Mark Gillilan on Hemp, Mushrooms & SEO | Unscripted Podcast

What happens when a biologist turned CPG brand manager decides to fight his way through the world of SEO and botanical wellness? I recently joined Jeremy Rivera on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast to pull back the curtain on Kyoto Botanicals. We dove deep into the complex science of dual-extraction mushrooms and hemp oil production, why I refuse to compromise, and the obsession with momentum that transformed my business, and my life.

Last updated: March 25, 2026 • Author: Mark Gillilan | Founder, Kyoto Botanicals

Exploring Functional Mushrooms

Jeremy: Tell me more about mushrooms. I'm familiar colloquially, but that's more on a psychedelic perspective. Tell me about that.

Mark: We use lion's mane, reishi, chaga, and cordyceps — the four really main functional mushrooms. We do a dual extraction process to break down the tough cell walls of mushrooms. They're called chitin and you can't digest the cell walls of mushrooms, so you don't get any benefit if they're not done the way that we do them. We mix it with raw cacao powder and those four different mushroom extracts. You can mix it in your coffee, put it in your smoothie, or make hot chocolate. It's fantastic.

I actually just did a big educational blog post on this last week. These are not psychedelic at all. They are not in the family of mushrooms that have psilocybin. So there's no high, no psychoactive impact. I do everything non-psychoactive — I'm here for wellness, not for altered states. They help support your wellness, help support focus, and may help support a healthy immune system as well.

Hemp works via the endocannabinoid system. The functional mushrooms work to help support neurological and immunological wellness. Check out our mushroom education guide if you want to go deeper.

The Science Behind Hemp Extraction

Jeremy: I'm always surprised at the depth and scientific process behind the scenes. Can you give us some of your expertise in bringing these products to market?

Mark: A lot of people don't understand how complex it is to get to a final, safe-for-consumption extract. If you're smoking a joint, the heat converts the cannabinoids via decarboxylization. With hemp ingestibles for wellness, you have to do that heating step during a complex CO2 extraction process under high pressure. Then we do another step to remove all THC, ending up with a full cannabinoid and phyto compound profile — minus the THC. You can read more about this in our CBD education guide.

That is why high quality CBD products are a lot more expensive than people expect — and a lot more expensive than the gas station product, which is typically just CBD isolate. That's just pulling the isolated CBD molecule, losing the entourage effect of the entire plant. Our CBD tinctures vs gummies vs sports cream comparison explains these differences in depth.

Navigating the Regulatory Patchwork

Mark: After the 2018 Farm Bill passed, there was an explosion of Delta-8 THC and people getting around the rules with higher-potency products. Delta-8 is synthetic cannabinoids that the Farm Bill was never meant to address. My decision from the beginning to be THC-free really helped — without any THC, it's pretty safe in most every state. We've written about CBD and drug testing transparency — the honest truth that most CBD founders would never tell you.

Until the FDA regulates CBD as a dietary supplement, it's going to continue to be a massive patchwork. What that means for consumers: they must be very careful about the brands they choose. Make sure it's trustworthy. Make sure you can figure out who's behind it. And make sure they have all their lab results easily accessible. Our lab results and testing transparency page is exactly that kind of open-book approach.

Congress is potentially going to pass the switch from the 0.3% rule to the 0.4 milligram per container rule in November of 2026. Our products are already within that limit. Most CBD products in the market are not.

Developing the Mushroom Product Line

Mark: It's totally new. Over six years I came to know somebody who's a mushroom savant. I took the role I had on the hemp side and leaned on his expertise on the mushroom side to develop this product. The extracts go through the same safety testing — residual solvents, pesticides, biological contamination — to make sure they're all safe to consume. Our functional mushroom brew guide explains how to integrate them into a daily ritual.

Marketing in a Restricted, High-Trust Category

Mark: My approach is very conservative by nature. I don't do any wild claims. I don't do anything that the research doesn't support. I just focus on education — trying to explain to people in a digital ecosystem how I'd explain things one-on-one at a market. Not making crazy promises. If they work, great. If they don't, I refund everybody. I want people to try them.

Being THC-free helps enormously. I can say: try it for 30 days and see what the health benefits are for helping support your nighttime routines and a sense of daily calm.. Our CBD price gap audit also helps customers understand why premium hemp wellness costs what it does.

This connects to a broader point Jeremy has made about SEO strategy for cannabis-industry businesses — in restricted ad categories, organic search and education-led content are the only scalable trust-building channels.

The Street-Fight SEO Journey

Mark: I've been in brand management for almost 20 years — but that is not SEO. My SEO has been the street fight for the last six months. In this category SEO is the secret. It's very restricted from an advertising perspective. SEO became: okay, this is a way I can quickly scale my 'I'm talking to one person' approach at scale. I've literally spent the last six months, at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week, teaching myself SEO and just breaking things fast on my site and fixing them.

Jeremy: The best way to learn SEO is to implement, implement, implement. I treat it like karate. Just doing the small repetitive motions again and again — eventually it starts to get faster and has a cumulative impact. The key is connecting your keyword data to real business outcomes, not just traffic metrics.

Mark: I recommend anybody with their own business to just throw yourself into SEO. Even if it's just for a week. Learn about it. Because it is — if I had just stayed in brand management, I would have never learned about the technical aspects of running a business, and I think I would have been a lot poorer for it.

SEO as a Full Ecosystem, Not Just Traffic

Jeremy: If you look at SEO from the perspective of 'what are the functional problems my clients are trying to solve' and think of your site as a repository for how to answer and unblock friction to your end sales goal — if you do that successfully for existing clients, you're also addressing the potential search market of other people who aren't your current customers. You've just killed two birds with one stone. Your organic channel should co-operate with your email, social, and paid budget as both a supplement and an augment.

Jeremy: There's the parable of the plumber — he walks in, takes out a hammer, hits a pipe, and charges you $100. You're like, that took 30 seconds. Well, it's $5 for hitting the pipe, but $95 for knowing which pipe to hit, where and when and how hard. That's what 19 years of SEO experience gives you.

The Five-Year Vision: Slow, Methodical Growth

Mark: It's gonna be mushrooms just for a little while. I'm big into keeping my product line focused. I deliberately keep everything very slow and methodical and simple. So I have four CBD products and now one mushroom product. I'll probably expand to a flavor expansion first, then a gummy form. Beyond that, magnesium is something I've discovered over the last year that's just been unbelievable. So we'll see where the world takes me.

Hot Take: The Power of Momentum

Mark: I'm kind of obsessed with momentum over the last two to three years. It's been a complete flip from the 20 years probably before that. When I started this company about six years ago, that was kind of the first step into doing little steps at a time from a health and wellness perspective. And it just snowballed from there. I had suddenly built like this momentum machine — mushrooms, working out, going to bed at a reasonable time, not looking at my phone at a certain time every night. It just snowballed and became addicting.

Once you break through that unseen wall, all of these things are just great. I feel awesome when I wake up every day. What can I do next to make it even better? That's kind of been my enlightenment. Check out how our orange CBD oil supports morning focus as part of that daily wellness ritual.

Where to Find Kyoto Botanicals

Mark: The website is the main place: KyotoBotanicals.com. All the socials are @KyotoBotanicals — I've recently settled on YouTube because it's a great way to do that one-on-one connection at scale. For direct questions, reach out at info@kyotobotanicals.com. I've been talking quite a bit lately about legality on the blog, including what's going on with Congress and the potential switch to the 0.4 milligram per container rule. I love talking about it and I'll help anybody I can. Also check out our full blog and our frequently asked questions.