Believe it or not, this is Robert’s second time on Hallway Chats! His first was back in 2017 with Liam and Tara. Since Ny and Topher had never talked to him on here, we decided to give it another go!

Website | www.wpdispensary.com
Website | www.robertdevore.com
Twitter | @deviorobert
Twitter | @wpdispensary

Topher: Hey everyone. My name is Topher.

Long pause

Nyasha: And I’m Nyasha. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. 

Topher: (laughing) Just pick it up. Just pick it up here, I’ll snip it out.

Nyasha: And I’m Nyasha.

Topher: And this is Hallway Chats.

Robert: And I’m Robert. 

Topher: Oh, not you, Robert, yet. 

Robert: Oh, okay. Sorry about that.

Topher: This is totally staying in the podcast. 

Robert: Good. Good.

Topher: But first I have to say nice things about Nexcess because they’re paying the bills. Nexcess is a great hosting company. I really liked it. We’ve been with them for a while now. And they are paying the bills here at Hallway Chats, which is really great because I’m not sure it would work without it. So if you need a good host, try out Nexcess.

Our guest today, if you haven’t guessed, is Robert. Robert, is it Devore? 

Robert: Yeah.

Topher: Okay, I didn’t know if maybe you were French and it was Devoir or something like that? 

Robert: No, no. It’s French but everyone, since I’ve been born, pronounces it Devore. That’s the way I go with it. So I don’t know if they switched it up or not. 

Topher: Cool. My last name is French too, if you go back far enough, of the rose. But there’s an Italian branch, and I think it means the same thing. So whatever. Robert, you’re here today. You and I have known each other on Twitter for a bunch of years but never really talked deeply. And you live kind of close to me. Like how far do you live from me? 

Robert: I think like maybe three or four hours, I think. 

Topher: Yeah. Okay. Are you from there?

Robert: Yeah. From suburban Detroit. 

Topher: Oh, cool.

Robert: Born and raised. 

Topher: Wow. Nice. 

Nyasha: I’m sure you’re inviting Topher and I over soon, right? 

Robert: Yeah, yeah, whenever you’re in town, just let me know. 

Nyasha: Okay. 

Topher: You know, we go Ikea all the time in Canton. 

Robert: Okay, nice. Yeah, that’s not that far at all. It’s like 20 minutes from here. 

Topher: Lucky you. It’s like two and a half hours for us. So who are you and what do you do?

Robert: I do a little bit of everything. I’ve been a freelance WordPress developer, I’ve run affiliate sites. Everything from start to finish I’ve done. But now I’m working full-time at SiteCare for the last almost four years, and still just building projects on the side still, just enjoying the fun of it. Being able to just open something up and come up with an idea and do it, I’m forever going to do that. So if I did sum it up, that would be who I am.

Topher: Cool. I know, a few years ago, maybe a lot of years ago now, you were building a product. Is that still a thing or did you put it away? 

Robert: Yeah, it’s still there. 

Topher: Cool. Want to tell us about it? 

Robert: Yeah. WP Dispensary, I built it at the tail end of 2015 and I kept building it. I have a bunch of pro add-ons that were built for it. I was transitioning it into a whole software company and I was going to offer the hosting. But right now I’m just working through some payment processing issues, trying to get actual company to accept me to allow me to have subscription payments. So once that hurdle’s crossed, it’ll be back to full running again.

Topher: I was working at BigCommerce when things started to break loose for weed. And there’s a lot of question of which of the big outlets would accept payments and which ones wouldn’t and what it would mean for different shops and different states and all that kind of stuff. It was really interesting at the time. I think that’s about when I met you. 

Robert: Yeah. I started using Twitter probably the middle of 2015. Then like six months later, is when I came up with WP Dispensary. I was toying with ideas. I built random themes and that one just stuck. Because I was a lifetime user and it was legal for medical here at the time. So it was like, All right, I’m gonna just jump in. I didn’t really see anything that was available other than a few big names. So I was like, I want to give them like an open source solution.

The beginning, if you go back to the very first 1.0 release, it was horrible compared to what it is now. But I mean, I was just toying around with it at the time. So it built up from there and it just kept building and kept building so I’m forever grateful for it because I feel like that’s what actually allowed me to join the space of WordPress on Twitter and have something that differentiated me so. 

And the people that I talked to that would use it but not talk about it publicly, I’ve had people come to me and be like, It was cool to be able to talk to someone that was so open about it because they weren’t able to be. So a lot has changed since then. That was like seven years ago now. Eight years.

Topher: Right. Yeah, it really has. It’s just so strange to think it’s been that long.

Robert: Yeah. It feels like just yesterday.

Topher: A friend of mine, her birthday is tomorrow. It’s actually today. She’s in India. She’s 44 today. And she was commenting that COVID started on her 40th birthday. And I thought, Wow, we’re getting to the point where it was years ago now. 

Nyasha: Wow. That’s an interesting way to view it. That just blew my mind just now. Sorry. 

Topher: It’s pretty crazy. 

Nyasha: Robert-

Topher: Yeah, go ahead. 

Nyasha: I have a question for you, Robert. 

Robert: Yeah. 

Nyasha: In my opinion, what you’re doing is one of the cooler things I see in WordPress, combining marijuana and WordPress. Where did you first get the idea to do this?

Robert: It was because I was shopping, looking at different sites that had menus and nothing really looked the way I wanted it to look. And I went, “I bet I could rebuild something like that.” And at the time, I was working with custom post types more heavily. So I separated every type of product into its own custom post type at the time. So it was very, very low budget but it was what I envisioned that it could actually be compared to what they’re doing now. Because you get some companies now, they’re charging thousands of dollars per month just to run their software. So I feel like that’s a rip-off. 

I wanted to have an alternative out there so other people could have an actual way to run their business without having to pay, you know, 25, 30 grand a year or more just to be able to have the functioning software, not including all the other hurdles they’re already having to face.

Topher: How far did you take it or plan to take it? Were you thinking of running point of sale in the store or that kind of stuff?

Robert: I toyed with it. But there was so many options already out there that dispensaries were set on. So I went, Okay, they’ve already got the kind of chokehold on that. They were funded companies. So I didn’t really feel the need to jump in first before having some type of solid base. The plan was to actually just connect to various point-of-sale services so you could just use our product for the website and then have everything run through the same point of sale automatically. 

So that was the plan at the time. But it’s a closed community unless you got big money and you’re funded and you know the right people, so you don’t get as much of the connection that you would want. So it’s just been that constant hurdles, little stuff like that. 

Topher: A friend of mine lives in a small town near me and he feels like… It’s a really small town. It’s just main street basically. It feels like main streets but mostly taken over by weed shops. So he did a little research and found that about half of them are owned by the same company. 

Robert: That happens. That happens a lot. 

Topher: Just running differently. Seems like it can make it hard for mom-and-pop shops. 

Robert: Yeah, yeah. You get multi-state operators that will come in, they’ll pop up their spots right next door to another shop. The place I go to has three other places within viewing distance. So it’s like this one corner. It’s like this one little section. It’s good in a sense because they’re consolidating it in the whole area where they’re at and just putting it in one spot. But then you have like, literal, your parking lots next door to another spot’s parking lot. So it gets weird when you start looking at it like that.

Nyasha: You made me think of a very interesting question. We’ve talked a little bit before about this, Robert, but I just wanted to talk to you again, excuse me, especially since I’m in a kind of different place now. When we first met, when I first met Robert, I was living in a state South Carolina, but you know, they still have very strict laws against marijuana.

I now live in North Carolina, not too far but medical marijuana is legal here, which I didn’t know when I was moving here which is awesome. Oh, how has life changed for you from not only a business standpoint but a community standpoint as well since they legalized marijuana where you are located?

Nyasha: You don’t feel as nervous driving around now. That’s the biggest thing. I got a bag in my car and now I got to worry about getting arrested. If the cop pulls me over and it smells a little funny in here, I’m gonna have to go to jail. Now I don’t have to worry about that because cops drive up and down the street past these places. It is what it is. Now they’re focusing or should be focusing on something more important. So that’s the one thing that’s changed the most for me personally, just being able to move about and not stress as much. Which makes living life a little bit happier because now you’re not worried about one extra thing that you don’t really want to be. So I feel like it’s a good thing. It’s a net positive.

Nyasha: It is. And I’m glad you can feel that level of comfort. I hope it eventually extends to the entire United States. Topher and both went to work in Asia at Bangkok, and I was wandering around on the streets one night because that’s what I do in other countries and we found a weed shop. Their grand opening was going to be the next day, so they did a little soft opening that night. I never told you that, Topher?

Topher: No.

Nyasha: Oh, okay. I’m sorry. So I’ll tell the story. I was trying to go to the WordPress parties, and I didn’t sign up for any in advance, so I couldn’t get into any of the WordPress parties. 

Topher: Oh, no.

Nyasha: So I was like, “You know what, this is a free night.” My husband was with me and I said, “Hey, let’s go to Chinatown. I heard Bangkok Chinatown is unreal. Let’s go.” So we hopped in a cab, went to Chinatown. And then we started wandering around, because it was just so much to do with so many people, so much food, so much alcohol, so much entertainment. It was just everything.

We were just wandering, and we saw a shop. It was kind of dark, and it was like glowing green and I was like, “This looks so cool. Let’s go in.” So we go in and we see marijuana lined up on the counter. And they’re like, ‘Hey, welcome in.” Topher can tell you that people were just so friendly in Thailand. They came in and it was like we were like family. And they were like, we are opening a cannabis shop. It opens tomorrow but we did a soft launch tonight. And they were like, “Would you guys like anything?” And then they just let us see. They took us on a tour of the whole shop. They gave us local ready-made craft fruit beer. 

Topher: Oh, wow. 

Nyasha: They had a weed loft. So we went upstairs and there was a weed loft. They had video games and a guy was playing the guitar. It was amazing and so comfortable. I have video of that. I’ll send you both the video. I was like, Wow, I’m thousands of miles away from South Carolina and you could not have this legally there. You could not have this safety and this comfort. But I experienced it in Thailand. They just legalized marijuana, by the way. I think it was January. 

Topher: Oh, wow.

Nyasha: Was it January? If it wasn’t January, it was like recent recent. 

Topher: Oh, yeah. WordCamp Asia was in February. 

Nyasha: Yeah. So it was incredible. I don’t really partake in marijuana, but I think it should be legalized. I just really with what you said… It was like, you know, people are comfortable. They’re not stressed out about what’s going on and the police can focus on more serious things. That’s why I really, really love what you’re doing. I think making it easier and safer for people to purchase marijuana and use it, that should be the goal that we’re striving for, in my opinion. So I think you’re awesome for that. 

Robert: Thank you. Thank you. And I bet you when you were there you probably didn’t see one angry face that whole time. Everybody was happy and having fun. You didn’t have to worry about a fight breaking out. It was a good time, I bet.

Nyasha: You are correct. I’ll have to send you all the videos of just hanging out with these local Thai guys playing God of War and drinking craft beer.

Topher: If you don’t mind, I’ll put that video in the transcript of this-

Nyasha: Yeah, I don’t mind at all.

Topher: …this episode. All right, cool. Robert, I was gonna ask if you go to WordCamps. And then I remember you don’t know. 

Robert: No, no, I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever really done any events ever. So it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just it’s never worked out. Times in life I either had a kid right around the times where they were having all the ones locally. I’m not really a big traveler, I stay here. Don’t really leave the state or leave this area. So it’s got to be close and then the timing has got to be right for it. And it just hasn’t worked out yet. I’m working on it though. I’m looking into a few.

Topher: That’s cool. We pulled the plug on WordCamp Grand Rapids for this year. 

Nyasha: Oh.

Topher: We’re gonna try it for next year. 

Nyasha: Topher, that means you have to start WordCamp Michigan. And then we can finally… I’ll come there. I’m a traveler, so I’ll come and we can all hang out. 

Topher: It was mentioned. 

Nyasha: Nice. 

Topher: That’d be a lot of work, though. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. That’s our goal, though. We eventually want to do… I just started a WordPress meetup with my mentors in Columbia, South Carolina. And one day we want to have WordCamp Carolina and combine… because North Carolina is our snooty cousin. So that would be fun.

Topher: That’s fun. 

Nyasha: That does lead me to a question. Robert, I know you haven’t been to any but it’s kind of hard to escape when one of the bigger ones happens. They’re all over social media. They’re all in the WordPress news. Which one would you be… It could be a flagship major one or it can be a smaller one. Which one would you be most excited about attending?

Robert: It would be less about the event and where it’s at. I think if I’m going to travel, I’m going to just travel to the one that looks most interesting to me. So the right topics, the right people, actually, you know, being at the event or hosting the event, I think that would be more important than the location of it. Or if it’s a big one like US or Europe, compared to a state one or a city one, I don’t think it would really make that much of a difference. 

Nyasha: Gotcha.

Topher: Interesting. Has there ever been one where you thought, boy, if I was gonna go that’s the one. I wish I’d gone to that?

Robert: I can’t think of one offhand. Just because I don’t dive too deep. I see the news when it comes through. 

Topher: Sure. 

Robert: I’ll remember it or talk about it during that time. But then seven other thousand things happen and you know, it just gets lost in the shuffle. So I can’t think of one off the top of my head. 

Topher: Well, if you get the chance, I highly recommend that they really change things in the WordPress game. 

Nyasha: They are. I can’t wait to go to my first small. I’ve only been to bigger ones.

Topher: Really? 

Nyasha: I can’t wait to go to my first small one. My first small one I’m going to WordCamp Rochester, and I can wait. 

Topher: Oh, nice. 

Nyasha: I guess I can ask you, Topher, how does it feel? I feel like they’ll be more intimate at a smaller one versus a major one. How do you feel about them?

Topher: They are. Actually, I went to Buffalo not too long ago, which is probably going to be similar in size to Rochester. And it’s maybe 100 people. And you get to meet everybody, every single one. At a big camp, there’s a lot of split-off. Like you’d only comfortably talk to so many people in a group at once. So you know, 20 people will go to dinner over here and 20 over there and a bunch of people go to the museum. They all split off and do things. But at a small camp, pretty much everybody sticks together. It’s a one big happy group thing. 

We still had three tracks. I don’t know that I recommend three for a really small camp, because it does split people off. With three tracks and only 100 people and not everybody goes to every session, then your talks get low traction. You know what I mean? Because everybody’s trying to figure out where they want to go. We had considered even a one-track conference so everybody was all together all the time. 

Nyasha: That’d be really cool.

Topher: Yeah, it’d be cool. 

Robert: I think for a smaller one, that would be really cool.

Topher: We’ll see. 

Nyasha: I actually don’t know how hard or easy this would be because of the United States, you know, marijuana is legal in certain places and it’s not in others. Robert, in Michigan, have you heard of any canna-tech-type conferences or events going on where you can come and kind of like just talk about cannabis and tech? 

Robert: Yeah. They have a couple that’ll pop up. They have other ones that are just more geared towards the cannabis products themselves. I still haven’t went to none of those either. So I’m not targeting WordPress and saying I’m not going to no WordCamps ever. Yeah, basically. Yeah. I’m at the house. Now with a three-year-old too now, I can’t ever leave. He won’t let me.

Nyasha: Ooh.

Topher: We need WordCamp Devore and it’ll be at your house. 

Nyasha: Yeah. And we can set up cameras and do it virtually too. That’s what we need. Nice WordCamp Devore Canna-tech Virtual conference. We could put it together. I know some sponsors. That would be awesome.

Topher: I’ve considered the idea of micro camps. Probably three or four times now I’ve tried to join the core contributor team out of WordCamp contributor day. And the idea is that you spun up with track and you pick a ticket and you commit code and you’re a committer. The actuality is it takes seven out of your eight hours to get Docker set up. And then people have long drifted away and no one’s interested in helping and it’s just over. 

So I considered a camp of maximum 20 attendees and have it be three or four days. And you go ahead and you spend the whole first day doing Docker, but then you’ve got two or three doing Core, or whatever your theme is. I haven’t done it obviously. I don’t know that anybody has. But I think it’d be an interesting idea. 

Robert: Yeah, yeah. I think stuff like that would be beneficial to WordPress in general. Like just people not having to be rely on, oh, it’s a WordCamp officially so now I can focus on this one. Instead, you can make your own little things where it’s now just a coding session about WordPress where you guys are hanging out having fun, but also doing a bunch of cool stuff.

Or, you know, if I went the route where I was like, Okay, I’m gonna combine the weed and the technology together, and we’re gonna have like a weed camp and everybody that likes WordPress and weed comes and hangs out, and you’re 21 and over, here it’s legal, so you can just do it. So anybody that comes to Michigan would be able to use it if they wanted to or buy it from shops. 

So I feel like stuff like that would be cool. I just don’t feel like I’m going to be the one to go, “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start that.” I can’t even get myself to a WordCamp or an event. So I don’t see myself hosting and running one like that. But someone else is free to take the idea and run with it if they want to. That would be one I would highly consider going to.

Topher: What would swag be like in a weed camp? 

Nyasha: Oh, my gosh.

Robert: Great. It would be great. I mean, if you like it and you’re into it, or you want to, there’s a ton of stuff that you can try and a ton of different options. So it’s not the same as it was 40, 50 years ago. There’s a lot of different things that are available now.

Nyasha: Robert, that makes me remember something we talked about. I know you talked about how the cannabis industry is just going fast and it’s hard to keep up with it. You had your idea in 2015 and you’re still working on it? How do you feel about it like now versus when you had it in 2015 overall?

Robert: I feel overall technology-wise in the way it’s built, it’s a billion times better. And it’s something that I’m actually where I’m proud to show it and say, here’s a product I’m willing to sell and actually, say, put my stamp of approval on it more than just it’s a side project that might live on GitHub for a while. So I’m happy in that sense. 

But then I’m also still frustrated that I can’t get everything just moving forward the way if I built the regular WordPress business where I’m like, I’m going to host your WordPress site and offer you some type of maintenance or something like that, they won’t have no problem with that. But since I’m even involved in the industry whatsoever, I can’t do it. They won’t accept it because your cannabis adjacent. I’m not touching the product, I’m not doing nothing with that, it’s just software and hosting, they still don’t care. 

Topher: Interesting.

Robert: So that’s something that I’m still frustrated with. But overall, I’m happy with the product itself, and I wish I could get it out and push it out to more people and allow more people to use it and know that it’s a viable option.

Topher: Do you think the weed industry will ever simmer down and become more like the alcohol industry? We have liquor stores, but I don’t have bar on my street.

Robert: Yeah, yeah. Because if you look at the stock market, most of these companies are way, way under and going down further every single quarter. So the product is so mass-produced now, you’re getting things for like dirt cheap in most places. Like when it first became recreational here for a regular to be like 70 bucks for a high-quality one. Now you can spend like 30, 35 to get a really good quality one. 

Topher: Oh my gosh. 

Nyasha: So the pricing has dropped drastically on everything because there’s so much of an available you can only sell so much. And I think that’s going to allow the good quality products and everybody that likes their main state products that you get will the ones that stick around and all the smaller ones will just disappear and do something else. That’s what I feel anyways.

Topher: I’m a whiskey guy. I’m into scotch. You can make better product by spending years refining it. Like a barrel of Scotch might sit there for 15 years. Aside from having a good strain, is there something you can do to weed to make it 10 times the value of something else, like a super excellent bottle of scotch?

Robert: It’s just the way you grow it. You’ll get certain harvesters that’ll use a lot of nutrients that aren’t really like organic or all that healthy. They don’t flush the products to get all that out at the end. So when you’re using it, you can taste the more bitter tastes. So when you’re doing the right things and you’re putting the quality product out, a user of this product will know it right away. They might try new ones if they haven’t seen your name before, but if it’s not something up to par with what they know, they’re out and they’ll never touch it again. So it’s the good quality. It’s just the way you grow it, how you cultivate it. Certain strength will actually be-

Topher: Organic.

Nyasha: Yeah, yeah, actually. Yeah. 100%. If you can get everything organic for it. It’s better. I’ve done it myself before where I’ve grown with just straight organic product and it worked wonderfully. Everything turned out great with it. None of the chemical taste or… You know, if you don’t want to ingest a lot of chemicals anyway in your normal day, you’re vegan or you’re looking at a health conscious, this is something that you’re going to be worried about. 

You’ll see a lot of edibles now are changing over to vegan options and switching things up, because a lot of people won’t use their products if they can’t. So they’re trying to reach more people. So it’s becoming more mainstream. I think that the big thing long term will just be the quality products will stick around and the rest will just be seen in mom-and-pop shops and little places here and there if they can get someone to sell it for them. But it won’t be the nationally known.

You know, like cookies brand. Everybody knows cookies. So it’s just one of those things where you’re gonna stick around because everybody knows you and they love you. And the rest will just fade.

Topher: All right. Nyasha gotta be out of here in a couple of minutes. Anything else you wanted to say, Ny?

Nyasha: Oh, no. That was awesome. Have you all seen the movie How High? When the guy is explaining the marijuana, he’s like, wow, did you go to weed college? That’s how I felt just now because Robert was like, That’s the… I just felt like, oh my god, this is amazing. 

Robert: I’ve watched that movie enough times. So it might just be blind conditioning from watching it so much. 

Topher: That is the weed college. 

Robert: Yeah. 

Nyasha: This is wonderful. Thank you, Robert. This is amazing technology that you’re putting out here. I know you’re going to have it done and it’s gonna be great. Just remember us when you become a billionaire. 

Robert: When the business grows beyond what I can do myself, I’m pulling from people that I know. I’m not going to try to just outsource to whatever place I can find the cheapest labor. I’m going to find quality people that actually want to help and would be perfect for the roles that I’m trying to fill. So if that’s you, then you know, you might be hearing from me soon. And then you’ll be a part of the billion-dollar business. 

Nyasha: Oh, yeah, I have multiple jobs. I’ll add another. You come in on too, Topher?

Topher: Yeah, sure. All right, I’m gonna read the outro here. 

This has been an episode of Hallway Chats, a part of the HeroPress Network. Your hosts were Nyasha Green and Topher DeRosia. We’d like to thank Sophia DeRosia for the music and Nexcess for hosting our network. If you liked the episode, please subscribe and mention us on social media.