Ep 45 - Sifting through the industry using H!ghten solventless extraction. An interview w/ Chad Johnson, CEO, H!ghten Sifter

In this episode we interview Chad Johnson, CEO of H!ghten Sifter, who has developed a solventless extract method for cannabis in the convenience of your own home.  The company’s sifter is set to disrupt a $40-million-dollar kief industry. In just 30 seconds the H!ghten Sifter gives consumers easy access to 10x’s more ready to consume kief than they are getting from their grinder today.  Kief is a hidden gem. 

The H!ghten Sifter is about the size of a kitchen toaster.  If you’re bored with cannabis leaf or looking for something new - then this is the answer you’ve been looking for.  Kief can be used in many ways. You can sprinkle it into a bowl or joint, or add it when making homemade cannabutter or oil. In addition, you can press it into hash or filter it and press it into rosin.  Listen to this episode to learn more about kief and the revolutionary new sifter.

To learn more about H!ghten Sifter visit their website: https://hightensifter.com/

https://www.instagram.com/hightensifter/ 

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Transcript

Ronjini Joshua: 0:10

In this episode we interview Chad Johnson from heightened heightened is a revolutionary technology company whose patent pending shake and vibrate technology is hoping to disrupt the solventless extraction market. So we interviewed Chad at mjbizcon, Let's get into the green room. Hello, today we're here with Chad Johnson, CEO and founder of H!ghten. doing fantastic, are you good. We're here at mjbizcon in Las Vegas, and we're kind of rolling around the convention center. And Chad, you guys are exhibiting this year. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing with heightened

Chad Johnson: 0:53

lots of stuff. We are a younger company, we are bringing to market a shake and vibrate technology. Interestingly enough that was invented in my garage if you could get any more cliche, uh huh. Grab startup, got it very much garage startup bootstrapped. Some suburban dads made the dream happen. And we are ex Boeing, our consumer sector and for the first time ever, our pro sector for the commercial market.

Ronjini Joshua: 1:23

So I know I jumped the gun a little bit because we are going to talk a little bit about your journey first. So tell us a little bit about like how you got into cannabis. What brought you into it personally?

Chad Johnson: 1:34

Great question. Like everyone else I had your typical story of I tried cannabis once or twice from from a friend and it was the wrong strain for me. And it's not a good experience. And therefore all cannabis is bad, right? Um, fast forward a few years back in 2015. At Christmas time, I was introduced to a vape pen from California. And it just so happened to be the right strain for me and an instant. For the first time ever, my anxiety melted away.

Ronjini Joshua: 2:07

Oh, you were mentioning that you're a medical patient.

Chad Johnson: 2:09

I am a medical patient. I have generalized anxiety disorder, which at the time years ago, I was still trying to figure out kind of, okay, things are working. It's like I went through PTSD, I went to all these different things. But in that day, in that moment, the NASCAR track in my head for the first time in my life turned off. And it was unbelievable, because I got to really enjoy Christmas and the holidays with my family. And after that, I was like, Okay, there's more to cannabis than I understand. So I started on YouTube, and I pulled up a PBS documentary, The Science of cannabis. And I was absolutely fascinated by the documentary, and some of the not so true truths that we've come to believe about cannabis aren't quite so true. And it just sent me down a rabbit hole of curiosity. And fast forward my consumption. So part of my background prior to cannabis, I actually was an Ironman Distance triathlete, okay? So I'm somewhat of an extremist personality. And hey, if a little bit as good, a lot must be better. So as I'm very quick to find that third rail and touch it before I find my way back to the middle, so my consumption without the proper guidance, and someone that really knew what they were doing went up a lot faster than it should have quickly got me to wait, what's this little thing called teeth. And I started playing with that. And I realized like, Oh, this is really great. And then my taste for went up and up and up. And I started just making it because you can't buy it at dispensaries. And I had, I knew so little about cannabis. I didn't know that you could actually buy a hand sifter box. I went to Michael's I bought sell Ziploc container, and I made it by hand. And from my days of Ironman training, I had holes in both my rotator cuffs. And I was so just sit there and go back and forth for any so yeah, really painful. Yeah. And I was going back and forth one night, and I'm like, my shoulder really hurts. And in that, let me rub some on it. Yeah, in that in that very moment. It happened exactly like this one. I bet there's a way you could automate this. And then my 20 years of marketing experience kicked in and I went, I bet a lot of people have this problem. And that just sent me down the rabbit hole and I called up some people from my team and said, hey, hey, guys, can I have this idea? Do you think you could make this work? And that was five years and eight generations of the consumer prototype new well, to get to market and the pro one. We are debuting first generation.

Ronjini Joshua: 4:57

Wow. Yeah, see, I mean this The great thing I love about interviewing people in the cannabis industry, half of them well, I don't know about half, but like half of them are, you know, they come to it with like, oh, I tried it in my use, I loved it, I went with it. And then the other half found it solved a huge problem in their life. And then I would say, I guess it's thirds, I guess the last third would be, you know, they're advocating for someone that they love and that a person's in the industry and or they need to use it for medicinal purposes or personal reasons. And I think like, we just see so many passionate people about it, that like solving your own problem is like the first step. Now, I don't know about much about the sifting industry. So like, tell me like, what, what kind of competition Do you have? What kind of demand is there for what you're doing? And like, what can you actually like net out of it from from doing what you guys do?

Chad Johnson: 5:54

It's a good question. So typically, when I think about competition, it's your typical tumblers that are out there. Pollen Master is one of them. And then you've got Bubble Hash. So using water for extraction, these are pretty universally used techniques. And then you've got hand sifter boxes. So manual, which is what I ran up against the interesting thing and what makes us really different, not necessarily better or worse, but just different than those guys is our shake and vibrate technology. And really a core, you know, height is a technology company. And we just happen to be applying this technology to hemp, and cannabis first. Yeah. And the difference of why you get such clean sift so quickly, is because the combination of motion and vibration is bound are bouncing the buds on the screen, and knocking the kief off, where in tumblers, it's rubbing it and you're putting much more volume in. And it's you know, taking quite a bit of time. And that one was really, I think designed for commercial and has been somewhat adopted by consumers to degree.

Ronjini Joshua: 7:06

And if you're watching this on YouTube, we started with a short video. So you should have seen it at the very beginning.

Chad Johnson: 7:14

And now, you know, we saw an opportunity in the consumer market of hey, people want to have more control over their experience, you know, and we saw an opportunity of if you take that that barrier barrier out of effort of like hey, with the tumblers it's great if you have a lot of high volume, but if you don't it's not it's not as convenient not so great solution for bubble. The people that isn't it, bless them. You have to be really passionate about your craft like that is a it's absolutely amazing and getting to absolutely full melt Pash is unbelievable. You know, there's a lot of people out there that like, you know, the five star or four star Michelin meals. But you know what, I'm perfectly good with McDonald's from time to time. Yeah, so this is where heighten comes in and fills a gap of hey, we can help create and you know, create these new experiences by simplifying essentially democratizing the extraction process. So you can get world class Keith, what's interesting is is the motion and the vibration is not much different than like Afghanis style of extraction that's been going on for 1000s of years by hand. And all we've done is automate the process.

Ronjini Joshua: 8:35

It's cool. You know, you brought something up earlier when our previous conversation like before we started, and we were talking about craft brewing and regular brewing and, and this conversation actually comes up a lot in in my interviews is that we kind of end up talking a lot about the comparisons between you know, cannabis and the wine or the alcohol industry, and how diverse that alcohol industry has become with craft brews and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about what we were talking about before of like, you know, kind of personalizing your experience but this opportunity to be able to have you know, your own craft? Yeah, designer, a book designer cannabis.

Chad Johnson: 9:16

Essentially, yeah, you can make your own designer cannabis to a degree. So really, it comes down to what we shared earlier is that insight around kind of control and understanding that people are to degree afraid of it. And the sorry, I'm just blanking out for a quick second. Really, the insight that we saw with cannabis that got us most excited was really cannabis despite how much pop culture value it has and cache and and mystique around it. At its core. It's a commodity right, and it can be made very, very cheaply. And we understand what the.com Boom and when Many things throughout history, things often get overvalued in the market crashes. So as someone who's been in marketing for the past 20 years and consumer insights work, and really trying to understand consumer behaviors, and the most important question of why, why are they doing the bear here is why are they seeking these things out? And we looked for benchmarks. And yeah, I think beer was the easy low hanging fruit of hey, you know, because there's so much variety and alcohol and all those things, and then likes and whatever. Exactly. And it's a even making custom drinks and things like that. And that's kind of where we started. But we went a level deeper than that. And we actually saw similarities to the coffee industry. And this is where that you know, going a level deeper from product insight to consumer insight behavior. You'll see you think about coffee, there is a an audience out there that will drink Maxwell House and folders and be perfectly happy with it. And there's nothing wrong with it. There's another group out there that will only drink $10 drinks from Starbucks. Yeah, the difference. The Maxwell House and Folgers are functional consumers where your Starbucks is more of your passion, right? And we're like, okay, there's really something to that. Because if you now translate that to beer, but like Miller Lite, or your functionals, that don't understand the passion around drinking craft or little on making craft at home. It's not better or worse. It's just different. And there's an audience for both of them. And what we realize is Wait a second, there's really a market if you look at cannabis. Okay, again, it started with with beer craft brew started with Sam maps, you know, craft coffee started with Howard Schultz. Today, when you go into dispensaries, oftentimes you don't see Keith, you don't really see hash, a lot of things are chemically extracted, again, not right or wrong, but for people looking for, for unique experiences a little different. You know, this is something that we're like, okay, there's really something here of, we kind of see where the market is going. But like, Wait a second. These extraction equipments, extraction equipment, exists at a commercial level. So they're making products for consumers, why doesn't someone just help consumers make the products themselves right? And that was kind of the whole idea of taking from one industry to the next and how we kind of leapfrog to where we're at.

Ronjini Joshua: 12:30

So do you find that this is going to be like on the consumer level, probably pretty niche. And then maybe resonate a little bit more with like you were mentioning growers and people that want to, you know, have different product lines.

Chad Johnson: 12:45

From a from a commercial perspective, we really see an edge just kind of your small to medium sized growers. Based on, you know, our projected price point and volume, we're projecting over 100 pounds an hour, which is quite a bit more than a competition right now. I think we've have a pretty good idea of that market. From a grower standpoint, I think commercially, we see opportunities with infusions and edibles. And even if you go to like California, you start seeing strain specific edibles and things where these growers are starting to do solventless extraction. And again, this is where we started learning from from one industry for the other. Actually, last year at mjbizcon. John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods spoke, and it triggered a light bulb when he started talking. I was like, Wait a second 2530 years ago, everybody was laughing at the people going to Whole Foods. Yeah. And it was seen as that very niche and you know, crunchy granola, and whatever I can, you know, today, nobody wants chemicals in their food, right? So the question is for those people that are fine with it, that's great. But for those that don't want chemicals, what options you have if again, Keith and hash are not there. You're starting to get to, you know, in the edibles, they're using distillates which are stripping out the terpenes to degree. So this is now a way of having that full experience. And this is what the growers and the processes are really looking to get to the consumers. We also see a big opportunity in a culinary space, the value one of the values of sifting and extracting the key out is you're removing the chlorophyll, you're removing the leaf matter itself. So that infusion is much cleaner. It's much tastier, it's much more potent, but it gives you a much cleaner experience. Again, not better just different. And we see that translating from a you know commercial culinary to everyday people in the kitchen. So as we go from that commercial level to the consumer, you're right out of the gate, it's going to be niche. It's going to be home growers that have a whole bunch of extra trim and larf that we talked to Tom through, like, yeah, I've got a couple pounds of trim sitting around and I don't know what to do with it, or you talk to the guy. It's like, yeah, I process it, but it takes me like, you know, two or three days of doing it manual. It's like, oh, my gosh, yeah, like you that's again, that's your hardcore passion people. Yeah. Within that subset, those are guys are looking to get to the hash and the stuff that you can't buy at the at the dispensaries. But on the flip side of that, and as we look to the next generation of cannabis consumers that are looking, again, to evolve, we very, very much believe that, you know, the, there's going to be a market where today, it's like dinner parties, and it's wine and how you pair with wine. At some point, it's going to be cannabis. And it's going to be throwing dinner parties for your friends and infusing the food and bringing them on a journey. Yeah, and we really see this machine is something that, honestly, we use, like kitchen in a Kitchenaid and gravel as brand examples as a foundation for how we designed, you know, solid steel, 23 pounds, it's built like a tank, but you know, and it's about 75 decibels. So as loud as a blender. And in seconds, you can have all the keys you need for your recipes. So that we see that kind of like the ability to now have it not only on demand, but to be able to kind of now mix and match and make your own creations is something you've never been able to before to now really take control and shape how you want to feel.

Ronjini Joshua: 16:44

Yeah, I mean, this is really interesting, because we get to see a lot of these different like, even, I mean, there's a lot of technology that's going into cannabis now, and I don't know, what do you think about? How do you feel about the pandemic? And how that affected the cannabis industry? I hear. Some people say that it accelerated it, some people feel like it kind of put a stamp on it, especially with the finance in the finance sector, like what do you what is your opinion, like? Did that help you? Fine tune what you guys are doing now? Are you upset that you wasted a year at home? You know, where do you stand on

Chad Johnson: 17:23

that? It's a great question. So starting at the macro level for the industry, I personally think it's gonna be a few years until we really know how this affected the trajectory of the industry, because it's so new. And I don't want to say it's unprecedented because it's really not I mean, look at like, you know, you know, Spanish flu in 1918. So things like this have happened before. It's just going to be interesting as far as how quickly it's going to ramp up how much the conversation changes. Yeah, now that people are out and about because, you know, cannabis is really, it's a very social, social plant when consuming. So I think now that people are going to be out and about and mingling, I think, you know, conversations are going to start changing. Once you get out of the social media vacuum of being locked in a house from a heightened perspective. Initially, we hated it like everybody else. But in hindsight, like any good entrepreneur, we can see the silver lining and where we really benefited from it. And I think what it did is it helped us in a, in a safer space, get a lot more nose and tell us where we were wrong. Tell us, you know, what people didn't like about the machine, why they weren't going to buy it, where the messaging was confusing. And we just use all this kind of individual one on one communication, to keep evolving every single message, the big benefit that it had his you know, from a marketing standpoint, my partners and I understood coming in, if you lead with commercial, it's going to be very hard as a brand to bridge the gap to consumer, once you really established yourself. So what the pandemic allowed us to do was take the time to really build out the brand Foundation, all of the right ways of doing things. And then we just happen to bifurcate that messaging. So it all for so both consumer and commercial can live under that macro umbrella of control over experiences,

Ronjini Joshua: 19:29

right? Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. I like that. It's a little bit of both then. Yeah. Right. Well, I am so glad you spent your time today with us.

Chad Johnson: 19:42

There's one other thing I want to touch on that we didn't get to yes, please. Yes, I'd love to as far as kind of like for me again. So I personally a big fan of Simon Sinek start with why and infinite game. And to me so much of this has to have some sort of purpose behind it. It's my frustration of working marketing for 20 years and working for so many wonderful companies whose intentions were great. But the actions when it came to actually giving back and doing more often fell short in realities. And part of my frustration coming in as, as I sit here today, someone who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder had a number of other issues over my life that I realized if I had better better understood cannabis, how different my life had been before earlier. And it makes me because I, my anxiety disorder led me to do things I honestly don't believe I would have done if I had better understanding and better control over and now, this is not cannabis would have solved it. This is hey, at least it would have been another tool. So where someone was, and oh, okay, whatever my takeaway was, it made me angry. Yeah, really, really, really, actually just angry, that there are so many people suffering unnecessarily. And nobody's willing to fund the research at scale, because it's very difficult to patent a plant and profit. So the whole idea is heighten exists to crowdsource fund cannabis research at a global scale. So the plan is, once we get up and running and profitable, is to literally start taking profits, and directly fund research and then make it publicly available, because it's just the right thing to do. And when you buy the machine, not only you getting great technology, you're helping get more out of your bug getting better experiences. Oh, by the way, you're also you happen to be paying it forward to helping someone else out to. And that really, that is why after five years of being told no, and getting beaten down, and having the world against me, including my family, at one point, actually one of my business partners is not a consumer and walked away at one point, because he was so passionate on the other end, that is why the business exists is to help other people.

Ronjini Joshua: 22:14

Well, I mean, I've talked to plenty of researchers that are always looking for funds. And it's it is it's impossible for them to get the funding that they need. They're, you know, constantly having to justify what they're working on. And it's hard to do that when they haven't been able to work on it long enough. And then their funds run out. So this is awesome. It's a great, really great way to give back to people that you know, have had similar like experiences as you have. And you know, one of the things that I we talk about in this podcast two is that, you know, a lot of the people that are coming in here are very passionate, very dedicated, they're like, they're in it to win it, they want to see this through. And I think it's such a really cool volatile time where you can become I mean, even though it's not the beginning of the cannabis industry, it's kind of the beginning of the cannabis very much the big game. So like, you know, we've we see, yeah, we're learning from people who've been in it for a while. But now it's like, actually, the wheels are turning and, and things are changing and shifting. And there's cool technologies that are like allowing experiences to happen in so many different ways. So it's very, very exciting. I really appreciate your insight, I would love to talk to you a little bit more about you know, just what you guys are expecting here at mjbizcon this year. And, you know, like we were all hidden away last year. So what are you what are you most excited about here at the show today?

Chad Johnson: 23:36

Honestly, to be in person? Yeah, at the show. We learned, you know, getting one of our learnings last year doing mjbizcon online, for as much, you know, interest is now people were getting in the product when people see it. If people haven't seen it, and you're can't see it in person, it's hard for people to really understand the value because it's not really top of mind for anyone. So now being there in person being able to show off the machine and more importantly, just talk to people. You know, I think that's what's really exciting. And I think the other is the opportunity to learn. Because there's so much to your point and so much other great technology out there. And you know, you know startups and businesses that like I My hope is there are a ton more guys out in the garage or women out in the garage, just like me, because we are the guys at the show the really big guys their worst nightmare. Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 24:32

That's funny, um, that I love everything that you're saying. What do you think? What do you what do you expect out of the show? I mean, obviously you guys are coming. You're launching a new product. Can you tell us a little bit more about kind of like, what your approach is to coming in as a little guy? Yeah, up against the

Chad Johnson: 24:49

David David versus Goliath. Yeah. Interesting side note, David David versus Goliath. If everyone's a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. He's a really fascinating theory. We're actually David Wood. was the one that was more favored than Goliath in that fight. It's a fact. It's a fascinating high theory, okay. But it's that whole mentality of you might be the small, we might be the startup. But we also understand that the patent that the patent pending technology we have is unlike anything else at the show, so one would love to see if there's anything like it. Yeah. And to having conversations with the right potential partners, as we look at, you know, growers and processors, but there's tons of great you know, distributors, wholesalers, online retailers, brick and mortar retailers, would love to talk with, you know, the exhibitors in the culinary industry and just learn what don't we know, that? That, you know, would be great to know, one and two, how can we help you? Yes, that's the biggest thing that I found from the conversations and the partners that we're working with today. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. Yeah, you know, innovate the product. Exactly. And it's more of, you know, they, they, you know, as a younger company, and I think there's a lot of passion and drive around the startup and the uniqueness I think is what is you know, standing out to to other kind of vendors and those in the field and I think that's really where we hope to get the most out of being in person and and having those one to one conversations Yeah,

Ronjini Joshua: 26:29

I'm sure that everyone despite whatever is happening, I know like everyone's just happy to be out at this point. Because yeah, it's pretty obvious that it was about time for people to get back to business I think very much so. Well, it's been lovely talking to you. I can't wait to see what else you guys come out with and like how everything works out because I Yeah, I'm sure I have a feeling that this is just the beginning the tip of the iceberg for heighten and we're looking forward to seeing what you guys are going to come up with. Yeah. Housing sifter.com, heightened sifter. We'll have all the everything in the show notes so everyone will be able to find you. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys. The Green Room podcast is brought to life by green seed PR, cannabis green tech focus PR agency, and a dedicated production team of editors mixers and show Booker's. A huge thank you to the vessel team for providing their studio for our recording. Don't forget to subscribe and share the greenroom podcast with friends, colleagues and family. That way you'll never miss an episode and we can keep the lights on. If you're feeling extra generous. Please leave us a review on favorite podcast listening platform. You can also find us on Instagram at green seed PR and to the live video versions of all of our podcasts on YouTube. Would you like to be on the guest on the show or do you have a great guest referral? Awesome. Submit your guests at Green hyphen room. Thanks for listening and be well