmarks and subsequently have horrible self-worths when they don’t come close to achieving them.

For the first 21 years of my life, I was fortunate to never suffer from anxiety. I had my ups and downs, but never really faced the stress and panic that people typically describe. Funny enough, I wasn’t really using social media heavily until I was 21-22.

When I was 22, I suffered from extreme anxiety. I hated my job and had zero self-worth because of it. Exactly as Chris said, I was looking up to celebrity figureheads and wondering why my financial, social and emotional trajectory wasn’t mapping to the mirage they were portraying online. I thought I was smart enough to be successful, but kept wondering what I was doing wrong because I wasn’t like them.

It was a brutal time. There was a 9-month stretch where I was afraid I had brain cancer because I was feeling crazy symptoms of dizziness, blurry vision, ringing in my ears, tingling in my hands and toes, chest pains, difficulty breathing, etc.

In hindsight, it all stemmed from that initial anxiety. The initial bout was from the depression I felt when comparing myself to other people and then the rest was from the downward spiral of thinking I had cancer.

And while in the moment it sucked and I felt like there was no way out, I doubt I had it as bad as the majority of the people I know. Which is a scary thought.

I was able to start pulling myself out of it through a lot of yoga and meditation, but it has been a constant battle since then.

In my mind, a combination of social media (both the unrealistic benchmarks and the instant gratification) mixed with the ubiquitous default to drugs and alcohol for social release is causing the macro trend we’re seeing.

While solving for these things (using social media less, drinking less, cutting back on things like adderall, etc.) will help, I think the key to controlling anxiety is to enhance your total wellness.

I’ve decided that the space I want to play in for the rest of my life is helping people unlock and sustain their desired levels of wellness.

I’ve spent the last 3 months really dialing in my own wellness routine and it has made a world of difference with my anxiety as well as general outlook on life. Self-worth is through the roof and I stopped caring as much about dumb things that don’t matter.

Take it from me - if you’re feeling the way I was feeling, wellness is probably the answer. Don’t wait until you hit a breaking point to take control of it for yourself.

Wrapping it Up 📕

I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support my journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:

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Till next time ✌️

Kallaway