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#10YearsofNCIA with Rhiannon Anderson and David Hua

Tune in to this look-back episode as we wrap up the year 2020 and reflect on #10YearsofNCIA.

Rhiannon Anderson and David Hua join us today to help celebrate 10 years of NCIA!

The future of tradeshow marketing with Rhiannon Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer at Steelhead Productions. Rhiannon has served as the CMO and Co-Owner at Steelhead Productions, who specialize in custom rental exhibits for some of the most exciting brands in the country and has been awarded Exhibitor Magazine’s Top 40 Providers in the event industry. Rhiannon oversees all of Steelhead’s business development, as well as internal and external communications. In that role, she has guided the company through the greatest recession of our time and gone on to help grow the business by over 630%, while becoming one of Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Companies in America. Rhiannon’s company’s role in the cannabis industry is helping cannabis brands in an exhibitor setting like at trade shows. We’ve all seen the gigantic expo floor at NCIA’s national conferences, but social distancing means that’s going to look different whenever those restrictions relax. We talk about the future of tradeshow marketing and event marketing, as well as what Rhiannon is seeing or predicting when it comes to this subject.

Cannabis Jobs During Covid-19 with Meadow CEO and Co-Founder, David Hua. Meadow is a software company built from the ground up for California cannabis, and Y-Combinator’s first start-up to operate in the cannabis space. Meadow’s all-in-one platform allows dispensaries to sell products, manage menus and inventory, reward customers, dispatch delivery and pick-up orders, and create exceptional in-store experiences for customers. Meadow has been Headquartered in San Francisco since 2014. Hua has also collaborated with California’s cannabis community and California regulators to draft, implement, and provide stakeholder feedback of medical and Adult-Use regulations. Hua sits on the boards of the California Cannabis Industry Association, the Cannabis Distribution Association, as well as the NCIA Retail Committee. The cannabis industry in California has had some ups and downs in the transition to adult-use laws from Prop 64, and the COVID-19 crisis is no exception. In Colorado, as in California, they almost had legal cannabis shut down alongside bars and restaurants. The announcement was reversed in about 3 hours after everyone rushed the dispensaries. We talk to David about what it looked like in California and how they as cannabis software providers reacted. Cannabis is essential but federally illegal, so they didn’t initially get access to SBA COVID-19 financial relief. Perlmutter and Blumenauer introduced a bill specifically to include cannabis. We did get SAFE Banking Language in the 2nd coronavirus relief package approved out of the House of Reps, even tho some of the senates complained about seeing the word ‘cannabis’ in the bill. David explains his thoughts on this reaction even tho the industry has been an unbelievable job creator.