DTC POD #257 - Stefany Nieto, Gwella & Mojo: Building For The Upcoming Psychedelic CPG Boom
What's up, DTC pod? Today we're joined by Stephanie Nieto, who is the founder and CEO of Guella. So, Stephanie, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about Gwella Mojo and all the stuff you guys are up to.
Stefany Nieto 00:01:02 - 00:01:21
Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. So Guella is our parent company. It's more of the editorial content where we provide trip supplies, well, trip support tools as well as guides. While Mojo is our flagship product, our functional mushroom gummies that elevate mood, focus and energy for five plus hours.
Awesome. So yeah, we're really excited for this episode because I feel like the psychedelic sort of space is becoming a really interesting hot topic. I know there's been a whole bunch of research around the space and obviously there's natural pairing with editorial content, CPG, all this sort of stuff. So why don't you, for our listeners who may not be so familiar, why don't you just give us a landscape of what functional mushrooms are, what research is maybe going on that hasn't passed or maybe will pass in the future? Just what the current state of affairs and what all the hype around mushrooms, functional mushrooms, normal mushrooms, not normal mushrooms are.
Stefany Nieto 00:02:04 - 00:02:40
Yeah, I like to think of it as the psychedelic renaissance. Like it's coming back. It's not that it hasn't happened in the past, but I think it got a resurgence due to the Pandemic. People couldn't travel abroad and so they traveled within. And so really Psychedelics kind of popped off because of it. And as a result of psychedelics becoming more popular, so did functional mushrooms. So of course, psychedelic mushrooms, they tend to have hallucinogenic effects, while functional mushrooms typically will not. Functional mushrooms are more adaptogenic in nature.
Stefany Nieto 00:02:40 - 00:03:24
So typically, they will target different parts of your body and improve it. Depending on either the individual mushroom itself or depending on the adaptogenic properties, they will basically find areas of improvement within you and work on improving them. And so that can be anything like energy, focus, mood, sleep, anxiety, like your sex life. It can be so many different things. There's thousands on thousands of different mushrooms out there. And as the pandemic kind of took off and people were looking for ways to not explore themselves, both through psychedelics and otherwise, adaptogenic, functional mushrooms really found their place in improving people's day to day life, as well as providing them with support in terms of their immunity.
Got it. And why don't you give us a little background about yourself? How did you end up in this ROle? How did you end up getting so excited about the space? Why don't you just tell us a little bit about your own background, for sure?
Stefany Nieto 00:03:35 - 00:04:15
So I actually used to build greenhouses in the Arctic, completely Different world. And I did that for about eight years. And then the Pandemic hit, and I realized this thing that I had built and Loved, and It was my baby. And basically my personality wasn't Necessarily who I was Anymore. And that was hard. That was Hard to come to terms with. And so I took some Time to really just Understand where I wanted to go, who I wanted to Be, who was I? Beyond my company, which I think entrepreneurs can definitely struggle with. And, well, it was actually friends of mine that brought up the fact that I love drugs.
Stefany Nieto 00:04:15 - 00:05:01
That was my hobby. And not just obviously taking them, but talking friends through them, researching them, figuring out different stacks, and kind of biohacking through them. It was just a pastime of mine. And so I kind of asked myself that question, like, how does one build a career in drugs without being underground? Because I didn't want to be underground, although I did consider it for a hot second. And really what that came to was the psychedelic space. It still is emerging, but at the time, I didn't know anybody in it. So I kind of just went on LinkedIn, reached out to a bunch of people, started meeting people who are actually starting companies. In the mean again, I spent eight years building greenhouses in the Arctic.
Stefany Nieto 00:05:01 - 00:05:37
I was the not for profit social venture type of person. And so when I was meeting companies that really were more focused on the profitable side of psychedelics, it really didn't align with my own brand values, like personal brand values. And so I ended up meeting my now co founder, Pete. And he kind of had the same vision of I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great to make profit. It's great to be able to keep the lights on. That's not what I'm saying. But we had this kind of more grandeur's vision of bringing accessible psychedelics to communities. So, you know, we kind of partnered up and brought together Guella and Mojo.
And why don't you give us a little bit of context and background about why now is such an exciting time for psychedelics, functional mushrooms, et cetera. I know there's been some amazing research that's been coming out of major institutions like Johns Hopkins and all this sort of stuff where people are really starting to get excited, like you were mentioning, not just in the business space, but everything. There's VCs that are excited about it, there's consumers that are excited about it. And it just seems like you even hear rumblings of potential legalization at some state levels in the near future. So why don't you just give us a quick catch up on what the heck is going on and how it's been happening?
Stefany Nieto 00:06:27 - 00:07:11
Absolutely. I mean, psychedelics really again popped off during the pandemic. A lot more research started being, well, not only completed, but also published, and people started getting the sense that, oh, legalization is on the horizon. Now, I am excited about psychedelics, but I don't think legalization is like around the corner. Every single time a state or a city decriminalizes, whether it's in the US or Canada, all of a sudden there's this repercussion right afterwards where they take ten steps back. In Canada, there was a bunch of licenses provided to decisions, I think, last year or the year prior to 2021, and then they were revoked about six months later. Right. And so on.
Stefany Nieto 00:07:11 - 00:07:35
One end, the reason to be excited about the psychedelic space in general is because of the decriminalization efforts that are happening and hopefully legalization will occur and also all the money being poured into research to hopefully kind of push for legalization, however, that may look like depending on states by states, country by country, et cetera. But I think it's good to be cautiously optimistic, which is partially why we came out with Mojo.
Right.
Stefany Nieto 00:07:36 - 00:07:53
We wanted a legal way to kind of get the benefits of micro dosing without having to go into the underground because it's such a, I guess, shaky ground for now. There has been movement, but again, ten steps forward, play steps back. So, yeah, people are still figuring it out.
Yeah. And I think that's an important distinction that you make about legalization versus decriminalization. Right? There's a lot of steps that are going to have to happen before something like that would get to fully legal. But in that vein, why don't you also give us a quick overview on how some of the people in the space are tackling this? Right? Like you hear about VCs making investments into the space, you guys are clearly going your own way. So with all the talk of call it psychedelics, mental health, et cetera, what are some of the ways in which people are maybe building into these opportunities? While it still isn't clear whether things are going to continue or on this path, although they look like they are, but what are some of the ways that people are being creative and really going full speed on the space like you had alluded to in a more white hat above ground as opposed to an underground sort of way?
Stefany Nieto 00:08:51 - 00:09:40
There's a lot. I feel like so many people have really specific niche psychedelic startups that I've been seeing. You have the medical angle, but that's split up into a million different things, whether it's sexual health, mental health. Within mental health you have a bunch of niche categories as well, depending on what people have been experiencing. You have the clinical side in terms of opening up clinics. You have the people that are. It's not just like psychedelics as like one type of psychedelic, but the various types and going down those routes. You have people that are looking at cultivation and people who want to kind of prime themselves to be suppliers of psychedelics for clinics, clinicians, eventually lifestyle brands and more consumer focused brands.
Stefany Nieto 00:09:40 - 00:10:22
You have people like us who are doing the consumer focused brand aspect. You have people that are becoming psychedelic guides despite the fact that it's not legalized yet but are entering that space. You have people creating psychedelic courses. There's just so many. There's just so many people are really getting creative with the space because there's so much opportunity with what psychedelic can do in terms of bettering the day to day and long term effects on individuals. I didn't even scratch the surface of how many opportunities there are. But yeah, there's a lot of creativity and even media plays on the psychedelic space. There's just so many an event I could go on and on.
Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's like when something like that emerges, you've got all the different use cases that go beyond just product and brand and then it goes into different use cases and it's really exciting to see. And which leads me into my next question then, Ramon, I'll definitely hand it over to you is you guys clearly are taking a different route than a lot of different brands that might be dabbling in the space. Like you said, you guys went into editorial trip guides and content as well as a product. So how did you find yourself in that space? I guess why don't you just walk us through how you guys thought about your go to market and what product lines and what initiatives made sense for you guys? Gwella and Mojo, to work on first.
Stefany Nieto 00:11:14 - 00:12:08
Gwella and Mojo were really built as a solution for things that we wanted individually as people. That's really what it came down to, and it's a lot of it, how we built. That's not to say that it's not a smart strategy, but to be really transparent. We wanted guides and how to blogs and trip support tools that weren't available to us when we started exploring the world of psychedelics. And then for Mojo, for a lot of people taking psychedelics, finding, like, it's kind of a scary, sketchy thing. And so we wanted to be able to bring a product to market that people could try and feel the effects and benefits that microdosing would provide. And so in terms of how they kind of came about, Mojo came. Well, they kind of came about the same time, but Mojo originally was one of our co founders.
Stefany Nieto 00:12:09 - 00:13:05
Well, kind of formula. It was more of like a natural Adderall when he was still in school to help him get through university. And so using that base formula, we tweaked it to make it more of a microdose. So beyond just focus, we added the energy lift as well as the mood lift. And so that's kind of where Mojo came from. Again, more of the accessible psychedelics aspect. And then Guella was kind of formed at the same time we've been adding things to it. I would say Guella is like a labor of love, of things that we wish we had when we were first figuring out psychedelics, and we're still adding to it all the time, but it really was just okay, what are the questions we get from friends, from family, when they're starting to get into the space? And how can we make that more accessible to People? And so, Yeah, a lot of the blogs that you'll see on there, or our dosage calculator, or Even the wiki of different types of Mushrooms, these are just Questions We've had Or have Been Asked to us.
Stefany Nieto 00:13:05 - 00:13:09
And then we find the Information and try to put it out there for everybody.
Ramon Berrios 00:13:10 - 00:14:00
So I have no experience with this, and I'm Curious how with MAriJuana for example, you have SaTIVA Indica. How does this work for Mushrooms In Terms of. We want to add energy Boost, a Creativity Boost. How are these Strains different? I've recently been seeing Aubrey MArcus from on it, just like he's going all in on ayahuasca. And so does this fit into the same category of Psychedelics? But let's go back to the first question, which is how is this different in terms of strains and all of that? And how Is this Different Than the other Options Of MiCRO Dosing Mushroom Brands that might be out there?
Stefany Nieto 00:14:00 - 00:14:53
That's a big question. Let's start at the beginning. Psychedelics are not just PsilocyBin Mushrooms, or Shrooms, As People like to call them. Psychedelics are a classification of different types of Hallucinogenics, right? So you have things like ayahuasca, you have LSD, you have PSilocybin, you have Ibogaine. There's more to kind of Explore now within that realm, you have different strengths. So ayahuasca, you will probably trip for more than 24 hours, I would say, on average. But a shrew trip can last as little as like four to 5 hours if you do some Lemon teching, which I can also get into, or typically it's more like eight to 9 hours. LSD typically eight to eight to 9 hours.
Stefany Nieto 00:14:53 - 00:15:32
DMT is like 15 minutes. But different types of Strengths, different types of experiences. And that also depends on different types of Strains that you have within those categories, right? And so similar to Cannabis, where you have, let's say SaTiba, as like your overall category, let's say. I call Satiba Psilocybin Mushrooms. Those are the categOries. Within those categories, you have different strains, right. And typically for psilocybin mushrooms, at least most of the time, when people try psilocybin for the first time and they don't really know what they're ordering from their local dealer, they typically get golden teachers. That's like the standard.
Stefany Nieto 00:15:33 - 00:16:36
But there's so many more beyond that. We do have a wiki on the website in terms of different types of mushrooms that we know about, have heard about, et cetera, and we're constantly adding to it. But they are grown and the same way that you would do farming for the different types of fruits and vegetables, et cetera, that you like and what you like about them, and you breed them for that same kind of deal, but with psilocybin mushrooms. And so some of them might make you more laughy, some of them might make you more visually colorful, some of them might make you more pensive and typically you'll get those descriptions whenever you're ordering, of course, depending on when and where you're ordering from. When I started taking shrooms and stuff, I had no idea what it was ordering. I was like, yes, I would like shrooms. And at the time I was probably just getting golden teachers, which are again, very standard. But now that I've kind of Gotten more into the space, it is fun to kind of Understand different types of mushrooms that are Available and Trying them and figuring out how they actually interact with my own tolerances.
Ramon Berrios 00:16:36 - 00:17:11
Yeah, we'll make sure to add that Resource and article to the show notes. I'm going to ask questions here. As somebody that is interacting with buying this online for the first time, what is it that you're selling? How can you then sell it online if it's illegal to buy mushrooms, right? I assume it's like a certain dosage level. And then what can the consumer expect by doing this? Are they just getting all the health benefits without the hallucinogen? How does that work?
Stefany Nieto 00:17:11 - 00:17:50
So mojo does not have psilocybin in it. We only have functional ingredients, nootropics and adaptogens. So these are ingredients that you could find in natural health food. Like, we just found a really good balance for them. So we're on Amazon, we're in stores, we're very legal, and that's kind of what makes us special. We are legal and that's because of our patent pending formula at the moment. So that's the difference between us and others. With that said, how do you know what you're buying when you're buying online? A lot of it is similar to when you buy a supplement or other types of products.
Stefany Nieto 00:17:50 - 00:18:24
A lot of it is trying it out or asking a trusted friend. Guella is a dear trusted friend. Like, what should I order? And I'm always happy to give advice. But what I've started noticing with these online brands that are in the underground and are selling psilocybin, which I think is really cool, is that they are adding in adaptogenic nootropics and other types of ingredients into their mixes with psilocybin. With that said, psilocybin isn't for everybody. For me, when I take psilocybin, I get the headache and the stomach ache. I'm just more susceptible to it. And so when I take Mojo, I don't get that.
Stefany Nieto 00:18:24 - 00:18:31
With that said, I do take know. But to answer your question, Mojo is completely legal. No psilocybin in it.
Ramon Berrios 00:18:32 - 00:18:42
And is there a path to lease resistance of selling it through retail outside of DDC, is it easier to get to sell it through retail?
Stefany Nieto 00:18:42 - 00:19:29
No, I guess it depends on what type of retail you're going for. Alternative shops, your cannabis shops, your delta eight shops, these type of places, they're like, hell yeah, you have a microdose, let's do it. Don't ask too many questions. Where you're trying to get into, like, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, they're much more like, why the hell does your product say microdose on it? And so it's really leaning into the type of verbiage that the consumers in these type of retail locations will understand. So, for example, one of the things that we're considering for 2023 is packaging in Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and these type of places. The benefits are, it's still benefits of microdosing. But instead of saying micro dosing, it's more leaning into brain boosting. Productivity, energy, focus, mood lift.
Stefany Nieto 00:19:29 - 00:20:00
Right. Versus perhaps maybe something that's in a Delta eight store or cannabis shop. Maybe. We have, our packaging has a giant mushroom on it, and it says mushroom gummies and it says microdosing. It's talking to the consumer based on what they're likely to understand and want in these type of different retail locations. With that said, in this type of illicit marketing, regardless, it is hard to figure out what you can, can't say what they like, don't like. It's been a lot of trial and error for us.
Yeah, that's a really interesting part of it as well about the messaging. Right? Like, I take Reishi mushroom, for example, as a supplement. I take it every day. And if you look at the supplement and what it's selling, it's like a totally different thing. It's like there's nothing about micro dosing. It's like you would just get a health supplement. Anything else that you're taking, and it's great for immunity and heart health and longevity and all that good stuff. But it's just really fascinating about how you're thinking about these things and understanding that retailers have different expectations.
And maybe there's a scenario in which you kind of split out and fragment different product lines that market to different customer personas under the roof of one underlying brand. One interesting thing that you had mentioned that I want to get into, and then I do have a couple other questions on the product side of things, is you mentioned you guys have a patent pending formula. So for a CBG founder that's especially working in an emerging space like this. And you guys are part supplement, part emerging thing. You have different benefits. How do you think about patents? How does that process work? What did you guys do? What are you patenting? Why don't you talk to us a little bit about that whole process for sure?
Stefany Nieto 00:21:18 - 00:22:14
So we are patenting a portion of the formula that's kind of our secret sauce. And why Mojo works So well, why we did it. We thought it would assist with our overall raises, having that IP in the product itself, the process, I mean, really submitting basically everything that's in our product, the quantities, the reasons, the studies, et cetera, to a lawyer. And they put it together in terms of is it worth it? I don't know. Would white do it again? I don't know. When it comes to, I think CPG and D to C, it's so easy to rip off somebody's product. I think what really makes you stand out is the brand that you've built and the community size that you've built. And so I think having a patent pending sign there, it definitely deters people in terms of trying to rip you off.
Stefany Nieto 00:22:14 - 00:22:29
Will it deter them completely? Probably not. And that's why we're focusing so hard on just building our brand and making it recognizable and also building a community of trusted, loyal fans who can tell us, hey, these people are ripping off, like, by the way, and we can try to take action.
That's really cool. And then just going back to that other piece like you were talking about community, right. Clearly, by putting together all the different resources, for example, around trips and different strains and education, because this is an emerging space, it clearly gives you guys some sort of thought, leadership and presence. So can you just talk, whether it's like anecdotally or from a data perspective, like how you've seen the two kind of go hand in hand as you're building the brand from the ground up and how the editorial that you've done, how it creates maybe a flywheel for the rest of the business.
Stefany Nieto 00:23:07 - 00:23:38
Yeah. Mojo speaks to consumers that either are looking for alternatives to psychedelics or they're just looking for the benefits. Energy, focus, mood in a convenient form. Doctor, the gummy. Right. Guella speaks to people who want to do psychedelic. They're actually two separate type of consumer groups. That's not to say that people that go to the Guella website don't buy Mojo, but that's not the reason that we built it out.
Stefany Nieto 00:23:38 - 00:24:03
The reason we built it out is in the future, should legalization occur for psychedelics and we come out with our own psychedelic line, then we have built a brand that people recognize in the psychedelic space. And people who understand the benefits of Mojo. If they walk into a psilocybin shop, for example, and they see Mojo on shelf, it's like, oh, I know that band or brand. I saw them at Joe's. Right.
The basic play then is like, you've got two sides of this coin. On one side, you're saying for the psilocybin community, we're going to be able to build into that community, provide resources, help out. So should there be a time that this stuff does get legalized and we can scale those things, we'll be able to do that. And on the other side of the business, it's let's build out all the infrastructure to produce, distribute through retail, have our CPG arm ready to go. So that should this click out, boom, you can plug into both and kind of maximize that impact pack. And if that doesn't happen, even if it's over ten years, 20 years, whatever it is over that time frame, you're still building out purposeful businesses in both of the spaces. And it just so happens that if things should progress in the right way, you guys will be really well positioned from both a production and distribution side of point of view as well as a content and brand point of view.
Stefany Nieto 00:25:03 - 00:25:04
Exactly.
Ramon Berrios 00:25:04 - 00:25:15
So are these two different teams? How is this distributed? So are the editorials the same people that are in your team, the people that are writing all this stuff and everything?
Stefany Nieto 00:25:15 - 00:25:38
Yeah, that's my co founder, Pete, a lot of the time. That's him kind of just going ham at like 10:00 p.m. Figuring out different things that we might get asked, or that we have been asked, or that our team has asked in our. We have a slack channel of different types of topics that we might be interested in. But, yeah, we're pretty hacky with it when it comes to building this stuff out.
Ramon Berrios 00:25:38 - 00:25:47
So I'm just so curious on this. Does the majority of the effort go to Guella, or is it split in terms of resources?
Stefany Nieto 00:25:47 - 00:26:00
MOjo, I would say. I mean, running a CPG and D to C brand, that's where the time goes, right? Editorial content, a lot of the time. It just takes a really good idea and a relatively good writer.
Ramon Berrios 00:26:00 - 00:26:00
Right?
Stefany Nieto 00:26:00 - 00:26:11
So I would say majority of our efforts on Mojo, since we have to deal with majority of our customers and product innovation and the website and international orders, and there's just much more there.
Ramon Berrios 00:26:11 - 00:26:32
Yeah, I could imagine. And how has the community received dojo? Is the growth faster than you guys expected? Is it a little bit slower because people are actually waiting for the legalization? What has it been like to grow Dojo?
Stefany Nieto 00:26:35 - 00:27:21
When we started, we targeted the wrong consumer segment, and so that was slim moving, and then we went back to the drawing table, figured out who are our actual customers, relaunched it, and then we beat our sales by our forecasted sales by 56% in the first month. And things have been growing, scaling really nicely since then. 2022 was our first full year in market. As I mentioned previously, it's two different audiences. So the people that are buying Mojo, it's an alternative to psychedelics. For whatever reason, they want an alternative, but it's also just for the benefit themselves. And it's things like the energy for a good workout, a mood lift for a shitty day. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear on them here.
Stefany Nieto 00:27:21 - 00:27:37
Just like, what benefit will help them on their day to day life? And so they're not necessarily waiting for legalization. They're just testing different products that provide them with these benefits, and Mojo just happens to have the benefits that they want in a very convenient manner.
Got it. No, Stephanie, that makes a whole bunch of sense. And then I think the next question I have is just kind of getting more into the psychedelic side of things. It's like, how do you see this market kind of progressing from the consumer point of view? Right. Obviously, I'm sure in certain pockets, the pandemic was a nice accelerant for mushrooms, but I still think if we were to compare, call it like cannabis versus mushrooms, there's still a lot more stigma around mushrooms. I don't think people are as familiar with how it works, what it does. How do you see consumer education playing out over the next several years? Call it. And as well as the branding and the use cases and all that kind of stuff, right.
Because I feel like maybe in the 70s, people are like, oh, take some mushrooms and go to a rock concert, and there hasn't been a real format to consume the substance. How do you see that evolving, and what do you think we'll see from that in the future?
Stefany Nieto 00:28:45 - 00:29:38
So taking psychedelics isn't like smoking a joint or something. When you do a macro dose, it's very much something that you do, not on a regular cadence. Right. I like to say I take psilocybin when the plant calls to me, which I know sounds a little hippie dippy because it's just not a regular occurrence thing. And so the way I think it'll play out, I think governments will probably limit macro doses, at least at the beginning, to probably the medical side, kind of like medical marijuana. With that said, I think that eventually those limitations will soften and the risk will be put into consumers hands. With that said, I think yes, there will be brands that have macro doses. They'll probably partner with retreats and other type of things for people to take them.
Stefany Nieto 00:29:38 - 00:30:50
In terms of use cases and education, I think people are understanding how it can help support your mental health. I think that's like a big thing that's come out of the pandemic. And in terms of just day to day personal education, I think that all of them coming out and all of so many different publications posting on their socials about, oh, this helped cure somebody's addiction to cigarette, this helped somebody's alleviate somebody's depression, all these positive benefits and breaking the cycle of different things in mental health, I think people will start to understand more and more how it can play out and at least get curious enough to research how can I take psychedelics? What is it good for in terms of the business opportunity? I think that a lot of brands will probably come out with their own micro doses because that's something that you can take. Well, not every single day. There's the standards protocol. What is it, three days on, two days off or four days on, two days off? Something like that. And so I think that's where people are going to be creating because that's a recurring revenue maker in contrast to macro doses, which again, it's like once a quarter and that's even too regular for me. Right.
Stefany Nieto 00:30:51 - 00:31:15
So I think that's how it's going to play out. But again, you're going to have all these other offshoots in the psychedelic space, like the guides, the clinicians, the clinics, the events, the retreats. There's just going to be so many different offshoots from psychedelics that help support your trips or help support even just the culture that I think will just explode whether legalization happens or not. I mean, it's already going.
Yeah. And I feel like such a big component of it will also be around getting the dosing. Right. Like you were saying, there's a difference between a micro dose and a macro dose and someone who isn't familiar with the space. They could be totally different experiences. Right. And then like you said, there's all these different strains and it almost takes me back to like, I'm just thinking about it even when I was in high school or college and people would be talking about mushrooms, it's like someone gets a bag of random mushrooms, it's like, how do they know even what they're taking and what they want to be doing and what they're trying to achieve from a mental health perspective or anything? I think the education and layer around this is going to be so important because there's so many consumers who might be scared to jump into those waters, as they probably should be if they don't know what they're doing and they don't know exactly what they're getting into. So I think it is really important to be able to, even for you guys and what you're doing at Guella, to be able to provide that resource, to be able to start being like, hey, these are what the mushrooms are, and here's what you can expect.
And this is what you should know about your trip, because otherwise it's just a total random shot in the dark. And these are like very powerful substances as well, right?
Stefany Nieto 00:32:40 - 00:33:10
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's kind of the content that we have on Guela, just a lot of the how to's and stuff that we wish we had known. With that said, there's also an organization called Fireside, and they kind of are a 1800 all the time 24/7 hotline for if you're tripping and you kind of need support and you don't want to call anyone because who wants to do that, you have fireside that will walk you through your trip. And I think more kind of educational support pieces and organizations will start to pop up as decriminalization and legalization takes hold.
So what's next for you guys in terms of focus? In terms of Gwella and Mojo? Is it just kind of focus on both and continue to provide amazing resources and scale up your supplement infrastructure? What are you guys really focused on in the next year, in 2023?
Stefany Nieto 00:33:31 - 00:34:28
For us, on the psychedelic side, it's creating relationships and partnerships with folks in the space. That way, if legalization does occur, we are ready, set, go in terms of launching product lines in the future. But when it comes to our non psychedelic space, aka Mojo and overall supplement side, I'm actually doing a bunch of customer interviews right now to try and figure that out. There are things that we think we are really interested in, whether that's different form factors or different use cases, we're just going back to our community being like, what do you want us to come out with? What would benefit your life to be decided at the moment, I foresee different use cases. I foresee maybe some fun limited time form factors and then just way more partnerships. We actually just went to international in October, and so now we're starting to play that international game and trying to do partnerships that help get our name out abroad.
And speaking of international, what's the international landscape for? Well, for mushrooms, it's supplements. So there's different health regulations in different countries and areas. But from a psilocybin perspective, where do you see this headed? Where does the US stack up compared to legalization progress or progress towards it in various different countries around the world?
Stefany Nieto 00:34:56 - 00:35:36
I mean, the US in comparison to Canada and the EU, I would say, is moving quicker than either of the other options because of how many cities have started decriminalizing. So I think that the US will get there quicker. I assume Canada will be like, wow, you guys did it. Okay, cool. We'll do it too, because we copycat everything. EU is a lot stricter on basically everything, whether it's drugs or functional products, natural health products, et cetera. I think it'll take a little bit longer, but again, it's anybody's game, really. Right now, you're guessing as good as mine.
Ramon Berrios 00:35:36 - 00:35:44
I was looking at Mojo's website. What is the difference between the regular strength and extra strength, other than the obvious that one is more potent than the other?
Stefany Nieto 00:35:44 - 00:36:37
That's really all it is. It's about two and a half times stronger. Regular strength for us are for people that have lower tolerances to stimulants, things like energy drinks or caffeine or any type of stimulant. We find that people that are probably under the age of like 45 to 50, because they're more used to stimulants, they tend to like extra strength a little bit more, and they tend to find it works better for them. In contrast to folks kind of beyond, I would say, 45. They didn't grow up with as many stimulants as we have, and so they tend to like regular strength a little bit better. With that said, we're actually doing some R and D into a super strong mojo that would not come out in a 20 count. And, yeah, we're kind of doing some R and D into that space and seeing if that's something that we'd want to launch later the year.
No, this has been very cool. Well, thank you, Stephanie. We just want to thank you for coming on, sharing all that information with us, and catching us up to speed on both the functional mushroom psilocybin sort of space. It's a really exciting space to be, especially with all the overlap between D to C and CPG. And you guys seem to have done a really amazing job in terms of being able to cultivate the content side as well as the product side. For our listeners who are tuning in and are interested in checking out and learning more, where can they follow along with you guys as well as learn more about Gwella and Mojo for sure.
Stefany Nieto 00:37:13 - 00:37:37
Again, thank you for having me. It's been great in terms of following our story. Mojo Shop at the bottom on the right you'll find all of our socials, TikTok, Instagram and so on in terms of gwellamusrooms.com. Again, all socials at the bottom. Lots of blog content on there and if they want to connect with me, psych or psych on literally any platform.
Ramon Berrios 00:37:37 - 00:37:40
Awesome. Thank you Stephanie, thank you.