Josey Orr is a serial entrepreneur, consultant, and philanthropist. He is the Co-Founder of HUGS Wellness, a hemp-derived CBD brand based in Austin, TX, that is bringing a new standard of honesty and transparency to the CBD industry.

Formerly, he was the Founder and CEO of the denim brand Dyer and Jenkins and the CMO at BLDR Studios, a marketing consulting agency in Los Angeles.

His scope of work includes strategic brand marketing, photography, and storytelling. His work is accredited by working with major brands such as Bacardi/Dewards Whiskey, Sony/Extreme Music, Kodiak Cakes and New Age Beverage.

This is a broad ranging conversation with Josey being fully transparent about his successes, failures, drug and alcohol addiction and recovery. His experience and perspective on business, value creation, recovery, and the reasons why his new company, HUGS Wellness, is focused on making a difference in the CBD industry are all on show during the episode.

Here’s a full summary of the conversation:
•Learnings from his first job working for his father’s business
•Josey’s early realization that he never wanted to work for someone else and wanting to be his own boss
•Learning core business principles with customer feedback being of upmost importance and being a man of your word – dependability and staying true to your word!
•A lesson from his father – no ask someone to do something that you’re not willing to do yourself or have done already
•Drug & Alcohol addiction running in Josey’s family and after starting to experiment with both, he started to cross ‘invisible lines’ and then becoming addicted.
•The opioid epidemic in blue-collar America that impacted Josey
•Easy access to these drugs so it lead to an addiction
•Taking OxyContin and Heroin – OxyContin is just pharmaceutical grade heroin
•Getting sober in 2011 at the age of 20 with AA which worked for Josey but it’s not the only way
•Recovery was also part of Josey’s family and this was key on his journey
•Josey’s mother telling him a harsh truth and this led to a ‘moment of clarity’
•Being given the gift of willingness to hearing and listening to advice to people that knew more than Josey
•Moving to LA for recovery and this put him on a new path towards becoming an entrepreneur
•Inspired by Books – Seth Godin – Purple Cow and the 4 Hour Work Week
•Key Lessons learned through a series of business:
oAn online retail store for me – failed miserably with too much inventory
oStarting his own clothing company rather than selling others – learning a lot about digital marketing as a whole
oLearning to take some hits on the chin and getting back up and going again
•Entrepreneurship now being like a celebrity and how glorified it is now – this can overshadow that it’s very hard!
•Sobriety & Recovery very similar
•The relationship between entrepreneurship and recovery are very similar – both willing to make a change – how you can focus on helping somebody
•Value Creation is very similar in recovery and business
•In Sobriety your thought ‘you can’t keep what you have unless you’re willing to give it away’
•Business is similar – you succeed more in delivering value than what you can abstract from a transaction
•HUGS Wellness & the CBE venture – why now?
•2019 CBD’s huge boom in the wellness community due to changes in the federal laws in the USA
•Misconceptions in the CBD Industry – Addictive?
•The benefits of taking CBD.
•Why are people taking CBD?
•How it is used?
•Difference with weed – THC v HEMP?
•What deciding to go into this industry now?
•How to differential themselves from the rest in their marketing and promotions
•Hugs is all about self-care
•Giving away 1% of profits monthly to help others recover – giving back at the core!
•Spending time, money and effort on compliance which is a critical part of the business and to create more credibility
•Being a mission driven organization
•Focusing on the User Experience as a key value
•Transparency is another core value
•Other inspirational leaders Josey learns from?
o@Naval on Twitter
oPaul Graham
•Creating a work-life balance? Practicing self-care!!
•Taking breaks is not a weakness!
•Check out more about HUGS Wellness at www.hugscbd.com
•If you’re keen to purchase, you can use the discount Code – HUGYOURSELF at checkout!