Rua Bounces Back

In January 2024, I joined Rua Bioscience as a board observer.

We were down on our luck.

We only earned $356 K in revenue.

Fast forward to today.

We’re now sitting at $1.89 m in revenue and moving toward profitability next year.

We’re a publicly traded company, so I can’t divulge too many details, but I’ll get into the 80/20 that has driven these results:

1. Focusing on what makes you different:
   
   Steve Jobs said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”
   
   At Rua, we’ve dialled in on the story that makes us different to the 20,000+ other medicinal cannabis companies.
   
   - We’re the only cannabis company with our unique Ruatoria-based genetics
   - We’re a kaupapa Māori company that focuses on social justice, equality and giving back
   
   This story appears everywhere, from our advertising to our NZX listing announcements.
   

   

   A snapshot of the ads we were running during our most recent raise with our founder Panapa

   
   
   No other medicinal cannabis company can compete with us on being us.
   
   Too many companies are homogenised in what they sell, and as a result, they don’t stand out.
   

2. We connected the dots for our customers:
   
   Advertising illicit substances is strictly prohibited on most advertising platforms.
   
   When I joined Rua, I found a way to address this issue that didn’t advertise medicinal cannabis while still connecting with Rua and its brand supporters.
   
   Here was the process:
   
   > We built ad creative that spoke to our story and who we are that didn’t make any mention of our company or product
   

   

   CEO led creative

   
   > We sent people to forms that weren’t linked to our website so that it had no affiliation with any illicit substances
   
   > We then connected supporters who filled in our forms with health practitioners who could support them to learn more about our company and its products
   

3. We’re cash-constrained:
   
   When companies have excess capital, it becomes easy to outsource or hire.
   
   When you don’t have capital, you become resourceful.
   
   > We introduced AI for menial tasks - the most common thing was to simply drop a screenshot or speak to ChatGPT and ask it to help us with the problem we were facing
   
   > When we found something that worked, we left it and let it run for months until it stopped working

These pillars are a small snippet of what we’ve been doing, but you get the idea:

• Focus on being you - no one else can compete with you on that

• Make it easy for customers to get access to what you’re selling

• Don’t spend a lot and make your dollars go further

If you want to read our most recent FY and get some more insights on our growth, you can check it out here.

Thinking Better

It took me far too long to grasp this simple fact.

I was nearly 30 before, with the help of my psychologist, I began to realise how little my thoughts were truly my own.

They were being shaped, constantly, by my inputs.

News. Social media. Gym members. Colleagues.

Once I started paying attention to this* insight* through daily meditation, I saw how often my negative thoughts lined up exactly with something I’d just read or watched.

An Instagram post.

A news headline.

A stray comment.

I’d catch myself thinking, “Wait a minute, I don’t even care about this. This doesn’t affect me at all.”

During a tough stretch in my business, it was all too easy to join the pitchfork crowd and blame politicians or “the system” for my problems.

I wasn’t winning, but it wasn’t my fault.

As my psychologist pointed out, there’s no better way to subconsciously give up your power than to care for someone else’s thoughts.

Being powerless is close to giving up hope.

And that’s a desperate place to be.

I was wasting energy on the outputs of people I’d never met, didn’t care about, and who certainly didn’t care about me.

The message was clear: change your inputs to change your outputs. Thanks, doc.

Over the past decade I’ve been trimming away those negative inputs.

They creep back in like weeds, so I have to keep pruning.

Sometimes I’ve gone too far, cutting off friends just because I disagreed with them.

But relapses and excessive measures aside, the practice has been powerful.

It feels freeing.

I rarely touch social media now. I still read the odd news article, but I’m conscious of what I’m “accepting.” And it’s glaringly obvious when others are unknowingly echoing those subliminal messages.

If the latest social talking point has made its way into your inner dialogue, beware.

I don’t meditate at the moment, nor see a psychologist anymore, but this lesson has stayed with me: your inputs are your outputs.

Be careful what you let in.