We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Tupper. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

I am a small business owner in the cannabis industry, and the most prolific challenge I encounter is multi-faceted and centers specifically around gender inequity and treatment of women, both who are working in this industry and potential consumers. This industry has been male dominated from the beginning, with little thought to how powerful women can be both involved on the business side AND as consumers with disposable income who make brand loyal purchasing decisions. The industry can feel predatory, networking events and conferences still feel masculine and uncomfortable, and with cannabis stigma still existing, this makes it difficult for women in this space. They don’t have brands, products, and events designed for them, they are still fighting for a foothold in this space. Being able to hear other women’s stories about their mistreatment by men in the cannabis industry futher fuels my passion for safe and comfortable space to be able to educate and learn about cannabis while in a judgement free space for consumption and experimentation. Combine this issue with the fact that women little to no chance to access to capital to scale a brand or business, and we’re locked out from the beginning.

I have been through poor partnerships with male owned and operated companies, horrific sales calls and meetings where I am consistently spoken down to or called “girl”, and have been taken advantage of in so many situations. This has led my business plan to dive into ways I can be impactful for other women in this space and hope to build a consumption and community event space that engages with all types of cannabis consumers. All are welcome, and we work with vendors and partners that align with our mission and values to create further economic impact.

Sarah, 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?

I have 20 years of food/beverage consulting, event planning, and hospitality experience. I am focused on creating unique and comfortable experiences for any guest that walks into one of my client’s events. As a lifelong cannabis user, I found myself interested in how I could be impactful in the recreational space here in Michigan. So I founded a brand that spoke to the women I felt like were being ignored – the women who is interested in learning more about cannabis, interested in incorporating other health and wellness aspects into her life, and is excited to learn about the benefits of cannabis from other women but wanted to start slow and purchase products from a women owned business. I distributed products throughout the state of Michigan for about a year, until I realized that my passion was actually on the consumer herself and not the products. There was some lessons learned along the way (poor business partnerships, always read the fine print on a contract, and don’t stray from your gut, it’s usually right amongst my top three pieces of failure advice!!) and I came out thinking about how I can blend my events and hospitality skill set, my passion for amplifying women’s voices and power, and my love of cannabis for my mental and physical health….so I started throwing events for women in my community and shortly after, I met my current business partner who was in the process of framing out a business plan for a community focused and cannabis friendly event space that embraces all consumers and can meet everyone where they’re at in their journey.

It’s interesting that where I live there are over 500 places to purchase cannabis legally, there are hundreds of greenhouses growing it, and there are dozens of different products but there is no space to consume it socially and without stigma. Add to the problem that cannabis events can be uncomfortable for women and are formatted in ways that are not conducive to social gatherings, aesthetic design, proper flow, and engaging content. So we’re building our own event space that will be able to offer classes, networking event, brand activations, co-working and meeting space, private culinary dinners, educational events, yoga, etc. If we are going to continue to work to normalize the use of cannabis, then we need to create spaces that showcase how it can be consumed just as normally as alcohol.

Ashe Lounge is for everyone – Ashe Lounge is dedicated to creating opportunities for women and minorities in the consumer space, the entrepreneurial space, and the entertainment and events community. We are proud to be building community-minded spaces to convene, connect, collaborate, and consume. And we are putting our money where our mouth is.

Ashe Lounge has only paid women and minority owned businesses since day one. For an industry that is male dominated, it can be extremely difficult to find both financial and moral support. Women are estimated to account for only 22% of executive positions in the cannabis industry, while people from minority groups represented just 13%. We plan on changing that as reflected in our current vendors and business plan.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

In my path to entrepreneurship, I have learned that the universe truly gives you what you need. I met Andrea Doyle, my business partner, after 6 months of soul searching and I was near the brink of giving up. These stories always start like this but it truly seems to align only at the moment that you are ready to quit. I had just spilt up my brand and my business partner quit one day, after a few months of empty promises of commitment. I was left to reconcile a failing brand, extricate myself from some partnerships, work with my legal team to protect my IP in case I was to pick back up in the future, and work with the IRS to fix some accounting mistakes that were made from my last partnership. I was a mess. It was a mess. It all felt like it was a mess.

We were set up on a coffee date by another women in the industry, and from there she presented me a business plan for Ashe Lounge. It focused on everything that I felt was lacking in this industry and after coming off of a roller coaster of experiences personally, I knew how important creating space is for women. I was back. And off we went to create a full calendar, where we were able to produce events in different states and markets, intentionally build our community as we focused on creating authentic and engaging events that ALL people would love, not only cannabis consumers. This allowed us to accurately gather data from our target audience, gave us practice with interfacing with large cannabis sponsors and marketing departments, and showed us what an incredible opportunity we had to build our own brick and mortar that could welcome all of these diverse groups.

Andrea and I are different in so many ways and that is what works for us. We don’t have anything to lose, we aren’t prideful and the most important thing we know is what we don’t know. It has allowed us to build a cohort of other women in different specialities that help guide and advise us. Because that’s how women work, when one of us wins, we all win. We are building our company for all of us.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is a beast and in the cannabis space, it’s even tougher. There are many hurdles and many different phrases, photos, and captions that will quickly give you a shadowban. We have been approached by dozens of these “marketing companies” that promise quick followers and utilize chatgpt and AI to generate content. We never went that route because that’s not us. And we live our brand every day.

We created a safe space for women to contribute their own stories (we allow them to anonymously contribute stories of instances that they have been discriminated against in this industry) and have created content that speaks to both what we want to learn about our community and what they want to learn about us. We are raw, honest, and real. There are many people that don’t like us on social media, but we tend to take that with a grain of salt. Anytime you are doing things differently than others, there is always backlash. Anytime you are calling out inequities, mistreatment, problems, and discrimination in powerful men it happens. Of course those in power are going to be irritated but we also know they’re sometimes afraid of women speaking their truth.

We keep our messaging and graphics uniform and we map out our partnerships with our event sponsors by creating custom social media assets for them to share so that our design stays consistent through all platforms. Most in the cannabis space do not have a strong brand voice or design, we have used our design skills to help our community find us. We create custom playlists that we share via social media, along with custom merch in limited drops. All of this has given us a high level of recognition here in the Midwest.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yoursarahjane.com / www.ashelounge.com
• Instagram: @your.sarah.jane / @ashelounge
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-tupper/