The LAGNIAPPE Section (Pronounced “Lan-Yap”, definition: “Something extra”) is for Special features.

AimerAmour: Can you discuss your upbringing and when you decided to be a pharmacist?

Marco Moran: I was raised by my grandmother and older aunt in a very small town in Louisiana. I was always considered a gifted student in academics and I excelled in sports. While playing sports in high school, I had a physical trainer that was also a very well respected pharmacist in our town. He inspired me to study pharmacy in college. I attended LSU (Louisiana State University) while simultaneously taking classes at Southern University in Baton Rouge to try to get into pharmacy school faster.  In less than three years, I was accepted to North East Louisiana University’s (now the University of Louisiana, Monroe) pharmacy program. Noticing that I was completing the university’s accelerated two-year pharmacy program with relative ease, my professors suggested I also get a Masters Degree. I had full Navy scholarship to attend pharmacy school so before going back to school, I had an obligation to serve in the Navy to fulfill the requirements of the scholarship.

After serving in the Navy, I went back to my Alma mater and enrolled in a dual MBA/PhD program for pharmaceutical sciences because I wanted to learn how to create medications that could help solve problems in the world. I specifically wanted to help those battling drug issues because both my mother and father suffered from heroine and crack cocaine addictions. Before being raised by my grandmother in Louisiana, I was born a drug-addicted baby in Chicago and had a very harsh childhood. My upbringing was another reason why I wanted to go into medicine but I never wanted my career as a pharmacist to be behind a counter of a drugstore or in a hospital, I wanted to find a way to be more hands on in helping people.

I decided to write my Masters Degree thesis on the prevalence of cough syrup abuse in urban communities. While working part-time at night at a drugstore, I noticed massive amounts of young people coming from nightclubs or going to nightclubs with prescriptions for Codeine, Robetussin with Codeine, Tussenx and so forth in the middle of the summer when people weren’t really catching colds. I started really paying attention to rap lyrics, specifically rap lyrics from southern artists and there were countless references to drinking cough syrup. “I got that syrup in my cup, I got that lean, I got that drank in my cup”. Realizing the use of illicit cough syrup was a rapid part of the hip hop culture, I did additional research for my thesis and discovered cough syrup abuse was a widespread epidemic effecting not only our urban youth but many other races and age ranges.

AA: What is “Lean” and how was it developed?

MM: The first prototype of my beverage was a clear purple syrup-based formula that had a bevy of all natural herbal ingredients that could be purchased over the counter. At first, I was unsure of how to commercialize it, so I packaged it and sold it to independent distributes and people thought they had “real” syrup. I made a lot of money by just making something natural in my kitchen with my pharmaceutical skills. I presented the concept of doing a beverage to a friend and this friend spoke to another friend who knew someone in the beverage industry and they thought it was an interesting concept. I did a deal with another company which is now a competing brand called, “Drank Relaxation Beverage”. We did a corporate deal in which I had ownership over the product in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Southeast Texas. The product sold so well in my states that we started working with various Budweiser companies in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Oftentimes, what happens in the business world is that greed takes over and the Budweiser Corporation tried to find ways to get out of paying all of the royalties and commission for the business in territories that I established. This led to an ongoing lawsuit. In the meantime, I broke away from that situation and developed Lean. It’s in the same category of relaxation beverages but the marketing campaign is geared toward the urban community and it incorporates using rappers that are influential in the hip-hop community. That’s one of the things that the previous brand failed to implement, even though I expressed to them how important this demographic was to sales, a lot of people fail to give hip-hop the credit it deserves in shaping our culture.

AA: With similar relaxation beverages on the market, what separates Lean’s packaging from its competitors?

MM: The shield is the identifier for the brand, once you see that moniker, you know it’s a Lean product. Eventually, I would like to create a clothing line with the shield and Lean logo. On the logo we have a male that appears to be apart of the hip-hop community. He’s wearing a t-shirt with baggy shorts and backwards hat, holding a Styrofoam cup. Our logo distinguishes our product from competitors because it’s a representation of the products intended audience. However, you don’t have to necessarily dress like this to be apart of the hip-hop culture, but this is definitely a signature style of our urban youth.

It doesn’t matter what race you are or profession you’re in, rap music has such a cross over appeal; everyone wants to be apart of it. And that’s why Lean is growing prosperously.

My goal in creating Lean was to decrease the number of people, especially kids that will overdose from the misuse of cough syrup. Lean flavors are Purp, Yella and Easta Pink-common words rappers use in their lyrics when referring to their potentially fatal syrup concoctions. I’m on a crusade to get rappers to promote Lean as positive alternative.  People want to emulate rappers and their lifestyles. We want to desensitize the youth on what real Purp, Yella and Easta Pink is. When people hear the references in the lyrics, we want them to associate it with the Lean they see in the stores.

AA: Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

MM: When you are ready to take your product to the market, make sure you have the resources to hire intellectual property attorneys to protect your idea. This is a crucial step for new businesses because when you have a great idea and you are new to the market, a bigger company with more resources will try to steal your idea and recreate your product with their brand name.

Entrepreneurs also need to build a strong team because you can’t do everything by yourself. The more your company expands, the more things will need to be done to keep it running smoothly and you can’t be in two places at one time. The best CEOs are excellent at delegation. They know how to find people with the expertise to take their company to the next level. Don’t hire just anyone. Make sure that the people you choose to work with will be able to make decisions on your behalf that incorporate the vision for your company.

To order Lean Visit:

slowmotionpotion.com/