We recently connected with Elisabeth Mack and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Elisabeth thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?

I followed my heart and used all of my prior career knowledge to create a needs based business to help others. After I crashed my bicycle in 2014, I was introduced to CBD as a healing option by my chiropractor. I was surprised, because I had been in healthcare for 30 years and no one told me that this is legit. But it worked – better than anything conventional care had offered me! I used CBD topicals, tinctures, and oils, and I healed. As a long time nurse, I knew I needed to help others so I created Holistic Caring to be the bridge between conventional and cannabis medicines in 2015. Fast forward to today – I have created online educational programs for patients and professionals globally on how to heal, and we’ve built a free private network to host our programs, podcasts, and support groups along with an interactive feed to learn, grow, and develop. After merging with The Green Nurse, we are now called Holistic Caring & The Green Nurse, and we showcase everything we do with our award winning Podcast & Clinical Conversations. Check out The Green Nurse Podcast on YouTube and catch up with our work!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Have you ever thought about using medicinal cannabis or CBD for a health concern? How about for a parent, or even your grandparent? Did you know that cancer patients using medical cannabis have a 3:1 advantage over those who don’t in healing? Did you know that dementia symptoms like agitation, insomnia, and anxiety can be reduced with full spectrum CBD and minor cannabinoids – without the use of THC? Well…these are the questions we answer!
With our sister company www.BloomHemp.com we offer USDA Organic hemp CBD products on a national level, and we complement that with free emailed care plans and a free nurse line for our clients. When people need to dig deeper into cannabis medicine using THC, the www.holisticcaring.com programs and coaching come into play. We call this our ecosystem and we practice “Patient Centered Care”, something healthcare has talked about for 40 years but fails to deliver. I had to step away from conventional care to create it!
Now we are training other nurses on how to discuss, educate, and support patients who want to try CBD & cannabis as a therapeutic option and we offer CEUs for all of our programs since we are a Provider for the California Board of Registered Nursing. I have called myself courageous because I color outside the lines – because it is needed! I also call myself the Wounded Healer, one who healed herself, who is using that passionate energy and strong foundation to help others.
I have been an RN since 1987, and spent 20 years inside insurance companies since finishing my MBA in Healthcare Administration in 1996. When I created Holistic Caring & The Green Nurse in 2015, it was truly to change the world – and the paradigm of healthcare!

Let’s move on to buying businesses – can you talk to us about your experience with business acquisitions?

Yes! We purchased www.BloomHemp.com in May of 2023 to complete our ecosystem of programs, coaching, and vetted products. We ran USA operations for an Australian firm for 18 months prior to that, building a global clinic and formulating products for them…until funding stopped. Buying Bloom Hemp gave us the ability to keep going – but it has been an uphill battle! Since then, it seems the sky has fallen on the CBD market. People don’t realize CBD is a medicine, they just want to feel good – but it is medicine, and we help dial it in with our free nurse line and emailed care plans. The other issue with the timing was that CBD is unregulated and people began to distrust vendors for false claims and mislabeling. We solve for that with our page of COAs – certificates of analysis on every product by the batch. We’re still trying to recoup our investment, but we are in it for the long term, and appreciate the chance to tell the world that we are the ‘good guys’ and that doing business with us is worth it because we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons. We truly care.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Patience. I have thought many times that just because we offer exactly what people need in the way that we do, that we’d have people lining up for our products and services. But REC happened instead…the recreational market for cannabis. Now the MED or medical discussion has almost ended, and it is frustrating to know we can help people but not garner the audience we need to do so.
Patience therefore is critical, and the faith to keep working diligently to build the systems that are needed for the medical cannabis industry while we wait. We’re keeping the lights on, but we need help with the message so that we can afford to wait…because one day, people will wake up, and realize conventional care does not offer what they need to heal. More pills and procedures are not the answer, holistic health coaching and CBD is a better option!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://holisticcaring.com/professional-programs/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thegreen_nurse/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGreenNurses
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/holistic-caring/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Green_Nurses
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO9UhH3t0sDi5SmdeI1Exyw
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/holistic-caring-palm-springs?osq=holistic+caring
• Other: https://network.holisticcaring.com/

Image Credits

personal photos with my partner Sherri Mack at various cannabis healthcare events.