Cannabis Businesses Can't Afford to Go Silent: Kyle Sattler on AI, Google Search
Cannabis is a difficult industry to market.
Kyle Sattler knows that.
But one of the things that stood out during our conversation at CannaCon Midwest was his argument that those challenges can't become an excuse to disappear.
Kyle is one of three founders of So Good, an AI marketing company that originally grew out of something much simpler: conversations with business owners.
The team was interviewing people about their goals, fears, and the problems keeping them from growing. Eventually, people stopped asking how So Good was doing its marketing and started asking them to do it for them.
A business grew out of those conversations.
Sound familiar?
That's part of what made Kyle such a natural fit for The Canna Connect Show.
From a podcast to an AI marketing company
Kyle's road here isn't particularly conventional.
Early in our conversation, he talks about attending three different colleges before deciding the traditional path wasn't for him. He was already working, advancing professionally, and discovering that he learned differently.
When I asked where his drive came from, his answer got personal.
Kyle talked about growing up in government-funded housing and remembering the emotional moment when he eventually had a home with a yard of his own.
That experience still drives the way he works today.
It also helps explain the energy behind So Good.
Kyle says the company started by trying to help businesses understand what was keeping them from reaching their goals. Those conversations eventually turned into a company focused on AI marketing and business growth.
Then cannabis presented a different problem
One of So Good's founders saw an opportunity in cannabis.
The problem was obvious: cannabis businesses face compliance and regulatory challenges that make traditional marketing much harder.
So the team began approaching dispensaries.
The response wasn't exactly encouraging.
Kyle said businesses essentially told them: marketing cannabis online is too difficult. Content gets removed. Accounts and campaigns get restricted. Why invest money into something that may disappear?
Then Kyle met a smaller Texas dispensary that couldn't afford So Good's services.
Instead of walking away, he gave the operator four things to change on the dispensary's Google Business Profile.
Kyle says that within three months, the dispensary's foot traffic increased 94.6%.
The owner called him back.
Now he could afford the help.
Four things cannabis businesses can do on Google
This might be the most immediately useful part of our conversation.
Kyle laid out four areas cannabis businesses should pay attention to on their Google Business Profile:
Get the category right. Make sure Google understands what kind of business you actually operate.
Keep asking for reviews. Don't treat reviews as something you collect once when the business opens.
Add new images. Kyle emphasizes that they don't need to be elaborate. Showing Google that the business remains active matters.
Post updates. Tell people what is happening inside the business and keep the profile alive.
His larger point is important for Minnesota.
Cannabis businesses have legitimate reasons to be frustrated with online platforms. But becoming silent because marketing is difficult makes the business even harder for customers to find.
Kyle's advice is to keep pushing.
What about AI?
Eventually I asked Kyle what people need to "chill out" about when it comes to AI.
His answer was pretty straightforward.
You don't have to like AI.
But it is here.
Instead of spending all of our energy arguing about whether it should exist, Kyle thinks business owners should be asking how they can grow alongside it.
That doesn't mean turning your business over to a machine.
In fact, later in our conversation, we landed on something that lines up closely with what we're doing at Canna Connect.
Start with real conversations.
Kyle's team uses educational YouTube videos, blogs, FAQs, Google Business Profile content, and other resources together. The goal is to answer real questions people are already asking and build authority around those answers.
We even talked about using podcast transcripts as the foundation for blogs and FAQs.
Which, fittingly enough, is exactly how this article started.
Education before the sales pitch
Kyle's approach to cannabis content isn't centered around constantly telling someone to buy a product.
It's about answering questions.
If someone is new to cannabis and searching for information, a dispensary or brand has an opportunity to become a resource.
Create the educational video.
Answer the question.
Turn that conversation into a useful article.
Build the FAQ.
Connect those resources.
Over time, the customer begins recognizing the business as somewhere they can go for answers.
That's a much different mindset than chasing every click.
This isn't an overnight strategy
Kyle was equally clear about something else.
This takes time.
He tells prospective clients that meaningful brand traction can require a six-month investment and, depending on the situation, potentially a year.
If someone needs leads tomorrow, Kyle will sometimes tell them So Good isn't the right solution and introduce them to another partner instead.
That part of the conversation stood out.
So Good began with a desire to help businesses grow, and Kyle doesn't want to take someone's marketing budget if another strategy is what that business actually needs.
Learning cannabis while bringing something to it
Toward the end of our conversation, Kyle said something else I appreciated.
He's new to cannabis.
He's been marketing since he was 19, but he isn't pretending that makes him an expert on cultivation, tribal cannabis, or every piece of the industry's infrastructure.
At CannaCon, he was learning too.
His goal is to bring value where he has expertise and learn from the people who know the pieces he doesn't.
That's how a new industry gets stronger.
People bring what they know, stay curious about what they don't, and build relationships across the gaps.
One more visibility problem cannabis businesses should check
Kyle also pointed to an interesting technical issue.
Cannabis websites commonly use age-verification gates. Kyle said So Good found that many of the cannabis sites they tested could not be properly crawled by its system because of how that verification was coded.
His warning is simple: if automated systems can't access your website, that may also affect how your information is discovered by AI tools.
So Good offers a free AI Visibility Check that businesses can use to begin looking at their online presence.
Watch the Full Conversation
There's a lot more in this one, including SEO versus newer ideas like AEO, GEO and AIO, why Kyle still sees Google as important for commercial discovery, and how YouTube, blogs, FAQs and community-driven platforms can work together.
Minnesota cannabis businesses already have enough obstacles between themselves and their customers.
Being impossible to find doesn't need to be another one.