What does it take to start a wellness brand in one of the most regulated and misunderstood product categories in the United States? Mark Gilliland, founder of Kyoto Botanicals, has been answering that question for six years — building a THC-free hemp CBD and functional mushroom brand from scratch, without a corporate safety net, without a paid media budget that actually works in this category, and without cutting corners on product quality or consumer transparency.
Read the full episode recap on Kyoto Botanicals
In this episode of the Unscripted Small Business Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Mark to explore what it really looks like to run a small botanical wellness business — from the science of extraction to the patchwork of state regulations, and from an obsessive six-month DIY SEO education to a personal philosophy of momentum that’s changing how he runs his life and his company.
Building a Product Line with Scientific Integrity
Mark: We use lion’s mane, reishi, chaga, and cordyceps — the four really main big functional mushrooms. We do a dual extraction process to break down the tough cell walls of mushrooms, called chitin. You can’t digest the cell walls of mushrooms, so you don’t really get any benefit if they’re not done the way that we do them. We mix it with raw cacao powder and those four different mushroom extracts.
These are not psychedelic at all. They are not in the family of mushrooms that have psilocybin. No high, no psychoactive impact. I do everything non-psychoactive — I’m here for wellness, not for altered states.
On the hemp side, the process involves CO2 high-pressure extraction, decarboxylization, and an additional THC removal step — resulting in a complete phyto compound profile with zero detectable THC. That’s what separates real wellness products from cheap isolates. It’s a very complex, very expensive process. That is why high quality CBD products cost what they do.
The Regulatory Reality for Small Wellness Brands
Mark: After the 2018 Farm Bill passed, there was an explosion of Delta-8 THC and people getting around the rules. My decision from the beginning to be THC-free really helped — without any THC, it’s pretty safe in most every state. Until the FDA regulates CBD as a dietary supplement, it’s going to continue to be a massive patchwork.
Make sure it’s trustworthy. Make sure you can figure out who’s behind it. And make sure they have all their lab results easily accessible. For most companies they are, for us they are — but there are companies out there that make it very difficult, and that’s a big red flag.
What 20 Years in Corporate Brand Management Taught — and Didn’t Teach — About Running a Small Business
Mark: I spent way too long in corporate brand management where if you’re not launching a new SKU every month, you’ve failed. I don’t want all of the operational complexity of a big product catalog. I deliberately keep everything very slow and methodical and simple.
Mark: I’ve been in mostly brand management for almost 20 years — but that is not SEO. My SEO has been the street fight for the last six months. SEO became: okay, this is a way I can quickly scale my ‘I’m talking to one person’ approach. I’ve literally spent the last six months, at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week, teaching myself SEO and just breaking things fast on my site and fixing them and learning. Doing stuff right, you don’t see results for a very long time. But when you do something wrong, I’ve at least seen it real fast.
The Five-Year Vision: Slow, Deliberate Expansion
Mark: It took six years to even get the next botanical product out the door. I’m big into keeping my product line focused. I have four CBD products and now one mushroom product. I’ll probably expand to a flavor variation first, then a gummy form. Beyond that, magnesium is something I’ve discovered over the last year that’s just been unbelievable. I like being in the weeds every day, and that’s kind of why I started this.
The Hot Take: Momentum Is Everything
Mark: I’m kind of obsessed with momentum over the last two to three years. It’s been a complete flip from the 20 years probably before that. When I started this company about six years ago, that was kind of the first step into doing little steps at a time. And it just snowballed from there. Mushrooms, working out, going to bed at a reasonable time. Once you break through that unseen wall, all of these things are just great. I feel awesome when I wake up every day. What can I do next to make it even better? That’s been my enlightenment — I wasn’t expecting it and didn’t set out to find it. It just sort of happened.
Key Takeaways for Small Business Owners
- Quality over quantity — in products and marketing: Focused product lines with scientific integrity beat bloated catalogs with shortcut production.
- Know your regulatory landscape before you launch: For any product in a regulated category, understanding the patchwork of state and federal rules isn’t optional — it’s your competitive advantage.
- In restricted ad categories, SEO is your primary growth engine: If you can’t run mass ads, you’d better own organic search. And the fastest way to learn it is to build and break your own site.
- Corporate experience helps but doesn’t replace small-business street smarts: Mark’s 20 years in brand management gave him brand-building instincts — but the hands-on operational and digital marketing skills came from doing the work himself.
- Momentum is a strategy: Small, stacked positive changes in your health, habits, and business create compounding momentum that eventually feels unstoppable.
Find Mark at KyotoBotanicals.com and reach out directly at info@kyotobotanicals.com