Built From the Inside Out: Mark Gillilan, Kyoto Botanicals and the November 12 Hemp Rule

Friends and followers, most people hear cannabis and think about getting high. My guest built a whole company around not getting high.

Mark Gillilan is the founder and CEO of Kyoto Botanicals. He has spent about ten years in hemp wellness, starting at Charlotte’s Web, where he met the original hemp families. He launched Kyoto Botanicals in 2020, THC-free on purpose. He named it Botanicals, not Kyoto CBD or Kyoto Hemp, because he always meant to grow past one product. Functional mushrooms came next. Lion’s mane, reishi, cordyceps, chaga. Not the kind most people assume.

The day he got high in his own kitchen

Mark went to college in Boulder. He told me plainly he has smoked weed. But THC and him do not get along. In his words, it makes him paranoid, keeps him up and raises his heart rate.

When he started building the brand, he planned to go full spectrum, under the 0.3 percent THC line the 2018 Farm Bill uses to define hemp. He spent half a day in his kitchen mixing full-spectrum extract with flavor oils. Partway through, he realized he was high.

That is where his big lesson came from. The legal limit is a percentage. What a person feels is milligrams. As Mark explained it, a 25 milligram full-spectrum gummy can carry about a milligram of THC, and a serving from a high-dose tincture can carry four to six. For someone sensitive like him, that is enough to feel.

So he went broad spectrum. Whole-plant extract with the THC pulled out, lab tested to no-detect. And he is honest about the limits. If drug testing is part of your job, he tells people to avoid cannabis products entirely, because “it’s not worth your livelihood.”

The forgotten customer

Here is what Mark saw that a lot of brands missed. There is “a whole other side of the market that’s kind of been forgotten about.” Older generations. Professionals. Athletes. People who want what the plant offers without the high. Or as he put it later, simply: “Not everybody wants to get high.”

I told him on air what I saw. He built from the inside out. Most people build from the outside in. They ask what the world will buy and go make it. Mark solved his own problem first, and in doing that, opened the door for a lot of people standing where he stood.

That one hits home. GUDWUDZ started the same way. Burnt fingertips. Wasted roaches. A friend with an empty ink pen tube and me thinking, there is something here, but not plastic. I built the GUDWUDZ OG for me first.

November 12

Then we got into the hemp law. As Mark described it, a law signed in late 2025 redefines hemp federally starting November 12, 2026, with a total THC standard of 0.4 milligrams per finished container. Mark was clear he is not a policy expert. But the numbers he has seen suggest about 95 percent of today’s CBD industry would fall outside the law.

He also told me states are already moving. He said Kyoto no longer ships to Tennessee, which he understands now regulates CBD much like alcohol and does not allow out-of-state shipments.

Mark is conflicted about it, and I respect that. He thinks it hurts ethically made full-spectrum products. He also thinks something had to give after the Delta-8 rush to get THC to everybody through a gap in the rules. Regulation is like water, he said. People find the weak spots.

His biggest worry is not his own line. It is the farmers. Kentucky tobacco farms that converted to hemp. My friend Farmer Tom Lauerman has spent years training farmers to grow hemp at scale, and those are exactly the people with the most on the line right now.

Education is the brand

Mark runs a YouTube channel, writes his company blog himself, and works local markets in Denver face to face. He listens to people’s doubts and answers them. That is not a marketing tactic. That is respect.

So here is my question for you. Are you building what the market rewards, or what you actually needed? Build from the inside out.

Read the full episode recap on Unscripted Cannabis, and learn more about THC-free CBD and functional mushrooms at Kyoto Botanicals.

And whatever you choose to enjoy, enjoy it with intention.

Mark’s views are his own, and the hemp rule details are as he described them on air. Nothing here is medical advice.

GUDWUDZ is a handcrafted walnut smoking accessory brand rooted in culture, craft and intentional living. Just J, also known as Mr. Gudwudz, hosts conversations on Unscripted Cannabis. More from Just J at mrgudwudz.com.