Peter Vogel: Connecting Cannabis Entrepreneurs and Investors

Peter Vogel is the CEO of Leafwire, a cannabis business-focused social media platform known commonly as “the LinkedIn of cannabis.”

Peter recently joined our podcast host TG Branfalt to talk about what separates Leafwire from other social media platforms, the importance of networking in the cannabis industry, how software and technology play an important role in the industry’s success, and more!

Check out this week’s Ganjapreneur.com podcast episode via the player below or scroll further down to read a full transcript of the interview.

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TG Branfalt: Hey, there. I’m your host TG Branfalt. You are listening to the Ganjapreneur.com podcast where we try to bring you actionable information and normalize cannabis through the stories of Ganjapreneurs, activists, and industry stakeholders. Today I’m joined by Peter Vogel. He’s the founder of Leafwire. He has nearly 20 or more than 20 years of tech industry experience. Leafwire, the LinkedIn of cannabis, is a social network aiming to link cannabusinesses with investors. How’re you doing this afternoon, Peter?

Peter Vogel: Doing great. Thanks for having me on.

TG Branfalt: Delighted to have you on, a lot to discuss. You’re a tech guy, so that’s always a great conversation to have. Before we get into that, tell me about yourself, man. How’d you end up in the cannabis space?

Peter Vogel: As you had said, I’ve been in the tech startup space for 20 years plus, so founded a variety of different online advertising, marketing and loyalty-type programs online. About a decade ago, I was CEO of a company called Plink, P-L-I-N-K, which was a Facebook credits loyalty program, which if you remember FarmVille and all those crazy games, we were basically giving social gamers the currency to play the games more, and ran that company for a while. While I was CEO of that company, I got to be buddies with Marion Mariathasan who is now CEO of Simplifya, a compliance company here in Denver. We got to be good friends and have been networking ever since. About a year and a half ago, we had a lunch, and he told me how he had transitioned into cannabis and how Simplifya was blowing it up. They raised a bunch of rounds and are scaling really big right now. Told me about Leafwire. Said they needed someone to run it and convinced me to jump in head first.

TG Branfalt: Tell me about Leafwire and what convinced you to jump in head first.

Peter Vogel: Well, one, the cannabis industry was very exciting to be in in the sense that, obviously, it still is, but a year and a half ago it was even a little more immature than it is now. Colorado, being one of the mature markets, but still, nationwide or worldwide it’s really an industry in its infancy. I saw an opportunity similar to what I saw in technology 25 years ago that there were very few companies that were mature or that had a lot of experience or growth yet that I just saw an industry that was ready to just blow up. It seemed like the place where I wanted to be five years from now, the cannabis industry is where I wanted to be firmly established versus the same kind of tech industry I’d been in for decades. So one, I saw it as a huge opportunity just because of the stage of the industry.

Two, I love the idea of Leafwire. Initially, we really talked about Leafwire more like an AngelList, connecting investors to cannabis, so we were connecting accredited investors to cannabis companies. We still are doing that, but it’s evolved a lot. As we’ve grown, we keep having more and more cannabis business people joining the platform, telling us what they’re looking for whether it’s jobs, business partners, advice, resources, news. They want to know about events. We realized there’s this huge need to be a business platform for everyone not just investors in cannabis. So that’s really what excited me is the demand that I saw that a solution like this was needed and there was nothing out there like it.

TG Branfalt: How many people are currently using the platform, and what are they doing on it? I mean you mentioned a lot of different things. What’s pushing its growth right now?

Peter Vogel: Some of those things I mentioned exist now, and some we’re in the process of building based on demand. But where we are in terms of members, just this month we’re crossing actually 10,000 members, and those are 10,000 members that are either cannabis professionals or investors. It tends to be about 90/10, so 90% cannabis professionals and then 10% accredited investors. These are all cannabis business people. These are not your typical consumers or stoners. These are people who work in the industry everything from law firms to dispensaries to grow facilities to advertising companies, but it’s all people. It’s all business. It’s 100% devoted to the business of cannabis. There are some other social networks that are more focused on consumers. We’ve tried very hard to stay away from that and be 100% focused on the business side of cannabis.

TG Branfalt: What are people doing most often right now? With everything now you have going on, what’s the more popular purpose?

Peter Vogel: For right now, our platform is really I would call it around news, awareness, and connection. So right now what we have is it’s very similar to a LinkedIn-type platform. You can come on, join, create a professional profile, which means you put your picture up, you put your professional experience, the city you’re in. You could put up your past jobs. You could put up a variety of other things. You could essentially put up as much or as little as you want. Some people create profiles. They can create a profile for their company as well, just like on LinkedIn. Then we have a newsfeed that’s their homepage. The newsfeed is 100% user generated, so our members post articles. They post open jobs. They promote events. A lot of people promote their own companies. People ask questions. There’s a lot of people that just post comments that they’re in Michigan. They just opened up a store and they’re super excited to be in the industry, and they want to know if anyone else is on the platform from Michigan. So it’s a big combination of just business people communicating, sharing news, promoting things, asking for help.

We also have the ability for people to like posts. You can comment on posts. We do get people who have an ongoing communication where they’re communicating about a certain topic. You can also connect with people. So in the top right corner of this site, we have a recommended connections module. That based on an algorithm of who we think you maybe interested in meeting and connecting with, you can hit the connect button, and that individual will get a message email to them saying, “John from The Green Solution wants to connect with you.” That person can accept the connection. Once people are connected, they can send messages back and forth on the platform. So that, right now, is what people are doing on a day-to-day basis. I can jump into, if you want, some of the other things we’re building as well.

TG Branfalt: Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Vogel: Sure. All this is based on demand. We get emails from people all day long asking for XYZ or suggesting we do something. One of them is jobs. Obviously, lots of people in cannabis are looking for jobs. Lots of companies are looking to hire people in cannabis. I always say that getting a job in cannabis is not something that happens by accident. You don’t just all of a sudden start working for a cannabis company. You go look for a job in the industry, and vice versa. If you’re a company, you are trying to find someone who actively wants to work in the cannabis industry not just any random person on a job platform. So we think once we launch this, the nichey aspect of the industry will be a big driver of people wanting to use our platform. It’s 100% safe for cannabis and hemp, and everyone on there is 100% focused on cannabis and hemp, so it makes a ton of sense to have jobs there.

We’re also launching a groups section. Just like LinkedIn has groups where people who want to talk about, say, “How do you advertise on Google with a cannabis company?” we’ll have a group where people can go on and talk, and there’ll be an ongoing thread where people can share information. Then there’s always information there that people can go access, and we can just act as a resource for people.

We’ll also be adding what we call marketplace. It’s kind of a Yellow Pages-type listing. We’re also adding that because of demand. We have people email us every day and ask if we know a lawyer who knows cannabis law in California or if we know an accountant who understands 280E. Multiple times a day people ask us about if we know banks or payment processors who will work with cannabis companies or CBD companies or even just ancillary companies. Even people that don’t touch the plant often have trouble getting companies to accept payments. Because people keep asking for that, we realized we need to have a static place where we can let companies post their offerings, and then other people can go find them. They can go search for what they need, and we can help them connect. All these things that I just mentioned, they’re all around connecting, helping each other and sharing information, and just providing people a platform to connect in whatever way they want whether it’s employment, business partners, or investment. We’re also all about connecting investors to cannabis companies who are fundraising.

TG Branfalt: This whole thing is being built in real time based on feedback. There’s got to be some learning curve there. What’s that been like from the time you’ve taken over until now?

Peter Vogel: I mean there’s definitely a learning curve. We’ve learned things about the user flow and how users are doing things. Some of the things we initially put up were clunky and didn’t work that well, and we found out really fast. Our users told us, “This is confusing. How do I create my company? This doesn’t make any sense.” Or this feature of messaging… For example, we had something up on messaging where anytime you hit return, it would send the message automatically. It was kind of an annoying thing that a lot of people complained about, so we actually just fixed that. I think that’s going to be live tomorrow or the next day. We’re slowly adding in features people want, and then we’re also learning some of the things that people don’t want, or don’t find user friendly we’re fixing, so there is definitely a learning curve. I don’t think that’ll change. I mean the industry’s growing so fast. I think we’re going to keep adapting as we go.

TG Branfalt: What about for you personally? What’s been the learning curve for you entering the space, and how have you adapted in your tenure thus far?

Peter Vogel: It’s been now about a year and a half. I’ll say one of the things that I’ve been pleasantly shocked by is how open and friendly everyone has been in terms of… I’ve done a lot of networking. Almost anyone I’ve reached out to to have lunch, have a phone call with, even CEOs of pretty successful companies, they’re all willing to talk. They’re all willing to answer questions. I think that’s kind of unique in cannabis where everyone still feels like they’re in this together. I think it was just a sense of there were so many years when people had to fight and band together just to get laws passed. Then once they passed, everyone had to work together just to figure out how to implement them. It was very confusing, and no one knew what to do or how it really worked. Everyone’s had to work together for so long; I think there’s still a really amazing sense of camaraderie in the industry. In general, people are much more open and helpful than almost any other industry I’ve been a part of.

TG Branfalt: One of the taglines on your site talks about this community building. It says that you want to help reduce the stigma for industry operators. While that does exist, I teach at a college and there’s definitely a cannabias in the discussions that we’re allowed to have, and I study the media and there’s definitely a cannabias there. How can your website, a specialty website, help reduce the stigma for industry operators?

Peter Vogel: I think that one thing we do is we provide a platform where that stigma doesn’t exist. So we provide a platform where people come on. You mentioned media advertising. Lots of platforms will sensor you. YouTube cancels video channels. Facebook cancels groups. It shuts down pages. We provide a platform where no one has to be afraid that’s going to happen to anything that they’re doing on the platform. They don’t have to be worried about announcing a new product line, a new opening.

I’ve had people tell me… I use LinkedIn every day, so I’m not negative towards LinkedIn. For me, I have a lot of connections I use every day. I post articles daily, just like I do on Leafwire, so I love using LinkedIn also. But a lot of people out there don’t want to necessarily be loud and proud on LinkedIn because they know they live in a state where maybe it’s not legal. They know half their family doesn’t approve. They know half the people they worked at their last banking job will look down on them or think strangely of them if they’re working at a cannabis company. Not everyone wants to go onto LinkedIn and say, “We just launched our third vape pen. Come check it out.” It’s kind of a weird…

There’s just so much on LinkedIn other than cannabis; it’s hard for people to be 100% open about what they’re doing. So one of the ways that we do help remove that stigma is just provide that safe community, that safe platform where people know they can hire people. They can promote events. They can just share news, and they can ask for help with whatever they need and not be judged or worried that they’re in a place where there’s millions of people who will look down on them for that.

TG Branfalt: Now, I don’t use LinkedIn personally. I haven’t since college when I was actually required to as a part of a class. I’m not really social media guy. Have they taken the steps that… You mentioned Facebook who does shut down groups but has recently said that they would be open to cannabusinesses advertising on their platform in legal states. Does LinkedIn have this cannabias that’s built in to some of the other more popular social networks?

Peter Vogel: Not as much. LinkedIn doesn’t do very much censoring. The cannabias that exists is not necessarily from LinkedIn. I think it’s more from the fact that society in general and the number of states where it’s not legal are still not necessarily open to cannabis. So it’s not LinkedIn as a company. I think that makes it a platform that’s not 100% open to cannabis. It’s really more the fact that societal norms are not 100% open to it. I don’t think that’ll even change even when things go 100% federally legal, say, in two or three years. We’re still going to have a condition where I think it’s going to be state by state. States are going legal with recreational or medical. That’s going to be slowed to adopt and slow to happen, so there’s still going to be the same X percent of the public who is not necessarily really approving of cannabis industry and cannabis businesses. So I don’t think that’s going to go away just because things are legal. I think that’s going to be another five or 10 years to get rid of that stigma and bias in general.

TG Branfalt: When it comes to Leafwire and your user population, are you seeing more growers and dispensaries, people who touch the plant, or are you seeing more ancillary businesses?

Peter Vogel: I’m pretty sure what we’ve been seeing pretty consistently is more ancillary businesses than plant-touching. I think that’s very simply a matter of numbers. I’ve been told there are probably… I don’t know what the numbers are this month, but I think there’s around 35,000 to 40,000 licenses in the US. You may have a better number than I do but somewhere in that ballpark. Let’s say 40,000, and those are licensed companies. They’re licensed by the state to either grow, transport, process, or sell in retail. The typical person outside the industry, if you say, “Cannabis company,” that’s what they think of. It’s someone that’s on a farm. It’s someone that’s in a dispensary, or it’s someone that’s extracting the oil.

TG Branfalt: Making candy.

Peter Vogel: Yeah, exactly. So that’s what almost everyone thinks cannabis companies are. There’s actually not a really solid list of these, but there’s probably three to four times as many ancillary companies that are depended upon the cannabis industry than there are plant-touching. So if there’s 40,000, there’s probably 120,000 to 160,000 ancillary companies out there. Those are everyone from security, lighting, fertilizer, PR companies, legal, accounting, real estate. I mean it’s a huge list.

What I usually tell people is think about if you’re a company like a store, you depend on 20 different companies to provide you with services. You depend on your POS system, maybe a loyalty program, maybe a compliance company, maybe HR, maybe advertising, maybe development, a creative company, someone to design your stores, someone to guard your store. So every single one of those companies probably has 15 to 20 service providers they rely on, and so it makes sense. There’s bound to be more of those companies than there are the licensed ones. Simply because of the numbers that there’s three to four times as many ancillary, we do see more ancillary than we do licensed companies, but I think that’s just the nature of the industry. That’s just the reality of what’s out there.

TG Branfalt: You had mentioned quite a variety of ancillary businesses that work with the cannabis industry. One of them I never really even thought of. You need somebody to design the store. Is there any other examples like that that stick out to you? That businesses don’t initially think, “Oh, yeah, we need this person,” that you’re seeing on the site people finding out, “Oh, we need this person.” Whereas they might not have thought about it initially, and then Leafwire helps them find that person.

Peter Vogel: That’s part of the site I talked about called marketplace, which is like Yellow Page listings. I think a lot of people don’t necessarily realize how important PR is in cannabis. Because advertising is so tough on Facebook and Google and some of these other places, PR’s a really big deal. There’s a bunch of companies out there that are really great, and we’ve worked with a bunch of different ones: Nison PR, Rosie Mattio, Powerplant. There’s a lot of these. There’s probably a dozen or more of these PR companies. AxisWire is another one that does PR. Most people don’t necessarily think about it immediately, but if you’re running a brand, it’s pretty important.

Another big part of the industry that people may not ever really think about is packaging. Packaging requirements are really stringent, and there’s a lot of companies that focus on eco-packaging. The biggest one, KushCo, that went public and then there’s companies like Sana Packaging and CRATIV Packaging. You go and buy your cannabis; you don’t necessarily think about what it’s in, but someone’s got to make that, and someone’s got to get it to the people who are processing the cannabis. So it’s all those parts around that people don’t think about.

TG Branfalt: And packaging’s a very highly regulated part of most cannabis programs, so it adds a whole other layer on. You’ve been in the tech industry for more than 20 years. Anytime I have conversations with somebody in the tech industry, I always tell them the same thing. When I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs entering the space, a lot of them make that comparison between the tech industry in the ’90s and the cannabis industry now. Can you compare those two being somebody who’s worked in both in those timeframes where they are really getting the ball rolling?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, for sure. I would describe it as a very similar level of excitement. Leafwire is a company… We’ve hosted a bunch pitch contests, like Shark Tank-type events. We did seven last year from Miami to LA to Denver to San Francisco all the way up to Vancouver. I can tell you that every single one of them we had a bunch of companies, a bunch of judges, 100 to 200 people, and the vibe in all of those people were so excited and jazzed to learn about new companies and to be there and meet each other and talk. The energy is really great right now in the sense of people being excited about growing businesses. That’s how it was back in the beginning of the tech boom.

The big difference, though, is the regulatory environment. Tech did not have that at all really. In tech, it was off to the races. Anyone could do anything they wanted. Whereas here, it can only grow state by state as governments pass laws, and even the things you can do in certain states whether… There are certain states that have medical, but you can only prescribe cannabis for one type of seizure disorder. It’s so limited. It’s almost impossible for companies to exist with such limitations. So the huge difference, I think, is the growth is a little bit slower and controlled, which is not necessarily an awful thing. Because everyone knows in the tech days, companies like pets.com and things like that would go spend $100 million on your Super Bowl ad. They blew everyone’s money, and half the companies went under in a year or two.

One thing I think the slower roll out is doing is it’s helping that slow down a little bit. I mean obviously in Canada right now we still have huge hype and a lot of people think that public companies are overvalued up there — depends who you ask — but you’re still seeing that a little bit in Canada. But in the US, it’s definitely more controlled and regulated. I’d say that’s the biggest difference between tech in the ’90s and cannabis now is just the regulatory environment has slowed things down a bit.

TG Branfalt: While we’re talking about tech, you’re a platform that connects people, but you also bill yourself as a social network. This is sort of broad, but what role do social networks have in protecting data? Are you being extra cautious since you’re dealing with cannabusinesses who operate in a highly regulatory environment and a lot of them operate with extreme caution?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, 100%. We do 100% respect that people’s data is private. It’s their own data. We don’t sell anyone’s data. We don’t give out any information about any members, any companies. The only we do is we communicate with our own members via email, but we never let anyone else have any data about any of our members, and we’re careful. We use top of the line, like Amazon Web Services and a bunch of other products that are designed to safeguard people’s data. So we’re 100% aware of all the stuff that’s going on especially that Facebook has done and other companies. We are not running our business model to have that be a part of anything we do.

TG Branfalt: How are you guys handling advertisements? You had mentioned it’s very hard to advertise, and very cannabis-centric sites such as yours, obviously, are going to allow these advertisements. Do you guys have any regulatory stuff that you have deal with? How are you handling advertisements?

Peter Vogel: We don’t. We’re allowed to post… I mean we’re our own platform. We don’t have rules about cannabis. We don’t ever post anything about selling directly to the consumer. We post things about brands. We post things about ancillary companies. We post things about services and advertisements, whatnot. We don’t ever, obviously, sell anything directly on our platform or promote the direct sale from one individual to another.

TG Branfalt: Interesting.

Peter Vogel: I mean we only work with established licensed companies who are advertising legitimate services.

TG Branfalt: I noticed some things from Cody who linked us up who does the editing on these podcasts. When he mentioned you, he was telling me that you had some CBD investments. You want to talk to me about those?

Peter Vogel: I’m a big believer in the industry in general, but recently I’ve gotten involved with some CBD companies. There’s some CBD companies here in Denver that have a physical location called Canvas Organics. I was approached by some people who wanted to open some more stores, so some friends and myself decided to be a part of it. We’re not operational in any sense. We’re just investors, but we are big supporters. We’re opening a couple actual physical stores, one over in Belmar and one in RiNo. They’re going to be called Canvas Organics. They’re run by this group of people out of New Mexico. They have a bunch of stores in New Mexico as well.

I really believe that just like you have gourmet pet food stores… I know CBD’s is going to be sold in CVS and Walgreens and all over the place. The fact is, though, there’s a lot of people out there who are very interested in CBD. They want to know how it works, what the different applications are, or how much they should take, what are recommended products, and they want to talk to someone educated. I believe that in a small, boutiquey-like store, you can have a much better experience than at Walgreens. That you’re not necessarily going to have every employee in there who’s actually trained to educate people.

Just like a pet food store, you can buy pet food on Amazon or on Chewy, which they just bought. You can go to a huge pet food store, or you can buy it at Walmart. But in almost every nice neighborhood, you still see a nice gourmet pet food store because people who love their pets, they care about them, they want to go ask questions. They want to get unique products. They want to get quality products, and they want to talk with somebody who’s knowledgeable. I believe for CBD that’s the future. Even though you will be able to buy it everywhere, people are going to want to go to stores that have 30 varieties and have the highest quality products and that have the most educated people who are working in the store that can help them.

TG Branfalt: So you bring up pet food store. I have a two-year-old Boxador. I’ve been giving him CBD since he was a tiny pupper. Still to this day, I give him not much. I’ve done a bit of research. I’ve talked to a few people. Had a conversation with my vet, with the person who runs the doggie daycare, and I’ve interviewed people who make CBD products for pets. What’s your take on CBD for pets? You like CBD. Obviously, you like animals, which we’ll get into that a little more in a minute. What’s your take on CBD for animals?

Peter Vogel: Well, so I have a dog who’s about five and who has some achy joints and aches and pains once in a while, and we’ve been giving our dog CBD for the last almost two years I think now. I take CBD every day. We buy a certain kind for pets. It’s essentially the same thing. They occasionally flavor it. Depending on your dog, some dogs don’t care. Some dogs will eat anything. They don’t care. I’m sure if you have a dog, you know.

TG Branfalt: Yes.

Peter Vogel: They flavor some of these. They flavor with them with bacon or salmon or something so they taste good to dogs. Mostly the only difference is it’s the amount of milligrams. If you know what you’re doing, you could give your… It’s CBD is CBD. You could give your dog any type of CBD as long as you give him the right milligrams and see. Obviously, they weigh a lot less than a human, so you give them less. We actually do buy the ones for pet. My wife likes to buy that. I think it’s a flavored kind, so we get that one. Theoretically, one, I think it works for pets. I’ve seen it work, so I believe in it. You can really give any kind. You just have to monitor. You could up online or look on… There’s a lot of resources. You can find out the appropriate dosage for the weight of the dog. That’s really the most important thing.

TG Branfalt: You said that your dog has achy joints. Have you noticed a significant difference?

Peter Vogel: Definitely. We once had her diagnosed as an early onset arthritis for dogs, so it’s just a little bit of aches and pains in the joints at an early age. The way that it displays is the dogs just chew constantly on their joints. They’re trying to alleviate it somehow. We do find that when we give CBD regularly, it minimizes that significantly so she doesn’t do the constant gnawing on her joints and elbows that we see otherwise. Yeah, we have seen a big difference.

TG Branfalt: The other thing that Cody was telling me about is that you have an animal rescue project. Can you tell me about that? Is it linked to the cannabis industry, and if so, how?

Peter Vogel: It’s not my project. It’s a project that I’m joining and throwing in my resources, trying to help as much as I can. It’s actually Davyd Smith over at Vangst. He’s the CTO of Vangst. He runs something called No Kill Colorado. It’s not a shelter. It’s an organization that teaches shelters how to change from being a kill shelter into being a either zero or almost zero kill shelter.

This is based on a book that someone wrote decades ago, and they’ve done this all over the world, in different cities and states. They have 12 different policies. If you enact these 12 policies, you can get your shelter to almost a zero kill shelter. Just to give two examples of this so it makes sense. One, when they go pick up a dog… Say a dog has been found. It’s a stray, and no one knows what to do with it. The shelter will go pick it up. Rather than just take it back to the shelter, they walk around in a three-block radius to every house and ask every single person if they know where the dog is from. I think it was something like 50% of the time they just find the owner of the dog by doing that.

TG Branfalt: Wow.

Peter Vogel: So they eliminate in bringing the dog in, which seems pretty obvious, but most of these shelters or pounds, they’re so busy. They just pick the dog up, take it back, put it in a cage, and forget about it. Another example of that is shelters often have people drive up with their dog and say, “I can’t afford this anymore. I have to give it up.” The shelters all get food donated from dog food companies. So another one of these principles is offer to give them a free month of food and tell them, “Take this. If you need more next month, just come back, and we’ll give you another one.” So rather than have someone give up their dog because of financial reasons, help them in a way that gives them a month at time so that they can, hopefully, get back on their feet and start to feed the dog on their own. Again, make it so you don’t even have to take the dog in. So there’s about 12 principles like that.

So what Davyd’s organization does is they go shelter by shelter in different cities. They go to them, and they pressure them to adopt these principles and work with the city, work with the county to pressure them to do it. They’ve gotten a bunch of shelters in Colorado to get to zero percent. Their goal is to get all of Colorado to zero percent kill shelters. No Kill Colorado, partly because Davyd’s the CTO for Vangst, obviously he’s a big believer in the industry, wants to bring in… That’s part of the reason I’m joining forces with him. We want to start to throw a lot of events, bring in cannabis companies to help support this cause and throw their resources, money behind it. Because one of the things that I didn’t really know that Davyd brought up is there’s a lot of people in the cannabis industry who want to donate money or time, and there’s a lot of charities that won’t take money from cannabis companies strictly because they’re cannabis companies.

TG Branfalt: Really?

Peter Vogel: Yeah. I didn’t realize that. Apparently the more traditional, conservative charities don’t want to be associated with cannabis still and they won’t accept — 

TG Branfalt: Unbelievable.

Peter Vogel: … money from cannabis companies. That’s what Davyd wants to do is really say, “Listen. Let’s show that the cannabis industry can work together and help save these animals.” The goal is to get to zero percent kill in Colorado. There’s other organizations that do the same thing in other states. So this is part of a national organization.

TG Branfalt: Super cool, man. I really appreciate you telling me all about that. Well, I’ve been covering this industry for several years, and there is a lot of charity that goes on. I had no idea that a lot of these traditional organizations won’t take cannabis industry money. You learn something new every single day of this industry. Where can people find out more about you, more about Leafwire?

Peter Vogel: Well first, we encourage everybody, obviously, to come join Leafwire. It’s 100% free. We will be adding some premium features, but right now it’s all free. Just come join. Create a profile. You can connect with me on Leafwire. Anyone that wants to shoot me an email or connect directly, you can also just go to peter@leafwire.com. I’m happy to chat, have coffee, meet with most anyone. I’ve been networking in cannabis very heavily ever since I started.

TG Branfalt: Well, Peter Vogel, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really a breath of fresh air in the industry, I think, especially for being new into it. I think you have a lot of really great ideas, and I’m excited to see how Leafwire grows. Definitely try to keep me updated on this No Kill Colorado campaign. I’m an animal guy, you know.

Peter Vogel: Well, I’ll chat with Davyd too. We should get him to get on with you, and he can tell you. He’s the guy. He started it here, so he can really tell you about it.

TG Branfalt: That’d be great, man. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show.

Peter Vogel: All right, thank you Tim.

TG Branfalt: You can find more episodes of the Ganjapreneur.com podcast in the podcast section of Ganjapreneur.com and in the Apple iTunes store. On Ganjapreneur.com website, you’ll find the latest cannabis news and cannabis jobs updated along with transcripts of this podcast. You can also download the Ganjapreneur.com app in iTunes and Google Play. This episode was engineered by Trim Media House. Thanks for listening. I’ve been your host, TG Branfalt.