CBD Up Close

Cutting through the CBD hype

Best CBD Gummies for Sleep

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Do you have a hard time getting to sleep? Do you wake up intermittently during the night and have difficulty getting nestled back into that warm cocoon of REM sleep goodness?

Blame it on anxiety, the increasingly dog eat dog stance of modern America, or just too much caffeine too late in the day–whatever or whomever is the culprit, there is a new solution to the problem. CBD gummies can help you sleep. Charlotte’s Web has some gummies that pair melatonin with the power of our CBD and the rest of hemp’s naturally occurring phytocannabinoids to support sound, quality sleep, and help regulate your sleeping cycle.

three bottles of charlotte's web gummies

Take a look at them here. Currently, you save 20% when you purchase three of them. I don’t know if you want to purchase three containers of 60 gummies each (containing 10 mg CBD per serving) without trying them first, but hey I’m not you. You may have had a good experience with Charlotte’s Web in the past and may trust them enough to go ahead and take advantage of this savings.

If you don’t know Charlotte’s Web from Adam (my dad would be so proud of me for using one of his favorite phrases) or only think of the unbelievably heart-breaking movie about the unlikely friendship between a pig and a spider, then pass. Maybe purchase one of them too start. Don’t get ahead of yourself–even though they’re raspberry flavored (yuuum)!

Here are a few more options to take a look at available on Amazon.

Silk Factor Gummy Sleep. $33 bucks for 30 gummies, 750 mg total weight, recommended for adults. Containing natural hemp extracts and melatonin, this is a product worth looking at if you are trying to find some CBD gummies for sleep.

silk cbd bottle and labeling

One reviewer writes: “After years of struggling with sleep issues and trying so many different products, I finally found a formula that gently helps me fall asleep and stay asleep. and I feel great the next morning. Bye Bye sleeping pills!”

Another reviewer writes: “The interior of bottle looked cloudy, the expiration date is 60 days, suppose to have Melatonin but not listed as ingredient on label, tasted a bit rancid and did not work. Trying to decide if will try and send back or just toss $34.95.”

Yikes–it sounds like they just had some bad luck. I hope they returned the bottle for a refund. Why wouldn’t they?

Moving on. Another CBD gummy for sleep cycle recovery is Keylor Nutrition Premium American Hemp Gummies. $28 for 90 pieces (23 cents per) with 333 mg of CBD in each gummy looks like a pretty good value.

bottle of keylor nutrition hemp oil gummies for sleep
Real King Size — yeah, every guy says that 🙂 but in this case it appears to be true.

One reviewer writes: “I have always had trouble either falling asleep, or staying asleep. I have been on different medications throughout my life to remedy that, and NOTHING has helped like these gummies do! Best sleep I have ever had in my entire life. It did take about a week, maybe a day or two less, to really work like I wanted. But, I will now continue to utilize the benefit these gummies provide me for the rest of my life! FYI- I chew 2 about an hour before I want to go to sleep.”

Another reviewer writes: “Little did I know that this product was strategically advertised as 3000mcg. That’s if you eat the whole bottle.”

Uhh, seems pretty obvious that one gummy is not going to be packed with 3000 mg of CBD or hemp oil extract, but hey some people will never be happy. Buy these on Amazon.

XOBO Hemp Gummies for Sleep, with 25 mg of hemp extract per gummy and 5 mg of melatonin combine into a molotov cocktail of pure sleep bliss. You’re also going to get some vitamin B and E in the mix as well. At $33, you pay about a buck per gummy.

Are these bears coming out at you in 3D or have I had too much CBD tonight? Just kidding.

One reviewer writes: “I must say, I was TOTALLY impressed by these gummies. I work the night shift and I often have a terrible time sleeping. I tried just one at first and it helped me get an amazing night of sleep. And the taste was great! Super yummy! I will definitely keep a bottle of this in my cabinet at all times.”

I can’t say that I agree with this reviewer’s decision to sleep on the job, but hey, you do you compadre. Read more reviews about these gummies.

Fantasy Organic Hemp Gummies will purportedly help you calm down and foster positive feelings and emotions, all things that can help you sleep. With 90 gummies per container at a price of $30, you’re looking at a pretty good value play for 33 cents a gummy.

fantasy hemp gummies container and labels
Fantasy Hemp Gummies: is it getting hot in here??

One reviewer writes: “I’ve tried a handful of CBD products before that just didn’t feel like they did anything, so I was hesitant to buy these. But when I tried them the first few times I actually felt the effects. Normal high anxiety times I was clear headed, and some of the pain/soreness from training was at a minimum. Highly recommend these to any entrepreneur, athlete, or college student!”

Take a look at some of the reviews of this product.

We hope this post has helped you find the right CBD gummies for sleep, anxiety relief, and just pure relaxation. If not, maybe you found it entertaining. We aren’t trying to hard sell you on any of these cannabidiol products. The truth is you will only really even know which CBD product works for you after you use a few and can compare and contrast the effects they have on you and your body. Good luck out there. Now go get some sleep you beautiful beast.

Rob Gronkwoski – CBD Spokesman – Why aren’t there more professional athletes supporting CBD?

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This makes sense.

Gronkowski suffered from multiple, and some of them very serious, injuries during his career and one of the primary selling points for CBD is that it helps to relieve pain.

However, I think the more interesting thing about this is that Gronkowski waited until after he had retired to become a spokesman for a CBD company. Even though CBD is in a seemingly ever-changing grey area legally, it’s a product that seems to have wide ranging support from many parts of the economy.

For Gronkowski, and I would suspect most other professional athletes in a major sport, I have to think that becoming a spokesperson for a CBD brand is frowned upon, if not against contract (there are some current professional athletes who are open about their CBD use but most are retired). Even if CBD were completely legal I think it will take some time for there to be a popular professional athlete who will be a spokesperson for a CBD brand.

CBD Mania

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Look at that picture; that’s a really small sample of the news items from Google about CBD. The New York Times just published an article about how the CBD industry has lax oversight; a Former FDA chief says that putting CBD into food is illegal; Ars Technica discussing how the FDA is responding to fallacious claims. Then you go down a little bit further in the page and there are more stories about the legality of CBD, one story about how jumping out of a plane turned a CBD skeptic into a CBD proponent, and a piece from LA Magazine about how CBD marketers have become “snake oil salesman”.

My deepest concern here is that the narrative has drastically gotten away from the companies that are being responsible and trying to make legitimate claims about their CBD products and, instead, has been hijacked by unscrupulous companies that are looking to cash in on the CBD mania while the getting is good.

And whether that is the case, or, more accurately, how prevalant are the “snake oil salesman”-esque marketers out there? And does that even matter? I ask that last question because the media can latch onto a few key data points or spokesmen and paint whatever picture they want. If you want the CBD industry to look bad there are probably ample examples of companies that are being downright dishonest in their marketing.

What should CBD companies do? Continue to be truthful in your marketing. Push for fair and clear regulations for the industry. Keep the conversation with customers going and bring attention to the successes and the failures.

Is the CBD Industry Overheating?

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We have talked at length about the upside in the CBD industry since our inception a few months ago. A lot of people agree and a lot of money is flowing into this industry… but is that a smart move?

Here’s a clear picture of the current CBD investment psychology:

“Leading cannabis researchers BDS Analytics and Arcview Market Research, project that the collective market for CBD sales in the U.S. will surpass $20 billion by 2024.

“The convention-goers were more keyed on this figure, and less worried about potential push back from anyone looking to enforce state law or agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.”

Depending on your appetite for risk, this sentiment either makes perfect sense or is a clear sign that the CBD industry is going through something of a mania. What do I think?

I think there will be some pure startup winners all along the vertical but that most of the pure startups will end up failing (this is normal for startups in every industry but I think that the failure rate here will be higher than most industries. Those that are able to survive can realize huge returns on investment, more so than in many other industries.). I still think that the industry will go through an aggressive consolidation phase over the next few years, as can be seen from our story earlier about HeavenlyRx.

Going back to the point of this post, the reported sentiment at that convention does give me pause for concern. There are a lot of people who have no consumer product, much less CBD industry, experience getting into the industry. That’s a risk from an investment standpoint. Some of these CBD companies started by neophytes will work but I think the vast majority of them will fail.

The lack of clarity on regulations is also a risk. Sure, everyone, including us, thinks that the writing is on the wall and that CBD products will be legalized across the board… eventually. In the meantime, we’re not sure what the FDA will do and who knows what each state will do when it comes to regulating CBD products.

A few days ago, the FDA sent a shot across the bow to CBD company Curaleaf telling them that they have 15 days to get in line with FDA requests, including changing their medical claims, or else.

“As a result of this warning letter, which will require Lusardi’s response to correct these deficiencies within 15 days, Curaleaf lost its topical partnership with pharmacy giant CVS Health (NYSE: CVS). As a reminder, CVS Health announced in March that it would carry Curaleaf’s topical products in roughly 800 of its stores in eight states, with CBD expected to be a means for low-margin pharmacy chains to drum up foot traffic to their stores. It’s unclear if CVS will look elsewhere for its CBD supplies, especially with Walgreens Boots Alliance and Rite Aid following suit with cannabis products in their own stores shortly after CVS.”

Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner at the FDA, has suggested a pathway forward for the FDA regulating the CBD industry:

“The FDA could put the onus on manufacturers to bring forward petitions to demonstrate that CBD can be safely added to products such as food. These submissions can take the form of new dietary ingredient notifications or food additive petitions, which would include toxicity studies to evaluate the safety of CBD. These are the same standards any new food ingredients are held to. Congress can help by passing language saying that the FDA doesn’t need to issue a broad regulation on CBD and can instead rely on petitions filed by individual, prospective producers.”

It’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that the FDA will do something along those lines. They could punt this issue, allowing limited ways to sell, and wait for clinical studies. Remember, the FDA has no incentive to act quickly here, they only look bad if they approve something that turns out to be unsafe.

Taking all this into consideration, I think you can make a good argument that entrepreneurs and investors are getting a little overly optimistic. I still think that there is tremendous upside in this industry but if the FDA throws a wrench in the machinery then you can kiss those projections goodbye.

Ex-Kellogg President Says CBD Industry to grow to 20+ Billion Dollars in Five Years

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We have talked about this in the past, the CBD industry is predicted to have amazing growth over the next few years, possibly to more than $20 billion in a few years. Now we have the ex-president of Kellogg North America, Paul Norman, saying the same thing: “This market is going to grow four or five fold to 20 plus billion dollars in consumer value over the next five years,” Norman tells Yahoo Finance. “I believe, down the road, CBD will be widely available in all kinds of consumer products.”

Mr. Norman is now the CEO of HeavenlyRx, which is a CBD company that is acquiring and investing in other companies in the CBD industry. According to a recent press release:

“HeavenlyRx’s focus is on hemp cultivation, processing and the manufacturing of a diverse range of traditional CBD products including oils, tinctures, balms, and vape-ready products. Heavenly Rx will also own and operate its own retail locations along with health & wellness related studios where it will generate a repetitive captive audience with a desire for Heavenly Rx’s products to be part of its customers’ daily routine. It is expected that Heavenly Rx’s portfolio will include several proprietary brands across numerous consumer product group verticals such as cosmetics and beauty products, bath and body products, and infused foods.”

Best case scenario, Mr. Norman would want to grow HeavenlyRx into the Kellogg’s of the CBD industry. It’s an interesting strategy, it makes sense on many levels but I have to wonder how many great deals are out there in the CBD space right now. On the one hand, it’s a nascent industry so there are many small brands out there that have a lot of potential and can probably be acquired at a seemingly low price. But how many of these companies will survive for the long haul? How reasonable are the prices considering the fact that just about everyone in the space, including Mr. Norman, think that the industry will grow dramatically over the next few years?

There will surely be brands that are mega winners in this space but there will also be losers. HeavenlyRx is making a portfolio bet here that their winners will more than make up for the losers that they acquire. It’s analogous to the bets that venture capitalists make: Invest in dozens or hundreds of startups with the hopes that the winners will have such outsized returns that it will give their portfolios a high return on their investment. Again, my only concern here would be that there may not be enough “deals” out there for this kind of portfolio bet (a year or two ago would have had better deals available).

Joe Rogan “CBD is One of the Best Things I’ve Ever Tried for Anxiety” – CBD Trust Marketing

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It’s videos like this that make it clear CBD companies should work to engender trust marketing all day long, every day of the year. It’s anecdotal evidence, which isn’t as good as statistical evidence, most of the time anyways, but it’s testimonials like this that will help get more people into CBD.

To the video. Joe Rogan is telling his guest, Maynard James Keenan, about how he has benefited from using CBD to help with his anxiety. In the video, he holds up a bottle of pills, shakes it, and first says that those pills can fuck you up because, if you take too much, it can make you paranoid. Not off to a good start, right? Wrong. Leading with the negatives is a great way to engender trust because if you’re willing to lead with what’s wrong with a product that signals to people that you are honest.

Then Joe goes into how CBD, and not just the pills in the bottle that he shook on camera, but also CBD oil, has helped him immensely with his anxiety. CBD is a “vacation saver” for Joe.

After rewatching the video perhaps the most powerful part of the discussion was when they talked about the negative effects ibuprofen can have on a body. Joe relates the story of a person he knows who is a runner who took ibuprofen to help with inflammation only to have his problems with inflammation increase. Turns out that it was the ibuprofen that was destroying his gut biome and causing his problems to worsen.

Joe also went on to talk about how CBD creams are a great way to help with aches and pains.

The key takeaway from this is that in a world where trust is provisional and the CBD industry is akin to a mellow Wild West with a short history of clinical research and a proliferation of fantastic claims abounding, it’s the companies that opt for a more genuine dialogue with their customers by acknowledging the truth, warts and all, upfront that will win the day. This isn’t to say be a dope about it, or do it in a weak way, that’s not Joe’s public persona at all, but be forthright with how you talk with customers. Customers who trust you are more likely to stay customers.