Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shayda Torabi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Shayda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I think the best ideas come out of necessity and need, and my story is one of turning lemons into lemonade. In 2015 I was in a car accident, I was hit by a vehicle as a pedestrian while crossing the street and ended up fracturing my pelvis in two places. I was in my mid-twenties, resilient, but now exposed to a lifetime of chronic pain and left to navigate modalities looking for relief. My first instinct was to listen to my doctors, after all, they’re the ones who went to medical school and should be the utmost authority on injuries on the human body. But after a few months of trying western medicine, with steroid injections, physical therapy, and opioid refills amongst other things, I was still in pain and now numbed out too. Thus began my quest to find resources, education, and non-traditional practitioners who could help provide pieces to the puzzle that I was missing in regards to what was happening with my body. It was during that exploration that my mother had come across CBD, and mind you, this was in late 2015 or early 2016 when there was little to no consumer market for this stuff. I was familiar with cannabis as I grew up in the live music capital of the world, Austin, Texas where I feel live music goes hand in hand with cannabis, at least it did and still does for me. But other than smoking weed, I had no idea what CBD was compared to THC and how it would work in my body. What I did know was that my mom was encouraging me to look into it more, and as the firstborn, when my mom says to do something, I listen. So I started to consume homemade concoctions of sublingual oils and topicals that she had formulated for me with CBD she had gotten from some farmers she knew who were growing hemp. I couldn’t tell you how much I was taking, it was a lot, I just tried to overload my body with CBD both internally and externally. And after a few weeks, I noticed my pain dissipating in ways that I hadn’t ever felt relief like before. It’s not that CBD is this magic compound, but after experiencing the effects firsthand, I knew there was more to it, and I had to dig deeper to understand. That led me for a few years to learn as much as I could about the cannabis plant, what is hemp versus marijuana, what is CBD vs THC, what is my endocannabinoid system, and other things that validated the benefits of CBD for pain and inflammation. It was at the end of August 2018 that my sister, Sydney, who is a former collegiate athlete and now sponsored Under Armor athlete, decided to join forces with me and launch our brand, RESTART CBD. Over the last 4 years, we’ve seen the hemp market balloon up, and also lots of industry change ensue as our nation advocates for better cannabis policy and laws. And we’ve risen to the top as a leader in Texas cannabis, helping educate our community of consumers as well as policymakers impacting the way we do business in our home state. I never imagined I would work professionally in cannabis, but now I can’t think of any other path. I feel grateful for my experiences good and bad, because they led me here, and now my family, team, and I get to make a direct impact by helping others along their journey explore cannabis safely and confidently.
Shayda , 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 think what sets us apart is our transparency as a brand, and our commitment to education and high quality. Branding is very passionate for me, I spend a lot of time thinking through consumer behavior and what makes us choose to shop with certain brands over others. So when it was time for us to bring our brand to market, we knew we wanted to do something disruptive while also being true to the foundation of the industry we were working in and to ourselves. We understood the power of our own personal stories and how we could use those experiences to create relatable moments for our consumers. In our industry, especially when it comes to someone’s pain management, it’s a personal thing. People are looking for relief and it isn’t a one-size fits all approach. On top of that, there is a lack of regulation, and a lot of brands making grand promises that are steeped in misinformation, ultimately delivering a crappy experience to the consumer who was simply just looking for relief. We know CBD and for that fact, Cannabis, is not going to work for everyone. But we do believe that with proper education and exploration, consumers can find relief and the effects they are seeking if they can learn how to play around with different doses, consumption methods, and cannabinoids. For example, if you are experiencing severe low back pain (like myself), I find a daily sublingual oil dose between 60-100mg before bed works wonders, and on days that I may be more inflamed, a topical for on-the-spot treatment is a great addition. Your body might not respond to 100mg, your body might respond to less or more. It requires you to understand and adjust as you consume to find what works best. This is where we try to come in as best as possible to support that consumer’s cannabis curiosity. We take a consultative approach, pointing out products that could work based on what the customer is sharing they are experiencing or seeking to feel. We were just voted Best Cannabis Dispensary for the second year in a row, and I give credit to those community validations that reinforce the practice of helping people one-on-one feel more comfortable with cannabis is what is going to change the stigma and help long-term adoption.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Social media is such a powerful tool. Unfortunately for cannabis brands, it’s a bit tumultuous but aside from that which is just par for the course, we do love leveraging social media to connect with our audience and attract new customers into our brand’s ecosystem. I would say there is a bit of an upper hand for us when it comes to social media, I majored in Marketing and had worked professionally as a Director of Marketing for a digital agency prior to founding RESTART. And my sister and I both had become micro-influencers on Instagram tapping us into a wild world of content creation and compensation with brands for creating content on their behalf. With those details aside, we focused on what platforms made sense for our consumers and what we realistically could tackle. Instagram is a really easy one for us, and I would say is also our most popular channel. We’re also on YouTube pretty consistently, as well as doing some interesting things on Facebook. We recently are tapping into Twitter and Pinterest, but we don’t use them regularly. My recommendation would be to secure your brand/business name across all social media platforms, even if you don’t use them as often or ever. And then start to strategize what platforms your target customer might be hanging out on and then dissect what types of content need to be created for that particular platform. ie. Instagram and TikTok like short reels type of videos, YouTube is longer form content, we find Pinterest responds well to infographics, and Twitter is short text-based. Those are just some examples, and you may be able to pull some content from one, for example taking a longer YouTube video, cutting it down, and sizing it for Instagram or TikTok reels so you can repurpose it. We love using a social media scheduler, some good ones are Hootsuite or Planoly, and we use Canva pretty much every day to create content whether it’s an infographic or social media graphic. The final note I’ll share about social media is one that probably gets said so often you’re numb to it, but it’s the easiest advice. Whatever you do, do it consistently. If you want to be on every platform, you better find the time or hire the team because it takes work and effort to make content and implement proper tagging and promotion. Focus on one or two platforms at a time, master a flow and see what you can add on from there.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
Due to the nature of our industry, there are some limitations when it comes to technology that is available for us to take advantage of. For example, Amazon as an eCommerce marketplace doesn’t outright support CBD brands, so we can’t sell through that channel. Additionally, some eCommerce platforms like Shopify say they might be CBD friendly, but when you set up your store, they shut you down for violating their terms of service. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, I worked in digital marketing and technology platforms for an open-source company built on WordPress. That time helped expose me to the potential of an open source platform which was a good primer for helping us set up RESTARTCBD.com as an eCommerce website, which allows us to sell directly to consumers from our site where we can ship our products nationwide. I would say from a cannabis and CBD perspective, there are going to be hurdles to overcome when it comes to selecting the platform and finding integrations that work with your business. WordPress isn’t perfect, as it requires a lot of customization through plugins and additional dev work, but at the end of the day, I know WordPress won’t kick me off my website for posting content that might violate terms of service, because the nature of WordPress is open source. When you’re on a platform like Shopify or Amazon, you have to abide by their rules, and depending on what you’re selling or want to sell, could be a violation. While we are limited in selling on other channels, we’re big advocates in selling direct to consumers and have built our site up to be the best place to educate and inform them, while also guiding them through the customer journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.restartcbd.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/restartcbd + https://instagram.com/theshaydatorabi
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RESTARTCBD/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaydatorabi/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/restartcbd
- Youtube: http://youtube.com/restartcbd
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/restart-cbd-austin
Image Credits
Breezy Ritter