WOAHSTORK EXPO EDITION December 2016 | Page 12

HERBal INFLUENCE by Nicco Reggente We sat down with Matt Grey to talk about his company, his influence, and the state of the cannabis industry. Matt Grey, co-founder and CEO at HERB, is easily one of the most influential figures in the cannabis industry. HERB is the most active and engaged community in the cannabis industry and currently reaches over 250 million people a month. To put that in perspective, the entire population of the US is 320million. More people viewed HERB’s content in November than there were voters in the presidential election. Now, that’s influence… That means just one Facebook post from Matt could help a cannabis company launch, scale, and soar. More importantly, social posts from HERB stand to educate, influence, and The old contractors, HERB is part of a growing movement that is Spiderman adage of “great power comes great responsibility” actively elevating the public perception of cannabis. HERB has has definitely rung true with Matt; he spends his life as a the ears of a massive millennial community that is digital nomad, travelling to different cities around the US and concentrated Canada to learn as much as he can about how legal cannabis HERB’s top cities are New York, Mexico City, Chicago, Houston, will affect that area. L A , London, Melbour ne, Toronto, Denver and San represent the cannabis community at large. With a modest team of 6 full time employees and 15 part time mostly in the US, Canada, and Great Britain. Francisco. The breadth of HERB’s community is yet another reminder of how incredibly unifying this incredible plant we’ve all come to know and love can be. We met with Matt to discuss some of the ways he’s using HERB’s influence to guide the industry and how he balances the public service such influence demands with monetization of such an obviously lucrative business. With the ability to influence so many cannabis consumers on a daily basis, what kind of message are you continually trying to convey to the community? The message that we want to convey is that cannabis consumers are regular people. We (cannabis consumers) are entrepreneurs, artists, moms, dads, brothers and sisters. We enjoy cannabis and there is nothing wrong with that. Our message is that through spreading honest, reliable, and trustworthy information we can all work together to end the negative stigma around cannabis. 12 WOAHSTORK EXPO EDITION 12