JOIN US IN MIAMI!

Christina: Hello everyone, and welcome to a special edition of I Am Christina DiArcangelo. And today I have two of my board members who have been on I Am Christina DiArcangelo a few times now. And today we're talking about something very, very exciting for us, and that is our big event in Miami, Florida on November 4th of this year from 2 Well, you're going to check in at 2, but it'll start at 2:30 till 6 down in Miami. And so I'm so pleased to have both Jose and Tiffany today on the show so we could talk a little bit, not too much, a little bit about what we're doing in Miami at our medical cannabis educational event. Who wants to start off?

Jose: Thanks for having us, Christina.

Tiffany: Yeah, always happy to be on. This is like my second home spot for podcasts, so I'm incredibly at home and super excited to talk about this event today.

Christina: Awesome. Thank you Tiff. And thank you, Jose, for coming on. And I noticed you got a little haircut there. It looks really nice.

Jose: Thank you. I love to be back. You know we all talk a lot about all of this. And I'm super excited to be bringing an event to my home state here in Florida because I think this is one of the states that's going to be driving significant change nationwide on this aspect. So I'm very excited to be able to bring an educational event down here.

Christina: Thank you so much for bringing that up. And actually, Jose, why don't we just dovetail off of that? Why did we decide as a board because you know the origination of APA is in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and we've done events already in the Commonwealth. Why did we choose to go down to Miami?

Jose: Florida has been a bit of a crazy market with all of like I've been looking into the numbers and just in the last few months, they've added almost half a million medical patients. Right? We're sitting at almost a million people in a medical program that started less than three years. So it goes three or four years ago. Now, this industry, which is holding medical here is already worth almost $2 Billion. And this insane growth is also creating, I think we have over 500 dispensaries in the state. It creates over 30,000 jobs. And on top of it, very few people are properly aware of the benefits of being able to find proper support, that there are doctors out there that will support them in being able to get the right products that support their health needs. And it can be life changing for people when they know. And being able to bring this here and on top of Miami, like the Miami mayor whose name escapes me right now, he's a candidate for presidency right now. And one of his big campaign promises is deal with the federal regulation of cannabis for both medical and recreational. So he's looking into how to expand this because he sees not just the economic benefits, but the medical benefits to the population. So hopefully we get lucky and we can count on him one way or another for our event. But I am absolutely excited because it's going to bring a lot of access to a lot of people down here.

Christina: I agree. And also remember we had a patient come to us back in February and it was in Miami. I was actually down there for Christian's birthday celebrating, and we met up with this person, and I obviously can't say her name. You guys know who it is. But for the population out there that will be listening or watching our show, because of HIPAA, we cannot obviously release who the name of this person is, but this person had been struggling on what her general practitioner and some of her other physicians had prescribed to her, and it caused her detrimental occurrences to her health. And she was a medical cannabis patient. And when she had to go into the hospital, they marked her off when she went into the hospital that she was addicted to cannabis, and that was her problem. So the other catalyst, if you will, for why we decided to do this in Florida, because to your point earlier, Jose, there's not a lot of education out there regarding the therapeutic benefits of medical cannabis and cannabinoids and all the various terpenes and things like that that are formulated for patients. So that was one of the other reasons why we wanted to take it to Miami. I just didn't want us to forget that because when we got on this morning, we talked quickly and then it just popped into my head like, oh, we cannot forget about our main person who brought this to our attention in our face.

Tiffany: Yeah, 100%. Look, we're patient first. Those of you who have been listening to us for a while probably know christina and I have said this a thousand times. We are patients above all else, all else. So what that really encompasses is making sure that where there is a thicket of those who rely upon cannabinoids in order to feel better, we are going to be there to champion them and to provide them support and resources. And that's really what this event is to us. The whole brainstorm behind the event is how do we get mass amounts of education and materials to folks who really need to know more about why cannabis is in existence in any given state, whether it's a medical program or an adult use program, we have to focus on where this originates. Cannabis has always been for wellness. Even thousands of years ago, tens of thousands of years ago, it was used as remedy, used in spirituality. So there's always been a wellness efficacy that people rely upon from this particular plant. And we want to make sure that the right eyes are looking and the right ears are listening because that is what's going to change and propel cannabis to where we know we want it to be. You know, when Jose speaks of economic wellness, we want economic wellness that starts with healed humans. We have to be okay, we must reach homeostasis in order to create that environmental balance as well. It's not just within ourselves. We want folks to understand that serious side of cannabis, that it's not just bumping into a dispensary or there's music playing and people are telling you this product's fire and we love this. We want people to understand the other side because as we've bridged into this industry, we've forgotten the community that it rests upon. And so with this event, we want to bring education together with the pillar of community and the pillar of research and education. So I think that we're super excited because of that, but it's always going to be patient first and you're going to feel it. So I hope that you're all able to join us.

Christina: I think that's awesome that you bring that up community wise, because Jose, TIFF and I had caught up off the cuff Friday night and we were talking know, much of our advertising started to flow already, right about the event. And it's hitting all of the social media across all the companies, brands, et cetera, of all the people that work with us, thank god, and our internship team that's been working really hard, helping us, all the interns we have that are out there and trying to bring in sponsorships, et cetera. But when Tiff brought up community, it made me think back on a discussion we had on Friday wherein a lot of times people perceive us as an organization, as this corporate entity, and that we have lost sight of why cannabis is here and why cannabis has been advocated for over the past god knows how many years forgetting that we have an OG here in cannabis and that would be and no OG from a strain perspective. I mean, original Tiffany Watkins has been in the space for more than three decades, much longer than me. I got in in 2015, 2016 on the research and then advocacy side, right? And so sometimes instead of us being more collaborative and loving to one another, we partition off because they see us as corporate. Even though, yes, we have a 501, yes, we have bylaws, we have rules of engagement, and yes, we follow the laws. That's what everyone should be doing. I don't feel as though we should be rubbed like we're this corporate endeavor when we don't even charge for the work we do for our patients, as you all know.

Tiffany: Right. I think that we need to invite people to scratch the surface a little deeper, keep going, because you never know who's behind whatever given project. There's a lot of us out here delving into the cannabis space and we're not all pointed in the right direction. We're not all pointed in the same direction, but it's worth to scratch a little bit further beneath the surface to find out who is really running the show. Because we've had, and I'll say frankly folks that we reach out to for this and they're like, well, I don't know if I want to support this corporate cannabis and not understanding that the people who are in it. We are, like I said, patient first, wellness first. But we also been at it for a significant portion of time and understand the community behind this industry. So ask more questions.

Christina: We're all patients, all of us are right? All of us on this Zoom today.

Jose: I think it's also important to add that this is still taboo for a lot of people. We've all been going to the doctors all of our lives and there's always like, well, there's this medical compound that we can give you, this chemical compound, everything's going to have a side effect, everything's going to have this. And the less that people are exposed to other options out there, the less they're going to know about it. And just the ability of being able to get in front of so many people have an event that's going to be in the media, that's going to be solo represented. It doesn't mean that every single person attendance is going to get what they want, but they might tell somebody from what they learned, hey, this could change you. And that's just going to generate a chain link effect of just so many people that will be affected positively by this event. So I'm really looking forward to it because I know it's going to make an impact in the community whether they attend or not. But we want them to attend though.

Christina: Absolutely. And so people who are listening or watching are probably wondering how can they get a ticket to our event? And we also need to bring up that we have a limited amount of tickets. We're not going to turn this into a big circus where we have thousands of people coming to this event. We're going to lock us down at 150 tickets. And that's not including all the staff that will be there, all the companies that will be there. We're talking about the actual ticket sales. And so to be able to purchase your ticket, you're going to go on www.affinitypatientadvocacy.org/events So we have a special page we opened up for events on the website and you'll see the full gamut of why we're doing this much to what we've already been talking to or talking about today. So I won't repeat ourselves because we've already talked about a lot of things, but the tickets can be purchased there. And then also we're allowing sponsorships to come in because to Jose and Tiffany's points earlier, we want this to be a big community event, educational event. So we want to kind of lock arms with partners who are vision focused for patients first and the therapeutic advantages of cannabinoids as it relates to research, not antidotally through Survey Monkey questionnaires and things of that nature. So we are looking for sponsorships as well because as I keep saying today, and I apologize, we don't charge money to do the work that we have done. And we've helped hundreds of patients over the years since we opened our doors in 2015. So it would be really awesome if we could see some core companies coming through that are willing to sponsor to join us in this endeavor because we are trying to change history with cannabinoids.

Tiffany: 100%. And a partnership with us is a partnership with the people in which you want to reach. If you're a dispensary, if you are a manufacturer, you kind of need some of the data that we collect by default with our help. And so when you partner with us, it's not just, oh, I'm just going to put my money here to be a part of this event. We've got an ongoing partnership that lasts long after this event because this event is representative of the work that we do that is long term and ongoing. So you have an opportunity to stay a part of that and be at the cutting edge of what we uncover. And we talk directly with those who shop with you, who look for your products, who respond to your branding, so we actually can help each other. So we really do hope that you will check out our sponsorship deck, check out the event, definitely buy a ticket and spread the word.

Christina: Thank you, Tiff. Jose, do you want to dovetail off of that as some of your last comments? Because I'm paying attention to our time so I don't get in trouble with Ry.

Jose: It's okay, you know, I didn't know about any of this until I was educated. I got educated because I was at an industry event that wasn't related to this industry and there was somebody that had set up shops to try to educate people as they went through, and I stopped and I spoke with them. It was life changing to me, right? I'm on this board now because of this, and I strongly believe, get a ticket, come out. Even if you don't believe in any of this, even if you don't care, even if you have professional curiosity, come here, learn. All the experts are going to be there to ask questions and clarify questions or direct you to where you can get the right answer. And maybe it's not for you, but there might be somebody in your life whose life will change because of information you could learn. And it's a lot more valuable having that information than living in ignorance without calling anybody ignorant. But being able to learn about something just changes the game. Come, please. You won't regret it.

Christina: Thank you, Jose. And just to dovetail on that, if you have any questions. You can always contact one of us, either Jose, Tiff, myself directly on LinkedIn. That's the best way to get a hold of us. We're always on. You see all of us on LinkedIn all the time. So you can send us a DM on LinkedIn. You can email info@affinitypatientadvocacy.org. That email box is checked 24/7. Because we have people across the luckily, we're lucky that because we have sister organizations that support us. i.e. Spectral Analytics Precision Telemonitoring and Affinity Biopartners that means that we have people all over the world that are committed to Affinity Patient Advocacy, even if they do not sit on the board and you don't see them today. So, like, the website that we did for APA that we redesigned this year, that was through SAPTM, through one of our lead developers, it's beautiful. It's the nicest website we've ever had in the history of APA. And the ability to put up a silent auction on the event page as well. We have the support of our tech team that's going to help us through the way. And so, again, let's just echo the community standards piece that we're all in this together, and we should accept the challenge of working on this immense project of bringing education to Miami, Florida. All right, well, I think we should end now, if you guys don't mind.

Jose: Wonderful.

Christina: Thank you both for being on today. I really enjoy having you guys here. It is like a family. Like, you see how we are. This is how we are all the time. It really is. We're goofballs, but we love each other and we love patients, and we want to help people. So that's why we're coming together today to talk to you briefly out of our busy schedules. So y'all know where we are, where we sit. And so, as we say in every podcast, remember, we are the same. I am Christina DiArcangelo. Thank you.