I'd like you to meet Michelle Crawford, though I'll warn you right off the bat, this video and blog post are not for the faint of heart! Michelle isn't shy about her belief that a healthy sex life is incredibly important to a healthy human life, She credits a random Google search for "weed lube" as the beginning of her passion for the plant. Find out more below.
Cannabis Coaching Institute Graduate Profiles
This is the first in a series of videos and blogs that I'm creating, where I'm profiling some of the students who have graduated (or are close to it) from the Cannabis Coaching Institute. It's really exciting to see where our students are working, what types of programs they're creating, how they're able to help their clients. And I hope that this series of interviewing these grads gives you a better handle on what we do at the Cannabis Coaching Institute (CCI). As always, if you have any questions, please post them down below. And if you're ready to join, click that happy button below and use code: revealcannabis for $500 off your tuition.
***Below you'll find a transcription of the video I made with Michelle. It's been slightly edited for better readability.***
- Please tell us your full name and where in the world you are.
- Absolutely, thank you, Andrea. My name is Michelle Crawford and I'm in San Jose, California.
- Awesome, here's a really a long-standing cannabis culture there. Can you tell me about when you joined CCI. And can you talk to me a little bit about your story leading up to that? Your cannabis story and why you're here?
- Yeah, absolutely. I am a graduate of the February 2021 class. Coming kinda straight out of the pandemic right at ya. My cannabis story starts about five or six years ago, and it's a really kind of a somewhat popular one at CCI. I got started with weed lube, as a matter of fact. I heard about the product called Foria, which you might've heard of now. And it was available in California from dispensaries if you were a medical patient back then. And so I went the whole journey to buy that product and to try it and then eventually, because it was such a great addition to my life. I wanted to make it. And that brought me into Corrine's sphere. Corinne Tobias, the founder of CCI, as you know so. She has so many cookbooks and her blog, Wake and Bake has so many recipes, for weed lube and other things that, that brought me into it. And I didn't actually know much about CCI, in the years that it started because I was kind of doing some things with my own life. I have a three-year-old. So I was doing the motherhood, pregnancy thing and keeping my energy to myself. And when I re-emerged from that world, I was doing a lot with cannabis for my family and just at home, I'm a kitchen person. I love to make things and DIY, and I was just making a lot of topicals, and things like that. And of course weed lube. I ventured into a lot of tinctures and capsules and stuff like that. And when I wanted to join CCI, I saw a news hour on PBS. That's what really brought me to it. I saw Bill Meeks, a guy in Arizona who was being biographied for his choice to go from being a retired Sheriff's deputy to a Cannabis Health Coach in his senior community in Arizona. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's what I'm exactly doing. I was literally like doing what he was doing for his, his community in my family. And I was like, "I can become a Cannabis Health Coach." I went online and boom, I found CCI and actually I found you, so thank you, Andrea, for my small coupon.
- We have a good coupon down below. Check it out. Can you tell me why it was so important for you to go through all the hoops of jumping through the California medical system so that you could get weed lube? I'm interested in that.
- Okay, so you want me to admit just how much I wanted this stuff?
- Yeah, just because I know that that it costs you money. It costs you time. It costs a lot for you to get that. So tell me about why that's so important to you.
- Sure, well, I might as well just say that I think a healthy sex life is just incredibly important to a healthy human life, and I will stand by that philosophy forever. As much as it's hard to talk about. And as much as it's a private and intimate affair with your own couplehood or your own single life, you know, cannabis is an excellent supplement for health. Even just on your body. I didn't know at the time, how much cannabis could help me. I just wanted to have amazing sex with my husband. We've been married for now 23 years maybe. We've been together a long time and I'm devoted to bringing pleasure into the bedroom. And I liked cannabis from my college years. But my husband and I, that was never our thing. We've come a long way! So when I, when I heard about Foria, when I read this crazy article and the title was so click-bait. "How I got my pussy stoned with weed lube."
- Yup, that is click-bait.
- I mean, I'm only human. I couldn't resist.
- What do you expect from me Google? LOL!
- And I want to have great sex with my beloved husband. What can I say? And we did, and I was so grateful. And you know what? I had also issues with my life that I had no expectations that cannabis was going to help me. We didn't know anything about the endocannabinoid system at that time or anything, but I was using weed lube very regularly for sex and that was having an effect in my general health, in my entire area down there, my bladder health. I used to get these UTI's, which are urinary tract infections. And I stopped getting those. And that pulled me down the road of finding out more about cannabis today.
- You have been extremely open with this very sensitive topic that lots of people don't like to talk about within our CCI online community. And it's been fascinating and tingle-inducing to watch how you being open about it in this community has created waves of change for other Cannabis Coaches and therefore for their people, for the people who they're helping as well. So, thanks for being so interested in weed lube that you would go through, all the hoops and come out here several years later with this really strong confident message.
- Thank you, it's been an honor and still is.
- Okay tell me about what the most impactful part of the Cannabis Coaching Institutes curriculum, was for you personally or professionally.
- Well, I wanted it to be Corrine or you, but honestly, it was Niki Wells and the mindset coaching, when it comes down to it actually.
- If you've been watching any of these videos (or reading the blogs) I think you're number six that I've done. And almost everyone has been, "Oh, it was mindset!" No question.
- Mindset is such a huge part of wanting to go into a business. And also, especially for something so previously stigmatized, I think we're riding a wave. I feel luckier than, than many people, especially up here in northern California, where I live, where there are hundreds of legacy farm families. And there's a rise in cannabis acceptance and legalization here and it is like the greatest blessing, honestly. And so being part of that wave by, by joining CCI and riding it with everybody at the same time has just been momentous.
- We've talked about this in other videos/blogs, but that wrap-around support from your fellow students and staff in the Slack community is so important. But it's really the fact that you are doing all of this really personal growth work and this really deep mindset work together with other people who are in many cases, willing to be brave and vulnerable, that you can develop deep connections with people who you've never met before. It's really, it's hard to explain to an outsider what a great community, our like little Slack tribe is. So thanks for bringing that up.
- It is a beautiful community, yeah.
- We're doing something awesome in there. Tell me, about your business. So tell me your, what the name is. Tell me what you're up to. You've got a lot of different irons in the fire.
- I've got quite a few of them.
- And I would like to just point out that this is September 2021, and she started February 2021. So watch out world. Okay, go.
- I think that what's exciting about CCI is that it does lead to a business opportunity that you can run. I am a mother of three children and a wife of two decades and more, I have had so many jobs in my life. I understand being a career woman. The flexibility of Cannabis Coaching to help others with the knowledge that I've put together in my own experience is just a beautiful opportunity with CCI. And the fact that we get you Andrea, with the cannabis science, we get, we get Niki to help us with our mindset as we go out there and represent cannabis, health, wellness, our own businesses, ourselves, and share that intimacy with people and can make those connections through coaching and classes and stuff like that. All of that example, it's set into CCI. I've started my own business. It's Canna-Curious Coaching, that's me, and I have a YouTube channel as well, where I talk a lot about what I call my total spectrum lifestyle. Because at this point my lifestyle includes cannabis to a massively high degree. Not only is it my profession at this point, but it's also like, a gardening hobby. It's a DIY hobby. It's something that I study, in a scholarly way because it is such a new science. It always helps to have that scientific understanding underneath your wings in order to help people. So some of my business has become sort of on the product side. Like I am a user and a purchaser of products like this (Michelle holds up a water glass that turns out to be a VAPORIZER), it's an exciting and outstanding thing. This is a vaporizer, as well as a glass and it really blows people's minds. And it's by a company called Tafee Bowle out of Canada. And I love, love, love them. I love them. And I want to host dinner parties and executive events with these on the table so that people can understand. And those are the kinds of products that I've been using in my actual life. In my DIY kitchen life, I use cannabis appliances that are very specialty, in my vaporizing life I do this, and then we have the gardening life, you know, and all of that. And so there's been a little bit of, for my business opportunity to be a spokesperson or possibly be sponsored by some of these companies or work with them at the very least. So I can get more people interested in their products and also guide people in understanding what's out there for them.
- I agree 100 hundred percent and people don't want or need to dive into this crazy world without a guide. You're someone you have this full-spectrum lifestyle where cannabis is fully integrated into your life. You love that vaporizer. That's a great opportunity to let people cut through the noise so they can find a beautiful vaporizer that looks cool. You're doing coaching. You're looking into products. You have a YouTube channel. You also have, at least one course coming out that I know that people in the broader cannabis community are so excited about. Can you plug that a little bit, please?
- Yes I can plug my course, absolutely. So I mentioned, I have a total spectrum lifestyle. If you're in the cannabis world at all, you might've heard of broad-spectrum, which means THC free and full-spectrum, which means having THC made from full plants and then I made up the word "total spectrum", which just kind of came from combining different cannabis together to get a different recipe and getting a ratio. In my world of DIYing, I started to make combinations of cannabis because I was reading so much about how CBD and THC work better together. And then other cannabinoids started coming out and I found out that they have great qualities that are healing and helpful too. And so I put those together and then, of course, we're learning more and more about, oh, I'm just getting really nerdy here, but acids and neutrals, All of that started to go into my work as my family tincture maker and my family topical maker. And so I developed some recipes that I committed to making that are blended recipes of multiple cannabinoids in both acids and neutrals. And the more I talked about these tincture recipes and these combinations, the more people got super interested in it to the point where I'm basically making a course now to share it with people.
- We briefly talked about Michelle's class on a Q and A call that we were on and people lost their minds. So Michelle is forced into making a class.
- With my YouTube channel, Andrea, I don't know if you've heard this, but my most popular and fastest growing video is me and my mom in her kitchen, blanching cannabis, the Jeff the 420 Chef way. So my mom has agreed to be my cooking co-host and we're going to be on-screen together, making trifecta and cannabinoids. It's going to be so cute, I cannot wait.
- It's going to be so cute, and again, you're opening up the cannabis lifestyle for other people's eyes as somebody who consumes it for health and wellness and your elderly mother.
- Yeah, making it normal and fun. I love it. Can you tell me about something that you've done in your business that you're really proud of?
- Of course, yes. I mean, I think any of us in Cannabis Coaching can think of things that we're really proud of because it's such a helpful plant and helping people get it, access to it and, and confidence with using it, is just, it's a heartwarming endeavour. But for me personally, I will say recently after doing my capstone presentation at CCI, which of course was "Better Sex with Cannabis." People have watched that presentation and have come to me and told me that they did some of the things that I suggested, and they have found more pleasurable relationships with not only themselves, but also their partners, after having hysterectomy's or after having childbirth, or after being kind of like out of the game for a really long time, and losing their confidence. And I just get moved to tears almost for these women who tell me this stuff. And I just think of how beautiful, what a gift for their relationship, that cannabis was able to bring to the bedroom for them. And I mean, everybody needs more pleasure, more health, and being able to be impactful in such an intimate area, but yet still so, so jubilantly part of like of a healthy life. I'm very proud of that.
- And just to be clear, Michelle is teaching this to people who are already in the Cannabis Coaching Institute. Like these are already people who are in their training of being Cannabis Coaches, and you still have such a deep knowledge of a very particular part. And this is what happens all the time is people can combine cannabis with their passion and they put it together and they blow people's minds open. I've seen it. I've seen the comments in Slack about what a difference you've made in their relationship. It's amazing. Looks like it's time for another course, eh lady?
- I definitely have some plans to put that better sex with cannabis and better relationships with cannabis stuff out there. Going forward, I'm going to definitely do what I'm calling Sacred Healing Spa. It'll be a much longer course. It's going to take me a while to put it together. But once tinctures is out there, and everyone's making their canna-kits, like they should be. Then I'll be able to work on Sacred Healing Spa, and share with you all of my canna-bath, self, self-care rituals and stuff, you can join me.
- It sounds like everyone who's watching this needs to click here and follow you so that they do not miss a single thing that you put out now or in the future. Before we go, can you tell me what you would say to somebody who is on the fence about CCI, who isn't sure about what to do, how to make this step?
- Oh my gosh, yeah, absolutely. If you're thinking about CCI, and you feel a pull, I would go for it because you know, we do have to listen to those intuitive callings. I think it's massively important that you tune into yourself, and that you think about it and give yourself this opportunity to explore your interest. You don't know what's going to come of it. I went into CCI thinking, "I'm going to get some legitimacy on a paper. And I might write a book and be like cannabis health coach certified." You know what I mean? That was literally kind of like a stamp in my mind. And I got so much more by participating and signing up, by showing up, and by joining in. I made friends, I made connections and my business is so much more exciting than I ever imagined.
- That's beautiful, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. If this does call to you, if this is that intuition for you, go check out the Cannabis Coaching Institute at the links down below. Use code: revealcannabis for $500 off your tuition. And make sure that you sign up for the FREE business-building workshop series. Many of our most successful cannabis coaches have done this work first. It really does set you up, in order to really think about this in a business-minded way and it's all free. And make sure you check out some of the other videos/blogs of the previous cannabis coaching grads and see their stories, and see if they resonate with you as well. Thanks again so much, Michelle, for being here with us today, we love and appreciate the work that you're doing so much.