Adam Wilks Transcript
Clint Betts
Welcome to the CEO.com Show. My name is Clint Betts. Today's guest is Adam Wilks, co-founder and CEO of Carma, a global house of brands that partners with cultural icons like Mike Tyson, Ric Flair, and Future to revolutionize industries. Under Adam's visionary leadership, Carma creates unique products and experiences through brands such as TYSON 2.0, the Ric Flair Drip, and Evol by Future, bridging the worlds of entertainment, culture, and commerce. Before founding Carma, Adam gained extensive leadership experience across industries. He was the chief operating officer at SOL Global Investments and One Plant and the CEO of Captor Retail Group. He's been in the cannabis industry. He's done a lot of incredible things. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show. What did I miss there? And tell us about Carma.
Adam Wilks
Yeah. No, thanks for having me today. Appreciate it. Excited to talk about Carma and everything that we've done. Just some back information: Carma HoldCo is a house of brands where we bring CPG products to life so that consumers can resonate directly with the talent through authentic products. As you mentioned, Mike Tyson and TYSON 2.0, Ric Flair with Ric Flair Drip, and Woooooo! Energy, good examples embodying Ric Flair's Energy, which we're all very familiar with, hyping up different sports teams and so on, and embodying that energy into a can of Woooooo! The energy here makes you go, Woooooo, right? It's a healthy energy drink. And then you got our Future, four-time Grammy Award-winning hip-hop star, giving consumers the ability to connect with an individual like Future, who is very to himself, doesn't post much, and is just very tough to connect with. We are giving them the opportunity through, whether that's cannabis, whether that's using his tobacco leaves that he smokes himself, or now his new merch line that we just dropped.
All of our products, we're bringing, again, consumers the ability to connect in an authentic way with our talent, as opposed to tons of stuff you see out there where people just slap a celebrity name on a product. If it's not real and authentic, it doesn't work for us. So we're trying to keep it as real as it gets. Mike uses cannabis daily for his own mental health. Rick Flair used cannabis to get off his 30 years plus of Xanax, and Future uses cannabis for daily purposes, just recreational use. There are many other products that we've rolled out under our celebrity names. Cannabis is a very large part of it.
But we also have nicotine products like nicotine pouches by TYSON 2.0 to help people get off of cigarettes or other nicotine consumption methods. One of the most viral products that we created, and I'm sure you're familiar with, is the Mike Bites. It's the gummy ear with the bite out of it to reminisce on the 1990s [inaudible 00:02:56] Holyfield just went viral. We launched that. It was featured on every media outlet, from Fox News to CNN to Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon. It's been a blast. It's been fun working with the talent and always ideating on new and innovative skews.
Clint Betts
Who was the first celebrity you worked with and realize like, "Hey, we can really do some incredible things, built some incredible products, experiences for people." Who was the first one that you started working with on this?
Adam Wilks
So, Mike Tyson is the first one in this group with Carma HoldCo. He approached me after he had a previous endeavor in the cannabis space, which didn't end well. That one went under, and when he approached me about four or five years ago, he knew my experience in the licensing world. I spent many years licensing QSR brands, quick service restaurant brands, franchising, and just brand building, as well as my experience in the cannabis space. He thought it'd be the perfect fit to help him rebuild it. So it started with Mike quickly evolved to adding Ric Flair in another iconic legend, which then we saw a void in the hip-hop category, and we came across Future as we feel one of the biggest things in hip-hop and one of the only male artists in the 21st centuries with 11 platinum records. So, we try to aim for the best of the best in every category.
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure. When you come up with ideas like the gummies for Mike Tyson, what is that process like? How involved is he in that? Obviously, you know you have something when you come up with something like that, but man, the way it took off, like you said, was incredible. Tell us how that even comes about.
Adam Wilks
Absolutely. So I can't take the credit for coming up with the idea, which I could, but the idea actually came from Mike's wife, Kiki, as well as her brother, Azeem. They presented the idea, and I said, "Guys, this is genius." I remember being in the kitchen at Mike and Kiki's house, and when they told me, I was like, "Guys, I got to bring this to market." How have you guys? They have had this idea for years. I'm like, "Why did nobody do anything with it?" So, six weeks after they presented it to me, I had a product manufactured and packaging completed. It went through a whole process of formulating the recipe for the most delicious-tasting edible we could, as well as creating the mold so we could mass produce these products in the hemp and cannabis category.
But six weeks later, I had a photo of it or the first prototype done. I took a picture of it on my kitchen counter at home, which I think I leaked a little bit too early because we leaked that photo, and it had hundreds of millions of impressions within 72 hours. And every outlet we're talking about, I think it was 600 plus media outlets, and for a three-day period, picked that up, which again, was a huge success. We rolled the products out. I think it was about a week and a half after that release, and again, it's worldwide at this point.
We have the product available globally. We've recently launched it on the cannabis front in several new countries as rules and regulations progress in new territories like Germany, the UK, and Australia, and some new countries are coming online, which we're really excited about: our Czech Republic, Poland, and Switzerland. We actually just launched in South Africa, our first TYSON 2.0 retail store in South Africa, which has been a huge success. Excited about that. We did open a TYSON 2.0 retail outlet in Amsterdam. The funny thing is that Amsterdam doesn't allow gummy manufacturing, so we still brought the ear to market, but it was through baked goods. We do little earcakes, so if you go visit our Amsterdam Tyson coffee shop and cafe, you can actually get an ear-shaped cannabis-infused cake.
So, leaning on that ear model still, we've done ear gold chains, ear magnets, tons of different products, and ear merchandise just to continue to ride the Mike Bites wave. And that product has transitioned to different variations of different compounds, including we have a Night Bites product, which is made specifically for sleep, which is done with CBN to really just help the people that are in need with whether it's insomnia, whatever it might be. If you need help sleeping, take a Night Bite, and it'll help knock you out.
Clint Betts
How did Holyfield respond to this?
Adam Wilks
We actually had Holyfield involved in a few content pieces. So, as Mike says, it could be anybody's ear, but we did involve Holyfield in an epic Christmas commercial that we released. I don't know if you got to see that, but it was-
Clint Betts
I didn't see it. I'm going to check it out the right time.
Adam Wilks
It's too funny. Mike and Evander are sitting around the Christmas tree and just reminiscing on the good old days, and Evander gifts Mike an iron and says, "I'm glad we can iron things out," which was great, and also poking on the iron Mike's side. And then, Mike gives Holyfield a package. He opens it and says, "What is this?" He goes, "That's your ear." He's like, "That's not my ear." He goes, "I should know; I'm the one that bit it." So it was just a great commercial. It's narrated by what sounds like Morgan Freeman's voice, and it's great; I'll send you the link afterward.
Clint Betts
Yeah, yeah, that is incredible. You said something interesting there: Amsterdam doesn't allow gummies. I didn't even know Amsterdam had any rules at all. They don't allow gummies. That's so random.
Adam Wilks
It's an interesting one. Every country and every state actually has its own rules as it's not a federally legal product; it's state-regulated here in the US. So everybody has their own rules and regs, and that makes this business somewhat of a challenge for us as we need to adapt to every market that we enter. Sometimes it's packaging restrictions, sometimes it's ingredients, sometimes it's form factors. There are some states that don't allow an ear because it's a body part. So, in some states, we actually have a square bite, a square with a bite out of the corner. So there are different forms and just different ingredients that are used in different markets to ensure we're staying compliant and playing by the rules in every market we play in.
Clint Betts
Yeah. You've been in the cannabis industry for a while. Give us a sense for how it's evolved and where it's headed.
Adam Wilks
Yeah, it's incredible to see how the cannabis space has evolved now. If you asked me 10 years ago where we'd be, I always said in five years, I see this being a federally legal product. I see the SAFE Banking Act as I see it being rescheduled. We're here today in 2025, and everything that I wished for a decade ago is still dreams and hoaxes. I do hope that with the current state of this country and where we stand, we can really see what it is, what cannabis is really used for, and its medical purpose. Several of the countries we're in right now are just medical only, and this product is used for medical purposes. I have met so many people, from children to the elderly, that use it as a medicine.
One of my first experiences with cannabis as a medicine was spoken at 14 and 15 years old; a recreational drug, and getting high with my buddies and stuff like that in high school. When I was 17 years old, my grandma was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and I remember her calling me and saying, "Hey, can you get me some weed?" She was going through treatment and wanted cannabis. Back then, it wasn't easily accessible. So, I remember taking a subway to downtown Toronto to my grandma's house, and this was the first time I got to smoke inside a house. So it was pretty cool. And I'm sitting on my grandma's carpet floor with her, and we smoked a joint, and I remember seeing her hit that joint and this piece that came over her eyes. It was beautiful. I'll never forget that moment, and that really changed my perspective on cannabis, and I realized it's a medicine. It's a miracle plant. It's what it can do for people. It blows my mind.
So I love the current administration to really see the same, and I hope all the efforts that ourselves, Tyson himself with his relationship with Trump and the several letters we've sent and working with the wealth and clemency project, freeing individuals, incarcerated individuals for nonviolent cannabis charges, we're always doing what we can to play our part in moving this forward where it needs to be because it's been a long journey. There are people who are still in prison who should not be in prison for cannabis possession. I understand if it's a violent charge, that's a completely separate matter, but being charged with Weldon's clemency is a great example of that; served 13 years for an ounce of weed, which is ridiculous nonviolent. So I think there are phases to it. I think the SAFE Banking Act needs to pass first so actual cannabis companies can bank safely with the real Wells Fargo and Chase of this world. Rescheduling will come soon after, and again, I hope this is all in the near term, and I think all of that will be followed by federal legalization.
Ten years ago, again, in this space, it was a completely different world. California was just coming up. We were selling medical, which slowly evolved to recreational. We're seeing that happen state by state, and I love seeing more and more countries evolving and following what we've done here, what Canada did, nationwide being a recreational product. It's incredible to see all these new countries come online. In the last couple of years, as I mentioned before, all these new countries- Poland, Switzerland, Czech, South Africa, Germany, the UK, and Australia- have all been evolving. Their cannabis programs are still on the medical side, most of them, but it's a process. It's all going to take time. I'm super optimistic about it all, and just to see what has happened over the last decade, I have no doubt that it will come. It's just a matter of when.
Clint Betts
Yeah. What an incredible memory you have there for your grandma. That must've been cool. It's like, "If I get in trouble for this, I'm helping my grandma out." And to just have that experience with your grandma is incredible.
Adam Wilks
Yeah, it was a special. That's actually my only living grandparents till 96 years old.
Clint Betts
Oh, wow.
Adam Wilks
Lived through it all. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Clint Betts
It's incredible. So, what does a typical day look like for you as CEO of this company? It must be fascinating.
Adam Wilks
Yeah, I start my days really early. I have a hard time sleeping in, so I get up super early. The first thing I do is check my emails and messages to see if there's anything super important to address immediately. From there, we have our days, my whole team, jam-packed almost every 30 minutes from about 7:00 AM till about 7:00 PM because we have all these international partners. First thing in the morning, we're dealing with a lot of our EU partners, and then late in the evening, we do with a lot of our partners in Asia; we operate in Thailand, so we do 5:00 calls and so on. With them, it's a mix of partner calls, licensee calls, and internal calls, which are part of my team's shareholder calls.
Every day, I make time for exercise. Exercise is a big part of my life. It keeps me grounded. I spend a lot of time just with my team discussing strategy, branding our long-term visions, and really just focusing on the big picture. And evenings, I really do; I try to allocate time daily to be with my children. I have two young boys, whether that's throwing a football around in the backyard, attending their games, or going for a hike. I try to make it a priority to spend time with my kids on a daily basis because you can get buried and lose track when we have as much as we have to go on the work front.
Clint Betts
What have you learned about leadership and great qualities in leaders that you've applied to the company?
Adam Wilks
I put people first. So, I've worked, and I was in the private equity world for a while. A lot of the time, it was profits before people. I saw what it was working for people who didn't prioritize the way their team felt, how people felt, and it was just all about the number. For me, I put people first, and I find the more time I spend building my relationships with, whether it's licensees, my own team, shareholders, or whoever it might be, along this journey of the career we've been on, that strengthens my loyalty, respect, and just everything across the board to be a better person and create better relationships.
Clint Betts
What advice would you have for entrepreneurs who are thinking about or wanting to get into the cannabis industry or even investors? What advice would you have for them? Obviously, it's still a little, as you've mentioned, every state has its own rules. Every place has its own rules. It's still pretty complicated.
Adam Wilks
Honestly, a big part of the adaptability is huge. Being able to adapt, this is a regulated space. You never know what's coming next. Things change all the time. States have gone backward, and things that you thought were going forward. We saw with Florida the whole recreational use this year or last year. I guess everybody was very optimistic, thinking recreational use was going to go forward, and everybody was prepared for it. We saw what happened in the public markets when that didn't get passed and that was pushed through. It drastically affected almost everybody operating in the California or Florida market, sorry. So adaptability is just being able to pivot when you need to, and in the business world, everything moves fast, so you have to be ready to move. You always have to be able to adapt and be patient. I wish that someone had talked to me about patience early in my career.
I always, always, always wanted things to happen yesterday. For me, patience is something that has played a huge part and something I wish someone had told me at the beginning of my career because, again, as I said earlier in my career, I wanted things to happen yesterday, and I've learned over the years, patience is key. You can't rush anything, whether that's going through the due diligence process for closing a new deal, rushing through contracts, rushing to just close a deal because, "Hey, look at the bright side. These are the numbers that are going to come out of it." The downside to rushing through that is choosing the wrong partner, not spending the right time through their due diligence process, and ending up in litigation, whether that's with a bad partner, where you got to terminate. In the time it takes to clean up those mistakes, patience is key. It's something that would've benefited me a huge early in my career and something that I recommend to anybody getting into any space of business.
Clint Betts
What goes into a great marketing campaign?
Adam Wilks
What goes into a great marketing campaign? Having just, I think it's involving many, keeping it authentic. Again, for us, when we're developing a lot of these campaigns, it's not one individual. Yes, we have a head of marketing, but it's bringing the team together. Everybody might have a different input. I like bringing a team together. We do a lot of team building activities, and through those activities, we develop a lot of our marketing campaigns, and ideas flow. And so things as basic as setting up a house in Joshua Tree, for example. Putting my whole team there for a weekend and doing different team building activities, whether it's yoga or sound baths, we do lots of fun activities like that to not only bring the team together, but ideate, bring ideas together, and the flow that happens when you're not stuck behind the computer and you're not just focused on work, really, the work will come out of it, the positive flow, the positive marketing ideas, and we implement that into a lot of what we do on a day-to-day.
To be honest, Mike himself has come up with some great ideas for some of the product development we were talking about. Mike is behind a lot of it. When we developed the edible cookie for Mike, Mike was behind the development of that cookie, the flavoring, the profile, and the flavors his favorite flavors put into it, which were the same as the strains we were choosing. And a lot of what we do, Mike himself, is Mike's choice as to what he personally uses. I'll go over to his house and bring him different products and let him try different samples so we can determine what he likes the best. And that goes back to what I was saying about letting the consumers connect to Mike in an authentic way, knowing that that's what he's smoking. This is his favorite strain. This is his.
Same with Future. I've had Future call me up and say, "Adam, what is this you sent me?" We all thought it was a great product. He didn't like it. You know what? Get back to the drawing board. Let's find some new genetics and some new strains for him. So authenticity here is, I say a lot, but authenticity is really a big part of everything we do, right?
Clint Betts
I'm sure, given your success, that you have celebrities and influencers reaching out to celebrities, "Hey, let's do something." The reverse of that would be you reaching out to celebrities and influencers and trying to do something with them. What goes into that, and how do you decide who you want to work with and who you don't?
Adam Wilks
Great question. We have dozens of different influencers and celebrities we talk to on a regular basis. I have a half dozen under LOI right now. Rolling them out, here's a good example: Jay Z, one of the biggest names in hip-hop, has been around forever. He came out with a cannabis brand, never made it anywhere, didn't get legs, and that company he was with ended up going bankrupt, and they blew hundreds of millions of dollars. I personally don't attribute that to authenticity. If he's not going to be involved, he's not showing up to dispensaries, he's not shaking hands and meeting his consumers, he's not smoking it himself, it's not going to resonate with the consumers. As soon as Mike comes to market and we bring him in, and he meets with these people, he shakes her, and he hugs them, he hears their stories, it is like leaving up imprints on these people and a connection that they maybe never would've thought they'd have, and being able to connect with them, being able to smoke what Mike is smoking. It connects the talent to the consumer.
We speak to tons of talent, and I'd love to work with them. There are some huge names. But when they don't smoke or when they don't, they're not willing to travel and meet and greet. I have done five country tours with Mike over a week-long period. There are a lot of celebrities and talent out there who are just not willing to. Mike feels he has a purpose on this planet, and it's to connect to his fans, his consumers, and the people. He's a people person. We're at dinner sometimes, and people are coming over, "Can I get photos?" And I'm like, "Mike, come on. Let's just say no, I don't want to." He's like, "No, no. This is my purpose. This is what I'm here for." He always says, "If I wake up tomorrow and no one knows who I am, I don't know how I would live."
It's finding that authentic product that matches the talent. Maybe it's not cannabis, maybe it's energy drinks, maybe it's cosmetics, but it's ensuring that we're bringing the consumers an authentic product. We can't just bring, and I would've loved to, some of these huge names we've spoken to, but we shut down a lot, so it just doesn't make sense. And I feel that consumers can feel that. You walk down the grocery store and see celebrity names all over products. A lot of it doesn't make sense to me. So if it's not authentic and the consumer can't connect or really feel the trust between the brand and the talent, then it's not for us.
Clint Betts
Right. What goes into the manufacturing and growing it and figuring out the correct strains and all of that type of stuff? Partnering with growers, partnering with people who manufacturers, that must be a whole other side of that thing that people maybe don't think about.
Adam Wilks
That's a huge due diligence process for us. We have a full operations team that will actually go visit the cultivators. We go through all test results, the COAs. Now, with the way testing has become with cannabis, it does make it a lot easier to know exactly what you're getting, right? Cannabis is now tested more thoroughly than the fruits and vegetables in your fridge at home, which blows my mind if you think about it.
Clint Betts
Yeah, it seems like a bit of an issue.
Adam Wilks
But with that said, we don't physically touch the plant. We don't actually grow. We don't actually manufacture. We license our IP to cultivators and manufacturers all over the world. So we're looking for the best of the best in each category, depending on the skew and menu offering for the talent. So when we launched in Germany and the UK, I flew out to Macedonia. Our partner has a 200,000 square-foot grow in Macedonia, GMP approved, so all government approved, full testing lab on site, one of the largest facilities out in, well, it is the largest in Macedonia, and they have the rights and licensing from the government to legally export to multiple countries, including UK, Germany, Australia. So when we went out there, tested the product, got to see the whole process, how it's made, and ensured that they're following the rules and regs, proper licensing, we knew it was a home run.
Our partner out there is, I think, one of the best in the world, and we are also sourcing some of the best genetics in the world. So it all starts from the base, the seed, the genetics, and what genetics they're growing. There's good and there's bad genetics, and we try to streamline and ensure everybody's growing our menued products, whether that's our world-famous toad after Mike's Toad ceremonies, whether that's our Knockout OG or Pound for Pound Cakes, one of Mike's favorite, our Sour Diesel. We try to follow that franchise model where everybody's following in line, following our SOPs, and producing the best quality product for that brand.
Clint Betts
Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Adam Wilks
So, it's been a long journey from the start. I wouldn't say just one individual. I think there are a few people who have given me the opportunity to really lead where I am today. Starting in my late teens, I worked for a gentleman by the name of Phil Heyman, and he gave me a job, which led me to actually run him; it was a wheel tire shop, one of the largest wheel and tire shops in Toronto at that point. But he really showed me what working hard was all about. He had me working six days a week, 10 hours a day, and I really think he shaped me into the workhorse I am today. He really showed me what the grind was all about.
From there, I started working with the Serruya family at SPE, Serruya Private Equity, and Aaron Serruya, one of the brothers there, really gave me a chance, honestly, to lead a lot of his investments, which started in the QSR space, quick service restaurants, and then led to cannabis investing in dozens and dozens and dozens of cannabis brands, cannabis operators leading some of the first licenses in Florida and California. And he just gave me that opportunity to dive in and really understand both cannabis, QSR, and the investment world.
And then, lastly, I wouldn't be here today is, without Mike Tyson. He gave me the opportunity to be who I am today, the CEO and co-founder of Carma HoldCo, for which I'm forever grateful. And yeah, love Mike to death. He's one of my best friends now. And again, just along the journey, I'm grateful and thankful for everybody who's really helped me get to where I am today. It's not just one individual. It's been the glamour of people who have really helped me here.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. Adam, seriously, thank you so much for taking the time. It's incredible what you've built, unbelievable, really, in a lot of respects, and you're marketing genius and the product market fit that you've figured out everybody should study. Thank you so much for coming on. It really means a lot.
Adam Wilks
Thank you for having me, Clint. It's been a pleasure.
Edited for readability.