Joe Sheehey: The Truth About Cannabidiol's Impact On Mind, Body, & Spirit | Wellness Force #Podcast

It's a very complicated world right now because there are so many tools out there that can, quote, heal people. But really, I think, Joe, like, what we're talking about is what are the tools that we can access inside of ourselves already without having to do so many things that really take us off the path, you know, And I think CBD and hemp and just any kind of plant medicines in general, they're like top of mind for most people right now. And it doesn't have to be so complicated. Like, we're going to get down to the truth today. You know, the truth about, like, this cannabis dial, what it actually is, what's going on with the industry. Just super stoked to chat with you, man.

Dope, dude. Thanks for having me here. And it's people like you that allow us to bring the message out into the world, that allows other people to equip themselves to make the right decisions when they're buying the products and diving into the modalities that are actually going to do that deep healing that you're. That you're alluding to, brother. So appreciate it.

Well, well, you and I have both done deep healing on the record and off the record. We have both communicated about the healing in our own lives, our personal journeys, you know, like with ourselves, with our relationships, with our ladies, with our significant others, like, all the things that we do in this triangle of health, wealth, relationships. I feel like, man, there's this feedback loop and it just reminds us, like, who we really are, how we're showing up every day. And then I think people really want to know, like, what are the tools and ways of being and the things that we're actually doing on a practical level that support us in the balancing act of all these things, the health, wealth, relationship, it's like all human problems are universal. Would you agree?

Absolutely, man, absolutely. And the statement of remembering who we are, the remembrance that's driven my life over the last several years, is remembering that we are of nature and nature is of us. And that's like the underlying message of everything that I do these days.

Yeah, and it's cool that you said remembering, because when we get stressed, guess what the first thing is that we stop doing. We forget how powerful we are. We forget to breathe. We forget that we have all these tools and community and resources at our disposal. We just fucking forget. We just forget because we're human. And one of the coolest things that I know about you, because you've talked about this in media and you've talked about this in A lot of different places is in your journey to founding Cured Nutrition and to really going. Probably the deepest I've ever seen somebody go is into being a beacon of truth about cannabidiol and about plants, is that you've ingested many plants on your own. You know, you've. You've done many journeys when it comes to psychonautic explorations, you know, psychedelic therapies, we're going to get into that and we're also going to talk about the CBD component. But life for you was not always this explorative vessel where you were encouraged to go out there in the world and learn what's possible and all these things. Like, you came from a different environment and you were an engineer at one point. And I want to hear this story, like this really, like, superhero story that so many of us have, but we just like, forget about our cape. What was that for you, man? You started where? And did you ever even think you'd be in the organically farmed, hemp full spectrum world?

It's a really. There's a lot to that question because to the public eye, to the people around me at the time that you're alluding to, they did not understand my actual belief and really underlying involvement in the industry. But I came from. I came from a background of engineering. I studied aerospace engineering in college. I spent five years, not four, getting that degree. And a big contributor to that was honestly at the time, a destructive lifestyle in that I was exploring things like psychedelics, I was using cannabis, but I was also heavily using alcohol. Heavily, heavily using other drugs such as cocaine. I used a number of things that I would never use again. But what I also was using at the time were plants that are still around in my life today. So that being said, I was living actually a really destructive life for some time there in college. And it led me to a really dark place. I actually found myself 2:30am on a Tuesday morning on the other side of a guardrail of a bridge, ready to jump off, ready to end my life. And that day, that early morning, early weekday morning, was the day that really brought me out, zoomed me out and made me look at what's going on with my life. And I looked at who I was, and I looked at who I thought I wanted to be or who I was supposed to be. And I had this big separation, this big gap. And what I really see when I look back at that story right now is I wasn't living in my true nature. I wasn't living in my True soul, purpose, and nature. I was living a very destructive life. So there was a massive chasm between who I was every single day and who I wanted to be. At the time, I was pursuing an aerospace engineering degree. I was on the edge of really getting to a place where I thought I could get. Get an offer to get into the industry, to actually pursue a career, and found myself in one of the darkest places I've ever been. And that was when everything really started to change. I was pulled out of my college town. I left all of my friends. I would drive an hour and a half to go finish up my schooling every single day, and I ended up actually landing a internship at Lockheed Martin. So I was living a very destructive life. I got to literally the edge of what I thought I could do and recognize that I was so unhappy with the life that I was living. Thankfully, I made it through that time. And how'd you make it through, man?

Like, what. What was the heart and soul connection that allowed you to take a breath and, like, not do the thing that so many people choose to do?

Yeah, it was a process for sure, but the removal, complete removal from the situation and from the people that I was surrounding myself with at the time was the number one and most important thing that had to happen. The people that I surrounded myself with were not bad people, but I made decisions off of becoming who I thought they wanted me to be, for me to fit in, for me to be enough, for me to be seen as a friend, as a quote, unquote member of the tribe. I made decisions that led me down a very destructive path. When I was removed from that situation and went completely sober, stopped drinking, cut all the drugs out of my life, and started focusing on true wellness, true health, and really started understanding what goes into my body through just simple nutrition to start with. Yeah, I started to see day after day, I was moving back into myself of younger years that was the jock that was really interested in having the six pack and understanding what it really was to be healthy. But I had lost it. I had lost all of that in college because I was trying to be what I want, what I thought everybody else wanted me to be. And I was just so out of alignment, so out of integrity. The word that you used before you even started this podcast is that's what was going on once I started to allow myself to say, hey, I have permission to actually live differently. Like, I don't need to live that way to be enough for anybody. I can live a different way and just be enough for Myself, everything started to change, and then it went into years and years of discovering what that really looked like.

Man, you. It gives me a chill because what you're talking about in a way, is everything that everyone experiences, but yet most people don't know about this hero's journey. You know, like we're separated from something, we're initiated, and then we return to tell the story. So I feel like this is really cool because you're here and we're talking about like the return process. Like you were separated, you took the traditional route. It didn't feel good. It actually made you almost leave us, which I'm glad you're here. And we all are glad that we're here because it's a gift. But in order to get initiated, like that initiation is so different for everyone. And I feel like this overwhelming, compelling thread that connects for all of us, man, when we get initiated is that we separate from ourselves. We separate from the core of who we are. Some people call it a soul split. Native Americans call it soul loss. But looking back, like, what. What part of yourself were you not wanting to actually hold? Were you not actually wanting to be there for?

Mm. Mm. You know, that's. That's tough. But what was really going on was this deep desire to be. To be somebody that like, you know, went to the gym and took care of himself. But I had these little undertones throughout college of just. I don't know what it was, but it felt like I was being made fun of for it. It wasn't what everybody else was doing. And as. As hard as it is for people to recognize how things affect other people's other. Other people's well being, when it comes to bowling, when it comes to little comments that can build up over time, that actually affected me more than I really knew. And coming into college. I had played several sports growing up. Hockey, golf, basketball, all at a pretty high level, and stopped doing that to pursue an engineering de. And all else I could fit in that time was the work hard. Play hard. The work hard was the aerospace engineering degree. That was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. And on the other end of that was the play hard. I didn't have any more room to really pursue that trueness of who I actually thought I was and who really cared about taking care of myself. I wasn't taking care of myself. I wasn't listening to myself. I would see glimpses of self, but I would let that disappear so quickly when I surrounded myself with other people. And I just wanted to be Enough.

Damn. What I was feeling when you were sharing that is every single person who's with us, they've all gone through that, where it's like they're following maybe their dads or their moms or their grandparents or somebody else's dream. And then one day you wake up and it's like, where the hell did I get to? Like, where, actually. And it's like living someone else's life. We had Mark Groves on the podcast, and he talked about this moment where he was next to a stream and he had been done all these things in life and he had amassed all these followers, and he said he felt like his. His mind was unraveling because he realized, like, all the things that he thought in life were going to be a certain way, that they actually were complete opposite. And he's taken now this path where he's just done everything from a place of being very authentic. And that word gets thrown around, man. Authenticity. Authenticity and integrity are like brother and sister. Did you think that that happened for you, or have you ever seen, in retrospect, that all that stuff might have happened for you to remind you how powerful integrity and authenticity actually is?

Oh, yeah, absolutely, 100%. And I think that what I see years and years removed from that, before even getting into the space I'm in now, I saw the people that were around me at the time, years afterwards, still desiring to have that love and connection with me. But what wasn't happening was the actual conversations of what was going on at the time. We would beat around the bush. We would say, oh, like, we just. We just wish you would still be showing up with us and going out with us and doing this and doing that. And it's not that I don't love these people. It's not those. Those people didn't love me, but it was actually understanding and be being authentic about what the struggles are that were going on. And the fact that some of those people that I was surrounding myself were going through the exact same struggles, but we just wouldn't. We myself in the beginning and then them, you know, in years past, not actually looking at it. So living authentically and saying, hey, great, like, I recognize you for doing this. Well, hey, maybe that should be a mirror for myself. And I think that shows up in so many areas of my life is, okay, cool, so we can say one thing, but can we actually have that reflected back to us? And that authenticity of what I was trying to do and actually sharing that with. With those. Those members of my quote unquote community or tribe at the time, it just wasn't there. It wasn't there. And so that. That ability to connect at a deeper level just. It just didn't show up.

One of the most fun things that I get to do, which, by the way, this is what I live to do, is connect and share what's real. And I've always felt this from you ever since I met you at Paleo. I met you at the Paleo conference from our mutual friend Chase. And right away I was like, this doesn't seem like your average businessman, you know, like, you didn't seem like you came into the world as a traditional businessman. And especially now, man, that we. And I understand this story, this bedrock of like extreme dark contrast on a bridge, questioning reality like that I believe is like pulling the arrow back as far as you can. Almost like the bow is going to break. And then when finally the arrow is let go, it shoots like, further than it ever would. Like the people like you that go through the struggles, like the real struggles, not just like, oh, my trust fund fell off, you know, like. Like you've. You've been through the real struggles. Do you. Do you look back on that and can you pull a couple things specifically that have happen you to enable you to withstand the storms as CEO of Cured Nutrition?

Yeah. Well, recognizing then, you know, seven years ago, coming out of eight. Eight years ago now graduating from college and really starting to pursue a true life of taking care of myself and listening to myself and doing what I wanted, I see that it was just the. There. There was a resistance to actually giving myself what I thought I deserved. And you know what, what happens nowadays, and even. Even over the last several weeks where we've had some difficult conversations going on just around the office is giving my permission to understand what's the truth and looking at situations and just being fully, completely honest around what. What the truth is. The truth was I was living a destructive pattern and I wasn't actually being forced to do it. Like, I was making the decision. And just like you said, so many things can happen in life to where we can look back three, four, five years later and say actually, like point at a time where, oh, if I actually would have recognized and acknowledged the truth of the situation and given myself to own that, giving myself the ability to own that and not show up in a way that's codependent or saying, hey, like, oh, like I'm gonna. I'm gonna beat around the bush just to make you feel good. I'm gonna beat around the bush to make this person feel good and still have some type of a connection. For me, it's just looking at what the truth is. And over the last years of operating cured, there have been a lot of ups and downs. There's been a lot of more or less imposters that I've seen. There's been times where we've done really, really well. And there's been some times where we've made some massive mistakes. And for me, I have to look back at it. And for example, the first year that we actually tried farming ourself, doing a fully vertically integrated business, the truth was we were not prepared to go after it. After several months of giving it a try, we were like, oh, you know what? Like, you know, this happened and that happened. And it was really easy to point fingers and make excuses. But the truth was, I didn't trust my intuition at certain times. And I didn't say, hey, okay, I'm gonna listen to myself. I'm gonna show up for myself. I'm gonna ask myself what the truth is, and I'm gonna let that actually come out of my mouth and pour into any business area, pour into any relationship, pour into any life decision that I'm making. And that's been something that I continually work on. Like I said, I've had some difficult things going on in the last month. And the truth is, if I didn't make these decisions, the business, my life, certain things would end in a certain way. And that's the hard truth. That doesn't mean that I'm going to have a conversation with somebody and they're not going to be hurt or they're not going to be sad. Yeah, both are true. And we have to stand in that and actually always ground ourselves in that to allow ourselves to make decisions that are going to be actually fruitful for our own future. And then whatever happens around us. Well, what's the truth?

Yeah, because the truth takes courage. So the universe rewards that courage. But the challenge is like, when we're in the process of experiencing the thing that's coming to us to make that courage come out of us. I mean, look, man, you know, one of my favorite quotes, the most powerful one that I talk about probably every single week is Ralph Waldo Emerson. And he says, do the thing.

Thing.

And you have the power. Like, you don't have the power before you do the thing. You have to do the things. And then the power and the courage, they're cultivated like a garden. And so I. I have a sense, and I'm curious how you feel about this. Anybody at all who's involved in anything in their life that gives them stress, that makes them feel like they're losing their mind, that makes them feel like they're really unable what to do. Where do you go in those moments when, like, the wheels are falling off the wagon, the house is burning down? Do you. Do you have a connection with Higher power? Do you have a just connection with yourself? Like, where do you go in those moments where you can literally just be like, all I'm going to do is surrender and tell the truth?

Yeah, man. I definitely have a connection with Higher Power. And as you alluded to in the beginning of the podcast, a lot of that has evolved over the course of my life. I grew up Catholic, was Christian for a while in college. I had no religion, no faith, no, no nothing. I had nothing that grounded me. And since then, in the years past and at towards the trip, the tail end of my engineering career, I started meditating a lot. I started really tapping into myself, my breath, my intuition that we were discussing and understanding that there are things that are so much bigger than me that I'm never going to fully be able to understand. But what I can say is that there's a lot that I don't know, and, and for me, I just need to get curious. So a grounding practice is for sure meditating all the time, but more or less a mantra of just like, being curious about the way things are, being curious about the way I show up in the world, the way I react when certain things that are said to me, if I see protective mechanisms coming out, if I can see those happening in other people, if I can just be curious of what my. What might potentially be going on, you can have a lot more love and compassion for people. And so something I've talked about a lot recently. And, you know, if I were to list some words that described Joe, I would say one is for sure. Curiosity, just being curious, being, giving myself the ability to ask questions and ask myself questions about what's going on. But to answer your question, definitely have a connection with Higher power spirituality. And it's continually evolving and expanding. And every time I go into a plant medicine journey, every time I get down into deep meditation, every time I go through a difficult time, it just adds on to that. And my understanding of what's really going on in this world, this universe and this, this, this life, this life mystery.

It'S such a big fucking mystery all the time. And people can relate to this because we've Talked about breathwork and plant medicine and float tanks. We've really run the wide scope of all the tools and practical things we can do to essentially, Joe, like, shift our state, because, man, we're half beast, half spirit. Like, if we're not taking care of the physical unit, spirit can't get the messages through. It's like. It's like a dirty contact on electrical system, you know, just. It doesn't work. Like, one can't work properly without the other. So I think about your bodybuilding days and all the ways in which you took care of yourself with. With the best consciousness you had. This doesn't come from shame. Like, none of us, none of us are ever, like, trying to do a bad job. We just do the best with whatever information and consciousness we have. If you were to go back and plant a seed about healing modalities and even cannabidiol and the power of the spectrum which we're going to talk about, of the plant itself, what kind of plant intelligence would you have given yourself in those moments where you really weren't being the most authentic you possibly could have been?

Mm. You know, if I could go back to really my last year of college and sit there and talk to my younger self, I would make myself more curious about everything that was going on in my life and what was actually destructive and what could be viewed as not destructive. Because when I moved into that initial sobriety and moved into bodybuilding, at first it was very healthy. It did give me a new life, a new perspective, and a new way of taking my care of myself and just pushing myself to the limit and showing myself what I could achieve. But that in itself turned unhealthy as well. Steroids existed. I found myself in a destructive life yet again, but, you know, quote unquote or hashtagging health. And I started to get the awareness of, okay, there's something going on there. But to go back to my college self, I would have told myself or asked myself, hey, you know, you've been using marijuana since you were 15 years old. You've had a couple mushroom journeys over the last couple years. You've also combined a lot of that with a lot of alcohol, a lot of not sleeping, a lot of other drugs that are synthetic, prescription drugs that are being abused widely throughout our world. It's a yes and thing. Everything was going on. There were a lot of substances. And I would have told myself or asked myself to be a little bit more curious about what was destructive and what wasn't. I started looking at that really four years ago before diving into this mission of cured. But I think it could have happened a lot sooner and I do believe I would have potentially guided myself out of a, in a little bit different way in going into the bodybuilding world, which, you know, I really needed to go into. And it was a huge catalyst to starting cured. So, you know, more or less just raising the question of what can be viewed as destructive. And if you're looking at everything that you were doing as destructive, why and like really diving into that a little bit more.

It's crazy because when I hear you talk about this, most people, the last thing they want to do when they're stressed out or when they're like beating their head against the wall is be curious. You know, it's like, it's like the, hey, I know I'm going through the shitstorm right now, but let me pause and be curious. Like this is the same, it's really hard. This is the same thing that happens with all of us where we want to have this richness of life and we want to be curious, but it ain't going to happen unless we practice it, my friend. It ain't going to happen. This is a practice. Right? So I'm curious, like when you were at that point you, you left aerospace or I believe you were even in aerospace and you were going to the gym, when did the conversation of CBD and when did the conversation of Cannabid Nile and full spectrum hemp, when did that even come into your consciousness and how did you take that out to market? Because going from aerospace to plant medicine, which was really what hemp is, plant medicine, that's a big gap, that's a big jump, you know, kind of a right hand turn, it's a big turn. How did that happen?

So I have this memory that's been popping up a lot recently. And thankfully I was able to collect myself, finish college, get the degree and get hired at a really big, well, the biggest defense company in the entire world where I went was in their NASA division. So I was working on interplanetary space programs where you didn't have a lot of the classified things going on. There was random drug testing, but to be completely honest, I was still using marijuana at the time. And when marijuana was legalized in Colorado, I remember very clearly the day that I came into the office and I remember sitting down in my cubicle and I was still fresh on a new program at the company. And so I was still getting to know everybody, I was still figuring out where my place was. How I could bring my short amount of specialties into their new program. And I remember hearing a couple of people saying, like, look at the email that just came through. Marijuana has been legalized in Colorado, but we as a company are a federally funded company, so we can't subscribe to those laws, even though it is legal in Colorado. So. And then you would hear a couple other people talk and a couple other people talk, and, like, there seemed to be this. Like, some people wanted to talk about it, other people were like, ooh, I won't even, like, say the word marijuana because I'm in a place and I'm going to get in trouble. And I remember very clearly this, like, expansion in contraction, like, this expansion from me in my cubicle, like, walled off and nobody could actually see me. But so wanting to join the conversation, because at that time, I was really starting to get curious about, oh, like, I can still use marijuana. I've actually been using it now in a very medicinal way. I've been using it to calm myself. I've been using it to sleep. I've been using it for general recovery purposes. And I so wanted to butt into that conversation, but I kept contracting. I was like, who? Like, what are they going to think of me? I'm the new person here. Am I going to be enough? Once again, am I going to be enough? Am I going to be viewed differently? Because I raised my hand for Maribel, for marijuana. I remember that so clearly. And at the time was listening to podcast after podcast after podcast. Joe Rogan, John Lee Dumos, the founder podcast, like some of the early podcasts, and just being like, I want to be an entrepreneur so bad. I'm pursuing this competing career. I had been competing in bodybuilding for a couple years, and I'm also an aerospace engineer that can't really talk about kind of both of the lives that I live outside of here. I just started questioning and I was like, is that right? Should I do what? Do I want to live a life in that way? Do I want to give myself the ability to actually stand up for things that I believe in and stand up for things that I'm actually noticing are giving me a new perspective on what you can actually use from nature to. To be healthy? That's the bottom line, is that was the truth.

Yep.

And a couple years after that, I had started a podcast of my own when I was still heavily into competing. It was called Committed Physiques Radio. And I was starting to transition out of competing. And I was like, you know what? I need A I need a new name for this. The name Higher Health popped up and I guess some pun intended there. I went with it and started talking to more and more health and fitness professionals. On the side, of course, still working in my engineering career and thinking this might be a good way to start a business. This might be my out or my in to being an entrepreneur, I should say. Started talking to fitness competitor after fitness competitor, more health and wellness and fitness professionals, and one after another were raising their hand saying, yes, I use cannabis. Yes, I use marijuana. Yes, I do this, yes, I do that. But nobody was talking about it publicly. And I said, that presents a massive opportunity for somebody. I'm going to let that somebody be me. But what I think needs to happen is people need to be introduced to cannabis very gently. And at the time, I had been listening to one of those podcasts that I listed, and somebody was actually talking about other cannabinoids. And that was the first time I heard about cbd, about cannabidiol. And I ordered up a bottle. It was early or late 2016. And I just started taking the tincture, putting it underneath my tongue, and noticing some amazing calming properties. I had been taking some medications at the time. I had been having anxiety most of my life, but it was getting really bad at the time. And I noticed I didn't have to use it anymore. And I noticed myself sleeping really well, and I noticed myself recovering really well, and I wasn't getting high from it. So I said, there's a massive opportunity here. I see person after person after person raising their hand saying, yes, I believe in cannabis. But I also realized that the mass public was not going to potentially sign up for THC right off the bat because it does have the psychoactive properties. And that's right when I knew that that's what I was going to do. I was going to take the industry connections that I've built through competitive bodybuilding, health and fitness professionals of all levels. Some are a lot more healthy than others, as I'm alluding to. But I was going to have conversations with them and I was going to start giving them products and asking them what they thought about it. And one after another said, wow, I'm actually noticing that this cbd, this full spectrum hemp oil that I had ordered, was actually helping people. And I said, you know what? This is it. I'm gonna make it happen. The very first products that we came out with were these spices that have CBD extract in them. And we did that very strategically because here's the Bodybuilding space. Here are the people that meal prep, that cook their own food all the time, but most of the time it tastes like shit. They need a little bit of help. There was a company in the space named Flavor God, that was blowing up at the time.

I remember that guy.

I said, this is perfect. This is perfect. We can do something very similar. We can make cannabis, specifically cbd, at the time, approachable in a way that you can just add it to your meals. And, man, it took off overnight. One after another, person after person after person was posting it. The original brand was called Cured Spices, and it evolved heavily from there. But, man, I dove into everything. Cannabis, after that day of seeing this is helping me. This is a route into starting a business. And this is for the mass. This is for the masses. This is for the general public. They're going to sign up for this.

I love this story because if you look back and you connect all the dots, the very thing that drove you was curiosity and feeling this. This. Like you weren't in the right place. You weren't in the right place. Like there was something in your soul that was like, this is not who I am. This is not where I'm meant to be. And I don't exactly know what's next, but I'm just gonna go for it. It's like this biological reward of faith. Like, there's something in you that you're like, okay, I'm just gonna trust this intuitive hit that I got. I'm gonna go and create this. And then, boom. The universe rewards you. The universe rewards you. Now you're at this place where it's no longer Cured spices, it's cured nutrition.

And.

And I got to tell you, like, I've been podcasting now for five years, and I get stuff sent to me all the time. I'm talking, like, boxes, tinctures and creams and all this stuff. And the industry. The industry is pretty saturated with, let's just say, for lack of a better term, imposters. Imposters, right? But there's something different. Like when I. When I take the product and I. Especially my favorite ones, the mint, I go. And I take it. I take it before I go to bed. I mean, it's on my. My bathroom counter right now. And it's just one of those products where I'm like, okay, I trust that it's always going to give me the same thing every time I need it, you know, and that's pretty rare because these. All these plants, they have such complex intelligence, and there's terpene profiles. And there's different spectrums within it now. There's all these different cannabidiol processes coming out where it's cannabidiol A and B and C. It's a complicated world, Joe. It's a really complicated world. And I think people just really want to know, like, how do I know if something actually works? Well, yes, the way you feel is a big one, but also, like, the quality standards and the way that it's farmed are just as important as how we feel. So talk about that a little bit, man, because the industry is pretty. It's the wild, wild west right now.

It is, man. And it can definitely get frustrating for those of us that have been playing in it for it's three years. For us now, there's been a lot of companies popping up in the last year, which means the industry is expanding horizontally massively. And that makes it difficult for brands that have been playing in the space for a while. But the most important, important thing to note really, to start with, is when we say hemp, when we say marijuana, what we're talking about is we're talking about cannabis. They're both of the same genome. The differentiator between the two is hemp has less than 0.3% THC. Marijuana has greater than 0.3% THC. That's really the only defining thing, or the. That's the only differentiator between the two.

Yes.

And what also needs to be known is the hemp plant has so many uses just outside of cannabinoid extracts. So it's being used for so many industrial purposes. But what's happened is the line between industrial hemp and marijuana has become so thin because the genetics and the breeding over the years have turned the hemp plant into what looks like a marijuana plant, but just with really low concentrations of THC. So there's over 80 cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. What we're talking about here right now is CBD, cannabidiol and THC, tetrahydrocannabinol. So that's two cannabinoids out of over 80 cannabinoids in the entire cannabis plant. CBG is looking really promising for things around gut health. CBN is actually something that is used a lot for sleep. It's more sedating. Other ones are more antimicrobial. And really what we're seeing is that every cannabinoid can have its own therapeutic benefit. But what's most important to note is when you combine all of those which you Started talking about, you get what's called a full spectrum or a full array of cannabinoids. And that packs a lot stronger punch than just one cannabinoid. So if you get something that says just cbd, what you should do is you should look at that company's website. And if they don't have a quality control center on their website and aren't showing their testing results to the public, that's a red flag right. Right there, right off the bat. Because what's going on is there are, you know, a handful of really big suppliers in the industry, and there's thousands of brands that are all buying from the same supplier. They're just putting a different label on it. Yeah, we at Cured said that is not going to be us. So everything that we have is locally sourced from our partner farm in Pueblo, Colorado. That's shy farms. You could look it up. And what that stands for is sustainable hemp initiative. So not only are they practicing organic practices, they're actually taking the crop and doing it in a very sustainable way. So they have multipurpose crops where they can use it for industrial purposes, they can use it for the cannabidol extract. But really, all that really matters is understanding your sourcing and supply chain. So to talk about the testing and talk about the transparency that we put out there, if you go to curednutrition.com or if you go to any of the really reputable brands out there in the industry, you should find batch testing results for every single product out there. And just like a lot of the food in our food chain, there are things that have to happen to get it into your hands. It has to be processed in some way. Things that happen in the manufacturing process are going through an extraction. And the extraction process also requires the companies to use solvents. It requires them to use processes that put things to put potentially other ingredients in the product. So understand that that happens just like anything in our food supply supply chain.

This is the isolate. Right? This is when the isolate happens. I've heard of this. CBD isolate.

Yeah. So isolate. But then, you know, a lot of extracts, if you're going into, like, you can do an alcohol extraction or you can do a CO2 extraction. People are actually doing a vapor extraction. So they only use air. That's really high quality. So. But really, all I'm trying to say here is that there can still be things showing up in your product once it comes to the consumer's hands. So there can be actually pesticides, there can be heavy metals, hemp actually has been known to be planted to remediate land. So if that's the case, if hemp's planted on land that's contaminated, you could be getting heavy metals in your final extract. So, yeah, the most important thing to be looking for are companies that are doing the due diligence to do all the testing that's required to show the end consumer that there are no heavy metals left, there's no pesticides that actually has the amount of cannabinoids in the product that they're claiming there to be. There have been a lot of companies and tests that have been done that show companies are making claims on their products to have a certain amount of CBD in them. And when it goes and gets tested, it's nowhere close to actually what's on the label claim. And yeah, the reason that's happening is because the education and the understanding at the consumer level, it's just not spreading fast enough. The industry is growing faster than the information is actually getting into people's hands. And cbd, the three letter acronym is what's selling right now.

You know, so much to understand. It's crazy, Joe, because I see, I see like fitness influencers and like, look at my new CBD line and I'm thinking you don't even really care about it. Like, you're just doing it because you want to make money. And I love money because money's energy. I really do. Like, it took me a long time to get peaceful about money being extension of who I am, right? Like my words, my actions and money, they all operate in the same law of reciprocity. So whatever I say and how I'm being like, that's how money's going to reflect in my life. But when I see the industry change so quickly because people are just grabbing the money, it gives me a bad taste in my mouth. And it's like this, not only in like the cannabis and the hemp space, but it's like this everywhere, man. And there's our responsibilities on one side, then there's our integrity on the other. And you have always, ever since I first met you, it's always been like a balancing of both, you know, how do you, how do you do that? Because I'm sure it's really easy to like cut corners and not necessarily put the most rigorous testing into place. In other words, you could, you could choose to sacrifice your integrity to fulfill your financial responsibilities or to increase your bottom line. But like, you don't do that. You know, what's the North Star in.

That one, you know, man, a lot of it comes from my engineering background and really when you work in aerospace there's, there's this line of 100% mission success. And what that means is that means you get one chance to launch the damn thing into space and you can't go and fix it once it leaves the ground, you can't fix it.

Yeah.

So you can't cut corners to get that thing into space. And my business partner and I actually met in engineering school and when we first came into the industry we knew that this was the case. We knew that extracts were actually at the time coming from outside of the US and not saying that all things from outside the US are bad, but there is an understanding and a responsibility that we have to actually do the due diligence to ensure that as a brand, that's, as a forward facing consumer brand that I'm giving my customer what I say I'm giving them. So for me there's been times where you know, we've moved a little bit slower, we've put more processes into the actual chain of getting things into, into consumers hands. But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to know that the integrity is always there and there's not going to be a customer that raises their hand that comes back to us that says this went wrong or that went wrong. Because to be honest, there's always the potential for that to happen. So there's a due diligence and a quality control that we've implemented since day one that has been rigorous and to be honest has probably made us lose out on some quick dollars at some times. Yeah, but I don't, I'm not here to have the, have the exit tomorrow where I'm like, oh, I just made my money and I'm going to move on. Yeah, I want wherever cured ends up tomorrow, the next day, in a year, in five years from now, if it's still in my control, wherever it ends up, I want to know that the foundation that, that company, that our company has been built on is one with true integrity and, and love for nature and its healing potential. Because if somebody is going to buy a CBD extract, they're going to buy a cannabis product, they're going to buy any product from a brand and we know that the truth is that, that it can actually help them in a way that might be outside of other things that they're putting in their body. And it actually has that potential if they buy a product that isn't built or served with integrity and it doesn't work, then really what that's doing is that's getting people to question nature as a whole. So that's the underlying message to me is nature is powerful, nature does have healing properties. Cbd, cannabinoids, hemp is nature. And if we're not actually taking our time and putting the integrity into our product, a customer that could actually benefit from it, who might be in dire straits in some form, I don't know, the potential is there. If I give them a product, if they purchase a product from us and it doesn't work like it's supposed to or actually has the potential to. I personally can't sleep at night. And that's just who I am.

Yeah.

I can't say that that's the case for every company out there, but there are some good companies out there doing that.

Sure.

And that's what we're always going to stand on.

Well, it makes me sleep really well at night. Number one, from, like a moral compass, I'm like, okay, I'm actually recommending stuff that I personally use. I'm feeling good about that. But then also to hear you talk about the quality standards and the way that you guys have taken a slow time think about a gardener, man. We garden everything in life. We garden our relationships, we nurture those. You're not going to have a quality relationship overnight. You're not going to be able to be a professional or a pro of anything unless you're in it for the long haul. Like, it's a testament to your work personally, the way that your mirror shows up in the company. And that's what I like. I mean, there's been so many opportunities. It was a hard decision to, like, which company is Wellness Force actually going to partner with? You know, like, who are we?

First time we talked, man.

Yeah. And I was like, okay. I just knew.

I was like, oh.

I checked in. I was like, it's going to be cured. Because, wow, you guys do such a great job. You're you as a person leading this company. Everything trickles down, right? And it's funny, like, your symbol is a triangle and it's a triangle with other triangles inside of it. What is going on with the triangle? And then why cured? I'm guessing. I'm thinking it's because we can use this to help cure what ails us. But what's the triangle all about?

Yeah, man. So the triangle, coming from a mathematician background, a scientific background, the triangle actually stands for change delta. That's what a triangle is. So the three triangles really centered upon each other is how we are going to spread that message out into the world. But it all starts here. It all starts with us. It all starts with the individual and it spreads out into the world of a whole. So if you look at our website, we really have. It says one mission and one purpose. But the mission is really to understand what we need, what our bodies need, and to check in and to be able to use the products and to give ourselves the feedback. And where does that go from just the individual? It goes into our close tribe. It goes into the people that are closest to us. So that's the second triangle. And then the third triangle is the entire world. So really we look at it as the, the, the distribution of a message from us and within us out into the people closest to us and then out into the entire world. And if you look at some of our other products that we've come out with in the last several. Well, it's been about a year now. The rise and Zen products, what those are really based on are three really important ingredients. One, functional mushrooms, two, cannabinoids, and three, a bunch of other adaptogen herbs. So everything at Cured is coming Back to the 3. It's coming back to the triangles that stand for change. And the change starts within us and spreads out to the people closest to us and then out into the entire world.

All right, Everybody go to wellnessforce.com cured right now and buy whatever product that aligns with your soul. Because the reality on this is, man, people don't buy what you do. I think it was Simon Sinek that said this in Start with why? One of the best books ever. We'll link that in the show notes. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. There's a million opportunities every day for people to buy whatever products they buy. We go to Amazon because we, like, trust it and it's easy. But kind of feels weird to me sometimes when I buy on Amazon because I'm like, I'm contributing to this Goliath that squashes people, you know, so when I, when I, when I tune into Cured, and this is why it means so much to me to have this conversation with you, you, God, Joe, the reason that you're doing things is so clear. It's so prevalent. And the way that people can use these tools to help themselves, it's just this reminder of who we actually are. And all these plants remind us of that. You know, whether it's CBD and hemp and whether it's marijuana, whether it's ayahuasca, whether it's San Pedro or peyote, like, all these plants, they just activate an inner knowing in us that's already there. And I think what's really powerful about what you're doing is you're doing it with integrity. And that is rare, my friend. This is why I really feel strongly about supporting you guys for this entire year, this 2020, so we can start seeing more clearly. We're so. We're so fogged right now as a society. There's so much pain and so much suffering and so much just things happening that just don't have to happen. They just don't have to happen like they're happening. And so the only way we're going to wake up to who we really are is if we actually practice this remembering process. And these tools help us to get there, man. And thank you for what you're doing, and thank you for trusting wellness for us to share your mission. And everyone is with you. Like, we all support you. We all know how hard it is to grow anything, whether it's a plant or a business. Right? So everyone listening, like, this is the one. If you've been searching, if you've been wondering or curious or maybe even overwhelmed, like, who do I go with? Go with Cured, because it's a company you can actually trust. And we covered a lot of ground, man, from your personal story to the way we can actually choose what we're going to ingest from a plant perspective. But what do we miss when it comes to rising above the overwhelm out there when it comes to cbd? Give us a little clarity there before we say goodbye.

Mm. So you know, when what matters most is taking the time to ask the questions. So what we've done here is we've equipped your listeners, we've equipped the community with some questions to ask. But what it really comes down to is giving ourselves, giving the people that are buying these products permission to ask more and more questions and to challenge us. Like, really, what I want is I want people to listen to this, and I want them to come up with more questions, and I want them to reach out to Cured, and I want to hear from them, and I want to answer those questions personally, and I want people to do that, whether they're going to select Cured or they're going to select any other brand out there, because that's what we deserve. That's what consumers as a whole deserve. And we're talking specifically about CBD here. But to get Past the overwhelm, allow yourself to just ask questions. Because living in a space of influencers and advertising and podcasts and everything that's in our face all day long, we forget to ask questions, we forget to be more curious and looping back to what we've already discussed, that's the most important thing to do here. And that's really going to clear the overwhelm. And to be completely honest, I think we're going to see a lot of these brands going away over the next year. And to be even more honest, I want to say that a lot of these brands that people are seeing out there, they're all coming from the exact same place. It's just one company that knows how to implement multi level marketing and really well, really well and really easily bring a product to market, whether it's through one brand or another. So, yeah, ask questions. Understand who you're buying from, who you're listening to and find us. Find me, Ask me questions. Ask you questions. That's the most important thing.

Well, one of the coolest things that I do in my life is I like to test stuff. You know, this concept of intelligence that we always talk about on the show. Intelligence, we gather, then we apply and we test. And then the most important one, man, is we embody, right? Like that's the cycle of intelligence application gathering and embodiment. If we're not doing those things, then it's really hard to have intelligence. Because intelligence doesn't mean you're smart. I know a lot of smart people that are not intelligent at all. And so the reason I'm saying this is that I'm going to post in this blog post. You're listening this. It's linked right below. If you're watching it on YouTube. I use the Oura ring for a month. And what was really cool is this ring tells me not only the quality of my sleep, but it also tells me the richness of my cycles of sleep. And what I noticed over a 30 day period is when I was doing the hemp, specifically the mint one, I just like the taste of mint, man. I don't know, it's just really good.

Peppermint is nice.

Peppermint is nice. It's refreshing. Here's the key though. You got to hold it. This is what I found. You got to hold it for like a full minute. You got to really just take some breaths there. Hold that under your tongue because that way it'll actually get in your system anyways. When I did this and the data reflected it, there was a 25% increase in my sleep quality, the richness of my sleep. So from a sleep perspective, I mean, yeah, we can supplement melatonin and we can do all these things, but I just like breathing and putting something on my tongue and it allows me to relax. So for the data analytical people, that's a big one. So go to the blog post, you can see where that's there. Now if you're more of the spiritual person and you just like Joe, you can go to the same blog and you can get these products. So but it's for both of us, right? We're half beast, half spirit. Some people are very logical, analytical, they want the data. And then some people, as Alan Watts talks about, they're just more goo. You know, there's prickles and goo. So whether you're a prickle or goo, this is the best product I've seen, bar none, period. I've had a lot of opportunities for other products. And Joe, thank you for what you do, man. Thank you for being an integrity. In an industry where it's slippery, you can sacrifice your integrity to cut corners, but you don't do it. And I think that's what's gonna mean your success in the long haul. So thank you for what you do, man. And where can people contact you specifically? I know you and your lovely lady have a podcast. I also know that you're leading this company like you're doing a lot, but where can people reach out to you?

Yeah, yeah, appreciate that, man. So my personal Instagram is Joseph Sheehy, last name s h e e h e y cured you can find at curednutrition on Instagram curednutrition.com and yeah, my wife and I have a podcast called the Jolo Show. We absolutely love the time we get to spend together, showing up and just having really, really deep and thought provoking conversations. Most of the time it's us. We also bring a lot of experts on that are in the plant medicine world and talking about the future of healing around psilocybin and all the lovely stuff in that world. So check that show out and just wanted to thank you, man. Appreciate everything that you're doing on Wellness Force, appreciate what you're doing and helping us with here at Cured. And I look forward to continuing to evolve and build this relationship because yeah, it's, it's special man. And like the reflection of, of what you've done for me and, and we would love to do and continue to do for you. It's, it's always going to be there, so thank you, brother.

Well, it's an honor. We live in this Monopoly game world where we're all, like, trading pieces and energy and all this fun that we get to have. And honestly, I was telling you this before we even record. It's, like, it's great to just do business with friends, because at least with friends, there's trust. And a lot of times in life, you know, when it comes to, like, what am I, what groceries am I gonna buy and what kind of car am I gonna buy, there's so much of a pain body around money and around the way people make their decisions that I really think we're returning home to just doing business, having conversations, and connecting with our friends again. And I think that's the side of technology that's actually meaningful, the one that brought you and I together. You know, if it wasn't for Instagram, man, we wouldn't even know each other. Right?

That's true.

So trust your intuition when it comes to all the different dist out there. Like, you know, if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment. If you have questions for Joe, be curious. And until we see you again, I'm wishing you love and wellness.

Thank you, brother.