Hidden Gems: Meet Gary Upah of Soggy Bottom Hemp

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gary Upah

Hi Gary, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was the second oldest of seven kids to be raised on our small farm in central Iowa. In the 70s, farming was more about love of the land than earning a livable income and we raised cows, chickens and hogs to sell, and for milk, eggs and meat for our table. Our garden was over an acre in size and had to be regularly weeded and fertilized, organically of course. Long days of work in all kinds of weather was the norm, and I hated every minute of it.

I wanted to be an attorney but the only way to attend college was with family money, which we didn’t have. I enrolled in a local Junior College and worked 45 hours per week, evenings and weekends to pay tuition and board. During my second year there, I successfully ran for President of the Student Senate and through that position learned about negotiation, salesmanship, and politics which benefited me more over the years than any class I attended.

I decided to take a year off after graduation to save money for my bachelor’s degree and took a sales job in the insurance industry. I found that I had a knack for sales and as a 19-year-old, was soon earning more money than many college graduates with bachelor’s degrees. Armed with my rural work ethic, I rose through the ranks of several companies in the insurance industry and soon found myself and my young family in Kansas City.
I was successful by most measures, but my goal had never been to be in the insurance industry. Despite all its rewards, I didn’t feel appreciated or valued for the services that I offered, and I dreamed of building something that was rewarding and would help people, so I started looking for new opportunities.

In the mid-90s the Internet was in its infancy, and I saw opportunity in that. One of the skills I mastered previously was sales, and I saw the Internet as a disruptive new platform to revolutionize the way sales recruiting was done. I launched a new sales recruiting company in 1998 and over the next decade, grew it into one of the largest sales-specific Internet and Recruiting Event companies in the country.

Recruiting is a feast or famine business. When the economy is good, companies are hiring, and recruiters make buckets of money. When the economy tanks, companies pull back and 70% of the industry goes out of business. We survived three of those periods but then came the Great Recession of 2008. In 2009, our gross revenues were 75% lower than in 2007, with no end in sight. We shifted gears and were able to claw our way back to profitability, but the industry had changed, and our business model was not as viable as before, nor as much fun.

Despite the setbacks, that company taught me how rewarding building a startup company can be, and the value of being a first mover in a new industry.

The hard work and lack of nutrition of my childhood had caused my joints to wear and ache prematurely. I visited my first Chiropractor at age 10. I had heard about Marijuana and how it purportedly reduced pain among other things, but also that it would fry your brain like an egg on a hot skillet. I never tried it, not out of restraint but lack of access. In 2015 I went on a fishing trip to Washington State where cannabis had just been legalized, so we decided to check out a ‘dispensary’. The next three days were some of the most pain free days of my life, and that’s when the light came on over my head.

I started researching the relationship between cannabis and pain and found a litany of anecdotal evidence that there was in fact, a biological connection. I started searching for opportunities in the industry and found that Kansas was scheduled to offer licenses to grow hemp for CBD in 2019. With my farming background I felt well suited to the task and jumped at the chance to get into another startup company and industry.

Growing hemp and extracting CBD promised to be the next gold rush and from 2014-19, it was like printing money. Oil extraction plants were popping up like weeds around the country and growers in those States that opened early made millions. Kansas in hindsight was late to the dance and we and hundreds of others had just got ramped up when the market for CBD biomass crashed. Prices for hemp oil dropped 90% in 2020 and millions of investment dollars were lost in Kansas alone.

But I had been here before.

CBD products were new and while many people had heard of CBD, few knew what it was or could do. Most thought CBD was marijuana so wouldn’t touch it. The fact is, CBD is a different cannabinoid (chemical) than THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. CBD has no psychoactive properties but provides the pain relief commonly associated with marijuana. CBG, another cannabinoid, provides the anxiety relief also associated with marijuana. Through my research, I felt that I could create medicinal formulas based on CBD and CBG that were non-psychoactive and had as good or better therapeutic results than today’s chemical-based pharmaceuticals.

In 2021 we pivoted from exclusively growing hemp to manufacturing medical hemp products. We developed our own proprietary, homeopathic formulas for pain, anxiety, and sleep, among others. We quickly learned that people won’t just buy CBD at retail locations due to the price and their lack of knowledge, so we applied for participation at a local Farmers Market. The City of Lenexa Kansas was the first city to approve us even though some there thought we would be selling marijuana at their market! Soggy Bottom Hemp products can now be found at the largest Farmers Markets in Kansas City every Saturday when in season, and through referrals from friends and families of market attendees, we now ship our products to every State in the country.

We have found that people crave natural alternatives to the chemical pharmaceuticals we are inundated with today. By participating in face-to-face events with knowledgeable, friendly staff, we can tell the story about this amazing plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years. As of the end of 2024 we have local representatives in three states, retail locations in six states, and plan to double both in 2025.

Personally, I begrudgingly started life as a farmer, spent my middle years building service companies, and in my twilight years, am back to not only farming but turning that crop into products that make people and their pets healthier. And nothing could be more rewarding than that!

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
When you’re an entrepreneur, there are times when you have to go ‘all in’. Do it often enough and you will have an occasional losing hand and there’s nothing you can do but play it out. Most of my rough patches in business have come from rough economic stretches.

The great coach Lou Holtz once said, “I’ve been on top and I’ve been on the bottom, and given enough time, I’ll be both places again.” Life is a journey, not a destination, and if you treat it like that, you’ll roll through the rough spots in the road.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Soggy Bottom Hemp makes and sells health supplements made primarily from the hemp plant. Hemp is the common name for the Cannabis Sativa plant but was redefined as a separate plant based on the level of plant THC by the 2014 Farm Bill. Federally and State legal hemp products contain no more than .3% THC, meaning they are 99.7% THC-free.

Our products are all between 99.7 and 100% THC free. We focus on the cannabinoids CBD for pain relief, CBG for anxiety relief, and CBN for better sleep.

Our product line includes a topical cream for pain, oil tinctures and softgels for pain and sleep, gummies for anxiety and sleep, caramels for anxiety, and pet products for pain and anxiety.

We are one of the few remaining ‘Farm-to-Pharm’ vertically integrated hemp companies in the region.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memories are of my dog Spike. Spike was part collie and mostly mutt, very intelligent who loved to play hide ‘n seek around the farm. He came into my life when I was about 10 and lived over 20 years- unheard of for a farm dog. He was a survivor. In the cold Iowa winter months, after everyone went to bed, Spike would walk the mile into town and bring home some other dog’s bowl of food. When the snow thawed in the spring, our lawn would be littered with bowls of all shapes and sizes that Spike had borrowed from the city dogs. Even in the years after I left home, he would watch for my pickup from the deck and his excitement was clearly visible as I drove into the yard. I’ve been blessed with many dogs since but none of them quite like Spike.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.SoggyBottomHemp.com
• Instagram: soggy_bottom_hemp
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoggyBottomHempKansas