Join us every Friday at the Furlough Fireside Chat hosted by Michael-King Sadick. Our guests change every week and range from experts, entrepreneurs and creatives to influencers, brands, nomads, investors and more!

 

A little about Jeffrey

Jeffrey Friedland is CEO of US-based FC Global Strategies, a firm that provides advisory and consulting services to start-up, early-stage, growing, and middle market companies. 

He is an author, speaker at conferences and events throughout North America, Europe and Asia, focusing primarily on entrepreneurship, corporate strategies, the global economy, and the medical, pharma, healthcare, technology, telecom, and cannabis industries.

 

You can watch the replay here:

 

 

Mike King  

Welcome everybody to Furlough Friday King talk with Michael King. We’re delighted to have a very special guest, Jeffrey Friedland, with us who’s going to talk about a number of things including investment banking, current political climate, and just the future outlook for entrepreneurs as far as he’s concerned. Of course, this podcast is brought to you by Hiyrr company in a system that automates all of your prospectings. So you don’t ever have to reach out to customers ever again. They come to you to learn more, go to hiyrr.io, and book a time with some of their specialists. Jeff, how are you, my friend? It’s good to have you on. I know, we got about 30 or 40 minutes of your time, but that’s more than enough. Do you want to give everybody listening a quick overview of yourself?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Okay, I live in Colorado and always lived in Colorado. My background is primarily corporate finance, investment banking, primarily. In recent years, it’s been working with companies that have business or financial objectives. I’ve probably taken dozens of companies public. I had an office in Beijing for 10 years, up until the financial crisis of 2008. That was to enable Chinese companies to access foreign capital. There are a lot of transactions not only in China but India, Brazil, and Europe. I’m living in Colorado and got involved in the cannabis industry. In 2013. We’re owners of two retail stores and dispensary along the way got involved in Canada in the cannabis industry with three startups all of whom intended to get licensed and get public. All three got licensed and public. Then got involved Israel was at the forefront of cannabis research and got involved in two companies in Israel one on plant genetics. We formed a company called Israel plant sciences to work on a sort of a miracle in the desert to work on cannabis genetics and another one that was doing preclinical work using cannabinoid THC and Hebrew University in Jerusalem for multiple myeloma. They were pretty successful, and they just had some corporate finance challenges. So since then, I’ve been really pretty involved with creating platforms. using video interviews, for companies in a variety of industries and sectors, technology, medical pharma, healthcare companies doing crowdfunding programs, as well as other companies using combining the power of a video interview with our own proprietary distribution, people registered at our websites, signed up for our emails, and then using, you know, distribution through social media, and digital. So that’s a quick, quick, quick rundown along the way. I’ve written two books, one on the economic future of China called All roads lead to China, the other one called marijuana, the world’s most misunderstood plant. Both of those are available on Amazon, in print and Kindle, and in most countries.

 

Mike King  

Beautiful, you’re quite an accomplished man. And we met two years ago, two and a half years ago at the airport to discuss a consulting company that we ended up throwing up for food companies wanting to get involved in cannabis at the time, that worked pretty well. So you always keep busy, that’s for sure. And you’ve, you’ve done and seen a lot. Today, I’m very interested to hear your outlook post-COVID. Right. You know, you’ve been in a lot of emerging markets. You were one of the first people in China, and now you’re seeing a pretty big shift in our economy. Would you agree?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Yeah, we’ve never had times like this, you know, inflation. And inflation is really something it’s very apparent to me. Every single day, I don’t know Mike what it’s like for you down there in Florida. But you know, the other day I went into a bar I usually used to go to. Four onion rings were $24. Burgers were $29. Then they put on a 22% service charge. And a small bowl of chicken soup was $26. So my wife and I had lunch, it came to $95. And

 

Mike King  

Terry Krieger, We’re in Colorado. That’s Miami prices right there.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

…Up in the mountains. But the point is that the people that can least afford to be impacted by inflation are people of fixed income, people that are, you know, minimum wage, people that are doing real work in this country. And the administration in Washington seems totally oblivious to what’s happened with inflation. And to me, that’s the biggest, the biggest issue out there. And housing prices, again, are another issue. But not even going there. But

 

Mike King  

Let’s talk about opportunity. Right with, you know, chaos and disaster, there’s typically opportunity you’ve been involved in. And, as I said, in emerging markets before, people really found out about how important they were when you wrote a book on China. You know, you’ve been in India, in Brazil, where are you seeing the silver lining? And all that has happened?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I think the silver lining is really simple, pretty simple. You know, Washington, especially this administration, is throwing money at things. And most of it’s wasted. I’m not, you know, it’s just due to bureaucracy, not necessarily corruption, but, but the money gets out there in the economy. So it helps the economy, we will go into a higher interest rate environment, there’s no question about it, the Federal Reserve, if anybody at the Federal Reserve knows, after 11 years, at least, I guess, of 0% interest rates on treasuries, if they know how to raise interest rates, they’ve got to slow it down a bit on that. But the opportunities, Mike, are where you can see Washington throwing money. I use the word throwing money because that’s how I feel about it. You know, we’re undertaking new programs, pre-kindergarten education, paid for by the government, hearing aids paid for by Medicare. So wherever you see, money being pumped in by Washington means that there’s really going to be a lot of money there. And that’s opportunities depending on what those sectors are, what those, you know, where that money is being spent. So, you know, obviously, on the tech side, there’s been concern about computer chips, you know, slowing down automobile sales in the US because they can’t get chips for cars, automobile sales globally. So that could be an opportunity. I’m not sure exactly why I’ve been in chip facilities. I know they want to establish a bunch here in the US, but they’re billions of dollars that take years to offer, you know, to set up. And technology changes pretty rapidly. I, I was in one in Sicily that I was involved with, on the healthcare side, the same kind of thing COVID brought out to all of us and to the government and to people with people in the healthcare industry. The Life Sciences industry already knew that healthcare screwed up in this country, we all sort of knew it. So COVID brought to the surface, whatever buddy thought. And again, there’s going to be money pumped into a lot of areas, a lot of those areas, I’m not suggesting somebody here says, Oh, I’m going to put up a facility to manufacture vaccines. But whenever you have an industry or business, there’s lots of peripheral activities. Mike and you know, one of the things if you go back to the 1850s, in California, in the Gold Rush, it was said that the people that really made the money weren’t the miners. It was the people selling the picks and shovels. So if you look at what Washington is doing, trillions of dollars throwing at things reminded me of the old David Letterman, where you know, you throw something against the wall. See what sticks. Oh, everyone’s loss brings forth opportunities.

 

Mike King  

So you mentioned a couple of industries, which are interesting health care and education, right. For a year, we’ve talked about these computer chips. Only the big guys are going to be able to get into that right. There’s no doubt about that. 

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I guess the short answer, Mike is, I’m not sure it’s just the big guys, but people of color, sort of reverse racism, you know, perhaps not so much in the way of opportunities for white men. You know, like yourself or myself, but if you’re a person of color, if you’re black, if you’re Latino if you’re gay, lesbian, etc, probably opportunities a lot easier, if you’re white, probably no chance.

 

Mike King  

Okay. So in the event of there being an opportunity in healthcare, where do you see small businesses being able to break in and add value to the marketplace and maybe catch some of these government dollars? 

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, one thing that comes to mind is home healthcare, you know, the cost of somebody going into nursing homes, congregate care facilities, is intense. There’s a huge demand for home health care, home health care workers. So I think a lot of possibilities Mike, are if somebody were wanting to really get excited about something, do a franchise opportunity that would be sort of employment for home health care workers, or become a platform for people needing to contract with someone for home health care. That’s right there off the top of my head are two opportunities that are going to benefit from Washington’s doing.

 

Mike King  

So would you say telehealth is one of those?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

telehealth is not via telehealth is not? I don’t think it’d be an opportunity because that’s gonna be for the big guys. Guy, for sure. Because you need a product, you know, they’re gonna ultimately there’s, there’s a LinkedIn group on telehealth, it’s got 12,000 people on it. You know, this is something that one of the big healthcare IT providers will end up with. There may be a dozen out there each tied to individual health portals. But I don’t think that it’s the kind of thing that Jeff and Mike can go, say, let’s do the technology for telehealth and then try to sell it to medical practitioners, hospitals, etc. So telehealth is not one that I think it’ll be easy to break into.

 

Mike King  

Now, you are very experienced within the cannabis space. Where do you see there being opportunities there?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Obviously there’s some action in Washington in the last two days, where a bill was introduced in the Senate to legalize federally, this is not a priority for this administration. It wasn’t a priority for the Trump administration. It wasn’t a priority for Obama, either. Obama really could have done something if he wanted it. So I don’t know. Right now there are tremendous opportunities in the cannabis industry. There’s a lot of issues there, Mike. Again, there’s peripheral involvement, sort of the pick and shovel opportunities, whether we’re there are IT, you know, things that come to mind could be loyalty programs for dispensaries, and retail stores, companies specializing in packaging, and if people doing these things, people providing what’s called seed to sale software. Those mandated by the states have to meet state requirements. Few companies do that. There are now in some states including where I am Colorado, options for not necessarily to grow or not to show you to grow or to process but to deliver home delivery of cannabis. That could be an interesting Uber-type delivery. Again, it has been licensed in only a few states so far. So I think you have to look to some extent around the peripheral opportunities in cannabis. In cannabis, the limitation for entrepreneurs is local zoning and in a lot of cases, I call it the soccer mom syndrome. You know, where people say, Oh, I don’t want a marijuana store near my kids’ school or church, or whatever. And so that creates really a lot of issues. The biggest issue is getting local zoning for a location. So I’d say if you can do it, if you can pull it off, if you have local political connections, then I think there are opportunities to be a grower or processor or a dispensary retail store.

 

Mike King  

Now as somebody who is in emerging markets for a long time, what made you good at what you did, right what kind of things were you looking at, and looking for, for instance, when you saw there to be opportunities In China, and you wrote your book before, it was blatant to see that the future was in China.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I yeah. And I’m not sure there’s any future in China right now, because China’s incredibly competitive with the United States. And, you know, we’re still a bit still being involved in China.

 

Mike King  

Are you good at seeing those opportunities? What are you looking for?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

You know, I did China on boredom, I had been doing a lot of private placements in the United States. I’ve done a lot of financial marketing strategies. I was bored, and I sort of open decided to open up the China office on a fluke, I met a woman in New York, who was Chinese from Beijing, she came to go to law school in New York, she wanted to move back to China, she was an only child, we opened an office on a fluke. So I think, if you, the one thing I like to say, Mike, if you don’t want to take a risk, don’t get out of bed in the morning. Now, the problem with that is that you’re in South Florida, buildings fall down and you have hurricanes. But for the most part, in most parts of this country, yeah, if you don’t want to take a risk, don’t get out of bed. But if you find something that looks exciting, you have to flip the switch and do it. You know, because you’ll have one chance. And so what we did in China, you know, worked for 10 years up till the financial crisis. the financial crisis is what ultimately killed it.

 

Mike King  

Got it.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Whether it’s cannabis, or whether it’s in health, home health care, whether it’s in tech, whether it’s in medical. There’s just tremendous entrepreneurial activity opportunities.

 

Mike King  

I want to get into how you got into cannabis as well. But if there’s something that is pretty clear, you’ve traveled throughout the world, is that right? Yeah, yeah. Where has been your favorite place to travel thus far?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I think that’s interesting, when you talk about the rest of the world brings to mind one thing is that, to some extent, because of having to have state licenses in the United States on cannabis, there could be greater opportunities in the rest of the world, where it is like we were in Colorado seven years ago, or eight years ago. 

 

Mike King  

And with all the travels that you’ve done, be aware that it has been the most exciting, more fantastic place that you’ve been in your opinion.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

 Well, if I were a bunch of years younger, I would move to either Singapore or to Dubai.

 

Mike King  

Why those two?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Dubai has been there a lot. I was there in December in the midst of COVID, trying to get something done by year-end. Dubai is a great financial center. English is a common language, a good healthcare system, friendly to entrepreneurs, you know, parts of the United States are not so friendly to entrepreneurs anymore. Starting at the top of the list was the state of California. High taxation, lots of regulations, etc. So I think Dubai would be great Singapore, which is sort of a benevolent dictatorship, essentially, again, English is a common language. And it’s really a business center for all of Southeast Asia. And when you start in South Asia, you know, you have India with a population 1,000,000,003 you have Indonesia, right market, Muslim, biggest, largest population, a Muslim country, I think last I looked, the population was 380 million. And then you start adding in small countries, not so small, but Thailand, and in Malaysia. huge opportunities. And it’s somewhat again, tied is a peripheral play in China. China sort of has Southeast Asia’s, you know, one of its areas of influence, let’s say.

 

Mike King  

Got it. So I’ve never been to Dubai, but I’ve heard good things about it. When you were in Dubai this year during COVID. What was it like?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

It was open. I mean, it was great. We didn’t have any quarantine restrictions. I was tested before I went for a swab test. I got tested when I was there in the hotel for $50. They have the swab test. You got your results in four or five hours. They really had their act together in the hotel. They checked everybody’s temperature coming into the hotel. I think that in general is sort of worthless, but it looked good. Um, they attempted for the most part to have somewhat social distancing on restaurants saying the restaurants were open. And all in all, you know, people out on the street in malls, the biggest mall in the world in Dubai, for the most part, wore masks, no requirement really to do so. But I felt pretty good about it there.

 

Mike King  

Nice. Very good. Now, you mentioned at the beginning of the question your favorite place to travel opportunities outside the United States for cannabis. What countries do you see there to be the most opportunity going forward?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I’ve just to tell you about their last two to three weeks, Mike, probably 40% of the calls I get regarding cannabis, cannabis strategy, startups, etc, from outside the United States. So, you know, in the last two weeks, I’ve spoken with people from Croatia, from Holland, from Sweden, South Africa, I’m involved in something in Thailand and cannabis. Colombia, one of the countries I know you’ve been to a bunch. So I think there’s, you know, again, you’ve got to be somewhat connected and know your way around the local business communities because there’s a lot of corruption, and a lot of the world you know, like New Jersey and Illinois, you know, as corrupt governments, we have it here. In other countries, South Africa, there have been some protests lately about government stuff. So those are some, I think, Latin America, if Brazil gets its act together, having done stuff in Brazil, is tremendous. I mean, the economy of South America, it’s all about Brazil, because the population the other countries don’t emit doesn’t amount to a whole lot. So you know, closer to us, Mexico’s tremendous opportunities, huge population. So those are some niche opportunities, again, in EU and Europe, EU regulations, and, you know, their, their socialist economies, to a large extent, a little bit of a problem over there. But I would say cannabis, Thailand, huge opportunities. Mexico, the top of my list here, Mexico, Brazil, other peripheral countries in Latin America, that’ll sort of piggyback on to probably Brazil, which could include Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Chile. Not a lot of people. But Bolivia, of course, when I was last down there, in northern Brazil, they were doing cocaine tours, like wine tasting tours, to take German tourists, Brazil into Bolivia, you know, to try different kinds of coke. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities.

 

Mike King  

Brazil is an interesting play with all of that. Do you see in the next five to 10 years, the ability to import and export cannabis into the United States? 

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I had this discussion two days ago, Mike with a woman colleague, who has four retail cannabis stores in Colorado, and has a growth facility and also a manufacturing facility for extracts, concentrates, and edibles. And everybody in the cannabis industry because of this bill that was submitted by Schumer and Congress is elated and partying. But I don’t see if there’s federal legalization. My personal opinion is that it will not allow interstate trans interstate commerce of cannabis. Meaning if I produce cannabis in Colorado, I don’t think I’m going to be able to ship it to California, or Nevada, or anywhere else. I think the model they’ll attempt is because of a lot of political issues and political interests. The model they’ll try to follow I think is the liquor after prohibition alcohol, where they really left it up to the States. And even today, in some states in Utah, Kansas, I believe parts of Texas in Oklahoma, there are dry counties, almost 100 years after the end of prohibition. So I think they’re going to delegate if they legalized federally, the big thing there would be to legalize, you know, would eliminate the banking issues, but I don’t think they’ll allow interstate commerce. Now, what I said to this woman is if they allow interstate commerce, they’re probably also not gonna be able to preclude imports. And the problem is, so, you know, be careful what you wish for. Because the last thing you know, when I talked to some people in Colombia, and Medellín, I know where you spent some time. You know, they said to me, hey, our labor costs are $5 a day. You can’t compete with that in North America, meaning Canada, us, how much cannabis Do you want because we can legally export to anywhere that can legally import. So, you know, if they allow the importation of cannabis itself, it can be devastating for the growers here. They do allow, I mean, you can import CBD. It’s complicated, but it’s the same issue. You know, we’re not a great environment to grow things here because of labor costs and regulations. You know, with OSHA and everything else.

 

Mike King  

Now, the importing of cannabis, is that allowed in Canada right now?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

No, Canada’s exports. I haven’t followed it carefully. they’ve exported some medical cannabis to a few countries. I think they exported some early on to somewhere in South America as medical cannabis. And also, I believe, to Germany, and they may have to other countries as well. But it wasn’t a major direction for any of the cannabis producers up there, Mike.

 

Mike King  

Interesting. I mean, Colombia is an interesting place, because it is so cheap to produce anything, labor’s cheap. It’s also the only country in South America that has defaulted on their debt that they have actually kept inflation in check as well. We’ll see what happens in the next election. I was actually looking at buying a condo down there. But we got to see how things play out with their new government next year. I always saw an opportunity to have Colombia just because of the culture of being a cannabis hub. Right? You know, they were the hub for cocaine originally, and you know, that culture, certainly, you know, bled into Midian Bogota, Cartagena in terms of openness, or we’ll just call it, you know, just a liberal culture, right. We’ll just call it a liberal culture in general. But that being said, say the importation of cannabis isn’t allowed in the United States. Do you see Colombia or Brazil being the main supplier for Central and South America?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, not Brazil, because it’s not exactly legal there. So, you know, Colombia has a head start, and being able to do that Brazil’s, you know, they’re treading water on cannabis policy. So definitely with Colombia.

 

Mike King  

Yeah. When was the last time you’ve been to Colombia?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Oh, it’s been a few. It’s been probably 10 years. Mike. 

 

Mike King  

That’s pretty great. You should visit again soon. As far as capital markets, right, you’ve been pretty involved in that we’ve had a discussion around this that, of course, anyone who tells you bet they know what’s going to happen is lying. But what do you see in the next five to 10 years being the biggest opportunity in the capital markets? Is it health care and education? Or is it something else?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

I think there’s a tremendous opportunity. We keep reading about supply chain issues, you know, that coming out of COVID, there’s a lack of truckers, truck drivers, lack of ships, you know, stuff can’t I’ve had trouble, you know, involved peripherally, trying to get stuff shipped from Rhode Island to Hong Kong, just booking a ship. So I think a lot will be on the supply chain. There’s a lot of opportunities, and I think technology as it relates to the supply chain. And as it relates to the labor shortages. I mean, every restaurant here in Colorado needs workers. So I think the automation for restaurants, to try to reduce labor is going to be huge. I think there are definitely opportunities there. There was a company that announced I believe, either a funding that got completed or a crowdfunding that got done to address technology for crowdfunding. So there are people out there that are thinking about entrepreneurial opportunities. I think on the staffing side, I don’t know how restaurant workers get employees, I mean, restaurants, get employees, restaurant workers, but it seems that it’s probably an old-fashioned system. I don’t know if there’s an app for restaurant workers globally or nationally. That could be interesting too. A restaurant back in March in Denver, Colorado, that we’ve been going to for 1015 years, they’ve been around for 25 years. They sent out a memo once Colorado opened up COVID restrictions. And they said we’re going to repeat the menu we had when we first opened 25 years ago. Today’s prices, by the way, I signed up immediately and went, then three hours later from the guy who owned the restaurant who owns three, four other restaurants. He sent out an email to his email list, which I was on saying, Hey, we need 100 workers at our various restaurants, you know, anybody, tell him to call us. I went in that night, he was there at that particular restaurant because it was a special dinner. And I said, Frank, I said, you know, we’re out of COVID, unemployment high. He said, Jeff, I can’t find any workers. And that’s true, whether it’s a fancy restaurant, Mike, or whether it’s a McDonald’s or other fast food places. So I think technology solutions for employment in restaurants, technology solutions, to make restaurants more efficient. Oh, I know what that company that got funding, did something on supply chain ordering for restaurants. You know, it’s like, they’ve got to order. How many chickens Do you need tomorrow? You know, how many trout do you need? How many bunches of broccoli do you need? I think all that’s archaic. And that’s what they were looking to address. I tried to take the people equation out of it.

 

Mike King  

Well, let me ask you this, Jeff, what happens to all of those people that don’t want to work? what’s the future of America looks like in that regard?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, that’s one of the reasons I go to Singapore or Dubai. If I were 20 years younger, I think those people are a burden on people who work for those of us like yourself and me that actually work for a living. And I think that it’s, you know, an entitlement society, where, especially with this administration, people feel that, hey, the government should take care of me. even get a free cell phone, you can get subsidies on-ramps, you can get subsidies on utility costs on cable bills. So it’s like, I think a lot of people. Why, you know, I said for years, Mike, that China was probably the most is going back 1015 years, the most entrepreneurial friendly country in the world, if you had China that went from communism/socialism to a market economy. And we have the United States going from a market economy to socialism. So I think there are opportunities there. It’s like a weight, you know, like, all these people we have to carry, who won’t earn a living, can’t earn a living, and there are people legitimately you can’t, there are other people that don’t want to get off their ass and get a job. That’s a burden on the rest of us.

 

Mike King  

I couldn’t agree more now, you have been in China. You know, what, what sort of programs do they have for those that have work? Or what is the unemployment rate in China? And, you know, enlighten us in that regard?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, I think, yeah, when I was there for a long time. I don’t know if they’ve improved it. If you don’t work, you starve to death. I mean, it’s really simple as a motivator. You know, they don’t have all these programs. They don’t have a homeless problem, either. So it either becomes a burden on the family unit over there. You still have extended families to some extent, even though people have moved from the towns and villages into the cities. China is now an urbanized environment, meaning more than 50% of the population is urban. But yeah, you starve to death.

 

Mike King  

 Interesting. Interesting, interesting

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

That’s a motivator. 

 

Mike King  

Yeah, it certainly is. Right. You got to feed your family, you got to go to work period, the end period, the end, I think, there are certainly some red flags and into the future ideology of Americans in terms of the government taking care of them in a false notion of what socialism is, right. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced that here. But some people

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Well, we’ve experienced bits and pieces of it. You know, since FDR, the New Deal, and Bernie Sanders is a true socialist. And what socialists I remember who was the I can’t remember her name. She was Prime Minister of the UK pasture. We went to a party with her. And she had a quote, she said, the problem with socialism is that you run out of people to pay for it. Because of a burden on everybody else. You know, Margaret Thatcher was really, during World War Two for the war effort. And Britain was attacked by Germany, you know, with U2, V2 vessels, and everything. They nationalized a lot of major industries for the war effort, you know, from coal mining to railroads, who knows what else. And those, you know, in other countries, we did the same thing. We had other countries, but we got rid of them. And they kept it. And Margaret Thatcher privatized a lot more he was able to, to really look at socialism.

 

Mike King  

Interesting. Now, speaking of which, timely world events have this conversation, what’s going on in Cuba right now? What do you think that pans out?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

You know, I don’t, you know, I have not had a chance to really drill down and find out what’s going on there, really? And who’s fermenting it? It seems that having been to Cuba, you know, Internet access is minimal. And it’s only within the last few years. There’s no way to really mobilize people by social media. So to me, somebody is behind this and funding it to a large extent. I don’t know. wouldn’t surprise me? Well, the Biden administration’s not going to do it. And AOC and other people are accusing the US are fermenting those actually coming out and the size of Cuba. So I don’t know at this point. But Cuba has such potential, such a beautiful country that people are wonderful. If left alone by the government, they could. It could be an incredible entrepreneurial opportunity. I remember when I was there, I went to an organic farm. And they made a big deal of creating this environment I mean, this organic farm or were all organic. Well, the reason was Russia and Britain really subsidizing Cuba. They cut them off from imports of fertilizer. So it wasn’t really done. Because Oh, it’s cool. We have people who want to eat organic food, but it was really done more because we don’t have any fertilizer.

 

Mike King  

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, being in Miami. It’s certainly a hot topic right now. And I think it will be for a while. Yeah. Speaking…

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

It has different factions too, you know. The Cubans in Cuba, to a large extent, resent Cuban Americans that fled after 1959 or 58.  I guess  When Castro took power, they resented them. They guys went to Miami. We stayed here and you know, you have a cushy life. We don’t. So I don’t know. It’s gonna be interesting.

 

Mike King  

Yeah. I remember news coverage of Elián Gonzales, you remember that?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

 Yeah. 

 

Mike King  

Yeah. It’s a big thing. The big thing. So what’s next for you? You know, you’re working on some marketing for companies and distribution. Talk a little bit more about that. So people know, you know what, what you’re doing right now. And…

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

We have a bunch of internet platforms and marketing strategies. What is a medical and pharma insider? The common characteristic of all these, Mike, is that they’re there to address business and financial objectives of companies investments, you know, so whether it’s our medical and pharma, including health care, medical and farming cider, we have emerging technology Insider, for tech companies. We have business Connect Insider, which is for the rest of the companies that don’t fit into those categories. We have cannabis and hemp Insider, and we have crowdfunding Insider for companies doing crowdfunding, so they’re all similar and we use the impact and power, Mike, have a video interview a conversation like you and I are having coupled with proprietary email, website and social media digital distribution, to get the job done to get the word out there to get the right audiences. So that’s basically what I’m involved with. The only thing new since you and I last talked a couple of weeks ago, is I have the largest financial community and event business in the United States, up until 2007. In 2007, we did over 230, roadshow luncheons, cocktail parties, big conferences in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, in New York, conferences in Hong Kong and Singapore. And we’re getting back and we’re gonna, I’m not sure business travel will return so quickly. And I think it’s driven basically by managers saying, we did without this dream COVID getting on airplanes, do you really need to get on a plane, and I’m sort of somebody that always believes in, break bread with somebody, you know, establish a one to one connection with them. It’s more powerful than a zoom call. So we’re getting back into live events with luncheons in key cities, including your city, Miami. We’ll see you know, we’ll do like a Miami on a Tuesday, Fort Lauderdale on a Wednesday Palm Beach on a Thursday or San Diego on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Orange County Thursday, LA type thing or Houston, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we’ll see what the appetite is from companies. We’ll see what the appetite is for attendees. 

 

Mike King  

Interesting. 

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

You know, again, we’re taking a risk, but we’ll see what happens.

 

Mike King  

Yeah, I mean, but without risk, you know, there’s no reward.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

I have scheduled some meetings I have to leave for, Mike, unfortunately. I just to wrap things up, irrespective of how good or how bad things seem. There are opportunities out there. And I interviewed myself for one of our platforms. A guy who was actually Palestinian American in Michigan a couple of weeks ago. And his big thing is entrepreneurship as a way for people of color and disadvantaged communities to get ahead. And, you know, he and I agree completely on that. And in fact, that interview was, you know, at one of our websites, and I think it’s fascinating. So, I really believe in entrepreneurship. And there’s just whether it’s a taco truck, whether it’s becoming, you know, creating an opportunity for home health care, as a franchise opportunity or employment opportunity. There are just tons of things or going into peripheral businesses in the cannabis industry or delivering cannabis. In Colorado, we also have, you can have cannabis venues where people can come and smoke. That’s a business opportunity that not a lot of states have. 

 

Mike King  

Beautiful. Well, as always, Jeff, I appreciate you joining us. Lots of insight was provided here and we’ll probably do it again. Why don’t you tell everybody where people can find you?

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Yeah, the easiest thing for me is to go to my sort of holding company, FC global strategies.com, F C. Frank, Charles. Global strategies. That then has links to all our websites and programs, biographical information, consulting, advisory services, etc. 

 

Mike King  

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. I know you got to run. I want to be mindful of your time. everybody listening. Thanks. And go check Jeff out. We’ll have more of this at a later date.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Yeah, Mike, I’d be glad to talk to any of your viewers. They go to my website, my emails there, they can fill out a form. We can have a call. 

 

Mike King  

Beautiful. Thank you so much.

 

Jeffrey Friedman  

Okay, have a great rest of the day. Mike.

 

Mike King  

 You too.

 

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