Rachel Garland, Co-Founder and CEO of Blaze It Media – Interview Series

One element the cannabis industry certainly doesn’t lack is breadth of subject-matter expertise. From lawyers and regulatory specialists to plant scientists, master gardeners, and financial advisors from major banking institutions, the caliber of talent in the American cannabis space is truly exceptional.

Yet, these same esteemed professionals often struggle to find relevant career or business-building opportunities. Traditional job boards like Indeed and Monster are frequently unreliable, and while LinkedIn excels at networking, cannabis-specific listings remain hit-or-miss—especially since many cannabis companies rarely post open roles on standard platforms.

As the industry grows, however, innovative platforms are emerging specifically to connect these experts with new opportunities. To learn more about one such platform and the process of designing it, mycannabis.com spoke with Rachel Garland, Co-Founder and CEO of Blaze It Media.

What were the most pertinent or otherwise useful subjects that you studied while at University of North Carolina Wilmington? How did being a member of Phi Sigma Pi benefit your studies?

Some of the most valuable experiences I had at UNCW actually came from outside the classroom.

I started freelance writing around 2013. A lot of that work was SEO focused, so I was also learning how businesses could use content to get found online.

Back then, making money online was a lot less common than it is today. A lot of people thought it was interesting, but weird.

I was also a member of Phi Sigma Pi, an honors organization, and served as historian. I realized the website hadn’t been updated in years. I had never built a website before, but I thought we needed a better one, so I figured out how to build it myself. It was my first experience creating something like that, and people loved it.

Those early experiences helped me develop the skills to land my first role at a startup in 2014, where I was one of the first two employees. I worked there full-time while finishing my degree and stayed on after graduation, so I was getting hands-on experience inside a growing online company from the start.

Looking back, that was more formative for my career than any particular class.

That became the foundation for everything that came next, from writing and marketing to entrepreneurship and ultimately building businesses in the cannabis industry.

What sparked your interest in writing about cannabis and hemp in particular? Prior to beginning your copywriting/journalism career, what previous experiences did you have with cannabis?

I first tried cannabis when I was 18 and it changed my life.

I had been through a lot growing up, including losing my mom to lung cancer on Mother’s Day when I was 14. Cannabis gave me space to slow down and reflect. I had always been someone who questioned things, but it made me think more deeply about my own life. Was I actually on the path I wanted to be on? Was I making choices because they were right for me, or because they were what I thought I was supposed to do?

At the same time, it was also social. I had a lot of fun, made memories, and built friendships through it. So my experience with cannabis was never just one thing. 

The writing side came a few years later.

After a year at the startup, I quit my job to build something of my own. I started freelance writing on all kinds of topics, and one day I came across a post looking for a cannabis writer. I remember thinking, “That sounds like the coolest job in the world.”

I applied, and I got rejected.

That rejection ended up changing my career.

Around that same time, I was realizing I needed to specialize instead of writing about everything. Cannabis was the thing I felt called toward, so I decided to go all in. This was 2015. I had no contacts in the industry and no proof that it was going to work.

I built a website, wrote sample articles, and pitched like crazy. Eventually, people started saying yes.

That was my entry into the cannabis industry, and from there, one opportunity kept leading to another.

While contributing to cannabis publications, what were the most meaningful and/or relevant topics that you wrote about? What were some common subjects that you explored throughout your articles?

I covered just about every side of cannabis.

One day I might be writing about cannabinoids, the endocannabinoid system, or what the latest research was showing about cannabis and spinal cord injuries, chronic stress, asthma, or sleep. The next might be about topicals, concentrates, sun-grown cannabis, consumption methods, cannabis culture, careers in the industry, or different parts of the plant itself.

I also covered industrial hemp heavily, from hemp plastic and homes to food, protein, fuel, and other uses.

A lot of those pieces were very research heavy. This was before AI, and there was far less information available online than there is today, so I would spend days digging through studies, books, reports, and other sources to understand a topic well enough to explain it clearly.

Outside of the articles, I was also doing a lot of independent research because I wanted to understand cannabis as deeply as I could.

With the Women in Cannabiz platform, who were some of the most accomplished and esteemed women in cannabis that were featured in interviews? How did the platform help increase and promote both cannabis knowledge and representation for the contributions of women in the cannabis industry simultaneously?

Women of Cannabiz really started with a simple idea in 2016. I was seeing all of these women building businesses and doing important work in cannabis, but there was very little coverage.

I actually pitched the idea to several publications and companies at first, and they either ignored it or rejected it. Within a matter of weeks, I thought, why am I waiting for someone else to say yes?

I’ll just build it myself.

For three years, I featured a different woman in cannabis every week. In total, I interviewed more than 100 women from around the world. That included people like patient advocate Carola Pérez in Spain, hemp leader Hana Gabrielová in the Czech Republic, and U.S. leader Shanita Penny, whose work has spanned business and policy. 

Part of the goal was to give women a place to share their work and their stories, but I also wanted to learn. Every interview gave me a deeper understanding of another part of the industry, and then I could turn around and share that knowledge with the audience.

The response was almost immediate.

Within about six months, the community had grown to 10,000 followers, and it kept expanding from there into an audience of over 100,000 people across social media, email, and the online platform I created. In 2018, Women of Cannabiz was also recognized by Emerald Magazine with its Best Social Media Presence award.

Alongside the interviews and educational content, I built revenue streams through advertising, digital products, and consulting.

That is really how Women of Cannabiz was able to promote both cannabis knowledge and women in the industry at the same time. I was giving women a place to share their businesses, ideas, and expertise, while also giving the audience access to stories and perspectives they weren’t seeing in many other places at the time.

What inspired you to co-found Blaze It Media? What industry issues did you hope to solve with the platform?

Blaze It Media really grew out of everything my husband Hunter and I had already been building in cannabis and out of a problem we kept seeing again and again: talented people in this industry had deep expertise, but they didn’t have a clear way to turn that knowledge into something they could own and grow.

Hunter started 420 Web Designs in 2016 as I was building Women of Cannabiz.

Then on 4/20 in 2019 everything changed.

I had planned a live event to launch a new book. Now keep in mind, I had already lost the Women of Cannabiz Instagram once at around 80,000 followers and rebuilt the page back to 10,000 at that point.

So there I was on 4/20, living in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, when in the middle of the live event, the account was deplatformed in real time. One minute I was live, and the next it was gone. Pinterest was removed the same day, and there were multiple attempts to get into the website.

From that point forward, I built differently. I became much more focused on owned assets, direct relationships with the audience, and business models that could not disappear.

It was also the point where Hunter and I joined forces, combined what we were each doing, and went all in together.

For the next several years, we built 420 Web Designs as a traditional cannabis marketing agency. We specialized in websites, branding, packaging, social media, email, and other done for you services. We also did some consulting, but most of the business was focused on delivering marketing services for clients.

A big part of that chapter was built while Hunter and I were living in Mexico and running the company completely remotely.

By 2023, we had evolved beyond a web design company. The industry had changed too. Censorship was getting worse, the 420 branding itself was starting to create limitations, and what we were building had become much bigger than websites. That was when we rebranded as Blaze It Media.

But the bigger change was in what we wanted the company to become.

After years of doing marketing for cannabis businesses, we kept coming back to the same idea: we did not just want to catch the fish for people. We wanted to teach them how to fish, because once you know how, you do not have to go hungry again.

In 2024, we started testing a new model for how we delivered our consulting and education side of the business. This was a different structure with a new system and a new way of helping people apply what we had learned.

We tested it in real time with the market.

That is where the bigger opportunity became even clearer. There were people throughout cannabis with years, sometimes decades, of knowledge and experience, but they did not know how to turn that into a clear offer and build something around their expertise.

So Blaze It Media evolved from helping cannabis businesses market what they sold into helping cannabis professionals monetize what they know.

That became the foundation for The Cannabis Business Accelerator.

How does Blaze It stay true to the title of the #1 Cannabis Business Accelerator? How was it truly built directly from the experiences of industry professionals across all sectors?

The Cannabis Business Accelerator is built from lived experience.

Everything inside it comes from things we’ve actually done, tested, and refined over more than a decade in cannabis.

Hunter and I have built businesses, sold education and services, grown audiences, dealt with censorship, and generated clients and customers completely remotely in this industry. Blaze It Media has been online from the start, so we’ve had to learn how to build trust, generate demand, sell, and deliver without relying on a physical location.

We’ve also worked with cannabis professionals across different parts of the industry and around the world. Consultants, educators, operators, financial professionals, and others may have different expertise, but many run into the same problem: they know a lot, but they don’t have a clear way to package, position, sell, and scale that knowledge.

We built The Accelerator to solve that problem.

We help experienced cannabis professionals turn what they know into a remote consulting or education business.

And it keeps evolving. We pay close attention to what is changing in the market. When we see the same challenge come up again and again, we improve the system around it.

What are some success stories from Blaze It Media? How has the platform helped cannabis professionals grow their business and client base?

The people we work with already know their craft. They have spent years in cannabis. What they are missing is a clear way to turn that expertise into something people want and will pay for.

One example is a dispensary professional who came to us with more than 12 years of experience working on the ground across multiple states. He knew cannabis retail inside and out, but he didn’t have a clear way to package that expertise into something people will buy.

We helped him turn what he knew into a clear consulting offer. The very first person he presented it to became a $5,000 client plus revenue share.

What he said afterward mattered even more to me. It wasn’t just the money. It was taking his power back. Once you understand how to package what you know and build a business around it, your life changes.

Another example is an edibles expert who came to us thinking she needed to build a course. Instead of spending months building first, we helped her validate the idea and get paid in the process.

She followed our system and enrolled four paying students within 30 days. Two were people she already knew locally. The other two were halfway across the world and had never met her before.

I love that example because it shows both sides of what’s possible. You can start with the relationships you already have. But you’re not limited to your current network. When the offer and positioning are clear and you apply what we teach, you can reach people around the world.

We’re also working with a doctor who has deep clinical expertise. We helped her turn that knowledge into a medical cannabis course for clinicians, from concept through the educational material, and the course is now accredited and live.

And then there are transformations that are harder to put on a spreadsheet. I’ve watched people go from being invisible online and unsure how to talk about what they do to becoming clear and confident in what they bring to the table. They start seeing the value of their expertise in a completely different way. 

That’s the deeper part of the work for me. Yes, we want tangible results: clients, customers, students, sales. Those are the things that actually build a business. But the deeper layer is who you become along the way.

When you know how to turn an idea into something valuable and get it in front of the right people, that changes your life and the lives you go on to impact.

How diverse are the specialties and subject matter expertise of the cannabis professionals who have used Blaze It Media? How does the diversity in those cannabis specialties strengthen The Accelerator?

Our clients have included growers, CFOs, medical professionals, CPAs, consultants, advisors, operations experts, hiring and recruitment professionals, and educators.

That range has given us a much deeper understanding of how the cannabis industry is evolving because we’re not seeing it from just one angle. We’ve worked with people on the clinical side, the financial side, cultivation, operations, education, professional services, and other areas where deep expertise matters.

There’s also a global piece to it. We’ve worked with people across the U.S. as well as internationally, including Canada and the Netherlands, and our clients have attracted opportunities and customers from other parts of the world too.

That strengthens The Cannabis Business Accelerator because we can see what changes from specialty to specialty, but we also see what stays consistent.

That’s part of what makes the work so exciting to me. The expertise may be completely different, but the opportunity to turn that knowledge into something valuable is there across the industry.

How do you envision the Blaze It Media platform expanding and evolving as the cannabis industry itself grows? What new specialties do you think clients will have in the coming years?

I see the impact getting much bigger over time. Not just through the cannabis professionals we work with directly, but through all of the people they go on to help.

There is an incredible amount of knowledge inside this industry. Some have spent 10, 20, even 30 years learning their craft. They’ve solved hard problems, made mistakes, and learned what works. That experience has value, and there are people willing to pay to learn from it.

I see a huge opportunity for Blaze It Media to help more cannabis professionals own and monetize their expertise.

That is already the work we are doing. Going forward, I see us expanding it, helping more professionals build businesses around what they know.

At the center of it all is the same asset: knowledge.

That’s what I call The Cannabis Knowledge Economy™: experienced cannabis professionals turning what they know into what they own through consulting, advisory, and education businesses.

As the cannabis industry evolves, I think we’ll also see entirely new specialties emerge. Highly specialized fields will keep creating new experts with valuable knowledge.

I think we’re only beginning to see what some of those future specialties will be.

But as the industry changes, new problems will keep creating new areas of expertise and new opportunities for the people who know how to solve them.

For me, the bigger vision is ownership and impact. I want the people we work with to own the value of what they know and become stronger leaders.

When you turn that expertise into something valuable, it doesn’t stop with you. The people you help carry that knowledge forward and pass it on to others.

That impact keeps growing, and over time, that becomes legacy.

That’s the future I want Blaze It Media to help build: more cannabis professionals owning what they know and turning it into something that can outlast them and change lives for years to come.

Thank you for joining us, Rachel! For more information on Blaze It Media, please visit its website.