Rick “MrSoul” Campanella - Original Founder and Breeder of Brothers Grimm

Interviewed by Aaron Robinson –Editor (@iamcomprehend)

During the late 1980’s was an interesting journey for MrSoul who earned a nuclear engineering degree and began working as a distributor for an Amsterdam seed company called Super Sativa Seed Club. While working at the company he began using their seeds to experiment, prior growing marijuana in his walk-in closet. Later, he would move to Belgium where he was in close proximity to Holland and legal marijuana distribution. After a couple of years living in Belgium, he moved to Boston and began growing and breeding again. He collaborated with a guy by the name of Sly who he met on the internet in a cannabis group; they spent years building up Brothers Grimm, and MrSoul created Cinderella 99. Unfortunately, a security breech by his partner caused them to shut  down their operation.

Eventually, MrSoul moved to Europe and went back to Belgium for a couple more years working as an engineer. After living there a couple years, he decided to return to the U.S. and resided in New York City in Times Square. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of demand for nuclear engineers in the city of New York. One day, it occurred to him to reopen Brothers Grimm Seeds. He googled both his name and the company’s, and it turned out that he had a solid rep in the cannabis community. This inspired him to cash in his 401k. He moved out to Colorado and started Brothers Grimm where the business has been steadily evolving and increasing ever since. Its reputation is building stronger every day.

I had the opportuntiy to interview Rick “MrSoul” Campanella who is the original founder and breeder of Brothers Grimm. He is most famous for the Cinderella 99, #1 - as well as Rosetta Stone. Both are winners of the High Times top ten strains. His amazing wife, Laura aka MrsSoul, is the CEO marketeer of the company, whereas he’s more on the production side in the facility making the seeds.

Here is what Rick “MrSoul” Campanella has to share with the Consciousness Magazine readers.

Aaron Robinson: First of all, MrSoul, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to pursue this interview with me.

Rick “MrSoul” Campanella: You’re welcome!

Aaron: As a cannabis breeder and seed maker, what did that inspiration come from for you to create and breed seeds?

MrSoul: It was very strong in me. I loved to see a seed be germinated, turn into a plant, watch it grow and care for it. That whole process was always fascinating to me. As a kid, I had been breeding guinea pigs from the ages of around 9 to 13. So I already understood how genes were passed from parents to the offspring and about the ratios and the Mendelian breeding data and techniques. It was easy to take all that information and kind of say, ‘oh well, with a plant, let's see if it works like that too.’ I had the idea to create Cinderella 99 back around 97, 98 and it was ready by 99. We call it Cinderella 99 because of the year that it was created and Cinderella because it’s really a great name for a cannabis strain.

Aaron: Absolutely. What was interesting, the BodyCount strain will be released October 1^st, which you are in collaboration with the culture icon Ice T. This strain is a tribute to his legacy. How did this all come about for the both of y'all to get together and create this opportunity to work together?

MrSoul:  Well, I have a marketing team. Laura, my wife, is in charge of that. They reach out to celebrities or if they're in the right location or if you're in the right place at the right time and somebody says something that makes you think like well, if you wanted to do that, we can do it for you. And today, you've had guys like Mike Tyson, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson - a lot of these celebrities were interested in creating marijuana strains. As that sort of unfolds and unrolls, people are saying, ‘well, if we wanted to do that, who would be the people to reach out to’. Our reputation precedes us. So, they’ll basically say, ‘hey, if you were gonna do that, Brothers Grimm would be the company to probably talk to,’ and Trailer Park Boys [from the televesion show] kind of set that up nicely. It's been about a year now that we have started working with Trailer Park Boys and creating strains for them. We're about to release our third strain in another month or two.

Aaron: Nice! And regarding the BodyCount strain release, you guys are going to be donating a dollar from every pack sold to the Minorities for Medical Marijuana for the first 30 days. Would you like to share more about that?

MrSoul: You think of it like an IPO for a stock that's just coming out and the most excitement occurs in that first month or so when it's first released. We figured there would be a wave of enthusiasm that would create a nice extra flow of money that we could donate to a good cause. So, Minorities for Medical Marijuana was the one we chose.

Aaron: I think its fascinating that you’re working with Montel Williams. You all have a strain called Montel’s Dream Widow. That's sort of the same way that you guys connected to Ice-T and many other celebrities.

MrSoul: So he's on board. He really likes working with us and vice versa. Most of the time when you meet these people, it turns out that you may have had some mental impression in your imagination about who they were, what they're like, and so on. Generally, a very pleasantly surprise is that they are a lot sweeter and down-to-earth than you would have expected for somebody as famous. I think I have a little bit of experience as a sort of minor celebrity in the cannabis community. You don't really think of it the way the other people do. You’re kind of just being yourself. I'm just me. It's very cool when you get to know those people.

Aaron: Your legacy Cinderella 99 and the famous Rosetta Stone, which was named Top 10 Strain of 2018 by High Times magazine. Also Brothers Grimm was inducted into the High Time Seed Bank Hall of Fame. With the company having so much massive success, what's next in the future for Brothers Grimm Seeds?

MrSoul: Well, one of our things is we're famous for the stability of our strains and the uniformity of the plants. When you grow a pack of seeds from us, the plants are not random and all over the place. They're very specifically as advertised in the description on the package. Going forward, we’re maintaining that level of integrity in the quality of the products. The public loves when we create new strains. We have a program that's a tester program where we charge a very minimal amount of money for a tester pack of seeds. The tester program is the future. If you were testing a product and you're a company that produces something, you'd love to know what does the public think of this product. What we're doing is we're letting our actual customers tell us what they think of the product and then after a year or two of them testing and replying back to us what they think of it…if a strain has been really successful, we get a lot of very positive comments coming back and no negative comments coming back for that particular strain, then we'll take it out of the tester mode and make it one of our featured items on our menu. And, from that process, obviously new strains are created.

Aaron: As a successful business owner, what would you share with individuals looking to go into your line of work?

MrSoul: One of the things about being a breeder is that it takes time. You have to start very humble and build your reputation. Say you were trying to win the Kentucky Derby and you're looking to get a race horse, you don't go, ‘let me see, I know a farmer who lives down the street. Wasn't there a mare in his backyard that got pregnant? Must be a foal out there somewhere. I'll buy that and then maybe I win the Kentucky Derby.’ No, you go to a guy who has about 10, 20 years of experience breeding racehorses that have had a track record literally of winning races. So the thing you have to do is build up a reputation of excellence in the breeding that you do. That isn't going to happen overnight.

Realize that you're probably going to put in five years of anonymity and nobody knows who you are until you start to build a reputation for yourself and then people will say, ‘hey, this new kid on the block seems to be turning out some fire, so it might be worth looking into buying some seeds from them.’

It's not at all like the cannabis business itself where you're selling flower or edibles because your reputation can be relatively new and still be attractive with a little bit of the right kind of advertising.

Aaron: Yeah, it's patience.

MrSoul: It's a lot of patience.

Aaron: MrSoul, before we conclude the interview, would you like to add anything else that we haven't talked about?

MrSoul: I give a shout out to our company. My wife, Laura, is doing a brilliant job. If anybody ever has a question about anything that we do and they visit our website, which is brothersgrimmseeds.com, she's always available by phone or email and she takes time to personally get back to people. I would really encourage anybody who is curious about what they've heard today, to go to our website and have a good walk through it. There's a lot of information there and there's a lot of products. Reach out and ask a question and know that you're going to get the answer from the source itself.

 

 

For more information about Brothers Grimm, please visit www.brothersgrimmseeds.com

Laura Campanella aka MrsSoul - Chief Executive Officer of Brothers Grimm Seeds

Contact: 918.209.1916 Email: laura@brothersgrimmseeds.com

 

Instagram: https://brothersgrimmseeds.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCulzdWbkz82YalbJ7rjB-nw