Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to John Autry. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
John, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How’s you first get into your field – what was your first job in this field?
I am a Texas hill country native who has been cultivating cannabis beginning in 1996. Since the early 2000’s I have been building and managing commercial indoor grows from 400 plants up to the largest facility of 20,000 square feet in Desert Hot Springs which totaled 8,000 plants and several thousand cuttings and mothers. I have been practicing an ice water extraction method since its early inception in 2001 and collaborated in the development of a low heat and pressure extraction yielding an extract called Rosin in the spring and summer of 2015. I have participated in several cannabis competitions through the years and collected several awards. One of the award winning products is our Salve. My father who played for the Pittsburg Pirates Baseball team when he was younger ended up developing a injury to his shoulder and continued to have pain and inflammation in that area and was encouraged to have surgery to help with the pain. So I started developing a salve to try and help relieve my dads pain issues. Fortunately the salve recipe allowed him to function with minimal pain and he was able to opt out of surgery. For me it was about helping people, providing relief naturally for the consumer with a clean product that really worked.
John, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Greg Autry. For many years I have been breeding cannabis plants and continue this practice to produce viable strains for my home state of Texas. My decades of hydroponic growing experience has led me to develop unique innovative growing methods that allow me to produce amazing terpene profiles and yields. I have consulted for multiple farms across the country while running my company Sweet Sensi CBD here in the Austin area that manufactures products and builds brands for hundreds of retailers and farmers across Texas. Our company Sweet Sensi CBD offers full-spectrum hemp products including topicals, pet products and what we are known for, our edibles. I have been called the Willy Wonka of the hemp industry because when you visit our facility you find yourself surrounded by sweet colorful gumdrops. We have many different edibles, our gumdrops that are unlike any gummy out there are our most popular. You can find them in flavors like Pineapple Mango, Peach, Passionfruit Guava and much more. We offer CBD gumdrops and our Elevated line which we have a Patent for. Our other sweets include Fruit Chews, Chocolate Truffles, soon to be launched, our Elevated Chocolate Bars, we have even produced CBD smores for a Hemp event once! Our topicals have helped so many people find relief with pain. One of our most popular among the health crowd is our Athletic Rub, allowing athletes and work out fans to find relief post activity. We also have a skin care line with lotion, soap and beard and body oil and of course being animal lovers we have our Dog Treats and Pet Tincture. All of these products I have created the recipe for spending a large amount of time in R&D with our ingredients and packaging and brand design. My wife and I do everything we can to use nothing but the highest quality ingredients, we are consumers ourselves and care about what we put in and on our bodies so naturally we would want our business to do the same. We have built a state of the art facility in Lakeway, Texas which includes our indoor hydroponic grow system, both low heat press and ice-water extraction methods we use and our manufacturing facility that produces small batch gourmet candies, tinctures, topicals and pet products. What really sets us apart from other Hemp companies in the industry is our extraction method. We are totally solvent free. And we do everything ourselves from breeding and growing the hemp, to extracting the oil and manufacturing the products. No other company is doing that, most the time they are buying their extract from out state or even country. The issue with extraction is the harsh solvents that are used in most processes. I was a part of the development of the Rosin Press extraction method and that is what my company uses to obtain all the beneficial oil from the hemp plant. The Rosin Press uses only low heat and pressure. We use the flower from our hemp plants, the flower is what contains the trichomes, that is what holds all the terpenes, flavonoids and cannabinoids. So there is no chemical manipulation of the plant, it is in its natural form when we press it and provides a clean natural extract. We believe that is why our products work and why we have the highest customer retention. We also focus on being a zero waste facility. I like to modify things to work better for what I need it to do and my wife and I can about our beautiful planet so we have built our grow facility to recapture all water and reuse it in a safe and efficient way. We grow our plants indoor with a system called Recirculating Deep Water Culture. The roots of the plants are submerged in a nutrient and oxygen rich water solution 24/7. This makes the nutrients available to the plant anytime they need it. And we use a nutrient and compost tea mixture all made organically in house so our plants get all the natural goodness as much as they need and when they need. The hemp plant knows what it is doing, we are here to simply provide those benefits in a clean and natural way. I love Cannabis and I love what I do because it truly helps people.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
Doing things right. Never cutting corners, or going against what you believe just to make a buck. Making sure the quality of the product in all aspects is up to your standards, what you would want from a high quality company.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
My experience. I’ve been cultivating cannabis for a long time, gone through many fails to find what works and what doesn’t. I know the plant well and I only want to provide what nature has provided us to help people find relief. And my wife would say my southern hospitality, we often have farmers, retail store owners, doctors, advocates for the industry out to tour our facility so they can see what it is we are striving to accomplish by setting higher standards in this market. The more we can work together the more we can help the customers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sweetsensiwellness.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetsensiwellness/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetsweetsensi
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sweetsensi2298
Image Credits
Donnie Boyd Photography, ultRae Photography