From Combat Vet to Extract Labs CEO: An Interview with Craig Henderson

Can you tell us about how you went from combat vet to CEO of a CBD company? It’s kind of a long-winded answer. I grew up thinking that marijuana was bad and either you used it and you were a loser, or you didn’t use and you weren’t a loser. But then I had good friends in the military who got kicked out for smoking weed and these were some of the smartest, strongest, and hardest working people I’d ever worked with and that was the first inkling in my mind, “Wow, maybe pot’s not so bad.” I started to realize that there are a lot of benefits for people. Then I saw what was happening out West in California, and that Obama signed the 2009 memo saying that the federal government would leave states alone to pursue their own cannabis laws; I realized that people were seeing what I was seeing and that this could change the world. I finished up my bachelor’s degree in engineering, was doing some internships and realized I just hated corporate america. I really wanted to go back to the military at that point, but then I thought “Why don’t I move out west and pursue this whole cannabis thing?” so I reached out to them, Apeks Supercritical out of Ohio, they called me back and I said to said why don’t I move out to Colorado and start a location, and the whole time I was doing this I saw there was a need for CBD and saw an opportunity for me to get into the market. What part of the business are you most passionate about? Changes. We’re evolving so rapidly. When I hired my first one or two employees, I thought I’d made it, that two employees was all we’d ever need, but now we’re pushing forty employees. I really love the challenge, and I see every part of the business as very important. In your opinion, what’s the biggest issue veterans face when returning home? Not having a plan. You have an twenty-two year old kid who’s gets out of the military and they really don’t have a plan, and that can destroy the human. They spent the last 4 years being this thing everyone talked about and now you’re just a regular person in society trying to fit in. But how do you tell someone that and get them to believe it? I don’t know. Do you do any kind of outreach with veterans? Can you tell us about it? We’re get contacted by different people who want us to send their soldier a package, or are just looking for a natural alternative to the medications they get from the VA. So we ship product to soldiers who are deployed, we’ve shipped some to the veterans who just want to try it, and it’s all free of charge. We send huge care packages overseas with shirts and products.

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Tell us about an average day for you, if there is such a thing. Today it’s a little bit more normalized. I used to be the guy wearing seven different hats, and luckily, now I only wear three different hats. Now I’m having to learn how to get information from each team to help them make decisions, just learning how to be a better manager, how to be a CEO for a company. What kind of growth has Extract Labs seen as demand for CBD has increased? It’s insane. We turn away more business than we sell to, so we spend half of our day turning people away politely and hope we don’t piss them off so maybe when we do reach a capacity to be able sell to them they’ll call us back. It sucks being a business owner; it’s awesome hitting a record month every month, but it sucks thinking how much bigger you could be. How would you define your primary market and how do you reach them? The original business model was to make CBD oil and wholesale it to marijuana companies. I thought marijuana was the big play in the industry and I thought I could make CBD and sell it to these marijuana guys to beef up their CDB levels. That was our initial focus and it really helped build our business, but now we’re trying to transition out of that since we realized that CBD has its own place in society as a supplement and healthy lifestyle product. So now we’re trying to target athletes.

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Are there any new products on the way you’re particularly excited about? In the near future we’re expanding our product line, offering better flavors and new terpene profiles. As farmers get better at growing, we’re able to extract better terpenes from the plants, and we can offer that as a product. The big future play is: How good can we get at separating other cannabinoids? For example, CBG is believed to be good for cell repair and who knows? You may have a stroke victim who can’t use half of their body anymore, and CBG might really be able to help them. What kind of changes do you foresee in the industry since the 2018 farm bill legalized hemp farming in the US? I could go two ways: if hemp is legalized everywhere people may start to focus less on quality. On the other hand, the bill could make banking easier, and maybe we could be a big player. Maybe there are enough people like us who care about quality and hopefully it will always be a high end niche product. What’s the future for the CBD industry? I’m hoping that CBD will be like big Pharma, but a better version. Not just for CBD, but all cannabis and cannabinoids in general, but not how it’s being done today; we just need better principles.

It’s kind of a long winded answer. I grew up thinking that marijuana was bad and either you used it and you were a loser or you didn’t use and you weren’t a loser. I didn’t smoke pot in high school, but for some reason I thought drinking was okay; it was okay to drink a lot, just don’t smoke any weed, and when I joined the military, they shared the same viewpoint. Everyone drank, but god forbid you get caught smoking marijuana because they’d take their life from you. I had good friends in the military who got kicked out for smoking weed and these were some of the smartest, strongest, and hardest working people I’d ever worked with and that was the first inkling in my mind, “Wow, maybe pot’s not so bad.” So I came home, got out of the military and decided I’d go to college for engineering and while doing so, one of those friends that had been kicked out of the military, his life wasn’t doing so well and he was smoking even more marijuana. So I thought I was going to do some research, watch a documentary, do some research on the internet come up with some good arguments for him to quit smoking pot and ruining his life, because in my eyes he was just throwing his life away. But the more I researched, I started to realize that I was the one who was wrong and that pot had nothing to do with my friend being at such a low point. I also learned that there are a lot of benefits for people. Long story short, it was a long evolution. Then I saw what was happening out West in California, and that Obama signed the 2009 memo saying that the federal government would leave states alone to pursue their own cannabis laws; I realized that people were seeing what I was seeing and that this could change the world. I finished up my bachelor’s degree in engineering, was doing some internships and realized I just hated corporate america. I really wanted to go back to the military at that point, but then I thought “Why don’t I move out west and pursue this whole cannabis thing?” Well, I tried. I tried to figure out how to get started out West, I called over 100 companies in California and Colorado. Then one day on TV I saw a guy with this extraction equipment. I was familiar with the growing process, and I realized that a lot of trim being thrown into the trash could be used for vape pens, so I saw an opportunity there. I didn’t see myself as an entrepreneur initially, I just wanted to be part of something big. So I reached out to them, Apeks Supercritical out of Ohio, they called me back and I said to said why don’t I move out to Colorado and start a location, and that was kind of my foot in the door. So I moved up to Colorado – we were a really small company at the time – and I trained a lot of those early Colorado companies that were also trying to turn trash into gold. Now these are big successful companies. I spent 3 years traveling the country teaching people how to turn marijuana into vape pen oil or edible oil, and the whole time I was doing this I saw there was a need for CBD. So after 3 years of teaching, I started talking to hemp farmers and saw an opportunity for me to get into the market.

Changes. We’re evolving so rapidly. When I hired my first one or two employees, I thought I’d made it, that two employees was all we’d ever need, but now we’re pushing forty employees. In the beginning I was doing a lot of the chemistry and extraction myself. That’s what I was passionate about at the time. Then as the business grew I had to evolve into other positions. I really am passionate about every single job in the building, and I’ve done them all myself at one point or another. I don’t ever remember not liking any single job. Maybe if I was stuck in the same position for six months I’d get bored with it, but my job changes every three to four months, so there’s always a new challenge. I might complain a lot, but I’m always taking on new challenges, things I don’t know how to do: marketing, sales. I really love the challenge, and I see every part of the business as very important.

Not having a plan. You have an 18 year old kid who’s never been propped up on a pedestal for anything. They join the military, go to war and now you’ve got this eighteen-year-old kid who may not have really accomplished a lot, but he’s got his parents bragging about him, his friends are bragging about him. Everyone’s like “look at him go!” and then he gets out of the military, he goes and gets a typical job and no one’s bragging anymore, no one is proud of what they’re doing anymore. They get out and they really don’t have a plan and that can destroy the human. They spent the last 4 years being this thing everyone talked about and now you’re just a regular person in society trying to fit in. So if more people got out with a plan, some people, myself included, at twenty-two get out and think they did all they had to do in life because they went to war. But really that’s just a stepping stone. People realize that they didn’t accomplish everything in life and they have to figure out what they’re going to do next. Just because you spent 4 years in the military it’s not over; it’s just a stepping stone. But how do you tell someone that and get them to believe it? I don’t know.

We’re starting to. We just hit our two-year mark, and now we’re getting all kinds of photos and emails from people who are deployed or just getting back, and they have a variety of issues going and they’re are seeking CBD to aid in their recovery. So what we’re doing now as we’re getting contacted by different people who want us to send their soldier a package, or are just looking for a natural alternative to the medications they get from the VA. So we ship product to soldiers who are deployed, we’ve shipped some to the veterans who just want to try it, and it’s all free of charge. We send huge care packages overseas with shirts and products. I wonder if the military is even okay with soldiers using our products, but it’s cool to see soldiers wearing our shirts and using our CBD products, and hopefully no one is getting in trouble for it. I hope that if enough people in the government and the military start using our products and see that they work, then the laws will change.

Today it’s a little bit more normalized. I used to be the guy wearing seven different hats, and luckily, now I only wear three different hats. My job today is reporting to each of those other hat wearers: social media, extraction team, sales team; you always want that, you always want these teams to be able to work on different on different things, but you can’t always afford that sometimes, so you have to do it all yourself. But today we’re at that point where I think I’m not doing as much. Now I’m having to learn how to get information from each team to help them make decisions, just learning how to be a better manager, how to be a CEO for a company. So my average day right now is just learning how to manage five or six teams.

It’s insane. We had a record month last month, I think we did $680,000 and if we had the CBD to sell we could have done $3 million. We turn away more business than we sell to, so we spend half of our day turning people away politely and hope we don’t piss them off so maybe when we do reach a capacity to be able sell to them they’ll call us back. It sucks being a business owner; it’s awesome hitting a record month every month, but it sucks thinking how much bigger you could be. It’s a constant challenge: how do we get bigger faster without messing up what we’re currently doing? You try to grow too fast and the stuff you learned a month ago, you start slipping and mistakes aren’t good for anyone. But I still feel like we’re still in our infancy and won’t see what our true demand is for two or three years.

Early on, the original business model was to make CBD oil and wholesale it to marijuana companies. I thought marijuana was the big play in the industry and I thought I could make CBD and sell it to these marijuana guys to beef up their CDB levels. I never imagined the world would want a pure CBD or a THC free product. So in the beginning we targeted a lot of marijuana companies and social media influencers, you know, people who just do dabs all day and have a million followers? That was our initial focus and it really helped build our business, but now we’re trying to transition out of that since we realized that CBD has its own place in society as a supplement and healthy lifestyle produc. So now we’re trying to target athletes. We’ve sponsored an Olympic snowboarder, we’ve got Cris Cyborg the UFC fighter. We just got off the phone with Andy McDonald the pro skater the other day. So now we’re really trying to shift our energy toward the healthy-lifestyle market.

In the near future we’re expanding our product line, offering better flavors and new terpene profiles. As farmers get better at growing, we’re able to extract better terpenes from the plants, and we can offer that as a product. That’s real easy stuff that we could turn into a product tomorrow. The big future play is how good can we get at separating other cannabinoids. I mean CBD is all the rage, but there’s about one hundred twenty cannabinoids. The marijuana industry is focused on THC, the CBD industry is obviously focused on CBD, but there are another one hundred eighteen cannabinoids out there, and that’s what we see as the big play for us, essentially turning us into a large pharmaceutical company someday. If we can get effective levels of these other cannabinoids and figure out what they’re good for, we can make products with them. So I guess the short answer is we want to sell products with these other cannabinoids. For example, CBG is believed to be good for cell repair and who knows? You may have a stroke victim who can’t use half of their body anymore, and CBG might really be able to help them.

I could go two ways, I could stress myself out thinking it’s just going to be like corn in five years, just a corn syrup factory. I don’t want to think that way, but that is a potential. I don’t want to be like a sugar manufacturer, just selling sugar to Pepsi. If hemp is legalized everywhere people may start to focus less on quality. On the other hand, the bill could make banking easier, and maybe we could be a big player. Maybe there are enough people like us who care about quality and hopefully it will always be a high end niche product. But I hate thinking too far into the future because it scares the S*%$ out of me!

I’m hoping that CBD will be like big Pharma, but a better version. And not just for CBD, but all cannabis and cannabinoids in general, but not how it’s being done today; we just need better principles.