Meet Corrie Brown of Lichen Livin & LICHEN in Arvada

Today we’d like to introduce you to Corrie Brown.

Corrie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Recovering from a spinal fracture incurred playing college basketball in 2006 is what set me on my path of natural and preventative health and healing. I was forced to slow WAY down giving me the opportunity to develop a very deep connection and understanding of my body. This led to daily practices of pilates, yoga, meditation, clean eating, plant medicine and eventually spiritual awakenings and the unraveling of my true self, purpose and potential.

I was able to rehab enough to finish out my hoop career as the starting center and team captain while earning a BBA at Northwood University in 2011. Upon graduating I moved to Washington, DC to learn that city life and corporate America were not for me. I quit my job and enrolled in the health coaching program at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. While in school I found work as a live-in nanny for a family using natural means for their special needs children. Working with this wonderful family while enrolled in nutrition courses was an excellent hands on learning experience with dietary influence on the body as well as exposure to multiple therapies for cognitive clarity and muscle development.

Aspiring to start my own natural health business and looking for a more health minded market I moved to Golden, CO in 2013. I tried real hard, but quickly realized I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I ended up with three part-time jobs working seven days a week. (Not what I had planned.) BUT, I put a ton of energy into finding mentors and learning how to run a successful small business and the universe provided. I walked into a vintage furniture store and absolutely fell in love. I offered to work one day a week in trade for their beautiful vintage decor. Six months later, I ended up their full-time manager and held that position for over three years. This was exactly the hands-on experience I needed to learn and become confident in my ability to run a small business.

May of 2017, I totaled my car, was fired from my job and started my first business in the same week. (read the blog) Urgency and a freed-up schedule, we’re the gifts here. My life flip-turned-upside-down like that lit a fire in me that has yet to die out. I don’t believe I would have found the extreme focus and sleepless drive I was suddenly possessed with if I were not shaken up and thrown out of the reality and comforts I knew. While employed elsewhere, I had never stopped working toward my self-employed healer goals so I was as prepared as I was ever going to be. I set up a website and started marketing myself to anyone that would listen. Around this same time, I had become very intrigued by the hemp plant and this new thing called “CBD.” Not being able to find too much reliable info on the subject at that time, I bused and biked my way from Golden to volunteer regularly on an organic hemp farm in Fort Collins. It was here that I experienced for myself along with meeting and hearing the stories of dozens of others whose lives had been severely and positively impacted by CBD and other cannabinoids. I was soon offered a live-in internship position within the hemp farm cooperative at the Colorado Hemp Institute and happily accepted.

I learned an incredible amount about hemp and cannabis through this experience and the more I learned, the more I felt it was my responsibility to educate. I started setting up CBD educational presentations at coffee shops, parks, yoga studios, anywhere there was a group of people interested. Through connecting with the community in this way, it came to my attention that there was a need for good, clean, organic products people could trust in an industry that had no regulations. So, I started making products. First, in my own kitchen, a couple of commercial kitchens after that and now we happily share a commercial kitchen space with our local vegan kitchen, Urban Beets in Olde Town Arvada.

The summer of 2018 was big for us. I traveled across the country in my 1989 dodge ram 16 passenger van giving CBD educational presentations in 23 different states. I set up both public and private events with my newly acquired retail accounts, customers, friends and family. I even made it on the West Virginia News for my presentation given in Marietta, Ohio, at a sports nutrition shop. I just felt so strongly about letting people know there is a natural and safe option out there that could be helping them in countless ways. I didn’t really even think it all the way through. A few snags aside, my three month “CBD Educational Tour” is really what stimulated business enough to keep it going and growing into the coming years.

My “Full Spectrum Organic CBD” product line is what takes up most of my time these days and I am forever grateful. I never meant my whole life to be just about hemp and CBD, though. I actually fear it just feeds the “pill mentality” that is far too prevalent in our world. We’re so accustomed to just masking symptoms rather than getting to the root cause. So, to accompany my health coaching certificate, I have taken steps to offer more than just a natural tool to help people find health and healing. In 2019 I graduated with my 200-hour yoga teacher training certificate and I launched a non-profit, LICHEN co with a mission to educate and provide free natural and preventative health education and classes. Our goal is to remove cost as a barrier to seeking natural health and lowering health care costs for individuals. Our first program, “The Healthy Hood,” is gearing up to launch in the coming months!

Has it been a smooth road?
Smooth enough I suppose. The biggest challenges have been breaking the deeply ingrained stigma around cannabis and scaling the business. I started with about $5,000 to my name so being very thoughtful in where I put those resources was key and held me back a bit at first. Sustainability is mandatory for me and my business practices so finding affordable packaging with sustainable standards has been a trick as well. Oh yes, and banking, banking has been an issue too. Being in the hemp industry, there are no federal regulations regardless of what your state regulations are. It has forced me to be creative and forced me to create my own spreadsheets rather than using easy platforms like square. These days, with more products flooding the market, it is mostly about differentiating myself from the rest of the CBD brands out there.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Lichen Livin & LICHEN story. Tell us more about the business.
Our mission is to help people find themselves in a positive energy cycle by addressing their mind, body and spiritual health through natural and preventative means. We are known for and specialize in our Full Spectrum Organic CBD products. Character is the most important thing to me. My father taught me very early that if I can’t look in the mirror and like who I see, then nothing else matters. I’m very proud to provide the high integrity products we offer. We don’t cut corners and we only source clean organic ingredients. Even our packaging leaves as little of a footprint as possible but even so, I’m always trying to make the footprint smaller. I think, as business owners, we all need to step up and adopt sustainable practices regardless of increased costs. Nothing you do should be about the money, you’re setting yourself up for an empty existence if it is. Choices should be made on what is right, not what is most profitable. Overall, the “Lichen” way of life is a symbiotic life and our founding principle. This means equal give and take or living by the law of attraction. You get what you give in this life and it starts with your thoughts because thoughts become your actions and your actions become your reality.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Science is going to catch up with the industry. It will not just be about CBD or THC. It is about all 100+ cannabinoids working together to yield maximum therapeutic potential and being able to narrow in on which specific cannabinoids are best for you and your unique physical makeup. The minor cannabinoids like CBN, CBG, CBC, THCV, CBDA are already being targeted to be produced in higher percentages. We will also start seeing hemp fiber being used in other industries like replacing plastics, and added to fabrics and other textiles. This will eventually reduce costs and make a lot of industries more sustainable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lichenlivin.com
• Phone: 720.800.5613
• Email: info@lichenlivin.com
• Instagram: Lichen_Livin
• Facebook: Lichen_Livin

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