We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alexis Ward. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alexis below.
Alexis, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The Cat Pharm was born out of the idea to merge my passions with my experience. It has truly been a work in progress and has evolved many times, which I think is amazing, because we want our love of cats and cannabis to meet the people’s likes and interests. My background is finance and accounting, I spent the last 13 years as an accountant for a few different organizations and learned that I had a knack for operations. This afforded me the opportunity to not only strengthen my skills in accounting but also to experience how the whole of operations is connected. I truly believe in a whole of systems approach and being able to bridge gaps in the corporate world between departments, interests, and change management has become an invaluable skill. I, however, was getting burned out. Prioritizing was starting to become a challenge for me and I was, little by little, foresaking my family, myself, and my quality of life for a career. I’ve always had a strong work ethic and the ability to manage multiple hats, so I knew that it didn’t matter what job I had this was going to be a struggle. So I decided to focus my energy on something that belonged fully to me. I knew for a long time I wanted to be in the cannabis space, being in Texas has made that a little challenging, but I am proud of how the state has grown over the years with their understanding of what this means as an industry. Anyways, I thought I’d be a cannabis accountant, so I began working to build this brand which has been extremely beneficial to me and my understanding of how retail sites operate. But one day, as I was visiting with a friend, I was asked, how do you invision your life in the future. And the only thing I could say was, “I just want to smoke weed and play with kitties!” And this became the catalyst for what The Cat Pharm is growing into. I kept thinking of this ‘retirement plan’ and what I wanted it to look like, and my dream is a bed and breakfast with a farm, cafe, and cat sanctuary. This is what heaven looks like to me! So now we’re building into this dream. We know we are on a journey and we are extremely happy with the progress. Currently we are preparing to open a cat cafe dispensary in Austin, Texas!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I have been given the opportunity to skill stack in my career and for that I am grateful. I may be overly confident, but there are few things in the business environment that I have not had the chance to participate in or work on. So as the kids say, my toxic trait is I believe whole heartedly that there isn’t much I can’t do! I’ll try anything and really want more people to feel comfortable in this fearful space. With that said, I do perform some consulting/strategy work from time to time, but right now my focus is on building The Cat Pharm brand. We sell cbd products for pets, for people, catnip, and cat merchandise. Our store will foster adoptable cats that you can come visit for a fee, and adopt for a fee. We will also offer events such as cannabis and collage, kitty bingo, and chef designed prefix meals, serve foods (infused and non-infused). Our goal is to utilize cannabis as a way to promote animal welfare issues. We also donate a portion of our proceeds to supporting the cat community in Texas.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Absolutely. I think the one thing everyone getting into business for themselves needs to keep in mind is that YOU WILL have to let go of your expectations at some point in your journey. it can be humbling, but also rewarding, because in this space is where growth happens, where your brand can take shape, and where you meet your customer in the middle. At the beginning of 2022 I was in talks with opening our brick and mortar. The goal was to be the first cat cafe in the city. Things were looking really good, then I caught wind of another cat cafe opening up in the downtown area. I was bummed, one because I really wanted to be the first, and two because Cat People have to stick together. We are a small community and in no way did I want to create competition. We decided at this time to pause on opening and to focus on building out our product line. So many things cross your mind when you are in this situation, will there be room for another? Will this reduce our ability to create brand loyalty? Partnerships? But ultimately I was able to learn from this new cafe, we’ve built a strong relationship, and I know that when we open in the future we will support one another.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
This is a bootstrapped effort. All capital comes from my personal finances which makes it very scary and absolutely necessary to succeed! Have you ever wanted something so bad you can taste it?! I dream about this place. I spend all my time visualizing, problem solving, networking, and breathing The Cat Pharm to life. We are at a time now where we may need to seek outside resources, but I have some feelings I need to get over regarding control before we can have a successful partnership. I’ve put together investment plans, financial projections, pitch decks, etc, so we are ready if the time comes, but I’m hesitant to start. I think this is the conundrum that most creatives live in. And yes, while I’m business savvy, I do consider myself a creative. Overall, if I feel its in the best interest of the business we’ll pursue it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thecatpharm.com
- Instagram: @the_cat_pharm
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecatpharm
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-cat-pharm/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thecatpharm?si=WHVF6XJLbuCQ5Q2V
Image Credits
N/A all my personal photos