1. Make Your Passion Your Business: Vince maintains that passion and belief in your business are essential for entrepreneurial success. Passion, not money, is going to keep you inspired to grow and innovate your company.
2. Emphasize Empathy in Customer Service: As a leader in the CBD industry for over a decade, Vince has found that empathy is essential to excellent customer service. Effective communication and thoughtful questioning are key to understanding each customer’s unique needs and delivering the right products to meet them.
3. Innovation Drives Business: Using nanotechnology, Vince’s company was able to offer a more effective and affordable water-soluble CBD product. Embracing innovation in the form of cutting-edge science allowed Vince to scale his business while diversifying product selection.
4. Prioritize Reinvestment: Vince advocates for a bootstrapped approach to business growth for startup companies, emphasizing reinvestment over external funding to avoid the high costs and risks of giving up equity or taking on expensive debt.
5. Leverage AI: Vinces views AI as an invaluable tool for E-Commerce companies dealing with legal questions and paperwork. His CBD company uses legal AI for labelling and FDA compliance, sending documents to an attorney for review as needed.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Vince Sanders was drawn to CBD for personal reasons – to help a family member battling cancer. In 2015, he founded one of the first major CBD companies in the U.S., playing a key role in reshaping public perception of cannabis for health and wellness. His journey is inspiring, built on a foundation of listening to customers, driving product innovation, and staying passionate about leading the CBD industry forward.
Meet Vince Sanders, Founder of CBD American Shaman!
CBD American Shaman is dedicated to bringing wellness to the world through ultra-concentrated terpene rich CBD oil derived from all natural, high quality industrial hemp. It is legal in all 50 states and is 100% Organic, Gluten-Free, Non GMO Hemp and has no heavy metals or insecticides, and is batch tested using Ultra Performance Convergence Chromatography.
Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Vince was introduced to the entrepreneurial mindset early by working for his family’s businesses. “Customer service and marketing were things that I saw on a daily basis,” he remembers and goes on to say, “I’ve literally been self-employed since I was 19.” But it wasn’t the pursuit of making money that led him to enter the CBD industry. Rather, Vince was motivated by personal reasons as he watched a loved one go through lung cancer. With no official plan initially, he was able to draw from ‘pre-existing entrepreneurial skills’ and turn his interest in CBD into a legitimate enterprise. In March 2015, he founded CBD American Shaman.
When Vince started his company, CBD was unchartered territory. He teamed up with the 5 other small CBD companies in existence at the time to form the Hemp Roundtable in 2016. Vince remembers their thinking and says, “It was a gray area, how legal what we were doing was, so in order to survive, we needed to join forces.” Prioritizing education along with countless visits to Washington D.C. led to the passing of the Farm Bill in 2018. “It reversed 81 years of prohibition,” Vinces says. “It was both a chilling and proud moment that a small group of determined individuals were able to change a US law that was nearly a century old.”
“We’re roughly 400 people divided up between corporate, online, in-store brick-and-mortar, manufacturing, sales, shipping and receiving,” Vinces says, noting that employees predominately work in offices spread across 5 campuses (positions like customer service and graphic design are partially remote).
CBD American Shaman’s customer experience philosophy focuses on empathy, education, and efficiency. People often seek CBD to relieve pain or address a health issue, but their knowledge ends there. Pinpointing a customer’s needs and concerns is important - Vince says, “the key is good questions, asking open-ended questions to determine why the person is calling and then trying to figure out what’s the best product for them and how it should be delivered.”
CBD is expensive – taken as an oil, only 10% enters the blood stream and is effective while 90% is lost to the digestive system. To boost the bioavailability of his product, Vince teamed up with scientists to develop a nanotechnology for CBD that was being used for pharmaceuticals. “In early 2017, we came out with our nanotechnology water soluble,” Vince says. “So then we were able to sell a 300-milligram water-soluble product rather than a 3,000-milligram product and get the same results.” The nanotechnology innovation increased effectiveness and affordability and that original water-soluble product “is still the anchor product for the whole business.”
Customers can sample at brick-and-mortar stores, Vince notes. “If someone who is anxious or stressed comes in and you give them a water-soluble product to try that in a matter of minutes makes their shoulders drop, they are going to want to make that purchase. And as it continues to work, they continue to come back. Obviously, repeat business is the key to success.”
Vince focused on reinvesting in his start-up CBD company, stressing a bootstrapped approach. “It takes money to grow. It’s very difficult to raise funds and it’s very expensive either by giving up part of your business or incredibly high interest rates. Neither is enjoyable or potentially good for a young business,” says the seasoned entrepreneur.
Looking forward, Vince aims to continue to grow his company and bring in more revenue. As a leader, he wants to add people to his team, giving them the opportunity to realize their career aspirations. “I like to think that I keep my eyes on the horizon, trying to figure out what’s coming next,” he says and then asks, “What can I get to be ahead of the pack? Because if you’re late, you’ve missed it.” A perceptive business strategy is essential while navigating the competitive CBD industry. “There’s only one way to lead and that’s to stay in the front,” he adds.
“If you are not going to invest your heart and soul in it, it will not work,” Vince proclaims. He believes that the key to successful entrepreneurship is to focus on your passion rather than making money. Ultimately, motivation and drive to move forward will come from having belief in your business no matter how much money is coming in. Years of experience also taught Vince to prioritize reinvesting back into his companies, rather than drawing profit, to support future growth and development.
Flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly in a changing market is also crucial for success. “You better be able to predict it almost; the winds of change are coming and be ready for it. Because if you don’t move fast you sink.”
CBD American Shaman has been a customer-centric company from the beginning. As the company grew and added to its product selection, up-to-date education, for both customers and employees, became a top priority. The introduction of new technology and modern practices like user-generated evaluation have also impacted CS strategies. “You start asking for Google reviews and say ‘here’s a QR code. If you’d scan it and add how your visit was today, it will mean a lot,” Vince says, acknowledging the impact feedback and word-to-mouth marketing has on business.
Can’t-live-without-tool? We are an eclectic group. Other than a computer and phone, I don’t think there is one overarching tool that absolutely everybody uses or has to have in order to survive.
Key hiring trait? In this day and age, willingness to work and show up. And having a good personality, empathy, and being a team player are very important.
AI or no AI? I’m all in. It’s amazing. We use it for customer service online. I personally use ChatGPT all the time for a variety of things. We have a large legal AI that we’ll use to vet labelling and things like that for FDA compliance. And if it’s a normal issue, we’ll just use AI. If it's of greater concern, we’ll use AI and send it to the FDA attorney to review and modify as needed.
Favorite thought leader in the E-Commerce world? I’m a brick-and-mortar type guy – that is how I grew up. But within my own industry, I know some very good websites that have done really well and cracked the code. A big thing under the Farm Bill is THCA flyer, which is essentially marijuana, but the THCA is under .3%. Therefore, it’s hemp until you burn it. A company called Mood has figured out how to SEO and do Ads that are compliant. Those are the companies that I look at – that are strategic and have found loopholes to get to market. Our products aren’t on Amazon. I can’t just go out and do traditional marketing. It’s about finding workarounds because oftentimes it feels like we're trying to pantomime this is what we’re trying to sell to you, but I can’t come out and say it. For a ‘normal business,’ these aren’t things they need to pay attention to – they can get Facebook Ads and just run them. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for us.
#1 challenge as a leader? E-Commerce has been very hard. But the #1 challenge is legal. It has been a challenge. We are lobbying in states, in the federal government. We have intoxicating hemp products and almost lost all of them in the state of Texas until recently when Governor Abbot vetoed it. An entire multi-billion industry that has been established over the last 5 years would have been gone in the blink of an eye. We have all the challenges you have with a normal business such as revenue and cost controls, plus dealing with legality and lobbying. We even have a hard time finding banks or credit card services. It’s far and away the most complicated thing I have ever done.
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