We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Casey Angeley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Casey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.

The most impactful thing we do as a company is to operate a compassion program in which we get cannabis into the hand of patients who desperately need it but are not able to afford the medicine. We work with growers to source cannabis donations which we extract, package, and turn into our consumer driven products. We then donate these products to our retail partners through out the state who in turn donate the products to the patients that need them. The retailer get these products out to various groups such as cancer patients and veterans.

After seeing the ongoing need of many of these patients we have begun working directly with a couple of pediatric medical providers to provide some of their most needed patients with the medicine they will need for their treatment over the following year.

Some of the patients we have been supporting for a number of years. It has been nothing short of inspiring to see how the product we create drastically change their live. Seeing this is on patients and their families is what drives and inspires us as a team.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Founded by a Stanford trained oncology nurse, Emerald Bay Extracts is a cannabis business focused on creating orally consumed cannabis products for medical consumers. We specialize in a specific type of full-spectrum extract which is packaged into syringes and tablets for oral consumption. Patients suffering from ailments such as PTSD, tremors, and the effects of chemotherapy find relief from the products that we create.

At Emerald Bay we focus solely on making a specific type of cannabis extract called RSO. We have designed all of our equipment and process to make this single product. When producing RSO our goal is to capture all of the cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids present in the cannnabis plant and turn them into an orally consumable extract. Some studies have shown that it is the entourage effect of the different cannabinoids and terepens that provide the greatest medical benefit. This differs from most other cannabis extracts which focus on isolating as much as possible of a single cannabinoid, such as THC, and processing it to be more aesthetically appealing.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

The cannabis industry has been a bit of a roller coaster. We entered the industry shortly after legalization. We were the first company to receive the permits to operate in our city. At that time investor sentiment in the industry was very high. There was a lot of cash being thrown at all different kinds of business. The general industry trend was to spend it as fast as you could raise it. A few short years later capital in public and private markets is nearly non-existent. Price have collapsed while the industry is saddled with high taxes, excessive regulation and a strong black market.

Early on we decided to very conscious of our balance sheet. We pieced together capital we needed to get our manufacturing off the ground but we very quickly transitioned to a slower pace of growth funded through cash flow. We worked to structure our debt in favorable ways to us. Our largest piece of capital, which funded the buildout of most of our manufacturing facility, came from a client that loaned it to us and allowed for a payback in products that we produce. Structuring debt in this way had the side benefit of ensuring a stable order supply from the client for many years.

While raising minimal capital restricted our growth in the good times we have been far more prepared for the lean times with much smaller profits. By the time prices crashed in the market we had paid off all of our existing debt. This has allowed use our profits for growth rather than funding prior debts or large expenses. Many other business are being forced to drop their prices below cost just to bring in the capital needed to satisfy their debt obligations. For us this has turned out to be a better way to run a business.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

This is not exactly selling a business but more on not selling. As a relatively young company we went through multiple acquisition offers. The acquisitions would have brought my partner and I a significant cash and stock infusion and well as provided the company with large amounts of operating capital and expertise. We spent a significant amount of time and money putting both of the deals together. Ultimately in the end we walked away from both of them. One of the deals was stalling in the final hour and we took it as a sign to walk away. The second offer was great in all respects except we concluded that the acquirer would be good for our company, team, or consumers.

At the time these were hard decisions that weighed heavily on us. They were also painful decisions for us to make and at times felt like we were hit with bad luck. With the advantage of a looking back at these decisions years later it seems like the opposite, we made what turned out to be really good decisions but did not know it yet. Running the company the company has brought us prosperity and happiness. We have loved being able to build the brand, support our team and the patients that use our products.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.emeraldbayextracts.com
• Instagram: emeraldbayextracts